Let's think about the sort of unhelpful stereotypes we see in mainstream media -- one comes to mind because I was sorry to see it emerge in a TV program I normally like -- the Heroic Single Mom. The HSM explains, sometimes tearfully, that she does everything for her kids, works two jobs, drives as a long distance trucker, whatever, to make ends meet and give the kids a life. This keeps the audience from focusing on whatever circumstances caused her to be raising three kids without a dad, nor how when boyfriend Steve comes around, he's lusting after the older son. All good reason for Fr Ripperger to advise parents to lose the TV as long as there are kids in the house.
It seems to me that when you pull the fluff away, Thompson is engaging in similar dishonesty. He leads by saying the OOLW is in peril, but he quickly segues to the sitcom slapstick Private Frazer and "We're doomed!" In other words, he doesn't really mean it. And other than the one realistic assessment -- the idea of group conversions is a fantasy -- his prescriptions are bromides. In fact, I would call them archetypes of wishful thinking, and I think there are two of them.
The first is the Heroic Young Parish-Planting Priest. There are a couple of OCSP priests playing to this stereotype, the dedicated Anglican version of Bing Crosby in Going My Way, but with the accessories of wife and many kids to go with the straw hat. He is building a parish where diocesan fuddy-duddies have tried and failed, and it's going from strength to strength. But like the stereotype of the HSM, the HYPPP is atypical at minimum and deflects attention from legitimate questions: are these new people part of the target group? How many are actually coming to mass and confession? Are they sustaining the church with real donations? How realistic are the blue-sky proposals?
The HYPPP also deflects attention from the reality that, as a commenter pointed out on Fr Hunwicke's post, most ordinariate priests are retirees, and in the OCSP they've wangled their way into established parishes or sinecures. They're long past planting parishes -- their careers were always oriented toward prestigious established parishes (i.e., the Steenson model) in any case. But beyond that, their formation was anything but Catholic. Thery went to prestige Anglican seminaries where they learned to tolerate diversity and that the seven deadly sins are neither here nor there. They're in favor of birettas, copes, patens, and subdeacons, but little else.
The second is the myth of the sudden donor who will make everything all right. This is the bright note on which Thompson ends his piece. The problem is that what we see in places like Scranton is something more like a Ponzi scheme, grandiose proposals demanding money far in excess of what's available, leading to unpaid bills and emergency campaigns. We can say this comes from faith, but in Catholic moral theology as I understand it, temperance must normally balance such aspirations with prudence.
Thompson pretty much confirms my developing view that Anglicanorum coetibus contains fatal contradictions based on a misunderstanding of Anglicanism.
