Within the Church of England’s parish churches there are many people who have responded to this openness and generosity of ministry, drawn gently to consider more deeply their need for faith and to find it in a Church that does not immediately ask hard questions or require formal membership as a precondition of receiving its ministry.
There are considerable numbers who have been divorced and later married again, who would not be eligible to receive holy communion in other churches, including those who have become Anglicans for this very reason, having found themÂselves excomÂmunicated in their own church community.
Equally, there can be very few who would accept the requirements of Humanae Vitae concerning birth control, or who would consent to private confession as a compulsory requirement of membership.
The Apostolic Constitution has no doubt been designed with generosity of spirit as a response to the expressions of need being received from Anglicans, but Anglicanorum Coetibus is not the Uniate-style solution for which many had hoped ”” a Church with its own jurisdiction and its own rite, capable of maintaining the very identity that enriches our Christian faith as Anglicans.
Those who embrace it must face a hard decision: to leave behind the very things that have sustained them in their Christian pilgrimage thus far, for assimilation into an unknown future in an Ordinariate that is neither Anglican nor fully part of mainstream Roman Catholicism.
The Apostolic Constitution is, at this time much like buying a pig in a poke; no one will know what it is really like until they are part of it. Is anybody actually in it yet? Does it have an official launch date? The Romans will determine what goes into any sort of Service/
Prayer Book that is to be used. Since the Vatican is not looking at this like a Uniate Church, are they intending it to simply be a place of transition and incorporation into becoming Roman Catholics? Will they allow for future ordinands to be married? I rather doubt it. So, what is really gained by not simply becoming Roman Catholics?
They are becoming Roman Catholics, they’re just going about it in a more gentle way than showing up for RCIA – which is not a gentle process, or rather it might be too gentle. Whatever RCIA is, it is not the right process for most Anglo-Catholics/Papalists.
#1– indeed it is a pig in a poke, and even more indeterminate is that local Catholic bishops will determine the shape of the things… so, it would be well advised that those heading to Rome check-out their bishop’s predilections first. They’re the ones you’ll be cuttin’ deals with.
Stephen and I have been friends for more than two decades. This fine essay shows him at his best and most thoughtful. I do most heartily agree with him when he writes, “Those who embrace it must face a hard decision: to leave behind the very things that have sustained them in their Christian pilgrimage thus far, for assimilation into an unknown future in an Ordinariate that is neither Anglican nor fully part of mainstream Roman Catholicism.” They are my misgivings, as well. A friend of Stephen and mine from Peterborough swam the Tiber after the C of E decided to ordain women and is very happy in his new milieu. However, he was simply absorbed into the prevailing structure. Being neither one nor the other ecclesiastically would be very isolating, I would think. Alas that a full Uniate-style Anglican Rite does not seem to be envisioned by Rome.
Remaining in TEC, and now the CoE, as a traditional Anglo-Catholic feels very much like facing an unknown future in a structure that is neither Anglican any longer nor part of mainstream Catholicism. But the Pope actually seems to care about our plight while General Convention and Synod evidently plan ,to harry us to extinction. That makes the Ordinariate rather more attractive.
I think #3 is wrong. Local bishops are only to be consulted. The Holy Office has authority over the ordinariate, and the ordinary has authority. That’s the point of the structure; news of the nasty behaviour of many Roman bishops to Anglican converts and their own traditionalists was no secret when the Constitution was drawn up.
I think this is pretty astute. If one is convinced of the truthfulness of the twentieth century Anglican disciplines of marriage and contraception, if one desires to worship in the established church’s parishes and if one finds the notion of a national church to be theologically significant, then the Ordinariate offers nothing that moves forward the desire to see Anglicans reunited with the See of Peter (which is the ultimate goal of the ARCIC process).
Of course, if one is convinced of the truthfulness of the pre-twentieth century Anglican disciplines of marriage and contraception (which are of course identical with the current RC discipline), if one is prepared to worship in other places than COE parish churches and if one finds the notion of an international church to be theologically significant, then the Ordinariate may offer a way forward.
In truth – given that visible unity is perhaps centuries away (or so I heard a chairman of ARCIC say in the early 90s) and women bishops are perhaps 4 or 5 years away in the COE – Catholic Anglicans in the COE face hard choices whether they remain in communion with the ABC or elect for communion with the See of Peter. Lord have mercy.