Good Questions!

A visitor sent an e-mail with questions that, while they might initially seem to have simple answers, started me on a train of thought.

What do you think the effect was on ordinariate communities when they switched from a 1979 BCP based liturgy in the Book of Divine Worship to whatever DW: The Missal is? Might the instability and low numbers reflect what seems like a bait and switch -- shifting from an approachable liturgy known and loved by Episcopalians who sought union with the Church to this expression of a patrimony that was foreign to most?

My initial answer was that Bp Lopes says basically nothing about the reason for the change, or even what the substance of the change was,. in his 2017 address in Vienna. But the drop in expectations for the ordinariate was plain by late 2012, even by March of that year, well before the DW missal came into use. The two parishes about which so much optimism had been expressed, St Mary of the Angels Hollywood and Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, were going to stay out, while David Moyer, a key figure in the runup, was denied a votum for ordination. The visitor replied,

I won't argue that there was a profound drop in expectation by the end of 2012....an ordinary who considered leadership to be his side job against teaching patristics is at the core of that....aided by a vicar general who also considered his role to be a side job against writing books. [The vicar general, then-Fr R Scott Hurd, left the priesthood to remarry after his divorce, which of course says something as well.]

I was interested in this project when it appeared to be the object of Ratzinger's thought in his paper on ecumenism in the compilation, Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith. I thought that's what the story was on the ordinariates. Now, despite a lifetime of being in TEC, I'm pretty confused by what the 'Anglican patrimony' is - and that's kinda funny.

Poor leadership can be developed or replaced. In this case, the entire project changed frequency, at least once, maybe more.

I think Anglicanorum coetibus was a bad idea horribly implemented. Just yesterday I asked who thought it would be a good idea to invite Protestants into the Church via a little group, where they could spend their time explaining to each other how Rome had gotten everything wrong, and they were going to fix things.

But the visitor raises new questions about the implementation, and he raises the issue as well of what the heck the Anglican patrimony is supposed to be. Let's just start with the question of Jeffrey Steenson as a patristic scholar. According to Wikipedia,

Steenson earned a B.A. from Trinity International University in 1974, a M.A. in church history from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1976, and a M.Div. from Harvard Divinity School in 1978.

He went on to earn a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in 1983 with a dissertation entitled "Basil of Ancyra and the Course of Nicene Orthodoxy".

An Oxford PhD with a dissertation on patristics is about as Anglican as you can get. One problem I see is with the context: keep in mind that Protestants adhere to some variation on the theme that the Church was clearly doing things right in the apostolic age, but at some point after that, Rome became corrupt and added unnecessary "accretions". A basic question for any variety of Protestant would be where things went wrong. Most Protestants, as far as I can tell, would agree that by the time Aquinas came along, the situation was past rescue.

However, it seems to have taken several centuries more until Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, Knox, and Calvin saw the light and cast off the Roman darkness. Anglicans, who in latter centuries have cast themselves as moderates, seem to take the position that, although the Protestant Reformation was justified, the Church Fathers were authentic guides, which places the point of Roman deviation some time after the death of St Isidore of Seville in 636.

That Steenson would specialize in this field basically makes him a respectable Anglican, which he certainly was, although I'm not sure if he ever held any academic position, even part time, during his Anglican career. (This indicates he had some adjunct positions in the 1980s.) As far as I can see, his PhD qualified him to hold academic posts once he was designated ordinary, but this was fairly clearly a supplemental income source, and I'm not sure how good a teacher or scholar he ever would have been.

Nor, of course, did he turn out to be an effective administrator in The Episcopal Church, since the Diocese of the Rio Grande seems to have found him a disappointment overall, failing to develop any clear path for conservative parishes and clergy in a liberal denomination.

What, if you get right down to it, did Pope Benedict, Cardinal Law, or Cardinal Levada expect him actually to do? Did they even ask that question? Or did they just figure they needed a guy who'd been an Episcopalian bishop to occupy a position pro forma?

As far as I can see, once Steenson was activated as North American ordinary in January 2012, he froze. His first job would have been to facilitate the entry of the two most prestigious potential parishes. Apparently there were questions about the pastors of each (in my view, justified in the case of Fr Phillips, but not in the case of Fr Kelley). But the clear path forward would have been to move quickly to bring both in and address questions about their fitness once they were under his authority.

Instead, he dithered, so that months after he should have brought St Mary of the Angels in, the ACA sued to keep it out. Again, early in the game, it appears that he gave Fr Philips plenty of warning what bad things would happen and time to react. He should have brought the parish in and temporized with Fr Phillips down the road.

It's hard to avoid thinking Fr Hurd was probably not qualified to serve as a vicar general at all, but he was apparently distracted by personal issues in any case.

But this is before we even get to the subject of liturgy and the new missal, which I think is a symptom of pre-existing dysfunction and not a cause. I'll work on this tomorrow.