I belong to a growing, inter-racial parish of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) that has a full church on Sundays with many crub crawlers (which I'm happy to step over-no cryng room hee!) with five priests, one full time, other guys do confessions and other services, three deacons, none stipendary- they all have full time secular jobs, numerous sub-deacons and readers and others who do lessons etc, as well as a choir with frum 10 to 20 people. And we get people coming here from RC and other places who want to explore what we offer. Can you comment on this to me privately, or otherwise, John? What is it that about the 'bigly' RC parish that is so attracive? Are we missing something? Am I missing something with your currant Pope who seems strange to me?What I think I'm seeing here, as well as from the e-mail I got a few days ago touting an ACNA subgroup, is the idea that there's a range of Anglican-rite options available to Anglicans who are primarily dissatisfied with TEC or the ACC. Seen from this perspective, Anglicanorum coetibus is just one of literally dozens of alternatives, "continuers", ACNA, Orthodox, and so forth. Also seen from this perspective, the Catholic Church is less preferable as one of those options, with disincentives ranging from Humanae Vitae, to its idiosyncratic interpretations of the sixth commandment, to the residual sense that it appeals to blue collar and immigrant types.
To which I'll say yeah, if all you want is the 1928 BCP, no same-sex marriage, or no women clergy, fine, knock yourself out. If what you want is valid sacraments and clear religious instruction, you're on much shakier ground. It's a little puzzling that people would decide that certain points that fringe Anglo-Protestant groups share with the Catholic Church are somehow enough to make them small-o "orthodox", while they reject 95% of the Cathechism.
I think this is the mistake Cardinal Law made in thinking Rome should offer the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus as options in this somewhat wacky market, which was wildly overestimated from the start. These are people who want to pick and choose, and in the end, they aren't a good fit in the Catholic Church.
And certainly there are Protestant parishes that number in the mid five figures, and there's the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, for that matter. These are accidents and unrelated to the real thing. The issue is that the Catholic Church is the real thing, and nothing can really get around that. There are good and bad parishes, and there are good and bad popes. It's still the real thing. A lot of the other options are trying to masquerade as this, which I think is frankly dangerous.
