What Is To Be Done?

Yesterday I posed the question of what might be done to salvage the outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus. Although there are attempts elsewhere to paste a happy-face on the situation, it's very hard to avoid the conclusion that the US-Canadian Ordinariate has peaked in size and is in the process of shrinking.

• All the self-sustaining parishes, about half a dozen, existed under other jurisdictions prior to the erection of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter. The OCSP does not appear to have had its own success story.
• A trend toward merger of nearby groups is developing, with two Washington DC-area groups already merged, two in the Philadelphia area in the process of merging, and the Boston-area group beginning to share activities with the Anglican Use group in the area. However, the size of such groups, even merged, does not augur for long-term viability.
• The status of smaller groups-in-formation at the fringe is not always clear, and it is not certain whether all such groups are still active.

In part, this is because Houston has not kept its own website parish list up to date, and official news updates of any kind appear to be sporadic and incomplete. This in turn may be either a reflection of demoralization among the Houston in-group, or complacency among the in-group may be the the cause. Flip a coin.

However, I think it's reasonable to conclude that Anglicanorum coetibus has been a test of whether any real demand exists among Anglicans for corporate reunion with Rome. Pope St John Paul II promoted the new evangelization. If Anglicanorum coetibus was an effort in that direction, I'm simply not convinced that further resources toward fostering it are well spent.

Consider that Houston has taken years to gestate an unresponsive, inward-focused administrative structure that ministers to about 2500 people in the US and Canada. This is the size of a single smallish urban diocesan parish, which itself might be subject to merger or closure. We have no sign that it is likely to grow, and some sign that it is already shrinking. I have serious questions about whether stewardship of an organization like that is a responsible use of resources; even more would I be giving this matter the most prayerful reflection if I were a member of the Houston in-group.

My biggest disappointment about becoming Catholic is seeing how little cradle Catholics value their own faith. It's deeply frustrating to go to mass and see no atmosphere of reverence; silly music; idle chatter from adults; out-of-control children babbling, banging, or screaming steadily throughout the mass without being taken out by the their parents; and so forth.

I would like to find a way to work with fellow Catholics to focus efforts at renewing faith and its manifestation at the diocesan level. No need for Latin mass, no need for Ordinariates if we can just start to establish ordinary decorum on Sunday mornings. I think that's where the real need exists. Frankly, I think that for 99.99% of Catholics, the Ordinariates are something overspecialized, irrelevant, and a waste of stewardship.

What Is The Market For Anglicanorum coetibus?

I realize that my approach to Anglicanorum coetibus doesn't match that of other observers. Nevertheless, it's worth posing the question why its outcome has been such a disappointment, and perhaps to go a little farther and ask what might be done to salvage the situation.

It seems to me that the evidence we have indicates that those who advised Pope Benedict in putting Anglicanorum coetibus together had two groups in mind for a target market. In the US, the initiative seems to have come from Cardinal Bernard Law, who initially proposed the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision in the wake of the same movement that resulted in the 1978 Congress of St Louis.

While the "continuing Anglican" movement is usually defined as comprising the breakaway denominations derived from the 1978 Congress and the episcopal consecrations that followed it, Fr Jack Barker also began talks with the Vatican at that time, facilitated by Cardinal Law, under the assumption that conservative Anglicans might choose some type of corporate reunion with Rome instead of forming new Anglican denominations.

I think this was a basic misunderstanding of Anglicanism. It's generally recognized that Anglicans have three factions, high church, low church, and broad church, with broad church dominant. The popularity of Tridentine vestments and gothic church architecture that swept Anglicanism generally since the 19th century has obscured this essential division. "Continuing Anglicanism" and the subsequent secession of the ACNA are low church movements, as was the Reformed Episcopal Church, which the ACNA has absorbed. (Web commentary I've seen notes that even the ACA, felt to be the highest of the "continuing" groups, is in actuality pretty low church.)

The October, 1993 meeting between Episcopal Bishop Clarence Pope, then-Fr Jeffrey Steenson, and then-Cardinal Ratzinger appears to have been an effort by Cardinal Law to reboot the Anglican Use initiative by bypassing the resistance of Catholic bishops, perhaps attributing an overall lack of enthusiasm for corporate reunion with Rome among Anglicans to certain Catholic bishops' resistance to the idea. I think it's significant that in the 1993 meeting, Bishop Pope pointed to a pent-up dissatisfaction with US Episcopal liberalization that could result in 250,000 Episcopalians coming over.

The flaw in that approach was an unwillingness to recognize that among those dissatisfied in TEC, most were low church, and in fact, "affirming" high church parishes in TEC are closely allied with broad church bishops. This is the sort of thing Frederick Kinsman clearly understood in the 1920s; it's hard to imagine how either Clarence Pope or Jeffrey Steenson could have been so obtuse in the 1990s.

The second bit of evidence for Anglicanorum coetibus's putative market is the Ordinariate liturgy, derived from the Church of England's Papalist movement. As I pointed out in a previous post, the Papalists were a very small high-church faction distinguished by an unwillingness to use the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer, substituting either the Roman Latin liturgy in whole or part, or a "uniate" liturgy consisting of an English translation from the Latin mass that incorporates certain Cranmerian prayers. Fr Hunwicke has traced the Ordinariate liturgy now in use for the mass to an English Missal dating from about 1905, illegal in the Church of England but with some sort of naughty appeal to the small number of priests who used it.

The source I noted in my earlier post points out that on the whole, the people of the parishes where Papalist priests were incumbent at best tolerated the Latin or uniate liturgy or were drawn by the charismatic personalities of some Papalist clergy -- but the movement never had widespread popular support. This is borne out by the reported experience of UK Ordinariate parishes, where the people have deserted "uniate" masses in favor of Ordinary Form masses in nearby diocesan parishes, leading Ordinariate leadership to complain that this deprives the Ordinariate of a cohesive identity.

Again, it seems to me that the historical record has been clear in showing that the Papalist movement was esoteric and limited to a small clique of clergy. It never had large-scale popular demand.

Hearing Continued to November 18

A source close to the elected vestry reports that they received word late yesterday from the court clerk that Judge Strobel hadn't finished writing her decision yet. Therefore she was "continuing" the hearing originally scheduled for today until November 18. This will be before a different judge, unknown at this time.

Fr Kelley and the elected vestry ask for our prayers for the parish until then, and for spiritual protection for Judge Strobel.

More On Anglican Papalism

A visitor very astutely insisted that I order Michael Yelton's book Anglican Papalism, which focuses on the extreme wing of Anglo-Catholicism between 1900 and 1960. Yelton, though, doesn't provide much more clarity on how you might define either Anglo-Catholicism or Anglo-Papalism than I've tried to find already.

On one hand, Yelton says the movement was a "bottom-up" effort to make the Church of England more Catholic, but the "bottom" he refers to definitely doesn't include the people of the parishes -- it was a movement almost exclusively limited to clergy and (Anglican) religious, and Yelton goes farther to say it embraced sbout 1000 Anglican priests in total between 1900 and 1960. Most, though, died off by the 1940s. It ended entirely with the adoption of vernacular liturgy and other reforms by Rome during Vatican II, when the ultramontane Church it aspired to emulate disappeared.

In fact, I would say that rather than being "bottom-up" it was more like an esoteric passive-aggressive effort either to irritate Church of England bishops or render them irrelevant, and in doing this, it probably achieved its end. The resistance to the authority of Church of England bishops among Anglican Papalists as defined by Yelton centered on two of the Thirty-nine Articles, XXIV, which says it is "repugnant. . . to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understanded of the people", and XXV, which says, "The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them."

As opposed to Anglo-Catholics, which were more likely to use Tridentine vestments and Continental church furnishings but in the context of the Book of Common Prayer, the Anglo-Papalists were more likely to use the Latin mass in whole or part, or some uniate English translation, and were more likely to reserve the Sacrament or use it in Corpus Christi processions, all illegal and a direct challenge to the bishops. An attempt to revise the Church of England prayer book in the 1920s was on one hand meant to compromise with Anglo-Catholic innovations, but on the other intended to make existing prohibitions more enforceable; the effort failed.

Frederick Kinsman was plainly familiar with this movement, and he saw it as part of a fundamental difficulty in Anglicanism. On one hand, there were priests who said the mass in Latin, on the other, there were priests who denied the Resurrection or the Trinity; once he became a bishop, he recognized the futility of imposing some sort of discipline on any of them. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the peak of the Anglo-Papalist movement, Church of England bishops mainly looked the other way, and although holdovers like Fr Hunwicke allege that Anglo-Papalists were somehow persecuted, formal actions against even the most extreme adherents were rare.

There's another difficulty with Anglo-Papalism on the ground. Of seriously Anglo-Papalist priests, we see ultramontanism that appears to aspire toward unity with Rome, although what form this would take -- should Rome simply declare the provinces of York and Canterbury again under the authority of the Holy See, should there be some unspecified other structure, or should certain Anglo-Papalists become the primates of their own tiny groups? -- was never remotely explained or agreed on.

On the other hand, as Diarmaid MacCulloch and others have pointed out, Anglo-Catholicism has been a refuge for gay priests from the start (he has his questions about William Laud), and that goes the more for Anglo-Papalists. Yelton's account is peppered with arrests for indecency or immorality, which may or may not have ended priests' careers. Some early members of the movement were closely associated with Oscar Wilde at Oxford; Yelton also says that TS Eliot's involvement with the movement is underreported (as is Eliot's homosexuality). This is not compatible with Roman Catholicism, which does not ordain men who are actively gay.

Yelton also covers interest in the occult among Anglo-Papalists very lightly. Necromancy is a mortal sin according to the Catholic Catechism, but influential figures in the Church of England, including Anglo-Papalists during this period, don't seem to have seen any contradiction between their version of Christianity and occultism. James Pike's ultimately fatal descent into the occult was fostered and encouraged by Anglican clergy and prebendaries.

As a result, while some Anglo-Papalists did eventually become Catholic priests or laymen, most did not, and the movement on the whole strikes me as delusional. I think there are lessons to be drawn in explaining the currently disappointing outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus.

Disposition Hearing Scheduled For October 16

I'm told that there is a hearing for disposition of the three related Rector, Wardens, and Vestry cases scheduled for Friday, October 16. Presumably, Judge Strobel will have issued her decision by then, but so far, there's no word on what it will be.

John Hepworth On The Patrimony Of The Primate

John Hepworth made no public statements following his 2012 "expulsion" by the TAC College of Bishops. My understanding is that he had a serious medical issue around this time, was hospitalized as a result, and was presumably not in a condition to comment or engage in public disputes.

However, on February 24, 2014, he gave an affadavit in support of the St Mary's elected vestry that has now been posted on the Freedom For St Mary Site. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5

The affadavit covers a number of areas relating to the Patrimony of the Primate as well as the circumstances of Hepworth's retirement (or, as some TAC bishops would have it, his "expulsion"). Regarding the canonical status of the Patrimony, he says,

The Patrimony of the Primate is a canonical device used by both the first Primate, Louis W Falk, and myself, to manage situations not anticipated by the Concordat (1990) of the world-wide Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC).

The Patrimony belongs to the Primate himself, not to the bishops of a national province (such as the ACA), and does not require the consent of the national province involved (if a province is involved). It is a "personal property" of the Primate. It is not a "diocese" as such, but an extension of the Primate's personal pastoral care, as required by certain unusual situations.

. . . . The powers were used again to prevent dissident U.S. bishops from taking legal action against Ordinariate-bound clergy and parishes by removing them from the jurisdiction of those bishops.

Hepworth then cites the August 2010 e-mail request from the ACA House of Bishops, via Louis Falk, to renew a previously-erected Patrimony to contain Ordinariate-bound parishes. He says,

It will be noted that there is, in this Consent, no mention of the Patrimony expiring "on the establishment of the American Ordinariate" as asserted in a letter of Brian R Marsh, newly Presiding Bishop of the ACA, on 10 January 2012. [The letter is posted here.] (That would appear to me as his own self-serving assertion.) It was always my understanding, from discussion with my Roman Catholic counterparts, that it would be some time after the Ordinariate was established before all applications could be processed and admissions and ordinations conducted; the Patrimony would serve as the vehicle for completion of that journey.

This understanding was entirely reasonable and borne out by events. The implication that Marsh's announcement of the "dissolution" of the Patrimony was self-serving is also borne out by events: Marsh did not attempt to seize any other Patrimony parish, presumably because only St Mary of the Angels was a property worth seizing. Hepworth's account of the events surrounding his retirement also strongly suggests that a desire on Marsh's part to seize St Mary's was involved:

The letter to the world-wide TAC bishops indicating I expected to resign on Easter Day, 2012, was signed and distributed by email on 28 January 2012. There were failed attempts by a certain few TAC bishops opposing the Ordinariates to force my resignation earlier. They had no power to do so.

Although I had announced on 28 January my intent to resign on Easter Day, 2012, I saw by then that the dissident U.S. bishops were making life and pilgrimage more and more difficult for chosen Patrimony parishes there [i.e., St Mary of the Angels]. I realised that signing any formal documents of resignation at that date would create even more problems for those parishes, so I refrained from doing so. I never dissolved the Patrimony.

Hepworth also says in the affadavit that, from his perspective, St Mary of the Angels is still a parish in good standing in the Patrimony, and Fr Kelley a priest in good standing as well.

Lancaster ex parte Application Rejected By Judge

I'm told that this past Tuesday, September 29, Judge Strobel rejected an attempt by Mr Lancaster to insert an additional brief in the trial record via an ex parte motion. An ex parte motion is "usually reserved for urgent matters where requiring notice would subject one party to irreparable harm." The initial action in the St Mary of the Angels cases resulted from an ex parte motion by Mr Lancaster on behalf of the dissidents and the ACA, as a result of which Judge Jones issued a temporary restraining order granting them control of the parish.

The problem was that Mr Lancaster concocted an "emergency" that rushed the judge into issuing an order that, on reflection, she realized was a judicial error. This error has left the ACA and the dissident group in control of the parish for over three years.

I'm told, though, that even before she left for her term on the appeals court, Judge Strobel instructed Mr Lancaster not to make any more ex parte motions in the case. It appears that Mr Lancaster s strategy was, at least in part, to distract or rush judges into premature decisions. I've been puzzled how, in litigation that's lasted more than three years, any sort of sudden "emergency" can arise. Apparently Judge Strobel has the same question.

I get the impression that Judge Strobel finds Mr Lancaster's strategies annoying.

She will apparently mail her decision on the trial within the next two weeks.