Welcome Home! Anglo-Catholic Sisters on the Road to Rome [Ecumenical]

According to a friend, among the Anglicans now considering a corporate leap to Rome is a group of religious sisters called the All Saints Sisters of the Poor, who are located near Catonsville, Mayland about 10 miles from Baltimore.

Their website introduction is refreshingly simple and straightforward:

All Saints is a traditional Community desiring to uphold orthodox Christian faith and morality and to support the Apostolic tradition in ministry and practice. We are united by our common commitment to the One Lord Jesus Christ, and by the desire to live for Him.

With that unity, and made possible by it, there is great diversity both in our personalities and in our talents. In giving these as an offering to the Lord our communal life is enhanced and the skills and talents of each are used for the benefit of all.

The All Saints Sisters of the Poor are the American Branch of a Society founded in England, and which came to Baltimore in 1872. We are a traditional religious community, living under the evangelical vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. A mixed Life of Prayer and Work enables us to be flexible in meeting whatever needs and ministries present themselves.

Welcome home, sisters!!

A short video from the Baltimore Sun on the life of the Sisters.

I love these women already. I cant wait to meet them. God Bless you, Sisters!

This is the original Small World Department.

The Chaplain to this order used to be rector of the Ultramontane, More-Roman-than-Rome parish in Atlanta.

They were considering crossing the Tiber as a parish back in 2003, and while we were visiting trying to find a new church, I had a long chat with him.

The parish ultimately decided not to decamp for Rome - and the bishop here harassed and bullyragged them to such an extent that the rector finally just gave up in exhaustion.

I discovered, purely by happenstance, that a "volunteer" who answered the phone for the parish was actually a communicant at MY loony-left former parish, and hand in glove with our assistant rector to spy on the parish for the bishop. I was in line waiting to go in with the processional when I overheard the assistant rector and this woman yukking it up about how they were putting one over on the parish . . . . it simply sped our departure from ECUSA, needless to say.

The bishop forcibly installed his own man as rector after the old rector left, and I think the parish is headed for extinction. The age of the average parishioner is somewhere north of 65, and their numbers are dwindling. They have an ASA now of just over 40, and they've been in steady decline since 2000.

Of course, the decline has NOTHING to do with the fact that the church buildings sit on the last prime piece of real estate in a very trendy intown neighborhood . . . no, nothing at all . . . .

It would be interesting (and providential) if this chaplain found himself in Rome after all!

What a blessing this would be to the faithful. So much of the rot in the Catholic church exists in the very religious who are supposed to be loyal to her teachings. I think many orders should be disbanded and only allowed to reform as Catholic orders if they come under the direct control of an orthodox Bishop or an office of the Vatican.

I've said it so often that I don't know if I said it here on Fr or not.

And it is so much a part of me that despite talking about it, I can scarcely remember the actual words.

It was along the lines of, "This is not YOUR ministry, not YOUR priesthood. This is Christ's ministry and you are Christ's priest, God's priest.

"So, you MUST pray. You must seek silence, because that is where God speaks the loudest and the clearest. You must have as frequent recourse to the sacrament as possible. You must dedicate yourself and your ministry to Christ."

So here is one Dawg, foaming at the mouth, as always, and still 14 years later, trying to shake the waters of the Tiber out of his fur.

The nuns are an embarassment? You have to be kidding.

The 60 or so, fully-robed, reverent women worshiping in our parish last weekend were anything but.

The young nuns coming into the EWTN fold are anything but.

The wheel-chair-bound nun who celebrated her 60th year of ordination recently at a local parish is anything but.

Take a look around you.

Good, because most of the nuns we have in the USA are an enormous embarrassment.

http://www.mountosb.org/index.html

http://www.oblatesofmary.com/

http://www.bvmcong.org/

The overwhelming majority of religious aren't an embarrassment to anyone.

The congregations you name are small ones compared to the Dominicans, Maryknolls and others that are riddled with angry leftists.

Face facts: the women religious of the 60s and 70s are for the most part feminist ideologues with serious issues.

Is there a revival of female religious life underway? Yes - but it is in its infancy.

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