Decisions (and a few updates)

Fr Edwin Barnes at The Anglo-Catholic writing on the subject of the Ordinariate speaks of the need for patience [here]  

"...A brief glance at Church History will tell us that what the Holy Father is doing for us through "Anglicanorum Coetibus" he is doing at breakneck speed.  What other former Anglican clergy have been ordained in the Catholic Church within one or two years?  Where else in all history have groups of non-Catholics been received into communion together, and allowed to keep their identity?
We are part of a work in progress, discerning the fulness of Anglican Patrimony, and finding ways of preserving it and handing it on...." 

I'm sure he's right on this. The most vocal critics of the seemingly slow progress of the Ordinariates seem to be  those who could but haven't joined them - a real danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy then?
On the other hand, sixteenth century parallels suggest (as Eamon Duffy both in the seminal The Stripping of the Altars and The Voices of Morebath illustrates)  these decisions are rarely simple nor made overnight and sometimes, in isolated rural backwaters, not at all. 
Even the most illustrious 'convert' from Anglicanism of the last few centuries, Blessed John Henry Newman (not that any comparisons should be made), took three years at Littlemore to come to a mature decision as to his ecclesial future. 
For Anglicanism each age seems to bring its own crisis. Yet for those of us in the twenty-first century - appropriately enough perhaps for the 'post modern' era - the historical parallels don't work any more. Contemporary synodical decisions irrevocably repudiating the apostolic tradition mean that this time within the Anglican Communion, as it has become, there can be no future Caroline or Puseyite 'Anglo-Catholic' revivals. Today, however long the process takes to work out individually and collectively, decisions of one kind or another will need to be made.

Another (and radically different) take on the recent child abuse evidence given to Parliament. From Brendan O'Neill [here]

Martyrdom: the reality facing Christians in many parts of the world [here]


Also from The Catholic Herald: Dr Oddie on the increasing eccentric figure of Hans Küng  [here]