Over at the English Catholic, we have grown tired of the hear no evil, see no evil mode and we will be publishing candid observations from people who are seeing things on the ground.
Here is an except from a Church of England priest with no canonical irregularities who was at first delighted at the Apostotlic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus but now highly disenchanted. Can't say I don't share some of his disillusionment on this side of the pond.
He writes, (my emphases):
Shock 3 – well not a shock exactly but the slow and reluctant realization – is, that “patrimony” is going to be what certain persons known and unknown decide it is, on our behalf. As you say, for us there is nothing to discuss. Our very own spiritual and even social inheritance is going to be filleted and served up by people some of whom have little taste for or knowledge of the ingredients they are handling. Two topical examples, in the liturgical category. Any continuing traditional Anglican group worth the name, whether in communion with Rome or not, must have at least the option to use the BCP in some form and be able to augment it in customary ways. That is a minimal requirement. The straightforward and obvious thing would be to say, Carry on using the the BCP or English Missal, we can perhaps tinker with them later; otherwise you have the Roman rites at your disposal, for those cloth-eared enough to want them, and we can add a pre-Reformation English rite in Latin and/or English. (That last needn’t take long, because the texts are available now.) Let a hundred flowers bloom. Well, ha ha! (Alan Bennett – I think – compared a liturgist revising the BCP to an ape taking a wristwatch to pieces.)
Simile modo (translated so cleverly in their new missal as “in a similar way”) it seems clear that the AV will not be permitted, because of inaccuracies. What inaccuracies? Let them give us a list and we shall calculate how much harm those inaccuracies have done to us down the ages. (Would the harm be as great as that done by unrelenting ugliness?) Even an inaccurate text can be sanctified through use, just as an inauthentic icon can be a channel of grace. The very inaccuracy itself can become a sanctified alternative. To decline to authorize (in other words to forbid the use of) our Bible is to set limits to the working of the Holy Ghost. I heard at second hand that Andrew Burnham was asked the obvious question, “Can’t we just continue with our old missals”, to which he replied, “No, because that would legalize the AV through the back door“. This he spake (presumably) not of himself, but being high priest that year. What are these people frightened of? Hunwicke once said on his blog that he feared the ordinariate would turn out to be a “well policed” institution; I expect that rash expression was duly noted.
From the very start the priests actually in the ordinariate have uttered either nothing or cries of joy. (None of them has publicly protested against the treatment of Hunwicke, though that would be partly out of a fear of doing him more damage.) Outsiders have been trying to find out what they think, what they do (about their daily office, for instance), what is the ordinariate really like (one Prayer Book Catholic who joined did actually say curtly, in a tone that firmly discouraged further enquiry, “Different ethos”); but all the public discussion – futile, as you point out – is among outsiders.All the news is good news, as in the relentless Church Times or the old Pravda.
In short, I don’t think I could tolerate a regime that does such things or has such an effect on freethinking people. It is not just that it does them, but that they are part of its character. The modern management of the C of E is characterized by a fear and loathing of independent thought or decision-taking or ownership of property. Dioceses are becoming more centralized, even as the talk is all of local responsibility. The old mediaeval notion of the distribution of powers, remnants of which survive even now in our systems of patronage and parochial organization, is perceived as a great enemy; and of course, in the RC Church it has been entirely got rid of, as it seems to my outsider’s point of view. The corollary of this is that the church becomes dependent and infantilized, waiting, like a Methodist congregation, to be told what to do. What I dislike in the C of E the RC Church in England possesses in spades.
Aidan Nichols was one who really raised my hopes (and the Pope was another!), but perhaps those hopes were always fantastic. (I wonder if Nichols is disappointed.) The English ordinariate has no money, no property, only a tiny number of lay members, and little affection for its own past. It must do as it is told, and its leaders love to have it so; they have been garlanded with foreign titles that can only emphasize discontinuity; I was there when the scrolls from Rome were presented to the “monsignori”, and the ceremony and applause reminded me of the primary school assemblies I attended as a governor, when swimming certificates were handed out, and everybody was happy to see the children’s achievements being “celebrated”, to see them being made to feel good about themselves.
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