Interesting contrast

Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins has put up a Q&A on how Anglicans will be received into the Catholic Church.

He writes:

The corporate dimension of Anglicanorum Coetibus does not mean that whole communities of Anglicans will enter the Catholic Church in a way that sweeps along individuals who may not want to do so. Freedom of conscience must be respected. Although an ordinariate parish is a corporate community (and in the Anglican Use parishes in the United States, we have for several decades had a model of what an ordinariate parish will be like) each member of the new congregation must freely and individually choose to become a Roman Catholic, who will then become a member of a parish within an Anglican Use Ordinariate within the Catholic Church. Although many other members of the group of Anglicans may also at the same time be in the process of reception into the Catholic Church, and will together form an ordinariate parish within the Catholic Church, each person enters the Catholic Church individually, after an appropriate process of instruction, as will Anglican clergy, who must also individually go through a process of discernment and formation in preparation for possible ordination to the Catholic priesthood, in accordance with the pastoral needs of the ordinariate and the Church’s requirements for ordination as Catholic priests of the ordinariate.

Contrast that with what the new Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham Fr. Keith Newton said at a news conference with the English Episcopal delegate Bishop Alan Hopes by his side:

All these things seem very quick but we’ve been thinking about this for the last fifteen months since the Apostolic Constitution. And I know that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith feel very strongly that the first priests needed to be in the Ordinariate quite quickly so that we can help to gather and help those who are coming over. That’s why we’ve been ordained within two weeks. The others will go through a longer process. They will have some formation from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost. It’s very important to say that formation will continue afterwards. It’s not that they will have any less than any other clergy coming from the C of E who wants to be a priest into the Catholic Church. It’s just that it will be done in a different way. It’s important that those priests will pass to their groups. There will be an intensive bit of preparation before Ordination, but that will go on for up to two years.

Q. Can you put a figure on the numbers who may come over?

I wouldn’t want to say any number. Until a person actually says, 'this is what I want to do’, then they have the opportunity to say 'I’ve decided not to do it'. They have to be committed to being a Catholic. Although we say it's groups, within those groups everybody has to make a personal decision. It’s what my colleague Fr Andrew said; it’s a bit like going on a charabanc outing to Walsingham. You have to pay your own fare and get on on your own, but then the bus travels along. Every individual has to make a declaration of faith and receive confirmation and chrismation. But they will do it together. Until they do it, I can’t say. Some of the groups may be a dozen or twenty, some may be 60 or 70. Until that moment comes we just can’t say.