Bitter Irony

After the heatwave, Autumn is back.
Today, I even thought I might have gone into hibernation and had woken up on April 1st
Life is full of ironies: some are amusing, others can be very bitter indeed. Here's one which, in a way, somehow manages to be both. I still don't quite believe it - can it really be true?

Francis Phillips at the Catholic Herald writes about Una Kroll, one of the original moving spirits behind the movement for women's ordination in the Anglican provinces of the British Isles. She has, the article says, been a Roman Catholic ( and so, of course, a layperson - apparently as well as ontologically)  for three years. That hasn't, however, prevented contributions such as this intervention [here] last year in The Guardian, supporting women bishops in the Church of England and claiming an insight into God's will for the Church somehow denied to the rest of us, including the Magisterium of her new spiritual home.

This is from Francis Phillips' piece:

"She also had the humility and insight to recognise in her former role “the temptation to potestas”, adding: “That was the moment when I realised that I was called by God to move to a Church where I could not exercise dominion of any sort, but where I could still learn what servant priesthood actually meant when put into practice.”  [read the full article here]

Can I be the only one who finds this bitterly ironic? Of course, one has to respect both Dr Kroll's decision and her own sense of personal integrity, yet having done so much to encourage those who have turned Anglicanism definitively into a liberal protestant ecclesial body and, in the process, effectively scuppered any hopes of reunion between Canterbury and Rome, she has taken the decision to renounce what she has fought for for so long in order to seek full communion with the successor of St Peter - with what aim in mind one should not perhaps speculate (but see here).
It is possible, I suppose, to respect, even applaud, the outcome of her pilgrimage of faith, but at the same time deplore the damage which has been done in the course of that journey.

The further irony, of course, is that she is a stark advertisement for the dangers inherent in the modern secularisation of Anglicanism, and the power of its politicised lobby groups, an urgent warning to the Catholic Church not to jump off the same precipice, and also the vindication (if one were still needed) of the need for Pope Benedict's establishment of the Ordinariate.

I'd laugh if I did not feel so sick at heart......

[Of course, despite my incredulity, the report is accurate - the source of the story, as I should have made clear, is an article by Dr Kroll herself  in The Tablet of 24th September -link here]