I've Been Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation

Although MacCulloch makes it clear that he's not a practicing Christian, and the book is often frustrating in its attempt to be encyclopedic but not well-organized, his admiration for the Council of Trent shows through. It seems to me that he finds several factors that led to its ultimate success in preserving the Catholic faith:

• De-emphasizing the role of friars in parish ministry and replacing them with largely secular priests under diocesan authority, formed via diocesan seminaries
• Emphasizing the ultimate authority of diocesan bishops in many matters
• Introducing modern systems of bureaucratic control, while emphasizing centralized policymaking.

I've been scratching my head all along about Anglicanorum coetibus, but MacCulloch's view of the Council of Trent has helped to focus my reservations about it. It basically sets up a system that bypasses diocesan authority, taking as its example the non-territorial Archdiocese for the Military Services. However, the armed forces aren't a parallel situation, since military members and their families often find themselves on military bases or in other situations under unique military authority, which gives them a quasi-territorial status. Law enforcement is handled in a parallel fashion in military situations as well.

In contrast, Ordinariate parishes can pop up in Anytown, USA (or Canada), for no good reason except that someone got it into his head to start one. If anyone -- and we're seeing it can be pretty much anyone with good contacts in Houston -- wants to become a Catholic priest, the Ordinary and his prebendaries will find a way to wangle it, although they may need to go some distance to shop for a sympathetic bishop to do the deed.

These new priests, whose formation is as a practical matter wildly inconsistent, then function thousands of miles from supervision. I've worked in corporate environments where the boss is on the other side of the country, and I guarantee you, it's a situation ripe for abuse. It's only a matter of time before this thing blows up. I think the diocesan bishop who, as my visitor suggested, worries about the priest on the six-o-clock news who's in his territory but not his guy has a legitimate concern.

I'm more and more convinced that the Pastoral Provision had things right: it's inspired to find a way to bring in Anglican (repeat, Anglican) priests who meet the proper criteria. But their formation and their ministry should be supervised by diocesan bishops.

Remember that Jeffrey Steenson presumably kept his mouth shut in 1993 when Clarence Pope gave Cardinal Ratzinger an estimate of 250,000 Episcopalians who'd come over to a US Anglican Ordinariate. John Hepworth suggested the TAC would come over with half a million. I believe both gave Pope Benedict the mistaken impression that the Ordinariates would be far larger than they actually have been, and a personal prelature may have been a better idea in that case.