A Bridge is being Built for Christian Unity

Photograph by Loci B. Lenar

Anglican Ordinariate: 'We Don't Have to Swim the Tiber; A Bridge is being Built' - Living Faith - Home and Family - Catholic Online

The following excerpt is from Catholic Online:

By Deacon Keith Fournier

LONDON, UK (Catholic Online) - I received a response to an article we published on the "Becoming One" gathering of those coming into full communion through the Anglican Ordinariate in the United States. It was from an Anglican priest who identified himself as "Father Luke". He wrote, "I am still in san Antonio. I wait for the plane back to Reno. My EMC (Episcopal Missionary Church) parish has voted to enter the Ordinariate, and I am pleased to have gotten together with my fellow travelers here in San Antonio. We do not have to swim the Tiber; a bridge is being built."

The imagery is apropos. This historic overture toward Anglican Christians is prophetic. A bridge is indeed being built and Pilgrims are crossing over and coming home. The implications have only begun to be realized; not only within the Anglican and Episcopal world, but within the Catholic Church. I am convinced this a part of an unfolding movement of the Holy Spirit which is fostering restored communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches as well as the healing of the divisions occasioned by the Protestant reformation in the West. Pope Benedict XVI is the Pope of Christian Unity. We should not underestimate the significance of what is occurring in this pregnant moment in Church history.

I have followed the movement of Anglican Clergy and lay faithful toward the safe harbor that is found in the Bark of Peter and written extensively about it. I have grieved along with many Anglicans as their own Christian community was torn asunder by the rejection of both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. It is my conviction that the influx of these Anglican Christians into the full communion of the Catholic Church through the Anglican Ordinariate is a work of the Holy Spirit, a gift to the Catholic Church and marks the beginning of the coming full communion of the whole Church.

This is the beginning of a new chapter in Church history. Pope Benedict XVI is the "Pope of Christian Unity" and the new chapter has only just begun to be written as the Third Millennium begins.

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