Update: I had an e-mail from someone who found me unjust and negative about the ACA.

I find that this person missed the whole point of this posting. I put up a piece I wrote in August 2010 – therefore from the perspective of a time when there were no Ordinariates and there was no determined response from anywhere in the TAC. Things have changed, and I already clearly stated that I was wrong in many ways. This paper merely represents my thought at the time. It is of historical interest. This point was missed by the person who wrote to me.

What I wrote then is not what I would write now. The TAC has reformed itself on the basis of the meeting in South Africa. Some bishops have been conveniently discredited (or discredited themselves? – don’t bother commenting – yawn). A number of former TAC communities, clergy and laity have been received into the Roman Catholic Church. I am shot down for even suggesting that there might be a “third way”, so I’ll just say there isn’t one. End of story.

* * *

At exactly the time when my collaboration with the Anglo-Catholic blog came to an end, at the end of August 2010, I began to think of some ideas based on my analysis at the time of Anglicanorum coetibus. The English Ordinariate was not to be founded for another six months, and it took a further year for the American Ordinariate to be rolled out. An Australian Ordinariate is announced for the summer of 2012 (see Good news from the Ordinariate… and Australian Ordinariate At Last! – 15th June 2012). I will offer no further comment on the present situation.

Since closing down the English Catholic blog, I have refrained from all polemics concerning the TAC and the Ordinariates and continue to maintain silence on this subject. Thus comments designed to “shoot me down”, to embarrass me or demoralise me will be refused or removed.

I also could not foresee the looming showdown between the Society of St Pius X and the Holy See, covered in some detail by the traditionalist Roman Catholic blog Rorate Caeli. There is a distinct possibility of fragmentation, but I offer no speculation outside what you can read from better informed people than I.

Here is my analysis of August 2010, wrong in many respects, but uncannily accurate in a few details. I was more pessimistic than the way many aspects turned out in time, and it is clear that the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus was designed to filter the clergy according to criteria of canonical regularity or irregularity. Whether a group of clergy of known canonical irregularity could credibly found some alternative structure outside the Ordinariates and a part of the TAC claiming its own canonical regularity, that is anyone’s guess.

I sent this paper to Archbishop Hepworth at the time, but nothing further came of it.

* * *

A “PLAN B” FOR THE TAC

To be expanded and matured over time

Scenario – July 2011:

An announcement had been made on 26^th March 2011 in Rome by Cardinal Levada about Ordinariates for groups of Catholics having left the Anglican Communion. The letter sent by Archbishop Hepworth in August 2010 to Cardinal Levada was left without an answer. As was said on several occasions by the former prefect of the Secretariat for the Unity of Christians, Cardinal Kasper, the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus concerned only Roman Catholics of Anglican origin.

The announcement included a new set of canonical norms and a “clarification” of the Apostolic Constitution. The introduction to the new norms stipulated that the words “in a corporate manner” should be taken to mean “corporate after each individual Anglican is received as a convert in an individual way”. Having been received in a parochial context, after due screening by the diocese, these individual converts will be permitted to join parishes that may be erected for the Ordinariate, conferring a “corporate” character a posteriori. The Episcopal Conference of England and Wales have expressed their entire satisfaction with this decision.

The converts are to be instructed according to the usual methods in their geographical parishes, typically the RCIA. This is to ensure complete integration of the converts leading to their acceptance of locally organised ecumenical programmes. This point was most insisted upon by the local Episcopates.

The clergy have for the most part been placed in the RCIA programmes and may, on a case by case basis – if unmarried – be allowed to enter seminary after some two years of living as laymen. This is held to be of no importance, since the laity will be attending Mass in their local parishes, and the question of priests for the Ordinariates has been left undetermined. Dispensations for married priests are to be very parsimonious and only for those having held positions of prestige in the Anglican Communion.

The TAC, having received no response from Rome, began to disintegrate by the end of 2010. Many of the laity joined other Continuing Anglican Churches, the Anglican Catholic Church (Original Province) in particular. The Churches of Canada and the United States collapsed, leaving the bishops, a few clergy and handfuls of straggling laity, more attached to their pastors than anything else. The bishops, having signed the Catholic Catechism and the letter of October 2007, are discredited. Their only option is retiring into anonymity.

Pope Benedict XVI was forced to accept the fait accompli, and with this collapse of any hope of recovering more than very small numbers of Anglicans, the dialogue with the Catholic traditionalists of the Society of St Pius X and even with the Patriarch of Moscow also foundered. The Holy Father has been rendered incapable of any work of reform in the Catholic Church and the inexorable process of decline continues, and his activity is severely curtailed by the “old guard” of the Roman Curia. He has been reduced to a long wait for death as it was during the final years of John Paul II’s pontificate. There is no hope for a serious reform of the Episcopate and the “Magic Circle”.

Response from the Bishops of the TAC

Not only has the bluff been called, but the goalposts have moved and the dice are loaded. In short, the request from the TAC Episcopate has been repudiated and the various responses by Cardinal Levada to Archbishop Hepworth were either based on unrealistic thinking or hypocrisy. The result is the same. The whole Ordinariate project was undermined by the local Episcopate concerned and the letter of the Papal legislation was emptied of the spirit of the law, the legislator’s intentions. All hope of corporate reunion of Anglicans with the Holy See is irremediably ruined.

Initially, groups of clergy and laity addressed themselves to their local Catholic bishops and parish priests and were received as individual converts. The flow stopped after the first few hundred when it was seen that nothing else was forthcoming. Anglicanorum Coetibus went the same way as Summorum Pontificum – priests from traditionalist societies were denied permission to minister in most dioceses, and diocesan clergy who celebrate the extraordinary form are ostracised and removed from their parishes.

The stonewalled TAC College of Bishops had two options:

1. Dissolve the TAC and instruct the clergy and laity to convert to the Catholic Church

The TAC College of Bishops wagered their life and lost. It was a one-shot deal, win or lose. The winner gets all and the loser loses all. Any attempt to regain credibility will be immediately beaten down. The clergy and laity at their various synods pledged support of their bishops and therefore contract the same obligation and curse: go through with unconditional submission to Rome or cease practising their religion.

The “classical Anglicans” of the Continuum blog were right in all but their nastiness. They are untouched by the “curse” on the TAC, though they are not exempt from the intrinsic splintering of undisciplined communities and bigoted contenders for power.

A few priests and groups of laity in the United States and Canada were able to avail of the Anglican Use provisions with friendly bishops interpreting the “dead” Papal legislation in a generous way. The number of Anglican Use parishes, using the Book of Divine Worship of 1980 has doubled. Such provisions have not been implemented in the British Isles or Australia. In Australia, Bishop Elliott was placed in charge of the procedures for vetting and training clergy and setting up a pastoral scheme within the Australian dioceses, with the promise of an eventual Ordinariate after an initial experimental period of some twenty years. In England, everything has returned to the stillness of the 1990’s and ecumenical relations are beginning to be restored between the Vatican and the Anglican Communion.

Archbishop Hepworth retired into private life with his family and is no longer heard from. The other bishops either removed themselves from any ecclesiastical life. Two of the Canadian bishops and all the US bishops joined the Continuing Anglican Union formed from the old Anglican Province of Christ the King and the Anglican Catholic Church. The small number of clergy who had been Catholic clergy or who had married after ordination, who reconciled with the Catholic Church were quickly rooted out and laicised. They were given strict instructions to behave as laicised clergy, and forbidden any participation in parish life other than receiving the Sacraments and tithing.

Most of the clergy have dispersed. It is estimated that no more than about twenty priests worldwide converted and tried their luck with their diocesan bishops. About a third joined the Continuing Anglican Union and most of the rest have not been heard from. Proportions of laity are about the same, with a slightly higher percentage converting to their Catholic parishes.

2. Dissolve the TAC and form a Pro-Ordinariate

The TAC was impeded from following the Pope’s plan because of obstruction by the diocesan Bishops and Vatican bureaucracy. The Apostolic Constitution failed to take reality into account and was doomed to failure.

The TAC and its bishops retain their credibility through their thwarted intention to unite with the Catholic Church. That intention was impeded, and we arrive at a conclusion that the normal functioning of the institutional Catholic Church is impeded, like Germany being taken over by Hitler and the Nazis in 1933. The Papacy is impeded. This thesis is very similar to that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Society of Saint Pius X, hence the extreme caution in the current theological dialogue. It is a thesis based on observation and common sense, and not on complex logical constructions and “proof texts” like sede-vacantism.

The consequence of this observation is to proceed exactly like the Society of St Pius X with the same degree of credibility: go ahead as if the ordinariate had been established by the Pope according to a reasonable interpretation of Anglicanorum Coetibus. This is a matter of transforming the present TAC structures into a provisional structure that is de facto or “materially” Catholic, even though it awaits canonical regularisation.

Many would treat the new pro-ordinariate as a schismatic or pseudo-Catholic structure. However, if the above fundamental justification is sincere and well founded, this is the only alternative to utter humiliation and collaborating in the terminal decline of Christianity.

Plan B – The Pro-Ordinariate

It would seem that the first thing, after the observation of the failure or “poisoning” (removal of the originally intended meaning from the texts) of the Pope’s project, is to take stock of what is left. A small percentage has gone over to Rome (local dioceses and parishes) and a slightly higher proportion has joined other continuing churches that refused anything to do with the ordinariate scheme in the first place. Maybe as many as twenty percent are so scandalised they have ceased all religious practice.

We are probably looking at about a third of the TAC as it stood in late 2010. The TTAC in England is nearly intact. About 1,500 souls remain in Canada and about half that number in the USA. About a thousand remain in Australia and the Torres Strait is more or less intact. India and almost all the African dioceses have joined the Anglican Catholic Church.

The decision is made to curtail the number of bishops severely and create a single ordinariate with one Ordinary and two auxiliaries, all three bishops. Thus, the administration and facilities for training the clergy are centralised. A seminary is established with a residential programme for unmarried students and a mentoring system based at the seminary for married students in full-time employment. Systems of financial aid for disadvantaged priests and pension funds are centralised.

Validity of Orders and the Sacraments

As would have happened on entering formal communion with Rome, it is judged opportune for the clergy to receive a new ordination that would be universally recognised as valid. The solution for this is for the elected Ordinary to receive conditional Orders from a retired Catholic bishop prepared to face the consequences of excommunication like Bishop Cornejo Radavero, Archbishop Ngo-Dinh-Thuc, Bishop Duarte Costa or Archbishop Lefebvre. The alternative is for such a line of succession to be given by a ‘descendant’ from one of these lines in possession of credible documentation.

The justification from receiving these conditional Orders is exactly as receiving such from the Catholic hierarchy. Episcopal consecration and all ordinations should be conferred according to the Roman Pontifical of 1962, and not according to Anglican or reformed Catholic rites.

The Pro-Ordinariate and other Catholics

This Pro-Ordinariate being in the same objectively schismatic state as the former TAC and the traditionalist Catholics of the SSPX, it is the duty of the clergy and faithful to attempt to forge links with Apostolic Churches of good will. Examples of such would be the SSPX itself, ‘canonical’ and ‘non-canonical’ Orthodox Churches and the more serious ‘independent Catholic’ communities such as that of Bishop Cantor in France.

In canonical terms, the Pro-Ordinariate would be alone, with support and help only from the above-mentioned communities, if they are sympathetic to the Pro-Ordinariate and find its foundational “justification” credible.

The Standard of Belief

The standard of belief of the Pro-Ordinate is as expressed: The Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members of the Ordinariate.

“This reflects the statement made by the bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion in their petition.   It is a deeply pastoral solution to the question of statements of faith. Many members of our community have been using the Catechism as a reference and a sourcebook for years. Its language is contemporary and its methodology, based on the Scriptures, the Fathers of the Church, and the liturgical Creeds, is already familiar to Anglicans.”

“Many of the things being denied at this moment in the world have been taken for granted for centuries. The nature of God, the revelation of God in Christ, the nature of holy scripture, the authority of Christian moral teaching about life and sexuality, the attack on the nature of marriage, and the widespread abandonment of holiness of life (especially among some of those consecrated to religious and priestly life), have all posed enormous problems for those who seek to teach and understand the Christian faith. The Catechism is a contemporary document addressing contemporary problems of contemporary unbelief.”

Liturgy

The liturgical standards of the Pro-Ordinariate would conform to:

–         The Roman Missal of 1570 and subsequent editions up to 1965 in Latin,

–         The English Missal of 1940 or 1958,

–         The Anglican Missal of 1921,

–         The Use of Sarum in Latin (Dickinson 1868) or in English (Warren 1911),

–         The Roman Pontifical in Latin,

–         The Roman Ritual of 1614 and subsequent editions and translations into English,

–         The Book of Common Prayer for the morning and evening Offices,

–         The Roman Breviary or any other breviary in Latin or English,

–         All traditionally used graduals, antiphoners, hymn books, musical settings, etc.

–         Traditional usages for religious orders in communities of monks and religious

Emphasis should be placed on traditional English cultural characteristics of churches and church furnishings.

Synodal Structure

The Pro-Ordinariate follows the rules laid down in November 2009 for the Ordinariates and the 1983 Code of Canon Law where applicable in these abnormal circumstances.

Clerical Celibacy and Marriage

The Pro-Ordinariate follows the same discipline as in the Orthodox Churches except for the founding clergy. Married men may be admitted to Holy Orders up to the priesthood. Only celibates are promoted to the Episcopate. Widowed priests are not normally permitted to re-marry. For the founding “generation”, married men may be bishops. All priests previously married after ordination are to be ‘grandfathered in’ and allowed to receive conditional ordination (see above) and continue as priests.

Former Roman Catholic clergy

Care shall be taken not to provide a simple haven for Roman Catholic clerics looking for a way around celibacy and who hold opinions and agendas that are not compatible with traditional Catholicism. Those who have received major Orders in the Roman Catholic Church are not to suffer discrimination if they are theologically orthodox and sincerely adhere to the tenets and principles of traditional Anglo-Catholicism.