THE
P RTAL
June 2016
Page 7
An Ordinariate
Area Co-ordinator
Jackie Ottaway and Ronald Crane meet Fr Christopher Lindlar
It is
always a pleasure to travel to Kent. England has many beautiful counties, and Kent is certainly
one of them. As island people going to the sea-side is another pleasure. So we drove up to the Presbytery
at Mongeham in Deal to meet with Fr Christopher Lindlar. He was welcoming, as usual, and we sat in his
spacious study overlooking the Kent countryside.
two or three times a year and we try
to have specific things that we want
to talk about, which essentially boils
down to a group of clergy building up
the life of the Ordinariate in the Kent
pastoral area, and evangelisation. We
strive to look outwards rather than
look inwards because far too many of
us have memories of meetings in our
previous incarnations when all we did
was meet together to grumble and
Fr Christopher Lindlar. weep into our beer over our lunch.
“I am the Area Co-ordinator of the Kent Pastoral Area We didn’t want to reinvent that rather depressing club
or the Coordinating Pastor: sometimes the terminology to which many of us belonged. I think that largely we
is a little fluid when you get down to pastoral areas. For have achieved our objective in meeting as a group of
myself I suppose, I think of the role of the Area Co- priests.
ordinator as two-fold; firstly to act as shop steward for
“I also attend the meetings of Deans in the Kent
the clergy of the area - to represent them to the Dean
“When
and the Ordinary, thus to, say, Fr David Waller and of area of the Archdiocese of Southwark.
course Monsignor Keith Newton. Secondly, to act as Bishop John Hine, the Area Bishop for Kent, retired,
the local point of contact. In many ways the role of Archbishop Peter Smith appointed Fr Paul Mason as
the Area Co-ordinator is that of a conduit, conveying Episcopal Vicar for Kent. He took over the workload
information up and down the hierarchy. I’ve tended that Bishop Hine had. It was roughly the time when
to think of that as being rather closer to being the I was asked to be the Area Co-ordinator. He decided
Chapter Clerk or the Chapter Secretary than being the that being Area Co-ordinator for the Kent Pastoral
Area Dean. That is because I think the organisation is Area really meant that I was Area Dean for Kent for
small enough, tight enough, compact enough, for us the Ordinariate and that it would be useful for me to
attend those meetings. I think I’ve attended three or
not to need endless layers of management.
four meetings so far.
“Quite soon after I was asked to be the Area Co“They are held six times a year, and I think it
ordinator by Monsignor Newton, I saw my role as
rather more just herding cats than leading the flock. is useful to the other Deans, to me and it seems to
Quite early on, the clergy got together and we agreed be useful to Fr Mason that I should be part of that
straight away that it was a good thing to meet up. We conversation because it means that we’re in contact
were expected to meet and we wanted to do that, but with one another, we’re sharing information, we’re
we didn’t want to invent yet another set of meetings sharing thoughts and ideas and it also makes concrete
that we had to go to - that we felt obliged to go to. So that important point in Anglicanorum Coetibus where
we really wanted to meet for specific purposes rather the clergy of the Ordinariate are exhorted to engage
with the life of the wider diocese. Incidentally, Pope
than meeting for the sake of meeting.
Francis has raised Fr Mason to the episcopate and he
“I think that’s what we’ve been able to sustain in will be ordained a bishop on the 31st of May, the Feast
the two years that we have been meeting. We meet of the Visitation.
We began with the obvious question. What
does an Area Co-ordinator do? He sighed,
laughed and said, “Good question! The
Ordinary has divided the country up into
three deaneries. Each deanery is divided up
into a succession of pastoral areas. In South
East England, there is the Kent pastoral
area, which is literally the county of Kent.
Sussex has its own pastoral area. Our Kent
Pastoral Area is also coterminous with the
Kent area of the Archdiocese of Southwark.
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