Apparently the Anglican Ordinariates are a gift to ALL ENGLISH SPEAKING CATHOLICS, as well as Anglican converts to the Catholic Church seeking refuge from the moral relativism pervading the Anglican Communion these days....
Prophecy Fulfilled
If his own bishops were trustworthy, if the Holy Father were confident that most of his local bishops would treat the Anglicans with due respect for their rights as Catholics, he would not set up the additional machinery of the Anglican rite. But, as the Calgary bishop demonstrates, the Holy Father can't even trust his own bishops to treat Catholics with due honor and respect. How much honor would they give to filthy little Anglican converts (for that is essentially how many Catholic bishops view these - spit when you say it - traditionalists).
Why are laymen being given their own liturgical rite?
Because, unlike most of the world's Catholic bishops, these laymen actually understand and appreciate holy and beautiful things.
The irony is delicious. The Vatican II types who wanted laymen empowered are getting precisely that with the new Anglican rite. Not only are laymen being empowered, they are being treated as episcopal equals. The men and women who felt thrills go up their legs when they heard that Catholicity subsists in the Church, that elements of Catholicity exist even in Christian communities outside the visible bonds with Rome, have been justified. The new Anglican rite demonstrates that when the Holy Father needs people who have a truly Catholic perspective, he now has to go outside the visible Church to get them. Who said Vatican II wasn't prophetic?
Many people have commented on the fact that some of AC's provisions regarding the Anglican orders are transitional. For instance, treatment of lay people as if they were retired bishops will only last for the life of the current Anglican bishops. Yes, that's true. But it is also transitional in the sense that the current crop of Catholic bishops will likewise be dead before those "transitional" AC provisions are no longer necessary. The AC provisions aren't just waiting out the Anglican bishops, they are waiting out the Catholic bishops as well. Indeed, it cannot have escaped the notice of all Catholic bishops that they are being forced to treat laymen with episcopal deference. No doubt this has played some niggling role in Calgary's cavalry charge into the teeth of a German panzer division.
Obviously, the bishop of Calgary has picked a fight he cannot win. Rome will crush him like a bug. His suppression of normal Eucharistic reception and the FSSP is too outrageous, too schismatic, too much in violation of everything the Pope hopes to accomplish. If the Catholic Conference of Pennsylvania could force out a man like Bishop Martino because Martino was too holy for them, then the bishop of Rome can force out the bishop of Calgary because he's too unholy.
Calgary's probability of getting a new bishop in the next couple of years is now astronomically high, if only because bishops in other dioceses around the world are watching.
And so are the bishops in heaven. We know which side St. Ambrose is on....
read the full version of this remarkable article here
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