The Ordinary’s Tale

Our buddy Geoffrey didn’t write a “Bishop’s Tale,” but were he around in the second decade of the 21st century, well he might.  Instead of a Bishop’s Tale, however, he might be tempted to write a Bishops’ Tale…or at the very least an Ordinary’s Tale…about the Anglican Ordinariates in the Catholic Church.  I wonder what he might say.
Looking at the shape of the Ordinariates now it may be hard to see how they got to be this way from their origins.  When the Episcopal Church in the USA began the final throes of its death agony in the 1970s there were priests and people who begged the Vatican for deliverance from the apostasy.  The response of HH John Paul II was to create the “Anglican Use” and “Pastoral Provision.” Sadly, the founding documents were written in such a way as to make both Pastoral Provision and Anglican Use subject to the control of the local diocesan bishops’ and their college of presbyters.  Over the years it was clear that the gracious response of JP2 had been subverted and derailed by the extreme modernists of the American church.
Then the Traditional Anglican Communion was founded in 1991 with the goal of what Anglicans used to call “home reunion”…the eventual reunion with the Roman Catholic Church.  TAC’s approaches to Rome were sidelined to the ecumenical office until the TAC’s American primate retired, and an Australian was made primate…and now with evidence that the TAC was not just an American phenomenon, the Vatican started dealing with the TAC through the CDF.  The Holy Father could see how the American bishops had circumvented his predecessor’s intent to rescue Anglicans, just as the American and European bishops had rebelled and refused to follow his bull Summorum Pontificum providing for restoration of the Latin Mass.  HH Benedict XVI then issued an apostolic constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, creating an entirely new structure for Anglicans, free from the interference of local Roman rite bishops who want nothing to do with liturgically and theologically conservative Anglicans being imported into their extremely modernist and largely post-Christian pond.
So now the Roman Catholic Church has two personal ordinariates, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England and Wales (and Scotland), and the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in the US (and Canada).  All’s well that ends well, right?  Well, not quite.
Have these two ordinariates, in spite of His Holiness’ express provision, been interfered with and subverted by the local Roman Rite bishops?  Was it a mistake to appoint as ordinaries men who had remained in the Anglican Communion so long after Anglicanism had abandoned the apostolic faith and order that they had themselves been affected by the Anglican departures from Catholic practice?  Are both ordinaries so influenced by the Canterbury Communion’s apostasy that they abet the local Roman Rite bishops’ attempts to make the Roman Catholic Church over in the image of Canterbury’s failure of faith and omission of order?
Worse, what about the people for whom the ordinariates were intended?  What about the people who didn’t stay in ecclesiastical organisations for years after those organisations had abandoned Christianity?  What about the priests who didn’t study theology under people for whom the culture was a higher good than Christ?  In short, what about the priests and people of the TAC?  Are the ordinaries and their local Roman Rite bishops they treat more as their masters than their colleagues busily sidelining TAC priests while fast-tracking those who had stayed in PECUSA and C of E?
When Anglicanorum Coetibus was issued, scoffers said that it was a deception, but the simple words said otherwise…the ordinariates were intended to be nationwide ‘dioceses’ of Anglicans in communion with the Holy See, brought about by the merciful response to repeated pleas from the TAC, and cooperating with but not owned by the local Roman Rite dioceses.  But instead, are the ordinaries obeying the wishes of the local Roman Rite bishops? Are the TAC priests who have faithfully taught the Catholic faith being passed over in favour of Canterbury priests who never even learned the Catholic faith?  Have the extremists in the Roman Rite succeeded in suborning the Holy Father’s intention in Anglicanorum Coetibus the same way they succeeded in ignoring his will in Summorum Pontificum?