Does Kansas City need a new Catholic Church?

Does Kansas City need a new Catholic Church? Only if the new one does something the others cannot do.

Just a couple of years ago it appeared that Kansas City might actually get two or three new Catholic Churches.  There was some excitement that Kansas City's two Traditional Anglican Communion parishes might enter the Catholic Church along with the whole TAC.  The bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion had asked for a way that they and their churches could enter the full communion of the Catholic Church while retaining some of their Anglican traditions and retain some responsibility for their own governance.  "United, not absorbed" was the goal of Anglican reunion with Catholicism as the early 20th Century Malines Conversations had described it.  Pope Benedict offered Anglicanorum Coetibus. Based on that Apostolic Constitution, Ordinariates were established in Great Britain, the United States and Canada, and Australia.  There was a lot of excitement prior to the Coming Home conference sponsored by the Anglican Use Community at St. Therese Little Flower and a number of Anglican priests participated.  The former Anglicans at St. Therese believed that they could help facilitate the project of healing church divisions by sharing their experience in becoming Catholic.  They were open to the possibility that they could cease to exist as a separate community and that they themselves could be absorbed into one of the existing Anglican soon-to-be-Catholic parishes when they entered the Catholic Church. But by then, the original excitement of the TAC was fading.  Rome had made a very generous offer.  But most of the Anglican parishioners in the pew didn't want to be Catholic, and the TAC bishops apparently weren't terribly enthusiastic about actually entering the Catholic Church.  Several of the Anglican bishops and many of the Anglican priests did not meet the required educational standards for ordination in the Catholic Church, and several had marriage issues.  A few TAC Anglican parishes around the country entered the new Ordinariate, but none of the local ones did.  That meant the former Anglicans at St. Therese Little Flower had to mull over their own reason for being.  What did it mean for them to be "United, not Absorbed"?  What was their reason for being?  Did they have a permanent future at St. Therese?  How could they enter the Ordinariate when the parish they had joined would always be part of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph?

More soon!