Personal ordinariate
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Personal ordinariate

A personal ordinariate for former Anglicans, shortened as personal ordinariate or Anglican ordinariate, is a canonical structure within the Catholic Church established in order to enable "groups of Anglicans" and Methodists to join the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their liturgical and spiritual patrimony.

Created in accordance with the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus of 4 November 2009 and its complementary norms, the ordinariates are juridically equivalent to a diocese, "a particular church in which and from which exists the one and unique Catholic Church", but may be erected in the same territory as other dioceses "by reason of the rite of the faithful or some similar reason".

Three personal ordinariates were established between 2011 and 2012:

"Personal ordinariate" is the term used for each of the three existing ordinariates in the decree that established them: the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross. It is also the collective name given to all three in the official yearbook of the Holy See and is a name the ordinariates themselves use.

"Ordinariates for former Anglicans" is a term sometimes used by the ordinariates themselves, by news sources (but not official documents) of the Holy See and episcopal conferences. This terminology, however, does not mean that an ordinariate's membership exclusively comprises former Anglicans. The head of the North American ordinariate has said that "ordinariates for former Anglicans must be a bridge to Christian unity and a force for true ecumenism" and the members must "build and rebuild our relationships with confreres who have stayed behind in the Anglican Church".

"Anglican ordinariates" is often used by newspapers, such as the Church of England Newspaper and the Canadian Catholic Register. It is also often used by communities belonging to the ordinariates. The name does not imply that the members of an ordinariate are still Anglicans. While those who have been Anglicans "bring with them, into the full communion of the Catholic Church in all its diversity and richness of liturgical rites and traditions, aspects of their own Anglican patrimony and culture which are consonant with the Catholic Faith", they are members of the Latin Church exclusively in communion with the Catholic Church and no other bodies.

The apostolic constitution was a response by the Holy See to requests coming from Continuing Anglican churches, particularly the Traditional Anglican Communion; and from Anglo-Catholic sections of the Anglican Communion, such as those involved with Forward in Faith, and, within the Catholic Church, from the Anglican Use parishes which have existed since the early 1980s when, at the request of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Pope John Paul II granted the Pastoral Provision allowing the creation, within the territorial Latin Church dioceses of the United States, of parishes in which the liturgy would be celebrated in an approved form of the Anglican tradition and with a married clergy composed of former Anglican priests who were ordained in the Catholic Church on joining it. Many of these Anglican Use Catholics had left the Episcopal Church because of women's ordination especially to the episcopate, revisions of the liturgy, and changes in its moral teaching. These changes evidenced also in the consecration of a partnered homosexual man as a bishop and the blessing of same-sex couples have provoked serious tensions within the composite Anglican world, as Cardinal Walter Kasper said in 2009, leading to the requests to which the apostolic constitution was a response. The discussions that led to the granting of the 1980 pastoral provision raised some of the ideas that came to fruition in the decision of 2009. One was the setting up of a structure for former Anglicans similar to the military ordinariate, an idea that was not then acted on because of the small number of Anglicans involved at that time.

In October 2007 the Traditional Anglican Communion presented to the Holy See a petition for full union in corporate form (i.e., as a body, not merely as individuals) with the Roman Catholic Church. This worldwide grouping, under a single primate, of churches of Anglican tradition but outside communion with the see of Canterbury, was founded in 1991. It was formed over a number of issues, including liturgical revisions, the ordination of women and open homosexuals as priests, the sanctioning of homosexuality and the importance of tradition.

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