English Missal

Fr Hunwicke has begun a series of posts on the Anglo-Papalist English Missal on his blog. I will be following with great interest.

Anglo-Papalism vs Anglo-Catholicism

My reference to Anglo-Papalism yesterday has led me to a puzzling question of definition. I first encountered the term when someone, I forget who, made the point that Jeffrey Steenson is an Anglo-Papalist, not an Anglo-Catholic, and in context I took this to mean a nominal Anglican who believes that nominal Anglicans (not just members of the Church of England) belong under the authority of the Pope. Support for this position would probably be the idea that the 1534 schism between Henry VIII and the Pope was essentially political, not theological. If one follows Diarmaid MacCulloch, this is a historically incorrect view, although I've heard it expressed in person by one Episcopal bishop.

However, a visitor has pointed out to me that Anglo-Papalism in the US is not the same thing as Anglo-Papalism in the UK. My visitor describes the UK flavor (in nominally Church of England parishes) as follows:

This included saying the Breviary in Latin, using the English Missal, discouraging the laity from making any responses at Mass, wearing only fiddleback chasubles, praying for X our Pope, etc. After Vatican II it often meant the [Novus Ordo mass] and radical reconstruction of the sanctuary [presumably moving the altar and removing the communion rail].

If this was done in either Episcopal or "continuing" parishes in the US, other than moving the altar, it would be highly unusual. The tendency in the US among parishes calling themselves "Anglo-Catholic" would be to retain Tridentine vestments, but also to retain the communion rail, and sometimes to restore the altar to its pre-Conciliar position against the wall for celebration ad orientem. Latin was not normally used in the spoken liturgy, though the Latin wording might be used if music by Haydn, Mozart, etc was sung for the Gloria, Agnus Dei, and so forth.

The most important feature that I see discussed in the Wikipedia entry is a missal liturgy:

The English Missal has been widely used by Anglican Papalists. This volume, which is still in print, contains a form of the Tridentine Mass in English (though with an alternative Latin translation of the Canon) interspersed with sections of the Book of Common Prayer.

This appears to be essentially the same as the missal used at St John the Baptist Calgary, which appears to be nearly identical to the missal used at St Mary of the Angels, and which had probably been used at both Episcopal and "continuing" high-Anglican parishes such as Good Shepherd Rosemont, PA. My former Anglo-Catholic TEC parish, St Thomas Hollywood, used the 1979 Rite One with Tridentine vestments and etiquette (such as copes, birettas, and subdeacons) under Fr Barbour, but moved to an abridged missal (no threefold Lord-I-am-not-worthy, no Last Gospel) with the altar placed against the wall under Fr Davies.

My visitor points out that UK Anglo-Papalist parishes had been using the Novus Ordo mass since Vatican II, so for those entering the Ordinariate, the introduction of the English Missal hasn't been well received. For the UK Ordinariate parishes, as a result, there has been a tendency to gravitate to any Catholic parish that uses the Novus Ordo mass, as this is what they're used to, the schedule is probably more convenient, and it lasts only an hour in any case.

My own experience has been that, since both St Thomas Hollywood and St Mary's included extended musical performance in their high-mass liturgies, the abbreviated missal service at St Thomas typically lasted 90 minutes; the full English missal at St Mary's often took two hours. This is definitely longer than either Rites I or II in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer usually takes, yet the choice in the Ordinariates is now either Novus Ordo or the Whole Nine Yards.

It seems to me that this limited choice of liturgy is one obstacle to the growth of the Ordinariates. But also, based simply on my experience with an "Anglo-Catholic" TEC parish, as opposed to an "Anglo-Papalist" parish more typical of the Ordinariates, the difference in liturgies wasn't made clear as things began to get going, and the implications of using the one English missal may not have been thought through.

Proof Of Pudding

Thanks to a visitor, I've been given a pretty detailed insight into Diarmaid MacCulloch's thinking on the nature of "Anglicanism". I think if we back off and see it in survey-course stereotypes, there's no problem in looking at it as based on compromise. This also means that there's no simple way to characterize it, except by saying that during some historical periods, it permitted a limited and politically expedient spectrum of beliefs. As a result, logically speaking, there really can't be a single "Anglican patrimony", except to say that any "patrimony" consisted of a tendency to make political deals as needed.

In a 2004 lecture, MacCulloch summed up his views:

[T]he Church of England has over the last two centuries become increasingly adept at covering its tracks and concealing the fact that it springs from a Reformation which was Protestant in tooth and claw. This labour of obfuscation began with the aim of showing that Anglicans were as good if not better Catholics than followers of the pope. It then continued with the perhaps more worthy aim of finding a road back to unity with Rome, in the series of ecumenical discussions which began in 1970, known by the acronym ARCIC. . . The participants in these discussions have not been anxious to emphasise difference, and very often they have fallen back on the Anglo-Catholic rewriting of church history pioneered by John Keble and John Henry Newman in the 1830s, as the Oxford Movement took shape.

This opinion was delivered before (but not much) both the Portsmouth Letter and Anglicanorum coetibus, but I think subsequent developments have borne it out. John Hepworth presumably represented a "continuing Anglican" wing of what is correctly called Anglo-Papalism , while Jeffrey Steenson was its latter-day exponent within The Episcopal Church.

It seems to me that both promoted a misleading idea, that dissatisfaction with policies in the mainstream Anglican Communion by a fairly wide spectrum of nominal Anglicans could be translated into a wish by many of those same disaffected Anglicans to become Catholic. That outcome simply hasn't taken place. In part this is because Hepworth and Steenson both seem not to have understood the true nature of Anglicanism, which I think MacCulloch understands much better.

The desire to become Catholic simply hasn't been a practical ingredient of the real-world decisions by the great majority of nominal Anglicans, no matter how dissatisfied they may have been with the formal actions of their denominational bodies. There are very good reasons to become Catholic, but a sentimental appeal to an "Anglican patrimony" isn't really one of them.

Those who may now see themselves tasked with salvaging the disappointing outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus need to take this into account.

And What Do We Mean When We Say "Ordinariate"?

Since I've been stopping by Ordinariate Expats more regularly, I've been realizing that it's unfair and incorrect to generalize about the Ordinariates set up under Anglicanorum coetibus. To start with, there are three of them, and although the US-Canadian Ordinariate seems to be the most prominent, perhaps due to its coverage of the two biggest Anglophone countries, the one in the UK is actually of equal size, and the Australian one punches well above its weight. A visitor notes,

The UK and the North American Ordinariates have about an equal lay membership (1500-1600). The OOLW has more priests than the OCSP, although many of those (perhaps a third) are doing diocesan work, (while many Ordinariate groups are leaderless). The Australian Ordinariate is tiny, with perhaps 200 lay members. The UK and the Australian Ordinariates do seem to present far more impressive façades than the OCSP, however. I am at a loss as to why the latter appears content to have no meaningful internet presence, no mechanism by which potential members can connect with a local group in formation, no nothing really in the way of communication and publicity.

Visits to Ordinariate Expats reveal remarkable efforts in individual US and Canadian Ordinariate groups and parishes. Most recently, there's a report of a new organ at St Barnabas, Omaha, which contains a remarkable story of a local Presbyterian parish, closing but preferring to make its organ available for use in the city, and St Barnabas's energetic response.

My hat is off to this effort, as well as the efforts of others like those at the Fellowship of St Alban in Rochester, NY. The difficulty is that we hear about these things mainly from individual parish newsletters and Facebook pages, sometimes carried over to Ordinariate Expats, but the publicity efforts in Houston are minimal. This is damaging the case for the Ordinariates overall. I've been looking mainly at the actual numbers vs those initially projected, which presents a dismal picture especially in North America, but it's not the only picture.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard at second hand a report from an individual apparently familiar with opinions in the Vatican regarding the Ordinariates, primarily disappointed that the impression created by the less than stellar performance in North America is detracting from the somewhat better news in the UK. Based only on what I see in Ordinariate Expats, this appears to be a legitimate concern.

My visitor continues,

Msgr Newton in the UK has been on a tour of UK Catholic cathedrals speaking about the OOLW. The UK Ordinariate is gearing up for several national events which will presumably rally the faithful while getting publicity in the Catholic press. A diary of Msgr Newton's official activities appears in the monthly magazine. What is Msgr Steenson doing? Occasionally we learn from a parish newsletter that he has paid a visit, but officially he is all but invisible. . . . I note that Fr Sellers, the former Episcopal Dean of Fargo, ND who was recruited by Msgr Steenson to come to Houston, where he has been the (unpaid, I hope) Director of Communications for OCSP since the Ordinariate was erected, now has a job as the chaplain of a local Catholic school. He is also trying to get a parish started. Perhaps if he succeeds he will find that he can no longer handle the onerous burden of Communications Director and someone new can be found who can at least update a website.

It does seem to me that a fairly minimal effort at publicizing the actual achievements of North American Ordinariate groups and parishes could make a start at correcting impressions that may be mistaken.

So Who's An Anglican, And Why Do They Weasel-Word It? -- V

A visitor very kindly sent me a collection of scholarly articles by Diarmaid MacCulloch relating to Anglican history and the Church of England, which add perspective to his more popularly aimed The Reformation. To some degree, his opinions seem to vary over time and according to his audience: in an earlier article, he takes the position that "Anglicanism" itself is a term that came into general use only in the 19th century, while certainly during the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, the Church of England thought of itself as part of the general European "Reformed" or Calvinist movement.

MacCulloch variously calls more Catholic-leaning figures like Hooker, Andrewes, and Laud "conforming avant-garde" or "Arminians", although he also makes it clear that neither Laud nor Charles I was ever quite Catholic. (I think he's correct in saying that Charles wasn't Catholic, but he was stupid. James II, on the other hand, was both Catholic and stupid.) I think we can draw a general impression from MacCulloch that from time to time there's been a Catholic-leaning faction in the Church of England that could more recently be called "Anglo-Catholicism", although even this is hard to pin down. The move toward Tridentine vestments, candles at the altar, and altar rails, which over the past century or so has become nearly universal in The Episcopal Church and many "continuing" groups, clearly doesn't imply an acceptance of the Catholic catechism. Instead, TEC has kept its Tridentine style but moved farther away from Rome over two generations, and even the more conservative "continuing" groups clearly prefer to retain positions on issues like membership in the Freemasons or divorce and remarriage that are not consistent with Rome.

One of the mistaken assumptions behind what was at least the naïve public reception of Anglicanorum coetibus was the idea that any significant number of Anglicans was ready to make this move. No one can be completely sure if even Clarence Pope or John Hepworth was delusional or intentionally misleading in estimating that this would amount to hundreds of thousands. However, I think it's safe to say that the influence of Tridentine style in contemporary Anglicanism has been far greater than the actual numbers in the "Anglo-Papalist" faction. This probably helps prove the point that MacCulloch sometimes makes, that "Anglicanism" is not a single entity, and it's unhelpful to look at it as a term that means much of anything at all.

In this context, it's worth noting once again that the US-Canadian Ordinariate has been filling out its distressingly small numbers with Spanish-speakers who haven't normally used English prayer book liturgy, and former members and clergy of other Protestant denominations. Again, "Anglican patrimony", a vague, elusive, and ultimately meaningless idea, doesn't seem to be what's involved here.

So Who's An Anglican, And Why Do They Weasel-Word It? -- IV

While I thought the issue had been resolved, the discussion in the comments at Ordinariate Expats that I mentioned yesterday has continued, and it's brought up the issue I've been thinking about as well: the group of 45 Spanish-speaking Episcopalians who were received, apparently as an Ordinariate parish, at St Michael's Church in Flushing, NY at the Easter Vigil mass this year. The diocesan news release describes them as "former members of St. George’s parish", but the Ordinariate site still doesn't list the group, so I simply don't know how they're properly identified -- it looks like we have no choice but to call them the Flushing group.

In fact, they're the second Spanish-speaking Anglican Ordinariate group. Both use the Spanish Ordinary Form liturgy; the Flushing group has the additional complication that, as far as I'm aware, they worship in the regular Spanish mass at the St Michael's diocesan parish. As a result, the difference between a Flushing Ordinariate member and a member of the diocesan parish is purely juridical. As far as I can understand this, should there arise a need to deny a sacrament to one of the Flushing Ordinariate members, this would be an issue for the Ordinary, not the diocesan bishop, although a diocesan priest would be the one doing the denying, since they have no Ordinariate priest (their Anglican Fr Gonzalez y Perez is not mentioned in the diocesan announcement, and his status is not clear). There's the subsidiary issue of whether the members in Flushing have a separate corporate entity to which they can pledge -- and there's the potential that cash in the basket might all go to the diocesan parish, when strictly speaking, some formula might be agreed on that would allocate a proportion to the Ordinariate group.

But beyond that, given the wording of the diocesan announcement, although the group initially identified itself as an Ordinariate group-in-formation, it's not completely clear if they were ultimately received via Anglicanorum coetibus or RCIA.

William of Ockham! Thou should'st be living at this hour!

But this naturally leads once again to the bigger question, into which it seems to me the Holy See has inadvertently inserted itself: what is an Anglican? The idea of an "Anglican patrimony" looks more and more like a hypostatization. The Ordinarite has clearly already run into the missionary efforts among several Anglican denominations to minister to Spanish-speakers. So sweetening any putative Anglican deal by adding "thee" and "thou" to English-language Catholic liturgy isn't necessarily to the point. And if that's not exactly the point, then what is?

Well, a bunch of former Anglicans, in the US mostly from the former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, got to check off some items on a personal bucket list. I'm not sure what else, at least in the US, is really involved.

So Who's An Anglican, And Why Do They Weasel-Word It? -- III

I want to be clear that as far as I understand things, all of the announcements of ordinations or confirmations we've seen are, strictly speaking, licit under Anglicanorum coetibus and the Complementary Norms. I got involved in an exchange of comments on a thread at Ordinariate Expats where some of these issues were teased out.

Without rehearsing the details, I now recognize that, say, a nominal Mormon could be attracted to an Ordinariate parish or group, be catechized, baptized, receive first communion and be confirmed in that group, and become a member. Praise be. A baptized Episcopalian can be attracted to an Ordinariate group, but must still be catechized, receive first communion, and be confirmed in that group to become a member. Neither the prospective Mormon nor the prospective Episcopalian, however, would be eligible to receive communion in that group's mass until he or she is confirmed. A former Episcopalian who'd previously become Catholic via RCIA is eligible both to receive communion with the group and to become a member, although exactly what benefits accrue to "membership" is simply unclear to me. A cradle Catholic who had already been confirmed, or a former Lutheran who'd already been confirmed Catholic, would be eligible to receive communion but would not be eligible to become a "member", for whatever that's worth. (If someone can explain what it's worth, I'll be most interested.)

I have a feeling that the basis for all these fine distinctions stems from the need to circumscribe the presence of married clergy in the Ordinariates. My concern is not whether some of the cases that have come to light are licit or illicit, but what they say about how the Ordinariates (especially the one in North America) have actually developed. If the Ordinariates were prospering, these instances would be minimally visible and unimportant.

One indication of this problem is how quickly statements of policy from the Holy See or Houston appear to have been overtaken by realities on the ground. So we see in Anglcianorum coetibus itself:

§4 The Ordinariate is composed of lay faithful, clerics and members of Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, originally belonging to the Anglican Communion and now in full communion with the Catholic Church, or those who receive the Sacraments of Initiation within the jurisdiction of the Ordinariate.

This can be read to mean what it seems to say -- the Ordinariate contains former Anglicans, broadly defined, who come into the Church -- but, at least according to the discussion at Ordinariate Expats, it can also cover anyone else who's been given the sacraments of initiation by an Ordinariate priest. (My own view as a grammarian is that the reference for the pronoun "those" is clearly to the faithful, etc "originally belonging to the Anglican Communion", but I'll let it go.) So, in the liberal reading, if a Buddhist wanders into an Ordinariate parish and discovers that chapel veils, threefold Lord-I-am-not-worthies, the Last Gospel, and the Angelus all fill an unmet need, then by all means, he soon enough becomes a "member", whatever that actually means (other than that he's a good, confirmed Catholic who can receive the sacrament anywhere, of course).

Or the Q&A page of the US Ordinariate site says,

[T]he Ordinariate was formed in response to repeated and persistent inquiries from Anglican groups who were seeking to become Catholic, and is intended for those coming from an Anglican tradition.

and

[B]ecause we maintain our own distinct heritage and traditions, we are Catholics who maintain our distinct Anglican Tradition within the Roman Catholic Church.

Except, of course, that an essentially Tridentine mass with some Cranmerian prayers and faux "Tudor" usage grafted on isn't all that Anglican.

This all came up because Ordinariate Expats linked to the June 2015 Ordinariate house organ, the Ordinariate Observer, which reported that the St John Vianney group in Cleburne, TX confirmed one teenage cradle Catholic, two former Baptists, and three former Episcopalians. It's good news when anyone becomes Catholic, and it's licit that the two former Baptists were confirmed -- though given the fairly plain language in the policy statements above, this doesn't seem to be what Ordinariates were necessarily intended to do.

The issue, as far as I can see, is that in practice, there's been so little interest in Ordinariates nationally that the occasional Baptist outlier is enough to bulk up statistics, which badly need bulking up. To put this in context, in the US, excluding Canada, there were 39,654 catechumens and 66,831 candidates in 2013, mostly entering the Church via RCIA. Even the former Anglicans received among these must surely outnumber by orders of magnitude those received as "members" in the Ordinariate during the same period.

Whether or not a few Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Nazarenes, or whatever find their way in shouldn't have made much difference as things were originally thought through. Now, though, the outliers are needed just to keep the numbers somewhere above zero.