A Wider Fellowship and Communion

The weekend before last, some of our Ordinariate group had the great pleasure to attend a wedding at St Mary's, Bourne St, the Anglican parish that for so long had been our home.  Here is a picture of two of our group waiting in that familiar place.

It was a joy to see so many old friends again, and to be surrounded by faces previously seen frequently but now only rarely.  Most of all, it was a delight and a privilege to share in the happy couple's big day, and we take this opportunity to assure them of our prayers for a long and happy life together.

It would not be appropriate to include any photos giving away too much of what was not our event, but we think we can just about get away with the picture above, which is of Marylebone Ordinariate Group members, and also this rather striking picture below, surely worthy of a caption competition.  In it, you see a former Head Server of St Mary's, now an Orthodox religious; key members of the current St Mary's serving team (the Vicar acted as the only server at this BCP Solemnization of Holy Matrimony), and a member of the regular St Mary's congregation, dressed in a very stylish morning coat.  Pictures do indeed speak a thousand words.

Most of us had been back to St Mary's at least once for one function or another since our departure, but this particular return took place almost exactly a year to the day since the weekend when we attended our final services as Anglicans.  As we explained in this earlier post, the anniversary of the dedication of St Mary's is held on the first Sunday of July, commemorating the day in 1874 when this small brick mission chapel behind Sloane Square was formally opened.  Forgive the digression, but I have long loved this extract from the Church Times reporting that on 2 July 1874 :

...being the festival of the Visitation of the BVM, a mission chapel in Graham Street, Pimlico, a portion of the parish of St Paul's Knightsbridge, far distant from the church in Wilton Place, was opened for service under the licence of the Bishop of London. The service at eleven o'clock was well attended by people from the neighbourhood, and we were glad to notice a good sprinkling of poor women. Mr Eyton, the Curate-in-Charge, was the celebrant, and an unconscionably long sermon was preached by Mr Knox-Little [curate of St Thomas, Regent Street], which, considering the broiling weather, was little better than cruelty.

Still today, that weekend built around the first Sunday of July involves a series of events at Bourne St.  Saturday's worship takes the shape of a Requiem Mass, and the set piece Sunday service includes not only the usual spectacular fare but also a Marian procession around the parish and a rite of Benediction.

The Saturday event was originally to have been our last service, it being agreed that a Founders' and Benefactors' Requiem was the perfect opportunity to give thanks for and to pray for the souls of those who played their part in creating the St Mary's that had been an important part of lives.  The ashes of a previous Vicar, the much loved John Gilling, who directly and indirectly had been the cause of the arrival of two of our group at Bourne St in the first place, were to be placed in the church's Colombarium at the end of proceedings, and so it really did seem the right day to say our goodbyes.

The Vicar had very kindly asked if we would like a visiting preacher on the Saturday, perhaps someone well known to us who had been important in our lives as Anglo-Catholics.  Our instinctive response was to ask for Fr William Davage, then Custodian of the Library at Pusey House.  The invitation was issued and accepted, and how right we were to have asked for him.  He preached an excellent sermon on how protestantism had played a very large role in making death something awkward and not talked about, turning it into the ultimate English social faux pas.  However, towards the end, he included an extra paragraph, which while it did not deviate from his theme, worked into the discourse some references to our imminent departure.

All Masses of Requiem, all masses, said or sung, offered pro defunctis, are bittersweet occasions. Because we are human, they taste of the bitter herbs of loss, they speak of longing and yearning, of tears and sorrow at the parting of friends, the loss of their regular society, the dislocation of familiar ties of friendship, the inevitable rupture of relationships. Yet in the Requiem Mass is the sweet savour and consolation of Our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead that promises us gain not loss, consummation and fulfillment, joy and eternal felicity, the reunion and reconciliation of friends in a new and greater social harmony, in a wider fellowship and communion, the restoration of relationships. It is the new Jerusalem to which this church is only a gateway: and if this is but a gateway, think how wonderful must be the House of God, the new Jerusalem to which we are bound: "Jerusalem the golden … What social joys are there, what radiancy of glory, what light beyond compare."

We have now been through that parting of friends, and yet although we miss the loss of the regular society of so many friends, it is indeed Loss but also Gain, for now we most certainly do find ourselves in a wider fellowship and communion.  We must always give thanks for what St Mary's was to us, for it was indeed a gateway into a wider communion, and for us most definitely fulfilled the promise of the reputation in which it had so long rejoiced, of being a "bridge between Canterbury and Rome".

After the Saturday service, the PCC very kindly threw us a party, short but friendly speeches were given, fond words of farewell spoken, and then we all moved on.  We returned the next day, as there had been some talk of a formal farewell during the service, but to everyone's relief, this plan was abandoned.  As the congregation left to process around the parish, we donned our serving cassocks one last time, cleared the altar, set it up for Benediction, and slipped out quietly and unobtrusively into our new lives.  You can see below the results of our final setting up of the Martin Travers baroque masterpiece.

This blog contains frequent fond references to our past at St Mary's and to our friends there.  This is only right, it is precisely the history and tradition of that church that brought us to where we are now.  We most certainly neither regret nor deny our past, quite the opposite, and no-one has ever asked us to do so.  Yet the references carry a small risk of misinterpretation, one that cropped up recently.

I know that the person who asked this question will not mind if I report it (on a no-names basis, of course: discretion is my middle name).  Amid the joys of that happy wedding day, we were asked if we did not miss St Mary's, if we did not regret our decision.  The answer is that although we miss our old friends, we do not regret our decision : we are sure that, given our understanding of what Anglo-Catholicism was and is, we have done the right thing.

In his sermon at the Ordinariate Anniversary Evensong and Benediction in January, Monsignor Newton cited Blessed John Henry Newman's response to Cardinal Bourne's father, who had written to him following rumours that Newman was unhappy with having becoming a Catholic.

I can only say, if it is necessary to say it, that from the moment I became a Catholic, I have never had, through God’s grace, a single doubt or misgiving on my mind that I did wrong in becoming one. I have not had any feeling whatever but one of joy and gratitude that God called me out of an insecure state into one which is sure and safe, out of the war of tongues and into the realm of peace and assurance. This is my state of mind, and I would it could be brought home to all and every one, who, in default of real arguments for remaining Anglicans, amuse themselves with dreams and fancies.

There is a lot more that Newman had to say on precisely this, some of which you will find below.  One could spin this negatively and say that he had to say so much because Anglican detractors were keen to sow seeds of doubt amongst those who might have followed Newman (I leave aside the rather ludicrous argument that he said so much about being happy as a Catholic in order to hide some deep regret at leaving Anglicanism).  Being more constructive, and I would argue being far more of relevance to the situation in which some find themselves today, one can say that he had to express his happiness so often because those who have not yet made the move fear,  mistakenly if understandably, that it is a huge and difficult step.  In this approach, we take heart from Monsignor Jamieson's encouragement that Catholics define themselves as a positive people, being "for" things, whereas antitheists (defining themselves as being against God, or the idea of God) and protestants (defining themselves as being against Catholicism and/or Catholic teaching) do not share that joy of hope and optimism.

Of course, seen from this side of the Tiber, all we can say is that looking back, the step seems miniscule.  It seems utterly logical, totally inevitable, unquestionably right.  The things we thought we might find difficult quite simply have not been.   If this blog ever gives the impression of regret, then it is of regret at not seeing so many friends as often as we used to, but not in any way the slightest of regrets at our decision to become Catholics.

In the Church Times extract above, a certain Mr Knox-Little is mentioned.  Shortly after Newman's death in 1890, the Tablet carried an article called "The Outline" by Dr W Barry, which also mentions this rather distinctive name.  Dr Barry made a rather important point rather well, correcting a misunderstanding that continues from Mr Knox-Little's time to the present.

Beautiful were the tributes which Newman's death elicited from the conspicuous pulpits of Anglicanism, and most affecting to Catholics; but some of the preachers strangely misunderstood their man when they hinted, as Canon Knox-Little did, that Newman would never have left Anglicanism in 1845, had he foreseen how many Roman collars would be worn, how many beards be shaved off, how many "celebrations" be talked about, and confessions heard in the Establishment in 1890. Why, the Arians in their day had Bishops, and Masses, and organisation as perfect us that of the orthodox; but it was with Athanasius, that Newman ranged himself while still an Anglican, and it was precisely the parallel he found between Anglicans and Arians, or Donatists, that brought him at last from Oxford to Birmingham.

It was, in truth, to the Canon Knox-Littles that he addressed himself when he said: "Look into the matter more steadily; it is very pleasant to decorate your chapels, oratories, and studies now, but you cannot be doing this for ever. It is pleasant to adopt a habit or a vestment; to use your office-book or your beads; but it is like feeding on flowers, unless you have that objective vision in your faith, and that satisfaction in your reason, of which devotional exercises and ecclesiastical appointment are the suitable expression. They will not last in the long run, unless commanded and rewarded on Divine authority; they cannot be made to rest on the influence of individuals. It is well to have rich architecture, curious works of art, and splendid vestments, when you have a present God; but, oh! what a mockery if you have not. If your externals surpass what is within, you are so far as hollow as your Evangelical opponents, who baptise, yet expect no grace. Thus your Church becomes not a home, but a sepulchre; like those high cathedrals once Catholic, which you not know what to do with, which you shut up, and make monuments of, sacred to the memory of what has passed away."

Just as today, many did not see the need for Newman to have done what he did.  At the risk of being ever so slightly flippant, the Knox-Little line was that if only Newman had known that he could have decorated his church in a more attractive manner, he might not have gone to Rome, and must surely regret that he did.  Turning that argument around on itself demonstrates that its basis is insulting even to the highest of high anglo-catholicism, suggesting that if the Church of England deprived the modern day Knox-Littles of their lace, they might then have to become Catholics.  Insulting as it is, as illogical as it is, it has a certain endurance in the complaints of some even now : "Why did you need to do that?  It's awfully nice here."

Newman went further, and stated clearly in the Apologia what was so evidently true (and doesn't the last sentence just ring a few bells even today?):

I have not had one moment's wavering of trust in the Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold, and ever have held, a supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline, and teaching; and an eager longing, and a hope against hope, that the many dear friends whom I have left in Protestantism may be partakers in my happiness. And I do hereby profess that Protestantism is the dreariest of possible religions; that the thought of the Anglican service makes me shiver, and the thought of the Thirty-nine Articles makes me shudder. Return to the Church of England! No! "The net is broken, and we are delivered." I should be a consummate fool (to use a mild term) if, in my old age I left "the land flowing with milk and honey" for the city of confusion and the house of bondage.

A process that Newman began, and which with each twist and turn of synodical voting comes to our minds again, is the reminding the people of these islands that the claim of Rome is that it brings the teachings of Christianity with it, that it is the Church that safeguards and presents the Truth.  Dr Barry's Outlook again :

One thing he did, with such triumphant success that it need not be done again. He showed that the question of Rome is the question of Christianity. Taking Bishop Butler's great work for his foundation, he applied to the Catholic Church that "Analogy" which had proved in the Bishop's hands an irrefragable argument. As, if we hold the course of Nature to be in accordance with reason, we cannot but allow that natural and revealed religion, proceeding as they do on similar laws and by like methods, are founded on reasons too—so, if once we admit that in the Bible there is a revelation from on high, we must come down by sure steps to Rome and the Papacy as inheriting what the Bible contains. To demonstrate this was to make an end of the Reformation, so far as it claimed authority from Scripture or kindred with Christ and His Apostles. When John Henry Newman arrived at that conclusion and followed it up by submitting to Rome, he undid, intellectually speaking, the mischief of the last three centuries. And he planted in the mind of his countrymen a suspicion which every day seems ripening towards certitude, that if they wish to remain Christians they must go back to the rock from which they were hewn, and become once again the sheep of the Apostolic Shepherd. Cardinal Newman has done this great thing; and its achievement will be his lasting memorial.

If today's lengthy blogpost has included rather starker words than usual (hardly: look at here, here and here, but let us account for all readers), we would not want to leave anyone with the impression that we have no fondness or love for the Church of England, and for the part it played in our lives.  This sentiment is not to be confused with any kind of regret, but in no way do we look back in anger or bitterness.  Newman felt the same way, notwithstanding all that is in the quotations above.  His friend and fellow convert Fr William Lockhart, who left Newman's Littlemore community to join the Catholic Church before Newman did, after having perceived that Newman himself had doubts about his membership of the Church of England (even his ability to absolve after confession), said this :

We left the Church of England with grief. All the good we knew, we had learned there; we had been led step by step by God's grace, but we left, because we could not close our eyes to the fact that the Church of England was no part of a Visible Church; rather than separate from which Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and hundreds of others have laid down their lives in martyrdom.

A word of warning in conclusion.  One of our most read posts is This is the Appropriate Moment, in which those thinking of entering the Catholic Church are encouraged to do so without delay.  The Dublin Review of October 1890 includes the following text, referring to an 1871 correspondence in which Newman made perfectly clear his acceptance of what he believed to be his vocation to become a Catholic, and of the importance he attached to having done so promptly.

"As to your question," he wrote to a lady correspondent, "whether if I had stayed in the Anglican Church till now, I should have joined the Catholic Church at all, at any time now or hereafter, I think that most probably I should not; but observe, for this reason, because God gives grace, and if it is not accepted He withdraws His grace; and since of His free mercy, and from no merits of mine, He then offered me the grace of conversion, if I had not acted upon it, it was to be expected that I should be left, a worthless stump, to cumber the ground, and to remain where I was till I died."

The appropriate moment is indeed now.  Let the act of Blessed John Henry Newman, in following the Divine Will and coming into the full communion of the Catholic Church, inspire others to do so in his footsteps, and may he intercede for all those currently contemplating the same.

Some Rays of Light Vouchsafed to Them

Sometimes Blessed John Henry Newman appears to be writing to us in the present day.  In the course of preparing a blogpost on another subject, I had a piece of Newman in mind, but I couldn't remember the source.  I mistakenly thought it was the Apologia, to which we have referred before as the impetus for many a move from Canterbury to Rome. 

It was not the Apologia.  It was the last section, "Persons who inspire anxiety", of Lecture 11 in "Certain Difficulties felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching".  Doesn't this just speak of many people in a certain situation today?

There is but one set of persons, indeed, who inspire the Catholic with special anxiety, as much so as the open sinner, who is not peculiar to any Communion, Catholic or schismatic, and who does not come into the present question. There is one set of persons in whom every Catholic must feel intense interest, about whom he must feel the gravest apprehensions; viz., those who have some rays of light vouchsafed to them as to their heresy or as to their schism, and who seem to be closing their eyes upon it; or those who have actually gained a clear view of the nothingness of their own Communion, and the reality and divinity of the Catholic Church, yet delay to act upon their knowledge. You, my dear brethren, if such are here present, are in a very different state from those around you. You are called by the inscrutable grace of God to the possession of a great benefit, and to refuse the benefit is to lose the grace. You cannot be as others: they pursue their own way, they walk over this wide earth, and see nothing wonderful or glorious in the sun, moon, and stars of the spiritual heavens; or they have an intellectual sense of their beauty, but no feeling of duty or of love towards them; or they wish to love them, but think they ought not, lest they should get a distaste for that mire and foulness which is their present portion. They have not yet had the call to inquire, and to seek, and to pray for further guidance, infused into their hearts by the gracious Spirit of God; and they will be judged according to what is given them, not by what is not. But on you the thought has dawned, that possibly Catholicism may be true; you have doubted the safety of your present position, and the present pardon of your sins, and the completeness of your present faith. You, by means of that very system in which you find yourselves, have been led to doubt that system. If the Mosaic law, given from above, was a schoolmaster to lead souls to Christ, much more is it true that an heretical creed, when properly understood, warns us against itself, and frightens us from it, and is forced against its will to open for us with its own hands its prison gates, and to show us the way to a better country. So has it been with you. You set out in simplicity and earnestness intending to serve it, and your very serving taught you to serve another. You began to use its prayers and act upon its rules, and they did but witness against it, and made you love it, not more but less, and carried off your affections to one whom you had not loved. The more you gazed upon your own communion the more unlike it you grew; the more you tried to be good Anglicans, the more you found yourselves drawn in heart and spirit to the Catholic Church. It was the destiny of the false prophetess that she could not keep the little ones who devoted themselves to her; and the more simply they gave up their private judgment to her, the more sure they were of being thrown off by her, against their will, into the current of attraction which led straight to the true Mother of their souls. So month has gone on after month, and year after year; and you have again and again vowed obedience to your own Church, and you have protested against those who left her, and you have thought you found in them what you liked not, and you have prophesied evil about them and good about yourselves; and your plans seemed prospering and your influence extending, and great things were to be; and yet, strange to say, at the end of the time you have found yourselves steadily advanced in the direction which you feared, and never were nearer to the promised land than you are now.

Don't Misunderstand

Somehow, an important part of the Ordinariate's message isn't getting through.  A lack of awareness of an important part of what makes the creation of the Ordinariate such an important gesture is causing the usual internet forums to get unnecessarily excited. 

Therefore, it's time to provide a little explanation, in a purely personal capacity of course, on a topic that seems to get people very wound up indeed.

The issue relates to what Ordinariate members think they were doing when they were still Anglicans.  Do they consider they were involved in high pantomime rather than in devout worship?  Do the newly minted Catholic priests consider that they were play acting when they were in the Church of England?  Once people reached a decision to join the Ordinariate, why did they not just leave overnight rather than announce an exit and then have various forms of farewells (including liturgical farewells) some time later?

Some of these points are raised in an understandable if misplaced kind of defensive anger ("Their leaving inherently criticises me and my decision to stay"), and some are raised as an argument against joining the Ordinariate at all (usually by those without any other argument, as if questions about the decisions of others who have joined the Ordinariate outweigh the wider rationale for doing so).  Nonetheless, if people still ask these questions, it is because we have failed to convey the full message behind the invitation that is inherent in Anglicanorum Coetibus.  Whatever the motives behind people repeating these questions, they are fair questions, and deserve an answer.

Speaking from personal experience, all members of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group can confirm that new members of the Ordinariate are not asked to state that their previous church and sacramental life was pointless.  No-one is asked to sign Apostolicae Curae with some kind of addendum stating that questions and answers in the 1890s relate to the position today.  What does happen is that in prayer we give thanks for all that has gone before, for all that has led us to this point, and for all those who have led us to this point.

One of the texts that has taken many members of the Ordinariate, and indeed many other former Anglicans who have joined the Catholic Church, over the line is Newman's Apologia.  Anglo-Catholics past and present will know that they would jokingly advise each other against reading it, "....because you know what will happen if you do."  This extract from the May 1843 section of the Apologia speaks powerfully to concerns that people are asked to deny their previous life.

At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His dispensation.  I am very far more sure that England is in schism than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.

Newman is saying that in the Church of England there is "not little" grace in his Anglican life.  He is saying the precise opposite of what some people, for one reason and another, speculate would be required of them to say if they ever joined the Catholic Church. 

How very apt that this Newman extract was also cited by Fr Aidan Nichols OP (whose understanding of Anglo-Catholicism is beyond question) in his homily at the "first mass" of Monsignor Andrew Burnham (the inverted commas were used by the Oxford Oratory, they are not my addition).  Fr Nichols made a reference to Newman saying that there was "not little grace" in the Church of England, and referred to Mgr Burnham as Bishop Andrew - so like Fr Nichols and Mgr Burnham, no Ordinariate member regards joining the Ordinariate as a rejection or as a negation of anything they have done, rather, to paraphrase Fr Nichols again, this time from his homily at the deaconing of Mgrs Newton, Broadhurst and Burnham, a "quiet rectification" of their position.

How is this reflected in practice?  Well, before being chrismated, as one would expect, new members of the Ordinariate are asked to make their confession.  Technically, it is a first confession, and so takes the form of a general confession.  However, this approach in fact allows respect to be shown for all the confessions a new Ordinariate member will previously have made, and for the Anglican priests who heard them : it means no-one is asked to list specifically, item by item, sins that might already have been confessed to an Anglican priest. 

In terms of the wider approach to becoming an Ordinariate member, away from the purely sacramental aspects (as important as they are), the approach is very much that the Church knows that new Ordinariate members are unlikely to need the same introduction to the Faith as a brand new convert.  Therefore, rather than simply putting Ordinariate arrivals in with the nearest RCIA class, discussions are held and a tailored programme of catechesis can be constructed, usually by the Anglican priest leading the group, that being the person most likely to know what has been preached and taught to the group in recent years.

In terms of the question of the chrismation / the reception / the confirmation, I think that lay people take the same approach as priests take when looking at the question of ordination.  The confirmation I had when an Anglican bishop lay his hands upon my head (and, by the way, conveyed to me, so he claimed, a short message from above) suited me perfectly for my existence in the Church of England.  When Mgr Newton chrismated me along with the other members of the group last year, we became beyond any shadow of a doubt full members of the Catholic Church, in communion with the Successor of St Peter, and with all other members of the Catholic Church: whatever else had happened at our Anglican confirmations, it was not that. 

The topic of ordination is a difficult one for a layman to comment on.  However, my understanding is that the very same approach is taken.  Some Catholic bishops ordaining former Anglican clergy encourage them to mark the date of their ordination as Anglican priests as their anniversary of ordination, and to mark the date of their being ordained as Catholic priests as the date when, quite simply, they became priests in the Catholic Church.  The ordination service, just as it has since the 1990s, includes a special prayer of thanksgiving for the clergyman's previous ministry in the Church of England.  Incoming clergy are not sent off to seminary for years before being set free, they operate at once, with a tailored programme of ongoing formation.

So there is no denial that God's grace operated in and for Ordinariate clergy and laity during their Anglican years.  What there is, is a strong desire to bring those gifts into the Catholic Church, that "all might be one".

Despite all the above, some continue to cry "Apostolicae Curae, Apostolicae Curae".  Not just ultra-zealous traditionalist Catholics who might make even the SSPX blush (NB, even Bishop Fellay, Superior General of the SSPX, thinks bringing Anglicans into unity with Rome is a wonderful thing and does not join that particular refrain), but also there are some Anglicans whom one might have thought would be keen on Christian Unity, who prefer to hide behind a wound alleged to have been caused by Apostolicae Curae.

To use Apostolicae Curae as a reason not to join the Ordinariate is to understand neither Apostolicae Curae nor the Ordinariate.  The Church of England countered Apostolicae Curae with Saepius Officio, but more importantly took steps to resolve the issues raised by Apostolicae Curae by implementing the "Dutch Touch", and through that mechanism and some good record keeping, it was possible for Monsignor Graham Leonard to be ordained conditionally.  So the Church of England itself clearly thought that there were things it could change in order to render Apostolicae Curae itself null and void in respect of the future.

Would the answer to the questions raised in Apostolicae Curae be the same if they were posed today?  Who knows, but it's not impossible at all.  The doubt about Anglican orders was shifting to being about whether they really were invalid rather than about whether they were valid, but rumours that the subject was to be re-examined in the 1970s and 1980s swiftly came to an end when the Church of England changed its own approach to the importance of unity as regards Holy Order in the 1990s.

Isn't that exactly the point though?  Who wants doubt about orders, about sacraments?  Who wants to have to look up directories of "sound" parishes where it's "safe" to go, isn't that about as uncatholic an ecclesiology as one can find?  Who wants to be a smaller and smaller part of an institution that perceives you as more and more extreme, more and more troublesome?  Those who have joined the Ordinariate have done so because they answered a call to Unity, but also because they actively want and are attracted to there being no doubt about these things.

Since I wanted to be part of that, I accepted that I needed to assent to the same things as everyone else who is a part of it, and that I needed to take part in the same rites to get there.  I had no interest in arguing why something I did many years ago, out of communion with Rome (indeed through an Anglican bishop of a very protestant variety, not that that matters) was or was not enough to admit me into the same communion as those who have received chrismation at the hands of a Catholic priest in communion with Rome. 

By way of comparison, no clergyman can seriously think that all they have to do in order to be able to say mass at the Brompton Oratory or at Westminster Cathedral is to say that their Ordinary is no longer Richard Chartres, but it is Vincent Nicholls or Keith Newton, as if it were a minor procedural matter of changing your line manager.  Everyone knows there is something missing there.  Anglican ordinations were perfect for Anglican life, but in the Catholic Church, like every other Catholic priest, ordination must be carried out by a Catholic bishop : why would it be fair to leave the slightest whiff of doubt about orders in the minds of the congregation? 

What we are all after is sacramental certainty, sacramental assurance.  That comes through Unity with Rome.  All the fuss over the past 30 plus years in General Synod has been about what the changes would do to Unity and what the changes would do to sacramental assurance.  Why allow the slightest trace of that to persist?  Doubt over all this, and moreover ever-increasing doubt, is one element of Anglican Patrimony that  nobody wants.

The Ordinariate is about Unity and sacramental assurance.  However, it is also about recognising the Anglican Patrimony, the gifts, the abilities, the faith, the learning, the pastoral strengths, the music, the approach to liturgy, the relationship with the wider community, the philosophy and so many other things that are inherent in the best of Anglicanism, and finding a way to bring those into the Catholic Church.

Doesn't this recent letter say exactly that?

The Ordinariate is not about denying one's past, denying that one was an Anglican, denying that one retains strong Anglican characteristics.  Not at all.  Once a decision was made to leave, we were all encouraged to do so in an orderly fashion, minimising disruption, and it was made very clear that there was no panic to leave, because no-one was asking us to deny what was then the present, what had nourished us for so many years : we were being asked about our views of the Catholic future, not about what we thought or didn't think about the Church of England.

No-one suggests a move is easy, and we have referred before to how this caused great agonies for Dr Eric Mascall and many others, but a fair appraisal of a possible move is not helped by an absolutely and utterly mistaken belief that Rome sets past existence and ministry at naught.