Reading the exchange between Mr. Smith and Mr. Beeler it felt like they were talking past each other and drawing different pictures. Mr. Smith makes the point some of the issues with the Ordinariate brand have to do with unforced errors: not utilizing optimized search engines, keeping their messaging up to date and not so overly fussy nobody actually reads it. Mr. Beeler seems to think boutique Catholicism is the way to go. Neither one seems to grasp that theologically mature Catholics understand the mission of Christ’s Church AND that it can be promulgated from more than one Rite.I think this goes to the sense Mr Smith's remarks give me that he's continuing a collegiate quest for authenticity past its normal expiration date. He seems to want to see authenticity in "working class" Catholics without understanding how "working class" authenticity works. Tasks in the crafts and trades are learned in some part through muscle memory, so that the "work" often seems to be done in an offhand manner, and it's hard for an outsider to parse out what the actual purpose is, or to separate the individual pieces of each task.Real Catholics I know are not rabid, fanatical and obsessing over only attending one kind of Mass. This was a lesson Fr. Phillips couldn’t seem to learn. He counted on regular Diocesan Catholics but misunderstood why they attended his Parish. Most Catholics who make the time to attend Mass every Sunday understand the Mass is the Mass and the decision about which Mass to attend has more to do with the times offered, the distances involved and whether or not they have something pressing to do on that day.
I know plenty of folks who enjoy attending TLM about once a month or so but also attend and support their Novus Ordo parish the rest of the time. Plenty of regular folks “put up with” the DW version of Mass because their kids go to the school. Even run of the mill Catholics know they can attend Mass in another language and it still counts as Mass even if they don’t understand a single spoken word, and most of them have done it at least once! My experience: extremely rigid systems fail much sooner than systems with strength and flexibility. I find neither Mr. Smith or Mr. Beeler’s postulations very compelling but they both seem overly rigid.
But what's being done is highly deliberate, and "the rules are written in blood", as rail workers say. But the workers "just do it". This goes to what the visitor here says about "authentic" Catholics going to mass. They aren't overanalyzing things, and they certainly aren't getting weepy about precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony. Mr Smith's approach will gain respect mainly over high tea with Mrs Gyapong.
My regular correspondent has a take that's not all that far from this:
Mr Smith feels that “ordinary people” —- let’s leave aside how we define them —- are looking for certain things in a Catholic, or even just a Christian, community, and if they find them then the specifics of the liturgy are of secondary interest at best—-possibly of no interest. I find this a more appealing idea than that there is a big thirst for the superficial trappings of Anglo-Catholicism, which is the alternative hypothesis presented. Of course I am not sure that the latter is what Anglicanorum coetibus was talking about, although that is certainly how it is being generally interpreted. If it is about that, it seems far below the theological sophistication one generally expects from Benedict XVI. Bp Lopes has chosen to interpret it in the spirit of this account of the conversion of St Elizabeth Seton, i e, that in the Episcopal church, as in others, there are “many elements of sanctification and of truth” which, rightly perceived, already belong to the Church and impel one towards unity with it. So, nothing new here—-these are the sentiments expressed by Pope Paul VI in his homily at her canonisation in 1975.The question of just what Benedict had in mind with Anglicanorum coetibus is a conundrum, and I'm not sure if we'll ever have a good answer. My own hunch is that this was a secondary agenda item that was somewhere on Bernard Law's overall plan to become pope. It was certainly not as high on the priority list as the Catechism, but he was pretty clearly pursuing it throughout the 1980s and 90s. The interpretation I've heard is that Law was wrong-footed in his strategy when John Paul lived half a dozen years longer than expected, while Law had to flee Boston in disgrace instead of leaving for the big conclave he expected before 2000.The dumbed-down interpretation, as expressed by Mr Beeler and found widely elsewhere, is that elements familiar from Anglicanism will make former Anglicans feel at home and lessen the trauma of making a switch. This of course is vulnerable to the rejoinder that Anglicans are an endangered species and not worth the effort to attract (Fr Bartus’s point, before he disappeared from Facebook). So was Pope Benedict just echoing sentiments expressed thirty years previously? Was he somehow pressured into enlarging the “soft landing” which the Pastoral Provision provided for former Episcopalian clergy in the US to serve the agenda of interested parties? Or was he trying to make some new theological point about some “treasure to be shared” which Anglicanism could bring to the Church? Mr Smith clearly rejects this last interpretation. TLM, Melkite, DW, OF—-any congregation which followed his rules would grow and flourish and its liturgy would become as the “mother tongue” of the congregation. The fact that no one seems able to explain this “shared treasure” in any intellectually respectable way does lend support to his point.
So Law, I would think from this version, decided to push Anglicanorum coetibus as something to do when he got to Rome and another guy was pope instead of him. And Benedict may simply have credited Law for knowing what he was doing. This might explain the overall incoherence of the project. But I think both Mr Smith and Mr Beeler are taking this far, far too seriously.
