But the idea of distant bishops flying in for townhalls with unruly parishes isn't really Catholic. It takes me back to the year or so I spent as a "continuing" Anglican, and it brings me to another puzzle I've run into with Anglicanorum coetibus, the prayer book problem.
Recall that one of the chief causes of the "continuing" revolt from The Episcopal Church was the modernized language in Rite Two of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The revision, however, was clearly inspired by Vatican II and the Novus Ordo mass. Another 1979 innovation, this one almost never acknowledged by "continuers", was the three-year lectionary, also brought over from Vatican II (and also never acknowledged as a good thing by Catholic traddies).
Clearly a thee-thou prayer book was thought to be a major selling point for Anglicans considering Anglicanorum coetibus, notwithstanding the 1979 BCP retained the 1928 language in its own Rite One. But Episcopalians in my generation or younger actually liked Rite Two and the rest of the 1979 BCP. A former TEC priest, before he left the priesthood, noted in a homily that saying the eucharist from the 1979 BCP was a big thing he'd miss. I've said I like the OF mass precisely because it's not that far from Rite Two.
The idea that Episcopalians and "continuers" would flock to the North American ordinariate because it offered something like the 1928 BCP was a major misreading of the market. In fact, what we're seeing as the disappointing first wave of Anglican converts recedes is that those still attracted to ordinariate parishes are traddie Catholics who want a whiff of archaism in their liturgy without the need to know Latin. But there aren't enough of those to establish or sustain any real parishes, even in the minimal numbers expected by Houston. The closing of the Minnesota group is an example.
In fact, if my experience at St Mary's Hollywood is any indication -- and I'm convinced it is -- "continuers" and traddie Catholics share an attitude whereby they want to get things out of the Church without putting much in. At St Mary's, many of the dissidents didn't even pledge. I suspect many of the traddies attracted to the ordinariate are just as cheap.
So I think the real-world outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus is to foster a form of "continuing Anglicanism" within the Catholic Church, and in fact it's brought more closet "continuers" out of the woodwork within the Church than it's attracted from outside.
