Interestingly, Bp Barron lists neither the Latin mass nor the ordinariates as potential sources for renewal in the Church. Indeed, he cites Dante Alighieri, Erasmus, and Thomas More as examples for Catholics who want to stay and fight, and I believe that if those men looked at Bp Lopes's careerism and the inward-facing and self-congratulatory mindset of the North American ordinariate, they'd mock them as they mocked other tendencies in the Church in their times.
But that also brought me to the circumstance that, with the apparent tacit approval of Bp Lopes himself, his clergy writing on official websites have publicly abandoned the project of evangelizing Anglicans, promoting instead the idea that the ordinariate was "originally" meant to bring Anglicans into the Church, but now it's for Catholics who want to deepen their faith. Right, in storefronts and basement chapels, or dilapidated facilities with dingy and threadbare naves, with poorly spoken ex-Protestant priests ordained as Catholics after cursory formation and negligent background checks. That'll fix things for sure.
I think the effective outcome for Anglicanorum coetibus is that after ten years, the strategy has failed to make any significant progress in evangelizing "Anglicans" of any denomination, and the North American ordinariate is in the process of recognizing this institutionally. The flaws in the idea were apparent from the late 1970s onward: The Episcopal Church would spend millions as necessary to prevent parishes from leaving with their property, and the "selling points" for a Catholic prelature, the 1979 prayer book revisions and the ordination of women, proved uncontroversial and even popular among Episcopalians.
I think the assumption that Episcopalians would flock to the Church over developments that were actually uncontroversial led to the first major misreading of the target market. Those who left TEC for the "continuing" movement were small and divided groups that in fact repeatedly seceded from each other after seceding from TEC. They haven't attracted significant new membership, and faced with aging and declining numbers, their strategy has been to retrench and even to merge with previously unrelated dissident groups like Old Catholics, which find themselves in a similar decline. (But doesn't this mirror the tendency within the North American ordinariate, faced with failure to recruit new members, to find common cause with Latin mass and other traddy groups?)
So the first thing I would do if I were seriously to think about evangelizing "Anglicans" would be simply to drop "continuers" as a target market. The second thing would be to drop the idea that Episcopalians would come in as whole parishes with their clergy. In other words, Anglicanorum coetibus hasn't worked. Find something else for Bp Lopes to do -- perhaps there's still time for him to learn to code.
There's no way a parish like St Thomas Hollywood could ever come into the Church with either its property or any significant body of members. On the other hand, there's always been a steady trickle of individual parishioners who've made the move over decades, including the rector who set it on its current path of renewal, the late Fr Carroll Barbour, who became Catholic after his retirement. My wife and I, and a former TEC associate there, are other recent converts, but not the only ones.
I think the appeal I would address to Episcopalians would begin with their baptism, which is the key Christian event. I would make the point that one of our parish priests recently stressed, that from a Catholic point of view, baptism infuses the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. Full participation in the life of the Church provides the grace to develop these virtues. The Catholic Church provides far more resources than any Protestant body to do this.
A big resource, which Bp Barron also stresses in the Letter to a Suffering Church, is the deposit of faith, the Church Fathers, the Doctors, and the saints. The Episcopal Church pays only lip service to much of this. The longer I was an Episcopalian, the more I had the feeling that the teaching I got there was watery soup, and there was more to be had. Which way the priest faces, or whether there are sufficient archaisms in the liturgy, are of very secondary importance and aren't really key selling points.
The objection to overcome from Episcopalians will actually be the Church's teachings in moral theology, especially those surrounding the sixth commandment. The more I think about these, the more I think they're simply good advice for anyone. The most we heard at St Thomas Hollywood was, "don't be promiscuous", but that left the definition of "promiscuity" up in the air. Good advice, though, from simply the practical outcomes like avoiding depression, avoiding divorce and unstable relationships, avoiding disease, and effective child rearing, tends always to resemble the traditional teachings of the Church.
So I think I would aim a certain part of an appeal to Episcopalians at those who've found lifestyle choices that TEC has effectively sanctioned or endorsed a disappointment over any long term. The Church provides an opportunity to recalibrate and rethink, with an extraordinarily wide set of psychological and moral contexts and insights.
The resources for this are in place. There's no need for the make-work program currently in Houston. I think an effective strategy would be to take a careful look at the clergy now in the ordinariate and find effective diocesan uses for the good ones -- there's a shortage of priests, after all -- and find other opportunities for the ones who never should have been ordained. Perhaps some can still learn to code.
