Australian Ordinariate To Receive A "Visit"

On Sunday and Monday, I posted on Pope Francis moving Opus Dei from the supervision of the Vatican Dicastery for Bishops to the Dicastery for the Clergy, with commentary from a knowledgeable reader on how this reflects on the Vatican's overall interest in accountability. One issue arising from this move is the suspicion among Catholic traditionalists that Pope Francis opposes conservative movements in the Church, although my own view as a convert to Catholicism is that if for no other reason, it would be silly to become a Catholic on one hand while on the other insisting that the pope has things all wrong. Catholics current or potential have lots of options available that don't carry that contradiction, including any number that might potentially ease their consciences by claiming to be Catholic in some way or another.

In any case, another Vatican move in recent days will stir this pot again. One of my last posts on the old blog covered a notice from the Australian ordinary that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican dicastery that supervises the Anglican ordinariates, had becomed concerned about the viability of the Australian ordinariate, the smallest and shakiest of the three erected under Anglicanorum coetibus. This concern was reflected in a January 21, 2021 letter from Msgr Reid that I attached to that post, which set particular conditions that would need to be met by January of this year; if they weren't fulfilled, the dicastery would send a letter to the Australian Catholic Bishops Council "asking counsel regarding the future" of the Australian ordinariate.

A visitor has sent me an update on this situation:

It was later explained that this deadline had been extended owing to COVID but now it appears that there will be follow-up (see letter below). Commenters on Facebook are treating this as part of Pope Francis’s alleged crackdown on traditionalists but in that case, of course, the OOLSC [Australian ordinariate] would not be the only Ordinariate subjected to a visit and a Visitor so obviously sympathetic to the project as Bp Lopes would not have been chosen. There has been no official update on communities’ compliance or otherwise with Msgr Reid’s original directive, but scattered comments from OOLSC members on Facebook seem to indicate that nothing has changed, financially or demographically.

Here is the letter (click on the image for a larger copy):

The original deadlines set in the January 2021 notice were meant to be met by January of this year, but presumably in light of COVID and the particularly stringent controls imposed in Australia, the threatened letter asking counsel regarding the future of the ordinariate from the ACBC has apparently been deferred. Nevertheless, there will now be a Visitor Apostolic to review the situation. The Visitor appointed is Bp Steven Lopes, the ordinary of the North American ordinariate, which is the largest and most successful of the three, but that is only in relative terms. He will be joined by two others whose identities are yet to be announced, and the visitation schedule is also yet to be announced.

For that matter, what it will decide, and how the decision will be made, remain completely obscure.

The visitor also forwarded a screen shot of typical social media commentary on this development (click on the image for a larger copy):

I spent nearly ten years running a blog that covered the history and progress of Anglicanorum coetibus, and I stopped it in some measure because I concluded the whole question had never reached the level of importance where it was worth my time. This suggests to me that even the Vatican is beginning to ask this question. I think the Australian ordinariate is only the weakest link, and eventually this question is going to be raised over the whole effort.

It's a big mistake to attribute this to animosity from Francis.