Anglican Bishops To Be Ordained RC Priests

by Michael Sean Winters

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Three Anglican bishops who have decided to join the new ordinariate for former Anglicans will be ordained deacons on January 13 and priests two days later at Westminster Cathedral in London.
This is huge to my mind. The news accounts do not mention it, but these will presumably be "conditional ordinations" akin to a church baptism when the baby was already baptized at the hospital. We call it "supplying the rite" because, of course, you can't be baptized twice. You also can't be ordained twice. So, these bishops, who have been bishops for some time, are acknowledging that they actually are not bishops, or not fully bishops.
I have to wonder if they really believe that? Do they really believe that their previous ordinations were deficient, that they are not really bishops right now, before Jan. 15? The question is an important one. If they are leaving the Anglican communion simply because it has tolerated the ordination of women and gays, then they cannot reasonably present themselves for Catholic orders. If, on the other hand, the fact that the Anglican communion has acted in these ways has convinced them that the Anglican Communion is not truly apostolic, that they now can see what the Holy See claimed all along, that their orders were invalid, they can reasonably present themselves for ordination in the Catholic Church. If this latter thinking is the case, then these men are doing something larger than most commentators have allowed. They are genuinely converting. And, that is huge.

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