Who Is Fr John Hunwicke? -- I

I never gave Fr Hunwicke much thought. I knew he had a large following for his blog, although I only occasionally glanced at it, in part because active involvement with a real Roman Catholic parish and active study of scripture and Catholic thinkers meant I saw little need to visit. I did, thoiugh, have an impression that he had a certain Blimpish persona with "Rule Britannia" always playing faintly in the background.

Then Pope Francis began to speak of "traditional" and "rigid" internet priests, by which I assumed he meant men like Frs Zuhlsdorf and Hunwicke. As a good Catholic, I wanted to get a better idea of what he meant, especially as Fr Z, as he became more controversial, lost the support of even the conservative bishop in whose diocese he lived. So I decided to look at Fr Hunwicke more closely as well, as just the other day I found him calling the Holy Father a heretic as he underwent surgery and insisting that even the OF Roman Canon had been "messed around with". Colonel Blimp must be in his lineage.

My first question was simply of what parish is he the priest? It turns out that, although he styles himself Fr and converted to Catholicism in 2011, his ordination under the terms of Anglicanorum coetibus was put on hold until June 2012 due to questions related to his blog. While he is listed on the UK ordinariate directory as a priest in the Oxford group, he is just one of four priests who are members there but is not the pastor.

The Oxford group, like many ordinariate groups, meets in an off hour at a diocesan parish and seems tiny in the photo at left and moribund as well, since its on line schedule hasn't been updated since June 2018, and its image of St John Henry Newman, canonized in 2019, is still captioned "Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us". It appears that Hunwicke takes little interest in this group and would seem not to be a very inspiring figure there -- his efforts must go to his own blog and fostering his own image.

Another incongruity is that, although Fr Hunwicke insists that the Roman Canon, presumably the one in the Divine Worship missal, not the OF breviary, is the only valid form of the mass, this version of course dates only from 20l5. I have no idea what version he prayed prior to 2015, although in this interview he insists he has actually "always" been a Catholic at heart. The only other valid English version of the Roman Canon dates from the 1960s, but according to Fr Hunwicke, it's been "messed around with". So which version did he pray before 2015?

Beyond that, it's generally understood that Anglicans of the "papalist" variety switched to the OF English mass in the 1960s, because that was what Rome did, and they saw themselves as fundamentally Catholic. In the interview linked above, Hunwicke places himself in the "papalist" faction:

For a long time now there has existed within Anglicanism a “Catholic” tradition. As I’ve belonged to this current since my youth, I naturally subscribed to the entirety of the beliefs of the Catholic faith, including the dogma of papal infallibility as defined at the first Vatican council. At the time we all hoped one day to reach complete unity with the Catholic Church.

So, what version of the Roman Canon did he pray in his youth? Was it the Latin one? On his blog, he says he'd served three curacies and been a parish priest in the Church of England. If he used the mass in the Book of Common Prayer at all as an Anglican, this was never a valid Catholic mass. If he used the Latin mass, this was never a valid Anglican mass, and his use of it for an Anglican liturgy would typically occur only because his Anglican bishop feared the consequences of disciplining him. If he used any English version of the Roman Canon other than that in the Book of Common Prayer, this again would be only because such diversion was widely tolerated, not because it was at all valid.

Did Fr Hunwicke ever use the Book of Common Prayer as an Anglican priest? If so, if he feels he was always a Catholic, then he was using it with mental reservation and effectifvely against his Anglican vows. If he never used it as an Anglican but always used unauthorized texts, this was also a violation of his Anglican vows and potentially disobedient. But then, why should we credit his Roman Catholic vows any other way? In Fr Hunwicke's case, I've got to wonder if this became a bad habit of mind that he's carried over.

But in any case, nearly all Fr Hunwicke's colleagues in the UK ordinariate use the OF English mass, not the one in the Divine Worship missal, as this had become the Anglican papalist practice there decades before Anglicanorum coetibus. So even in the context of the UK ordinariate, Fr Hunwicke has few or no specific pastoral duties, his ordination was delayed under a cloud, and even his colleagues would apparently view him as a liturgical outlier. His views on valid liturgy in fact seem confusing at best.

But although he affects erudition on his blog, his understsnding of both Anglicanism and Catholicism is superficial. I'll cover this tomorrow if nothing intervenes.