Fr Longenecker And The Product

Yesterday's post from Fr Longenecker, Anglicanism: Practically Perfect Poppinism, raises half the question that's been building in my mind over Anglicanorum coetibus. Is the Church, as a practical matter, trying to sell a Catholic version of Anglicanism, and what the heck is that, anyhow? We've seen this problem most recently in the dilemma of the St Aelred's group in Athens, GA, that I discussed in this post. They seem on one hand to want to "reclaim" the gay-friendly sentimental dilettantery of Anglo-Catholicism and attract what a visitor called Tolkien-y hipsters.

On the other, the up-and-coming instant ordinands in the OCSP seem to want to appeal to conservative Catholics who are somehow turned off by diocesan practices. For starters, this is beyond the original scope of Anglicanorum coetibus, but it's now apparently a recognized, if not approved, strategy in the OCSP. The Church of the Good Shepherd OCSP parish in Oshawa, ON has recently updated its website and makes extensive reference to the Divine Worship liturgy as "not quite" the Traditional Latin Mass, but it "offers a comparable liturgy in English, with all the features (and more!) of the Traditional Latin Mass (known by many as the TLM)". In a bait-and-switch gesture, it then publishes a photo of a TLM being celebrated in some other, much nicer, church.

Msgr Steenson's 2012 letter disassociating the OCSP from the TLM no longer appears on the OCSP website, and we must assume the content of the Good Shephrd web page has been approved by Houston. Fr Tilley, its priest, is a retired firefighter with no MDiv or equivalent. So that's clearly one part of the product, which amounts to fancy vestments and thee-thou liturgy without real content from poorly formed priests, that's now being pushed by Houston. And it really isn't aimed at former or currently dissatisfied Anglicans.

There's more to the conservative Catholic target market. My regular correspondent notes,

In the pursuit of news about the OCSP, news which in the absence of a well-maintained website or a diocesan newsletter or magazine must be gleaned from parish sources and personal blogs and FB pages, I often read posts, etc which reflect the writer's general thoughts on the Church, politics, and Society. Although these are tangential to my quest for facts, a commodity in short supply in the OCSP, inevitably I have formed a picture of the mindset of the typical Ordinariate member. . . . There is a tacit assumption that Vatican II was a disaster and everything in the Church has gone downhill since then. . . . For most groups the faux-Tudor liturgy and Anglophile taste in music and decor underpins this conservative outlook, although perhaps because of the admixture of non-Anglican Protestant traditions of many of the clergy there is no consistency in the way that resistance to modernity presents itself. But as you point out, the key problem is that there is no effort to present the Church's claims intellectually, no effort to witness to the profound, timeless message of the Christian faith which must seek to make itself known, in season and out of season.

From remarks by my correspondent and now some references in Douthat, I'm becoming more aware of a conservative Catholic home-school culture, which strikes me as verging on separatism like that of the Amish or some cults, which Catholics are not actually called to. My regular correspondent has noted the effort at several OCSP groups, with insufficient interest in starting a full-fledged parish school, to implement home-school co-ops. Fr Bartus, in the most recent of his overambitious proposals, is now predicting a Friday-only home-school co-op in Murrieta, depending, apparently, on how many actually sign up.

Fr Phillips came to Scranton two or three years ago to consult with Fr Bergman about the school building on their property---the plan that was supposed to be funded by a café and bookshop, if you recall. Failing a full-fledged school they have a two day a week "academy" which will be adding a third day in the fall. St Barnabas, Omaha seems to have some sort of relationship with the Chesterton Academy in that city. The Reeses ran a home school support group, in happier times, which offered Latin, of course. The Seraiahs floated this idea when they were in Iowa. St Thomas More, Toronto tried unsuccessfully to get a home school/choir school program going in its former location. It seems to be part of the brand.

What's of concern is that this seems aimed almost exclusively at parents of school-age children who for whatever reason don't want to send their children to Catholic schools (which certainly could use the support). Insofar as I'm becoming familiar with a conservative Catholic home-school subculture, I've got to assume these are cradle Catholics, not former or currently dissatisfied Anglicans, who at least at one time were thought to be the target market for Anglicanorum coetibus.

I would take this to be a tacit admission, effectively endorsed by Houston if in no other way than by not contradicting it, that Anglicanorum coetibus did not, and never will, attract the significant numbers of upscale Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians, often in whole parishes like Good Shepherd Rosemont, that were originally anticipated. Instead, it's going for the fringes, the Tolkien-y hipsters who got tired of the Wizard of Oz and never quite caught on to Star Wars, plus the Catholic homeschoolers.

I don't see this lasting much longer.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent responds,

I wouldn't necessarily accuse Houston of having approved the new Good Shepherd, Oshawa website, since it, like at least two others, is not the one linked to the appropriate parish on the "Find a Parish" section of the OCSP website. I sincerely believe no one in the Chancery ever looks at such things.