THE P RTAL
February 2011 Page 10
What I think about the Ordinariate by Aidan Nichols OP
Roughly twenty-five years ago , I started thinking about what an Anglican Uniate Church might look like . It was already obvious , even before the Church of England ’ s ordination of women vote in 1992 , that the Anglican Communion , taken as a whole , would not be able to come into union with Rome .
Think of the ‘ Christian atheism ’ of the ‘ Sea of Faith ’ movement , or attitudes to Eucharistic presidency in the Anglican archdiocese of Sydney and you ’ ll soon realize why ! So instead I went through the history of Anglican theology and picked out the elements I thought would be compatible with communion with the Pope .
Thought-experiment
Of course , this was only a thought-experiment . It produced a paper Church , not a real one – though I still think it would be a useful rough and ready guide when the powers that be are selecting what could usefully be taught to Anglican Use seminarians preparing for the Roman Catholic priesthood .
Tractarian ambition
Anyhow , I ’ m obviously not a prophet because my imagined Uniate Church doesn ’ t look much like the Ordinariate , which is what is actually happening . The bishops , priests and people who are joining the Ordinariate come from the nineteenth century Oxford Movement . In fact , they are following out the logic of that movement to the end .
The Tractarians were not mainly interested in looking back at earlier Anglican writers for bits and pieces they agreed with ( though they also did that ). They were mainly concerned with restructuring Anglicanism root-and-branch on Catholic principles ( for which the older writers were sometimes useful , and sometimes not ). The Tractarians wanted to reshape the whole of the Church of England – not just the High Church party – along Catholic lines .
We know how much was achieved along those lines , in preaching , Liturgy , devotion . But when in 1992 the Synod voted for the admission of women to the ministerial priesthood , that crucial Tractarian ambition was frustrated for ever and a day .
Corporate reunion
That did not mean , however , that the aims of the Oxford Movement could not be realized in another way . Once the Tractarians admitted Rome was a genuine Church , and not a parody of a Church ,
as earlier polemics had it , a number of those who remained loyal Anglicans started to thinking about ways in which corporate reunion might be possible .
Even when Anglo-Catholics were not Anglo-Papalist , they were often what we might call ‘ Patriarchalist ’. They thought that the Church of England was a detached portion of the Church of the West which needed to be reunited with its patriarchate . So for the heirs of the Oxford Movement to enter into corporate union with Rome , preserving what is best in their theological , liturgical , devotional and artistic patrimony , is not to confess that the whole thing has been a failure . It is to say that there is still – thanks to Anglicanorum coetibus – a way in which the unionist aim can be made ( spiritually speaking ) a roaring success .
Pioneers
The pioneers who are going forward at this early stage are , for the sake of this goal , taking a brave step into the unknown . I find it entirely understandable that many Anglo-Catholics baulk at the prospect . Those who , despite having pictures of the Pope in their clergy-houses , sacristies or even churches , cannot imagine ever moving into another ‘ part of the Lord ’ s vineyard ’ ( as Pusey put it ) need to be clear , however , that achieving tolerated status within the Church of England ( a . k . a . The Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda ) is not what the Oxford Movement was about .
Again , I appreciate that many mainstream Anglicans are irritated by the establishment of the Ordinariate .