Fr. Bartus and his fellow contributors will focus on issues concerning the idea of the Anglican Patrimony rather than the nuts and bolts of the Ordinariate or the day-to-day news of its development. To date, there have been articles on ascetical theology, the Divine Office, the English Missal, and Anglo-Catholics and the folded chasuble. You will also find videos, book reviews, and some great photography.

So far the site is proving that opinions on the boundaries of the patrimony are as strong or even stronger than those on the interpretation of the Apostolic Constitution. They are certainly no less important since they touch on issues of core identity for those considering a future in the Catholic Church.

Visit Anglican Patrimony.

Howard & Jane relaxing

For some years now we have lured Fr. Howard Levett away from Holborn in the thick of London to visit us in Hampshire. The attraction, besides Jane's cooking, has been the New Forest Show.  This annual three-day event caters for everyone: the great and the good go to the Members' Enclosure, guarded by uniformed bouncers.

Members Only

For once, this has little to do with ecclesiastical politics, though you might say it is a bit of our patrimony.  You can hardly get more old English than a country show on the South Coast.  The local brewery, Ringwood, is a prominent sponsor, so naturally Fr. Howard and I give them our support.

An expert Judge

Supporting the Sponsors

The high-spot, though, for Fr. H is the performance by the New Forest Plonkers.  This country music outfit (mostly gents of a certain age) performs old Acker Bilk numbers, complete with tea-chest Bass and audience participation on various banged and shaken instruments.  The words of many of the songs are not fit for repeating on a family blog, but it is immensely good-humoured, and this year it ensured that Fr. Howard was distracted from his forthcoming move.

New Forest Plonkers

He has celebrated his last Sunday at St Alban's Holborn, and is due to take up a post as Anglican Chaplain in Venice in the Autumn.  So, if you know a good priest wanting an A, B and C parish in London, in the care of the Bishop of Fulham, watch out for the advertisement.

Judging Ring

Meanwhile enjoy a few pictures from this sunny summer's day in the New Forest (so called because it was new when the King set it aside for himself in . . . I think . . . the eleventh century.)

Hawk & Handler

Old England

Another senior Church of England cleric [at Synod] who did not want to be named, told me he believed that those who turned to Rome would see their Anglican traditions diluted. He said that a lot of people would laugh at the idea of a distinctly Anglican body within the Roman Catholic Church, adding “Many of them have been using Catholic rites (illegally) anyway – so I would ask exactly what authentically Anglican aspects will they be taking with them. The only thing authentically Anglican would be their wives.”

Marching Orders by Sam Adams, 17 July 2010

Well, this rather gets to the heart of things, doesn’t it? Here in the (Roman) Catholic Church over recent months we have been becoming far more familiar with things Anglican than in the past. ‘More Roman than Rome’ has been a long-standing joke on both sides of the Tiber, and we have been at turns amused, bemused and occasionally irritated at Anglo-Catholic practice which appeared to ape us and yet, somehow, not quite ‘get it’.

I am well aware that the situation is different in other parts of the world, but here in England we, too, are left wondering what is going to be the practical difference between St Charles the Martyr Ordinariate parish and Our Lady of the Anguished Expression Roman-use parish. Both are probably going to use the Roman Rite; the only external difference is likely to be that St Charles may use the English Hymnal, whereas Our Lady’s will use Laudate and sometimes use guitars and things. We, too, wonder whether the only real difference is going to be Mrs Priest (and we have quite a lot of priests’ wives already).

I suspect that it is going to be necessary for those who join the Ordinariates in the British Isles, ironically, to be quite a lot more Anglican than they are now. And, even more ironically, to be more Anglican (in the right sense) than the Church of England they are leaving behind. A friend of mine, who would identify with the Anglo-Catholic movement commented to me the other day that at his (mainstream, not Anglo-Catholic) theological college, ‘Anglicanism’ was studied very little indeed. The ‘divines’ were never mentioned, for instance. The strange thing is that just as we are asking what ‘Patrimony’ is, there is no clear answer because the Church of England no longer sees itself as having any particular patrimony but only ongoing revelation of new and different truths (such as the 'truth' that women should be ordained).

The person who seems to understand this most clearly is the estimable Fr Hunwicke. I asked some time ago about the identity of the patrimony, and I have got the clearest answers from his blog, though I think his approach is not as complete as it could (and possibly should) be. He is most fond of the pre-Reformation period (which I would be reluctant to concede as specifically Anglican patrimony; this stuff is surely shared between us) and, quite rightly, the twentieth century, especially as found in the work of Dom Gregory Dix and Canon Eric Mascall, surely two of the most towering scholars of the century in any communion.

The writers in both these periods, of course, were keen to identify themselves as Catholic in one way or another. But the Anglican Patrimony necessarily also involves the writings of some who would be more reluctant to adopt a specifically Catholic label. One does not have to accept the stuff that is obviously contrary to the faith, but simply to be aware of it, while sucking the nectar still to be found there, and which may provide a real source of nourishment not just for the ordinariates, but for the whole Catholic Church in time. The Syrian Catholic Church owes a great deal to the thought of Babai the Great, who lived and died out of communion, but was in a real sense the father of the group of churches inaccurately but commonly called Nestorian. There is no reason why Ken, Hooker, Lawes, Nicholas Ferrar and even Cranmer should not continue to be studied appreciatively within the safe context of the Ordinariates; once one’s feet are on the Rock, one can see all sorts of good things within them; securus iudicat orbis terrarum. All one needs is good and erudite guidance to see the good and avoid the pitfalls.

The irony of this is that in a sense, the ordinariates, rather than being more Roman than Rome, would become more Anglican than Anglicans. They would preserve the very thing that Anglicanism would appear to be casting off; its own patrimony. I cannot imagine that average seminary training in the Ordinariates would be shorter than four or five years; during this period, a major course for the seminarians will need to be the Patrimony. What has, in a sense, been despised as non-Catholic by Anglo-Catholics until now needs to be brought in from the cold, to find a new home and context. After all, it went to build up the platform upon which the Anglo-Catholic movement stands.

In this way, Anglicanism, as a true school within the Western Rite would be secured for future generations in a way that it is very unlikely to be within the Church of England, the Church in Wales, or the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Ironic, eh?

As a Baptist, I came upon one church after another that had written its own statement of faith. Each one had a different phrase or point that they felt was essential that the others did not have. I, myself, had wanted some kind of "confession of faith" that was more broadly based. I sought after something that would have some historicity to it; I liked reading the Church Fathers, and I earnestly longed to be able to say, "our confession was first written hundreds of years ago" (to me that felt like it would be ancient). Eventually, I found the London Baptist Confession of 1689 and thought I had seen the shekinah glory. From there, the transition was quite easy to the Westminster Confession of Faith (the confession written by Presbyterians in 1647). The two were very similar and that meant there was little that was new. Though I had a few "exceptions" over issues that I was unconvinced about (I never believed the Pope was the Antichrist) I stayed with that as "my" confession for many years.

When I joined the Reformed Episcopal Church some of the priests referred to themselves as "Presbyterians with a Prayer Book" so that made the move into a logical next step in my spiritual journey. That meant the Thirty-Nine Articles. The substance of the Articles was not terribly different than what I was used to in Reformed Presbyterian circles. I read them, studied them, discussed them, wrote articles on them, and bought a number of books that gave deeply specific exegesis.

At this point, I became acutely aware of something that disturbed me. Whereas in Protestant Evangelical circles there were numerous opinions as to what each statement of the confessions exactly meant, they each believed that there really had to be only one true opinion. In all these Anglican commentaries, I was finding a resistance to "over-defining" and something of a joy in being non-specific. I even had one priest tell me that the "unofficial mascot" of Anglicanism was the duck-billed platypus; because he was so hard to narrow down and define, and "Anglicans like it that way". About the same time, I was at a synod meeting and listened to a debate over the particulars of one statement in the diocesan constitution. The first comment was, "can we be more clear and define exactly what it means for the priest to ensure 'reverent music' in the liturgy?" The response was, "no, most of us prefer things less specific, that is what it means to be Anglican after all."

Then I picked up a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and I started to read. By comparison with the Confessions I once held to, or the Articles that (I thought) I held to, this was massive. I even once asked myself if anyone could really be sure about that much? As I read, I found a wealth of information and specific definitions that was exactly what I had been looking for all my life. Yes, this "statement of faith" had only been written a few years before, but its content was the same as what the Church held to centuries before any Protestant Confession came on the scene. This was definitive truth that was not a resistance to clarity. With an allowance for variation in non-essentials, it was an encouragement to faithfulness in the essentials. Things that were left vague in the Anglican denomination I was a part of (artificial contraception, tradition, ecclesiastical authority, etc.), were now a "given", and with the authority of the historic Church behind it. I found such joy in digesting these words, that I began to find that the "via media" of Anglicanism was not much different than the "everyone interprets for himself" that I came across so often in Protestantism.

If being "non-specific" in the arena of theology and practice really is a part of the Anglican Patrimony, then that is something we should not try to maintain in the Ordinariates. Though there are Anglicans who are pleased with the specificity of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there are others who prefer things left open and vague; apparently so that each priest can "choose for himself" and not have any rules to tie him down. This may work fine when everyone agrees on the historic faith, but when the historic faith is jettisoned (as in the TEC) chaos will soon follow. If we let each man decide for himself we are slowly, but surely, led into positions that our forefathers would have gagged at. The "undefined Anglican" way can easily be confused with being gracious towards our brethren and thus giving them the benefit of the doubt in those non-essential areas where we may not see eye to eye. The latter practice is a good thing, and it shows brotherly love and the biblical principle of treating others as better than ourselves. Yet, the desire to maintain a lack of clarity so that we can be free of restrictions is a dangerous thing. The sinfulness of our hearts cannot be trusted, and the latitude that comes with being "undefined" can only lead to another disaster like The Episcopal Church. When we enter the Ordinariate, let us rejoice in the specifics; thank the Magisterium for their teaching; and give praise to God that we have a clear direction to go in and a definition of who we are and how we are to live.

The customary definition of patrimony is “something inherited from one’s ancestors.” As we think about our own Anglican patrimony, quite rightly we consider such things as liturgy and language, music, aspects of architecture, things done “decently and in order.” Many things are defined and much is undefined, but it’s all unmistakably Anglican. However, we know also that “patrimony” isn’t static. For instance, we have parochial patrimonies which are reflected in particular churchmanship, treasured vestments, an honored tradition of music, pastoral practices with which we identify. But unless a parish is dead, its patrimony continues to grow and develop. It stands on what came before, certainly, but that which we hand on to subsequent generations isn’t exactly the same as what we received from our ancestors.

The Ordinariates will be moving into almost-uncharted waters. I say “almost-uncharted” because a few of us have had the opportunity to scout on ahead, and are already experiencing the Anglican patrimony as a living part of the Latin Rite. We’re finding there’s a richness which has developed as we’ve unpacked precious Anglican treasures in our new home. It’s rather like when my wife uses my great-grandmother’s recipe for plum pudding, and I discover it tastes even better.

This realization of a “developing patrimony” struck me the other day when I was offering one of the early weekday Masses. Of the forty-five or fifty people present, I don’t think any of them had ever attended an Episcopal or Anglican church. Almost all of them have belonged only to this parish – either for their whole lives, or from the time they were children. For them, the Collect for Purity is simply a Catholic prayer said at the beginning of the Mass; the Comfortable Words are part of a Catholic penitential rite; the Prayer of Humble Access is what Catholics say before receiving Holy Communion. They don't think of our liturgy as coming from “someplace else.” It’s just a Catholic liturgy. Of course, they've attended other Catholic parishes. They know our liturgy is different, and that our parish has a particular “feel.” But they have embraced and experienced our Anglican patrimony exclusively as Catholics, and in that way these second-generation Anglican Use Catholics probably have a clearer understanding of the patrimony being a living and developing patrimony, than do we who are first-generation converts. They haven’t had to attempt to live as Catholics outside the communion of the Catholic Church, and they’ve never gone through the mental gymnastics we had to endure, trying to put a Catholic spin on things, when much of the evidence around us was contrary to what we believed about ourselves.

The little experiment that is the Anglican Use, local though it is, gives a glimpse of the future, because the Ordinariates will be doing all this on a grand scale – oh, probably not grand at the beginning, but when second-generation Ordinariate Catholics become the majority of our members, there will be a much deeper understanding of our Anglican patrimony, because it will have been experienced in the context of full communion with the Holy See.

Most of those heading toward an Ordinariate think in terms of what they'll be able to bring with them, and that's important. Our Lord said, “Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost,” and that applies to the various elements of our patrimony which come from our past. But the Lord also said, “Behold, I make all things new,” and that, too, applies to our patrimony. Within the Ordinariates, all the familiar things we love will be made new, for a new generation of Catholics. Our past is building the future.

* * *

How would you define an Anglo-Catholic?

The Church of England contains many varieties of Christians. Those who are nearer to the Catholic understanding of Scripture, Tradition and the Church, and who express this in their language (speaking, for instance, of the Altar, rather than the Holy Table) and their practice (celebrating the Eucharist regularly and frequently, in many churches not simply every week, but every day) would be called ‘Anglo-Catholic’.

You have been an Anglican bishop for the past fifteen years. What has been your role as a ‘flying bishop’?

In 1992 the central Council of our Church, the General Synod, decided that women might be ordained to the priesthood. In doing so it also said that those who did not accept this innovation must have provision made for them to enable them to continue as faithful Anglicans. For this purpose each Archbishop (there are two in England) consecrated one or two bishops, themselves opposed to women’s ordination, to minister to individuals and congregations who voted to ask for such extra provision. They were suffragans of the Archbishops, and so known as Provincial Episcopal Visitors (PEV’s) or, colloquially, ‘flying bishops’. My remit, for six years from 1995-2001, was to travel the length and breadth of the Eastern half of the Canterbury Province. I was consecrated to the See of Richborough – a title taken from the site where St Augustine set foot in England on his mission from Pope Gregory. On my retirement I became simply a super-numerary and honorary bishop in the diocese where I live, Winchester. My successor as Bishop of Richborough is Bishop Keith Newton.

Did the creation by Pope Benedict XVI of new Personal Ordinariates for Anglicans who wish to enter full communion with the Catholic Church come as a surprise for you?

The Holy Father’s initiative, directed at Groups of Anglicans, came as a great and very welcome surprise.

Many people ask “why now?” If Anglo-Catholics wish to seek communion with the See of Rome, why have they waited until now? Is it just a matter of women bishops or something deeper?

Many of us have believed that the Church of England was moving, for the past century at least, in an ever more catholic direction. With the international conversations between the Anglican Communion and Rome (the ARCIC Conversations) we believed and hoped there would be corporate reunion for us in our lifetime. Since the ordination of women to the priesthood, and now the likelihood of their consecration as bishops, that has faded as an impossible dream.

What are the main elements of the Anglican Patrimony you would like the Ordinariates to preserve?

Our fathers in the faith spoke of “reserve” in matters of faith. That is, a sort of quiet and simple spirit in the best of Anglican use. It has seemed to me a religious voice, a tone, in keeping with our national character. The language of our Prayer Book which introduced the vernacular into our worship five centuries ago seems to catch something of this plain, undemonstrative but deeply felt religious sensibility. But in truth, I think we cannot discover our Patrimony until we see it in a completely Catholic context.

Do you expect the Anglican Ordinariates to attract many people in England and Wales? Will whole parishes take the plunge?

It is difficult at present to see how it will be possible for entire parishes to join the Ordinariate, simply because the Church of England is very territorial, and will not readily part with, for instance, its buildings. For all that, there are several priests I know who are preparing their congregations, and who will take the first opportunity of belonging whether they can retain their parish churches or not.

Do you believe some Anglican Bishops will enter the Ordinariates? Are you personally planning to avail yourself of this opportunity?

Certainly I know of several Bishops who are exploring the possibility, as I am myself. I can see no other future for catholics in the Church of England than this.

Would you be willing to seek ordination in the Roman Catholic Church? Would you consider ordination or whatever your role is in the Ordinariate a denial of your pastoral work in the Anglican Communion or rather a culmination of that work?

Because the Holy Father’s appeal is to Groups of Anglicans, I believe my personal future is unimportant compared with what is offered to us all. If it is decided that my ministry can continue, and that I may be ordained a Priest in the Catholic Church, then I should be delighted – but I should join the Ordinariate unconditionally, and let others decide whether there might still be something for me to undertake. I am sure that the simple fact of joining the Ordinariate will be the crown and completion of my ministry up to this point.

What are the main difficulties you envisage in this adventure, both for yourself and for most Anglo-Catholics? Will the need to accept the faith of the Roman Catholic Church as proclaimed by the Catechism be an obstacle for many Anglo-Catholics?

I think for some Anglicans there are stumbling blocks within the Catechism. We have been separated from the Catholic mainstream for five hundred years, and there have been developments in doctrine with which we are unfamiliar. As a frequent visitor to Fatima, I have no difficulty with the Marian dogmas. There was a time when I found it hard to accept the Immaculate Conception (for I did not properly understand it) and Papal Infallibility. Others may still find these to be difficulties for them – I do not. And I hope and believe the Church will be very understanding and patient in explaining these matters. Far more important for me is the readiness of the Holy Father to accept and ordain men who have been married Anglican clergy. My wife has been a great help and adornment to my ministry, and I am glad there is the possibility that, should I be ordained a Catholic priest, this would continue.

Some members of the Ordinariates will come from the Anglican Communion, while others will come from different groups, such as the Traditional Anglican Communion, or even from Anglican Use parishes? Do you think that diversity will be a problem?

I believe that Anglicans in North America and elsewhere have been in such difficult situations that for them actual schism from the Anglican Communion has been necessary. I know several such priests and parishes, and have no doubt that we shall learn from one another and come to value one another. One of my greatest friends is a Priest of the Anglican Use in Texas, and I think he and I have more in common than I do with most of those in England who call themselves members of our church.

Do the Anglican Ordinariates have a future in the Catholic Church? How do you envisage them in, say, one hundred years?

I believe the Catholic Church is very patient; and I am sure she will want to learn from this experiment. I hope, personally, that the experience of a married priesthood might at some future date enable the Church to recognise that it is possible to have a double vocation, to the priesthood and to holy matrimony. I am greatly impressed by the way the Holy Father has introduced Anglicanorum Coetibus, making it clear that this is not a short-term solution to present-day problems, but a generous open offer for many years, perhaps centuries, to come. So who knows, it may be that eventually the Church of England will indeed return to her roots and become part of the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church which she has always claimed to be.

How will the leaving (maybe we might say expelling) of Anglo-Catholics affect the Anglican Communion? Would it mean the end of its claim to be a branch of the Catholic Church? Do you expect the Anglican Communion to change much in the following years or decades?

It seems to me we are witnessing the break-up of the Anglican Communion – which was always a rather anomalous fruit of Empire. Gradually individual national churches will, I think, either join the Catholic Church, or dwindle into some amorphous protestant body, incapable of making any real witness to society.

What will the Roman Catholic Church gain by the ‘coming home’ of the Anglo-Catholics?

I hope we shall all gain enormously from this home-coming; it will be a reunion of friends, to replace the Parting of Friends of which Newman spoke.

How is Card. Newman regarded by Anglo-Catholics? Will you attend his beatification in September? Would you like to see him as one of the patron saints of the Ordinariates?

I believe John Henry Cardinal Newman has had a hand in what is happening in England today. Many of us are very glad to have him as a fellow-countryman. If I were permitted to be at his beatification I can think of no greater honour; and whether or not he is named as a patron of the Ordinariates, I am sure we should all be seeking his prayers at this wonderful time.

Bride & Groom

Driving to Birmingham early this morning, the 'Sunday' programme announced what I had predicted; that the 'compromise' by the two Archbishops was defeated by the lady priests and their running dogs.  So what!  It was never going to give Catholic-minded Anglicans what they needed, a secure future; so far better that it should have been defeated.  Meanwhile, there are more important things to concern us.

In the Antique Jag

First, there was a wedding; not any old wedding, but the marriage of the daughter of our one-time baby-sitter to her Marc.  Marc and Amy met in the Police force — the Met, no less, the Metropolitan Police force of London (think NYPD with better headgear).  I had solemnised the marriage of Amy's parents in my Surrey parish twenty-nine years ago, and one of the guests told me my sermon was the same this time round!  Her memory is better than mine.  So you might like the pictures above from the wedding.

Clergy & Servers

Then, foolishly, I had committed myself to a Patronal Festival in Birmingham — the Centenary Mass at St Benedict's, Small Heath.  It is a part of the City which has been all-but taken over by Muslim immigrants, so the witness of the church there is vitally important.

The neighbouring parish, which was flourishing under its former Vicar, has been left without a priest for eighteen months.  No one has responded to the advertisements for a new Vicar.

Vicar's Wife with Century-old House and Church

Where is that fighting spirit which once sent young Anglican Catholics into the most difficult and dangerous parts of the country?  Many of the churches we now think of as shrines began their lives as slum mission parishes.  Today, it seems clergy prefer safe billets, preferably somewhere on the London tube system.

Over the Vicarage Fence; Mosque under Construction

Fr Von Malaise and his wife Kirsty occupy a forbidding great house which they have, by hard work and dogged determination, turned into a lovely home.  The church, which five years ago was nothing but leaks and decay, is now a vibrant and lovely place again.  Today, all the stops were pulled out (quite literally!) and to add to them we had young trumpeters from the Birmingham Conservatoire.  I have never before had a fanfare as I ascended the pulpit steps!

Former Incumbent, Now a Catholic Priest, & Some of the Faithful

It was quite like old flying-bishop times, rising at six to head north this morning and returning down the motorway this afternoon only to have to contend with traffic coming away from the British Grand Prix.  What with that and Spain winning the World Cup (soccer, for those who think football is quite a different game), the fulminations of General Synod have taken a very small part in the news today.

The Beauty of Holiness

An Immense and Holy Place

Just as it should be.  But good that the fig-leaf has been removed, and the once-great Church of England is revealed as the mean-minded sham she has become.

Over the last few years my family has been excitedly discovering Catholic practices and expressions of faith. For them it is entirely new; for me, I have a vague recollection of some of these things. Sacramentals, feasts, fasts, the Baltimore Catechism, etc. Something as simple as not eating meat on Friday is a clear way of being willing to give up something for the sake of our Lord. While speaking with a friend recently, I was told that most Anglo-Catholics do not give a "hoot" about such practices. I hope he is mistaken on this.

As I talk with the local Catholic priest, it speaks volumes to display our willingness to practice certain Catholic traditions that most Catholics do not pay any attention to. No, we should not be trying to "one up" them, and come across as being "more Catholic than the Catholics" but we should be showing our willingness to be faithful to all things Catholic (especially those good practices which may not be necessary). An example may be helpful here. Children should never be thanked for obedience. It makes it seem as though their obedience to their parents is something they do as a favor (out of the kindness of their hearts). They should be commended and encouraged ("good job, son"), but never thanked. A "thanks" goes to something that is done unnecessarily (merely out of the desire to do something for the other person); thanks should be given when the child goes out of his way to show love on his own initiative.

It is these "extra special" acts of willing submission to simple practices like I am speaking of that shows to the world (and to God) that we enjoy following our Lord. So, if you had bacon for breakfast, or ham for lunch, or a steak for dinner today, you can still do something different next week. Most restaurants have "fish Friday" for that very reason. So plan ahead with your family; choose something different on the menu when you order; be willing to say "no thank you, I'm Catholic." Not with selfish pride, but with joy.

At 12 noon on Saturday 11 September 2010 a special Eucharist of Thanksgiving will be celebrated in St Katharine’s Church, Little Bardfield, Essex, to mark the centenary of the foundation in 1910 of the Brotherhood of St Paul, a theological college, by the rector, the Rev. Edward Mears. Mears (1864-1947) studied at The Queen’s College, Oxford. Following his graduation in 1887 he embarked upon a career as a schoolmaster, and was also ordained priest in 1900. He became rector of Little Bardfield in 1906 and remained for thirty-four years until his retirement in 1940.

With his educational background and experience, Mears conceived of the idea of opening an Anglican theological college along sound catholic lines for ordinands from poorer backgrounds. Study at a theological college in the early twentieth century was expensive and ordinands mostly had to find the fees themselves. Some of the religious orders sought to remedy this situation by inaugurating schemes to train ordinands from poor backgrounds. The theological colleges run by the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield and the Society of the Sacred Mission at Kelham are well known, but the Benedictines at Nashdom Abbey also prepared a number of men for the parish ministry between the wars.

Mears decided in 1910 to open a theological college in his parish to train men who might otherwise not have fulfilled their vocations, and which, in the words of one former student was run on a ‘shoe string.’ In his earlier life, Mears had undergone a dramatic spiritual awakening which left him with a warm affection for St Paul. He therefore called his college The Brotherhood of St Paul. Mears conceived of a brotherhood of men living in community in preparation for ordination, and constituted himself the first ‘warden’ of the Brotherhood. The ordinands were obliged upon their arrival at Little Bardfield to pledge obedience to the direction of the warden in regards to studies and general life of the community. At the conclusion of their training they were each released from this obedience.

The ordination course at Little Bardfield cost a total of twenty five guineas, though books were extra. The ordinands lodged with families in Great and Little Bardfield. During term time they were expected always to be dressed in a cassock, with a cross at the belt. Mears held four terms a year, with a week’s holiday at Christmas and a fortnight in the Summer. Ordinands aged under twenty-three studied for nine terms, those over twenty-three for eight. Each day began with the Eucharist in St Katharine’s. A large room at one end of Little Bardfield Rectory was used for lectures and examinations, which the ordinands nicknamed the ‘Room of Pain.’ Scholarly country clergy were recruited to assist with the lectures. Latin and Greek were taught to all ordinands from the beginning to enable them to read the New Testament in both languages. Special emphasis was laid on a thorough knowledge of the Bible. Seven separate courses were given covering the Old Testament in general, the Psalms, the Prophets, the Apocrypha, the Synoptic Gospels, the Fourth Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, the New Testament Epistles, and Revelation. A considerable portion of the New Testament was studied in Greek, whilst one book was studied in a Latin translation. Many ordinands were coached to university level.

Between 1910 and 1914 ordinands from the Brotherhood of St Paul were accepted for ordination like students from any other Church of England theological college. After 1914 it became difficult to find English bishops to accept them for ordination. Bishop Edgar Jacob of St Albans, whose diocese then covered Essex, was wary of giving official recognition to the Brotherhood of St Paul in its early days, for fear that it might fizzle out, but he held Mears’ work in high esteem. John Watts-Ditchfield, the first bishop of the new diocese of Chelmsford, created in 1914 to cover Essex, took rather a different view. Watts-Ditchfield was a severe and authoritarian low-churchman, who had no understanding or sympathy with catholic theology or spirituality. During the 1914-18 War, for example, Watts-Ditchfield famously pressurized the enclosed community of Anglican Cistercian nuns at Pleshey over their reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, and in the end they left his diocese and settled in Buckinghamshire. Watts-Ditchfield arrived unexpectedly at Little Bardfield Rectory one day in 1914 to confront Mears about his use of vestments and reservation of the Blessed Sacrament. An argument developed between the two men, and Mears ordered Watts-Ditchfield off the premises. Watts-Ditchfield never visited the parish again during his nine years as bishop of Chelmsford.

Mears’ reaction may have been counter-productive because bishops talk to one another and Watts-Ditchfield was unlikely to keep quiet about his reception in Little Bardfield and his apprehension of what went on there. It may not be coincidental that around this time ordinands from Little Bardfield began to find it difficult to get English bishops to ordain them and in consequence they sought ordination overseas at the hands of colonial bishops. The occasional Little Bardfield ordinand still managed to persuade an English bishop to ordain him during the 1920s and ‘30s, but mostly they went to Africa, Australia, Canada and the U.S.A. The Brotherhood was officially recognised as a theological college by a number of African dioceses. Interestingly, there seems to have been no shortage of ordinands willing to study with the Brotherhood of St Paul – there seems to have been around twenty ordinands in training per year between the wars – in the knowledge that they would have to go overseas at the end of their course. Nor does Mears appear to have experienced any difficulty placing his ordinands with colonial bishops, who would occasionally visit Little Bardfield seeking new curates for their dioceses, and would sometimes preach in St Katharine’s church.

Correspondence amongst the papers of Archbishops Lang and Fisher at Lambeth Palace show that some English bishops and clergy were worried that the training offered by the Brotherhood of St Paul may have been of uneven quality and thought that the library might have contained a wider selection of books. However, one former student of the Brotherhood of St Paul went on to become a bishop of Worcester, a second became a bishop in Canada, two were appointed to the ecclesiastical household of Queen Elizabeth II and one was elected the superior of the Society of St John the Evangelist in Canada, which would all seem to indicate that their priestly formation in Little Bardfield cannot have been too defective. A little over three hundred priests were trained for ordination by the Brotherhood of St Paul, the majority of whom served in parishes, on mission stations and as military chaplains during the Second World War. Following Mears’ retirement in 1940, the Brotherhood of St Paul moved to Barton in Yorkshire, where Canon S.C. Joad was the warden. In 1952 the Brotherhood moved first to Tottenhill, near King’s Lynn in Norfolk, and then to Great Snoring, near Walsingham. The unravelling of the British Empire, declining numbers of ordinands, and the failure of an attempt in the mid-1950s to secure official recognition from the Church of England, despite a generous report from the C.A.T.C.M. theological college inspectors who visited the Brotherhood, all contributed to its eventual demise. The Brotherhood of St Paul finally came to an end in the Spring of 1957, after an existence of forty-seven years.

Mears may have been something of an irascible character and probably had only limited resources at his disposal, but he was a gifted teacher with a love of the New Testament – he published a commentary on St John’s Gospel – and a devotion to the Anglican parochial ministry. His vision of using his educational skills, his house and his parish to enable young men from poor backgrounds to realize their vocations to ordination, at a time when the Church of England did not make it easy for them to do so, was a noble and generous one. It is said that a priest, knowingly or unknowingly, will affect the lives of thousands of people during the course of his ministry. Many people throughout the world, in consequence, must have been helped by clergy whose priestly formation took place in Little Bardfield.

Edward Mears’ vision and the vocations of the men whom he prepared for ordination will be remembered in a special Eucharist of Thanksgiving in St Katharine’s Church, Little Bardfield, at 12 noon on Saturday 11 September. The preacher will be Father Jeremy Sheehy, rector of Swinton and Pendlebury, and formerly principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford. The service will be celebrated as it would have been in 1910, with the Book of Common Prayer, enrichments such as the Benedictus and Agnus Dei, and propers sung to Gregorian chant by the Horatio Singers. We hope, in these difficult times, to say something celebratory about vocations, and to pray for priests in their ministry today. Although we are conducting the service as it would have been known to Edward Mears and his first ordinands, we hope that it will not be just a quaint liturgical reconstruction, but will rather strike a note of adoration and renewed commitment to Christ and his service.

Further details are available from: Father Robert Beaken, The Vicarage, Braintree Road, Great Bardfield, Essex, CM7 4RN. Telephone 01371 810267. E-mail Robert@webform.com

I'd love to see an audio archive developed on this site with instructional materials, like the ones on the Anglican Identity site, for those of us who are relatively new to Anglicanism and want to learn these things and do them well.

We have a number of children in our congregation and if they could listen at home to the Gloria or the Creed sung properly via the web or a CD at home, they could participate more and thus enjoy the mass more on Sundays.

I would also love it if we did more sung Mattins and Evensongs.  Without instruction and practice, people will forget how to do these things.

Anyone else have some good links to sites like this?

It was not my intention to discuss the Ordinariate as I travelled to Cornwall for the wedding of an old college friend.  And yet on three separate occasions that is precisely what happened as I was quizzed about it by various people intrigued as to what is going on.  This gave me a fascinating insight into what 'Joe public' might be thinking about the most recent and historic developments in the life of the church.  In every case I was speaking with well educated and well informed people — after all it was quite something that they had heard of the Ordinariate at all!

The first person I spoke with at length was an old friend from Cambridge days, now a man in his thirties.  A former chorister he is sympathetic to the Christian faith but no longer attends church regularly.  Having heard a whisper that I am considering a switch of identity he was most intrigued and quizzed me as to what this was all about.  As we talked I was surprised on two fronts; firstly by his genuine enthusiasm for the Ordinariate which struck him as being exciting, viable and much needed — he thus urged me to risk all and go for it!  Secondly I was surprised by his dismay regarding the state of the Church of England.  How he laments its demise since his days singing in the choir as a youth!  In his opinion it has become unbelievably wet, completely out of touch and is now a total embarrassment which can be seen in its inability to even state what it believes in with any certainty!  To press his point home he likened bishops today with low-grade labour backbenchers!

C of E take note: successful, intelligent young people do not want an overly feminised church pushing for secular notions of inclusivity; they want to see firm and clear leadership — a strength in which they can trust.  If the Ordinariate can demonstrate such leadership and vision it might just lead young men like this to return to the pews and rekindle the faith of their earlier days.

The second conversation I had was with a charming and well healed couple in their fifties.  The wife is a practising Roman Catholic and the husband an Anglican whose sympathy lies with the Roman Catholic Church.  Our conversation began when they quizzed me as to my use of biretta and title of ‘father’.  As we discussed the Ordinariate vision so this couple became genuinely excited.  The thought of a church in communion with Peter but which retained an authentic Anglican patrimony impressed the husband who saw it as a bridge to bring the family closer together in their worshipping life.  It also impressed the Roman Catholic wife who was delighted that the Pope was being so visionary and accommodating.  Once again this couple felt that the Church of England was in a terrible mess and quite understood the need for change.

My final conversation was with another couple this time in their thirties.  In this instance it was the husband who was Roman Catholic, though lapsed, whereas the wife had no church affiliation at all.  Here the tenor of debate changed and I was pushed onto the back foot by the wife not impressed by the Ordinariate at all!  She thought the Pope was a wicked man and that the church should be doing more to fight for inclusion of all.  Her main complaint was aimed at faith itself, however: who was God to judge her friends when she knew for a fact that they were decent people?!  As I gently asked if she had ever been in need of healing and forgiveness in any part of her life, explaining that I certainly was, she softened and I hope that her preconceptions might have changed a little in the course of our debate.  Her husband was more supportive but diplomatic enough to say little — it was not me he would crawl into bed with later! — a fact I am sure he is delighted about!

The interesting thing these various conversations demonstrate is that the current Church of England position is attractive to the very people who will never attend… those of no faith whose opinion is formed by the secular mantra of our day.  Whereas those sympathetic to Christian faith, the sort who are ripe for evangelistic outreach, are delighted to hear about the Ordinariate.  When it is formed it must therefore become a missionary enterprise — of that I am certain!  It must preach the faith boldly!  It must avoid pandering to societal opinion but cleave itself to the teaching of the Catechism.  It must be bold, courageous and clear!  And it must avoid the temptation to be inward looking as it seeks to call people to faith in Christ Jesus.  How my conversations heighten my sense of excitement; this Ordinariate might just spark a spiritual revival so desperately needed in our day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We need the prayers of St John Fisher and St Thomas More particularly today. May their prayers help the healing of the wounds which still divide us from one another, and the present moves towards the greater unity of Catholic Christians. We need their prayers to guide us home.

I found myself in agreement with most of what Fr. Rutler said, but I was a bit discomfited by his pessimistic assessment of contemporary Anglican liturgy.

As far as aesthetic patrimony goes, the typical Anglican forms of worship are no more elevated than the ordinary Catholic liturgy of our day, now happily under revision.

Setting aside the fact that he paints a rose-colored picture of the Roman Catholic liturgical landscape (which, admittedly, is slowly but assuredly being renewed), if Fr. Rutler's point of reference for Anglican liturgical forms is the current state of PECUSA, then this observation might well be reasonable, but it certainly does not take into account the generally quite dignified liturgical praxis of those Anglicans actually planning to avail themselves of the Holy Father's offer.  As Fr. Rutler's name has intriguingly — and quite unexpectedly — surfaced in conjunction with the anticipated personal ordinariate in the USA, I, for one, am eager to hear more from Fr. Rutler about his affinity with those of us who will soon be filling the ranks of the new jurisdiction.

* * *

The Present Importance of Newman's View of Anglicanism
Fr. George William Rutler

On my 60^th birthday, friends gave me a spiritual bouquet and, as there are a variety of spirits, they included a bottle of 1945 Armagnac.   When I open that bottle I shall be able to smell the liberation of Paris, but the question is: when should I open such a valuable thing?  James Anthony Froude recalled that “though (Newman) rarely drank wine, he was trusted to choose the vintages for the college cellar.”  While good souls have been sipping the wine of Newman all these years like sommeliers arguing over the taste, it is now time to drink it full.  For when Pope Benedict beatifies the great man, Deo volente, this year,  he will be telling the world that the vintage pressed long ago is full ready for general consumption.  Newman has been remaindered too often to the pantheon of beloved intellects whose poetic charm overcame the distractions of their religion, the same way temperamentally fragile revisionists played down Francis of Assisi as a mystical stigmatist, and turned him into an ecological birdbath ornament.

Newman was born in his day for today.  The Established Church of his youth, which seemed like a flagship of empire is now breaking on the shoals of reality, and what Newman proposed as a challenge to something mighty is now a call to rescue survivors.  Yet in any such calamity there are both flotsam and jetsam.  Pope Benedict’s decision on November 4 of 2009 to receive Anglicans in a canonical personal ordinariate, was a response to an appeal.  He is not rummaging for flotsam, those floating logs who will drift to any safe shore. The Pope welcomes a full profession of faith in the Catholic creeds and a rejection of all that the sectaries have said in their contradiction.  The jetsam are those who have been propelled by circumstance into a positive recognition that their old craft was not the Barque of Peter.  In the opening paragraph of the apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus,” the Holy Father says,  “The Apostolic See has responded favorably to such petitions.  Indeed, the successor of Peter, mandated by the Lord Jesus to guarantee the unity of the episcopate and to preside over and safeguard the universal communion of all the Churches, could not fail to make available the means necessary to bring this holy desire to realization.”

I may stand accused of mixing metaphors of wines and ships but sailors have never thought the two incompatible.  If it is time to break open the wine of Newman, it is not like drinking the last dregs on a sinking ship, for it is very like uncorking a noble vintage that has been waiting for a special celebration.  What Newman preached in his “Parting of Friends” at the time of his conversion, and what he wrote heart to heart in his “Apologia” and what he summed up in his “Biglietto Address” have all found their moment now.

It is important to remember that Newman was classically trained. It is difficult for us to recreate a semblance of what that means in our coarsened culture, whose leaders are so bereft of those articles of civility and wisdom which were the common language of types diverse as Cicero and Lord Chesterton and Harry Truman.  Newman’s classical acuteness enabled him to tell the real thing from a sham. The logician Richard Whately said he had never known such a clear thinker.  The Established Church of his youth was a mixture of spiritual aridity and institutional confidence, well expressed by Mr. Thwackum in Henry Fielding’s “Tom Jones” who says: “When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.”  We can go back earlier.  One of the most splendid, if also most obtuse, lines ever uttered about churchmanship, was that of the seventeenth century Anglican Bishop of Ely, Simon Patrick, who praised “that virtuous mediocrity which our Church observes between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.”  Newman, though, knew that classical mediocrity is not what fuzzy thinkers today think it to mean when they address the religious controversies of our time in the turgid diction of Delphic oracles.  Horace praised the man who loved well the Golden Mean, "Auream quisquis mediocritatem diligit."  It was golden, not because it was a compromise between truth and falsehood, but because it was like a laser beam pointing the way between every mistake.  Anglicanism, by force of political circumstance and religious confusion, had settled on a wrong idea of the Golden Mean as a “via media” of a bit of this and a bit of that, reducing the apophatic spirituality of Byzantium to polite ambiguity.  Newman gave a series of lectures between 1830 and 1841 in defense of Anglicanism’s via media as spiritually prudent and the work of divine grace, but the scandal of the Jerusalem bishopric in 1841, which laid aside religious differences between Anglicans and Lutherans for the sake of practicality, would open Newman’s eyes to the fact that the true “via media” is a declaration of precision and not vagueness.  So he says, “Take England, with many high virtues, and yet a low Catholicism.  It seems to me that John Bull is a spirit neither of heaven nor hell . . . Has not the Christian Church, in its parts, surrendered itself to one or other of these simulations of the truth? . . . How are we to avoid Scylla and Charybdis and go straight on to the very image of Christ?"

This subjective substitute for the classical Golden Mean is not modern but post-modern, since the philosophical quality of our culture has tumbled from those parapets upon which wrong but well-trained thinkers could declare that the only certitude is that nothing is certain.  Today, what Pope Benedict has tagged “the dictatorship of relativism” is seen in a blithe rejection of Christian essentials by vestigial Anglicanism, not because they are hard to believe but because they were never learned.  So let us uncork the wine of Newman, for what he preached while still an Anglican has now found its target:

“Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it.  Whether this very Apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we cannot know; but at any rate this Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death.  Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!  Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?  No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you civil liberty; he promises you equality; he promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.  This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you; he tempts you to rail against your rulers and superiors; he does so himself, and induces you to imitate him; or he promises you illumination, —he offers you knowledge, science, philosophy, enlargement of mind.  He scoffs at times gone by; he scoffs at every institution which reveres them.  He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his.”

Pope Benedict XVI has done a stunning thing in providing such an ecclesial structure as described in the Apostolic Constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus.”  The dilemma of Anglicans maintaining  a firm if incomplete belief in the supernatural character of the apostolic Church, when contradicted by post-modern forces who would reduce the creedal formulas to impressions of reality, is a cultural icon of the spiritual combat between virtue and egoism which defines the crisis of our age.  While only the Pope knows what he is doing, I suspect that this Constitution is a shot fired over the bow of secular cynicism which is entwining its fingers with those of the men and women of our generation, to make us one with the enemy of our Creator.

Consider many Catholics have reduced sacred worship to a suburban expression of goodwill.  It is evidence of the creeping banality by which the Prince of Lies would seduce Holy Church herself, though he is bound to fail, with that same mediocrity which repulsed Newman, for he knew that banality is indeed evil, and possibly crueler than pre-Christian paganism which danced its sensuality in Arcadian groves without feeling a post-Christian need to declare perversity a sacrament.

As late as 1835,  ten years before his conversion, Newman associated the Anti-Christ with the Papacy and returned from his first visit to Rome in 1833 calling Catholicism “polytheistic, degrading and idolatrous.”  Gradual experience of alternatives to Catholicism, however, especially the skepticism of the Broad Church Anglicanism of his coterie, trimmed his judgment: “We are much disposed to question whether any tests can … prove that the Roman communion is the Synagogue of Satan.”  His friendly battles in Oxford with his mentor, Richard Whately, whom I have mentioned, professor of political economy (battles which he said continued when he was starting the Catholic University in Dublin where Whately had become Anglican Archbishop), moved him to reflect more on the Catholic claims.  Whately was a fair minded man who advocated civil rights for Catholics and Jews.  He had his own sense of humor, which inspired him to satirize the new skeptical Biblical critics by using their critical methods to prove that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed.  In this, he was a precursor of Ronald Knox who, a century later, used modern canons of literary criticism to prove that Tennyson’s poem “In Memoriam” had in fact been written by Queen Victoria.  In treating virtue ethics, and the Greek ideal of happiness as “eudaimonia” it was Dr. Whately who said, “Happiness is no laughing matter.”  Newman inherited something of this subtlety, and this should  help to make sense of what Newman meant later when he said, “…as a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary but not my life – but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion.”  Understanding true happiness as the attainment of truth, he was ready to sacrifice lesser  consolations to find it, like Augustine exulting in the discovery of “beauty ever ancient, ever new.”  The recent proposal of a personal ordinariate for Anglicans, is an invitation to such “eudaimonia.”

Newman preached big words to a small scene in his day.  He was addressing a “national apostasy” which is now universal.  If “national apostasy” seemed an inflated term when Keble decried the government’s confusion of bishops with state managers, Newman did not see it so and he called it the start of the Oxford Movement.  The Oxford Movement has now become a World Movement,  sometimes called a “Reform of the Reform,” the kind of “aggiornamento” optimistically envisioned but imprecisely achieved in the years after Vatican II.  “Anglicanorum coetibus” may well be the ecumenical movement come of age, a correction of the disoriented notion that unity in the Church happens by confederation.  While the number of ecclesial communities that will join this new structure for Anglicans may be small, the initiative itself could encourage relations with the separated historic Churches.

More than thirty years ago, John Paul II approved a “Pastoral Provision” to receive Anglicans into the Catholic Church.  This followed the 1976 decision of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church to ordain women.  Some five years before that, I had written my first, and perforce juvenile, book which was a small study of this question.  In it, I maintained that to deny gender as a charism in the sacrament of orders, was a Gnostic heresy, for it dismissed the prophetic significance of sexuality.  In phrases subtle because I knew the subject would be scandalous, I contended that such ordinations would irreparably destroy chances for unity with the Catholic Church and that this a Gnostic abuse of anthropology would logically lead to what is now called same-sex marriage.  Some reviewers said that was absurd.  What I predicted in 1971 has happened.  There have been many division since then within the Anglican structure which prided itself on its unity, even in this country through the trials of the Civil War.  The original Pastoral Provision provided welcome for over one hundred clergy and several thousand laity, including one religious community of women.  These are small numbers, but they have established several flourishing parishes with an approved Anglican Use for worship which is attractive even to cradle Catholics.  While the most important aspect of this provision was the clear signal of Rome indicating that the question of women’s ordination belongs to the irreformable deposit of sacred tradition, the part of it that got most attention was permission for the ordination of married men, with the understanding that, as in the Eastern rites, there could be no marriage or re-marriage, in the instance of widowhood,  after ordination.

It seems logical that this provision, while continuing as an entity, would be subsumed by the new personal ordinariates.  The chief difference between the former pastoral   provision and the new ordinariates is precisely that, while the former was part of the regular diocesan structure, the new ordinariates would have their own bishops and ecclesiastical superiors similar to military ordinariates.  This is something of which Newman, with all his prophetic gifts, could not have anticipated.  While he encouraged a scheme of Ambrose Philip de Lisle for a sort of Anglican Uniate Church for converts, he knew that it was impractical.  Yet, his comment in a letter to de Lisle in 1876 is significant: “Nothing will rejoice me more than to find that the Holy See considers it safe and promising to sanction some such plan as the Pamphlet suggests.  I give my best prayers, such as they are, that some means of drawing to us so many good people, who are now shivering at our gates, may be discovered.”  It is also the case that in his day the invalidity of Anglican orders was not a settled question as it is today.  Newman was ordained a priest in 1846 less than a year after he had been received into the Church, and Manning’s ordination in 1851 took only nine weeks, and within fourteen years he became Archbishop of Westminster.  That was during the pontificate of Pius IX who was not given to impetuosity or neglect of doctrine.

The new apostolic constitution expectedly has had its doubters .  The Holy Father made this a personal initiative to the surprise of some ecumenicists whose more relaxed instincts had not encouraged traditionalist Anglicans in their petitions.  I do not make an exact parallel with the present situation, but in a letter of 1859 to Lord Acton, Newman wrote: “There will necessarily always be round the Pope second-rate people, who are not subjects of that supernatural guidance which is his prerogative."  Newman was certain that the Catholic Church in England could not flourish if it remained under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda Fidei, but he was often stymied in getting his message through bureaucratic tangles to the Pope.  He said, “…the Rock of St. Peter on its summit enjoys a pure and serene atmosphere, but there is a great deal of Roman malaria at the foot of it.”

The uniqueness of “Anglicanorum coetibus” naturally begs questions.  Not least of these is the “patrimony” of Anglicanism which the apostolic constitution seeks to safeguard, not temporarily but as a permanent ornament of the richness of the Latin Church.  But this patrimony is not defined.  Anglicanism has gone through transformations since the Elizabethan Settlement, and the engine of its motion, which is now proving itself to be not perpetual, has been its effort to define itself in various moods, Catholic, Calvinist,   Laudian,  Erastian, Deist,  Evangelical, Tractarian, Ritualist, Liberal, and Post-Christian, all bobbing on the surface of the endemic Anglo-Saxon bias of Pelagianism.  The “patrimony,” however re-imagined from time to time, would have been more Protestant from the start, were it not for the theological conservatism of Elizabeth I.  Surely there were clerics, especially of the Laudian period, who were “stupor mundi” in their Patristic erudition, but often what claimed to be a return to sources, was a sort of theological bottom-feeding made palatable by a knowledge of Greek.  To speak in generalities of a patrimony risks becoming nostalgic, bearing in mind that nostalgia is history after a few drinks.  John Jewell and Richard Hooker in the seventeenth century had a romantic notion of the sub-apostolic church which easily accommodated what their king decreed.  Even Jewell had a functional but not sacramental concept of episcopacy and his confidence was in Sola Scriptura.  Anglicanism was not originally confessional but statist, and what is of the state dies with the neglect of the state.  As Caesar’s eye grows cold,  so does what glimmered in his glance.

As far as aesthetic patrimony goes, the typical Anglican forms of worship are no more elevated than the ordinary Catholic liturgy of our day, now happily under revision.  Newman was sensitive to signs; he remembered wearing black gloves in Trinity College Chapel when mourning the daughter of King George IV, the Princess Charlotte;  and everyone knew he had abandoned Anglican orders when he appeared one day in grey trousers.  If he who blushed at the most innocent pun had seen some of the liturgical aberrations of our generation, he would have lapsed into a coma.  There is a cottage industry of polemicists who claim that the Catholic Newman used to haunt old Anglican churches to hear the voices of distant choirs gilding the rafters.  There is no evidence for that.  His frequent discouragements were not from a loss of what he had sternly rejected.  He writes of those who claimed that the convert keep looking back over his shoulder: “This is said of every one in turn – and in every case which I am acquainted with most falsely – There is but one feeling of joy and happiness among those persons with whom I am acquainted who have become Catholics.”

Newman was actually repulsed by much of what passed for prayer in the churches of his early years and said that the thought of the Anglican service made him “shiver.”  The services in his own university church of St. Mary in Oxford were “intensely dreary.”  The Tractarians spent little time on the liturgical romanticism of the ritual movement which was to follow. But that movement was a recovery of a patrimony not unique to the English church.  Perhaps in recognition of this, it has been suggested that the new personal ordinariates should revive the Sarum Rite to be distinct.  In  my Anglican days, I knew no one who had ever seen the Sarum Rite.  That would just be a homemade historicism, which in part is why a proposed revivial of the Sarum Rite for the new Westminster Cathedral was rejected in the nineteenth century.  The personal ordinariates will fail if their concept of preserving a cultural patrimony is the creation of an Anglo-Saxon Theme Park, or an ecclesiastical Williamsburg.  It would lack the spiritual dynamic the Church needs for revitalizing a dispirited segment of our anemic culture.  Pope Benedict’s focus has always been on Newman rather than on Anglicanism, but in the foreword to a book “Turning Towards the Lord” by the Oratorian priest, Father Lang, he commended the “ad orientem” position of the celebrant at the altar and  described “the contribution made by the Church of England to this question and in giving, also, due consideration to the part played by the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century…”  Many of the present Anglican clergy were not reared in the Anglican tradition themselves, and this adds a difficulty if the “patrimony” which the Constitution seeks to  encourage is in no small part an “ethos” which comes by a long lived experience of a cultural heritage.

There follows another questions about the expectations of Anglican stalwarts so long to become Catholic, since more than thirty years ago all veneer of Catholic simulation was shattered by the ordination of women.  Catholicism is a commitment and not a last resort.  Pusey was discomfited when Newman continued to attract converts after his conversion.  After an awkward encounter in Prior Park in Oxford, Newman wrote to his friend Dalgairns saying that Pusey had expected the Catholic converts to be nothing more than vinedressers who had simply “transferred to another part of the vineyard.”  Newman became aware, and expresses this in multiple ways in his lectures on “Difficulties of Anglicans,” that High Anglicanism is a delusional ecclesiology supported by cultural affinities holding sway over logic.  Newman’s dispatches this with curt words in the “Apologia" when he says, “It is not at all easy (humanly speaking) to wind up an Englishman to a dogmatic level..”

The Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,  Cardinal Levada, said on March 9 of this year that “among the distinctive elements of Anglican heritage should be included the spiritual and intellectual gifts of the Oxford movement in the 19^th century, the then-Anglican cleric Newman together with his fellow Tractarians have left a legacy that still enriches a common Catholic patrimony.”  Thus the Anglican patrimony consists in a style of living the apostolic life.  Newman and his fellows gave it new life by opting for the fullness of Catholicism, in an action rooted in an intuition of history ignored in our own day.  Newman’s argument for the development of doctrine as an economy requiring what he called “preservation of type” and “chronic vigor” is the antecedent cousin of Pope Benedict’s “Hermeneutic of Continuity.”  The Holy Father might paraphrase with benevolent Bavarian courtesy, what Newman said rather curtly: “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant.”

After attending one of Newman’s twelve lectures on “Anglican Difficulties” delivered in London in 1850, which  provide a guide for wavering Anglicans today, Thackeray rose from his seat, daunted by the Newmanian logic, and cried out: “It is either Rome or Babylon, and for me it is Babylon.”  The case is the same today, to a larger audience: It is either Rome or Babylon. These lectures, treated nervously by some who would tone down Newman’s popery, are the beating heart of the exhilarated Catholic Newman.  It is noteworthy, but not inexplicable, that perhaps the leading modern Anglican interpreter of Newman, Owen Chadwick, in his book “The Spirit of the Oxford Movement” (1990) does not once refer to the lectures on “Anglican Difficulties.”  In them, Newman said, “All depends on the fact of the supremacy of Rome,” and "One vessel alone can ride those waves; it is the boat of Peter, the ark of God."

In 1988 I made the longest of all possible trips on this planet, the treacherous and usually fruitless journey from Oxford to Cambridge.  I went to hear a lecture by Cardinal Ratzinger.  To the dismay of some of the faculty who attributed the vast outpouring of undergraduates to what one professor called the current young people’s fad for mediaevalism, Ratzinger spoke of eternal verities in a way which I imagined might have been composed by Newman.  Both are musicians – Newman a violinist and Ratzinger a pianist.  And you see that I speak of Newman in the present, because he is being brought back to us by Ratzinger whose own name will never be in the past perfect.  The Pope’s overture to Anglicans is not polemical but pastoral.  Newman said “Denunciation neither effects subjection in thought nor in conduct.”  In the new apostolic constitution, the Holy Father denounces no one, but as the Father of Christian Unity, in the succession of  Peter who was commanded by Christ to confirm the brethren in the Faith, he would that none be lost.

In this conference you will hear talks more serviceable than mine, I am only here as the sommelier, to recommend the vintage wine of Newman.  He uncorked it in the finale of the “Apologia pro Vita Sua” when he listed his friends who had joined him in the fraternity of converts, and also those who were moved in mind but not enough in will to embrace the ancient beauty.  He wrote one last line: “And I earnestly beg for this whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our union, may even now be brought at length, by the power of the Divine Will, into one Fold and under One Shepherd.”

Fr Philip North used the Pusey House Conference on Anglican Patrimony to say how very C of E he was; and if he could not be C of E with all its privileges, its capacity for being accepted in schools and other institutions and being part of the fabric of society, then he would become a Roman Catholic – but not via the Ordinariate.  It seemed to me at the time that he had an unduly romantic notion of the place of the parson in England.  He might have carved out a niche for himself in Camden, but Fr Philip is so much larger than life that he would carve out a niche anywhere – and he is just the sort of priest which the Ordinariate needs to get up and running quickly.  And since the Holy Father has made this offer, what gall to say we know better than he does!

Then this week, while my server was down and my computer inoperable thanks to a new router from AOL, Fr Trevor Jones of the famous St Peter's, London Docks, expressed his own reservations in his blog.  His preferred choice, he says, would be 'a continued future as an Anglican'.  Well of course, that's a lovely idea.  But not one ot be accepted on any terms.

What these two good Fathers have been saying (and no doubt others feel much the same), is that if promises made in Synod in 1992 were kept, then we might just about hang on in the sort of way we have hung on since that time. This is a dreamworld.  The promises have been broken consistently.  I have been in the House of Bishops and seen it at work, diocesans blatantly ignoring their own 'guidelines' and using all their considerable power to undermine anything remotely catholic in their dioceses.  The two parishes where I ministered for twenty years are now indistinguishable from their neighbours.  A century of catholic practice has been dismantled within a decade.  Fr Jones only has nine years before he  must retire.  The Bishop of London, on whom he and Fr North rely, has an even closer sell-by date.  We said we wanted provision for our children and grandchildren.  That has not been granted, and will not be.

Possibly next month's General Synod meeting will cobble together something which will salve the consciences of those who say they want a "catholic element" to remain in our church.  That will not do, however you dress it up. Either the Church of England is catholic, part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, or it is not.  What it is currently deciding is to become a Protestant sect.  The Act of Synod made it clear, and Archbishops spelled it out, that we were in a process of "Reception" (which includes "non-reception") and it was perfectly possible that the C of E would eventually have to admit  that it was wrong in ordaining women as priests.  Everything that is happening now, concerning women as bishops, means that "Reception" is over.  Cantuar locuta, causa finita — the Church of England will have women whom it regards as bishops, and it will be necessary for everyone, priests, ordinands, laypeople, to accept that fact.

The alternative outcome of July's group of sessions (knowing Synod as I do from many years bitter experience) is that they might kick the ball into the long grass, say "too difficult" and leave it for the next Synod (to be elected this Autumn) to come up with new answers — thus simply prologing the misery, both for the women queuing up to be measured for mitres, and those of us who remain implacably opposed.  I am no longer prepared to wait upon the good pleasure of the General Synod.

So to turn to Fr Trevor Jones' specific points:

Firstly, he asserts it would be a "priest-heavy" organisation.  That certainly is not what many of my Catholic friends tell me.  They want our priests to set up the Ordinariate so that they may worship with us.  It may be that they will not 'join' the ordinariate, formally; but there are many Catholic laity who want to be with us at the altar.  Morevover, I believe Fr Jones is being unduly pessimistic about our own laity.  Many are already signing up, and I am sure many more will do so once the chocks are away and good ship Ordinariate slides down the slipway (if that isn't mixing metaphors – or even if it is!).  Of course, if their own parish priests are lukewarm they may hold back — all the more reason for our anglo-catholic clergy to look carefully at the proposals, hear what the Bishop of Fulham and the two Southern PEVs have to say about it, and begin to be enthusiastic instead of carping.

I am not sure what to make of Fr Trevor's second point, about there being a "radical distinction" in the path to reordination for married and unmarried clerics.  Maybe he has read something I have not — or maybe he is guessing.  Perhaps he will use his blog, or this one, to enlighten me.  It will be for the Ordinary, in consultation with the Vatican, to decide about the path to ordination for our priests and deacons.  If we are really fortunate, then the Ordinary will be one of our current PEVs, someone who really knows us and whom we can trust.

Thirdly, Fr Jones is "not sure the structure would have a future".  Again, this seems to be his own crystal ball malfunctioning.  Of course people want to find churches where the spirit is at work.  But why does Fr Joness suppose that churches in the Ordinariate will spend their time seeking a "way of being and Anglican in full communion with the Holy See?"  Those priests I know who are enthusiastic about the Ordinariate are looking to be what they have always hoped they were, English Catholics.  Since that is no longer possible within the structures of our increasingly confused and 'liberal' State Church, the offer of the Holy Father for an Ordinariate is the answer to prayer.  So, dear Frs North and Jones, and any others whose misgivings threaten to hobble you, give it a chance.  It is the best offer there is, it is all we asked Synod for and were refused.  Let's set to and make it work.

Br. Stephen's aim is to underscore genuine personal conversion as the proper motivation for an individual's participation in the anticipated personal ordinariates, and, in doing so, he takes a deliberately modest view of the scope and significance of the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution.

The great weakness of the ethnic parish metaphor, it seems to me, is its failure to account for the breadth and depth of the Anglican Patrimony, which far surpasses the significance of the cultural eccentricities of Polish, German, or Italian Roman Catholic communities.  Though Anglican churches may in some sense be "defective," the treasures of Anglicanism are genuinely ecclesial contributions to the Universal Church which the Holy Father has recognized "as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared."

* * *

Ethnic Parishes for Anglicans:  A Provocatively Modest View of the Ordinariates

When I worked with prisoners and their families, I learned the importance of expectation management: Never excite extravagant hopes based on wishes if there are too many unknown factors that could line up to produce despair when a more measured initial response might have produced only slight disappointment. I begin to worry, in the case of the Anglican Ordinariates, that too many hopes are being excited in the absence of many facts and a wishful reading of those that are known such that, when all of the details are eventually known, the failure of these more optimistic readings to have been the case may cause some people to despair or even to feel that they have been actively misled by the Holy See. I sensed a bit of this sort of disappointment in the Internet reactions when yet another well-placed Catholic official made it clear that celibacy would be the norm within the Ordinariates during the recent Anglican Use conference in Newark.

I am not saying that all or even any of what follows is the way that things will fall into place for the Ordinariates, but I do think, based on official documents and statements to date, that the following are all plausible interpretations of how the Ordinariates might function within the larger Church. My purpose here is to paint a minimalist vision of the Ordinariates so that people can ask themselves if they would still want to be a member of such a body. Obviously, as a former Anglican turned Roman Catholic monk, I think that the answer should still be yes, but I think that it may be healthier to assume the minimalist scenario and then to be pleasantly surprised if some things turn out differently rather than to be cast into despair if the rosiest possible picture fails to materialize.

Let me start with a quote from Fr. Basil Maturin, the great Anglo-Catholic convert of a century ago, who, unlike most of his fellow converts of that era, never tried to stampede Anglicans who were looking Romeward to cross the Tiber. Instead, in The Price of Unity, he encourages people to convert only when their conscience will not allow them to do otherwise. He says,

Go and live where the Church is at the lowest and the scandals are real; if you cannot keep your faith in Rome in the face of all such things you do not really believe in her.

And here, I expect, I will meet my first objections. Some will say, “But we’re not converting, we’re entering Communion.” My reading of the documents says that conversion is what is being asked. It is being asked as pastorally as possible and with all due respect for the riches of the Anglican patrimony, but members of the Ordinariate are being asked to enter full, visible communion with the Universal Church from bodies that the Holy See does not recognize as properly constituted churches. To enter an Ordinariate is to believe that you are currently a member of a body that is defective in some way that the Catholic Church is not. True, this is a package tour with a protected enclave waiting on the other side with many familiar furnishings, but it remains a new ecclesiastical address and you can only get there by the narrow gate of conversion or, in the traditional idiom, which we current and former Anglicans love, by making your submission to the Holy See.

And here, I expect I will meet a second set of objections: “But we’re not becoming Roman Catholics. The Ordinariates are for Anglican Catholics.” To this I would say, based on my reading of the official documents issued to date, it depends on what you mean by “Anglican” or, perhaps better still in this case, “Anglo-.” If one uses the term as it would be used of a “Greek Catholic” or a “Ruthenian Catholic,” clearly that is not the case, though generous provisions have been made. If, however, you are using the term “Anglo-Catholic” in the same way as one might say “Polish Catholic” or “German Catholic,” meaning, in the U.S. in particular, a group that has been granted parishes in which special safeguards have been enacted to protect a cultural and linguistic patrimony, I do think it is fair to speak of “Anglican” or “Anglo-” Catholics.

And here I expect I will meet a third objection: “But our bishops are being given hats and sticks so we must be something more than ethnic parishes.” In an Anglican understanding, that would be true, but that is not necessarily the case among the Orthodox or within churches under the Holy See. Perhaps someone else can flesh-out all of the implications of a mitred archpriest in Orthodoxy, but let me give three examples from the Latin Rite where hats and sticks do not a bishop make. First, we have the case of the Cardinal who is not a bishop, but is entitled to pontificals. Cardinal Dulles, who received the red hat in recognition for his work as a theologian, would be a prominent American example. Second, we have the historic example of the highest grade of monsignor, the protonotary apostolic, who until 1969 was entitled to the mitre and ring and to celebrate Pontifical Mass. The third example, and I think this is perhaps the closest, is the territorial abbot or abbot nullius, who, though not necessarily a bishop, wears full pontificals in recognition of his governing a specific territory attached to his abbey and is a member of the local conference of bishops. North Carolina’s Belmont Abbey would be a famous American example of this type of jurisdiction from the past while Subiaco in Italy would be a notable contemporary example.

Historically, hats and sticks always mean honor, but they do not always mean full or even partial jurisdiction and clearly, from these examples, hats and sticks do not a rite make. Add to this the fact that while the Apostolic Constitution and the Complimentary Norms make the Ordinary’s membership in the local episcopal conference explicit, they do not make reference to a body of these ordinaries with governing or even deliberative functions and it seems reasonable to infer that the Ordinary is more like someone with delegated authority over a national enclave of especially privileged ethnic parishes than he is like a bishop of a (forgive the term) uniate church. The Rt. Rev. Msgr. Graham Leonard, sometime Anglican Bishop of London, might be a better model for Anglican Bishops who enter the Ordinariate but are not the Ordinary than the various grades of eparchs of the Oriental Churches. That is still a great honor and an incredible act of love and respect on the part of the Holy Father.

Being a member of an ethnic parish (or “personal” parish, as they are now called), albeit one with some very special dispensations, is still a very generous offer. As in a German, or Italian parish, there will be special safeguards that protect an Ordinariate parish’s historic patrimony from the majority culture and, as a double safeguard, these parishes will be governed by an Ordinary in sympathy with that heritage. (I am reasonably certain that more than one person at the Vatican and the USCCB wishes in hindsight that something similar might have been done to prevent the Polish schism in the U.S. Church in the 19th Century.) But, like those other ethnic parishes, those in the Ordinariate will be expected to be active cooperators in the life of the local diocese. I worry that too many people see this as a threat rather than an opportunity. To be a member of the Ordinariate means to engage with the richness of other ethnic and historic traditions within the Catholic Church. The documents to date seem to say that there will be no standing alone or going one’s own way. In addition to the Holy Father and the London Oratory, members of the Ordinariate will be in full communion with bingo, the chicken polka, the St. Louis Jesuits, and all of the other things that some Anglicans like to look down their noses at.

To be an Anglo-Catholic of the Ordinariate will be no more or less special, in the larger scheme of things, than to be an American Polish Catholic belonging to a personal parish. In fact, it seems that those who belong to ethnic minorities within the Catholic Church in the U.S. might feel a bit slighted that they were already in full communion with the Holy See and received so little while Anglican converts are receiving so much. Anglicans looking at the Ordinariates who are tempted to think that they have been given too little might do well to remember the parable of laborers who came at the end of the day and received the same wage as those who worked through its heat.

Some Ordinariate parishes will no doubt face mistrust and even, perhaps, hostility at various levels in the local diocese to which they will belong. Were that not the case, these elaborate canonical safeguards would not be necessary. I think that it is best not to minimize this potential reality and, instead, to trust that grace and steadfast witness will make the Ordinariate parishes come to be seen as wonderful places in the wider diocese as seems to have been the case of most of the current Anglican Use parishes, which were given no canonical safeguards when they made their leaps of faith.

Obviously, the ethnic parish metaphor is not perfect in its parallels, both because of the generosity of the provisions made by the Holy See and because global Anglicanism holds within itself the treasures of many cultural patrimonies, but I think that this more modest vision of how the Ordinariates might be understood will temper the potential wind of despair and allow those considering this option to weigh their choice with a most Anglican sobriety.

Let me close with a thought exercise that parallels my opening quote from Fr. Maturin. Do you agree with this statement:

I believe that to join an Ordinariate is to promise before God that, when I am traveling and not able to attend an Ordinariate parish on Sunday, under pain of mortal sin I will assist at a folk Mass with streamers and liturgical dancers, if that is all there is to be found, in order to fulfill my Sunday obligation.

That’s the somewhat provocative crux of what I understand it to mean to join an Ordinariate and I think that this is the level of love for the Catholic Church you will need to have or to hope to be given by grace to be happy over here. You have to have come to love the idea of the Catholic Church in its fullness more than the reality of the Anglican patrimony at its best. You need to strongly suspect that there may be something ontologically present in a progressive, praise-band parish in a scandal-ridden Roman Catholic diocese that is lacking in Anglicanism’s greatest shrines, because, contrary to what may seem to be much visual evidence to the contrary, the former is a constituent member of the body in which the fullness of the Catholic Church subsists while the latter is not.

If those words seem overly jarring or exclusivist to you (and remember I am speaking here to those who are actively considering conversion, not to Anglicans who are not interested), I suggest that you think carefully about your reasons for considering converting. If it is to escape the turmoil of Anglicanism, it will not be worth the dislocation that goes with it. If it is out of a desire to validate or improve your ecclesiastical standing, I assure you that the Roman Catholic Church can teach you humility in ways that you have never imagined. If you are entering the Ordinariate, it needs to be because you have come to believe what the Catholic Church says about herself in spite of the ten times a week you will be reminded how much the Church on earth falls short of the ideal in heaven.

I know that this is a time of pain in many parishes and dioceses. There is a great temptation to paint the best possible picture of the Ordinariates so that as many people as possible will make the journey together and the pain of separation and loss will be minimized, but I do not know that this approach will serve souls best in the long-term. The Holy Father’s offer is open-ended. It is perhaps best that some should come now and that others come later, when, like St. Thomas, they may touch and see, rather than for those who are eager to come now to pressure friends who doubt into a disappointment that may lead them to reject the Catholic Church permanently should it turn out that things are different after all.

I may be wrong in every word that I have written about the future implementation of the Anglican Ordinariates and will be glad if I am, but I still think the exercise of thinking of yourself as a member of an odd sort of ethnic parish in a church that doesn’t quite know what to make of you is worthwhile. What I have outlined above is provocatively modest, but a pessimist can only be pleasantly surprised.