Declare Victory In Anglican Outreach And Get Out -- II

The Anglican Use Pastoral Provision continues in effect, although all former Pastoral Provision parishes have been transferred to the OCSP, a situation acknowledged with the 2017 transfer of the Our Lady of the Atonement parish. Individual married clergy from designated Anglican backgrounds can still apply for ordination as Catholic priests via US dioceses. This creates a situation very similar to the one prevailing in the UK, where married Anglican priests who go into the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are typically assigned to diocesan parishes and spend most of their time with them.

This in turn suggests that Anglican outreach has been successful at least in recruiting married priests from Anglican denominations, although practically speaking, US dioceses tend to limit their numbers and place them in less-visible roles. Even so, to the extent this side of the Pastoral Provision has been successful, it has been much more so than in bringing in full parishes, a practice discontinued in the Pastoral Provision. In his University of Vienna address, Bp Lopes in effect acknowledged that the Pastoral Provision had failed in this role, although the reasons for its failure have not been remedied by the changes brought about by Anglicanorum coetibus.

But let's look at two developments that have been far more successful than Anglican outreach. One is the dual phenomenon of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). The historical and canonical issues are outlined here. Immediately pertinent to my purpose is their popularity as grassroots movements. A list of SSPX communities in the US is available here. I stopped counting at 60, but I would estimate there are about 200 total, in many places where no OCSP community is anywhere close. This is in spite of the fact that Catholics are mostly aware that sacraments in SSPX chapels are valid but not licit.

FSSP locations can be found here. The locator says, "We are active in 37 dioceses in the United States and 7 in Canada. We have over 93 priests working in 48 apostolates." However, there are Latin masses available outside the SSPX and FSSP. This site, which calls itself "A Catholic directory of approved traditional Latin Masses", notes a total of 759 Latin mass locations added since the site's 2015 launch. Should my wife and I choose, we can find a Latin mass 6.8 miles from our home, although Latin masses are available at about half a dozen locations in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The other development is the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Contemporary with Anglicanorum coetibus, it was aimed at a generally similar market, Anglicans who want a more traditional theology in their denomination. Founded in 2009, its Wikipedia entry currently notes 1019 congregations and 134,000 members. Even allowing optimistic inflation in these numbers, there's simply no comparison with the numbers for the OCSP. We can find an ACNA congregation 6.1 miles from our home. One can argue that the ACNA appeals to a low-church market, but that indicates the sheer ignorance of Anglicanism among Catholics who proposed Anglican outreach.

The clear difference in interest between the OCSP and similar traditionalist movements indicates that the other movements attract much more widespread support, while the OCSP has probably reached a high water mark in the neighborhood of 40 communities and is in the process of struggling to stay afloat. My regular correspondent sent me a link to this post at a UK blog that covers the OOLW:

The essential issue for the [OOLW] is to find young men wishing to be priests. The present contingent ranges from a few younger men through to a top heavy decidedly elderly batch who will be dropping out of active ministry, if not directly into the grave, over the next five to ten years. The current handful of seminarians will need to double if not quadruple every year if the present numbers are to be maintained.

There is also a heavy dependence upon CofE clergy moving off the sinking ship and on to the barque of Peter. Clergy attracted to the Ordinariate are like a rare breed and fast running out. Those who have joined the CofE since the foundation of the Ordinariate are unlikely to leave and indeed, are unlikely to be accepted by Rome. So we are looking at an ever decreasing pool of ex Anglican clergy who are of retirement age or older. And from that pool many are opting for the direct route via the local diocese.

. . . . Nothing new there of course but it suggests that the present “steady as she goes approach” will need some serious revision unless, of course, we accept the “conspiracy theory” approach which goes something like this. The Bishops of Engkand and Wales never wanted the Ordinariate and have discovered that through acts of extreme kindness they can actually kill it. Offer posts to Ordinariate clergy, who have no income, to run diocesan parishes who thereby become dependent upon the good will of the local bishop. Running one or even two parishes leaves little time for the Ordinariate group which either dies off or is absorbed into the parish structure.

This, of course, is another reference to the problem Bp Lopes outlined in Vienna, that under the Pastoral Provision, priests could be co-opted into diocesan work and neglect Anglican ministry -- but this is a current problem under Anglicanorum coetibus as well, one that never arose in the UK before the erection of the OOLW.

Seems like there are better options for the CDF's time and resources.