I take up the case of the Catholic Anglican, and his echo chamber. He is an inquirer, often a cleric, often of Anglo heritage, who is unhappy with secular modernity. He is introduced to a solution by a missionary. The missionary is a pious convert from the friendly neighborhood Orthodox bookstore, who convinces the inquirer that the Eastern Church lacks the problems of the Western. The missionary makes theologically ignorant, sweeping claims with breathtaking confidence. Statues are idols, for example. By his surety and appeal to antiquity, he deludes the inquirer, just as he had been deluded before. It’s the way that fraud gurus gain converts.He sees the real threat as Orthodox proselytization. Farther down,
Tens of thousands of Anglo-Catholics in Fort Worth, San Joaquin, Quincy and MDAS are being targeted by [ “Convert Orthodoxy”] missionaries. When ACNA voted to continue WO, orthodoxwest.com was released, Rev. Mark Rowe became active on social media, and Anglican Radio went over. This is likely an intentional strategy of clergy with experience in public relations, who mean to convince Anglicans that the Eastern Church cares, and will suddenly save Anglicans by a “miracle” (dirty PR trick). . . . The only serious counterattack in this game of chess has been the October 2017 agreement between four Continuing Churches. It was heroic, but too little too late. Thousands of Anglicans remain outside the merger. Many are quietly entering the Western Rite, or are in secret talks to do so. The Orthodox are moving to checkmate opponents who don’t know they’re playing chess! If traditional Anglicans don’t widely circulate a serious case for their existence in months, they will go extinct.The puzzling thing is that the writer refers to himself and his audience as "Catholic Anglican" and Anglo-Catholic, but the one threat he never mentions is the Roman Catholic Church or, in particular, the Anglican ordinariates.
On one hand, this says a great deal about those who characterize themselves as Anglo-Catholic: the prospect of ever actually becoming an unhyphenated Catholic is clearly remote, and by the writer's admission, even more remote than becoming faux Orthodox. His discussion, of course, never touches on whether he and his audience are faux Catholics, but one thing he unintentionally reveals is that it's apparently easy for faux one to become faux another.
Interestingly, he refers to Western Rite Orthodox as "hipsters in expensive denim" -- I have no idea how accurate this might be -- but it echoes a visitor's recent characterization here of people attracted to the OCSP as "Tolkien-y hipsters". But the takeaway for Catholic observers, I think, is that whatever is drawing dissident Anglicans away from their "Anglicanism", the threat is simply not perceived as coming from Houston.
Says a lot about Houston.
