So, Are The Ordinariates A Very Good Thing?

A visitor has been prompting me to react to Mr Murphy's post on the five-year anniversary of erecting the first Anglican Ordinariate. Mr Murphy asserts at the start that he is a "member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham", which, since I believe he lives in Germany, is hard to distinguish from an assertion that one is entitled to receive secret code messages over the radio from Captain Midnight. I'm sure his intentions are good.

I'm not a member of any personal ordinariate -- I simply struggle to do my best as a new diocesan Catholic. I would in fact say that, raised Presbyterian and moving to Episcopalianism as an adult, neither denomination equipped me to deal with what I encountered in an elite-school education in the 1960s. I suspect that even an average Catholic education wouldn't have helped me out much if I'd gone, say, to Notre Dame or Georgetown, where I would have been fed the same awful misinformation.

The cultural problems serious Christians encounter, frankly, go much wider and deeper than the issues Mr Murphy tries to address. Whether there are Comfortable Words or a Prayer of Thanksgiving in a version of the mass complete with faux thees and thous, or whether a dozen married now-Catholic priests are alumni of Nashotah House, is completely irrelevant in this context.

My visitor says,

[Mr Murphy] is making the point that the theological implications of attempting to incorporate the treasures of the Anglican Patrimony into the Catholic church are important regardless of any success the Ordinariates may or may not have proselytising among Anglicans or others.

I'm not from the UK, and I don't have the perspective of Mr Murphy or for that matter Fr Hunwicke. I do sense a certain Rule Britannia strain in the remarks I occasionally see from both, a subtext that Rome is finally coming around to do things the English way. If it makes them feel better, that's fine. I simply don't have the same perspective, and I just don't get all sentimental about the Spiritual Treasures of the Anglican Patrimony. They're nice to have, but they aren't essential to salvation.

I see a much bigger obstacle to the Ordinariates, which is simply how they can generate enough celibate vocations to produce a second generation of priests, especially when the current generation of former Anglican priests are near or at retirement age. I e-mailed this to another visitor in a different conversation:

I would nevertheless say that a much bigger issue would be how many celibate vocations any of the Ordinariates can generate in the next 15+ years -- there's the actual future. A retired guy, OK, but so far, the Ordinariates are pretty much of, by, and for retired guys!

One thing I'm noticing in my diocesan parish is that in fact, of five priests on staff there, several do in fact provide inspiring examples of celibate clergy, enough to produce more vocations, it seems. Even as a new Catholic, they're changing my ex-Protestant attitudes toward the Church and the role of priests. I read accounts now and then of young boys who see a priest celebrating mass and begin to think that would be an attractive role, as others might find a teacher or firefighter. Now I begin to see how that could happen!

This probably needs to happen in the Ordinariate more than it is, even now.

This visitor replied,

As to the importance of celibate vocations for the ordinariates, there are two salient points.

1. The Vatican will NOT allow ordinariates to fail on account of the issue of clerical celibacy. The ordinariates are the Vatican's solution to reconciliation not only for Anglicans, but also for other Protestant traditions -- and one cannot expect those who are not yet in communion with the Catholic Church to adopt it if they perceive that it cannot work. If it becomes clear that the ordinariates are not getting enough vocations to be sustainable, the demand for celibacy will bend very quickly.

2. And in any case, Pope Francis has indicated very clearly that he wishes to relax the discipline of clerical celibacy in the Roman Rite, but that he wants the initiative in this regard to come from dioceses and episcopal conferences rather than from the top down -- and no wonder: there are many practical difficulties with which dioceses and episcopal conferences will have to deal in implementing such a change, including major restructuring of budgets to provide sufficient compensation for married clergy to support their families and reconfiguration of rectories to provide suitable accommodations for married clergy with families. These adjustments obviously require planning and fundraising, and thus will not happen overnight. Nevertheless, a relaxation of the present discipline may well happen within a decade, and perhaps even more quickly -- and it obviously will extend to the ordinariates whenever it happens.

I simply am not seeing any hint of imminent changes like these from, say, Bp Barron. I'm not sure how realistic this is -- what, Rome is going to relax the discipline of clerical celibacy in order to let Ordinariates continue? My own view is that any effective attack on the current cultural situation is going to come from more of what traditional Catholicism has been, not bending things to bring in more Anglo-Catholics or Lutherans or whatever.

I get a certain sense of unreality in the remarks of my visitor here, as well as Mr Murphy.