THE
P RTAL
August 2017
The priest is acting in persona Christi, so his
personality is subdued. It is Christ offering the
sacrifice and the victim is Christ himself. The custom
of celebrating ad orientum — which Divine Worship
appears to support — will create a reordering of the
people of God. I think we underestimate just how
dramatic a shift — or reorientation — that is for the
Church.
5. Pope Francis recently stated that “the problem
is how to build the parish.” Do you agree that this
is the central issue for the Ordinariate, or are we
building something different?
Page 22
question of one love keeps clear the motivation for
why we do what we do.
7. Finally, you’ve now got Trump and we’ve got
Brexit and another election looming. Is it time
for Catholics to re-read documents such as Rerum
novarum, which Saint John Paul II described as an
“indispensable gift” for Catholic social teaching
and the whole concept of the common good
— to counter extremism and what the Children’s
Society report recently described as an “excessive
individualism”?
When we speak of Catholic social teaching, what
strikes me is we often speak about it in its effects,
rather than in its motive or in its point of origin. In
those early centuries, in those places where the Gospel
had been preached and groups of people, for example,
returned to the cities where there may be disease and
famine whilst everyone else was leaving the city. Why
So Ordinariate groups have to make an interior shift were they going in to retrieve those who were very
that they will cease to be a group and become a parish; sick, almost dead?
in our context (St Bede), we are hosted by the parish of
the Holy Family, Minnesota, so this is where God has
Their answer was, that they were imitating God.
placed us, and our first task is to become visible. So I God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.
always wear clericals.
Catholics do the care of their neighbours because their
neighbours matter to God — because there is nothing
I always wear a cassock. I’m visible. And for the more insane than that the God of the universe should
faithful, they always have to be ready to give a reason take on human form, to humiliate himself so that he
for the hope that they have. And so I encourage them could rescue even people who could not care less.
— even if they say it badly — to give witness; when That’s the wonder of the Gospel!
they see somebody in the grocery store, speak to them
This interview has been seen, modified
out of the hope that the Gospel gives them. The Gospel
and approved by the Vice-Chancellor
has — pregnant within it — an enormous amount of
(Director of Communications
hope, but people have to matter enough to us that we
& Strategic Planning)
will actually open our mouths and speak. So we are
of The Personal Ordinariate
about building a local Catholic community.
I am not sure if I know what Pope Francis had in
mind when he said this, but by the very nature of the
case, the Catholic Church necessarily takes on the local
dimension. When people receive the Gospel, they are
formed into Catholic communities and parishes.
6. Your parish is dedicated to St Bede the
Venerable, whose Ecclesiastical History of the
English People is cherished by so many of us. Bede
quoted Pope Gregory’s words to St Augustine when
he sent him to evangelise these islands in 597: “Do
not let the toil of the journey or the tongues of men
put you off the mission.” Is that fair advice today
for us?
Absolutely. Jesus says, “Do not fear him who can
destroy the body but fear him who can destroy both
body and soul in hell,” and he said, “You shall love
the Lord your God with all your soul….and love your
neighbour as yourself.”
Jesus calls us, then, to one love and one fear. That
fear keeps us from weighing in the question of human
approval. It only matters what God approves. The
of the Chair of Saint Peter
Forms of words for Making a Bequest
in favour of the Personal Ordinariate
of Our Lady of Walsingham in your Will
I GIVE to the Ordinariate of Our Lady
of Walsingham, 24 Golden Square, London
W1F 9JR, the sum of ______ pounds (£
) and
I DIRECT that the receipt of the Treasurer or other
proper officer of the Personal Ordinariate of Our
Lady of Walsingham shall be good and sufficient
discharge to my Executor.
or
I GIVE the residue of my estate to the
Ordinariate
of
Our
Lady
of
Walsingham, 24 Golden Square, London W1F
9JR, and I DIRECT that the receipt of the Treasurer
or other proper officer of the Personal Ordinariate
of Our Lady of Walsingham shall be good and
sufficient discharge to my Executor.