"...it is the Door-keeper who knocks"

Carl Olson speaks of the Anglican Ordinariate and the Anglican communion.  Excerpts follow:

...A couple of days ago I stumbled upon an essay written by a former Anglican who had finally become Catholic (and a priest) in large part because of the lack of final authority and doctrinal foundation in the Anglican Communion. He wrote these strong and even startling words of his former Anglican fellows:

They know that the Pope is necessary to their system. They see their own Church torn with rivalries and dissensions, and they know that such rivalries and dissensions must be, in a Church which replaces the principle of authority by the principle of compromise. They see it riddled with heresies, and they know that there is no safeguard against the perpetual recurrence of such heresies, unless the charisma of infallibility is centered in one man. They feel themselves to be an insular, or at best an imperial institution; and they know that no power will ever effectually unite living national Churches all over the world except a world-wide power which has no nationality. They see the whole principle of authority crumbling upon them; and they know that no voice can be heard over the tumult except one that speaks from another world. A Pope they must have, but the only Pope they will acknowledge is a phantom and a figment. Many souls gathered together in prayer, but no Pope, and, therefore, no Church.

And all the time, Peter stands knocking at the door. A real Pope, a figure in flesh and blood, a Prince in being. And by these would-be Catholics of another Faith, with all their devotion to an imaginary Pope, the real-Pope is cold-shouldered and ignored. Sometimes one of their number listens to the knocking door, listens, and is attracted. How strange, that what we longed for so eagerly should be waiting at our very doors all the while! No time must be lost, clearly, in telling the others: "Look, look, Peter stands at the gate!" That message is the signal for a chorus of contradiction. "Pooh, a fancy, a mere fancy! You are letting your imagination run away with you; it's an attack of nerves, no more! Take it easy for a bit; you will find that you think quite differently in a month or two." Or, if the questioning mind will not be contented with such soothing treatment, they will proceed to explanations: "What you see is not the real Pope; it is only the ghost of a Pope. What reigns at the Vatican is no true Prince of Christendom; it is only the phantom of a great historical institution; the Papacy that ruled the Middle Ages and died with the Middle Ages. An anachronism, a pathetic survival! The power of the Papacy is dead; or . . . dying; or . . . well, anyhow, it is just going to die. There's nothing there really. Don't open the door! For goodness' sake, don't open the door!"

God forgive all those who lightly and thoughtlessly—for there is levity, there is thoughtlessness—thus add to the spiritual embarrassments of a soul already hard pressed to obey the voice of conscience! God pity the timorous soul that is terrified by such sophistries! If the Papacy is dead, then the Catholic Church is dead; and if the Catholic Church is dead, Christ has failed. Close down the Churches, shut up the Bible; let us have no death-mask of Anglo-Catholicism to mock at our despair! But Peter is still there; all the fury of Herod has spent itself in vain. Peter's prison on Easter Eve, like his Master's Tomb on Easter morning, stands empty. We have a Pope.

Peter stood at the door without, and continued knocking. As he knocked long ago, in the shadow of the porch, while good souls within busied themselves with prayers for his safety, and shut their ears to the noise, telling themselves that it was only his spirit, till at last they rose to let him in; so he knocks still, while the souls that profess to hold him in all reverence shut their ears and invent comfortable theories, and cannot or will not—is it cannot, or will not?—go out to seek him in the darkness and the storm. He knocks patiently, for the fisherman has earned patience; he knocks gently, for his shepherd heart knows that bullying will do no good. But do not mistake his errand; he has keys upon his shoulder; it is the Door-keeper who knocks.

The author, a fine Scripture scholar, refers here to the miraculous escape from prison by Peter, recorded in Acts 12. I do wonder what the author of this essay would think of today's situation? After all, Monsignor Ronald Knox wrote the piece over eighty years ago; it is titled, "A Postscript for Anglicans", from Anglican Cobwebs (Sheed & Ward, 1927)...