Full Court Press

A visitor comments,

I was looking at some articles on the National Catholic Register website and ran across an unusually large number of articles about the Ordinariate and the Anglicanorum Coetibus situation. It seems odd that all these articles appeared so suddenly in such a large cluster until I ran across this one [at Mr Schaetzel's blog]. It seems your criticisms of the press office of the OCSP must have struck a nerve. Look out disgruntled Catholics! There seems to be a full court press on to get them to sign up and be counted. I wonder if this has anything to do with the Vatican requirement of the Ordinary appearing for his ad limina Apostolorum visit which, if my math is correct, must be due this year. (See section XI in this document.)

I think the reassessing is ahead full bore. . .

I'm not sure how well Mr Schaetzel understands his audience. I was drawn to this passage in the link to his blog given above:

Well folks, all of that is about to change, because of a little organisation called the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society. Pronounced as "Ang-lick-an-OR-oom CHAY-tee-boos," the Society is named after the Apostolic Constitution signed by Pope Benedicit [sic] XVI in 2009 by the same name. Anglicanorum Coetibus means "Groups of Anglicans" in Latin, and it is the Apostolic Constitution that allows for the creation of Personal Ordinariates within the Catholic Church that follow the Anglican Patrimony as proscribed [sic] by Divine Worship.

The tone of grand condescension, patiently explaining to the rest of us "folks" how to pronounce Latin, crashes and burns when he misspells Benedict and misuses "proscribes". Unfortunately, this is the sort of thing that I see all too often from the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society stalwarts like Messrs Schaetzel and Murphy and Ms Gyapong. If he can't distinguish between "prescribe" and "proscribe", I can't be completely sure if "Benedicit" is just a typo. (Is it pronounced as "BAY-nay-dee-cheet"?)

The biggest problem with this is that Episcopalians in the US are thought to be well-educated and upscale -- I used to see Anglicanism referred to as "the thinking man's religion", although this at the time was probably meant as a reference to Bp Pike or Fr Boyd. But no member of an educated audience is going to take Mr Schaetzel seriously. So much for the full court press!

Mr Schaetzel has been covering this story, however, since well before the erection of the OCSP. My regular correspondent pointed me to this story from 2009 at Catholic Online. Referring to his group in Springfield, MO, he says

The group is small but diverse. Shane, the group's coordinator, simply felt a calling. He and his wife are former Evangelicals, turned Episcopalians, who eventually converted to the Roman Catholic Church about ten years ago. After putting up a group page on Facebook, he immediately received the support of over a dozen friends, many of whom live in or near Springfield. The emerging group has received interest from diverse people. One is a former Episcopalian who is without a church home at this time. An active Episcopalian couple has also expressed interest.

The rest of the group consists of Roman Catholics who have become disillusioned with the current vernacular celebration of the contemporary mass, and are now seeking something more traditionally "Catholic" but simultaneously have no interest in the Traditional Latin Mass.

Again, something's missing here. There are Catholics "who have become disillusioned with the current vernacular celebration of the contemporary mass". So I don't understand. They're disillusioned with how the Church overwhelmingly celebrates mass -- but they don't like the EF, either. (Are they perhaps substituting their private judgment?) But why would a faux 17th century English text created in the 21st by a Viennese professor be more appealing? Perhaps they can find a Klingon translation to celebrate. In any case, in the 2009 piece, he describes a group-in-formation that numbers perhaps two dozen. It appears that it's about the same size now in Republic, MO as it was then, despite the brave assertion that "they hope to grow significantly with God's blessing."

My regular correspondent found these statistics on the OCSP as of 2012:

I revisited the account here of the 2012 Anglican Use Conference, Kansas City MO. At that time Msgr Steenson reported that there were 36 communities and 23 incardinated priests, with 77 more (clerical) aspirants. From 36 to 42 in five years is not particularly impressive, and the possible 101 priests have boiled down to 71, of whom 56 are active, not all in Ordinariate ministry.

If Bp Lopes isn't under pressure, as my visitor thinks he is, he certainly should be.