The search continues for any "Anglican Patrimony" of interest to those minded to join the Ordinariate. The media insist on calling them "traditionalist Anglicans" and such like, as if they were the dear old C of E, but like in the Fifties and Sixties. They are not. They were not then, and they are not now.
There is talk of "ministry to the whole community", but the constitutional basis of that will disappear when they leave the Established Church, and they have no claim whatever over the parish churches that they currently occupy, many of which would have closed years ago without the stream, itself much more of a trickle than in former decades, of baptisms, weddings and funerals only made possible by the local prominence of the building and by its status as the parish church by law established.
Their metropolitan citadels have long or always exercised little or no parochial ministry, although the legal status of the buildings remains exactly the same. After all, who do they think has been paying the clergy stipends? Rome? The Church Union? Forward in Faith?
So the latest wheeze is to suggest that this "Anglican Patrimony" is the Sarum Use. Are they having a laugh? The Sarum Use, even without going into any ostensibly serious suggestion that anyone adopt its regular celebration today, was the liturgy of those dispossessed first by Henry VIII and Edward VI, and then again by Elizabeth I. It died out when they died out and were replaced with priests trained on the Continent according to the new Tridentine seminary model, including the Tridentine Rite, which must have been as much of a shock to the lay faithful, accustomed to the Uses of Medieval England, as anything experienced since Vatican II. Nothing new under the sun, and all that.
Perhaps those who organise conferences for liturgical aficionados, featuring celebrations of the Tridentine Rite in all its solemnity, might consider celebrations of the Medieval English Uses (no permission necessary, since they were already more than 500 years old at the time of the Council of Trent), as well as of the still-living Ambrosian Rite, Bragan Rite, Mozarabic Rite, Rites of several Religious Orders, and Eastern Catholic Rites? I realise that there are Old Riters and Old Riters, but it would certainly give some pause and cause for thought to any "argument from tourism" types who might be present at such an event.
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Being a fomer Anglican myself I could suggest at least one aspect of Anglicanism which is horribly lacking in the structures of the RCC: proper structures for lay people.
ReplyDeleteThe RC system is that the priest is solely responsible for the parish; he should be advised by a finance committee (but he and he alone signs the cheques); there is no recognised structure for the maintenance of a parish as a functioning body if there is no priest, or if the priest is managerially or legally incompetent. And if Fr Smith sets up a full lay structure, Fr Borwn can arrive next year and dismantle it all, and no-one can argue (except by leaving).
And we don't train our priests in health and safety law, or in employment law, or in planning law - all areas on which parishes have had to pay hefty fines. The priest moves on in disgrace; the laity pay the long-term bill.
The C of E system has its imperfections, but it's better than this.
The RC structure, of course, has to suit all places, all societies, all levels of ability and education among the laity; but we really could learn and adapt formally and quasi-legally in places where lay people are capable and effective in these ways.
Oh, dear God, no! Anything but the C of E committee system! But you do make some interesting points.
ReplyDeleteThe Sarum Rite was reintroduced by Mary I after the death of Edward VI. It was done away with definitively by Elizabeth I and hasn't been used since, notwithstading that a couple of play-clerical clowns have been indulging in self-indulgent travesties of it of recent.
ReplyDeleteAnglican Patrimony at the moment seems to consist of little more than a handful of CoE flying bishops affecting the garb of RC bishops... The farce never ends.
In all things, charity.
ReplyDeleteI am not against these things on an occasional basis for the cognoscenti, who would insist that they be done well. They would provide excellent focal points for conferences on appropriate topics, and I can easily see myself going along both for the liturgy and for the papers.
But the attempts to define a distinctive "Patrimony" by people hitherto as zealous for the Novus Ordo as anyone on earth grow, I fear, at once ever more comic and ever more tragic. The latest is Anglican hymnody, where they have a very good point, but which hardly justifies an Ordinariate.
It will thrive in certain other places, but the whole thing was never designed for this country, and it will rapidly come to grief here.