Father Andrew Bartus is a member of the expanding ordinariate of pastors in Southern California and Orange County. But there is nothing ordinary about the 36-year-old priest.
He is married, has four children and a day job as a history teacher at St. Michael’s Preparatory School in Silverado. And he is a full-fledged Catholic priest.
Fr. Bartus is part of a unique group of former Anglican and Protestant priests that are in The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter.
Father Bartus prays during Sunday Mass at Blessed John Henry Newman Church in Irvine (image: Challenge Roddie)
The ordinariate is a jurisdiction within the Catholic Church, much like a diocese, and created by the Vatican in 2012 for people in the Anglican tradition, who wish to become Catholics. Parishes and communities in the ordinariate are fully Roman Catholic, but retain elements of Anglican traditions and liturgy.
Fr. Bartus, who previously had been an Anglican priest at St. Mary of the Angels in Los Feliz, said after the creation of the ordinariate, “I was the first priest in California ordained.”
In his conversion, Fr. Bartus, who had graduated from Anglican seminary, was allowed to retain his priesthood and received dispensation from Rome to remain married and an exemption from clerical celibacy.
Fr. Bartus said the education he received in seminary was about “90 percent” similar to Catholic teachings, but with more English history and liturgy. The Anglican priests who joined the ordinariate spent about a year learning Roman Catholic canon law.
The journey from the Anglican Communion to Catholicism was a long, soul-searching journey that thousands have taken over the years. Fr. Bartus also brought over about 54 converts from his parish and others in Orange County.
Fr. Bartus said he was guided by the spiritual journey of John Henry Newman, a 19th-century theologian and poet in England, who was an Anglican priest that left the Church of England and became a Catholic priest and cardinal.
Full story at Orange County Catholic.
You’d think writers for the Diocese of Orange newspaper would know that people who are received into full communion with the Catholic Church from another ecclesial community are never referred to as “converts.” On the plus side, Masses celebrated at ordinariate parishes are almost guaranteed to be reverent and free of the silliness at most Roman Rite, Ordinary Form parishes and the Religious Ed Congress.
I did not know this. Thanks for the info:
Catholic Dictionary
CONVERSION
Definition
Any turning or changing from a state of sin to repentance, from a lax to a fervent way of life, from unbelief to faith, and from a non-Christian religion to Christianity. Since the Second Vatican Council the term is not used to describe a non-Catholic Christian becoming a Catholic. The preferred term is “entering into full communion with the Church.” (Etym. Latin conversio, a turning, overturning, turning around; turning point; change.)
If you’ve never attended a beautiful Mass of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, I encourage you to do so. The Ordinariate was a Holy Spirit inspired creative act on the part of Pope Benedict XVI and may be one of the small signs of a new springtime about which Pope Saint John Paul II spoke.
This is wonderful! I would like to attend a Mass at an Anglican Ordinariate church! I bet their Masses are reverent and lovely– and I bet their congregants are very devout, faithful Catholics– who very much love the Church they joined! I wonder– do they have Eucharistic Adoration? Do they say the Rosary– and celebrate all our Marian Feasts??
I would love to know if parishioners of the Anglican Ordinariate kneel at the altar rail, for Communion– and if their priests face God at the altar, when saying Mass. And does their liturgy contain some of the beautiful, old English, of the Anglican liturgy, before it was “modernized??”
For more information google “Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter” and click on their website. There is a video of their Mass there. The priest does face ad orientem (towards Christ over the altar), and the people kneel at the altar rail for Communion on the tongue. It used to be called the Anglican Use Rite but is now called “The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter”. I believe it is the old Sarum English Rite. Most of the info you need is on that site.
I am not sure, though, if the church in the picture above has an altar rail, but churches built for the Anglican Use do. Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston, Texas, is a beautiful Catholic Church built for “The Personal Ordinaraite of the Chair of St. Peter, which has an altar rail and a high altar. You can also google their website. I have never been to any of these, except on the web, although I am qualified to join.
Yes, yes, and yes.
The rite owes a lot to the Sarum rite, but it is, in truth, an amalgam from several sources. In some ways, it is an approach to the vision of Pope Benedict of having the various traditions of the Church come together in a rite that is a genuine development from the Tridentine. The Anglicans did not entirely abandon the old Mass, and I think what has been attempted is to build a bridge from the Mass before the Reformation to the Mass today. In a sense the Ordinariate rite bridges past both the Reformation and the Novus Ordo.
Yes we kneel.
Anne TE– can’t wait to see this, on the computer! Great!
I chose to watch the YouTube Anglican Ordinariate Mass done by San Francisco’s own Bp. Steven Lopes, their Bishop, at their Cathedral. It is a modern English version of our old Latin Tridentine Mass (no 16th Century English)– with similar pre-Conciliar vestments and liturgical cycle. Why is this not our Novus Ordo Missae, of our Vatican II Roman Missal?
On one of those websites they also have videos of Evening Prayer or Vespers, which is often called Evensong in the English Masses. My 1962 Latin Missal uses that term for the English translation of “vespers”, also. It is such a beautifully poetic word meaning “Evening Song” for the chanted prayers.
The Houston site also has videos entitled “Walking to Walsingham”. They are talks about many of the Benedictine and other saints, and give a lot of history of the English Catholic Church and of the events at that church itself. One needs to click on a subject at the top — forget which one — to drop down the videos.
Correction to last post: they are actually podcasts called “The Road to Walsingham” dropped down by clicking on the “Faith Formation” subject at the top.
I almost cried, when Bishop Lopes gave the Final Blessing — and then said the Last Gospel— with all of the parishioners following along– with even the Prayer to St. Michael, after the final hymn!– no Catholics rushing out the door early! They seemed so devout– and dressed up so lovely, for their Mass. Wonderful!!
Although a Roman Catholic, Sunday, June 23rd, I attended a Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter mass in Athens, GA. The homily was given by the deacon who was ordained a priest June 29th. The mass was indeed reverent. It was celebrated ad orientum, with a kneeler and communion was by priestly intinction (dipping host into wine ). The homily was very good, encouraging Adoration as well as the rosary. Love of the BVM was evident.
This seems to be a new assembly, meeting in a school chapel. There were about 20 in attendance, young families with small children and a few of us older folk. I was impressed with the reverence of both clerics and congregation.
Just one correction. He did not “retain” his priesthood. Leo XIII declared Anglican Orders: “absolutely null and utterly void”. When he or any Anglican becomes a Catholic they are ordained outright, not conditionally.
This beautiful Mass of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St
Peter was much closer to our pre-Conciliar Tridentine Latin Mass—I was expecting something closer to the work of Thomas Cranmer. I would like to read more about this– – I had (sadly!) been expecting a post-Conciliar Mass like this for us, in the late 1960s. Big shock!