A Visitor Responds To Ms Gyapong's Post From Last Week

A diocesan visitor who's sent me a number of well-informed and insightful e-mails in the last several weeks recently sent this one in response to Ms Gyapong's post at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog from September 14. It's worth pointing out that my visitor attempted to publish the gist of it as a comment to that blog post, but Ms Gyapong did not approve it for publication. There are several comments in that thread that seem uniformly unfriendly toward this blog, which presumably had Ms Gyapong's approval, but we must surmise that others like this one may have been submitted but not approved.

This is the gist of what I said:

Two things, one, she mischaracterized your blog post about Obamacare. She totally missed the point that the quality of Obamacare/Anglicanorum Coetibus was not the issue, their lack of wider appeal is. She states, “There is no possibility of a renewed Pastoral Provision for communities. It’s over. The choices are: join the Ordinariate, remain a Continuing Anglican group, or become Roman Catholic like the Bruces did and disperse into the wider diocese.” I agreed with her wholeheartedly but pointed out that given such choices, the majority of the people will still choose options two and three because of the more robust support networks those options provide. Down with logic of limited appeal!

Second, I called her out a little on one of her closing comments, “Remember Christ’s desire for unity is not an option, and the Catholic Church has generously provided a way for you to maintain your precious Anglican patrimony.” Christ’s desire for unity is NOT an option? I pointed out that Christ himself only established one Church and all the Holy Fathers have and continue to work toward making that so again, so how is it Jesus Christ’s desire for unity not an option? Down with difficult tasks!

Lastly, I noticed one of her seemingly regular contributors had posted comments about how the Ordinariate was here to stay. Possibly so, I posited, but the examples the person used to buttress the claim were a little off the mark, similar to the mischaracterization of the Obamacare issue. Rev22:17 (the username of the poster), lists several Eastern Catholic Churches and their relatively small populations (sourced from Wikipedia) that use a different rite and still exist as separate in the Latin/Roman Church. The comparison is not apple to apples. To wit, the three churches listed, the Albanian, the Bulgarian and Greek Catholic Churches all use the Byzantine Rite and each of those churches can trace their clerical origins back to at least one of the original apostles of Jesus Himself. The Ordinariate can make no such claim. The Anglican patrimony can only trace its direct connection to Christ through the Latin/Roman Church. Additionally, the numbers for each of these Churches are dwarfed by their Latin/Roman Catholic brethren over the exact same geographical boundaries, so again, the limited appeal thing. Looking at the population numbers for these three Eastern Catholic Churches, one can see a decline in membership over the last 15-20 years or so, with the exception of the Greek Catholic Church which went from 2,500 to 6,000 in just a few years, which I am guessing is the beneficiary of the huge influx of Christians fleeing the Middle East because of persecution. (My numbers are from a Catholic website that uses the Annuario Pontificum as its source for population data )

As an interesting side note, Ordinariate population figures for Chair of St. Peter were from the Annuario Pontificum book from 2015 (so numbers from 2014) and listed 6,000 members. Assuming 1,500 or so new members via OLA’s entrance, the total population is probably still less than 8,000, which is 20% smaller than the tiny Diocese of Juneau that was used as an example also by Rev22:17. Funny, the Diocese of Juneau was started in 1951, grew big enough to split into two dioceses in 1966, Juneau and Anchorage. The population of the Juneau diocese in 1966 was 3,000. As of 2013, it had climbed to 10,400. I do not see the same pattern occurring with the Ordinariates. Darn you, again, Spock Logic!!!

I guess you are just a disparaging blogger who attracts more disparaging folks like me.

The only thing I would add is that the 2014 number of 6,000 given in the Annuario Pontificum is still hard for me to credit, since even if we allow an average of 500 members for the half-dozen biggest communities -- and given the 80-20 rule, the numbers will fall off steeply after those -- we'll get 3,000, with probably less than 1,000 additional from all the rest, given the large number that have a dozen or two members. I've always thought actual OCSP membership pre-OLA was in the low to mid four digits. Several visitors now estimate actual membership at OLA as 1,500, so I think a realistic 2017 estimate of OCSP membership is closer to 5,500 or 6,000.

Naturally, if someone has a better basis for a different estimate, I'll be happy to publish the thinking here.