If anyone had any doubts about the absolute necessity of the Ordinariate in order to preserve any kind of recognisable and traditional Anglican identity - both for those hoping to join it and those thinking of staying on - one need not look any further than the subject of yesterday's post.
Undoubtedly, traditionalists should receive an apology: not only for the episcopal, and therefore official, expression of opinions which, regrettably, are now fairly common in certain Anglican circles, but also for the publication of these views on an official Provincial website.
Traditionalists have often been accused of "repudiating our own Church." That's not true, or only true if one accepts that Eichmann-like we are simply here to obey the orders of those who now rule the roost (how's that for a nasty comparison?); it beggars belief exactly how the "new orthodoxy" has been imposed, here as elsewhere, by a combination of theological stealth, ruthless patronage and, particularly in the synodical process, a cynical exploitation of theological ignorance.
The fact that the classical Anglican 'three-legged stool' appeal to authority (whatever its limitations) has been transformed over the last couple of generations into a shooting stick (i.e. with 'reason' - interpreted wrongly and all too often as the secular spirit of the age - effectively trumping the witness of Holy Scripture and sacred tradition) has made the revisionists' conquest of the Anglican world swift and irrevocable. Hence the search for authority which has ended for many of us in the recognition of the need to accept that gift to the whole Church which is the Petrine supremacy.
Of course, I don't for a moment think there will be any kind of apology forthcoming, at least until
Let's put it another way: holding our breath that long will fatally compromise our health.
Father, you are so right! I don't think the Bishops or General Synod appreciate the depth of feeling that their decision has made on Anglo-Catholics. It is not us who have repudiated the faith of the apostles enshrined in 2,000 years of tradition but those who would seek to follow the political correctnes of modern society and transform it into a change in the Episcopate which can't be justified either by apostolic tradition, scripture or, to my way of thinking, reason. i think the ordinariate will grow and grow and grow. Some now, some a little later and some in the future but it will grow and, sadly, to the detriment of the church I have loved but from which I now feel estranged.
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