The 2019 Mission Creep

In this last part of 2019, I think we're seeing more and more evidence that the Anglicanorum coetibus project isn't just not growing, it's in fact not viable at all. It looks, for instance, as though the income from parish tithes won't support the minimal chancery operations that exist in Houston, while the ordinariate seems not to have other resources like endowment or real estate that sustain dioceses. So we're seeing a certain amount of desperate flailing to find a new mission.

A visitor pointed out to me a post by Mrs Gyapong on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog from December 13. Evangelization and deeper conversion, which

has augmented “Anglican Patrimony” with “English Patrimony” and the description of which is “…recovering that English Catholic patrimony that preceded the Reformation…” Apparently, “Bishop Steven Lopes has described this two-fold approach as English Christianity.” The full article is not really worth the read, but the opening paragraphs show an alarming devolving of logic and culpability for the rest of the article’s claims of patrimonial appropriation.

I didn’t know Jesus created national/ethnic kinds of Christianity. Silly me, I thought there was only one kind, hence the ability of people to recognize the mark of the true Church of Christ, it would be catholic (with a small “c” meaning universal), not a collection of (insert flavor variety here) Christians. I used to give this group(ACS) the benefit of doubt because they were new to Catholicity, but the more time passes, the more it seems they do not want to fully embrace Christ’s Church. They keep looking backward* and making up their own stuff as they go (Does the Gilbertine situation ring any bells here?), hence pulling others backward with them. Yes, sometimes looking back can help with perspective but fixation on the past and the inability to move forward in times of great change slows, if not altogether halts, onward progress. How did all that looking back work out for Lot’s wife and family? It’s time for Lot’s family to move on from this backward-looking side show.

In our area, Catholic parishes celebrate particular Mexican and Filipino expressions of Catholicism, but one thing that's missing is that neither Mexicans nor Filipinos have been told by the Church that they're entitled to separate hierarchies. In fact, the Cahenslyite proposal was tacitly disapproved by Leo XIII. The idea that English Catholics get a separate hierarchy was bad in the 1890s, but it's now proving unworkable in practice.

Mrs Gyapong's ideas in that post seem incoherent, leading eventually to what I dreamed about not long ago, that Houston would wind up streaming episodes of Upstairs, Downstairs and Downton Abbey into masses.

.A second mission creep is the position, I assume tacitly authorized by Houston, that we've noted on some parish websites, that the ordinariates somehow started as a project aimed at Anglicans, but now exist for any Catholic who feels their faith will be deepened with a heavy-furniture liturgy. How's that going?

The last development seems to be abandoning Potemkin village "gathered" groups that might someday turn into parishes -- the short answer is they don't -- for jump-started parishes do novo that rely on funding from major donors. To the extent these can be found, they seem to compete with dioceses for donor money, which is unlikely to be a winning formula. But another question is simply how many donors can be found to fund such startups.

The robber-baron families, Morgans, Harrimans, and others, that funded Gothic parishes a century ago have moved on. If I had several millions to donate, I'd want to take a close look at any such projects, and the record we see for the ordinariates is just not promising.

Stein's Law: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."