It has schools, but no school department. It ordains priests, but there's no single process of formation, and bloopers happen that are expensive in remedy and publicity. It theoretically catechizes laity, but it trains and licenses no catechists, while it tolerates a wannabe semi-official blog whose proprietors often demonstrate an embarrassing ignorance of Catholic basics. Mrs Chalmers, its former chancellor, told me in 2012 that "We're making it up as we go along," but seven years in, nothing seems to have changed.
In short, this is a half-baked effort that's showing no signs of growing out of it. It reminds me of when I was really young, and I knew a couple who'd gotten involved in one of those cult-like pyramid marketing schemes. (The guy was a Yalie, come to think of it.) I was well-informed enough even at the time to recognize a Ponzi, and I asked them about it: at some point, I told them, you run out of suckers and their money. What are you going to do when the whole thing collapses? They answered they were sure that at some point, it would sorta-kinda turn respectable in some hidden way and continue. Sure enough, it collapsed within months -- the only good part was they themselves weren't indicted.
I can't avoid a sense that there's a faction of Kool-Aid drinkers in the OCSP who are convinced that at some point, the thing will have to become respectable. I'm more and more convinced the outcome will go the other way.
I'm told that Bernard Law, by the 1990s, fully expected to become pope, and a book, Boston's Cardinal: Bernard Law, the Man and His Witness, was published in 2002 in premature expectation that John Paul II's failing health would result in a conclave several years sooner than it did, and it was intended to introduce Law to a world eager to learn about him. (The book now sells at a premium at Amazon, for whatever reason.) Luckily, the scandals surrounding Law emerged well before the conclave was needed.
The visitor here who knew Law when he was Bishop of Springfield-Cape Girardeau reported that Law was extremely ambitious, the sort of person who, while he shook your hand, was always looking over your shoulder to see if there was someone else in sight who might be more important to schmooze. This, of course, was the period when Law was working through intermediaries to interest the 1976-77 first wave of dissident Episcopalians to secede into a new Catholic jurisdiction that would just sorta-kinda happen.
I would guess he got that idea from Opus Dei, which was angling to become the first personal prelature at about the same time. Law took part in early Opus Dei activities while at Harvard in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and he was always closely associated with William Stetson, an early Opus Dei numerary and powerful figure in the US movement by the 1970s. The visitor says that Stetson traveled frequently and visited Law in Springfield during this period. It's hard not to think discussions on personal prelatures took place on those visits.
Opus Dei was erected as a personal prelature in 1982 in the apostolic constitution Ut Sit. Commentary suggests this was because Opus Dei was able to impress John Paul II with the money it was able to direct to the Vatican. John Paul was never as enthusiastic about creating a second personal prelature for Anglicans, and the substitute, the Pastoral Provision, turned out to be largely a headache for the diocesan bishops who hosted its parishes -- two archbishops of Los Angeles turned down repeated applications from several parishes to join.
I think the half-baked character of the Anglican ordinariates is a product of Bernard Law's ambition to become pope, but from the start, the whole project was nothing but a Hollywood stage set, a Potemkin village. Unlike Opus Dei, it's simply not a money machine -- it seems to have some difficulty even maintaining a skeleton chancery staff.
One question I have is why, after Law left Boston for Rome, probably to avoid prosecution, with any hope of being elected pope out of the question, he continued to press for the Anglicanorum coetibus project. My impression is that Law's energy was unabated in Rome, though possibly his judgment was gradually impaired.
I would be interested in any additional insights visitors may have.
