On The Anglo-Catholics

and the Anglican Communion:

The Church of England’s determination to wreck the Ordinariate plan needs to be emphasised again and again, despite the General Synod’s offer to departing Anglo-Catholics to allow them to carry on worshipping as Catholics in their old buildings (which will stay Anglican). The offer isn’t particularly radical – it would look terrible if the C of E refused permission, particularly as it allowed this arrangement to operate when a group of Anglicans from St Stephen’s, Gloucester Road, South Kensington, converted in the early 1990s. (Cardinal Basil Hume was persuaded by liberals to put an end to that experiment, I gather.)

I’m rather impressed by the panic in Anglican circles at the Pope’s plan, even though the people panicking simultaneously assure us that it will come to nothing. Amazingly, the Church of England is now dangling the carrot of the women bishops legislation not going through in front of potential Ordinariate supporters. But women bishops certainly will be ordained before long and, in strict Anglo-Catholic terms, any bishop in any sort of communion with them will be fatally compromised. It would be unkind to describe the attempt to confuse traditionalists as dirty tactics, though if I were a supporter of women’s ordination I might wonder what the hell was going on.