As Roosevelt Was To Polio, Biden Is To COVID

I came up with that a few days ago, but little did I realize how quickly events would reinforce the perception:

President Joe Biden announced Saturday that he would return to isolation after testing positive again for coronavirus.

“Folks, today I tested positive for COVID again,” Biden wrote on social media Saturday afternoon.

. . . The president’s physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a letter to the public the reoccurrence of the virus was “rebound COVID,” something that takes place with some patients treated with PAXLOVID.

Think about the manifold ramifications that emanate from this succinct announcement. First, the big guy has been fully vaxxed, and his masking, if not fully consistent, has been in general supererogatory. Second, a week ago, I quoted Dr Birx, who if not the pope of COVID is at least an influential cardinal:

So that's why I'm saying even if you're vaccinated and boosted, if you're unvaccinated right now, the key is testing and Paxlovid. It's effective. It's a great antiviral.

Except that this was in the context of how the vaccines don't work, but now the sure thing, the key, is Paxlovid. It's effective. It's a great antiviral. Except if you give it to the President of the Unitred States, well, er, you might get a rebound effect, which takes place with some patients. Sure helps build the credibility of the public health authorities, huh?

Third, let's recall that two years ago, the COVID panic-hype had many people believing that a positive test was practially a death sentence. The authorities were reassuring those who were flooding the emergency rooms over positive tests that actually a positive test didn't mean a whole lot, they should only go to the ER if they were having trouble breathing and stuff. This fussing over a mere positive test is an aftershock of that panic, which was cynically generated for clickbait and to increase the screen time of the anointed talking heads.

In fact, this episode exposes the dishonesty of the public health establishment at the start of the pandemic, when contrary to past practice, they equated "positive test" with "case", when in the past, a "case" (as in the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic) was a person who had been hospitalized with symptoms. This inflated the perceived prevalence of the disease, which had the short-term effect of spreading panic, but over the longer term created an underlying sense that the Birxes and Faucis were lying to us.

Two years ago, if the president tested positive, they'd have been figuratively dusting off the bier so he could lie in state, though probably in a lead coffin. That Trump could catch the 'rona and recover only months later had a deeply reassuring effect. Now, Brandon's second positive test is a trivial event worthy of a trivial guy.

Next, that Biden should effectively return to the basement studio of COVID quarantine is just another reminder of how he won the 2020 campaign and the persistent sense that something was hinky about that whole exercise. It simply allows Trump, who is gradually returning to public discourse, to repeat a probably counterfactual but figuratively resonant claim that the election was "stolen". Biden apparently will have no strategy to counter this beyond renewed retreat to his Delaware basement.

This is why we seem to be feeling a need for more optimistic, confident leadership. President Zelensky is to the current European crisis as Victor Laszlo was to Casablanca, a thoroughly commendable fellow, but in the background and not really what we need to solve the bigger problem. Victor Laszlo was actually a problem Major Strasser should have been able to deal with but couldn't quite manage. The West needed someone more like Roosevelt to solve the bigger problem.

Let's face it, Joe Biden can't even solve COVID. The real problems now are Russia and China. Going forward, this isn't going to work.

"People Eat More Protein Than They Need To"

A couple of stories at the aggregators this morning reminded me that they don't just want us to drive electric cars. In Scientific American ,

In the U.S., people eat more protein than they need to. And though it might not be bad for human health, this excess does pose a problem for the country’s waterways. The nation’s wastewater is laden with the leftovers from protein digestion: nitrogen compounds that can feed toxic algal blooms and pollute the air and drinking water. This source of nitrogen pollution even rivals that from fertilizers washed off of fields growing food crops, new research suggests.

Well, they sure know about nitrogen pollution in the Netherlands and the EU, huh?

Dutch government proposals for tackling nitrogen emissions indicate a radical cut in livestock - they estimate 11,200 farms will have to close and another 17,600 farmers will have to significantly reduce their livestock.

Other proposals include a reduction in intensive farming and the conversion to sustainable "green farms".

As such, the relocation or buyout of farmers is almost inevitable, but forced buyouts are a scenario many hope to avoid.

Inevitably,

Dutch farmers dumped manure and set fire hay on fire along major highways Wednesday, prompting traffic jams in central and eastern parts of the Netherlands, in protest over government plans to reduce fertilizer use and livestock numbers.

Wait a moment. Ukraine has applied to join the EU, and the EU apparently views this favorably and is expediting the application. But isn't Ukraine's agriculture the key to avoiding a global food crisis?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its fourth month, is preventing grain from leaving the "breadbasket of the world" and making food more expensive across the globe.

Russian forces' blockade of Ukrainian ports, destruction and alleged theft of the country's grains and agricultural machinery, and shells and mines now strewn across its fields are threatening to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.

So the EU thinks the Netherlands has too many farms, but not that far away, if the world doesn't get enough Ukrainian farm products, there's going to be a crisis. What will happen when the Russians are inevitably kicked out of Ukraine, and Ukraine is in the EU. Is the EU going to reduce the number of Ukrainian farms? How's that all going to work?

Meanwhile, in California,

It appears that the “Climate Change Mitigation Strategist” on the California State Water Resources Control Board has stepped down, making a splash with a resignation letter that blames Governor Gavin Newsom and his administration, as well as his own colleagues, for California’s inability to manage its climate crisis.

In his resignation letter, he says,

Sadly, this state is not on a path towards steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions reductions, massive construction to alleviate the housing crisis, quickly and permanently reducing agriculture to manage the loss of water to aridification, and reducing law enforcement and carceral budgets and reallocating resources to programs that actually increase public health and safety.

"Quickly and parmanently reducing agriculture" is part of the whole progressive-reset agenda that hasn't had much attention, but it's there. And California is the top US state in agricultural revenue, 11.63 percent of the total. Exactly what these people intend to do with the people who work directly on farms, sell to farmers, transport farm products, and provide other support, is unclear -- but the same people would also like to eliminate another key part of the California economy, oil and natural gas.

California's natural gas and oil industry supported 1,059,000 total jobs across the state’s economy in 2019. California ranked among the highest states for the percentage of total economic contributions by the natural gas and oil industry, generating $199.3 billion toward the state’s gross domestic product—including $94.4 billion added to total labor income.

If Newsom has been dragging his feet on this agenda, that's certainly good news. The problem overall is that the philosopher-king wannabes have an overall agenda that at least in its end state proposes drastic reductions in the world standard of living, only decades after market and commercial progress succeeded in raising that standard and putting billions of people into a relatively prosperous new middle class.

I've only started to try to get my head around this.

Apparently Only So Far

I remember people claiming back in the initial days of COVID lockdowns that stay-at-home orders weren't so much intended as a public health measure but were actually a dry run to see how well they'd work for climate change "emergencies". But if you think about it, climate change is simply a cat's paw for something else as well, just as COVID has been. The real question is whether, irrespective of the specific excuse, the unelected administrative state can impose supralegal measures on the population at large.

After more than two years of COVID controls, the answer appears to be only so far. As I noted on Wednesday, LA County was considering reimposing an indoor mask mandate, but it appears that strong behind-the-scenes opposition has headed this off:

Los Angeles County will not be reimposing an indoor mask mandate for now after COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations appear to be trending downward, and the region may soon move back into the “medium” community level of virus spread, officials announced Thursday.

. . . The county entered the high level on July 14, prompting County Health Director Barbara Ferrer to warn the public about a possible indoor mask mandate being issued to slow the spread.

And while L.A. County remains in the “high” community level based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s indicator, Ferrer said local officials will wait to further analyze data based on its own, more current, metrics.

“Since most of our local data trends have just begun to decline, we decided to take a closer look at the hospital admissions rate using our own data … so that we can get a more precise sense of where we might be headed,” Ferrer said Thursday.

Wait a moment. Up to now, CDC data had been the gold standard. If the CDC says it's true, it's true. This was the basis for Gov Newsom's red light-green light routine throughout 2021, for instance. Nobody claimed they needed to "further analyze data" back in 2021. Back then, if the CDC said you were widespread, you were widespread, and indoor businesses were shut. Now, well, we need to study things more. Maybe it'll get better by itself, let's not overdo things here. At the same link,

The threat of returning to the mandate stirred up controversy. Several cities, including Beverly Hills, Pasadena, Long Beach, and most recently El Segundo, had announced this week they would not enforce any mandate.

Additionally, two [of five] members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors had indicated they opposed the reinstating of a the region-wide mask mandate.

In an open letter, Supervisor Kathryn Barger said “masking mandates lack empirical evidence to back their effectiveness, are unenforceable, polarizing, and take a huge toll on the social-emotional well-being of children and youth.”

It appears there was a massive back-channel campaign against restoring the mandate, given Supervsior Kuehl's remark about the "snowflake weepies" who were opposing it. Sounds like the snowflake weepies won the day, and I would guess the supervisors put a lot of pressure on "Dr" Ferrer to decide she needed to look more closely at the data before they themselves would be pressured to vote against reimposing the mandate, which would likely put Ferrer's own job at risk.

In other news,

Fox News host Tucker Carlson jokingly announced plans to rename monkeypox 'schlong COVID' after a woke official deemed the existing moniker racist.

Carlson announced the results of a Twitter poll on his Fox News show Thursday night, saying: 'So, monkeypox is about the coolest name ever for a disease.

'But they are changing the name because racism or something.'

'So, we had a vote,' Carlson then said: 'There was no ballot harvesting. You can trust our counting. And the new name for monkeypox is now officially – and we’re declaring it – schlong COVID. That won our audience election result with about 40% of the vote. So, let Rochelle Walensky at the CDC know.'

Public health authorities need to be thinking about the implications if their deliberations begin to be the topic of late-night humor. I think even Drs Birx and Fauci had begun to recognize people were fed up, and the political authorities in deep-blue LA very reluctantly realized it was time to shorten "Dr" Ferrer's leash. At some point, the same authorities need to recognize that they went just a bit too far with COVID, and the current self-parody with monkeypox is threatening long term damage to their credibility.

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.

In LA, The Masks Come Off Over Masking

California, or at least part of it, has been seeing a resurgence of bien pensant opinion that we should be wearing masks, even though Drs Birx and Fauci have been publicly backing off their own previous endorsement of COVID measures. Contra Costa County, which includes both Oakland and Berkeley as well as very tony suburbs, tried to reimpose a mandatory indoor mask rule in June but dropped it after a few weeks. Los Angeles County has been threatening the same for two months now, but pressure against it has been building.

Lame duck LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who represents the uber-wealthy West Side and Hollywood Hills, had this to say about the growing opposition to a renewed mask mandate:

"I'm particularly struck by the blowback from a number, though not a really significant number of sort of, 'snowflake weepies' about how oppressive it is to wear a mask."

Kuehl has previously been a supporter of COVID restrictions that have been among the strictest in the US. In December 2020, demonstrators surrounded her home in Santa Monica when she voted to ban outdoor dining at restaurants but promptly went out the same evening to dine at an outdoor restaurant:

LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, who represents Santa Monica, ate at a local restaurant just hours after voting to ban outdoor dining and saying doing so is “probably more dangerous in terms of contagion than any other kind of business.”

On Tuesday, November, 24 Kuehl along with two other Supervisors voted to suspend outdoor dining for three weeks in Los Angeles County due to rising COVID-19 cases. The ban passed with a 3-2 vote.

“Outdoor dining is probably more dangerous in terms of contagion than any other kind of business,” Kuehl, a Santa Monica resident, said at the Tuesday meeting. “The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”

That evening, however, Kuehl ate outside at Santa Monica restaurant Il Forno, as confirmed by Barbara Osborn, Director of Communications for the Supervisor.

If it's as dangerous as she claimed, why on earth did she risk her health and her life to do it one last time? In any case, she was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2014 and had been subject to a three-term limit, which would hsve ended in 2026. It is not entirely clear why she announced last month that she would not run for reelection in 2022, although she is currently 81, but her positions on COVID, as well as her public conflicts with County Sheriff Villanueva on homeless encampments, may also have convinced her that reelection might not be a sure thing. Oddly, there has been no serious coverage of her decision.

Previous restrictions have not played well in the county, and although there's an existing mask mandate on transit, neither Amtrak nor the Metrolink commuter rail agency has enforced it since the spring. In addition,

The local governments in several cities in Los Angeles County, including Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach and Long Beach, have already said that they would defy a county mandate on masks, reports NBC Los Angeles.

Additionally, neighboring Orange County's Healthcare Agency said in a statement that the would not be implementing a mask mandate.

My guess is that a substantial part of the population anywhere in the US is simply done with COVID and recognizes that masks are, and have been throughout, useless in controlling the pandemic. Nevertheless, even without a mandate, my estimate is that roughly half of those who attend Sunday mass wear them, and a remarkable number still wear them on the street. If LA County or any other jurisdiction is serious about limiting transmission, they should take Dr Fauci's advice and require everyone to wear N95 masks, properly fitted.

And of course, if they're in a restaurant, they should remove the N95 only briefly when they take a bite and quickly replace it while they chew. But as Supervisor Kuehl has already pointed out, even this is highly dangerous.

The fact is that nobody, starting with Supervisor Kuehl, actually takes any of this seriously. On one hand, it's kabuki. On the other, it's a sign of assent. As with Darth Vader, it shows you take orders. The wealthiest seem to want things back like they were in 2020.

The Politicization Of Public Health Continues Notwithstanding

For proof that the official response of the public health establishment to COVID was a debacle, we need to look no farther than the fact that states like Florida and Texas that didn't enforce lockdowns, masking, and other controls had statistical results no worse than those that imposed the strictest ones. Even the most visible spokespeople for such controls, Drs Birx and Fauci, have recently been backing off the recommendations they issued in 2020 and 2021, maintaining they never said vaccines prevented transmission and, now, masks didn't work because everyone wasn't wearing the right ones.

So why didn't Dr Birx say vaccines didn't prevent transmission back then, or why didn't Dr Fauci tell everyone to get an N95 mask right off the bat? They're implying that things would have gone better if they'd been honest back then -- so why did they fudge things and make the pandemic worse? And of course, they're backtracking now because they recognize that if they're right, in failing to do so then, they damaged the credibility of their colleagues and their institutions for the next public health emergency.

But as far as I can see, nobody's learned a thing. They're following the discredited COVID playbook with Monkeypox:

Despite a WHO panel not having consensus on labeling the sickness a global health emergency, WHO leader Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus directed the organization to declare it a “public health emergency of international concern.”

“We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” Tedros told the press.

The disease, which primarily spreads among men who have sex with men, joins both COVID and polio as the other diseases designated as international emergencies by the global health organization.

COVID and polio, of course, affected the population at large, and both could be fatal, while polio could also be massively disabling if it didn't kill people. But according to NBC News,

No one has died of monkeypox infection outside of Africa during this outbreak. And for many people, the disease is relatively mild and resolves on its own in a few weeks without any need for medical intervention.

And of course, people outside one particular demographic have almost no chance of contracting it. At the same link,

Now infectious disease specialists are developing an increasingly refined understanding of the predominant conduits of monkeypox transmission, as well as the typical disease course patterns.

“These data point clearly to the fact that infections are so far almost exclusively occurring among men who have sex with men,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Brown University, of the new study, which was published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. “And the clinical presentation of these infections suggest that sexual transmission, not just close physical contact, may be helping spread the virus among this population.”

Even those who aren't gay adult males apparently contract it because they're in the same household. According to the UK Daily Mail,

Two children have tested positive for monkeypox in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Friday.

One is a toddler from California; the other is in an infant who is not a U.S. resident and was 'transiting through' Washington D.C. Neither had contact with each other.

. . . It is thought both children likely caught the virus from 'household contacts'.

Dr Rochelle Walensky said the children both had contact with gay or bisexual men — the community where most cases are being detected in the current outbreak.

But the WHO isn't backing down:

World Health Organization (W.H.O.) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus took the “unprecedented” measure this weekend of ignoring the agency’s special advisory committee to declare the spread of monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern” – despite his lack of medical background and his own admission that the risk of it spreading was “moderate” at worst.

. . . Concerns regarding Tedros’ actions on monkeypox posit the opposite problem – that he overreacted to a situation, even as the medical experts tasked with assessing the risk did not believe it merited the label of public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC).

. . . “Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” Tedros declared. He added that the fact that the disease was not spreading widely among a generalized population did not diminish the PHEIC, but rather meant “that this is an outbreak that can be stopped with the right strategies in the right groups.”

So, what are the right strategies in the right groups? Oddly, this isn't clear -- the group for which the right strategies would apply is clearly identifiable, but, well, if we identify them, we'll increase stigma and discrimination or something. This is the conundrum, which is entirely political:

During the China Flu pandemic, we were shamed for leaving our homes, going to the beach, opening schools, gathering to worship God, standing together, hugging, attending funerals, visiting nursing homes, allowing a mask to slip under our nose, and showing up at a political rally that didn’t involve burning and looting (because health officials assured us burning and looting do not spread the virus).

During the coronavirus pandemic, and for two whole years, every facet of normal life was condemned as the equivalent of committing mass murder.

. . . Now there’s monkeypox. . . [ellipsis in quote]

But there’s no behavior-shaming…

Even though, according to what we now know. . . [ellipsis in quote]

Gay sex is the chief spreader of monkeypox.

. . . If the government had a single standard when it comes to spreading a virus, gay bars and bathhouses would be shuttered, police would be knocking on doors to break up gay sex parties, the media would celebrate a costumed Specter of Death walking through gay neighborhoods, gay men would be told to stay home, and any gay gathering would be smeared across the media as a selfish superspreader event attended by serial killers.

But that’s not happening, and it shouldn’t happen, but that’s what happened for two years to those of us who are not among the left’s protected class.

I think the point here is that Monkeypox is mostly the occasion of public-discourse kabuki: there will be the usual denunciation of stigma and discrimination, but as with AIDS, even closing bath houses will be a tough call if it's ever made at all -- and unlike Monkeypox, AIDS killed people. The subtext will continue to be that gays are a special protected class, and that's about it. Nobody's gonna demand that gays wear not only condoms but hazmat suits during sex, but if Dr Fauci has his way, the rest of us will be back not just to masks but N95 masks.

People aren't stupid, and they see pretty clearly what's going on. Dr Birx at least had the sense to skedaddle as soon as she was caught celebrating a normal Thanksgiving with her family. Dr Fauci is playing the odds that the public health establishment won't need to fight a real epidemic with its credibility badly damaged, at least during his lifetime. For that matter, the odds are that Dr Walensky will be fired before that happens, too. But that's the game they're all playing.

Let the next generation fix the problem they've created. .

A Visitor Clarifies Pope Francis's Move On Opus Dei

As I hoped might happen, a visitor with more knowledge than I have of Opus Dei e-mailed me to provide additional context on his apostolic letter Ad Charisma Tuendum:

This is mostly a canonical move that puts OD under the dicastery of clergy rather than under that of bishops. Under the bishops, OD wanted to be treated as its own diocese---just as a diocesan bishop makes an ad limina visit to the pope every 5 years, so did the prelate of OD. Now OD will give a yearly accounting of its activities (& not to the pope). Also, OD has to put together a constitution which OD has avoided all these years. OD has operated under its statutes in the public arena but behind closed doors the "members' of OD have been trapped by one instruction after another. (Interestingly, there seems to be no verification of when the statutes were approved by Rome, if they were.)

There has been confusion about the 'members' of OD. As the code is written now, only clergy are members of OD, but it very apparent with this letter that ONLY clergy are members. OD has been able to cloud that distinction by pointing to its position in the hierarchical structure of the Church---kinda like it's a worldwide diocese. One of the consequences of that distinction has allowed OD directors to tell those who wanted to leave OD that they only way they could do so without incurring mortal sin was to be released from their contract by the prelate. (ODers don't take vows or make promises; they have a contract with OD. Contracts are not a part of religious or diocesan life so it's a curiosity that's been allowed. Hopefully, this new letter will clear things up for those on the outside, as well as, for those on the inside.)

I don't know if you've seen some of the concerns being voiced by those attached to the Tridentine Mass. They're afraid this is one more way Francis is going to keep them from perpetuating the rite they feel they have a right to. This takes away any possibility of orders like the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter to continue its ability to exclusively say the TM. There is a lot of conspiracy surrounding this letter. (Francis has been clear for a while that he would like to see the Church united in the Mass of Vatican 2. Best of luck to him. I'm afraid his stand is making the TMers more intransigent.)

I don't know if you've heard this take on the letter, but I saw it mentioned in an article. Some who are affiliated with the ordinariate are fearful that Francis is coming for them next. I still have a hard time wrapping my head around people who want to be Catholic but want to keep their former litugrical practices. How would it be if an entire Calvary Chapel decided to convert & wanted to keep their worship as it was but just insert the consecration somewhere? (I know the Anglican rite isn't like that: it's just for absurd comparison.) Probably the saddest reality for the ordinariate is the amount of disaffected Catholics who have wandered (or run) to an ordinariate parish because they don't want to deal with their local parish....liturgical abuses or not.

So broadly, there are two issues here. One deals with the legal basis of Opus Dei practices, especially those which have been characterized as "cult-like". Over the medium-to-long term, it looks like Opus Dei will need to provide a more transparent, legal, and constitiutional basis for its activities, which strikes me as a justifiable move. The second issue applies to Catholic "restorationists" or "pre-Conciliarists", who tend to interpret any move Francis makes as detrimental to their interests.

I think the visitor is correct that this is a canonical move related to the unique standing of Opus Dei as a personal prelature and directed toward placing it on a more solid constitutional foundation subject to review and accountability. Francis has issued separate policies related to the Latin mass, and other than his stated overriding goal of preserving the Second Council, there is no relationship between the two moves. (I can't disagree with Bp Barron's point that you can't get a higher Catholic authority than an ecumenical council.)

As I pointed out yesterday, Opus Dei and the Anglican ordinariates are juridically different animals, and insofar as the military ordinariates are on a canonically more solid foundation, so are the Anglican ordinariates. The threat against the Anglican ordinariates is primarily one of failed execution. The first generation of mostly married former Anglican clergy who were grandfathered in via instant ordinations has begun to retire, but there's been no second wave of celibate candidates in formation sufficient to replace them.

Our diocesan parish for some years has had a number of the archdiocese's vocation staff in residence, and this has given me an opportunity to learn a little about how the process works in a successful diocese. Vocations come from supportive, actively Catholic families and sympathetic parishes. Candidates are normally formed throughout adolescence by parish clergy and diocesan vocation staff even before they enter seminary. (There are exceptions, but they're exceptions.)

The Anglican ordinariates aren't necessarily made up of those families, and especially if the groups attract mainly the disgruntled, they aren't those sorts of parishes. And that leaves out the need for full-time diocesan vocation staff. If for no other reason, I don't see much of a future for Anglicanorum coetibis, notwithstanding the posture of the current pontiff or his successors. Opus Dei has nothing to do with this.