Out Of The Ordinariate

To Saint Chad's College, Durham's Advent Procession last night, by kind invitation of the College Officers and Fellows. The old place is on very good form. But the word on the Anglo-Catholic street is that the Ordinariate proposal is ridiculous.

Just as the worst liturgical abuses on this side of the Tiber are mostly in London or its orbit and are dying out even there, so the most exotic aspects of Forward in Faith are mostly in London or its orbit and are dying out even there. There is a more than a happy medium to be struck by clergy who come over having used the Modern Roman Rite tastefully, reverently and sensibly for decades, in many cases all their lives.

Parishes the length and breadth of the land are crying out for such priests. Should the men who could meet that need revert to, or adopt for the first time, the full English Missal flora and fauna of 1950s Anglo-Papalism? That is as absurd to them as it is to me. The provision for the Latin Rite ordination of married convert clergy goes all the way back to Pius XII.

As for being aimed at the Traditional Anglican Communion, again the views of the Anglo-Catholic mainstream are in line with those of many of the rest of us. If that body really is active in 66 countries, then in which 66 countries, exactly? If it really does have hundreds of thousands of faithful, then who are they, and where are they?

This whole thing may be playing well in London, at Oxford and on the South Coast. But in all parts North (and, no doubt, West), it is being dismissed as an irrelevance and an absurdity.

All in all, it was heartening stuff. "If I were going to become a Roman Catholic, then I would just get on and do it", and, even better, "If you are going to do it, then you should do it properly, and become part of a normal Roman diocese and parish". Quite.