However, a visitor has sent me links to a series of eight posts at Fr Hunwicke's blog from 2010, beginning here, in which he gets snarky about Apostolicae curae, the 1896 encyclical in which Pope Leo XIII declared Anglican orders null and void. It appears that in a series of posts between August 16 and 23 of this year entitled Ecce Sacerdos Magnus! he's taken up his issues with Apostolicae curae once more.
Naturally, I'm not qualified to discuss the theological fine points, although Apostolicae curae was current at the time Frederick Kinsman went through the process of reconsidering his own vocation. He certainly endorsed the idea that Anglican orders were invalid due to defect of intention. (I assume that if I go to confession without the intention of repenting my sins, that sacrament is invalid. If I accept ordination without acknowledging the proper ecclesiastical authority, isn't that sacrament also invalid?)
Kinsman also raises the problem with Anglicanism in which it substitutes private judgment. It's hard to avoid thinking that something like this is happening with Fr Hunwicke. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but as I said last week, whatever he's doing, he appears to be pushing the limits. As far as I can see, he was doing the same thing in 2010.
So, after some deliberation, he was ordained after about a year's delay. My own view is that Fr Hunwicke is an Anglo-Papalist of the Protestant sort and is acting in a very Protestant way. Although the "Protestantization of the Catholic Church" is a subject that frequently comes up in different contexts, I have some concern that the Ordinariates represent yet another way for this to happen.
