Msgr. Nazir-Ali: The Ordinariate Was Benedict XVI’s Path to Unity for Anglicans
One of the late Pope Benedict XVI’s most notable achievements was to create a personal ordinariate for Anglicans whereby members of the Anglican Communion could enter the Catholic Church while retaining their heritage and liturgy.
Benedict established the new structure through his 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus so that “corporate reunion” was made possible for former Anglicans while preserving elements of a “distinctive Anglican patrimony.”
A well-known former Anglican who was recently received into the Catholic Church through the ordinariate was Msgr. Michael Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester. He was received into the Church in September 2021 and ordained a priest for the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, the ordinariate’s branch in England, a month later. He was elevated to monsignor in 2022.
In this interview with the Register, Msgr. Nazir-Ali, 72, describes what the ordinariate means to him personally and for other Anglicans, discusses Benedict XVI’s approach to ecumenism in general, and reflects both on Benedict’s character and his historic state visit to Britain in 2010.
The Pakistani-born priest of dual British-Pakistan nationality served as the 106th bishop of Rochester from 1994 to 2009 and was once considered a potential future archbishop of Canterbury. He had already served as the Anglican bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan and is currently the director of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue.
How significant was the creation of the ordinariate for you personally, and your reception into the Catholic Church, and for other Anglicans?
The ordinariate is very significant for me and for others because, whilst we see the inadequacies and errors of the Anglican Communion, we also see a rich heritage in liturgy, biblical study, theological method, ways of approaching moral issues, hymnody, etc. Such “authentic patrimony” should not be lost in reunion (Pope Paul VI).
How needed was the ordinariate, in your view? How much were Anglicans looking for a pathway into the Church and this structure provided it for them?
The ordinariate is a partial fulfilment of the “united but not absorbed” proposal of the Malines Conversations of the early 20th century and, of course, the work of ARCIC, of which I was a member for many years. Pope Emeritus Benedict would have, I am sure, wanted the ordinariate to develop according to the logic of its own genius in the full unity and diversity of the Catholic Church: Eastern and Western.
