The Anglican Ordinariate is pregnant with potential. The immense sagacity of Pope Benedict the humble is recognized among everyone whom you would care to hear from on the subject. He ingeniously acted as Pontiff by building a sturdy bridge for Protestants to cross the Tiber on. It captures the beauty inherit within Protestantism and gently corrects the errors. It is also an opportunity to recapture our English Catholic past and revitalize it. A little example of this is the growing interest in Our Lady of Walsingham, the patron of the Ordinariate. But the potential is there to capture it all. In a more tolerant and less virally anti-catholic English speaking world, could we see the restoration of the Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury? Even such there would be no need to do away with the Archbishop of Westminster. What about the potential for a more united English liturgy present in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland etc.? How about a liturgy that prays for the Queen, and I suppose, the President, the revitalization of the Sarum Rite and a distinctly English (Sarum) Latin liturgy? Recently a law was passed allowing an heir to marry a Catholic (let’s hope for its hasty ratification)? Perhaps one day we will see a Catholic King of Britain, who may live up to the mantle, Defender of the Faith. Perhaps we could finally get back to one version of the Bible across the English speaking world, even if it is the Authorized Version (aka the King James Bible, or as we called it the King Jimmy) of happy memory with some very simple corrections, like only updated archaic language, not these crazy modern Bibles that add to, take away from, and wreckovate the Scriptures.
More technically with the right demand those within the
Anglican Ordinariate could use it as a vehicle to recapture the imagination of
the English speaking people by demonstrating the truly Englishness of the
Catholic Church. Reintroducing the people to their past, demonstrating the
compatibility with the present.
Some goals could be the following:
o Make the Sarum Use of the Roman Rite a key project of the
Ordinariate
o Encourage a beautiful and healthy Latin liturgy based on
the immemorial Latin Mass and Sarum Rite, and a beautiful and healthy English
liturgy based on the ordinary form used in English speaking countries, the Book
of Common Prayer, and the ancient Latin Mass (minus much of the Latin).
o Perhaps make celibacy a requirement for clergy but not all
priests, like our Orthodox brothers.
o Encourage a revitalization of the old English Catholic
traditions like Our Lady of Walsingham, a Catholic English monarchy (through
love and prayer and loyalty), restoration of the old bishoprics of Canterbury,
and York, etc., a standard liturgy and canon for the English speaking world
that is deeply grounded and rooted in tradition without becoming a dead letter.
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| Our Lady of Walsingham |
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| Coat of Arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury |
o Optimally much of this could be more easily accomplished
if her majesty would return the Church of England to her proper custodian the
Bishop of Rome instead of the Queen of Britain at which point all of the
ancient bishoprics could be restored alongside the current structure and a new
structure could be born incorporating and combining the current Catholic
structure in the English speaking world, the current Anglican/Episcopalian
structure in the English speaking world, and the Anglican Ordinaries.
Imagine a Church that captures all of the best of Chaucer,
Shakespeare, Thomas More, Newman, Chesterton, Belloc, Lewis, the KJV, the Book of Common
Prayer, the Sarum Use, the Roman Missal, the extraordinary and ordinary form.
The Anglican Ordinariate has the potential to revitalize all
of what was best about English Catholicism or rather English culture in general
before the murderous and insane Henry VIII or his sad daughter Bloody Bess
destroyed so much of our history and culture, combine it with what is best
about Roman Catholicism as expressed in the various parts of the English
speaking world, combined with beauty inherent in Protestantism without the mess
within the English speaking world and in time perhaps the old tired
institutions will give way into one English speaking Church in union with Rome,
and organized throughout the English speaking world, headed by the Archbishop
of Canterbury.
