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

A visitor very kindly sent me a collection of scholarly articles by Diarmaid MacCulloch relating to Anglican history and the Church of England, which add perspective to his more popularly aimed The Reformation. To some degree, his opinions seem to vary over time and according to his audience: in an earlier article, he takes the position that "Anglicanism" itself is a term that came into general use only in the 19th century, while certainly during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, the Church of England thought of itself as part of the general European "Reformed" or Calvinist movement.

MacCulloch variously calls more Catholic-leaning figures like Hooker, Andrewes, and Laud "conforming avant-garde" or "Arminians", although he also makes it clear that neither Laud nor Charles I was ever quite Catholic. (I think he's correct in saying that Charles wasn't Catholic, but he was stupid. James II, on the other hand, was both Catholic and stupid.) I think we can draw a general impression from MacCulloch that from time to time there's been a Catholic-leaning faction in the Church of England that could more recently be called "Anglo-Catholicism", although even this is hard to pin down. The move toward Tridentine vestments, candles at the altar, and altar rails, which over the past century or so has become nearly universal in The Episcopal Church and many "continuing" groups, clearly doesn't imply an acceptance of the Catholic catechism. Instead, TEC has kept its Tridentine style but moved farther away from Rome over two generations, and even the more conservative "continuing" groups clearly prefer to retain positions on issues like membership in the Freemasons or divorce and remarriage that are not consistent with Rome.

One of the mistaken assumptions behind what was at least the naïve public reception of Anglicanorum coetibus was the idea that any significant number of Anglicans was ready to make this move. No one can be completely sure if even Clarence Pope or John Hepworth was delusional or intentionally misleading in estimating that this would amount to hundreds of thousands. However, I think it's safe to say that the influence of Tridentine style in contemporary Anglicanism has been far greater than the actual numbers in the "Anglo-Papalist" faction. This probably helps prove the point that MacCulloch sometimes makes, that "Anglicanism" is not a single entity, and it's unhelpful to look at it as a term that means much of anything at all.

In this context, it's worth noting once again that the US-Canadian Ordinariate has been filling out its distressingly small numbers with Spanish-speakers who haven't normally used English prayer book liturgy, and former members and clergy of other Protestant denominations. Again, "Anglican patrimony", a vague, elusive, and ultimately meaningless idea, doesn't seem to be what's involved here.