Deborah Gyapong: Visiting the Anglican Use parish in the Boston area

: Fr. Richard Bradford pastor of St. Athanasius and two altar servers

On Sunday, I had the privilege of visiting St. Athanasius, the Anglican Use parish in the Archdiocese of Boston.

Though the congregation is small, it is warm and friendly and certainly a place I would be happy to make my church home if I moved back to the Boston area where I grew up and my mother and brother and his family still live.

Interestingly, I would estimate the size of the congregation is about half of that of our Ottawa cathedral, but their church building is about five times the size! That might say more about Boston as being like the Quebec of the United States in terms of its secularism than about the quality of the preaching and teaching and fellowship and the beauty of the Anglican liturgy. This was my first Anglican Use liturgy, which I found a bit of a hybrid.

The size of this parish is quite a contrast to that of the Anglican Use parish in San Antonio, Texas, recent site for the Becoming One conference. Here's an excerpt of a report from on of the Traditional Anglican Communion priests from Canada who attended:

I have to begin by saying that if someone had told me what I was to encounter at Our Lady of the Atonement it could not have prepared me for what I actually experienced. Yes, it is the most robust parish of the US Pastoral Provision parishes, but. . .! This parish that began in 1983 with eighteen parishioners, one priest and no building is now a thriving institution with four Masses on a Sunday, daily Masses, an incredible campus, and a top-rated day school of 550 students in pre-K to grade 12. The school (Atonement Academy) deserves a write-up of its own.

This conference was billed as an opportunity for those in the US who are interested to learn more about what Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution has to offer to those in the various Anglican bodies there. Everyone was welcomed, whether in the Traditional Anglican Communion, another of the Continuing Anglican bodies, The Episcopal Church, or the US Pastoral Provision Parishes. When Bishop Botterill and I (Canon Richard Harris) decided to attend we knew that, as Canadians, we’d be the odd ducks there. But we were welcomed with open arms even though we were not the specific target of the conference.

There were three basic aspects of the conference: worship, presentations by some of the Pastoral Provision clergy and Fr. Scott Hurd, the official representative of Cardinal Wuerl, who is in turn the CDF’s designated liaison in the US, and fellowship. On “the way forward” we heard how the C.D.F., with input from those raised in the Anglican tradition, are putting the final touches on the “crash courses” that will be offered to the Anglican laity and clergy who wish to join the Ordinariates when they are established. As announced by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales the English Ordinariate will be established in a few short months and we will benefit from their experience as they break new ground. The formation programme for laity will involve study at the parish level of some aspects of the Catechism of the Catholic Church that Anglicans may not have been exposed to, and the “intensive” study programme being prepared for the clergy will ensure that they are ready for ordination as Catholic priests in a matter of weeks rather than years. Follow up reading programmes for the Ordinariate clergy will complete their academic formation.
Worship at Our Lady of the Atonement was in every way as Anglican as you could ask for. While the building that houses OLA is of recent vintage, it is what any Anglo-Catholic parish would hope for. There are pictures and all sorts of information on their web site.

I got a nice shot of Fr. Richard Bradford, the pastor, and two of the altar servers, in the sacristy before Mass. I got the names of the other two, but since I did not write them down I am sorry I can't put them on the caption. Maybe someone can add their names in the comments section.

As I arrived at the beautiful St. Lawrence Church in Chestnut Hill where St. Athanasius now finds its home, some parishioners were loading up cars with gaily-wrapped boxes with all the fixings for a turkey Thanksgiving dinner to deliver to those who might otherwise not be able to afford one.