Ordinarily Speaking

Forward in Faith Australia has voted to avail itself of the provision for a Personal Ordinariate.

The ones in India, South Africa and the Torres Strait will be very successful. Each is the lively product of a fascinating tale, in marked contrast to Forward in Faith, most of which - not all, but most - is a shadow of a shade of the Anglo-Catholicism of old in this country, which had the same positive features as old school Methodism: Biblical preaching, sacramental spirituality, missionary zeal, musical excellence, practical social concern, radical political action. That was for the same underlying theological reason: the righteousness of Jesus Christ not only imputed, but imparted by means of Word and Sacraments. And it appealed to much the same sorts of people, so that old school Anglo-Catholicism and old school Methodism were often concentrated in the same areas, both of this country and of the Empire; their co-existence in the Pacific remains particularly striking. What of this remains in Forward in Faith? Still, at least they are not Aff Cath.

Full unity with the Petrine See of Rome is also where the remaining heirs of the Anglo-Catholic Socialist tradition belong, purged by Magisterial obedience of historic Marxism; association with Conrad Noel was one of the reasons given by the Communist Party of Great Britain for expelling the Trotskyists, while many of the rival Western Use were pro-Soviet. Anglo-Catholicism in general would be guarded thereby from the Fascism with which it has been associated for as long as there has been such a thing with which to be associated. Ostensibly Catholic Fascist movements on the Continent and elsewhere have only ever been Catholic in form rather than in substance; even Maurras was an atheist, but, typically of what was to follow, he saw the Church as part of the culture and as socially useful. And the form rather than the substance of Catholicism is the curse of Anglo-Catholics.

Are there really only “up to 200” people in Forward in Faith Australia? Anglo-Catholicism was the norm in several entire dioceses there until not very long ago at all, and it is still widely presented as such. Oh, well, that is their own figure, I suppose. Not all of them will come over, but even if they all did, then they would be a small proportion of the Australian Ordinariate, dominated by the former Anglican Catholic Church of Australia and the Church of the Torres Straight, formerly the very Anglo-Catholic Diocese of Carpentaria. I expect that most of the Forward in Faith lot will gravitate to the mainstream Church, significant parts of which over there are if anything a bit conservative even for them (creationism and what have you), but even so.

Speaking of the ACCA, the Hepworth question arises. Not only is he married, like David Robarts, but he is divorced and remarried. That, however, is the least of it. Former Catholic priests who become Anglican are very rare, but when they do exist, then, confronted with the full-on liberalism of the Anglican Communion in the West rather than with the things that they thought made them ever so radical when they were Catholics, they frequently move very decisively in the other direction.

Thus, the late Reverend Malcolm Tudor, ordained a Catholic, was a leading light in Credo Cymru, the Forward in Faith organisation in Wales. Canon Michael Banks certainly used to chair Forward in Faith in Leicester, a diocese with a very entrenched Anglo-Catholic presence. Returning to Saint Chad’s College, Durham for a function at the end of last term, I was unsurprised to discover how conservative the longstanding Principal, Canon Dr Joseph Cassidy, a former Jesuit, is now known for being, although he certainly never used to be; he is still in favour of the ordination of women, although there has never been a woman priest on the staff there. But that is about it.

Lo and behold, a man ordained as a Catholic priest, but who crossed the Tiber the other way in the heady days of the Seventies, is now Primate of the Traitional Anglican Communion. But I think Malcolm Tudor was married. Michael Banks and Joe Cassidy are certainly married. And John Hepworth is not just married, but divorced and remarried. Moreover, while Banks was a convert in the first place, as am I, I have a feeling that Tudor was a cradle Catholic. Cassidy, whom in any case I am not suggesting would join an Ordinariate, certainly is. And Hepworth? It really would seem to matter.

I write this as a supporter of the Ordinariates in several cases, and as someone who wishes them well everywhere, even where I think that they stand little or no chance of making any progress. “Up to 200″ people in Forward in Faith Australia hardly seem to warrant an Ordinariate at all; that few people would not get their own parish priest in the West these days. Never mind when there is going to be at least one more, and much larger, on the territory of the same Bishops’ Conference. Something similar applies to the small, typically Continuing Anglican body within the TAC in South Africa, rather than the TAC member containing most of the old Order of Ethiopia. Alike, they are looking at being a very small part of an Ordinariate strange to those in the Australian case (how culturally Melanesian is even the Old Rite Anglo-Catholicism in the Torres Strait and in its considerable Queensland diaspora?), very alien indeed at least to whites and Coloureds in the South African case.

We may rule out Ireland, where the tiny TAC member is most unlikely to submit to Rome and where, even comparatively speaking, there is little or no Forward in Faith constituency. But what about Scotland? The Forward in Faith constituency there is miniscule and then some, and even much of that would never come over. But Scotland has, of course, her own Bishops’ Conference. So I sincerely only ask: is a man with responsibility for perhaps fifty souls, if that, to be a member of that Conference?

The Ordinariates are in my prayers. The ones in India, black South Africa and the Torres Strait will be great successes, I have no doubt. But there are major unanswered questions in the West.

And if the heritage of South African Ethiopianism counts as "the Anglican patrimony", then so does that of the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, a product of the discovery of Swedish High Churchmanship, as subsequently influenced by the Tractarianism, on the part of members of the Missouri Synod. That body is already signed up to the Catechism. We see what is rapidly becoming the standard pattern: a small, variously problematical presence in the West, specifically in North America; but no such difficulty in Sudan. Bring it on. And then bring over the Sudanese missionaries as soon as possible.