But if I were to imagine a continuation of the story from the point of view we have in Divided We Stand, I think an outline might go something like this:
- It was an omission not to cover the discussions between Fr Barker and Cardinal Law's representatives that eventually led to the Pastoral Provision. As Fr Barker has pointed out, these began in the context of the 1976 Congress of St Louis and predate the founding of the Anglican Catholic Church -- while the definition of "continuing" Anglicanism covers developments that began at the Congress.
- Anglicanorum coetibus was a direct outgrowth of the perceived defects in the Pastoral Provision. In particular, the unwillingness of Cardinals Manning and Mahony to accept St Mary of the Angels as a Pastoral Provision parish has always been cited as a reason to attempt a redo.
- However, even in the mid-1980s, the St Mary's parish was never unanimous on going into the Pastoral Provision, and there were factions in favor of becoming Catholic, Anglican-rite Orthodox, and going into the ACC. A group of TEC loyalists broke off under the auspices of Bp Rusack. I still hear from a former parishioner who became Orthodox.
- As an effort to fix defects in the Pastoral Provision, Anglicanorum coetibus failed spectacularly in 2012. Key TAC figures Hepworth, Falk, and Moyer stayed out of ordinariates. Although St Mary of the Angels, the clearest manifestation of the Pastoral Provision defects, was to be received in January as the first parish in the new OCSP, this foundered on continuing parish division and competing personal agendas. Personal agendas kept another significant parish, Our Lady of the Atonement, out. (Would Mr Bess be surprised?)
- Between 2012 and 2016, the US-Canadian Ordinariate's growth was disappointing. In size, it was comparable only to any of the larger "continuing" denominations (themselves a disappointment as Mr Bess points out) and did not offer any practical advantage for most parishes or any splinter denominations that might have considered it.
- The "retirement" of the US-Canadian Ordinary at age 63 in late 2015 can certainly be seen as another attempt to fix the original idea in the Pastoral Provision. However, at the current writing, the most concrete effort at a renewed fix, bringing Our Lady of the Atonement into the OCSP, seems to be encountering difficulties, again almost certainly on competing personal agendas.
