News for Week Ending 1/3/2011

Anglicans join Roman Catholic service in Westminster Cathedral service

The Telegraph reported that the first group of clergy and laypeople from the Church of England were welcomed January 1, 2011, into the Ordinariate created by the Vatican. In a service in Westminster Cathedral—not to be confused with Westminster Abby—three former C0E bishops and clergy and laypeople from about 20 parishes became Roman Catholics who will be able to maintain certain Anglican traditions within the Roman Catholic Church. Most prominent among the new converts was the former Bishop of Fulham and now resigned chairman of the Anglo-Catholic Forward in Faith John Broadhurst.

Additional defections from the CoE to Rome are expected to follow as the CoE continues on the path to consecrating female bishops. The departures are expected to make the CoE General Synod less contentious.

Japan moves forward toward adopting Anglican Covenant

George Conger has reported that the General Synod of the Anglican church in Japan (the Nippon Sei Ko Kai) agreed to move forward in considering the Anglican Covenant last May despite opposition expressed by the Theological and Doctrine Committee of the House of Bishops. According to Conger, concerns that Section IV of the Covenant is un-Anglican were put aside “in view of the parlous state of the Anglican Communion.”

Prominent female priests marry in Massachusetts

Episcopal News Service reported January 3, 2010, that two female priests were married January 1 in Boston’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul by Bishop of Massachusetts M. Thomas Shaw before a congregation of 400. The principals in the service were the Very Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, dean and president of the Episcopal Divinity School and the Rev. Canon Mally Ewing Lloyd, canon to the ordinary for the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Although The Episcopal Church has not authorized liturgies for same-sex marriage, such a ceremony is allowed under Resolution C056 passed by the General Convention in 2009.

Anglo-Catholic Va. parish gets alternative episcopal oversight

According to VirtueOnline, Bishop of Southern Virginia Herman ‘Holly’ Hollerith has agreed to allow retired South Carolina suffragan bishop William Skilton to provide pastoral care for the Anglo-Catholic St. Bride’s Church of Chesapeake, Virginia. Rector R. Stephen Powers said that sexual issues and women’s ordination prompted the request for alternative oversight. Skilton was reluctant to call the arrangement Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight (DEPO), an arrangement authorized by the church’s House of Bishops in 2004.