Depends On What A Coetus Is

A visitor sent an e-mail that raises several worthwhile points. I'll start in the middle:

As for the CDF fundamentally misunderstanding Anglicans, I think too many people seem to misunderstand Anglicanorum Coetibus. The very first sentence of AC states,

In recent times the Holy Spirit has moved groups of Anglicans to petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion individually as well as corporately. [emphasis the sender's]

This tells me that the target for AC is not an individual here or there, who happens to be Anglican, looking to become Catholic (which would surely be better served by the RCIA or personal priest process) but rather multiple people converting simultaneously. The “individually” and “corporately” says to me that these groups of Anglicans can convert as individual groups (meaning with or without their clergy) or as an entire corporate parish group (meaning with their presbyter and/or clergy and presumably their property).

This brings up something that had been on my mind, the meaning of the Latin coetus. This definition gives these possible meanings:

assembly coition coitus company congregation connection connexion crowd gathering group join meeting

In an ecclesiastical context, I would tend to pick "assembly", "congregation", "gathering", or "meeting", where "meeting" might also be seen as a type of Protestant parish. This would also carry the implication that these specifically Protestant groups are organized in some established, pre-existing way that might lead to the use of these words in a certain defined sense. But since we're talking about Anglicans in particular, I would be expecting a meaning rather closely echoing canonical parishes or missions.

This has been by far the exception in the history of the OCSP, something Bp Lopes dodges in his September interview:

We continue to experience good growth, for which we give thanks to God. Initially, there was perhaps a presumption – warranted or not – that there would be a continuous stream of whole parishes entering into the Ordinariate. This is actually very difficult for a number of reasons. There are complicated questions of property and ownership, and many people are very attached to their parish churches. There are other issues of pastoral life when only a percentage (even when it’s a large percentage) of a parish decides to seek full communion with the Catholic Church. Parish groups continue to enter – we have had 2 since I became bishop – but this is less common. More common is for our existing parishes to found a mission community starting with a group of Ordinariate parishioners that have to drive a long distance for Sunday Mass, a mission which begins to grow and develop on its own. We have started four of those in the last two years. Additionally, we sometimes receive a request from current or former Anglicans to begin a community in a certain area. When we are able to send a priest or deacon to assess the situation and begin ministering to their needs, a group grows up very quickly. Many former Anglicans who have become Catholic over the years welcome the opportunity to reconnect with the heritage, liturgy, culture, and “style” of parish life they knew before becoming Catholic.

So I think my visitor is correct in saying that what's actually happening in the OCSP has moved quite far afield from what had been the original intent of Anglicanorum coetibus, especially in light of Bp Lopes's own remarks. On the other hand, when I first started working as an editor, my boss told me a story of a student who got a bad grade on a paper because the professor noted he'd misused a word. The student looked it up and found that, in fact, his use of the word was covered by definition 2 in the dictionary. He took the dictionary to the prof, showing him definition 2. The prof's response was to take out his pen and cross out definition 2. By then, I'd dealt with plenty of profs like that.

I assume bishops and popes have the same discretion, so we'll probably have to look to developments as they take place as a better refutation of how things have been done. The visitor, probably aware of this, continues,

The next two sentences of AC read,

The Apostolic See has responded favourably to such petitions. Indeed, the successor of Peter, mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches, could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization.

The Apostolic See (meaning the Pope) is responding to group requests by Anglicans to join the Catholic Church, not the Pope looking for ways to poach protestants, thus AC was created and promulgated to accommodate this. AC continues on, blah, blah, blah, then when you get down to the fifth paragraph of AC it says,

In the light of these ecclesiological principles, this Apostolic Constitution provides the general normative structure for regulating the institution and life of Personal Ordinariates for those Anglican faithful who desire to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church in a corporate manner. [emphasis the sender's]

I see nothing in AC that says the purpose is to accommodate individuals, or to organically grow a group of individuals who may or may not have been Anglican in order to populate an Ordinariate. Since each of the Ordinariates are essentially self-funded, I have to think it matters more to the Apostolic See and the CDF that the option for groups of Anglicans is available rather than extreme growth in numbers of former Anglicans; however, if over the next x number of years( x number to be supplied by the CDF), no actual groups of Anglicans join, I don’t imagine the Ordinariates will survive much beyond the lifetimes of the present clergy. Of course, the CDF might just leave the structure in place to accommodate future groups from other disciplines. Who knows? Who is the Ordinariate/AC hurting? Nobody really. I believe that as Anglican converts through AC grow into their new communion with Rome, the Anglican patrimony will become more like window dressing as opposed to the actual “meat and potatoes” of their faith. My opinion only.

This is completely consistent with my regular correspondent's view, that the OCSP could well die out with its current clergy or simply result in an alternate canonical structure for what would be ordinary Catholics. But if ether is the case, we will have multiplied entities for no good reason -- except to further the careers of a small interest group of former Protestant clergy, of course.

My visitor started the e-mail with these comments:

Maybe it’s just me but it seems there is some confusion about the responsibility of parties to each other here. The laity are not responsible for holding their bishops accountable, that is the job of their brother bishops and the Pope who are all ultimately accountable to the Holy Spirit. The laity are responsible for following the magisterium, not individual bishops because bishops can be, and frequently are, wrong. If your local bishop is out of step with the magisterium, you still obey the magisterium. If the issue is NOT a magisterium issue, of course you obey your bishop.

Paragraph 88 of the Catechism defines the Magisterium as

The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these.

Well, OK, all Catholics, not just laity, have this responsibility. But as used in my visitor's e-mail, and also from another visitor I quoted yesterday, it seems to me that it's tautological in this context -- all Catholics are obligated to be Catholics. But what should Catholic laity do in certain specific situations in which priests or bishops appear to be in error -- which my visitor acknowledges can happen? "Follow the magisterium" in that case is unhelpful, and brother bishops or the Holy Father may not be inclined to step in.

I would point to numerous recent cases, specifically one in which the pastor of a New York parish embezzled parish funds to pay a gay prostitute boyfriend. Parish laity attempted to resolve the problem through ordinary channels, but the effort was blocked by corruption in the archdiocese. The issue eventually reached the press and law enforcement before it could be resolved, with the priest sent to Rome to undergo laicization. I would say that, even if laity do not have a canonically defined responsibility to hold bishops accountable, there are certainly situations in which a natural-law obligation must clearly apply. This would be a basis, whether or not there is any other, on which laymen like Michael Voris operate.

My basic purpose in this blog has been to understand what happened in a situation I've been living through, the epic bungling of the St Mary of the Angels attempts to enter the Catholic Church as a parish. Bishops are entitled to pay attention to what I say here, or not, at their discretion. But the more I discover, the more what I find interests me.