Update: Please read Filling in the blanks… by Fr Christopher Phillips.

Update: Deborah Gyapong has weighed in with her article The Anglo-Catholic’s hiatus which somewhat modifies some of the ideas I expressed based too uncritically, in particular from Christian Campbell:

Unfortunately, the powers that be have made it known that our help is not wanted at this time.  In deference to them, this blog will comply and leave them to their business.

Perhaps the so-called “powers that be” are persons other than the US Ordinary, perhaps something not existing at all. To be quite honest, I just don’t care. At the same time, I don’t want to be construed as a conspiracy theorist of some kind on the basis of words coming from a highly partial source.

Deborah Gyapong finds this idea unlikely, and that it would have been out of character for Monsignor Steenson to tell either Fr Phillips or Christian Campbell to put a blog into hiatus status. She writes very reasonably and cogently. I too appreciated my time on the Anglo-Catholic in its better days of late 2009 and early 2010.

I therefore wash my hands of the whole affair and get on with life.

* * *

I anticipate my blog being carefully watched today to see if I would say anything about the announcement by the Anglo-Catholic‘s moderator of a hiatus. I am not surprised either. There is an article on Fr Smuts’ blog – Fr Christopher Phillips Leaves The Anglo-Catholic. So there is no need simply to reproduce what is already written and quoted from the Anglo-Catholic.

I was first contacted by Christian Campbell on 29th November 2009 to ask me whether I would become a contributor on this promising new blog. I accepted, and contributed a number of articles – which are still there. Finally, I discovered that the blog had its own “orthodoxy” and “police”, and my increasing resistance to the pensée unique ended with a rupture. I set up my own blog called the English Catholic, and this met with my expulsion from the Anglo-Catholic in the last days of August 2010.

It now seems to be common knowledge that Christian Campbell went off on his own tangent after his reception into the Roman Catholic Church. I found out very early on that he was going to a chapel of the Society of St Pius X and had adopted the traditionalist ideology. Fair enough, but hardly representative of the Rome-ward movement of “groups of Anglicans”. This culminated with polemics concerning the use of the pre-conciliar Roman rite in the ordinariates, whether in Latin or the Cranmerese English form in the English Missal. This and other issues caused Deborah Gyapong to pull out, since this kind of discussion would tend to discredit other Anglicans on their way over, but less concerned about the exact rite to be used. I have been quite surprised by some things CCCC put on his Facebook page, but they are entirely irrelevant to me and concern only his personal life.

Now, Fr Christopher Phillips has pulled out too, and Campbell himself has announced an indefinite hiatus. We might suppose that Monsignor Steenson has told those who are now Roman Catholics that ordinariate business is private and not to be discussed on blogs. That seems to ring with my recent article on secrecy, but I am not myself concerned with any Ordinariate anywhere. I will not speculate, but with no discussion and no coverage of any kind, the internal business of a “private club” is irrelevant to nearly all of us, as would be the yearly accounts of some provincial golf club in England.

There is an old quip about gentlemen’s clubs in London – that you know a member has died when there is an ungodly stench coming from behind the newspaper!

Fr Phillips, as a priest under jurisdiction, would have seen the need not to provoke problems for himself or his ministry. Similarly, Deborah Gyapong is a respected journalist and maintains excellent relations with the Roman Catholic Church in Canada. It is a question of professional integrity and keeping squeaky clean.

Sic transit gloria mundi. The Anglo-Catholic met a less radical demise than my English Catholic blog which I deleted. Campbell has his personal blog on which he writes about the things that interest him. I do the same thing here, but on different subjects and from another perspective. Should I say Good riddance? I do not take pleasure about negative things, but just find it sad. I have no feelings of “getting even” – I’m just not that kind of person. At the same time, time marches forward, and the religious world is not the same as it was in the heady days of 2007 and 2009.

In 2007 and November 2009, there was an objective to work towards. That is now irrelevant to all but a very few, and the future of the remnant TAC remains uncertain in spite of the rhetoric of the early months of 2012. Archbishop Hepworth wanted to keep something going for the clergy of the erstwhile Patrimony of the Primate who were still waiting for word from the ordinariates or had been rejected. Without a clear justification for any kind of structure, it seems hard to imagine that idea going anywhere. The storm clouds and gloom seem to gather as, for many of us, Godot never arrived and the batteries ran out.

The moral of all this is that Campbell and I made the same mistake, continuing to gnaw on the same bone year after year. My English Catholic blog had become too concerned with the ordinariate question and a continuing coverage of what was happening to Archbishop Hepworth. I ended up buckling under the nastiness of many of the comments and the same “political correctness” that dominated the Anglo-Catholic. This blog was designed to be more educational and intellectual, though I have often allowed myself to discuss the old problem.

The statistics page show that I get many more times read when I discuss the old problem than when I write about other subjects. I am not “in business” to attract attention or advertise myself. This should be a lesson to us all. Christian Campbell had something more gimmicky and full of gadgets than I ever thought about. He was constantly asking for donations. My blogs have never cost me anything and I have never collected a penny. He has his problems and I have mine.

The Anglo-Catholic looks like staying available for the sake of its archives, which can be consulted. My old articles are still there, as are many others of intellectual and historical interest. No Schadenfreude – but life has to go on. The lesson the dinosaurs bequeathed us is that we adapt or go by the wayside!