There Are Other Puzzling Features

in Ms Gyapong's post of January 1. I keep thinking about her account of Abp Hepworth on heresy and doing the sacraments the wrong way, and it reminded me that this is another version of the "Anglo-Catholic" bait and switch: as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the TAC is just another Protestant denomination. It does not recognize Anglican orders any more than it recognizes Baptist orders; it's as much a sin for a Catholic to participate in a TAC eucharist as it is a Presbyterian. In fact, this was the perceived slap in the face that the TAC got from Anglicanorum coetibus.

But as I've said, the Vatican was under no obligation to give things away that normally have a cost. Luke 14:31 makes it plain that the Lord Himself sees that faith has a cost: "Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand?" No matter how much Abp Hepworth or any other "Anglo-Catholic" wants to insist that using the proper elements in a sacrament makes him Catholic, from the Catholic point of view, he's deluded, and Anglicanorum coetibus simply makes that clear. If you want to be Catholic, you have to pay the dues that make you Catholic.

But Ms Gyapong makes another odd remark in her January 1 post:

Of course, today does mark the Circumcision of our Lord, but now that we are Catholics, it is a new Holy Day of Obligation for us as it is now the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God.

A commenter makes it plain that in fact, January 1 is not a Holy Day of Obligation, although it was before Vatican II reforms. Our priest at mass on Sunday in fact reminded us that January 1 is not a Holy Day of Obligation. I'm wondering if we're seeing a certain residual Anglo-Catholicism here, a need to be more Catholic than Vatican II, a need to make things more complicated than they need to be.

One of the excommunicated St Mary of the Angels parishioners, who'd returned to her previous Catholic parish, noted what several others of us have seen: the St Mary's high mass was, by 2012, close to two hours in length, with every possible accretion: asperges, lengthy homily, extended announcements, extended intentions, prayer of thanksgiving, post-communion motet, Angelus, and Last Gospel, the sort of thing that's very seldom seen or, coming from the Anglican prayer book, not seen at all in a Catholic mass. A Catholic mass, our friend noted, starts on time and ends an hour later!

The need among "Anglo-Catholics" to perform such acts of putative superergogation seems to be characterisic, and it probably speaks to a basic insecurity, a recognition that after all, one is not actually Catholic and needs to make up for it. As the Puritan John Milton put it, who best bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. No need to make things harder than they are!