I have been reading your blog posts lately and I had to chuckle a little to myself thinking about my experiences as a cradle Catholic in the confessional. It made me also think the ordination/membership issues in all the Personal Ordinariates are somewhat similar if the expectation is that squeaking by with the minimum is better than not making it all with more robust catechesis to follow at a later time.Well, we're getting into issues of intention here, at minimum. If the kids in this school had the intention of repenting their sins and doing better, fine. But naturally, this isn't necessarily what happened in every case, and we don't know what was in individual hearts.I remember at my Catholic high school, we had access to confession every week during our lunch hour on Fridays. We always had a visiting priest, usually retired, who had this interesting job. I say interesting because you can imagine the quality of soul searching that was involved in the penitents who were avoiding going to their home parish priest who would surely recognize them as they confessed their transgressions with Suzy or Billy or other sins of impurity or fill-in-the-blank whatnot typical of high school kids. The line was ALWAYS the longest on the Fridays with Fr. Blacklege (God rest his soul). You could confess ANYTHING and his demeanor never changed. He lovingly chastened you to try harder to live the faith and absolved you from your sins not because he was such a holy, understanding, gentle man (which he truly was), but rather, he was pretty much stone deaf. Whew, talk about dodging shame bullets!
Just because Fr. Blacklege did not dispense any case specific nuggets of deep wisdom or explain complex doctrine to his penitents doesn’t mean he wasn’t helping them. We all knew what our sins were, why they were wrong and were appropriately ashamed enough of them to be resolved to sin no more. I also know, a lot of kids would have stayed in the state of mortal sin and away from the strengthening grace of the Holy Eucharist if it wasn’t for deaf priests like Fr. Blacklege. I would like to think this kept someone, maybe even just one kid Catholic long enough to “grow into their Faith” and then later seek out a priest who would know them and be able to offer them better, specific counsel in the confessional.
A sacrament, after all, must be valid in form, matter, and intention: ". . . in adults, the valid reception of the sacraments presumes that the recipient has the intention of receiving it." If I go to a deaf priest knowing he won't hear what I say and thus think I can get away with something, naturally, this makes the sacrament invalid. And of course, these were students.
But we're speaking here of adults, by and large, and in fact, adult cradle Catholics who for whatever reason choose to go to a mass with newly-minted former Protestant priests, and possibly confession as well. All we can do is ask "What's up with that?" and hope for the best, I suppose. But we're easing back to the issue that Abp Garcia-Siller raised, of whether ex-Anglicans operating under a special provision may feel they aren't just unique but separate -- and why some cradle Catholics would be drawn to this.
The visitor continues,
I regularly see “members” of Our Lady of the Atonement in line for confession in my home parish. Is it because the time is more convenient or is it because they know they won’t be recognized or is it because they want better counsel in the confessional? Does it matter as long as they are availing themselves of the opportunity to be in closer communion with Christ and His Church? The good news is that they are at confession; the bad news is that newly minted Catholics may not understand these distinctions and are, as you think, likely being cheated out of a much better/longer lasting reconciliation experience.I do believe there is much rejoicing in heaven over recovering even one lost sheep. If the Ordinariate brings only one soul to the true Church, it could be argued it was worth it.
My regular correspondent, who follows these things, reports that the public Facebook pages of many people connected with the California Our Lady of Grace and Bl John Henry Newman groups indicate that they're also highly traditionalist, Latin-mass cradle Catholics. I think the consensus among priests who are conservative-mainstream is that there's a danger here of substituting private judgment. If I go to a special mass, I'm above the great herd of the unwashed and misguided. We can't know what's in individual hearts, but I feel uncomfortable with where this might lead, and whether some of these former Protestants may be manipulating weaknesses for their own ends. Certainly a suspicion about the potential here pervades some of the accounts I've heard of Our Lady of the Atonement under Fr Phillips and Dcn Orr.
It's also worth pointing out that traditionalist TLM types aren't in the target market for the OCSP, were specifically discouraged by Msgr Steenson, and aren't eligible, strictly speaking, to be "members" -- although I assume flashing one's OCSP membership card on entry to the pearly gates avails nothing.
Let's take a parallel case, though. Let's say an adult Catholic who's had the sacraments of initiation but has fallen away from the Church years earlier for some reason attends a high-church Anglican mass and is inspired by it to go to confession in the Church and resume Catholic mass attendance. The Anglican mass wasn't a valid sacrament, of course, and while it had a good effect, so might seeing a Rembrandt painting in a museum or watching Bl Fulton Sheen on YouTube. There is rejoicing in heaven over any of these.
A sacrament is valid even if the priest is a sinner or just plain dumb. But naturally, it's incumbent on Catholics to find the best spiritual direction they can.
