The bottom line is that people who are comfortable with truly egregious errors in spelling and usage don't expect much of themselves. The observation has been made in recent years, though, that the denominations that are growing are in fact the ones that expect more of their members -- Catholicism and Mormonism are the most frequently cited examples, but one less noticed is the Amish, which have also been growing. (Should it be a surprise that there are at least two popular television shows about the Amish? I watched Amish Mafia just the other night!) Nobody, by the way, sees a whole lot of future in the "continuing Anglicans".
At St Mary of the Angels, risking oversimplification, we might even delineate the factions as those who believe they are "Angelican" versus those who wanted to become Catholic -- in other words, those who expected little of themselves, versus those who expected more. It's apposite that Fr Kelley, bitterly unpopular among the "Angelicans", delivered a homily in 2011 suggesting that it was OK for us to expect a lot from God, because God expects a lot from us.
In looking at discusssions on "continuing Anglican" blogs and websites, I see a strain of opinion that tries to shade the difference between small-c catholic and capital-C Catholic. It's worth pointing out that I heard exactly the same explanation of small-c versus captial-C in my Presbyterian confirmation class in my early teens and in my RCIA confirmation class a month or so ago: both Protestants and Catholics see a small-c in the "holy catholic church" of the Nicene creed. Both say small-c catholic is universal, something bigger than the denomination led by the Bishop of Rome. Capital-C Catholic is the part of the universal church headquartered in the Vatican. This is not controversial at all.
Yet time after time, I see "continuing Anglican" bloggers trying to argue that you can somehow be capital-C Catholic without ascribing to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which among other things makes claims for the authority of the Pope. No. These people are pretending that small-c catholic is the same as capital-C Catholic. This is like claiming that there's no difference between referring to John and referring to a john. Words mean something.
I think the basic difference here is one of conscience, which is probably just a variation of what people expect of themselves. Many in the ACA hierarchy seem to think it's OK to abuse their canons and tell lies -- they don't expect much of themselves, and they seem to have squared this with their consciences as well. I think this goes to a basic flaw in the reasoning behind "continuing Anglicanism", and it may also be at the root of the near-hysterical anti-Catholicism that often seems to accompany that school of thought.
The Presbyterianism of my childhood and adolescence did not, I fear, survive an elite-school education, and I didn't return to the Church until I was well into adulthood. I went to an Episcopal confirmation class about 1980 right when the first controversy over St Mary of the Angels was on the local TV news. "I don't understand," I asked the Episcopal priest leading the class, "What do these people mean by 'Anglo-Catholicism'?"
"You know what they are?" he answered. "These are people who want to claim they're Catholics without actually paying the dues you have to pay to be a Catholic."
Over the years since then, no matter how I've turned it over, and I've thought about it many times, I've never been able to get away from the fact that he was right.
