First formal request for Ordinariate in Britain comes from TAC

It looks like the first moves towards establishing an ordinariate in the United Kingdom have been made by the Traditional Anglican Communion in this country. According to Anglo-Catholic, the group–which is small in Britain– has made a formal request to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

This is part of their letter stating that they will take up the new canonical structure offered in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, published last year:

We therefore request that:

1) That the Apostolic Constitution be implemented in the United Kingdom and a Personal Ordinariate be erected.

2) That we may establish an interim Governing Council.

3) That this interim Council be directed by the Holy Father to propose a terna of names for the appointment of an Ordinary in a UK Ordinariate.

While we cannot speak for other groups of Anglicans in the United Kingdom, we shall be delighted if others apply for acceptance under the terms of Anglicanorum coetibus.

NB: It is important not to confuse the Traditional Anglican Communion with traditionalist groups in the Church of England. TTAC counts as a continuing Church and is not in Communion with Canterbury.

Malta diary: Awaiting Pope Benedict

Last year Lady Gaga – a pop singer with a penchant for outrageous outfits and bizarre expressions – drew some 40,000 people to the Granaries in Floriana, a town outside Valetta. This year, Pope Benedict – on his first Papal visit since reports of clerical child abuse began to surface in January – is expected to draw only 30,000 people in Europe’s most Catholic country.

“People do not love God, because they do not know God”

Malta’s most recent saint — canonised under Benedict XVI in 2007 and beatified by JPII in May 2001 — is Saint George Preca who “anticipated the Second Vatican Council by 60 years” by founding a society to teach lay people about doctrine and Scripture. His remains lie in the chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Hamrun under a wax effigy made at Madame Tussaud’s in London.

“Even Benedict XVI and Pius XII are victims of predjudice”

One of the world’s most glamorous public philosophers has lept to the defense of one of the world’s most formidable theologians. Bernard-Henri Lévy has written an article defending Pope Benedict as well as Pope Pius XII’s wartime record in the Italian daily Corriere de la Sera.
Bernard Henri Levy wrote that Pope Benedict had been misrepresented in the press.

Is Cormac Murphy-O’Connor the most powerful priest in England and Wales?

If the long-drawn deliberations over Archbishop Vincent Nichols’s appointment to Westminster are anything to go by, then Rome struggles for reliable information about the on-the-ground situation in Albion. With Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor at the table and the Nuncio Archbishop Faustino Sainz Muñoz by his side, the bishops will have someone present as they deliberate to advise them. As a member of the Congregation for Bishops, the cardinal will also have a veto on names put forward on any terna. Even if he reaches Roman retirement age in three years time, he will be able to influence a great number of decisions which will directly affect the appointments made to England and Wales.

Next year Bishop Edwin Regan of Wrexham diocese faces retirement while in 2011, Bishop Thomas McMahon of Brentwood, Hallam’s Bishop John Rawsthorne, Bishop Crispian Hollis of Portsmouth and Shrewsbury’s Bishop Brian Noble are all due to step down. In 2012 and 2013 Plymouth’s bishop Christopher Budd and Salford’s Terrence Brain respectively retire.

See how they love one another…

 Cardinal Walter Kasper — the gap-toothed Swabian official in charge of the Vatican’s ecumenical department (or Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as it is known for short)—has launched a book celebrating 40 years of Catholic-Protestant dialogue this week.

Even the people who worked on the book were “positively surprised at how much has been accomplished in these years. It is a very rich harvest that overcomes the polemics and the great historical problems of the Reformation”, the cardinal said.

He said that although there had been great progress, there were some “even among some members of the curia” who held a less than positive view of ecumenism. They believe, he said, that ecumenism “has not borne any fruit and left us with our hands empty.”

Harvesting the Fruits: Basic Aspects of Christian Faith in Ecumenical Dialogue comes at an interesting time for ecumenical dialogue in Cardinal Kasper’s native Germany, where ecumenical relations have, until the last week, been on the rocks.