What, After All, Is The Purpose Of Ordinariates?

There are a couple of posts at Ordinariate News, (here and here) suggesting, first, that some inchoate need exists among Anglo-Catholics that could be filled by reconstituting the Anglican Use Society, and second, that in the UK, there's not enough to distinguish Ordinariate parishes from Latin-rite parishes, especially when the Latin parishes host Ordinariate groups.

I'm a little puzzled that an announcement should be made of reconstituting the Anglican Use Society, followed immediately by a call for suggestions on what it might do with its reconstituted self. I've certainly heard the suggestion that the AUS is re-emerging due to unspecified dissatisfaction with the leadership of the US-Canadian Ordinariate -- although I'm not sure that, if in fact this is a factor, anything can seriously be done. Msgr Steenson is 63. He will not be obliged to submit his resignation until he is 75, although the Vatican could certainly choose to retain his services after 2028. He would not be replaced short of that date without some serious allegation of misconduct. Ain't gonna happen, even if the Anglican Use Society should eventually offer remonstrances.

At the same time, a UK commentator notes,

In cases where those groups who used the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite as Anglicans have experimented with the Ordinariate Use, they have found that a number of their group members have voted with their feet and started to go to Mass in a diocesan parish. The Ordinariate Use may be part of what distinguishes the Ordinariate and the liturgy may be particularly suited to special occasions like an Ordinariate pilgrimage or festival, the titular solemnity or another major feast day, but most groups feel more comfortable with the Ordinary Form as their regular Mass liturgy on weekdays and most Sundays. So one can fairly say that the Ordo Missae is therefore not the main distinctive feature of the Ordinariate in Britain.

This seems to echo the viewpoints in my last post on God-wottery. A visitor with experience at two Anglican Use/now Ordinariate parishes notes that, given the choice of driving a greater distance to get threefold repetitions, genuflections, and multiple kissings of the altar, or not traveling as far to get a mass that lasts no more than an hour, his preferences align with many communicants in the UK Ordinariate -- it's fine for special occasions, but. . .

Add to this my continued concern that the US-Canadian Ordinariate resembles "continuing Anglicanism" all too closely, not only in privileging a liturgy that doesn't appear to be all that popular among the rank and file, but also in what appears to be the opportunism among its clergy, including a disturbing tendency to ordain (or intend to ordain) candidates whose connections in Houston might be good but whose qualifications are, frankly, open to question.

Look, on the other hand, at the sort of issues that actually confront Catholics.

A senior Vatican official has attacked the legalisation of gay marriage in Ireland. The referendum that overwhelmingly backed marriage equality last weekend was a “defeat for humanity”, he claimed. . . .

It was a far more critical response than the circumspect reaction offered by archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, who said: “It is very clear that if this referendum is an affirmation of the views of young people … [then the church needs] a reality check.”

Meanwhile, the Anglican Use Society is asking for suggestions on what to do.