Taxonomy

Oddly enough, I interrupted a rereading of Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial to take up Kinsman's Salve Mater, but finishing Kinsman, I've returned to Johnson. Both books, it seems to me, take a rationalist approach to conventional wisdom. Both ask if something we assume to exist -- a "Catholic" quality in Anglicanism on one hand, a verifiable hypothesis of natural selection on the other -- is actually there, and both offer up an answer that no, neither exists.

This has got me asking once again what we mean when we say "Anglo-Catholic" or "Anglo-Papalist". It seems to me that there's a big definition and a smaller, subsidiary one that may not in fact apply at all, and we're trying to get hold of something very slippery.

1. Both Anglo-Catholics and Anglo-Papalists seem to adhere to a view, refined by Keble and Pusey and generally called the "Oxford Movement", that there is a "Catholic" quality in Anglicanism that was continuous after 1534. This does not appear to have been Newman's developed view, and Rome, investigating Oxford claims, eventually responded with Apostolicae curae. The Oxford view is what might most accurately be called Anglo-Catholic. It implies that Anglicans are Catholic enough that they do not need to take any particular steps to rejoin Rome or accept Papal authority. This is almost certainly what TS Eliot meant when he said he was "Anglo-Catholic in religion", as his personal life did not reflect any desire to approach Roman ideals of conscience.
2. The secondary issue involves liturgy, and this is what Fr Hunwicke has chiefly been discussing in his recent posts. From context, I'm beginning to conclude that "Anglo-Papalism" reflects a desire to hybridize Anglican and Roman liturgical language into a single missal, although there are numerous variations on this theme. Fr Hunwicke said flat out on July 4, "It was the authorisation of the Ordinariate Rite which restored the substance of the English Missal." However, although Fr Hunwicke cites a UK version of an English missal, there's apparently more than one. A visitor tells me,

   In the USA. . . [Anglicans] with "Roman leanings" produced two missals, The American Missal and The Anglican Missal. Both of them included material from the 1928 Prayer Book. One of them (I forget which) was basically the Tridentine Missal in Cranmerian English with bits from the 1928 BCP inserted; the other was basically the 1928 BCP rite with bits from the Tridentine Missal provided as inserts to be said silently. A Fr. Frank Gavin, a priest of the PECUSA Diocese of Indianapolis who taught at Nashotah House and at General Seminary, was associated with the production of one of these missals, the "Anglican Missal," I think.

   But in the US, it was probably more common either to use the 1979 Rite One (in TEC parishes), or the 1928 Eucharistic rite (in "continuing" parishes) with Tridentine additions to etiquette. As a result, at least liturgically, "Anglo-Papalist" actually means very little, especially since before the Ordinariate Rite, none of the missal liturgies had any ecclesiastical sanction -- it was all informal freelancing, with episcopal authority looking the other way.

Somewhere in this muddle, it seems to me, is an explanation for why the Ordinariates have underperformed. Those who describe themselves as Anglo-Catholic haven't moved to join, because they feel no need to, they're already Catholic enough. But nobody's attracted by the Ordinariate Rite liturgy, either. Frankly, it's ugly and unwieldy. If anyone thought the Ordinariates would sweeten the deal for any appreciable number of Anglicans, or even Anglo-Catholics, it was a wrong call.