INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) — The journey to full communion in the Catholic Church “has taken a few twists and turns,” said a former Anglican priest who joined the church with his community during the Easter Vigil in Indianapolis.

“But once you get to your destination, it seems so natural,” Luke Reese said.

History was made at SS. Peter and Paul Cathedral April 7 when 17 Anglicans, all members of the St. Joseph of Arimathea Society in Indianapolis, became Catholics according to rules established by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2009 apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus.”

The document provided a way for entire Anglican parishes or groups to become Catholic while retaining some of their Anglican heritage and liturgical practice.

Earlier this year, Pope Benedict approved the establishment of the new U.S. Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, based in Houston, which functions like a diocese for former Anglicans in the United States and Canada.

In Indianapolis, the Anglicans were welcomed in the church by Bishop Christopher J. Coyne, apostolic administrator of the archdiocese. They are the fourth group of former Anglicans to join the ordinariate.

“It’s glorious. I’m happy. I’m satisfied,” said Reese, leader of the society who is a husband and father of six children. He is in formation to be ordained a Catholic priest in the ordinariate.

Bishop Coyne was happy to play a role in this historic event.

“It was definitely an honor to welcome the families of the new Anglican communion here in Indianapolis,” he said. “I look forward to continuing to help them become a rich part of our local Catholic community.”

Father Stephen Giannini, archdiocesan vicar for clergy, parish life coordinators, formation and personnel, served as a liaison between the Anglicans and the church as they sought to become Catholics.

“It has been a privilege to assist the Anglican families who became members of the Catholic Church during this year’s Easter Vigil,” he said. “We look forward to continuing our support for these faithful Christians. It is truly a blessing for us all as together our faith is deepened by Christ’s peace in the Catholic Church.”

In comments sent to The Criterion, the newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, leader of the ordinariate and formerly a bishop in the Episcopal Church, offered his support to the new members.

“I am praying for Luke and his people,” he said. “It takes much courage and faith to make this journey, to leave familiar things behind. But almost everyone I know who has come into full communion describes it as a coming home experience. If this community focuses on the joy of being Catholic, they will grow and prosper in the Holy Spirit.”

Reese said that his group coming into the Catholic Church, which he described as “the powerhouse,” may very well lead to many more people joining in the future.

“But it’s all up to God,” said Reese, 43. “We’re going to be content with whatever God gives us.”

Currently, the group gathers at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Church in Indianapolis on Sunday mornings to pray Morning Prayer, according to the Anglican tradition, then attend the parish’s 9:30 a.m. Mass.

Although that parish is not part of the ordinariate, the new Catholics are happy to worship in a community much larger than their previous one.

“For a long time, we’ve been very isolated,” said Gina Reese, 43, who is Luke’s wife. “We felt like we were on a desert island. Finally, we’re coming into the fullness of the faith and into a larger community. For me, that represents a lot of hope and excitement and joy.”

Luke Reese said that, starting last fall, the group studied the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults in preparation for being received into the church.

He and Gina met when they were music students at Butler University in Indianapolis during the 1980s and 1990s. They learned about the Anglican spiritual tradition when Luke became a paid member of a choir at an Episcopal parish in Indianapolis.

“We fell in love with the liturgical form of worship,” Luke Reese said. “It’s absolutely stunning. The worship is just so beautiful.”

About 10 years ago, he was ordained as an Anglican priest and ministered within the Traditional Anglican Communion, a worldwide group of several hundred thousand Anglicans that separated themselves from the Anglican Communion led by the archbishop of Canterbury.

He and his small group desired to come into the full communion with the Catholic Church before Pope Benedict issued “Anglicanorum coetibus,” in part because of their dissatisfaction about a continuing trend of schism among Anglicans.

“Schism really is a sign of internal problems,” Luke Reese said. “And there’s been schism after schism after schism. We were just fed up with it.”

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Gallagher is a reporter at The Criterion in Indianapolis.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Citing “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life,” the Vatican announced a major reform of an association of women’s religious congregations in the U.S. to ensure their fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women’s ordination and homosexuality.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle will provide “review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work” of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Vatican announced April 18. The archbishop will be assisted by Bishop Leonard P. Blair of Toledo, Ohio, and Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Ill., and draw on the advice of fellow bishops, women religious and other experts.

The LCWR, a Maryland-based umbrella group that claims about 1,500 leaders of U.S. women’s communities as members, represents about 80 percent of the country’s 57,000 women religious.

In Silver Spring, Md., the presidency of the LCWR issued a statement saying it was “stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Because the leadership of LCWR has the custom of meeting annually with the staff of CDF in Rome and because the conference follows canonically approved statutes, we were taken by surprise.

“This is a moment of great import for religious life and the wider church. We ask your prayers as we meet with the LCWR National Board within the coming month to review the mandate and prepare a response,” the statement said.

A spokeswoman for the LCWR said its leadership would not be granting interviews until after a wider consultation with its members in May.

The Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said the doctrinal congregation “appreciates that (the leaders of the conference) have so far limited themselves to a single official statement and have not expressed other specific complaints.”

But Father Lombardi said the congregation believed that it had been treated “a bit unjustly” with the suggestion that the sisters had been taken entirely by surprise by the assessment.

The LCWR later revised its initial statement, adding that “we had received a letter from the CDF prefect in early March informing us that we would hear the results of the doctrinal assessment at our annual meeting; however, we were taken by surprise by the gravity of the mandate.”

The announcement from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith came in an eight-page “doctrinal assessment,” based on an investigation that Bishop Blair began on behalf of the Vatican in April 2008. That investigation led the doctrinal congregation to conclude, in January 2011, that “the current doctrinal and pastoral situation of LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern, also given the influence the LCWR exercises on religious congregation in other parts of the world.”

Among the areas of concern were some of the most controversial issues of medical and sexual ethics in America today.

“While there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States,” the doctrinal congregation said. “Further, issues of crucial importance in the life of the church and society, such as the church’s biblical view of family life and human sexuality, are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes church teaching.”

The Vatican also found that “public statements by the LCWR that disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”

According to the Vatican, such deviations from Catholic teaching have provoked a crisis “characterized by a diminution of the fundamental Christological center and focus of religious consecration.”

But the congregation’s document also praised the “great contributions of women religious to the church in the United States as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor, which have been founded and staffed by religious over the years,” and insisted that the Vatican “does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of women religious” in the LCWR’s member congregations.

During his tenure as the Holy See’s delegate, which is to last “up to five years, as deemed necessary,” Archbishop Sartain’s tasks will include overseeing revision of the LCWR’s statutes, review of its liturgical practices, and the creation of formation programs for the conference’s member congregations. The archbishop will also investigate the LCWR’s links to two outside groups: Network, a Catholic social justice lobby; and the Resource Center for Religious Institutes, which offers legal and financial expertise to religious orders.

Sister Simone Campbell, a Sister of Social Service who leads Network, told CNS in Washington in an April 19 phone interview from Rochester, N.Y., where she was giving talks, that like LCWR’s leaders, she was “stunned and surprised” by the document.

CNS was unable to reach the executive director of the Resource Center for Religious Institutes for comment. The center is based in Silver Spring.

The doctrinal assessment was separate from the Vatican’s “Apostolic Visitation of Religious Communities of Women in the United States,” a study of the “quality of life” in some 400 congregations, which began in December 2008. The visitation’s final report was submitted in December 2011 but has not yet been published.

LCWR was founded in 1956 as the Conference of Major Superiors of Woman after the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious asked U.S. sisters to form a national conference. The organization changed its name in 1971 to the Leadership Conference for Women Religious.

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— By Francis X. Rocca, Catholic News Service 

INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) — The apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis spoke out against the “attempted ordination” of an ex-nun to the priesthood.

“I am saddened that the woman who attempted ordination and anyone who took part in this invalid ceremony have chosen to take such a public action to separate themselves from the church,” said an April 17 statement by Auxiliary Bishop Christopher J. Coyne of Indianapolis, who is overseeing the archdiocese until a successor is named for recently retired Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein.

The Catholic Church frequently uses the term “attempted ordination” since it does not view the ordination of woman as neither valid nor licit.

The ceremony was for Maria McClain took place April 15 in Indianapolis with a woman bishop from the group Roman Catholic Womenpriests presiding. Bishop Coyne called it “a schismatic group.”

“This group has no valid connection to the Roman Catholic Church or the Archdiocese of Indianapolis,” he added. “Any supposed ‘ordination’ this group performed has no relationship with the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church and is not valid.”

McClain, 71, was a Mercy sister in Buffalo, N.Y., for 15 years before leaving religious life, according to the Indianapolis Star daily newspaper. Now married, she moved to Indianapolis in 1977 to become director of religious education at St. Pius X Parish in Indianapolis.

At his Holy Thursday chrism Mass at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed the church’s ban on women priests, asking: “Is disobedience a path of renewal for the church?”

“The ordination of men to the priesthood is not merely a matter of practice or discipline with the Catholic Church, but rather, it is part of the deposit of faith handed down by Christ through his apostles,” Bishop Coyne said. “The Catholic Church has always followed Jesus’ example and does not believe it has the authority to change what Jesus instituted.”

Greg Otolski, a spokesman for the archdiocese, echoed Bishop Coyne’s statement. He told Indianapolis television station WTHR: “He (Jesus) only chose 12 men, 12 apostles, all men. He did not choose women, and that’s an unalterable part of the faith.”

“According to the Roman Catholic Church, we excommunicate ourselves through ordination,” McClain told the Indianapolis Star, saying she chose to disobey what she termed “an unjust law” in order “to change the church.”

“I am sorry they have chosen this path. It is clear that they believe they are doing the right thing,” Bishop Coyne said. “I wish them all the best but hope they will decide to return to the church’s communion.”

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — In what the Vatican described as an encouraging “step forward,” the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X has revised its response to a Vatican document laying out certain basic doctrinal principles and criteria for interpreting church teaching.

The latest response submitted by Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior general of the society, arrived at the Vatican April 17. It will be examined by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and then “placed under the judgment of the Holy Father,” said a brief communique from the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei,” which is handling the Vatican’s discussions with the SSPX.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters April 18 that a curial official who read Bishop Fellay’s response said it was “substantially different” from one he submitted in January; the doctrinal congregation and Pope Benedict XVI had determined Bishop Fellay’s first response was “insufficient” for healing the breach between the society and the Catholic Church.

Father Lombardi said that because Bishop Fellay’s latest response “asked for changes” in the text of the “doctrinal preamble” the Vatican asked him to sign last September, “the changes must be examined” and then submitted to the pope for his final evaluation.

The society’s response will be examined quickly and given to pope, probably within “a few weeks,” he said.

“We cannot consider the matter concluded,” Father Lombardi said, but “we can say it is a step forward and more encouraging” than Bishop Fellay’s previous response.

A short time later, the general house of the SSPX issued a statement saying, “The media are announcing that Bishop Bernard Fellay has sent a ‘positive response’ to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and that consequently the doctrinal question between the Holy See and the Society of St. Pius X is now resolved. The reality is different.”

The statement, posted on the society’s website, said because the Vatican must study the changes Bishop Fellay requested be made to the original Vatican text, the bishop’s response should be considered another stage in the Vatican-SSPX discussions “and not a conclusion.”

Father Alain Lorans, spokesman for the society in Paris, told the French news agency APIC April 18 that because Bishop Fellay proposed different clarifications or changes to the Vatican document, the matter “is still in a study phase.”

“All is not settled yet” and will not be until the congregation and the pope make their judgment, Father Lorans said.

The text of the “doctrinal preamble” has not been made public by the Vatican or the society, but the Vatican had said it “states some doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary to guarantee fidelity” to the formal teaching of the church, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

When the Vatican’s doctrinal discussions with the society began in 2009, both sides said the key issues to be discussed included the concept of tradition in general, as well as the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on the liturgy, the unity of the church, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and religious freedom.

After a two-hour meeting March 16 between U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the doctrinal congregation, and Bishop Fellay, the Vatican announced that the society’s first response, delivered in January, was insufficient and said Bishop Fellay would have another month to draft a new response.

In a formal communique published after that meeting, the Vatican said it gave the society more time in order to “avoid an ecclesial rupture with painful and incalculable consequences.”

“In compliance with the decision of Pope Benedict XVI,” the communique said, Bishop Fellay was given a letter signed by Cardinal Levada explaining that “the position he had expressed is not sufficient to overcome the doctrinal problems that are at the basis of the fracture between the Holy See and the society.”

At that time, Father Lombardi would not give examples of the points on which the Society of St. Pius X and the Vatican still differed since the original preamble was never published. He said the additional month given to the society showed “the case is not closed,” although the March letter to Bishop Fellay made it clear that the consequence of “a non-acceptance of that which was foreseen in the preamble” would be “a rupture, something very serious for the church.”

Pope Benedict’s efforts to bring about a reconciliation with the traditionalist group included lifting the excommunications imposed on Bishop Fellay and other SSPX bishops after they were ordained without papal permission; establishing a Vatican committee for doctrinal talks with society representatives in 2009; and drafting the “doctrinal preamble” to explain the “minimal, essential” elements on which the society would have to agree for full reconciliation, Father Lombardi had said.

In late November, Bishop Fellay had said, “This doctrinal preamble cannot receive our endorsement, although leeway has been allowed for a ‘legitimate discussion’ about certain points of the (Second Vatican) Council.”

— By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service 

PITTSBURGH (CNS) — The Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania, one of the largest regional ecumenical agencies in the United States, urged the Obama administration to broaden the religious exemption in the federal government’s mandate requiring that most health plans cover the cost of contraception, sterilization and some drugs that can induce abortion.

As it stands now, religious employers who are morally opposed to such coverage maybe be forced to shut down various ministries, including outreach to the poor, which would result in an “immense injustice” to those in need, the organization said in a statement.

It said the mandate violates the Constitution’s guarantee of religious freedom and also called “health care for all” a “moral imperative.”

The statement, released April 13 at a news conference at the organization’s headquarters in Pittsburgh, was signed by the leaders of several church bodies, including the Catholic Church.

“Our deep concern over this mandate does not arise from the varying convictions we have on the moral content of this mandate, but from our common commitment to the right of religious freedom that all people of faith expect to enjoy in this country,” the statement said.

“The Constitution of the United States guarantees every religious institution and its affiliated bodies the inalienable right to define its own identity and ministries and to practice its own beliefs, not just its freedom of worship,” it added.

The signatories included Bishops David A. Zubik and Lawrence E. Brandt, who head, respectively the Latin-rite dioceses of Pittsburgh and Greensburg and Father Eugene Yackanich, interim administrator of the Byzantine Archeparchy of Pittsburgh. (Archbishop William C. Skurla was to be enthroned as head of the archeparchy April 18.)

“Many religious institutions are now placed in the untenable position of (a) violating their consciences, (b) ceasing health insurance and paying ruinous fines, or (c) withdrawing entirely from providing the social services to the wider community that have long been a social justice hallmark of their ministry,” the statement said.

“Creating gaping holes in the public welfare safety net is in and of itself an immense injustice.”

The statement concluded by calling on the Obama administration to alter the contraceptive mandate by broadening “within it so that both the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion for all and the moral imperative of health care, likewise for all, in this country may not be impaired.”

Other signatories included Archbishop Robert Duncan of the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh and chair of the Christian Associates, and representatives of the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, the Disciples of Christ, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the United Church of Christ, the Baptist Church and the Orthodox Church in America.

Founded in 1970, the Christian Associates organization includes 26 church bodies (Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox and Protestant) representing 2,000 local congregations and 1 million Christians in southwestern Pennsylvania.