So What's An Anglo-Papalist?

A visitor pointed me to a post, with comments, on Ordinariate News, in which Mr Murphy makes what appears to be an editorial insertion quoting Church of England Bishop Philip North referring to himself as a "die-hard Anglo-Papalist", with the implied criticism that, despite this self-characterization, Bishop North never became Catholic.

"Anglo-Papalist" appears to be a recent term. Frederick Kinsman, although he discusses the movement among some Anglicans to use the Roman breviary, does not use it in 1936. A web search of the phrase brings up, first,

I think I have a decent idea of what Anglo-Catholicism is, but Anglo-Papalism confuses me.

Second, Wikipedia,

Anglican Papalism, also referred to as Anglo-Papalism, is a subset of Anglo-Catholicism with adherents manifesting a particularly high degree of influence from, and even identification with, the Roman Catholic Church. This position has historically been referred to as Anglican Papalism; the term Anglo-Papalism is an American neologism and it seems not to have appeared in print prior to the 1990s. Anglican Papalists have suggested "that the only way to convert England is by means of an 'English Uniate' rite."

But in a comment at The Continuium, a visitor notes,

Jeffrey Steenson has been an Anglo-Papalist for many years, probably even since before his ordinations in ECUSA in 1979 and 1980.

The best one can say, in this case, is that Msgr Steenson was an Anglo-Papalist in pectore, as he seems to have said nothing on his real intent as an Episcopalian, and his preferred liturgy would have been the 1979 BCP. But, until he made his move, he would presumably have been a coreligionist of his brother Anglican bishop, Philip North. So what's an Anglo-Papalist?

As I've said here before, Anglo-Papalist is a vague term (a definition in the Urban Dictionary would probably make it clearer). It's a term I probably will never use without implied fright quotes. From context in common usage, I would say it's a more extreme version of Anglo-Catholic, itself an imprecise term that probably means someone in the Laudian, Arminian, or High Church strain of Anglicanism.

However, we're in a season of asserting political identity, with Rachel Dolezal and Caitlyn Jenner setting the pace. So I would say that, following that model, an Anglo-Papalist is someone who identifies as Catholic but hasn't had the operation. After all, if you've been catechized and received, you're Catholic. Why make a big deal over being anything else? This, among other things, makes me skeptical of most of the comments on the Ordinariate News thread.

A better synonym for Anglo-Papalist, as I think about it, might be Anglo-Arbitrageur. According to Wikipedia, arbitrage is

the practice of taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets: striking a combination of matching deals that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices. When used by academics, an arbitrage is a transaction that involves no negative cash flow at any probabilistic or temporal state and a positive cash flow in at least one state; in simple terms, it is the possibility of a risk-free profit after transaction costs.

It seems to me that Anglo-Papalist clergy are arbitraging the difference between the Anglican market for vocations and the Catholic market. In the Anglican market, there is a surplus of candidates; in the Catholic market, there is a shortage. Anglicanorum coetibus eliminated or greatly reduced transaction costs by allowing Anglicans to become candidates for the Catholic priesthood even if married, and in many cases crediting their seminary expense. In addition, female and openly gay candidates are at a premium in the Anglican market, a problem we don't see in the Catholic market.

In that context, I actually can't disagree with Bishop North's implied analysis of the market:

My heartfelt fear is that the Ordinariate can offer priests only a diminished ministry, for the majority of us a part-time or voluntary ministry, and for all of us a ministry that lacks the opportunities, the depth and the riches of what we know at present.

However, his estimate of the market prospects of Anglican candidates is correct only if we consider the strongest ones. A good Anglican preferment is always to be valued more highly than a Catholic pastorate -- higher pay, greater prestige, more chance for hanky-pank, whatever. The problem is that the women and openly gay candidates mostly crowd the straight guys, other than the ones best connected, out of the Anglican market.

But for Anglican priests who already have a pension -- Msgr Steenson already had his airplane, after all -- or for those utterly without Anglican prospects (by his own admission, this includes Andy Bartus) the Ordinariate provides a positive flow of rewards (prestige, for instance, even if, as Bishop North anticipated, the job might be part-time or non-stipendiary) without transaction costs in one state of the market.

Bishop North had a point.