The converts, who have been undergoing catechism classes since St. Luke's announced it would to seek admission to the prospective U.S. ordinariate in June, will undergo confirmation as part of the service. The Mass and Rite of Reception will be celebrated by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington. Anyone interested in witnessing the congregation's reception is invited to attend the service, Fr. Lewis said.

THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY, October 16, will see another extraordinary event, as St. Luke's welcomes Monsignor Keith Newton, ordinary of Our Lady of Walsingham in the United Kingdom, the first Anglican ordinariate to be established under the terms of the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, issued by Pope Benedict in November 2009.

A married former Church of England bishop, Msgr. Newton will celebrate the 10 a.m. Mass October 16 at St. Luke's, which is located at 4002 53rd Street in Bladensburg, just outside the District of Columbia. Again, anyone interested is invited to attend.

Both momentous events are likely to be followed within weeks by the inauguration of a U.S. companion to the U.K. ordinariate. Cardinal Wuerl, the Vatican's choice to implement Anglicanorum coetibus in America, told fellow prelates in June that the U.S. ordinariate might well launch this fall with a starting constituency of up to 100 former Anglican priests and 2,000 laypersons.

An ordinariate is also in the works in Australia, according to a report received last week, and another such structure is probable in Canada. Not coincidentally, the Anglican provinces in the four countries named are among those most buffeted by unorthodox trends that have effectively gone unchecked by the Anglican Communion's authority system.

Thus, while Rome remains a hard sell among many orthodox Anglicans, due to historic differences between Catholics and Anglicans and other factors, the Catholic Church's offer of ordinariates - widely hailed as generous and unprecedented - seems to have spurred a Romeward movement among Anglicans that is starting to pick up steam.

The apostolic constitution - which the Vatican has said was issued in response to "many requests" from faithful Anglican clergy and laity in different parts of the globe - authorizes the establishment of "personal ordinariates" enabling Anglican groups seeking reunion with Rome to move together into full communion with the Holy See, but to retain some aspects of their Anglican heritage and patrimony.

The constitution permits such groups to use a modified Anglican liturgy and receive oversight from a former Anglican priest or bishop. As well, it allows for married Anglican priests and seminarians to become Catholic priests (albeit not bishops), in much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married.

However, in the case of the ordinariates, which will be part of the Roman Church's Latin Rite rather than comprise a separate rite, married priests are expected to be a largely temporary concession - a fact seized-upon by critics, but seemingly known to most ordinariate-bound Anglicans. In June, Cardinal Wuerl made clear in remarks to fellow U.S. prelates that, while a provision for accepting married clergy would remain in place, unmarried male members of the ordinariates who aspire to priesthood would be expected to remain celibate.

But for the new Catholics at St. Luke's, this provision of the apostolic constitution means that, though their married rector, Fr. Lewis, has ceased priestly functions for now, they can expect him to return as their spiritual leader after he undergoes any supplemental training deemed necessary and ordination as a Catholic cleric.

The length of that process will likely differ from cleric to cleric, but in Lewis' case is expected to take only a few months. In the interim, the St. Luke's ordinariate community will have a chaplain in the person of the Rev. Scott Hurd, an employee of the Washington Archdiocese who is himself a married former Episcopal cleric.

Hurd was received into the Roman Church via the Pastoral Provision, which is distinct from, but in some sense a precursor to, the ordinariate concept (which was also inspired by a similar arrangement for military chaplaincies).

Approved by Pope John Paul II for the U.S. only in 1980, the Pastoral Provision was designed mainly to facilitate the transfer of married Episcopal clergy to the Roman Church, but also spawned a handful of "Anglican Use" parishes in the U.S., all of them now expected to fold into the nascent U.S. ordinariate.

The liturgy authorized for those parishes, the Book of Divine Worship, offers language that many Anglicans would find familiar, the main exception being the prayer of consecration, which is an English translation of the Latin Mass of Pope Paul VI.

The Book of Divine Worship will now be made available to U.S. ordinariate parishes - St. Luke's has in fact been worshiping according to that liturgy since departing the U.S. Episcopal Church (TEC) in June - though it is possible that additional Anglican-based liturgical resources could be offered to them.

The decision by the multi-cultural, Anglo-Catholic St. Luke's - one of the few remaining conservative Episcopal parishes in the Washington area - to leave TEC for the ordinariate came after a long period of prayer and discernment by the congregation, and quiet, sensitive conversations with concerned parties.

Parish leaders said the move was not directly prompted by bellwether theological differences (e.g., over sexual morality and women's ordination) between St. Luke's international congregation and the Episcopal diocese and national church. Rather, they say those differences pointed to deeper issues at stake, such as apostolic authority, and finally to more positive reasons to choose the ordinariate, such as helping to restore church unity, a clear religious authority, and the ability to convert as a body while retaining an Anglican identity.

Surprisingly at the time, liberal Washington Episcopal Bishop John Bryson Chane not only supported St. Luke's decision, but helped broker an agreement with the diocese that allowed St. Luke's congregation to continue to worship in its Bladensburg church building under a lease which also gives congregants an option to purchase.

"This was a transition achieved in a spirit of pastoral sensitivity and mutual respect" Chane said at the time. "Christians move from one church to another with far greater frequency than in the past, sometimes as individuals, sometimes as groups. I was glad to be able to meet the spiritual needs of the people and priest of St. Luke's in a way that respects the tradition and polity of both of our Churches."

---The foregoing is for informational purposes only, and should not be taken as an endorsement or rejection of the ordinariate option by the Foundation for Christian Theology, former publisher of The Christian Challenge magazine