As you will see at the Ordinariate Expats site Mr Murphy is gradually transforming his blog into a quasi-official news and comment forum. In its day the Anglican Use of the Roman Rite blog maintained by Steve Cavanaugh covered the news fairly thoroughly and the Anglican Use Society site was a comprehensive source of information and more substantive writing on the subject. Whether the achievement of enthusiastic pioneers can be matched by a second wave dealing with the reality that theirs is destined to be a fringe movement remains to be seen.I'm wondering if Bp Lopes is drinking some of this Kool-Aid. In his interview with the Register. he remarked, "[The Anglican prayer] I find myself using often in various situations, everything from the beginning of meetings to personal prayer, is the 'Collect of Purity.'" This, I discovered, is a sign that I've been Catholic long enough to have forgotten what he meant: the Collect of Purity is the prayer at the start of the Anglican rite that begins,"ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. . ."The line is of course that AC has a significance far beyond its minuscule uptake because it demonstrates the Church's ability to appropriate the spiritual gifts of other Christian traditions, which may be a tool to draw Protestants into the Church or may just be a Good Thing in itself (a safer thesis, given experience to date). Considerable effort is also taken to demonstrate that many aspects of Anglican liturgy and spirituality actually belonged to the Church all along, despite the fact that this raises some issues around the first point.
It seems to me that the Anglican usage of Purity isn't the same as the Catholic: if I go into confession and mention impurity, the confessor will know exactly what I mean, and purity in the Anglican rite is something else. I've got to take seriously what was explained to me in Episcopalian confirmation class: the Anglican collect is basically saying let's calm down, get centered, and concentrate here.
St Thomas Aquinas had something else in mind:
I know that every perfect gift, and especially that of chastity, depends on the power of Your providence. Without You a mere creature can do nothing. Therefore, I beg You to defend by Your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I have ever sensed or imagined anything that could stain my chastity and purity, blot it out. . .If Mr Jesserer Smith caught this in his interview, he didn't bring it up. I can't imagine Bp Lopes means to start staff meetings with a prayer for radical chastity. The longer I'm a Catholic, the more I recognize the important differences between Anglicanism (and for that matter other flavors of Protestantism) and Catholicism. Going too far in trying to gloss over the differences brings us, it seems to me, to syncretism.
This may start to explain why Anglicanorum coetibus is developing into a fringe phenomenon. But this goes to another problem, the OCSP's clumsiness in dealing with 21st century media. Bp Lopes is relying on stenographers -- I think this accurately characterizes both Mr Jesserer Smith and Mr Murphy. They see their roles as gushy cheerleaders who report what they're told without question.
The recent electoral results in both the US and UK should indicate this is an outdated media strategy.
