Professor Martens cautioned against forming premature opinions of the case. “If you don’t know what’s really going on in a case, it’s very difficult to comment on it,” he said. “You’re talking about a people, about the parish, and also about the history, and you don’t know what has been going on. There might be that one piece of information we don’t have.”But another visitor sent me a link to a post on Fr Phillips's blog (still called Atonement Online despite the order that he dissociate himself from the parish) that might give a hint about how things are proceeding:The Vatican will ultimately determine the jurisdiction of the parish. Until the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith makes its decision, all parties involved continue to pray for the good of Our Lady of the Atonement.
It is this purpose – the building up of unity – which is outlined at the very beginning of Pope Benedict’s Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum coetibus. But even from the first days of its implementation this stated purpose has often been glossed over in the search for the particulars of the Personal Ordinariates. So much time and energy has been spent on questions of who can belong, of the details of the liturgy, of who can be ordained - indeed, any number of other things – that the more important purpose of building up the unity of the Church sometimes is pushed to a lower place.The whole tone of the post is oddly mopey -- somehow the Church is ignoring the need to be one. But isn't OLA already Catholic? Aren't the Eastern Rite jurisdictions, for instance, just as Catholic? How is OLA somehow not Catholic enough? I might see this as an argument for St Ipsydipsy Podunk, an ACA parish applying to join the OCSP and somehow encountering an obstacle, but this really doesn't work for OLA, which is already one with Rome.
Which suggests to me that Fr Phillips's case is not going well. My visitor says, "It reminds me of President Nixon's farewell utterings. I suggest an intervention, but then I guess there already is one, of sorts."
