Saturday 29 January 2011

"The Anglican Catholic Basilica of the North"

I have known the Reverend Ian Grieves of Saint James's, Darlington for many, many years, and I have the utmost regard for him. I am not remotely surprised that he is joining the Ordinariate and, although I see little or no practical chance of this, wants to bring his citadel, or at least its congregants, with him.

The all-too-frequent theological and pastoral problems with what we are proposing to ingest certainly do not apply there. But where he, it and they are all concerned, I really do have to ask: "What Anglican Patrimony?" Why don't they just come over into the local diocese, plain and simple? They really would not need to change a single, solitary thing.

Whereas whatever happened to the Traditional Anglican Communion, of which many things may be said, but one of them is not that it only ever uses the Modern Roman Rite? The TAC made the initial approach that led to the provision for Ordinariates, it negotiated the terms of that provision, and in fact it contains at least three potential examples of thriving Ordinariates (in India, in South Africa, and in the Torres Strait). Yet the TAC has disappeared from this story, supplanted by a constituency for which that provision is wholly unnecessary. What is going on?

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