27th January 2010
A Pastoral Letter to the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Traditional Anglican Communion
From The Primate, The Most Reverend John Hepworth
“On the Gathering of the Anglicans”
The Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus - Read here.
27th January 2010
TAC Bishops’ Letter to the Holy See
The full text of the TAC Bishops’ Letter to the Holy See dated 5th October 2007 concerning their desire for unity with the See of Peter. Read full letter here.
18th January 2010
A Statement from the Primate relating to TAC and Holy See.
Read the Statement here.
28th December 2009
The Octave of Christmas – A Message from His Grace Archbishop John Hepworth.
"The Octave of Christmas is a time of richness and of confrontation. Richness because of the great liturgical and popular tradition that takes us day by day into events and places that deepen our faith in the Christ Child.
The feasts of Stephen, John, Holy Innocents, and the saintly martyr Archbishop Becket, all follow one another in a tumble of carols and remembrance. But these are also days of martyrdom and mass murder.
The Child was laid in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. These were the clothes in which the Jewish dead would be buried. They were kept in the stable so as not to be within the realm of the living. "His death cast a shadow over His birth, because his death was the reason for His birth."
The martyrs of His octave, the first of the martyrs, Deacon Stephen, the Anglican Archbishop Becket, the host of the Innocents, the children who died for the comfort of a King, the Apostle whose failed martyrdom led to the Apocalyptic exile on Patmos, these are the ones who accompany our Christmas thoughts, and remind us of the cost of following the Child of Bethlehem.
These are appropriate thoughts in this year's Octave when the bishops of our Communion receive their formal response to their petition for communion with the Bishop of Rome and those in communion with him in East and West. To be a splinter is not a virtue, it is an irritant destined to fester. A branch unconnected to the vine withers and corrupts.
Catholic communion is not an idea, nor the acceptance of a set of beliefs. It is standing together at the Altar of God, affirming one faith and receiving together the one Body and Blood of the Christ who is God and brother.
Our bishops have realised from the start of our separation from the Anglican Communion that it was a separation of pilgrimage. Pilgrimage must have a goal. Our goal was the healing of catholic disunity, that Anglicans had sought and then abandoned.
There is great integrity in being a pilgrim. If the destination be holy, God sustains on the journey. We will not be rushed or stampeded. Nor will we falter. So in our waiting as the vision of our destination becomes clearer in the mists of our wandering, let us take clear sight of the martyrs who are our Octave companions. Their echoes are all around us, in the destruction of innocent life, in the failure of episcopal teaching, in the denial of the Christ Child's godliness, in the transformation of love into hate, even within the company of those who bear His Name. The dying Stephen prayed for Saul, and the Church was given Paul, and the world was transformed. These are important days for us, and days that demand that most
difficult of prayers. "That we be transformed, so that the Church may transform the world."
+John
The Most Reverend John Hepworth
Primate
The Traditional Anglican Communion
20TH OCTOBER 2009
“This is a moment of grace, perhaps even a moment of history, not because the past is undone, but because the past is transformed”
STATEMENT from The Most Reverend John Hepworth, Primate of The Traditional Communion. [READ HERE]
26th July 2009
The Year of the Priest
ARCHBISHOP Hepworth writes: Given our status as a Communion that has formally petitioned for “full, Eucharistic Communion” with the Bishop of Rome, and given the status of that Petition, it strongly befits us to accept wholeheartedly the invitation of Pope Benedict XVI to make the present year “The Year of the Priest”. The year is a particular celebration of the life of St John Vianney, the patron of parish priests. I anticipate special celebrations for our priests both nationally (in conjunction with the National Synod) and in the regions of the Diocese. And this is a time for our laity to deepen their understanding and appreciation of priesthood. I do not have to tell you that one of the most misunderstood matters in global Anglicanism at the moment is priesthood.
