SSPX welcomes Ordinariate converts


This notice was posted today at the USA District of the Society of St Pius X:
GOOD NEWS:
900 Anglicans become Catholic at Easter
5-3-2011

While celebrating the Paschal season’s glad tidings of joy, it is appropriate that we relay the good news of 900 Anglicans converting to Catholicism on Easter, a traditional time when converts are received into the Church. This encouraging number is all the more so when we consider that it included 61 former Anglican ministers.

Despite some reservations about the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and the personal ordinariate that has been erected for such converts from Anglicanism, nonetheless we genuinely rejoice to hear of their recent conversion and sincerely welcome them as new members of the Mystical Body of Christ. May they unceasingly turn to their ordinariate’s patroness, Our Lady of Walsingham, for assistance in the restoration of the Faith of their Catholic ancestors, whose fervent devotion to the Blessed Mary Ever Virgin once caused their country to be called, Our Lady’s Dowry.

We also pray for all of this year’s Easter converts that they will persevere in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and thereby earn the eternal reward of the beatific vision of Our Risen Lord.
Of the reservations, I think that the first and second will prove unfounded. All of the former Anglicans that I know are absolutely sound on the question of the visible Church, and have no truck with sola scriptura. People who do not live in England often fail to realise that the Church of England encompasses a ludicrously broad spectrum of belief, and that the anglo-Catholics who are actually willing to come into Communion with Rome have professed the Catholic faith for years, taking their lead from the magisterium. What has happened basically is that there is no longer any possibility of preserving the myth that communion with the Catholic Church can exist within the Anglican communion.

On the third reservation, relating to celibacy, I can see the danger that is alluded to, but I think that too will dissipate. However I think that we do need to be vigilant on this matter, so that married clergy continue to be considered a charitable exception granted by the Holy See for particular cases.

Most importantly, though, this notice from the SSPX is a significant gesture of welcome and reflects very well on the Society.

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