A Hepworth Episode

My regular correspondent, who is not a Hepworth fan, sent me a link to an article in the UK Catholic Herald from May 2011, "Ordinariate talks stall in Canada".

But this morning we learned that the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion has thrown his toys out of the pram and warned that the British structure may well be the first and last ordinariate, as negotiations in Canada have come to a standstill.

Archbishop John Hepworth – a flamboyant and outspoken former Catholic turned Anglican who leads the TAC – wrote a letter to Bishop Peter Elliot, a former Anglican who is the Vatican’s appointed delegate for the Australian ordinariate, in which he accused the Vatican’s Canadian point man for the ordinariate of derailing the process.

My evolving view is that stories about Russian election hacks are nothing compared to unpublished backstories about the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. A matter that's had almost no mention from the start is why, in mid-2011, references were made in the Catholic press and by Cardinal Wuerl to a Canadian ordinariate-in-formation, but by roughly February 2012, this was off the table, with Canadians put under the OCSP. Hepworth himself suggested to me that this was part of more universal contentiousness and opposition to Anglicanorum coetibus among bishops' conferences. Well, this is the Vatican, and I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that there's more to this story than we know.

The particular story in this episode, at least the part we know, appears to be this:

[T]he Church has decided to adopt the process that was used for the ordinariate in Britain, namely requiring the clergy submit to its dossiers for approval and having the people begin a Eucharistic fast while receiving formation and asking them to worship alongside local Catholics. One difference between Britain and Canada (and the United States) is that many of the groups own their buildings, which understandably makes the idea of worshipping in the neighbouring Catholic parish less appealing.

Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto, who was appointed to be the Vatican’s delegate to the ordinariate[,] appointed mentor priests who were due to visit the parishes this month. Before Archbishop Hepworth’s letter was made public, the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, a member of the TAC, asked for these visits to be put on hold.

Hepworth's objections, expressed in the letter to Bp Elliott, were

These priests are to announce, on behalf of Archbishop Collins, that the parishes will close forthwith, that the laity and clergy will attend a Catholic parish for from four to six months, that they will not receive the sacraments during this time, that they will be catechised adequately during this time since any catechesis from the Catechism of the Catholic Church done by the Traditional Anglican Communion is inadequate because only Catholics understand the Catechism, that the dossiers submitted by Traditional Anglican Communion clergy show an inadequate training since they have not attended Anglican Communion Theological Colleges, and therefore those selected by the Ordinary and approved by the CDF will have to attend a Catholic Seminary for an as yet unspecified time, at the end of this process, new parishes for Anglicans along the lines of the Anglican Use in the United States may be established, but not necessarily in the former Traditional Anglican Communion churches, and that during this process the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) must cede its property to the Ordinariate.

I would say that Hepworth's concerns seem completely reasonable, especially in light of Bp Lopes's recent Vienna lecture, where Lopes made the point

a new approach [viz, Anglicanorum coetibus] might involve creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost to assimilation into the much larger sea of Catholic life.

The interpretation in Hepworth's letter strongly suggests an intent by Canadian bishops in effect to squash the ACCC parishes like bugs and then maybe let the few remaining members in, though quite possibly assimilated into local parishes. One may disagree with Lopes's approach -- certainly yesterday's visitor doesn't quite see the point of retaining distinctiveness -- but it's hard to disagree that Hepworth's position is more consonant with what appears to be the CDF's intent than Collins's.

My regular visitor comments,

In the event, only the ACCC parishes in Oshawa and Ottawa entered the Church with a majority of their members (and their buildings). Two clergy associated with those parishes were in the first group to be ordained, despite not having been former ACC clergy or possessing M.Divs or the equivalent. But the uptake from the ACCC was probably fewer than a hundred people.

Nevertheless, the overall numbers in Canada are too small to see a definitive trend. It does appear to me that something like the Hepworth position, whoever else may have held it, eventually prevailed vis-a-vis the OCSP, in that overall, no parish entering the OCSP was required to close and send its members to diocesan parishes for catechesis, and no former Anglican clergy in the first waves were required to spend extended periods in seminary. This would certainly be consonant with a common-sense interpretation of Anglicanorum coetibus.

I don't see a scandal on the part of Abp Hepworth here, and I don't see reason here to see him as a disreputable figure.