Your thesis exactly accords with my observations on the Ordinariates from the beginning, and I mean back to the days of The Anglo-Catholic. They have attracted primarily those who were outliers, and while they may have tried to frame the narrative as one of wanderers at last coming in to a safe haven, in fact many of them don’t work and play well with others in the Church any more than they did in their previous denomination. Mr [redacted], of course, is now SSPX and occasionally lobs a grenade into the Anglican Ordinariates Informal Conversation Forum, making points not unlike your own ie that the Ordinariates lack liturgical integrity and consistent discipline.There's a double problem with how Anglicanorum coetibus has shaken out in the US. The first is that it hasn't attracted many Anglicans, either in absolute numbers or, even worse, relative numbers. The ACNA has been far more effective in providing a more "orthodox" (at least from an overall Christian perspective insofar as it shares traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality) alternative to The Episcopal Church.
But there's another problem even here, since more centrist Anglicans have always been suspicious of Anglo-Catholics since the start of the Oxford Movement, specifically on the grounds of sexuality. It's hard to avoid a concern not fully expressed out of decorum in the low-church tract I quoted yesterday, that there was an agenda behind the Anglican missal movement of the 1920s to bring toleration of Anglo-Catholic sexuality into the larger Episcopal Church.
A key complaint in the tract is that the Anglican missal advocates claim they're adding Roman theology to Anglican liturgy in the name of Church unity, when in fact the missal movement is highly divisive in parishes when it gains a foothold. This is a cousin of the 21st century secular alphabet agenda, which insists that bizarrely deviant sexual expression be accepted on the basis of tolerance, when, once it's tolerated, it becomes the basis for proselytism -- witness drag queen story hours and mandatory same-sex ed for elementary students.
The second issue, and I think it's related, is that the uniate missal is an innovation, pure and simple -- it dates from no earlier than the 20th century. But ordinariate apologists fuzz this over, for instance on the website of the St John Henry Newman group in Victoria, BC:
Our Ordinariate Form of the Roman Rite, Divine Worship, approved by the Holy See, is rooted in the liturgical and spiritual patrimony of the English and Anglican traditions as found in the Use of Sarum, the various editions of the Book of Common Prayer, and the English and Anglican Missals.This is similar to what Bp Lopes said in his 2017 Vienna address:
The search for the authentic faith of the Church within Anglican worship allows us to situate Divine Worship firmly within the shape and context of the Roman Rite so that it might be approached in a manner which respects its own integrity and authority.Except that all that's been done has been to take the Book of Common Prayer, pretty much snip out the part of the mass between the Creed and the Agnus Dei, and replace it with an archaized Roman Canon. Sarum Use has nothing do to do with it. It's like the lady at the counter at Taco Bell who asks you if you want Swiss or American cheese on your taco. It doesn't matter if they wear sombreros on Cinco de Mayo, this is not authentic, and there's no integrity.
The outlier part concerns me, too. It's increasingly clear that the North American ordinariate isn't even attracting many Anglicans. The angry visitor whom I'd characterized as a Catholic turned Anglican turned Catholic again corrected me: in the period he'd attended mass at the "affirming" St Clement's parish in Philadelphia, he'd remained a cradle Catholic and attended a proper Sacrament on Sunday before then betaking himself to St Clement's, where apparently for some years he gave the impression that he was a communicant, but he wasn't. Or something.
A certain contingent of members, cradle Catholics, appear to be attracted by features like de facto compulsory reception of the Sacrament kneeling, on the tongue, when in the US, for a priest to force a communicant to do this is a canonical violation, and reception in the hand is actually the "Anglican patrimony". Again, we're looking at a movement that's pushing the limits of opposing authority, and in fact at least two priests insisted they would administer only on the tongue in the face of recent health advice that this was dangerous.
Whatever the frequency, Kenneth, it's not very Anglican, and not all that Catholic, either. It isn't even prudent from a secular perspective, which ought to be troubling.
I continue to think that the combination of suspended public meetings, the financial precariousness of the ordinariate and most of its communities, and changing health awareness in the population will make these matters largely moot as we recover from the virus threat. That this strange episode should simply die out would, I think, be the most desirable outcome.
