The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has released a new document describing the “Anglican heritage” of the Catholic Church’s personal ordinariates as a permanent reality that makes a “distinctive contribution” to the Church’s evangelising mission. Source: OSV News.
Published on the dicastery’s website last week, the Vatican document stressed that the Anglican patrimony of the ordinariates founded under Pope Benedict XVI’s 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus — ordinariates informally known as “the Anglican Ordinariate” — is “a living reality” that “looks to the future in the transmission of the faith to future generations”.
The Vatican said the ordinariates – which bring with them a patrimony from the Church of England that developed for nearly 500 years following the Reformation – offer “a unique reflection of the face of the Church and a distinctive contribution to the living richness of her identity as ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic’”.
“The patrimony they have inherited, therefore, not only equips the Ordinariates to welcome communities and individuals into full communion but also continues to shape their distinctive participation in the Church’s mission well into the future,” it stated.
The document followed a March 1-3 meeting between the bishops leading the Catholic Church’s personal ordinariates and the head of the dicastery, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández.
Regarding what the Anglican patrimony is in the Catholic Church, the Vatican document noted Cardinal Fernández’s observation during the homily he gave at the 2024 episcopal ordination of Bishop David A. Waller of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which covers the United Kingdom.
“In the case of the Ordinariate, the Catholic faith is inculturated among people who experienced the Gospel in the context of the Anglican Communion,” the prefect preached, noting how elements of the rich Anglican tradition “are now lived out in the fullness of Catholic communion.”
The Vatican document identified seven distinctive traits of this patrimony that it proceeded to describe in detail under the following headings: “a distinctive ‘ecclesial ethos’”; “evangelisation through beauty”; “direct outreach to the poor”; “pastoral culture”; “the family and the domestic church”; “Scripture and preaching”; and “spiritual direction and the sacrament of penance.”
Vatican affirms permanent place of ‘Anglican heritage’ in the Catholic Church (By Peter Jesserer Smith, OSV News).
