Saturday 13 November 2010

Homes From Home?

Rules or no rules, it is by no means unheard of for members of certain Eastern Catholic Churches to receive Communion in the corresponding Orthodox bodies, and even on occasion to attend them in preference to the Latin Church. The Eastern Catholic Churches are very, very "ethnic" indeed, and the ethnic groups in question are often close-knit oppressed peoples at home, or close-knit immigrant communities abroad, or both.

Nor has it been unheard of for Catholics with long histories in the Anglo-Catholic subculture (I was always more around it than in it, and greater immersion in it only helped to send me across the Tiber) to receive Communion when visiting old friends or, especially, when attending their funerals.

So, what of members of the Ordinariate? And what of those who might just about be persuaded to follow their clergy into it, but who now make what is often the fairly easy journey back to their roots in centres of the vastly more wholesome religion planted by past Anglo-Catholic missionary activity? West Africa, say. Or the West Indies. Or somewhere in the Indian Ocean. Or a Pacific Island. Or Saint Helena.

They may find themselves nowhere near a Catholic church of any kind, but on the doorstep of the church where they grew up, a church very much like their Ordinariate one in, almost certainly, London. Will they stay away? Will they attend but not receive? Come on, what do you think?

2 comments:

  1. I think it's most likely they'd attend but not receive. Isn't that what most Catholics would do in those circumstances?

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  2. But they won't be most Catholics.

    ReplyDelete