Starting off 2012 Rightly! Great News of Reunion for Followers of Christ (courtesy Rocco Palmo)

This is from the Whispers in the Loggia blog. The New Evangelization is bearing fruit! I am excited for 2012.Upon This "Rock," An Ordinariate Is BornTwenty-six months since Anglicanorum coetibus laid the groundwork for groups of Anglicans to cross the Tiber whilst maintaining elements of their liturgical, spiritual, theological and canonical patrimony, the top-shelf papal project has taken a sizable leap this New Year's morning, with as the establishment of the venture's Stateside jurisdiction by the Holy See.In an unprecedented Sunday announcement -- a significant sign of Rome's degree of seriousness about the effort -- the Vatican's press bulletin gave official word of the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, encompassing the territory of the United States. The national quasi-diocese for the entering groups is the second of its kind, following England's Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which was launched a year ago this month.Fr Jeffrey Steenson, 59, the former Episcopal bishop of Rio Grande ordained a priest of the archdiocese of Santa Fe in 2009, has been named the founding Ordinary. A married father of three and Oxford-trained patristics scholar who's been serving until now as a professor at Houston's St Mary's Seminary and University of St Thomas, Steenson's appointment is effective immediately.

Read the rest on Palmo's blog.

Here is the link to the CDF document establishing the ordinate, and here is the link to the ordinate itself. We will likely not know until the final resurrection just how much Pope Benedict has done for the Church in our time, but his legacy continues to grow. Here's a brief quote from a 2010 article I wrote for Zenit.

The Pope’s earlier thought is useful in illustrating his navigation of the Barque of Peter. He writes in "Church, Ecumenism, & Politics: New Endeavors of Ecclesiology" (Ignatius, 2008, originally published in Communio in 1983), “The actual goal of all ecumenical endeavors must naturally remain the transformation of the plurality of the separate denominational churches into the plurality of local Churches, which, in reality, form one Church despite their many and varied characteristics” (p. 119).The idea is essentially the same -- the ordinariates are as local churches, preserving the characteristics of the Anglican communion while achieving the koinonia in the Church of Christ, which subsists in the Catholic Church.