Anglican Ordinariate
AN OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON THE REUNION OF CHRIST’S CHURCH
Before his betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ prayed: “I pray . . . also for those who will believe in me through their word so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me. Father, they are your gift to me.” (John 17:21-23 NAB)
The Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church (ALCC) believes, teaches, and confesses that God granted this prayer. Once this unity was a lived reality. There was one Church under one shepherd, Jesus Christ and his Vicar on earth, the Successor to St. Peter. Human beings, however, have free will, and for their own reasons, motivated by the sin of pride, destroyed that precious unity of Christ’s Church, shattering it into the approximately 38,000 separate Churches which exist today. That is a tragedy of epic proportions. All of those divisions were due to the will of man. They were not the will of God. Separately, a splintered Christendom has not been nearly as effective as it could have been in carrying out the mission of Christ’s Church: that it would be the way of salvation and the light of the world; that, as Christ prayed, “the world may know that you sent me.” (John 17:23)
Jesus said, “Righteous Father, the world also does not know you.” (John 17:25) Two thousand years after the resurrection, much of the world which once knew Jesus the Christ, knows him no longer. This is due in part, to the fact that the Church’s witness and voice has been shattered into 38,000 pieces. Pope Benedict XVI has called for “a New Evangelism;” and it is long past time for the separated Churches to return to the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
Since its founding in 1997, the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church has been committed to the reunion of Christ’s Church, working to make the visible corporate unity of all Christians in full communion with the Bishop and Church of Rome a lived reality once again. Accordingly, after accepting the faith and order, worship and forms of spirituality of Catholic Christianity, in May of 2009, the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church filed a formal petition to the President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity to enter the Roman Catholic Church in which ever form the Pope and the Vatican Curia felt most appropriate. This petition was promptly forwarded to the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith for action as appropriate. You may read the text of the ALCC’s official petition to Rome online at http://stmichaelsalcc.org/News.dsp .
In October of 2010, the ALCC received a letter of instruction directing it to enter the Catholic Church “through the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus, and giving the name and address of Donald Cardinal Wuerl to start that process. The ALCC promptly sent an official letter to the Cardinal asking to start that process, which is now under way. Our prayer is first that others will hear the voice of Christ and heed the call to return to His One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church in communion with the Bishop of Rome and Successor to St. Peter, not only because it is the right thing to do, but that it is the only right thing to do. Ut unum sint – Deus le veult. (That they may all be one – God wills it.)
