"A new disobedience..."

Hats off (birettas, even) to the Vicar of Purgstall who tells it as it is:

"...The spirit of the Oxford Movement was that it persisted through disapproval, censure, persecution, prosecution, and betrayal before, finally, the very things priests were locked up for doing began to be accepted in the mainstream of the Church of England. Birmingham priest R. W. Enraght went to prison for using candles on his altar - I can't think of a cathedral that doesn't use candles now. The movements these radicals attracted because they were acting in all good conscience against an institution that couldn't, through thought, writing, the media, or through parliamentary legislation, inhibit their spirit continues to be an astonishing thing.  

So the question remains whether this New Erastianism needs to be met by something, and I venture to suggest that a New Oxford Movement would get trapped in the academic, the theological, and the social. What is actually needed is a new disobedience from the present culture and institution: if we are not prepared to be censured and prosecuted for protecting apostolic order, then we are not really walking in the way of R. W. Enraght. We have, in the present movement, outstanding priests who build great enterprises and great 'peoples of power', but once those figures have disappeared or moved on and the pockets of exciting growth settle back into normality, to what do we make appeal in order that the whole body might thrive?"

[Read it all here]

The new disobedience it is, then ...