Swimming The Tiber Or Rerouting It?

A visitor did some poking around on the Continuum blog I linked yesterday:

As I read the linked article from your blog today, I chanced upon this article (What is Over?) referenced in a side column under the subgroup, The Problems With Anglicanorum Coetibus. As I read this article written in 2011, it became clear to me that this guy saw AC as Rome saw it (and, quite frankly, I saw it as I read the documents promulgating AC). It was a vehicle to “warm the waters”, if you will, for Anglican types to swim the Tiber, not a re-routing of the Tiber to bring Rome closer to Anglicanism.

The Roman Church did not compromise any teachings or dogmas, all compromise of change in belief structures is required of the Anglicans putting on their swim suits. This guy clearly sees that there are many who will delude themselves into thinking whatever they want/need as they glom onto Anglicanorum Coetibus. The clarity of this man’s thoughts that Rome must move to Anglicanism, not the other way around, is the reason Anglican Patrimony in the Catholic Church will “fail”.

False premises lead to disillusionment, sustainable for a little while, until the scales fall from the eyes. The misconception that Rome had indeed moved toward Anglicanism by AC is the real reason, IMHO, the Ordinariates are and will continue to be unsuccessful.

I certainly see the attitude that Rome has moved closer to "Canterbury" (whatever that is) at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, as well as at Fr Hunwicke's blog. Mr Chadwick is on a planet that has neither a Rome nor a Canterbury.

But the visitor brings up what I think is the dilemma at the basis of Anglicanorum coetibus, and that I think nobody in Rome understood when it was promulgated: most Anglo-Catholics feel they're "Catholic enough" as Anglicans. This goes once again to the answer I got in TEC confirmation class: they want the prestige of calling themselves Catholic without paying the dues Catholics have to pay (e.g., the Catechism, the sacrament of confession, weekly mass and also on days of obligation, the need to tidy up irregular marriages, etc).

But my confirmation class question was prompted by seeing St Mary of the Angels on the nightly news in the late 1970s. I clearly remember Mrs Brandt, still a member of the Bush group and head of the altar guild during the group's 2012-16 possession of the building, serving as the parish spokesperson on TV 40 years earlier. She said at that time that TEC had abandoned its "catholicity" by ordaining women.

This, of course, was a meaningless statement, and even in the 1970s, before I'd resumed going to church, I thought there was something peculiar about it. If you wanted "catholicity", you went to a real Catholic parish, not a faux one. Unless you're an Anglo-Catholic. We must assume they see no need to go through RCIA or Evangelium and be received; they're "catholic" already.

Then there's the even smaller group that thinks Anglicanorum coetibus meant Rome was going to adjust its doctrines to suit a few thousand ex-Anglicans. I think we can at least give the low-church "continuers" credit for intellectual honesty, if nothing else.