How Things Looked In 2011

A visitor found a link to the USCCB's page, still up on their site, covering the report of Cardinal Wuerl to the November 2011 General Assembly on the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. In hindsight, several things stand out. Perhaps the biggest is what a psychologist might call "flat affect".

What is Anglicanorum coetibus?

This is an apostolic constitution issued by Pope Benedict XVI in November 2009 that authorized the creation of "ordinariates," geographic regions similar to dioceses but typically national in scope. Parishes in these ordinariates are to be Catholic yet retain elements of the Anglican heritage and liturgical practices. They are to be led by an "ordinary," who will have a role similar to a bishop, but who may be either a bishop or a priest.

Note: Anglicanorum coetibus is pronounced Anglican-orum chay-tee-boose.

While the weepy grandiosity we often now see from spokespeople for the ordinariate is happily not to be found here, the lack of any particular enthusiasm for the project is also apparent.

• In September 2010, Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, was asked by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to be its delegate for the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus in the United States.
• The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops created an ad hoc committee that includes Cardinal Wuerl, Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth and Bishop Robert McManus of Worcester to assist the CDF with implementation of the document and to assess interest in an ordinariate for the United States. Fr. Scott Hurd, a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, was named as a staff liaison to the committee.

(Note the reference to "in the United States". Even by November 2011, there was an expectation that there would be a separate Canadian ordinariate, something that appears to have been disapproved by Cardinal Collins at the last minute, but which was never discussed publicly.)

Another item that stands out for two big reasons is this:

Has an ordinary been named yet?

No. The canonical establishment of the ordinariate will take place on January 1, 2012, the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. An ordinary for the United States will be named at that time.

The first issue is that the identity of the presumptive ordinary had to have been known to all in the loop since his resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande in 2007, moving to Rome under the auspices of Cardinal Law, whose pet project had always been the Anglican personal prelature. Jeffrey Steenson, who had attended the 1993 meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger that effectively presented a draft of Anglicanorum coetibus, was the clear choice for the job once TEC Bp Clarence Pope's failing health rendered him unsuitable.

So why the big secret? I would guess that ecumenical issues were in play, and Rome didn't want to present a picture of poaching an Episcopalian bishop directly to become a Catholic ordinary. But if Steenson left TEC in 2007, and the North American ordinariate wasn't erected until 2012, couldn't someone have decided there'd been a decent enough interval and announced his designation in, say, mid 2011?

I ask this because, in hindsight, the process of setting up the North American ordinariate was in fact ongoing, with an ad hoc committee and a staff liaison at work from 2010. The fact was that a Yale-Nashotah House clique that included Scott Hurd, Jon Chalmers, and his wife, as well as the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clergy who'd previously surrounded Steenson, all had an inside track, and it's not unreasonable to assume that the parishes to be formed and the clergy who'd be appointed to them were all known well before January 2012.

So the process was anything but transparent. Oddly, though, nearly all those who were on the inside track. from Hurd to Steenson, flamed out within a few years of the ordinariate's erection. Might the project have benefited from better personnel procedures? Not only that, but I think the implementation suffered from the assumption that everything would start up just fine on January 1, 2012. Before that magic date, nobody was in charge, there was no clear line of authority, and people were looking, for instance, to David Moyer for guidance on how TAC parishes should prepare, when Moyer, preoccupied by that time with his own legal problems, could be of no help.

The second question was simply Steenson's suitability for the job. While he was a member of an Anglo-Catholic clique within TEC, he wasn't an inspiring leadership figure, and his public utterances were few and in fact highly politic. His essay "The New Donatists", which has apparently gone down the memory hole (does anyone have a copy?) implied that those who objected to gay TEC bishops were schismatic. (Why call them Donatists otherwise?) Yet he himself made what from an Episcopalian point of view was a schismatic move only a few years later, when his career prospects improved in Rome.

His later essay "The Causes For My Becoming Catholic" is obscure and disingenuous, since it makes no mention of his still-secret position as ordinary-in-waiting, while he also sees the need to dance away from his prior accusation that those who disagree with TEC's current course are schismatics.

I continue to think the assumptions at the basis of Anglicanorum coetibus are flawed, but it's hard to avoid thinking that the project could have been implemented better if more capable people had been identified and the process had been more transparent, with clear lines of authority, from the start.