I Was Able To Order Another Book

that mentions the 1993 meeting between the Texas Episcopalians, including Jeffrey Steenson, and Cardinal Ratzinger, William Oddie's The Roman Option. (Luckily, I found mine for about $0.50 plus postage, which is what it's worth.) Beginning on page 178, it contains the most complete published account of the meeting. The book was published in 1997, so it naturally can't continue the story to Anglicanorum coetibus, although I don't believe subsequent developments support Oddie's optimism that the Catholic Church can play a major role in either Anglican realignment or continuing Anglicanism, overrated movements in any case.

It includes Bishop Clarence Pope's estimate of 250,000 Episcopalians likely to come into a US Catholic Anglican personal prelature, and I think this is important, because I simply can't imagine the Vatican troubling itself over the actual numbers we've seen. Let's keep in mind that the Ordinariates were implemented based almost entirely on the proposal drafted by Steenson via Pope in 1994, so we should reasonably expect them to meet the 250,000 estimated to come over from TEC -- and if the actuality is only 0.6% of that, we should be asking serious questions.

The account of the meeting is clearly based on the minutes authored by Dr Wayne Hankey, who was present. However, the book's account of the subsequent inaction by the Vatican is incomplete. Oddie presumably got his copy of the minutes from Bishop Pope, since Dr Hankey, following the book's publication, wrote a letter to the editor of The Tablet strongly disagreeing with Oddie's premise and also suggesting the record on which the account was based was incomplete.

Oddie's account of Pope's disillusionment with his reception by the Catholic Church stresses the unwillingness of the Catholic clergy in the Louisiana diocese to which Pope retired to agree to his ordination as a married Catholic priest. The book mentions, however, that Cardinal Law then offered to ordain Pope himself, but Pope, according to Oddie, complained that this would take place only in a chapel, not in a cathedral! Pope, by his own admission, had become unstable by this point due to cancer treatments.

Other accounts, which seem to stem at least in part from Pope as well, suggest that Pope's disillusionment also stemmed from the Vatican's unwillingness either to recognize his Anglican orders as a bishop, or to re-ordain him as a bishop, so Oddie's version isn't necessarily the only one, even from Pope, and it strikes me as more likely that Pope would have objected to not getting the bishop sweetener as part of the deal.

A final detail in Oddie's account concerns Jack Iker's reaction to Pope's announcement, on his retirement as an Episcopal bishop, that he would become a Catholic. Iker had become Pope's bishop coadjutor, and when Pope told Iker of the decision, Iker threw him out of his office! This lends additional perspective to Iker's own positions regarding Catholic realignment.