I'm Not Sure If This Is The Look Bp Lopes Wants

My regular correspondent mentioned a discussion thread on the Facebook Anglican Ordinariates Informal Conversation Forum about a recent statement by Taylor Marshall that ordinariate parishes were competing for traditionalist Catholics who in his estimation should be attending a Latin mass. I'm not a member of that Facebook group and presumably would not be approved if I asked to join, but I did some web searching and haven't come up with any specific statement by Marshall about that. If anyone can send me a link, I'd appreciate it.

Nevertheless, in my searches, I've found a great deal of evidence that the traditionalist wing of the Church sees a common cause with the ordinariates. For instance, Church Militant puffs the orfdinariates along with the FSSP and ICKSP here:

Likewise, ten years after Pope Benedict XVI issued his historic decree Anglicanorum Coetibus, the Anglican ordinariates continue to strengthen, in spite of various challenges, both in the U.S. and abroad.

In North America, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter now serves 45 parishes across the U.S. and Canada. In the United Kingdom, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham today serves 35 parishes. The Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, meanwhile, covers 11 communities in Australia, and is expanding throughout the Pacific Rim, with two congregations in Japan, one in the Torres Strait Islands, and with pre-ordinariate communities forming in the Philippines.

My regular correspondent also pointed to the 102 comments at this story on Lifesite News, which covered

In an unscripted outburst, the president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference has expressed his frustration at mounting criticism of Pope Francis among Catholics, suggesting that those who do not appreciate his style of teaching and government should embrace Protestantism.

My own views track pretty closely with Fr Longenecker, who thinks Pope Francis could use a better editor and maybe a more savvy media staff, but there's a serious agenda there. On the other hand, without consulting Fr Longenecker, I'll go ahead and say Benedict's abdication creates a serious credibility issue for those who look back to him with nostalgia. My regular correspondent notes,

Of course there have been many periods of internal debate in the Church, of which that of the First Vatican Council over Papal Infallibility is a recent example. But I suspect that this made little impression on those in the pews. Today things seem quite different.

I sense that a lot of Catholics do not see the contemporary Church as much of a draw for people who are looking for a place to escape division and uncertainty. The irony is how much they do to create the impression that the One True Faith is being kept alive by a beleaguered minority within the Church. The idea that only the EF is really a valid Mass is the extreme position on liturgy, but I think that the “Reverent Mass” website is on that spectrum.

“Continuers” and denomination-hopping clergy formed the initial intake of the OCSP. In the UK, most of those in the OOLW were formerly Anglo-Papalists on the fringe of the CofE. For both groups, becoming a “real” Catholic in communion with the Pope offered stability and legitimacy that was an attractive contrast to life on the margin. Those markets for Ordinariate membership are now exhausted, and instead, at least in North America, the focus has shifted to lifelong Catholics looking for the Church of their youth, or someone’s youth, where one was surrounded by comforting certainties and changeless rituals. But wait, aren’t there two Popes? Never mind, never mind, just look at that altar rail, or “alter rail” as they say on the Reverent Mass site.

Even so, the North American ordinariate seems more and more like a solution in search of a problem. Several visitors have sent me links to this conference announcement, which Bishop Stephen J Lopes will keynote. He may well have pertinent remarks to make on the alter rail and its role in the liturgy, if the scholarly standards established in the announcement are followed. My regular correspondent comments,

But it is interesting that some, at least, see DW as a bridge between, or perhaps I mean among, warring liturgical factions in the Church. This would certainly provide a justification for establishing groups made up almost entirely of currently practising Catholics and abandoning the pretence that the OCSP is about Anglicanism in any fundamental way.

Well, consider that the Oxford Movement was about adopting Roman form in liturgy, vestments, and architecture, while moving away from enforceable standards of doctrine. In fact, the movement toward Roman form went a great distance toward undermining ecclesiastical authority as the Church of England moved away from official Protestant forms.

i wonder if what we're seeing among this wing of the Church is the adoption of forms -- indeed, forms imported from Protestantism -- and empty traditions of the sort Our Lord Himself disparaged in Matthew 15:2, like chapel veils or abjuring altar girls.

Not a good look.