Our local Roman Catholic Archbishop has issued a letter to be read in his churches this week on the subject of Christian Unity.
I’m not going to say a huge amount about it because I’m still thinking about it and its important to read these things carefully and initially without much added commentary.
I note in passing though that the letter itself makes no mention of the prospects of Personal Ordinariates, the Pope’s invitation to groups of disaffected Anglicans to convert to Catholicism in company with one another and form a new membership organisation within his church. That invitation seems to me to have the potential to be a complete ecumenical gamechanger. Indeed, I’d say that the manner in which it was announced moved the goalposts considerably. Certainly it made some unlikely people like myself feel some sympathy for the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Anyway, I was going to say that the ordinariate issue (and the lack of any mention of it in the Archbishop’s letter) might be thought to be something of an elephant in the ecumenical room. However, I’ve done my homework (ie read a few blogs) and find that I may be mistaken. It seems that there may not be a Scottish Ordinariate in the near future due to lack of interest. There may be no elephant in the room after all.
As I’ve said before, I give all good wishes and blessing to those who feel the desire to belong to the Roman Catholic Church in this way. I’m not one of them. However, I spend enough time with people moving in the opposite direction that I know how joyful it can be to find oneself feeling fully at home in church that I do wish a blessing of peace to anyone travelling.
Anyway, Archbishop Mario’s letter can be found on the Glasgow Churches Together website and it would be a great discipline for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity for individual non-Roman Catholics to read it in company with individual Roman Catholics. Episcopalian members of St Mary’s reading this might take this as an invitation to do just that and then put a comment on here saying how you got on.
Interesting times, no?
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