Nieuws uit Engeland op Witte Donderdag

In Engeland worden vandaag honderden gelovigen, waaronder tientallen priesters, na een voorbereidingstijd die de hele vasten geduurd heeft, officieel opgenomen in de katholieke Kerk; ze gaan deel uitmaken van het zogenaamde Ordinariaat van O.L.V. van Walsingham, een nieuwe structuur binnen de Kerk, waarin anglicanen, met behoud van eigen liturgie en gebruiken, in volle eenheid kunnen treden met de bisschop van Rome.
Uit de Sunday Telegraph van deze week:

Marcia Mitchell, 76, who joined the [Anglican] church in 1980 and was a churchwarden for 14 years, says she had been considering the Pope’s offer ever since it was made in 2009. “I had become dissatisfied with the way in which I felt the Church of England was losing its Catholic heritage.
“When I heard that we were being offered the chance of going into this new pilgrimage of faith, it interested me.”
She will be among hundreds of former Anglicans, including 66 clergy, who will be confirmed as Catholics in services being held at the end of Holy Week.
Figures released by the Roman Catholic Church show that the largest impact will be felt in the Catholic diocese of Brentwood, where 240 people have prepared for confirmation.
In the archdioceses of Birmingham and Southwark, 100 and 167 respectively have begun worshipping in the Catholic Church, and a further 60 have been recorded in each of the dioceses of Plymouth and Portsmouth.
Although these numbers are relatively small, they are nevertheless higher than initially expected, which owes much to the leadership provided by the three former [anglican] bishops, [now priests of the Ordinariate,] who have travelled to parishes assuring disillusioned Anglicans of a cherished role in the Ordinariate.
One of them, Fr Keith Newton, the former Bishop of Richborough, who has been appointed as the Ordinary responsible for heading up the new structure, says he had been encouraged by the response – but feels it is only the beginning.
“I haven’t been going around proselytising, but I’ve been helping priests to explore what is a very generous offer from the Holy Father,” he says. “These are not simply people fed up with the Church of England, but people who see a really positive and exciting future.
“This is just the start. Now we are here, I expect many groups will join us in the months and years ahead.”

Zie ook Anna Arco's The Ordinariate is really happening in de Catholic Herald.