John Allen Interviews Fr Mark Woodruff for the National Catholic Reporter

This interview with our priest-director forms part of the blog, All Things Cahtholic, of the distinguished journalist senior correspondent of the American National Catholic Reporter, and is found here, starting about half-way down the page.

John Allen writes:
While I was in London recently, I had the chance to speak with several people about the new “Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham,” a structure provided for by Pope Benedict XVI two years ago to welcome groups of Anglican clergy and laity into the Catholic fold, which is now a going concern in the U.K.

The ordinariate currently numbers roughly 900 laity and 60 clergy, including some newly minted Catholic priests who had already retired from Anglican ministry at 70.

One of the more interesting conversations came with Fr Mark Woodruff, a former Anglican who entered the Catholic church long before the ordinariate, but who has served as an advisor for some of its groups. A veteran ecumenist and a deeply thoughtful soul, Woodruff sketched some of the promise, and the challenges, facing the new venture. Woodruff not only took the time to answer my questions in person, but he also fleshed out his thinking in e-mail correspondence. The following are excerpts from our exchange.

What does the ordinariate mean?
I think it’s genuinely an attempt to signal that in the universal church, which we believe subsists in the Catholic Church, there is endless space, with the possibility of embracing Christian tradition in its entirety and its integrity. … This is an immense affirmation of Anglicanism and its riches. It’s possible for them to be in communion, united not absorbed tout court. Furthermore, we as a Catholic Church can to some extent internalise Anglican tradition and make it our own. This is an immensely valuable tool ecumenically that we have not had before. It’s not about poaching, it is about internalising in the Catholic Church what already belongs to it, the ultimate dimension being the visible unity of the whole of Christ’s body.

What’s the background to the ordinariate?
The practical shape and detailing of it has been under discussion for twenty years or more. There were negotiations for something along these lines in the late 1980s. A grouping called the Congregation for the English Mission was involved in discussions with Cardinal [Basil] Hume when there was a crisis for Catholic-minded Anglicans and papalist Anglicans in those days.

At that time, the Catholic bishops here didn’t want a multiplication of jurisdictions. They wanted an integrated diocesan structure. The effect was that, when there was an influx of Anglicans in large numbers in the early 1990s — since that time we’ve had about 500 priests in England and Wales who have come from the Anglican tradition — it broke up relationships, traditions and shared outlooks, as people made their own way. They did so in great number, but you lost that esprit de corps.

What did that say about what we really thought of ecumenical reconciliation? Our message was that, to be in communion with the Catholic Church, you had to relinquish your old life together and simply ‘convert’ to Roman Catholicism. As we lost sight of the principle of corporate reunion, we also lost sight of our own principle that the church is a community of communities. That communion has not been broken up this time around. You’ve got some kind of ecclesial, Eucharistic, corporate identity, and that’s something to build on.

There are 900 laity and 60 clergy in the ordinariate. Ten years from now, what will those numbers be?
Partly, it depends on finding resources and buildings from which the Ordinariate parishes can conduct their mission. Perhaps there will be some sharing with other denominations, or existing Catholic parishes. A big concern is how to pay the clergy too, not least those with families. There are hospital, school, and prison chaplaincies that can help with this, and some have arranged to take secular employment, as permitted by the norms.

The liturgical rite is being developed and hopefully will be in use early next year. In my view, it’s a risk not to have it ready now, as inevitably people may drift from their groups into the parishes where they are now getting accustomed to church life. But when it is in use, there is no reason why it shouldn’t be a draw to other Christians who want to be built up in this way. Other Catholics will be free to attend and take part and, it may even be that, with this rite as normative, the Ordinariate will be among the most enduring manifestations of the Anglican tradition in this culture and country.
I believe that God has not gone to all these lengths for something that is merely transitional.

Is it an open question how large the ordinariate may become?
I happen to think that if the ordinariate project gets its liturgical life together, and it maintains a distinctive Anglican theological and spiritual tradition, it will be a great addition to the Catholic church in this country. It will embody something to which people will respond. It will have classic Anglican liturgy, it will express Catholic faith in a classic Anglican way, and it won’t have the sort of dichotomy within itself between orthodoxy and relativism that I think is troubling the Church of England.

Are the members of the ordinariate right-wing ideologues?
No, I don’t think they are. I think most people have been ordinary Anglican churchgoers coming from the broad range of Anglican-Catholic traditions. Externally, some will be used to a fairly elaborate liturgy, others will be coming from a more choral-civic ‘Prayer Book’ tradition, others will have been very consciously ‘Vatican II’ and not theologically all that different from Roman Catholics. Sociologically and demographically, they will have different perspectives, but from what I have seen there is both the sheer normality of the people and clergy, and also a range of views and their expression – from very conservative, to very academic, very ‘Anglican’, very pastoral, very spirituality-focused, to very social gospel-focused, to everything else that we can find in our regular Catholic churches.

What’s been the Anglican reaction?
I think there has been a great deal of neuralgia. In the English situation, the Church of England does not quite occupy the position in national life that it once did, but it still has this important position of leadership and engagement with the state and with civil society that is vital, I think, also to the mission of the Catholic church. We are absolutely bound to work together and, besides, we respond to different parts of society, and they respond to us. There has to be a partnership.

We mustn’t settle for the Ordinariate as the last word in somehow embracing an Anglican tradition within the Catholic community. The work that still needs to be done is the union of all Christians, and that has to be happening because it’s the will of Christ. The Church of England entire and the Catholic church entire have at some point to be in complete union.

I’ve stressed time and time again to these friends of mine who have come into the Catholic church: I do not want you to come in and pull the ladder up. This is not about you finding a safe haven. You are now somebody who is embedded within us, who adds something to us in terms of our understanding of Anglicanism, which helps us reach out and embrace and be friends and collaborate even more deeply. We want you, therefore, to be part of that ecumenical outreach and engagement.

It is clear to me, too, that the church in this country cannot simply go on as it is, with all of our ‘denominations’ experiencing a declining grip on the imagination of people. No one church can address the deepest longings in those imaginations on its own. We need each other, we relate to people differently, and even though we are disunited we urgently need to collaborate and realise more and more an ecumenism of life.

There’s also an ecumenical vocation to the ordinariate?
If it forgets that, it must fail. It has to be about unity, because it really does have to be about the struggle for the soul of Europe and re-evangelization. It has to be at the centre of that. Otherwise, it’s just going to be an ‘ecclesiastical granny flat’. No one wants that.

Study Paper II - Anglican Patrimony, by Fr Brooke Lunn

Today we publish Fr Brooke Lunn's second Study Paper to assist exploration of his Appreciation of Anglicanorum Coetibus.

This is already an historic document, since it is a reworking for the present circumstances of An Inlook into Anglican Identity, a study guide Fr Lunn developed early in the period from 1987 to 1990 as the leaders of the Catholic League set up a Committee for Corporate Reunion, to explore the feasibility and basis of corporate reunion. "Anglican identity" was thus the term being used at the time of the first formal plan for a scheme in the late 1980s and just into the 1990s, before the phrase "Anglican patrimony" entered into the currency. To those who say that the Apostolic Constitution was rushed in its conception and had no precedents, once again we demonstrate evidence of important foundational work two decades ago, itself resting on more than a century of repeated efforts, contacts and approaches, which are now bearing fruit as they are realised in the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and further afield.

The original Inlook was printed in its entirety in our August 2010 Special Edition of The Messenger, a substantial collection of 200 pages of documentation and analysis entitled, Anglicans and Catholics in Communion: Patrimony, Unity and Mission. This remains available for free distribution and if you would like a copy, please email us here and we will send you a copy while stocks last. All we ask is a small donation to the Newman Fund to support the Ordinariate.

After a searching discussion among members of the League, using the Inlook, a "Congregation of the English Mission" was established as an embryonic body that could in due course petition the Catholic authorities for a "group of Anglicans" requesting a corporate reunion, marked with a distinctive Anglican identity and outlook, and committed to the union of all Christians for the sake of, and vital to, the effective and convincing mission of the one Church to the nation. Sounds familiar?

In this pioneering work, Father Lunn was a leading figure. The proposed model for corporate reunion looked to Canon 372 and also to concrete examplars such as the relatively new exceptional structure of the Personal Prelature (designed and implemented for Opus Dei) and the Pastoral Provision in the USA. A series of meetings took place with Cardinal Basil Hume OSB, Archbishop of Westminster, and his advisers Fr Anthony Nys SJ and Fr Michael Seed SA. There were also informal explorations with the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith (whose prefect at the time was Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI - evidently Anglicanorum Coetibus was long forming in his mind) and the Apostolic Pro-Nuncio to the United Kingdom at the time, Archbishop Pablo Puente Buces. These plans could not be advanced at the time - the Personal Prelature because it provided only for a clerical body, and a Pastoral Provision because the Bishops of England & Wales were "of one mind that, in our particular circumstances, such alternatives would serve to increase the multiplicity of Church identities in an unhelpful and confusing manner". Their full November 1993 statement eventually rejecting the Congregation for the English Mission's proposal, and addressing the forthcoming likely transfer of hundreds of clergy to the Catholic Church and untold numbers of laity on an individual basis alone, can be read here. Who knows what could have been?

There were several parish groups received on an individual-cum-corporate basis, mainly in the Diocese of Westminster - notably at Enfield Lock (St Peter & St Paul) and St Pancras (Holy Cross, Cromer Street). But these relied on church-sharing by a small Catholic congregation with a continuing but diminished Anglican parish congregation; and relations, despite considerable efforts at good will locally, proved difficult, not least as their former pastors were not available to lead the nascent Catholic communities, their having been moved on to other parish postings in anticipation of ordination and incardination in the diocese. While obviously there was disappointment on the part of many that a Pastoral Provision for Anglicans seeking full communion, with some kind of distinctive ecclesial reality of its own, could  not at that time be integrated into the Catholic Church in England and Wales, many clergy and faithful were undeterred. It is estimated by Fr John Broadhurst that in England over the 10 years from 1994 (the period of financial and housing support allocated by the Anglican authorities for those in conscience taking up what was essentiallly a voluntary redundancy or early retirement scheme) and in the period since, 500 Anglican clergy became Catholics, with large unrecorded numbers of lay faithful. The effect of this influx of Anglican background, patrimony and contribution to the life of the Catholic Church in England and Wales remains uncalculated but deserves thorough research. Certainly, it was something of an answer to prayer - even if an unexpected one - for vocations to the priesthood, during a period when across the Western world the numbers being ordained was seriously contracting.

As in Fr Lunn's first Study Paper, Towards an English Ordinariate, the focus is taken beyond the immediate identity markers of Liturgy and Tradition, to a thorough treatment of origins and the Anglican theological paradigm of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, to an appraisal of  the purpose and truthfulness of a Via Media (and the integrity of how that is practised), to considering the role of the laity in Anglican church life, and on to such factors as the relationship of Church and State, how size of congregation affects identity and mission, and the importance of folk religion and culture for what our now termed the "evangelisation of culture" and the "struggle for the soul of Europe".

Fr Lunn has thoroughly revised his original Study Paper to take account of the opportunities offered by Anglicanorum Coetibus and development of the new Ordinariate. It is also a masterly introduction to the thinking of Newman as it relates to the fields he covered.

Read or download Fr Brooke Lunn's Study Paper II - Anglican Patrimony here.

We will post the final Study Paper - Sacraments and the Ordinariate - on 5th July.

Pastoral Message of CBCEW - November 1993

This message was first published by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England & Wales in November 1993:

As the first ordinations of women to the priesthood in the Church of England draw near, a number of Anglicans, both laity and clergy, who are unsure about their future in the Church of England, have approached members of this Bishops’ Conference. We are aware, too, that many others, in some ways represented by those who have approached us, await our response. In the light of these discussions, and of our own careful consideration of all the issues involved, we now wish to address publicly the questions they have raised.

Our responsibility, as bishops of the Catholic Church, is to ensure that the Catholic community in England and Wales, in its faith and life, is within the full communion of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, united in bonds of faith and sacraments, with a clear awareness of its universality. Our ministry as members of the College of Bishops in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, the successor of Peter, is one of the visible signs of that universality. Within this Catholic Church there is a clear doctrinal structure and vigorous debate, both of which are needed for Church life. There is also to be found a variety of styles of prayer and liturgical practice. The distinctive and complementary roles of laity and clergy, and women and men, are a point of continuing development.

Many of those who have approached us manifestly share this vision of the Catholic Church. Their concern is not primarily that women are to be ordained to the priesthood. Rather they are struggling with the question of the authority by which the decision to ordain women to the priesthood has been made by the Church of England and the implications of that decision for those who wish, above all else, to live their Christian life in the Catholic tradition. Many have arrived at the conviction that visible communion with the Bishop of Rome is a necessary element of Catholic life. They believe they can no longer work within the Church of England to achieve that end. To them we wish to extend a warm welcome.

Those who have approached us make very clear the personal sadness and distress which they experience at this time. For our part too, we take no encouragement from the difficulties being faced in the Church of England. The urgent task of announcing the Gospel in Britain needs the strength and vigour of all Christian communities. This same task also underlines the importance of the search for unity of life and witness among all the followers of Christ. Working vigorously for this unity remains one of our grave responsibilities. It is our conviction that this search for unity would not be assisted if another ecclesial body were to emerge from present doctrinal and pastoral difficulties.

Approaches have been made by clergy of the Church of England, both singly and in groups. In some few instances groups of parishioners with their pastors have also made approaches, enquiring about the possibility of coming into full communion with the Holy See, embracing the fullness of Catholic life. After our Low Week meeting we stated that our aim in welcoming those who wish to join the Catholic Church must be their eventual total integration into the Catholic life of our dioceses. This remains our aim. Other paths have been suggested. We have looked carefully at the suggestions of the establishment of a Personal Prelature or of a Special Pastoral Provision, such as exists in the USA. We are of one mind that, in our particular circumstances, such alternatives would serve to increase the multiplicity of Church identities in an unhelpful and confusing manner. Our determination in this matter does not imply any lack of respect or esteem for the tradition, strengths and vision of Christian living represented by those who are approaching us. In fact the opposite is the case. We are convinced that the Roman Catholic community, diocese by diocese, will be enriched by the eventual full integration of those who bring with them not only the traditions of English Anglicanism, but also its commitment to reach out to those who are on the margin of Christian living, or beyond. But for this to be the case, it is essential that we strive to come together in a fully integrated manner, a challenge which will involved real change for all concerned.

It is this fundamental conviction that gives shape to the ways in which we have agreed to respond to those who approach us.

1. We welcome those who have served as clergy in the Church of England, and will endeavour to express in specific ways the value of the ministry they have exercised. We gladly acknowledge and esteem their faithful celebration of Word and Sacrament in the Church of England. We would never suggest that those now seeking full communion with the Roman Catholic Church deny the value of their previous ministry. According to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, the liturgical actions of their ministry can most certainly engender a life of grace, for they come from Christ and lead back to him, and belong by right to the one Church of Christ. We recognise in the ministry they have exercised a call from God. This is the basis for our readiness to assume a continuity of ministry, normally leading to ordination to the priesthood in the Catholic Church, depending on a process of mutual discernment. A period of study, preparation and integration, suited to the requirements of each person, will also be necessary.

We are convinced that our solemn duty to ensure the unquestionable validity of the sacraments to be celebrated with and for the Catholic community means that we cannot accept any residual doubts as to possible defects affecting the validity of the orders already conferred in the Church of England. This means we must ask all who are chosen to exercise priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church to accept ordination in our Church as the fulfilment of their ministry and its full integration into the Apostolic Succession. This is a difficult and sensitive matter, but we are reassured that so many who have approached us understand quite readily this need for certainty in such a crucial matter.

2. As is well understood, there are special difficulties faced by those who have thus far exercised ministry in the Church of England and are married. The celibacy of priests in the Church of the Latin Rite is the norm. It is a witness to the total love of Christ for his Church and a treasured part of our tradition. This is not at stake. In fact, it is shared by some who are seeking the fullness of Catholic life and priesthood. Rather, in these exceptional circumstances, consideration has to be given to the manner and extent in which it is possible, and desirable, to permit exceptions to this norm. This is because the discipline of the orders of those married clergymen who now seek full communion with the Holy See permitted them also to take up the vocation of married life. We understand and accept that they may well be convinced of the continuity of their vocation to serve the Catholic Church in the priesthood. This is a matter which we are pursuing with sympathy for those who have approached us.

3. In welcoming those pastors who approach us together with a group of parishioners, we wish to state that we respect and esteem the bonds of fellowship that exist within such a group and between the group and its pastor. While insisting that the decision of faith entailed in coming into full communion with the Catholic Church is always one  which must be made individually, we will do all we can to respect and build on those precious bonds of shared discipleship. Steps are now being considered which will enable a group to stay together for as long as it is wishes not only during any period of enquiry and exploration, and in the process leading up to reception into the Catholic Church, but also, if thought fit in particular circumstances, after that point. The process whereby that group becomes, in practice, fully one with the Roman Catholic local community may, indeed, be gradual. On the other hand, once important steps are taken, and misapprehensions or misgivings removed, it may well be that the common identity of full Catholic faith opens up a much easier process of integration into the local Catholic parish community than is now envisaged by some. The Catholic community in many parts of England and Wales is already characterised by a diversity of culture and background. It is Catholic faith shared within the visible unity of the Church which forms our identity.

At this important time, it is clear that the way forward requires of us all both generosity and patience. For many troubled in conscience difficult decisions lie ahead. We are exploring ways in which they can be given additional spiritual and pastoral support. We will do all we can to encourage the Catholic community to give a warm and generous welcome to all who join it at this time. Similarly, we will seek not only to protect but also to enhance key ecumenical relations so that ecclesial life may be strengthened and the service and common witness required by the Gospel given in our society.

19 November 1993

Geoffrey John Wright, RIP - General Secretary of the League 1974-2002

Geoff Wright belonged to the small, unswerving and venerable Anglican tradition which looks beyond Canterbury to Rome, and the chief pastor of Christendom's role in the life, worship, and mission of all the Churches.


The late Geoffrey Curtis CR, in his life of the Abbé Paul Couturier, observed that prior to Vatican II few Roman Catholics in England had given credit to the continuity and extent of Catholic belief and practice in the Anglican Church after the sixteenth century. By the same token most Anglican Catholics had been keen to assert the Church of England's position as 'the Catholic Church of this land', to the exclusion of Roman Catholics who are equally bearers of an authentic English Christianity. Thus for the consciousness of Geoffrey Wright and other 'Anglo-Papalists', the Church of England is not merely a part of the greater Catholic Church, neither is it the local branch: the whole Church is one in its very essence and 'the walls of separation do not rise so far as heaven'. He devoted his energies towards realising that unity, raising the ecumenical profile of the Church of England's Catholic tradition, and promoting the reconciliation of all Christians around the successor of Peter.


His encyclopaedic knowledge of shrines, abbeys, liturgical and musical oddities, railways and restaurants began as a delightful way of going on holiday by way of going to church. He stood in an honoured tradition of English travellers who were taken with 'Quaint Sights in Continental Places', to quote an old Faith Press title. When this love of pilgrimage matured in later years, he realised these unique links by enabling new networks of Christian, ecumenical friends from different countries and spiritual cultures to find each other, love each other's prayer and church lives, and to grow in a desire to persevere out of urgent personal experience in the cause of Christian unity. Thus his retirement became increasingly devoted to supporting regular visits by groups to the Béguinage and the English Convent in Brugge; to the convents of the Monmartre nuns all over France; to Lisieux and Tours and monasteries all over Europe. At the time of his death he had been planning with me a new visit to Lyon and Ars in 2003 to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Paul Couturier, priest of Lyon, apostle of Christian Unity, devoté of St John Vianney and founder of the Week of Prayer. Geoff had a deep understanding of the Religious Life as at the heart of the Church's vitality and faithfulness. Although his own Benedictine oblation did not work out, he forged deep links of ecumenical friendship, quietly building up understanding and affection for Anglicans among European Catholic communities, often through music. In return, they trained him to play the liturgical zither, so he could take back for St Matthew's, Ponders End in Enfield (where he was for many years churchwarden) the same peace and attentiveness he discovered abroad. After retirement, almost as a solitary, he prayed the office by singing along to the monks and nuns' tapes and CDs: 'Who sings, prays twice'.


But his service in the Catholic Societies for over forty years, increasingly ensuring that European, ecumenical dimensions were not forgotten by others, will be his legacy. A gifted facilitator, Geoff devoted all his liturgical, musical, administrative and teaching skills to ensure the involvement and enjoyment of others in the things of God, rather than his own self-fulfilment. His deep sense of vocation to making an active lay, rather than priestly, contribution through his ministry and discipleship, both gave him a reason to live, and taxed that life in the end to the full.


As only the second secretary of the Catholic League (a society to promote the corporate reunion of the Anglican Church with the See of Peter) since the 1930s, from 1974 he played a leading role in introducing the Anglo-Catholic world to the liturgical, doctrinal and pastoral renewal transforming the Roman Catholic Church after Vatican II. Geoff loved the people of God in their liturgical action. It is often a matter of curiosity to Roman Catholics and to most Anglicans that a section of Anglican parishes use the Roman rite. To some it is disloyal to the canons of the Church of England; to others it only makes sense if you follow through to logical conclusions by actually becoming Roman Catholic. One understands, however, that for Geoff and many who shared the philosophy this was not about imitating Rome. It was a way of witnessing against the idea that there was a distinctive, separate, qualified Catholicism for the Church of England. The logical conclusion was that therefore, beside the individuals who were taking this path, it is the whole of the Church of England that has to own and recover its Catholicity through visible unity with the See of Peter. The symbol and witness of this is the adoption of Catholic liturgy, just as before Anglicans had adopted Catholic hymns, retreats, spirituality, arts and made their own to enrich their own church life, even if in separation for the time being. Not in the end satisfactory, or completely licit, it has nevertheless been a sign of contradiction - a reminder to Anglicans that, as Dr John Habgood said when archbishop of York, the future of the Church of England is Catholicism - a reminder to Catholics that 'sacred actions of the Christian religion as carried out in communities separated from them can truly engender a life of grace and can rightly be described as providing access to the community of salvation', and that their 'fruitfulness for salvation has been derived from the very fulness of grace and truth entrusted to the Catholic Church' (quotations from the prayer prior to Catholic ordinations of former Anglican clergy).


With the same thinking in the late 1980s, Geoffrey was one of three who set up 'the Congregation of the English Mission' to explore practical ways of implementing ARCIC through corporate reunion with the See of Peter. Though this came to nothing, during the 1990s he enabled the Catholic League to transform itself into a genuinely ecumenical society of Roman Catholics, Anglicans and other Christians praying and working for visible unity. This somewhat counters the suspicion that those believing in authentic unity with the Holy See are actually either merely an extreme party among Anglicans, or Roman Catholics who do not have proper respect for the individuality and distinctiveness of 'beloved sister' churches. It was just not like that, I think, for Geoff, at the heart of whose Catholicism were Mary, Benedictine religious life, and living, organic membership in the One Body which he longed for but never lived to see revealed.


Geoffrey was troubled when the Church of England decided to admit women to the priesthood and a number of his priest and lay friends left. His decision to remain seemed at odds with his zeal for reunion with Rome. He sacrificed something dear to his heart in order to continue with his share in the painstaking work that one day will lead to corporate reconciliation. And out of respect for the testing times some of his friends faced to become Roman Catholics, he thereafter declined the usual generous invitations to receive Holy Communion at mass on the continent. This was a profound offering for the sake of the unity of the Church. So too was his Anglican life for, as a leading light in the Church Union and Forward in Faith, to many in the Church of England he and others have been portrayed as partisan, even preferring separation. But for Geoff this at times painful tension was intrinsic to being loyal both to the Church of England and to Catholicism in the same moment. It was a paradox he lived in, embodied, but strove to reconcile and resolve.


One day, when the miracle to make the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church visibly one is revealed, it will be thanks not only to theologians and negotiators. Many like Geoffrey have lovingly cemented the bonds of spiritual kinship over decades of prayer, service and ecumenical constancy.