What is in a title?, one might ask. The title of this slim volume by the distinguished Dominican scholar, Fr Aidan Nichols OP, makes strikingly clear what members of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are. Personal Ordinariates – structures erected by Pope (now emeritus) Benedict XVI – are governed by the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (2009). This Constitution makes provision for Anglicans, who so wish, to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church in a corporate manner while retaining distinctive features of their Anglican liturgical and spiritual identity.
In the Preface, the author states that Anglicanorum coetibus has changed the landscape of English Christianity irreversibly. For an understanding of this development, Nichols examines four particular themes which help to explain the point and purpose of the Ordinariate for England and Wales. To this end, the book is divided into four chapters.
Chapter One examines the historical and theological context of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham (2011). Theological issues raised by the historical background of Anglicans are looked at from the Reformation period to the present day. Various streams of Anglicanism are viewed – the Catholic, the Protestant and the Broad or Liberal currents – from the perspective of Anglicanorum coetibus. The emergence of Catholic-minded Anglicanism is mapped out in some detail, from its beginning in the reign of James I (1603–25) with the High-Church party, through to the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century. The author discerns a theological shift with the Tractarians whose aim, as he puts it, was ‘to take over the Church as a whole, to render it consistently Catholic albeit in an English way’. This aim was continued by Anglo-Catholics of succeeding generations until the outcome was rendered unattainable when the shape of apostolic ministry was abandoned in recent years. Nichols sees the emerging Ordinariate as a sort of ‘little church’ (ecclesiola) for former, traditional Anglo-Catholics ‘within a body…culturally unfamiliar to them but theologically congruent’.
Chapter Two places Anglicanorum coetibus within the wider theological vision of Pope Benedict. The author supposes Pope Benedict to be a ‘Noah figure’ seeking to bring various passengers into the ‘Ark’ which is being buffeted by the storms of relativism and secularism. These passengers include Eastern Orthodox, ‘Lefebvrists’ and particular Lutherans, as well as Anglicans. With regard to the reconciliation of the Church of England as a whole to the Holy See, the influence of Bl. John Henry Newman upon Pope Benedict's thinking is considered. Newman's view (in a letter of 1866) was that the most to be hoped for was the reconciliation of the Anglo-Catholic party. Anglicanorum coetibus, Nichols remarks, shows Pope Benedict to be of the same mind on the matter. The author proceeds to ask what does Pope Benedict look for from the Anglo-Catholic party? One affinity is a similar theological view concerning the relationship between Scripture and Tradition. Another is the appeal of the Anglican ‘three-fold cord’ – the union between Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Evidently there is close affinity between the Anglo-Catholic tradition and Pope Benedict's high view of the liturgy, in its fostering of beauty and richness in worship. In the area of ‘spiritual practice’, the author links Pope Benedict's vision with Anglicanism in general. Included here is pastoral outreach and involvement beyond the confines of Church membership; also included is Newman's doctrine of conscience as a possible example of Anglican patrimony in that entry into the Ordinariate is consequent upon a personal conscientious decision to do so.
Chapter Three is concerned with the liturgy. The author explains that ‘the 1662 liturgy, interpolated with some either silent or spoken Sarum or Roman prayers, became bit by bit the Roman Use or the Sarum Use, interpolated with some spoken Cranmerian prayers’. As background, the Protestant nature of Cranmer's Prayer Book reforms (1549, 1552) are described together with the discontent of Anglo-Catholics and their demand that they be supplanted rather than developed. The matter of ritual – items and gestures legitimate for use in worship – was also a serious issue for Anglo-Catholics. A Royal Commission Report in 1906 held that both the texts and ceremonial of the 1662 Prayer Book were unsatisfactory for the religious needs of the day. The latter half of the last century saw the emergence of several sets of Anglican rites (in parallel with the 1662 Prayer Book) from which churches could pick and choose. During the same period a substantial number of Anglo-Catholics became adherents of the Revised Roman Liturgy (1969).
In the final Chapter the author argues a need for the Ordinariate from the perspective of mission and evangelism. He refers to the ‘credibility gap’ which is affecting the Catholic Church in England. He explains how the Ordinariate is well-placed to fill the gap. For evangelizing, Nichols feels there is a need for the Church to have what he calls a ‘native-cum cosmopolitan recipe’, that is a mix of Catholics indigenous as well as immigrant. Another need, he mentions, is for the Ordinariate to keep alive the memory of notable figures of the Anglo-Catholic movement as a means of inspiration for its members within the Catholic Church.
The book is clear and concise, and it is written in a fluent, engaging style. It should prove informative for Latin Catholics and inspiring for Ordinariate members. However, this Welsh-speaking reviewer feels compelled to ask: what of Wales, for so long a devoutly Catholic country, as portrayed through its language and history? A mention, en passant, of Wallia alongside Albion in the final Chapter would have covered the Ordinariate's landscape.
The publishers are to be commended on a fine publication. It deserves a wide readership.
