This we have done. So, if ever an ordinariate gets up and running, those who think that the Roman Catholic Church will protect "Anglican patrimony" may try to live with their delusion. It is a pathetic sight to behold them, at present, like a bunch of self-defeated refugees from a land of freedom and plenty (having no idea what they leave behind) standing on a dock, waiting for a magic ship to carry them to Shangri-La. Will the ship arrive? Does Shangri-La exist?
As time has gone by, less and less of the TAC people have proved willing to abandon the truth of Anglican theology, the power of genuine (as opposed to "A.U.") Anglican liturgy, and the principles of the Affirmation of St. Louis. We hope, therefore, to see complete unity between them and the Continuing Anglicans of the Concordat churches (all the chatter about the Anglican Province in America notwithstanding). This we want for them, including unity with their old allies and brethren of the ACC, without recriminations by anybody, and without old war stories about a distant past and big personalities absent these several years. None of that should matter for the future, if we want to be one Continuing Anglican Church as envisioned in the beginning.
The sight of the people on the dock, however, is most tragic. We must wonder, very simply, why. Why, when the moral reputation of the Roman Catholic Church is at an all time low, due entirely to self-inflicted damage, are these folks on the dock expecting "the Holy Father" and "the Holy See" to create for them an infallible solution to whatever problems they imagine?
They report that traditionalist Roman Catholics are saying, "we need you." How so? If the roamers on the dock consider Anglicanism so weak a thing that they keep only its thinnest outer shell (daring to call their perception of that shell "Anglican patrimony" - the real substance of which they cannot discern from their own posteriors), what are they going to offer by lending the tiny drop of their presence to so vast an ocean? But, if "the Holy Father" and his "Holy See" are not sure of their own health, what are a few thousand (if that many) former Anglicans presuming to accomplish?
The problems of the Roman Communion are obvious. Their legal liabilities, and bad reputation, are entirely the fault of their gigantic bureaucratic system. At a time when it has proved to be broken and corrupt through and through, why are some former Anglicans so taken with its arrogant claims? At a time when the shepherds have failed to protect their weakest members from the wolves, and when many of the shepherds have proved to be the wolves, why are the roamers so impressed by the theories of the papacy, by what it claims to be rather than what it has shown itself to be? Why are they impressed by symbolic gestures and promises of reform, when even the chief spokesman of the new constitution, Cardinal Levada, is himself a shepherd who, as everybody knows, clothed the wolves? The system protected the predators, and gave their children to be the prey.
Why, then, is anyone enamored with Rome at the present time?
Anyway, I have not forgotten. But, I prefer to work with Fr. Wells on our Layman's Guide to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and to spend most of my energy teaching the wonderful and positive things we have in our meritorious treasury of Biblical truth.
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