ecclesiastical Heraldry: January 2008

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Newark:

The Rev. Father Ernest Rush priest of the Archdiocese of Newark

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Archdiocese of Newark

The Rev. Fr. Michael Barone
Archdiocese of Newark

Saturday, January 26, 2008

The Diocese of Birmingham was elevated to the rank of an archdiocese on the 28^th of October 1911. The territory of the archdiocese covers the counties of Oxfordshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.

The Archdiocese of Westminster

The archdiocese was created by the Bull "Universalis Ecclesiae of Pope Pius IX from the ancient Apostolic Vicariate of London District, on September 29. Today Archdiocese’s territory consists of all the London boroughs north of the River Thames and west of the River Lea, together with the towns southwest of Staines and Sunbury-on-Thames, and the County of Hertfordshire, which lies immediately to London's north. The suffragan sees of Westminster are the dioceses of Brentwood, East Anglia, Nottingham, and Northampton.

The current archbishop is Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor, who was installed as tenth Archbishop of Westminster on March 22, 2000. He was raised to the rank of Cardinal Priest of the Title of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva by Pope John Paul II on February 21, 2001.

Nicholas Wiseman, the last Vicar Apostolic of the London District, was appointed first archbishop upon the creation of the archdiocese and raised at the same time to the dignity of the college of Cardinals.

Cormac Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor

Friday, January 25, 2008

The Catholic Church in England and Wales (In Modern Times)

The Catholic Church in Great Britain today is a resurrected church. After the tragic events of the reformation in which the political authorities of Britain found it opportune to separate the British people from the Roman See, the state proceeded to create a national church which adopted a generic Protestantism for its creed but preserved the outward episcopal structure of ecclesiastical government.

The Faith became the object of a virulent persecution which lasted almost three hundred years and produced not a small number of martyrs from every social class in the kingdom. Catholics nevertheless persevered, albeit in dramatically reduced numbers. By the middle of the XIX century the remnant of the ancient church, its numbers reinvigorated to a good degree by immigration from Ireland and France, as well as conversions from the general English population, resurrected all the structures of public worship. It is regrettable but understandable given the profound prejudice of the protestant establishment in Britain, and its necessity to cling on to any vestige of historical authenticity, and continuity with the medieval English church, that upon the re-erection of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, Parliament sought fit to forbid Catholics the use of the names and territorial dimension of the ancient dioceses of the realm.

Forced to re-draw the ecclesiastical map of the Catholic Church in Britain, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales now found themselves Shepards not of Canterbury, York or London, but rather of Westminster, Liverpool and East Anglia. A small price to pay in exchange for the opportunity of restoring Britain once again to the orbit of the barge of Peter.

Today the Church in England and Wales is divided into five provinces, one Apostolic Exarchate for the Ukrainians, the Military prelacy, and twenty-two dioceses.