What is the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter and why is it flourishing?

Holy Mass at Mount Calvary Catholic Church in Baltimore. The pastor, Father Albert Scharbach, told CNA that “families need to be fed spiritually; that’s the priority.” / Credit: Photo courtesy of Mount Calvary Catholic Church

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 12, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Turn down “Shadyvilla,” an unassuming residential street in Houston, and you will be greeted by a surprising sight: an imposing white stone neo-Gothic church that wouldn’t be out of place in 14th-century England.

This is the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham, the beating heart of one of the most unique dioceses in the Catholic Church, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter. 

Though in full communion with the Catholic Church, the ordinariate’s liturgical practice is deeply steeped in age-old English-Anglican traditions. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the ordinariate, however, is that despite the rapidly secularizing culture in the U.S., many of the ordinariate’s parishes, known for their reverent liturgies and respect for tradition, are flourishing.

According to several priests in the ordinariate, the diocese’s growth is primarily sparked by young people, especially young families. So, what’s going on and why are so many young people and families being drawn to the ordinariate?

What is the Anglican Catholic ordinariate?

When King Henry VIII broke with Rome and became the head of the Church of England in 1534, he ruptured centuries worth of religious tradition and practice developed between the English and the Latin Church.

Almost five centuries later, following growing requests from members of the Anglican Church, Pope Benedict XVI promulgated a document called Anglicanorum Coetibus that laid out a pathway for both individuals and congregations to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church. 

Two years later three ordinariates — the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in the U.S. and Canada, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the U.K., and the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Oceania — were founded. 

Since then these ordinariates have offered former Anglicans, Episcopalians, and Methodists a pathway to enter communion with the Catholic Church while retaining much of their English patrimony.

Just over 10 years after its founding, the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter numbers 11,255 faithful, 81 priests, seven seminarians, and 36 parishes and communities in 15 states and three Canadian provinces.

The ordinariate’s growth has yet to slow down. There are currently 14 communities in formation and several new parishes were established just this past year. 

Presentation of the Lord Catholic Church in Montgomery, Texas, is one such community that after starting with 90 members in 2019 now has over 600 faithful attending Mass every Sunday. 

Because of this growth, Presentation of the Lord was elevated to the status of a parish in the ordinariate six months ago. The church building was formerly a simple barn in the woods of southeast Texas. Today, that barn has been beautified and consecrated, and is the spiritual home of hundreds of families.

Complimentary not competition 

In an interview with CNA, Father Charles Hough, rector of Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, explained that the ordinariate is not in competition with the rest of the Church but rather is meant to be complimentary. 

“This isn’t a competition by any means; it’s actually complementary to the mission of the Church,” he explained. “While we’re enriching, we’re also being enriched as well by those very faithful Catholics around us.”

Hough said the ordinariate exists to further the Catholic Church’s evangelizing mission to save souls and to simultaneously enrich and be enriched by the Church. He believes the ordinariate can deepen the faith life of anyone, even those who have been Catholic all their lives. 

While serving as an Episcopal priest in Dallas, Hough decided to convert to the Catholic Church in 2011. Through special provisions granted by the Vatican, he was able to be ordained a Catholic priest a year later.

By being allowed to retain many of the Church of England’s traditions, Hough said, the ordinariate reimbues over 500 years of liturgical practice including sacred liturgy, music, and art back into the Church.

While its core aspects are recognizable to any Latin-rite Catholic, the ordinariate’s liturgy uses the Book of Divine Worship, a missal approved by the Vatican in 2015 that draws from Anglican sources and has many Anglican particularities. In an ordinariate Mass, the priest faces the altar for most of the liturgy and the prayers are said in an older form of English — called “the king’s English” — which Hough said helps to further elevate the Mass as a sacred space set apart from ordinary, daily life.

Children in the ordinariate receive the sacrament of confirmation at a younger age than in most dioceses, often at the same time they receive holy Communion at the age of reason. 

Ordinariate members also participate in several unique traditions such as the observance of extra fasting days, called “ember days,” and the English tradition of choral evensong.

While partaking in these Anglican traditions, ordinariate members get to also experience the fullness of the heart and soul of the Christian faith that is in receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ in the holy Eucharist.

“Allowing for those who have been enriched by an ordinariate patrimony,” Hough said, “what we have received from our fathers and been grafted back into the Church is something that is enriching to other people, even cradle Catholics.” 

Why are young families joining?

While many churches, Catholic and non-Catholic, have struggled to fill the pews since coming back from the COVID lockdowns, several ordinariate parishes, including parishes in Texas, Florida, and California, have been growing since the pandemic.

Father Albert Scharbach, pastor of Mount Calvary, a historic Episcopal parish in Baltimore that joined the ordinariate in 2012 and has been growing since the pandemic, told CNA that young families are the heart of this growth.

According to Scharbach, the median age at his parish is 12. When he speaks to these families, Scharbach said he has noticed a consistent answer for why they keep coming back to the parish.

“Families need to be fed spiritually, that’s the priority,” he said. “So, our primary focus here is to bring forward the roots of the faith with newness and vitality. That’s what families are after. It has to be alive; it’s got to be fresh, but it has to have roots.”

Christopher Pagel, a soon-to-be-ordained deacon in the ordinariate, told CNA that he has seen the ordinariate growing across southern California. 

After being raised Episcopalian and converting to Catholicism in the 1990s, Pagel said that he was “blown away” when he discovered the ordinariate. Since 2015 he and his wife, Ashley, and their now five children have been attending St. John Henry Newman, an ordinariate parish in Irvine, California. 

He attributes the ordinariate’s success to its emphasis on evangelization.  

“The principal mission of the ordinariate is evangelization,” he explained. “It’s sharing with people that might have grown up separated from the Catholic Church the fullness of the sacraments, saying, ‘Come take a look.’” 

“Everybody’s story about how they found the truth of the faith is so different,” he went on. “Yet there’s this common thread where then we’re in and we’re in our parishes and we are all committed to that evangelization and that growth.”

Sacraments and all-night barbeques

Luke and Paula Stuckey, a married couple with five children in Houston, backed up Scharbach’s hypothesis.

The Stuckeys have been attending the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham since 2020. While there are many reasons they chose to make the cathedral their spiritual home — such as the tradition, reverence, and community — Luke Stuckey was quick to say that the easy availability of the sacraments was crucial for him.

“The first thing that really made us fall in love with Walsingham was regular confession that was easy to get to,” he explained. “Every Saturday, every Sunday, and multiple times throughout the week.”

“In more than five years in attendance at another parish in town, I was never able to go to confession with a priest at my home parish because the schedule was that tight, even during Lent,” he said. “I think the priority at Walsingham focuses on the needs of the flock.”

It’s not just families; young adults of all stages of life are flocking to the ordinariate.

Alexis Kutarna, principal of Walsingham’s Cathedral High School, told CNA that young people are drawn in because of the ordinariate’s intentionality in making the Catholic faith a “concrete reality.”

“Young people are looking for meaning in their lives,” she said. “They’re seeking a true, meaningful relationship, and they are drawn in by those signs of that relationship with Christ.”

Reflecting the ordinariate’s values, Kutarna said the four pillars of education at Cathedral High are worship, wisdom, music, and art.

“These give us an approach to truth as a concrete person. We are encountering someone who’s really here, he’s not an idea,” she explained.

Kutarna said the ordinariate offers a community life that is rooted firmly in its relationship with Christ.

At Walsingham, this is expressed not just in the Mass and sacraments but also in more mundane ways, such as with its all-night Easter barbeque, which the cathedral holds annually after the vigil Mass. This year, more than 450 parishioners of all ages gathered for the party that went well into the morning.

Kutarna said there is “a sense of intentionality in community life” in the ordinariate that is not often found in today’s society. 

“It’s almost like a medieval English monastery or an English cathedral where you have an intellectual life that’s centered around the church, and you have an artistic life that develops around it, not only in architecture but in sacred art and sacred music,” she said. “This is all fostered in the local community around the church.”

United with the Church

Eduardo Brand, a 19-year-old rising sophomore at Mercer University and a lifelong parishioner at Walsingham, told CNA that the special gift the ordinariate brings to the wider Church is its emphasis on “the beauty of holiness.”

Pausing for a moment to reflect, he said: “Ultimately I think what this brings is this great feeling of connection to the faith.”

“I’m connected to all the parishioners here, to the parishioners who made this church what it is; I’m preparing myself to be the future of the parish and I feel the connection to Our Lady of Walsingham and her love, and to all the English martyrs and saints who built up this patrimony,” he explained. “I think it’s ultimately a feeling of really being united with the Church.”