THE
P RTAL
Advent Supplement
inconsistencies and compromises and fudges and curious
blend of the medieval and post-modern structures,
seems native within the cultural forms of holiness that
the Church of England (and, in my own little land, since
1921 Yr Eglws yng Nghymru) has managed to preserve.
There is there something of the “genius” and “history”
of these people, that Pope Benedict identified as being a
crucial cross-roads of a word-wide culture.
So long as the Catholic Church in this country was
largely a chaplaincy to the Irish diaspora, not forgetting
the few converts and the even fewer, brave, admirable
recusant families, she was well equipped enough. But the
collapse of Anglo-Catholicism and of liberal-Protestant
Nonconformity, and large-scale immigration from other
Catholic countries with their own religious cultures and
even distinct, ancient rites, has meant that an AngloHibernian Catholicism needs complementing.
I know, I do not think that it is too much to suggest
that John Henry Newman, reflecting upon the need
for missionaries to Britain today, for a “few such
highly-endowed men” in the light of his own motto
would instantly see what Benedict XVI was about in
establishing the Ordinariate.
He would recognise that it is a crucial part of the
New Evangelisation; it is a crucial part of the future
of the Catholic Church in this country as she goes
about fulfilling her Divine Master’s command; it is
indispensable to our being able to give an account –
one at least that our country is able to hear and not
reject as entirely culturally alien – t