Hid In Thine Earthly Home

Arcane it may be, but a number of questions are raised by the strange case of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament's decision to donate one million pounds, more than half its annual income, to the Ordinariate that five of its six Trustees have joined.

First, there is, so to speak, the matter of who is therefore acceding to the Ordinariate. Time after time, I was howled down in various fora by cradle Catholics with no idea what they were talking about who had attended Evensong in some cathedral or some Oxbridge college and who imagined that that had ever been typical of anything other than itself. I told them then, and I stand entirely vindicated, not only that even Book of Common Prayer Evensongs were not and are not like that in parish churches, but that it bore absolutely no resemblance to the liturgy anywhere that might take any interest in the Ordinariate.

Exactly as I predicted, we are instead talking about people who have used nothing but the Modern Roman Rite for as long as there has been such a thing, which is as long as any of them below retirement age can possibly have been in public ministry at all. Exactly as I predicted, they have brought not a single building with them, so that they are now doing little or nothing more than offering another more-or-less traditional and ritualistic celebration of the Ordinary Form in a church which, having the sort of priest who is willing to host the Ordinariate, already has several such every Sunday. The Ordinariate has been given permission to pioneer the new, accurate translation of the Mass, but that puts them only a couple of months ahead of the rest of us. And, again, it has nothing to do with any "Anglican patrimony".

I might add that half of the Church of England's church buildings were erected in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mostly under the influence of the Oxford Movement as it coincided with industrialisation and urbanisation (and also, therefore, with the Catholic Revival), so that the Forward in Faith constituency is disproportionately concentrated in them. Such goings on are practically unheard of in the Medieval churches of Midsomer, Emmerdale or Ambridge, although that is not necessarily true of a certain resistance to the ordination of women.

Exactly as I predicted, not a single entire, or anything like entire, parish community has signed up. Fifty per cent figures are very occasionally approached, but even those are altogether exceptional. In many places, there is profound disquiet that incumbents, churchwardens and others have been able to clear off without making any transitional arrangements whatever. Note that clergy then filling in proceed to conduct those parishes' first services out of Anglican books in living memory, or possibly ever.

Exactly as I predicted, the number of clergy - fully 61 - is roughly one eighth of the extravagant figures proclaimed in the period immediately after the Apostolic Constitution. A million pounds for what, precisely? Exactly as I predicted, the Traditional Anglican Communion, which actually sought and negotiated the Apostolic Constitution, and which might genuinely have brought benefit through it, has been written out of the script. And exactly as I predicted, there is a heavy concentration in the South East, where Anglo-Catholicism has, to put it politely, a certain ambiance, rather accounting for the attitude of the Ordinariate's noisiest media enthusiast. The decidedly more wholesome manifestations in parts further North and West are strikingly conspicuous by their absence.

And yet, and yet, and yet...

If the CBS is to be the Ordinariate's benefactor, then the fact that its liturgical life is simply the more ritualistic and traditional aspect of our own would only make easier, both the integration of any Ordinariate communities here in the Hexham and Newcastle Diocese into our superb Association of the Eucharist, but also the entire Ordinariate's participation in the urgently needed new Crusade of Eucharistic Adoration, aimed primarily, though not exclusively, at boys and men from about the beginning of secondary school upwards. That Crusade would have seven Aims.

First, the conversion of the whole world to the Catholic Faith, including the reunion of all Christians with the Petrine See of Rome. Secondly, the continual increase of vocations of men to the Priesthood and Diaconate, and of both sexes to the Religious Life. Thirdly, due reverence and solemnity in the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, and above all in the celebration of the Holy Mass, including in respect of the reception of Holy Communion. Fourthly, the defence of the sanctity of each individual human life from the point of fertilisation to the point of natural death. Fifthly, the eradication of all sins of unchastity as defined by the Roman Magisterium. Sixthly, justice and peace through the ever-wider and ever-deeper appreciation and implementation of the Church's Teaching. And seventhly, the Holy Father's intentions.

As a minimum, participants would commit themselves to morning and evening prayer (at least ideally, the Divine Office), to weekly Communion, to a weekly Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament for the above intentions, to monthly Confession, and to annual retreat. There need be little or no central organisation, and thus little or no cost. However, a Eucharistic Congress could more than usefully be held every three years, or possibly even more frequently than that.