My head hurts. Naturally, if I miss mass on a holy day of obligation, I've sinned. I'm not sure, though -- if I'd been traveling last week and found myself in Philadelphia on May 14, would I have sinned if I didn't go to mass that day in Philadelphia, but returned to LA in time to attend mass on the day it's transferred here, May 17? And because my baptismal certificate has gone south, I'm not yet registered in my diocese. I'm not sure if Frs M or D would have been confident of my status if I confessed it to them -- they'd probably have absolved me of all my sins anyhow (possibly with a chuckle), whether that covered this one of not. Three Our Fathers.
The problem is compounded when, as noted in the comments on the Ordinariate News threads, the policy isn't posted in any understandable way on the US-Canadian Ordinariate web site. And beyond that, when did this become Ordinariate policy? The US-Canadian one has been going for 3-1/2 years, but the issue has come up only now, as far as I can see. Was this always the policy -- in which case, do any Ordinariate members need to hie themselves to the confessional? Or has it changed more recently?
This specific issue is taking me back to a bigger problem I've come to see in the Anglo-Catholic flavor of "continuing Anglicanism", which I'm beginning to wonder is bleeding into the Ordinariate, at least in North America. I think there's a subtext among some communicants that, if they go through all the supposed liturgical supererogations, this will compensate for whatever lacunae may occur in their actual religious observance. I insist upon incense, bells, maniples, and copes -- which compensates for (fill in the blank, almost certainly a bit of grave matter). I keep thinking of the prominent St Mary of the Angels parishioner, a political operator closely associated with pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage interests, who gifted favored clergy with elaborate vestments.
It's hard enough to be a Catholo-Catholic. Why make it harder? And why cloud things all the more by communicating so poorly?
I'm less and less inclined to have anything to do with the Ordinariates, and I thank my guardian angel for keeping me from making any premature decisions about them.
