1st head of US Anglican ordinariate installed

February 13, 2012

Father Jeffrey Steenson has been installed as the first Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. The ordinariate was established on January 1 to assist Anglicans in the United States who wish to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage.

Father Steenson--who will take part in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, but will not be ordained a bishop because he is married--preached in his installation homily:   

Listen to St. Anselm, the 37th Archbishop of Canterbury, perhaps the greatest theologian ever to grace England’s green and pleasant land: “This power was committed specially to Peter, that we might therefore be invited to unity. Christ therefore appointed him the head of the Apostles, that the Church might have one principal Vicar of Christ, to whom the different members of the Church should have recourse, if ever they should have dissentions among them. But if there were many heads in the Church, the bond of unity would be broken” … the rest