Recently, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a document on the importance of the Anglican Ordinariates. The text has a long and rather awkward title: “Characteristics of the Anglican Heritage as Lived in the Ordinariates Established Under the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus”. Issued on March 24th, it marks one of the few official comments from the Vatican on the significance of the Ordinariates for the Church since their establishment in the pontificate of Benedict XVI.
My wife and I regularly attend an Ordinariate parish here in Scranton, Pennsylvania (St. Thomas More). Therefore, I follow closely anything that comes out of the Vatican regarding the Ordinariates for any sign that the mood in Rome might be shifting one way or the other. What has been encouraging is that papal support for the Ordinariates has been consistently strong, from their beginnings under Benedict, through the Francis papacy, and now into the papacy of Leo.
A distinctive ecclesial ethos
This latest document continues this trend and signals very strong support for the Ordinariates as we approach the one-year mark of Leo’s young papacy. I am not going to go into a detailed review of the text since it is not long and readers can access it easily enough. Suffice it to say by way of a summary that the text lauds the Ordinariates for having a distinctive ecclesial ethos that emphasizes lay involvement in governance as cooperators with the hierarchy, for emphasizing beauty, especially in preserving the English liturgical patrimony, for their strong commitment to helping the poor, for a strong emphasis upon the family as a domestic church, and for placing front and center Scripture, preaching, and access to the sacrament of penance.
I cannot speak for all Ordinariate parishes, but I can speak for the one I attend, and I can say without contradiction that everything this document lists does pertain to our parish. The liturgy is beautiful, and the music is led by our trained choir under the expert leadership of Mr. Paul Campbell. Mass is ad orientem, with much chanting and a fulsome helping of all the traditional bells and smells. The liturgical language is elevated English, and we receive communion kneeling at an altar rail on the tongue with intinction. Our pastor, Fr. Eric Bergman, makes Confession available before every Mass, and his homilies always focus on a sound exegesis of the Scriptural readings. And as the married father of ten (living) children, he is merely the first among equals in a parish dominated by large families, where there is indeed a strong emphasis on the family as the domestic church.
There is also a level of commitment to the poor that is the heart and soul of the parish’s outreach to the economically challenged neighborhood in Scranton (the Providence district) in which it resides. Closely allied to the parish is the “Providence Pregnancy Center,” which is a pro-life crisis pregnancy center run by parishioner Jessica Freyne. My wife and I will soon be opening a food pantry associated with this center, but which will also serve the entire neighborhood. Also associated with the parish is the “Our Lady of Providence Medical,” run by Dr. Philip Huffman and Kelly Babinski (CRNP), which offers low-cost to free medical care for people in the neighborhood. Divine Mercy Farm, run by Matthew Nickle and his wife Jessica, provides free food to the pregnancy center and to those in need. The deacon assigned to our parish, Joshua Davis, has a long-standing and fruitful prison ministry.
Finally, my friend Marcus Daly owns and operates “Marian Caskets”, which is a business devoted to building low-cost “green” wooden caskets with a Divine Mercy theme. Originally a builder of wooden boats, Marcus was inspired by the funeral of Pope John Paul II and the simple wooden casket in which he was interred. A “revert” to the faith, Marcus and his wife, Kelly, with eight children of their own, have become a mainstay of the parish’s life, but especially in its outreach to the grieving. The simplicity of his caskets is rivaled only by their beauty, and I hope to one day be interred in one of them.
The Bishop of the North American Ordinariate (the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter), His Excellency Steven Lopes, has taken notice of the Scranton parish and has asked Fr. Bergman to go on a summer sabbatical to write a book on everything the parish is doing, with an eye toward holding it up as an example for others to follow. Cardinal Newman began the Oxford Movement while still an Anglican, but as with Newman, so too in our parish, insofar as what started within Anglicanism has found its completion within the Catholic Church.
Deep ecclesial gratitude
That is an impressive list of accomplishments. Nevertheless, I am also struck by the fact that these are parish activities in which many non-Ordinariate parishes also engage, except for the preservation of elements of the Anglo-liturgical tradition. In some ways, therefore, I find the new document from the Vatican lacking insight into an ethos within Ordinariate parishes, which is what breathes fire into all of their various ministries.
And that ethos is its posture of deep ecclesial gratitude. Gratitude for the simple gift of being Catholic seems to be in short supply these days in many quarters of the Church. There seems, instead, quite often a counter-ethos of grumbling wherein nobody ever seems satisfied with much of anything. For example, we hear incessantly about terrible liturgies, boring parishes, clerical scandals, bishops who are too liberal or too conservative, young people leaving the Church in droves, and what it is that Bishop Robert Barron has not done sufficiently to someone’s liking. And like a game of “Where’s Waldo?” we now see internet sleuths ever on the lookout for old photos of Pachamama in various settings to make it seem as if the Church has fallen into rank idolatry.
All of this has now reached its zenith, wherein some ecclesial groups have declared that the Church is now in such a grave “crisis” that it justifies defying Rome in order to set up its own parallel episcopacy, which alone, allegedly, can guarantee that “orthodox Catholicism” will survive. It is as if we are witnessing the essentializing of “grumbling Catholicism” as an idealization of one form of Catholicism against which all other forms are to be measured.
But we see this as well among so-called “progressive” Catholics who, for the past sixty years, have become a perpetual plaintiff class within the Church, ever ready to relitigate just about every major ecclesial doctrine and to place the Church’s magisterium in the dock at every turn. This has the effect of placing the Church, as Bishop Barron has noted, in a constant state of “suspension” as if she exists as a giant debating society where each complaint, not matter how adolescent, is said to be the very voice of “the people of God” who, apparently, are as restless as the Israelites in the desert grousing at Moses.
This is perhaps an exaggerated impression owing to the outsized influence of social media these days, with an entire class of professional online grumblers and grifters, on both the right and the left, constantly ginning up the latest outrage of the day.
“I love being a Catholic.”
But is the Church really in such dire condition? I think not.
Yes, the Church is beset with major problems, and she has had many major scandals of late. Yes, popes and other bishops have made mistakes, some of them grave, that deserve to be criticized. We continue to have a shortage of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, much of it caused by the uninspiring milquetoast Catholicism we see in so many places. And none of what I have written implies that we can never “grumble” about anything or criticize the Church for her many failings. There are many fine, devout Catholics and trained theologians who have raised such criticisms (myself included), and so I am not arguing here for a false irenicism, or some silly rose-colored glasses through which we must read everything.
But what of gratitude? Has it not been a casualty in all of this, and have we not succumbed to its opposite, ingratitude? When I first attended an Ordinariate liturgy, I was immediately impressed with its beauty and solemnity. But I have seen beauty and solemnity in Novus Ordo and TLM parishes as well. The Ordinariate liturgy is indeed beautiful, but that is not what impressed me the most and kept me coming back. I have listed many of the wonderful things our parish is doing. But other parishes are doing similar things. What impressed me instead was the unvarnished and thoroughly unrehearsed joy and gratitude of being a Catholic that most parishioners I encountered in the Ordinariate embodied.
It is the same sense one gets when finally arriving at a much-desired destination after a long and arduous journey. The sense of “completion” one finds here and the peace of “being finally home” is palpable and real. There is very little grumbling about anything, and the overall ethos is one of mission and vocational fulfillment. The tonality is a positive one, devoid of cynicism, with a clear desire to put one’s hands to the plow, not looking behind or to either side. The only questions raised are “What is the task at hand that the Lord is asking of us?” and “What in this grand vineyard needs tending?” And rather than despair because of obstacles, there is instead a simple prayer: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”
This is all to be expected, I suppose, in a parish with so many converts to Catholicism. For the most part, Ordinariates are filled with those who are Catholics “on purpose” and by intentional choice. But no matter its source, it is a joy and a gratitude that is infectious. And it is that infectious gratitude that I think is the greatest contribution of the Ordinariates.
At our Easter Vigil liturgy this year, our parish baptized and/or confirmed fifteen new Catholics. Not a fan of long liturgies, I nevertheless found that the three hours flew by. And as the liturgy was ending, I looked around and was overwhelmed to the point of tears at the sheer gift of being a Catholic. I went up to one of the newly baptized and welcomed them into the faith, whereupon he said to me without prompting, “Thank you. My goodness, I am finally home. I love being a Catholic.”
“I love being a Catholic.” Me too! Along those lines, someone asked me after the Mass what I thought of Pope Leo. I paused for a moment and reflected. And I replied, “I think Pope Leo loves being a child of the Church. I think he loves Christ and the Eucharist. I think he loves being a Catholic.”
It takes humility to be grateful. Sheer gratuity is foreign to us, and we distrust it. It often seems the kissing cousin of either pointlessness or manipulation. During the Vigil Mass, I prayed that God would shower us all with such pointlessness and that we would have the humility to embrace it.
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But we see this as well among so-called “progressive” Catholics who, for the past sixty years, have become a perpetual plaintiff class within the Church, ever ready to relitigate just about every major ecclesial doctrine and to place the Church’s magisterium in the dock at every turn.
Didn’t you just write an article celebrating Joseph Ratzinger’s dialogue with Kasper in the early 2000s?
Not certain what point you are making here Mortain. The debate you mention involved Ratzinger when he was head of the CDF responding to a proposal from Kasper that local churches should be able to apply the Church’s moral teachings, especially on marriage, in ways that allow people to live lives contrary to those teachings on the grounds that the local Church should have priority in such “pastoral applications” over the universal Church. This forced Ratzinger to respond from the CDF which he did. His judgment was obviously negative on the Kasper proposal. The fact that the debate eventually gets highlighted in America Magazine should not cloud over the fact that this was not an arcane academic debate between two professors arguing over the meaning of Catholic doctrines. This whole affair actually makes the point I am making in the quote you give above from my essay. To wit, that the Church is NOT an endless debating society, which is a point Ratzinger makes clear in his response to Kasper. And his response, to repeat, is that of the head of the CDF to a bishop who needs correcting. This is not an example of the Church being in a constant state of suspension. It is an example of the opposite.
Dr. Chapp,
Thank you for the response. Is this a concrete example of Balthasar’s idea of the “theo-poetical” two truths that seem in contradiction yet are somehow elevated into a higher unity? You deplore progressives constantly relitigating settled issues but then celebrate Ratzinger’s dialogue with them? I guess there is some higher truth here I am just too dull to understand.
You assert Cardinal Ratzinger made clear “that the Church is NOT an endless debating society”. Yet Cardinal Kasper seems to have done just that, kept the debate going without any substantive correction and as a consequence Cardinal Kasper’s views* have become the de facto view across a wide swath of the Church today. Why couldn’t Ratzinger/JPII discipline Kasper and ensure he would never be in a position to relitigate this issue? You fault progressives for relitigating issues but if the leadership (JPII/Ratzinger) de facto tolerates it by refusing to take concrete actions to stop the debate and remove people who disingenuously want to change Church teaching does Ratzinger bear any responsibility? And don’t tell me JPII couldn’t mete out discipline when he wanted to! Contrast the treatment of Kasper with, oh I don’t know Marcel Lefebvre! Say what you want but Pope Francis also didn’t make this mistake and didn’t hesitate to sack critics and he certainly never promoted them. He was also effective at shutting down the “debate” with Traditionis Custodes.
*Namely “local churches should be able to apply the Church’s moral teachings, especially on marriage, in ways that allow people to live lives contrary to those teachings on the grounds that the local Church should have priority in such ‘pastoral applications’ over the universal Church.”
If that quote is truly Kasper’s, where can I find it? Is it perhaps simply a paraphrase of Kasper’s position?
Ratzinger just continued the debate without any subsequent correction? Did you not read in my response that the exchange between Kasper and Ratzinger began precisely as a result of Ratzinger “correcting” Kasper via a document issued by the CDF?? You seem intent on mischaracterizing their exchange as just a debate among the professors when it was nothing of the sort. Ratzinger was in some small sense “dialoging” with Kasper, but only insofar as Ratzinger was attempting , via correction from the CDF, to get Kasper to change his position. And Kasper was not disciplined further for many reasons. First, he dropped the issue after the exchange with Ratzinger and made no more of it as a cause. He obviously was just biding his time, but the fact remains he was not obstinate in his public disagreement with the CDF and retreated into silence on the issue. Second, Kasper is a strange case because he is actually a very good theologian (or was back in the day) and his theology can be quite profound. I read his book on the Trinity many decades ago and thought it profound. My point is that Kasper was not Hans Kung and even if Kasper now leans in a liberal direction it was not altogether clear back then that this was so. Indeed, liberal Catholics back in the day thought Kasper was a “conservative”. So please do not equate the treatment of Kasper under JPII with that of the schismatic Lefebvre. The former was a loyal son of the Church. The latter was not.
Meiron,
I was quoting Dr. Chapp’s article above, it may have been a paraphrased of Cardinal Kasper’s position.
Dr. Chapp,
I don’t think anyone has to be a rad trad to find your breezy characterization of Cardinal Kasper (“leans in a liberal direction” but “loyal son of the Church”) rinsible. Cardinal Kasper’s infamous retort to the African bishops in 2014 was scandalous and it even outraged many JPII conservatives. He started out being an associate of Kung to only end up like that. It seems to me a pretty predictable trajectory.
Wonderful, thank you Larry. For those interested in experiencing the amazing fellowship found at an Ordinariate parish, see: https://ordinariate.net/parishfinder
I seem to recall Francis essentially stopping the Anglican priests from reconciling to Rome and thereby cutting off any supply of fresh Anglican priests who might have wished to be part of the Ordinariate, all in the name of ecuminism.
As for experiencing the Ordinariate service, a large Roman Catholic parish had an Ordinariate priest celebrate the mass there one time, and it was beautiful to hear grand proper English used in a church, much as if an old translation of the Roman mass were used.
At closing, the priest invited everyone to attend his parish any time, and me knowing it was in their old original and sold off brownstone beautiful church could hardly wait to attend.
I went to a lightly attended daily service, maybe 20 people, if that, perfect for intimate worship….except 5 of the 20 were the new-retro dressed family of modern rad-trad family type, young mother and husband, and three utterly undisciplined children, who unrelently gabbed, ran around, stomped on hardwood floors, kicked pews, dropped kneelers with thundering crashes, and I finally bailed out unable to follow the service at all in proper frame of mind. I adore children but they should not be allowed to disrupt worship in the name of family time. In my youth, unruly children were removed by mortified parents, while today mom and dad simply ignore them, even if impossible for anyone else.
I did not go back as these were obvious regulars there.
I’ve been seeing more commentaries about the failings of “Gentle Parenting”. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back to something more reasonable. We do our children no favors if we neglect teaching them about respecting others & what is appropriate behaviour in public places. Especially sacred spaces.
Agree with you totally. Have seen the occasional parent not restraining their kids in my church. Have also heard the folks who suggest if such people are reprimanded, they will not return to church. To which I say, “so what?” Parents such as this continue in their behavior because no one ( read: the priests) will speak to them directly. A way to address this would be at the next Sunday Mass. Announce before the start of Mass that children who are loud or misbehaving are to be removed so as not to disturb the worship of others, as it has been an ongoing problem. If the parents fail to do so in a reasonable amount of time, they will be approached by an usher who will explain they need to remove their child.
Priests are afraid of hostile complaints to the Bishop. The truth is most of us would applaud when the kids are removed. Children will “learn” to be quiet in church when they are old enough to understand that creating a scene at church will mean a lengthy time out at home.
I raised two children. For the most part they were bored but well behaved in church. Sometimes we brought along their books and crayons to occupy them. We did reach a point where one parent went to church while the other remained at home with the kids; then reversed roles when the first parent returned home after Mass. Annoying and time consuming? Yes. But it only lasted a year or so. In the meanwhile, I got more out of Mass being there alone, as did my spouse, and I am certain the congregation did not miss my kids distracting them.
But in any case, subtle measures do not work with dunderheads who only think about themselves. For that sort, a little blunt talk is required.
Yep.
There are some people who are so uptight that they complain about a baby crying for the 90 seconds it takes to leave with them.
There are other people so loose they never leave with the screaming child, and call it virtuous and welcoming.
External discipline tends to have the effect of correcting both kinds of error – which then has the effect of making things a much more recollected experience for everyone.
Yes, Bob, you are right. This is noticeable at Ordinariate parishes because the reverent atmosphere seems to oppose this phenomenon that is maybe average at normie parishes.
There are a number of families at my ordinariate parish which cause me to gasp inwardly at the parents in embarrassment for them, and just zoo-level distraction for everyone else, and I’m young.
This dad is excessively proud of having children, and would never brook being told to discipline them,
or that mother is overwhelmed yet mortified by her inability to control her children,
or else: the children are all autistic thus no one can expect to control them.
We are all supposed to clam up and be grateful for children present,
but this doesn’t seem right for anyone.
This does not exist at TLM parishes though those families lean into severity so even toddlers seem abnormally subdued.
Hope it can be pastorally addressed.
To all the above commenters regarding the comportment of children at Mass:
I attended St. Saviour’s parish in Brooklyn in the 50’s/early 60’s. All students in our Catholic school (numbering about 700-800) were required to attend 9 AM Mass as a group organized by class and with an SSND religious teacher overseeing her students. There was virtually no talking among the students for the entire Mass. There was no leaving the pew to go to the bathroom as there was no bathroom in the Church. The Mass was in Latin which I can assure you no student spoke fluently. And most students had a English/Latin St. Joseph Missal to follow along. So now, tell me, what changed about the children and the adults supposedly raising them?
(NB this is NOT a post about the Mass in Latin or the Usus Antiquior. This is a post about children, thir conduct in public places and adult management of children.)
There’s a book about French child rearing by an American mother who moved to France:”Bringing Up Bebe”.I highly recommend it & I bought copies for each of my children who are now parents.
It’s not a Catholic book & there are sections that may not mesh with Catholic teaching but it gives an important view into another culture where children have greater freedom in some ways & much firmer boundaries in others.
We hosted two French exchange students in the past. They had lovely manners , were respectful, & a genuine joy to be around. And so was the French chaperone who came to our parochial school along with the exchange students.
I have seen the same new-retro clothed young parents (by new-retro, I mean modern kids’ strange ideas of how older styles appeared, a church dress version of The Stray Cats), and same out of control children at TLM masses….it is modern parenting or lack thereof, same as people patiently explaining to their non-stop yappy dog why it must be quiet, which it ignores as never any consequences.
I agree modern thoughts and media seem to insist we all should embrace the chaos of undisciplined children, especially in otherwise aging dying parishes, and I suppose we are expected to equally embrace the spoiled out of control teens and adults which these modern children often become.
As an Ordinariate priest, I do not recall that at all. In fact, in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, we had over 40 Anglican priests become Catholic priests of the Ordinariate during Pope Francis’ pontificate (source: my 2025 Clergy Directory). There was also Msgr Michael Nazir-Ali in England, among others.
As I recall, Francis had said something along the lines of not wanting to poach in England (which is what I meant by Anglican), but if he then changed his mind, am glad to hear. I was quite aware of several higher ranking folk who reconciled from England, but had no numbers for priests from England. My mistake for lack of precision in meaning.
Dr. Chapp:
I have full respect for your faithfulness as a stand-up Catholic man, and as such my comment below is not intended to be corrosive or taking pot shots.
My main concern regards Cardinal Kasper, and my assessment is that he is not “a faithful son of the Church.” I reached this conclusion by reading what I will call his “credal” writing (and not, as you have referred to, his theological works).
I was compelled to read some of Kasper’s work directly, after reading an extended series about him here at CWR (in 2013 I believe it was), during Kasper’s campaign to overturn the Church teaching on marriage, which was unleashed after Jorge Bergoglio was elected pontiff. Essayists (theologians) here at CWR expressed frustration in “dialogue” with Kasper, asserting that they could not resolve what Kasper actually believed, because they found his words ambiguous and evasive. After weeks of reading these narratives, I decided to read Kasper myself. I chose to read Kasper’s 1974 book “Jesus the Christ,” because critics of Kasper sometimes cited problems with Kasper’s beliefs written there (and in another earlier work entitled “God in History”).
I assume from your own more moderate assessment that you have not read Kasper’s “Jesus the Christ.”
In any case, in that book, which was published in 1974 (before he was elevated to teaching authority as a bishop), and re-issued in 2018 (I believe), reportedly without change, Kasper explicitly denies the bodily resurrection of Jesus (asserting to his readers his alternative creed that Jesus only “obtruded in the spirit”), and in like manner explicitly denies the numerous Gospel accounts of the miracles of Jesus, and takes pains to list several in particular, including the calming of the sea, the raising of the widow’s son, the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the Transfiguration, and the raising of Lazarus. He opens his argument for denying the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus by declaring his intention to (his words” “demythologize” the New Testament.
He summarizes his denial of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection and the miracles by inviting his readers to join him in denying the Gospel accounts, declaring: “We probably do not need to believe these things.”
The evidence given by Kasper in his own hand is that he denies the authority of the Gospels (and he obviously denies the Creed regarding the resurrection of the Body). This is evidence offered by Kasper that he holds and teaches heresies, and has done do publicly for 50 years. Being a man of 70, I am well aware that our Church has (since the days of John XXIII), decided to avoid “condemning” heresy, and we are all “well-schooled” in the oft-stated remark that some disbelievers such as Kasper are “not formally declared to be heretics.” However, the preference of our contemporary Church leadership to avoid the unpleasant duty of condemning heresies does not inspire a belief that the Church has strong convictions about the faith, and elevating a man to teaching authority as Bishop AFTER he dismisses the Gospel accounts can be reasonably interpreted as an indicator that the contemporary Church is not serious about the faith.
As to another matter you allude to in your essay, you are clearly concerned with the recent revelations by “internet sleuths” that photographs have been published showing then-Rev. Robert Prevost kneeling with others in a Pachamama ritual. My own sense is that it is better for the sake of the Church that such information be disseminated widely, because kneeling before images of pagan gods is wrong (as we learned when we were little children).
My sense is that we cannot expect to strengthen the Church by resorting to ignoring evidence in front of our own eyes.
In Christus Veritas
My wife and I attended an Anglican Ordinariate Mass in Bethlehem, PA, a year or two ago on our way back home from visiting friends and family in PA. We were quite impressed and wished we had access to one where we live (northwestern Vermont). Alas, the closest one to us is over three hours away.
The closest Anglican Ordinariate Mass for us is more than 3 hours away also. Sadly.
I do not believe there is one any closer than 3hrs to me, and ditto any decent Latin Mass or decent mass at all in my diocese where the Francis appointee last year just made the refugees of a Latin Mass move 45mins further away to a far shabbier church where there is a shabbier Latin Mass. I must admit being utterly disgusted by what has been going on in the Roman Catholic Church today, where it doesn’t seem to believe or practice its own teachings through the centuries. I would be off like a rocket to any parish that had more than automaton rote, suchlike true spiritual direction and practice. But, sure as I found it, some bishop would wreck it.
Chapp writes: “My wife and I regularly attend an Ordinariate parish here in Scranton, Pennsylvania (St. Thomas More).”
You are most fortunate. I’d also attend if there were one conveniently located.
When the Ordinariate was established, I was under the impression that it was a temporary measure to accommodate the living Anglicans who identified as being Catholic. And that a a generation or perhaps two it would be obsolete and that it would be absorbed by the Latin NO rite. Therefore they would not need to train new priests and that all priests eventually joining would be single with no chance to marry. The Church did not want it to be a gateway for married men to the priesthood. I am a former Anglican,, but have no desire to become part of the movement. I am glad that it exists and reaches the needs of so many and hope they continue to thrive and contribute to the Chirch. May the Lord bless them richly.
I have been following Catholic/Anglican dealings for nearly fifty years, and in all that time I never came across the notion that the Anglican Use (here in America) and the subsequent Ordinariates constituted a “temporary measure to accommodate the living Anglicans who identified as being Catholic.” Rather the contrary, that it was to be a permanent concession to benefit Anglicans to whom remaining Anglican had become impossible due to the ordination of women and subsequent endorsement of homosexual pseudogamy, developments which rendered any possibility of a restoration of sacramental communion between Anglicans and Catholics a flat impossibility.
I have, however, over these decades come across “dissenting” Catholics, usually advocates of women’s ordination, who expressed resentment at, as well as opposition to, the “Ordinariate scheme” precisely because its creation and existence betokened the unalterability of Catholic teaching and practice on these matters. Indeed, a few of these to my knowledge went on to leave the Church and become Episcopalians or Church of Englanders themselves.
If anyone is close to Fort Worth, Texas I recommend the Anglican Ordinariate parish in Arlington. If you are visiting the further western suburbs, I think there’s an Anglican Ordinariate parish in Cleburne.
“My wife and I regularly attend an Ordinariate parish here in Scranton, Pennsylvania (St. Thomas More).”
I went there when it was St. Joseph’s and when it was St. Thomas More about ten years ago.
Upon leaving, I was greeted by the Priest (if I recall correctly, he was from Puerto Rico) and I apparently stood out as a visitor. I concluded our interchange with “this is the first time in all my years of attending Mass that I’ve ever said you have a lovely daughter, Father”-she was with her dad greeting leaving attendees. I can’t remember his name, and it appears he’s no longer at St. TM.
The Mass was reverent and the language was amazing. If somebody would have asked me what “vouchsafe” meant prior to that experience, I would have thought it was some archaic word for bailment or a bank deposit.
Or ” it is right and mean so to do”. If my memory serves.
Poor memory, “meet and right “, not mean.
🙄
I think in the context of what I remember, 1a applies.
1
a: to grant or furnish often in a gracious or condescending manner
b: to give by way of reply
refused to vouchsafe an explanation
2:
to grant as a privilege or special favor
Our parish entered the ordinariate in 2018 and it has been very bad for our parish. We had one of the finest Catholic schools in the country, the Atonement Academy and through all the infighting among the Ordinariate priests, the lack of attention given to the school by the Bishop, they ended up lowering enrollment from 600 down to 200 in just 8 years. Then the Ordinariate shut the school down and put in a charter school it its place, not even giving the enrolled parents any notice, right in the middle of summer. Why? Because they could make more money renting to a public charter school than they could serving the Catholics who the school was built for. It’s not the liturgy that makes for the shambles that the Ordinariate creates. It is their lack of attention and lack of caring.
“Our parish entered the ordinariate in 2018 and it has been very bad for our parish. We had one of the finest Catholic schools in the country, the Atonement Academy and through all the infighting among the Ordinariate priests, the lack of attention given to the school by the Bishop,”
Dear Bill, your statement about the reduction in Catholic schools does not deal with the main factor for this decline:
Avoid scandal and help the poor
“A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic Schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the poor, the Church should be ready to use its resources for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the upper classes while leaving the poor in the public schools. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the upper classes fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it. The resources of the Church could then be focused on “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic Schools for centuries. It can get along without them today. The essential factor is to avoid scandal and cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely, THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the poor must be included.
Define “rich”, “poor”, and “middle-class”.
The mission of Catholic schools is to indocrinate (a good thing) children in the Catholic faith – both rich and poor. The mission of Catholic schools is NOT to operate a private school for the general public – rich or poor.
The Ordinariate seems to have gone far beyond accommodating former Anglicans in a familiar kind of worship. Officials Ordinariate media regularly praise figures like John Donne and Laud, who became very ant-Catholic publicists, as part of English Catholicism’s heritage. They don’t seem to recognise any essential discontinuity between the Catholic Church in England and the post-Reformation Church. They seem to believe that the Church of England, until a couple of generations ago, was the Catholic Church in England, albeit in an imperfect unity with the Catholic Church. It makes one wonder if, behind that “grand English” speech alluded in the post (which anti-Catholic haters like John Knox and Cranmer could have used), what kind of religious notions bubble away. Chesterton and Dawson would have easily answered that question.
My mother’s Douay Rheims Bible uses some older English language. Should it be suspect also?
Or the English Catholic martyrs who *spake* in the same way as in the Ordinariate liturgy?
🙂
“My mother’s Douay Rheims Bible uses some older English language. Should it be suspect also?
Or the English Catholic martyrs who *spake* in the same way as in the Ordinariate liturgy?”
Use of the word “seem(s)” should be suspect.
As a pup auditor, I encountered an experienced colleague who told me that the use of the word “seem” or its evil fellow instrument of equivocation “appears” is a “weasel word” used when one wants to draw inferences based on the thinnest of reeds-but still wants an exit door.
Either the evidence and the criteria used to evaluate it supports the assertion or conclusion, or it does not. In this case no evidence is cited, instead we have a subjective impression without supporting evidence and no criteria.
My conclusion- based upon several prior posts by a poster in which he promoted open borders as a method of importing South and Central Americans is that this language is a little to “Anglo” for his personal taste.
“Official Ordinariate media regularly praise figures like John Donne and Laud, who became very ant-Catholic publicists, as part of English Catholicism’s heritage. They don’t seem to recognise any essential discontinuity between the Catholic Church in England and the post-Reformation Church”. These criteria are in the Queen’s English. You seem not to want to address them. It seems like you don’t wish to engage in seemly discussion. Au revoir!
“Official Ordinariate media regularly praise figures like John Donne and Laud”
Show us the evidence for your claim.
I like the English of the Douai Rheims too. In itself, it’s not a guarantee of orthodoxy. I pointed out that, beyond questions of taste, there are doctrinal problems in the views officially expressed by leaders of the Ordinariate, like the ones mentioned.
Trust me, as someone who is traditionally minded and familiar with the Anglican Church since childhood I’m not fooled by faulty theology wrapped in archaic language. But the language itself is still beautiful.
As the Editor-in-Chief of the journal *Anglican Embers: Journal of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society* published twice a year, and as an historian of the English Reformation, I can comment with some experiential authority, and in my 20+ years of membership of the ACS I have never encountered members who “don’t seem to recognise any essential discontinuity between the Catholic Church in England and the post-Reformation Church.” There are no doubt, such people, but I would hope that the process of catechetical preparation leading to their reception into the Catholic Church would have disabused them of that notion; and in the journal which I edit there is nothing to be found to lend countenance to such an idea.
We do have in each issue of that journal a section entitled “Patrimonial Pearl(s)” whih usually reproduced an item of Anglican theological writing, poetry or hymnody which illustrates a certain drawing upon Catholic tradition, theology, or piety by figures like Laud, Montague, Ken and others – for instance, an excerpt some three years ago from Montague’s defense of the practice of auricular confession – by individuals who were in other respects anti-Catholic and anti-papal. I fail to see any harm in this, and it follows in the footsteps of Rome’s allowing certain prayers composed by that Arch-heretic himself, Thomas Cranmer, to be incorporated into thew Mass rite provided in the “Divine Worship Missal” for Ordinariate congregations. Needless to say, none of these prayers propound any views peculiar to Cranmer himself.
https://acsociety.org/
https://acsociety.org/current-journal
Thanks for your answer. Here’s an example of Ordinariate views on the Church, published by the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society – What Does the Anglican Patrimony Have to Offer the Church?, Richard Upsher Smith https://ordinariateexpats.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/richard-upsher-smith-jr-what-does-the-anglican-patrimony-have-to-offer-the-church/
The article demonstrates an ambivalence towards core aspects of Enlightenment thought which Catholics have been put on guard against by Church magisterum. It mistakenly tries to reduce much of it, and Protestantism itself, to renewed modern “Augustinianism”, which was in fact the “Reformist” plague rejected by the Church:
“Neo-Thomism… is a failed historical project… Neo-Thomism can no longer buttress the weak walls of a one-sidedly Procline and Dionysian thought. The Plotinian, the Augustinian, must be re-appropriated if the Church is to re-evangelize her own people… It is precisely here that the Anglican patrimony may be of use to Mother Church. The Prayer Book tradition effectively embodies the Augustinianism of modernity”. Most of the current crisis in the Church has to do with well-intentioned effort to get rid of the scholastic worldview expressed by Saint Thomas and so-well revived by Pope Leo XIII’s “neo-Thomism”. Yet more efforts in the same vein are not to welcomed, even in the name of contribution. “Neo-Thomism” never lost the debate with Enlightenment modernity. It was “defeated” by the grubby politics of modernity, nothing to celebrate.
The following is seriously flawed: “[The Ordinariate] might also have some influence both on Church governance and theology. A Platonic tradition exists in Anglicanism – whether one thinks of Richard Hooker’s Procline Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, the Cambridge Platonists… that could provide some guidance as Roman theologians wrestle with Thomas after Neo-Thomism. Also, the absolutism of Roman clerical governance is not a necessary concomitant of the authority of the Magisterium; Anglican experiments with lay involvement in ecclesiastical polity have been responsive to the growth of modern subjectivity through the centuries – the headship of the British crown was only one such experiment! – and Anglicanism could have a contribution to make here too”. Hooker Laws contains a generous number of heresies, one of which is referred to positively in this quote above, “lay involvement” in the form of civil society’s headship of religion in Anglicanism. This huge error of Hooker’s makes of the civil society and the Church, one society with different functions. Neo-Platonism since the Renaissance has been the greatest of covers for the best-known of errors, but the false logic now goes: Saint Thomas was a Platonist [indeed, he let us know exactly what he did and didn’t borrow]; Proclus was a Platonist: therefore Catholics can be “Procline”. Nonsense, of course.
The Ordinariate’s line is that it brings to us “what is best” from the Protestant tradition in England. Anglicanorum Coetibus’ snippet into its worldview entitles Catholics to enquire whether Ordinariate figures like this one are qualified to discriminate what is fit to be contributed; Richard Upsher Smith’s suggestions for “inclusion” would suggest not, because he praises them precisely for the grossly deficient aspects mentioned above. While some, after certain experiences of (very unRoman) antics at Novus Ordo parish life are pleased by the external aesthetics of Ordinariate practice, it is what rattles around in the mind of the Ordinariate, so to speak, that is concerning. Perhaps there is a strong Ordinariate voice that contradicts that of Upsher…
Miguel Cervantes,
I have read your comments here and I think at Ed Feser’s blog, I just wanted to commend your excellent comments and stalwart defense of Thomism in the face of Nouvelle/Protestant attacks. Those sections you cite above have completely soured me on the Ordinariate whereas before, I was neutral. It sounds almost exactly like what John Milbank (an Anglican with a “priestess wife” no less!) says.
I have read your comments here and I think at Ed Feser’s blog, I just wanted to commend your excellent comments and stalwart defense of Thomism in the face of Nouvelle/Protestant attacks. Those sections you cite above have completely soured me on the Ordinariate whereas before, I was neutral. It sounds almost exactly like what John Milbank (an Anglican with a “priestess wife” no less!) says.
I would attend if I could
Was it gracious or was it condescending? Seems to me there is an awful lot of difference between those adjectives.
*****
I know an ordained, married, Anglican minister and once attended one of his Anglican—non-ordinariate—liturgies, a memorial service for a deceased Anglican friend. The rubrics of that service and gestures were reverent, worthy of respect by many a TLM devotee. Yet some ‘Catholics’ felt so blessed, they received eucharist at that mass-service, not discerning any difference, pooh-poohing my questioning about any difference.
I think condescend as a verb had a different meaning back in the day:
“In the eighteenth century, condescension or condescending denoted a positive characteristic of a person of superior breeding, class, or some other superior set of characteristics lowering themselves to speak *kindly* to an inferior.”
“Worship” & “pray” could also be used differently.
Yes. Thank you. The English “vouchsafe” can connote a positive or a negative condescension depending on historical context and an individual’s understanding.
I personally observed ‘Catholics’ receiving eucharist at an Anglican mass, not discerning any difference. Whether vouchsafe connotes a positive or negative condescension seems a point of nonimportance. The common worship space we inhabit is one big ecumenical morass.
Some Protestant writer at First Things (?Trueman, Boersma?) once wrote that Protestants bear some responsibility for the mess all churches are in. We’re all atomized, splintered, divided each from each, and yet we are audacious enough to vouchsafe God! I suppose that shows we know what Mercy Is. Thanks Be to God.
Te ígitur, clementíssime Pater, per Jesum Christum Fílium tuum Dóminum nostrum súpplices rogámus ac pétimus (osculatur altare) uti accépta hábeas, et benedícas (jungit manus, deinde signat ter super oblata), hæc dona, hæc múnera, hæc sancta sacrifícia illibáta (extensis manibus prosequitur): in primis quæ tibi offérimus pro Ecclésia tua sancta cathólica: quam pacificáre, custodíre, adunáre, et régere dignéris toto orbe terrárum, una cum famulo tuo Papa nostro N. et Antístite nostro N. et ómnibus orthodóxis, atque cathólicæ et apostólicæ fídei cultóribus.
Wherefore, O most merciful Father, we humbly pray and beseech thee, through Jesus Christ thy Son, our Lord (he kisses the altar), that thou p. 465 wouldst vouchsafe to receive and bless (he joins his hands together, and then makes the sign of the cross thrice over the offerings) these gifts, these offerings, this holy and unblemished sacrifice (he extends his hands and continues), which in the first place we offer thee for thy holy Catholic Church, that it may please thee to grant her peace: as also to protect, unite, and govern her throughout the world, together with thy servant N., our Pope N., our bishop, as also all orthodox believers who keep the catholic and apostolic faith.
Me, too Mrs. Hess.
We can find havens that satisfy, yet the Church at large with all its imperfections is where faith is tested, where we can bring light.
Server disconnect test.
What’s up with the server issues? It seems to happen quite often.
St. Benedict Spiritual Authority Key
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The Ordinariate provided a faithful and challenging community for us here at Good Shepherd Parish in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada.It was a growing and vibrant ecclesial community with ever increasing numbers of faithful members, a deep and fervent spirituality along with a sincere appreciation for the Eucharistic Celebration in the Ordinariate Liturgy. However, for rather unclear reasons, we were declared not to be viable. With a simple Friday email, we were notified that the following Sunday would be our last. Building sold and bank account transfered. That was the end of Good Shepherd Parish in Oshawa. So sad and incomprehensible.