So Who's An Anglican, And Why Do They Weasel-Word It? -- IV

While I thought the issue had been resolved, the discussion in the comments at Ordinariate Expats that I mentioned yesterday has continued, and it's brought up the issue I've been thinking about as well: the group of 45 Spanish-speaking Episcopalians who were received, apparently as an Ordinariate parish, at St Michael's Church in Flushing, NY at the Easter Vigil mass this year. The diocesan news release describes them as "former members of St. George’s parish", but the Ordinariate site still doesn't list the group, so I simply don't know how they're properly identified -- it looks like we have no choice but to call them the Flushing group.

In fact, they're the second Spanish-speaking Anglican Ordinariate group. Both use the Spanish Ordinary Form liturgy; the Flushing group has the additional complication that, as far as I'm aware, they worship in the regular Spanish mass at the St Michael's diocesan parish. As a result, the difference between a Flushing Ordinariate member and a member of the diocesan parish is purely juridical. As far as I can understand this, should there arise a need to deny a sacrament to one of the Flushing Ordinariate members, this would be an issue for the Ordinary, not the diocesan bishop, although a diocesan priest would be the one doing the denying, since they have no Ordinariate priest (their Anglican Fr Gonzalez y Perez is not mentioned in the diocesan announcement, and his status is not clear). There's the subsidiary issue of whether the members in Flushing have a separate corporate entity to which they can pledge -- and there's the potential that cash in the basket might all go to the diocesan parish, when strictly speaking, some formula might be agreed on that would allocate a proportion to the Ordinariate group.

But beyond that, given the wording of the diocesan announcement, although the group initially identified itself as an Ordinariate group-in-formation, it's not completely clear if they were ultimately received via Anglicanorum coetibus or RCIA.

William of Ockham! Thou should'st be living at this hour!

But this naturally leads once again to the bigger question, into which it seems to me the Holy See has inadvertently inserted itself: what is an Anglican? The idea of an "Anglican patrimony" looks more and more like a hypostatization. The Ordinarite has clearly already run into the missionary efforts among several Anglican denominations to minister to Spanish-speakers. So sweetening any putative Anglican deal by adding "thee" and "thou" to English-language Catholic liturgy isn't necessarily to the point. And if that's not exactly the point, then what is?

Well, a bunch of former Anglicans, in the US mostly from the former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, got to check off some items on a personal bucket list. I'm not sure what else, at least in the US, is really involved.