Just Sayin'

There's another big takeaway from rhe story I linked in yesterday's post about the schism within the United Methodist Church: Pope Benedict's 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus was initially directed not just to disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians, but to members of other, Anglican-derived denominations, such as Methodists or African Methodist Episcopal members. However, this has almost entirely been removed from odrdinariate documentation, with only this vestigial reference on the US ordinariate web site:

Former Anglicans and Methodists who have already become Catholic and wish to join the Ordinariate may submit an application form to the Ordinariate.

However, Wikipedia has kept the earlier intent:

A personal ordinariate for former Anglicans, shortened as personal ordinariate or Anglican ordinariate, is an ordinariate, a canonical structure within the Catholic Church established in order to enable "groups of Anglicans" and Methodists to join the Catholic Church while preserving elements of their liturgical and spiritual patrimony.

The original intent of Anglicanorum coetibus was to facilitiate entry of full Anglican and Methodist parishes into the Roman Catholic Church as existing groups with their clergy. This was reflected in the USCCB's Q&A at the time of its promulgation:

Anglicanorum coetibus was a response to repeated and persistent inquiries from Anglican groups worldwide who were seeking to become Catholic. Ordinariates seek to provide a way for these groups to enter in "corporate reunion"; that is, as a group and not simply as individuals. This will allow them to retain their Anglican liturgical heritage and traditions.

The repeated and persistent inquiries to which the constitution refers came almost entirely in the late 1970s and early 1980s from disaffected Episcopalian parishes who objected to the US Episcopal Church's decision to ordain women and revise its Book of Common Prayer at that time. However, the number of these parishes that actually wished to follow through and affiliate with the Roman Catholic Church was never large at that stage, amounting to fewer than half a dozen.

A second wave of inquries began in the late 1990s, which eventually resulted in the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus. but again, the actual number of full Episcopalian or Anglican parishes that were able to follow through, disaffiliate from their original denominations and reaffiliate with the Roman Catholic Church with their clergy, was still in the single digits. On top of that, the history of those clergy who entered via that route was often unhappy and marked by scandal.

So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the United Methodist Church, an Anglican-derived denomination specifically targeted for Roman Catholic evangelization as Anglicanorum coetibus was originally envisioned, should show effectively zero interest in Pope Benedict's invitation. Via the link in yesterday's post, 6,000 UMC parishes have elected to disaffiliate, but as far as I'm aware, not one of the 6,000 ever expressed even the most tentative preliminary interest in possibly affilating with the Catholic Church.

I would also guess that there's been no interest, either in Rome or in the US ordinariate, in asking why this might be. One path of inquiry might be with the current US ordinary, Bishop Steven Lopes, whose official photo is at the top of this post. Contrast that with the official photo of Bishop Robert Barron on the Diocese of Rochester-Winona website, at right.

There's something complacent about Bp Lopes that we don't see in Bp Bsrron, who basically comes off as an active, happy guy who isn't leaning on ecclesiastical kit to greet the viewer.

There's likely a great deal to be said about the manifest failure of Anglicanorum coetibus to appeal to conservative Protestants concerned about the liberalizing trends of their own denominations, but who are unmoved by the evangelical appeal of the Catholic Church, at least as presented by the Anglican ordinariates. What's gone wrong?

I think it's worthwhile just to compare the generally flat, inward-looking, and uninspiring mesaage that comes out of Houston from Bp Lopes with something like the Catechism in Year podcast from Fr Mike Schmitz, which has 133,000 subscribers on YouTube and is aimed, based on his occasional remarks, at non-Catholics interested in learning more about Catholicism, in addition to current and lapsed Catholics. These are two entirely different approaches.