It is payback time for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on some mortgages sold to the finance companies by lenders.
Stuck with about $300 billion in loans to borrowers at least 90 days behind on payments, Fannie and Freddie have unleashed armies of auditors and other employees to sift through mortgage files for proof of underwriting flaws. The two mortgage-finance companies are flexing their muscles to force banks to repurchase loans found to contain improper documentation about a borrower’s income or outright lies.
The result: Freddie Mac required lenders to buy back $2.7 billion of loans in the first nine months of 2009, a 125% jump from $1.2 billion a year earlier. Fannie Mae won’t disclose its figure, but trade publication Inside Mortgage Finance said Fannie made $4.3 billion in loan-repurchase requests in the first nine months of 2009.
“Because taxpayers are involved, we’re being very vigilant,” said Maria Brewster, who oversees Fannie’s repurchase team. “No taxpayer should have to pay for a business decision that caused a bad loan to be sold to Fannie Mae.”
This is easily the most devastating and surprising piece I have read from the ACI in well over a year. It also points out a detail about the Covenant that I’m not confident I’ve heard expressed from anyone, even the most negative and naysaying regarding the Covenant.
You’ll need to plow through the whole piece — I’ll excerpt a couple of the sections, but you really must hasten to the ACI website and lower your head and begin driving your legs up the field, like the men in one of those strong-man contests.
[Please note that my description of each excerpt does not use the words of the ACI -- I am far more brutal and bludgeoning than they are as you'll soon see.]
Here’s an excerpt that pertains to a detail that I’ve heard mentioned by no one, even those who really despise the Covenant and think it pointless — it’s a stunning point that I simply hadn’t noticed:
The new Section 4 reflects these fundamental principles in its provisions for adopting, maintaining and amending the Covenant. It assigns to a “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion†a coordinating and monitoring role in carrying out these activities. Prior to the release of the Covenant, no such committee had been given that title or assigned the role of performing these functions.
Contrary to a widely shared assumption, Section 4 does not in fact explicitly identify this “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion†with any pre-existing committee. It does, however, define the Committee’s responsibilities and thereby determines the qualifications for any committee that would fill this role. First, and most importantly, the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion is to be “responsible to the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting.†Its primary role is to “monitor,†“take advice,†and “recommend.†Importantly, “[o]n the basis of advice received from the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting, the Standing Committee may make a declaration that an action or decision is or would be ‘incompatible with the Covenant’.†In other respects, however, its role is that of coordination and recommendation, all the while “responsible to†the two Instruments of Communion. For example, under 4.1.5, invitations to “other churches†to adopt the Covenant are issued by the Instruments, not the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion. Similarly, under 4.4.2, proposed amendments to the Covenant may be submitted either by the covenanting Churches or by the Instruments. They are submitted “through†the Standing Committee, but that Committee’s duties are mandatory, not discretionary: it “shall†send the proposal to the Instruments and Churches for advice, make a recommendation and then submit the proposal to the covenanting Churches for approval.
The working group that revised Section 4 seems to have assumed that the recently reorganized standing committee of the ACC would function as the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, and the ACC committee itself appears ready to assume the functions of the committee defined by Section 4 of the Covenant. But it is increasingly doubtful that this assumption, which has not yet been explicitly and publicly ratified by any of the Instruments, is consistent with the text of Section 4 or acceptable to a large part of the Communion.
Here’s an excerpt that points out just how duplicitous and Wormtongue-like Canon Kearon’s rhetoric has been — [no, they don't say that -- I'm saying it]:
And in what is probably the single most contentious paragraph in the Covenant, a change was made to Paragraph 4.1.5 to incorporate a reference to procedures for amending the ACC membership schedule. Canon Kearon’s cover letter disseminating the Covenant to the Communion Churches cited the unpublished Articles of Association to explain these procedures, but the procedures he quoted were different from those that were shown at the time in the published version of the ACC constitution on the Communion website. Canon Kearon subsequently amended his cover letter and the published version of the constitution was changed as well, but the constitution even as changed still does not match what Canon Kearon quoted from the Articles. We do not want to dwell on what might be minor discrepancies and administrative hiccups–although the differences in the procedures are substantive and when ACNA was formed a year ago a Communion spokesman described the procedures as “clear†and cited different ones than are now quoted by Canon Kearon. But transparency on such a contentious issue is essential, especially when more profound questions lie just beneath the surface.
Here’s an excerpt that deals not with legalities and procedures and processes, but rather with the untrustworthiness of the standing committee of the ACC:
Indeed, the urgency to consider these questions now arises because they point to a more profound flaw in the mechanisms currently contemplated for implementing the Covenant. Whatever its legal status, the standing committee of the ACC does not enjoy the trust of a large part of the Communion. The degree of trust, already diminished, was further eroded by the public display of procedural chaos, never appropriately resolved, at the last ACC meeting, out of which the current committee’s make-up emerged. And to repeat a point made above by the Windsor Continuation Group about the ACC: “If the membership becomes polarised, it will lose its ability to act effectively on behalf of the whole Communion.â€Â
This issue has been brought to a head by the election of a non-celibate lesbian as suffragan bishop in Los Angeles, which occurred after the Covenant working group finished its revision of Section Four. Confirmation of this election by TEC as a whole, following the removal of previous restraints at last summer’s General Convention, will be a clear repudiation of the discernment of the Communion on this issue and therefore a repudiation of the Covenant under which each covenanting Church undertakes “to endeavour to accommodate [the] recommendations†of the Communion’s Instruments and “to act with diligence, care and caution in respect of any action which may provoke controversyâ€Â. Should the bishop-elect receive the necessary consents for consecration TEC could not maintain in good faith any claim to be “still in the process of adopt[ing]†the Covenant as contemplated by paragraph 4.2.8.
I haven’t posted the recommendations and numerous other important points from this essay — much honey is awaiting the reader.
The Archbishop of the Middle East has called out The Episcopal Church and hard-core revisionists in the broader Communion. This is remarkable not just for its candor and accuracy, but for the fact that it comes from someone as patient and sweet-tempered as Mouneer Anis, who reminds me of a more patient and sweeter-tempered Drexel Gomez, if that’s possible. His departure can only been seen as one of the more devastating comments on Rowan Williams’ leadership in recent memory:
After much prayer and consideration, I hereby submit my resignation from the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion (SCAC). I have come to realize that my presence in the current SCAC has no value whatsoever and my voice is like a useless cry in the wilderness. Having said that, I must say that since I joined the committee in 2007 I have learnt quite a lot and made friends who may disagree with me whom I appreciate very much and I will miss.
…I have come to the sad realization that there is no desire within the ACC and the SCAC to follow through on the recommendations that have been taken by the other Instruments of Communion to sort out the problems which face the Anglican Communion and which are tearing its fabric apart. Moreover, the SCAC, formerly known as the join Standing Committee (JSC), has continually questioned the authority of the other Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference.
…
Some may say that the provinces within the Anglican Communion are autonomous, and each province is free to make its own resolutions. While I agree and accept the autonomous nature of each province, I believe that the participation in the decision making process that affects the life of the Anglican Communion should be for those who show respect in word and deed to the whole Communion – not those who turn their backs to every appeal and warning.Many sing praises of “inclusiveness” while at the same time the exclude others. I am deeply disturbed in my conscience when I see a kind of double-standard in dealing with different issues. While emphasizing the importance of caring for for the marginalized in our communities, like the LGBT community, the orthodox Anglicans are being marginalized. I understand that in a family, the concern of every member is cared for; but this is not the reality in our meetings where the orthodox voices are disregarded or suppressed.
[Hat tip: T19]
A fascinating article from McClatchy Newspapers. Many interesting aspects to this story, but one thing I enjoyed reading about were the few small things that brought this man back to some comparative health. Note what they were — an entire day spent with some attentiveness from his boss, animals, some encouraging words, and other things, which I won’t list. It’s just a pleasure to think about the small things that may help — and how other human beings may help.
For Rhodes, 49, who grew up in Ringgold, Ga. and lives in the shadow of Fort Benning, near Columbus, Ga., where he once commanded troops, the Iraq war was a greedy ghost that stole him away for 30 months and gnawed at his marriage and his sanity.
He lost both during his third tour. Rhodes’ sky cracked open in April 2005.
“The first hundred days, we didn’t have a boy get a scratch. Then we lost two guys when their suits caught on fire. It started then. Then a couple days later we lost a few more.”
Then the unit lost two captains  younger men with children and career aspirations.
“We arrived at the scene, and that was the first time I saw a human body in so many dismemberments. A young private walked over to me with a hand and said, ‘What do I do with this?’ I took his ring off and said, ‘Put this over in that bag.’ “
In all, he watched 37 soldiers die during his time in Iraq. Rhodes pushed on through heavy fighting, fatigue and a grief so deep that it threatened to swallow him whole.
Then one day, everything went dark.
“I woke up on the helicopter, and a young soldier put a card in my pocket and said, ‘You’ve been serviced by Angel Flight.’ “
Rhodes was flown to a military hospital in Baghdad and was diagnosed with PTSD. He made what he calls “a deal with the devil” and was offered an opportunity to slow down and receive counseling.
He was also prescribed medication for depression, which he rarely took. Soon he started sleepwalking.
“I’d tie myself to my bunk at night. One time I was found on top of my bunk and was brought back down.”
Back home, his wife, Carol, found that she could relax only after 10 at night, figuring that the Army would never bring her news of her husband’s death any later than that. His son, Sam, dropped out of college and joined the Army in the hopes of fighting alongside his father in Iraq.
That November, Rhodes was sent to Fort Benning to help lead a brigade. By day, he was a stalwart commander, barking out orders and in full control. At night he’d go back to his now empty apartment  he and Carol had divorced  drink and think about whether in death he might find some sort of respite from the nightmares and the overwhelming guilt he felt because he’d survived and others hadn’t.
“I went to a friend’s house, a retired veteran, I got a gun from him with bullets, and the next day I was trying to figure out when and where to do it.”
Col. Charles Durr, the brigade commander, sensed that Rhodes was having problems and pulled him aside.
“He spent the day with me, and he recognized I was having issues; he didn’t know I was considering suicide,” Rhodes said. “It was just a very positive day. He told me I was doing a good job. When somebody says something positive to you and reinforces you’re doing good things, it makes it seem better.”
Slowly, painfully, Rhodes found his way back.
He met Cathy, a friendly Army IT specialist who made him feel new. They married in a small, spur-of-the-moment ceremony in Fort Benning’s chapel, then dashed off for a whirlwind honeymoon in Las Vegas.
It was willfully impulsive, and it was the closest thing to normal he’d felt in a long time.
He also rediscovered a love of horses and found catharsis in stoking their smooth coats and silently unburdening all his troubles on his quiet, gentle companions.
[Hat tip: SS]
The diocese approved without discussion a resolution supporting a covenant, or agreement, that may establish guidelines for future participation in the international Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is currently the American partner in the Communion, but it has been ostracized by other national Anglican churches and by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams for moving beyond commonly accepted practices on the role of gays. If The Episcopal Church does not adopt the covenant, it could find itself relegated to second-tier status in the Communion.
Howe said in his address that endorsing the covenant would put the diocese in a good relationship with like-minded Anglicans.
“We may be in the minority in The Episcopal Church, but we are in the majority of faithful Christians in the Anglican Communion,” he said.
The diocese also approved a resolution tacitly disapproving of the election of the Rev. Mary Glasspool, an openly lesbian priest, as assistant bishop of Los Angeles. Glasspool’s election must be confirmed by the Episcopal House of Bishops and diocesan advisory boards called standing committees. Howe pled unsuccessfully that the resolution be withdrawn because the diocese has no standing in her confirmation. The resolution passed in a close vote, 174 to 152.
The diocese also passed a resolution opposing the creation of liturgical ceremonies that would bless same-sex unions.
We have learned today from Bishop Mouneer Anis that he has submitted his resignation from the former joint standing committee. Following so closely the release in December of the final text of the Anglican Communion Covenant, this resignation underscores the extent to which the Anglican Communion is at a major crossroads. At this decisive moment, however, substantial doubts have been expressed both publicly by Bishop Mouneer and privately by others as to whether this committee, now the standing committee of the Anglican Consultative Council, is the appropriate body to coordinate the implementation of the Covenant. These concerns point to the steps that we believe are necessary to restore the Communion so badly damaged by actions in North America over the last decade. In what follows, we seek first to outline the current structural challenges to the Covenant’s initial implementation. This will involve some important, if technical, analysis. Only then, however, can we make clear what, in our mind, these necessary steps for implementation are.
In summary, and on the basis of our continued conviction that the Covenant itself as currently formulated is a positive, faithful, and necessary basis for the renewal of the Anglican Communion and its member churches, we argue that:
1. The final Covenant text envisions a Communion of responsibly coordinated Instruments, ordered episcopally, that the current ACC-led standing committee is in fact undermining;
2. The current ACC standing committee is not necessarily the “Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion†indicated by the Covenant text, and cannot therefore automatically claim the authority it seems to be assuming;
3. The current ACC standing committee has little credibility in the eyes of a large part of the Communion and ought not to be claiming the authority it seems to be assuming;
4. Those Churches of the Communion who move fully and decisively to adopt the Covenant must work with a provisional and representative standing committee, continuous in membership with the other Instruments, that will direct the implementation of the Covenant in a way that can eventually permit a Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion to be formed as envisioned by the Covenant text.
…I have come to the sad realization that there is no desire within the ACC and the SCAC to follow through on the recommendations that have been taken by the other Instruments of Communion to sort out the problems which face the Anglican Communion and which are tearing its fabric apart. Moreover, the SCAC, formerly known as the join Standing Committee (JSC), has continually questioned the authority of the other Instruments of Communion, especially the Primates Meeting and the Lambeth Conference.
…
Some may say that the provinces within the Anglican Communion are autonomous, and each province is free to make its own resolutions. While I agree and accept the autonomous nature of each province, I believe that the participation in the decision making process that affects the life of the Anglican Communion should be for those who show respect in word and deed to the whole Communion – not those who turn their backs to every appeal and warning.
[The] Rev. Asman, of Santa Barbara’s Trinity Episcopal Church, and Rabbi Gross-Schaefer, of the Community Shul of Montecito and Santa Barbara, annunciated their support for women’s rights and asserted that being religious and being pro-choice are not always mutually exclusive.
Declaring himself a “progressive religious activist,†Asman critiqued the health care bill’s anti-abortion amendment. “God is grieved by this amendment,†he said. Asman went on to say that he feared the “tragic consequences of a pre-Roe world.â€Â
Gross-Schaeferâ€â€who for 28 years has been a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, a Catholic institutionâ€â€was equally supportive of a woman’s right to choose, declaring that abortion was “not a concept of murder whatsoever†given that the “fetus not a separate human beingâ€â€not until a head emerges.†He said that as “a very religious person, I have to be pro-choice.â€Â
I saw that Ralph McInerny, Roman Catholic writer and professor of philosophy at Notre Dame, has died — he’s famous for . . . well, if you don’t know, this older essay by him in First Things will tell you, so I won’t spoil the surprise.
I thought his comments about his earlier serious novels, particularly the ones about a young priest, and a group of old priests, were so fascinating. But I’ve excerpted the part about the discipline of writing — fascinating too. I’ve always respected people who acknowledge the necessity of hard work in order to produce excellence.
Here’s a bit of his bio from Amazon:
RALPH McINERNY holds degrees from the St. Paul Seminary, the University of Minnesota, and Laval University. He has taught at the University of Notre Dame since 1955 and, since 1978, has been the Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies. For seven years, he was director of the Medieval Institute; since 1979, he has been director of the Jacques Maritain Center, also at the University of Notre Dame. He has published extensively as a scholar and as a fiction writer. His publications include The Question of Christian Ethics, Aquinas on Human Action, and a biography, The Very Rich Hours of Jacques Maritain. His Gifford Lectures, delivered in 1999-2000, were published under the title Characters in Search of Their Author.
Here’s an excerpt from the First Things article, where there is much much more — it makes for a nice Sunday afternoon read:
At the University of Minnesota and at Laval, at first single and then married, I continued to write. I sent a Christmas poem to fellow students and to some of the faculty, and Charles De Koninck was impressed all out of proportion to the value of the poems I showed him. (Later I would discover that he had attempted to write a novel.) During the months that I was writing my dissertation I was also at work on a novel. It is penitential for me to even page through those early efforts. There was another novel written in Omaha, and yet another when we moved to South Bend in August 1955. I sat at the dining room table in my bathing trunks because of the ungodly heat and wrote. Over the years I would occasionally write a short story and mail it in, my preferred target being the New Yorker. It would come back (in Thurber’s phrase) like a serve in tennis. What I remember about those years was how episodic my efforts were. After I sent off a story, I would wait as if for news of the Nobel Prize. Rejection was cushioned by no work in progress. I was not serious.
On January 16, 1964, I decided to get serious. We had moved into the house on Portage Avenue and were overextended. Getting through the month was depressingly reminiscent of days we thought we had left behind forever. I took on teaching a couple courses at the branch of Indiana University in South Bend, adding those to my daily chores at Notre Dame, but this was peanuts. I remembered the copy of Writer’s Digest I had bought in the Los Angeles train station in 1946. I decided that I would write for commercial markets, not just sporadically, but determinedly, every day, and keep at it for a year, after which if I had not sold anything I would admit to myself that I was not really a writer.
And so it began. In the basement was a workbench, unlikely to serve its original purpose for me. It became my desk. It was L shaped. I plunked my typewriter on the short leg of the L and, standing, began. Every night, after we had put the kids to bed, I would go downstairs and write from ten until about two in the morning. The markets I was chiefly interested in were Redbook, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Good Housekeeping. Their initial price for a story was a thousand dollars. I sent stories out, but I was always ready with others when they came back. There was never a time when I wasn’t awaiting editorial word on one or more stories. This gave room for hope. In April I began to get messages on the rejection slips and then a letter from an editor at Redbook, Sandra Earl, telling me “close but no cigar,†and urging me to keep trying.
Those early times at my converted workbench were, I came to see, my apprenticeship. For someone who aspired to write fiction I was almost totally ignorant of how a story is made. The slick magazines operated on the Edgar Alan Poe principle that a story aims at a single effect. No sideshows, nothing that does not contribute to the point of the story. I would sometimes be asked what paragraph three on page seven was meant to do, would read it, find it lovely writing but effectively idle in the story. Out it went. I was learning that one writes for a reader. Writing is too often described as self-expression. But writing is the art of making a story that will engage and hold and satisfy the interest of the reader. I typed a slogan and pinned it over my typewriter: Nobody Owes You A Reading.
What I thought were stories piled up on the workbench. With time I began to see why they were rejected: They weren’t stories. A story needs an attractive or at least intriguing character facing a crucial choice. The story is the account of his making it, solving his problem, resolving a dilemma. His efforts worsen rather than ease his situation. Eventually he arrives at the dark moment when all seems lost. Then, by his own efforts, plausibly but surprisingly, he succeeds. The end. A variation on this is the villain whose pursuit of his evil goal triumphs over one obstacle after another until, just as ultimate success seems assured, surprisingly but plausibly, he goes down in flames.
Is this formula fiction? Well, you can find this account of imaginative portrayals of human agents in Aristotle’s Poetics. The structure I have just sketched is of course the plot, what gives a narrative a beginning, a middle, and an end, in Aristotle’s pithy phrase. Or, in Peter De Vries’ version: a beginning, a muddle, and an end. Plot is not everything, but it is the soul of the story.
The themes of the stories I wrote for the magazines were domesticâ€â€the kids going to camp, recitals, trouble at school. All I had to do was look around my house and see the germs of stories. Before the year was out, I sold my first story, “The First Farewell,†to Redbook. It was based on my daughters’ going to school in Louvain.
I began publishing under a pseudonym, Ernan Mackey, an anagram on my family name, to keep my fiction separate from my academic career. At the beginning I felt more divided than I did later between two non-overlapping kinds of writing. I went to New York and met the editors with whom I had been corresponding. Sandy Earl took me around the Redbook offices and showed me the reports the fiction department prepared and explained the politicking involved in getting a story accepted. She, I now realized, was my champion there. I watched the receptionist, who served as the first reader of unsolicited manuscripts, draw pages from a manila envelope, read a few lines, let the pages drop back, and set it aside for rejection. As often as not, that woman did not have to read more than a few lines to tell whether it was a story or not, and if it was, whether it would be of interest to Redbook’s readers.
Every published writer is the beneficiary of luck. Among my good fortune was the fact that editors began to treat me as if they were my aunts. They were all women, of course. There were no men in the fiction departments. On one of my visits to New York, three or four editors from different magazines sat me down in the Algonquin, plied me with manhattans, and discussed my career. It was now three years since my big resolution. I was selling stories regularly. One year I sold more stories to Redbook than anyone else ever had, using several pen names. It was the consensus of the group that I was ready for more. I needed an agent. They supplied me with a short list of agents they had agreed on, and I went around to their offices and in effect interviewed them.
It was Henry Volkening who became my first agent. Henry’s office was in the French Building on Park Avenue. He had the diffidence of a drinker, and indeed when he took me to the Century Club for lunch, we largely drank it, or at least Henry did, ringing the bell on the table for another martini and unnecessarily telling me not to try to keep up with him. Listening to him sum up his own career made me realize that he was my connection with the mythical past. He had begun at Scribner’s, where no less an editor than Maxwell Perkins had told him that there was more need for good agents than for another editor. So with Diarmid Russell, the son of the Irish writer who signed himself “AE,†he founded an agency. Eudora Welty has written a book about her long association with the agency, and in it there are photographs of the partners in their youth. The Henry I came to know had a valedictory air. From the outset, he let me know he didn’t like my use of a pseudonym: “It’s hard enough to make one name famous, let alone two.†He said things like that. He was not thinking of my magazine stories. Something had happened.
It was the spring of 1965. I had written a piece for America magazine called “Thomism in an Age of Renewal.†Jack Bernard, an editor at Doubleday, saw it and wrote to ask if I would like to develop it into a book. I did. Later, at lunch in New York with Jack, I listened to him say nice things about the manuscript I had turned in. He liked the way I wrote. I told him that I also wrote fiction. “Really? Have you ever thought of writing a novel?†If I hadn’t, I would have thought of it then and there. There was a story I had written under the influence of J. P. Donleavy called “Jolly Rogerson.†I had sent it to the Paris Review and there it sat, unrejected but untaken. That story came into my mind and suddenly seemed part of something larger. “Yes,†I said. “I am thinking of writing a novel.â€Â
Here’s a smaller excerpt about the role of his faith on his writing that I also thought quite astute:
The beginning writer consciously and unconsciously mimics what he has read and likedâ€â€art imitates artâ€â€but a moment must come when his own voice emerges, his distinctive way of seeing things. For me, after many efforts, I first found my peculiar way of seeing things in “The First Farewell.†I wouldn’t try to define it abstractly. Others have tried, and I get a little superstitious about such descriptions. Who you are, or at least who you want to be, comes through with the stories you tell. If your assumptions are banal, received opinion, with the outlook of the advertisements that flank your story, then you will continue to be an imitation of an imitation. One need not be a revolutionary to have a distinctive way of seeing things that goes deeper than, if not against, the common grain.
As a Catholic my outlook may seem to be provided me. The believer has catechetical answers to the great questions. “What does it all mean?†becomes “Why did God make me?â€Ââ€â€and the answer: “To know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life and be happy with Him forever in the next.†Christians are supposed to imitate Christ. If that meant that their lives must be uniform and indistinguishable from one another, the question would arise as to why God created so many humans. The answer may be a variation on Tolstoy’s comparison of happy and unhappy families. The calendar of the saints tells us that the more fervently and perfectly men and women imitate Christ, the more differentiated they become. It is we mediocrities or worse who seem to blend into one another, as predictable as our bad habits.
Well, the influence of one’s religious belief on one’s imagination is like that. All the great artists of western civilization were influenced one way or another by Christian revelation, but who would confuse Dante and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Hawthorne and Emily Dickinson? All this may seem to be a presumptuous way for a minor writer like myself to view what he does. But one need not delude oneself in order to take seriously the task of writing. It is not the goal of writing to express oneself. The goal is the well-made story, something with a beginning, middle, and end, a portrayal of human agents.
A joint prayer service for Christian unity will be held at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Bishop Richard Malone, head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland, and Bishop Brian Marsh, spiritual leader of the Traditional Anglican Church in America, Diocese of the Northeast, will preside at the service.
The service is an outgrowth of talks between the Vatican and the Worldwide Traditional Anglican Church.