THE P RTAL
January 2015
UK Pages - page 12
New Ordinariate Groups
Recently the Ordinariate of OLW has opened some
new groups and Jackie Ottaway and Ronald Crane
begin the new year with a résumé of one of them
UK Pages
Two shrines;
one village. Charlotte Boyd and Fr Alfred Hope Patten both had the vision of a
restored shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. At different times and in different ways they both pursued
their goal. Theirs were times when Catholics and Anglicans were nowhere near as friendly as they are now. It
did not seem at all odd to have an Anglican Shrine and a Catholic one.
The scene is quite different now. We live in ecumenical
times. Indeed, in our last issue Mgr Keith Newton told
us “The Ordinariate is about bringing into the wider
Catholic Church aspects of the life of a Christian
denomination which was formed in 16th century
England. That is the most important significance.
Anybody could have gone to their local Catholic priest
and said, ‘I wish to be received into full Communion‘.
Thank God that now there is an embryonic group at
this most holy village in Norfolk.
incredible ecumenical implications
Moving to Walsingham
Those of us who joined the Ordinariate did not
do that. We came in under the auspices of the
Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus,
which was specifically about responding to a request
that Anglicans had made to the Holy See to further
corporate union whilst retaining aspects of Anglican
Patrimony, consistent with the Catholic faith. It has
incredible ecumenical implications. When Anglo
Catholics say to you they want union with the Universal
Church, the question is, what do you think that might
look like in practice?
Barry and Christine Barnes have moved from
Croydon to North Norfolk. They told us, “Sadly the
Ordinariate, despite its title, had no group actually in
Walsingham. Walsingham is one of those places where
the local Anglicans consider themselves safe.”
It is small, that is true. It has no resident priest. Its
members cannot therefore meet for regularly for
Mass other than with the local Diocesan Catholic
Community. Yet the group is in good heart and looking
to the future.
Sisters Jane Louise and Wendy Renate returned to
live in Walsingham and were joined by my wife Chris
and me from the Croydon group. Then Janice and
her husband from the Sevenoaks group moved to
Fakenham, so we had a nucleus for a group of our own.
Recently Bro. Robert was received into the Ordinariate
united but not absorbed
by Mgr John and we have two new members, Jim
‘We are an experiment of what this looks like in from Walsingham and Robert from Wroxham, who
practice. We have something that is united with the are being received and confirmed by Mgr John on 15
Catholic Church, but not absorbed. Ecumenism must December. Fr Gordon Adam is leading us in an Advent
not be only talk; it must work out the practice. We are reflection, so we can now say that England’s Nazareth
not the only way, but the Catholic Church has been at last has a group.”
prophetic in that it has embraced a tradition which
comes from the west, from the 16th century originally. tea and mince pies
It’s almost like a free province.’
We met with Sister Wendy Renate over tea and
mince pies in the tea shop at the Slipper Chapel.
So the Ordinariate is about ecumenism and nowhere “We are meeting for a Quiet Day soon. From time to
ought to be more ecumenical than Our Lady’s shrine time we manage to meet together. We recently had
at Walsingham.
a pilgrimage to the Roman Catholic and Anglican
Cathedrals in Norwich. We are a new group, but it
Yet one of the strange things about the Ordinariate is good because we had been frustrated at having no
of Our Lady of Walsingham is that Walsingham has Ordinariate Group in North Norfolk. As it is we do not
been the catalyst in the spiritual journey of many of have a resident priest, so things are not easy.”
its members; it is the place that bears the name of our
Ordinariate here in the UK, but it was the place that overseeing this embryonic group
had no Ordinariate Group.
Mgr John Broadhurst has been overseeing
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