Crossing the Tiber

It has been some time since my last posting, largely because my mind has been occupied with other things like moving house, packing and unpacking, getting back on line, and trying to find all those things which I had thought had gone missing in the meanwhile. So now, having more or less got through the upheaval, I must try to return to more important matters, such as the recent realignment of John Broadhurst, Keith Newton, and Andrew Burnham, formerly flying bishops in the Church of England, who have now flown the coop altogether, winging their way across the treacherous waters of the Tiber.

I cannot say that I know any of these three gentlemen personally, but I have read some of their more occasional writings, particularly those of Andrew Burnham, which I have found to be both predictable and puzzling. His enthusiasms are not those which I would expect of an Anglican bishop, although having been trained for the priesthood as he was at St Stephen's House, I can't say I am surprised. He seems remarkably keen on the Sacred Heart, the Cure d'Ars, and Our Lady of Lourdes. Perhaps he is just an enthusiastic Francophile (I myself once had a third-class relic of St Margaret Mary Alacoque) but I rather doubt that mere francophilia could be the real reason for his enthusiasms, nor for his frequent and devoted references to the Bishop of Rome, whom he insists on calling the Holy Father, and from whose 'detestable enormities' loyal members of the Established Church in a more theological age prayed devoutly for deliverance - or they did until the rather tactless suffrage was deleted from the English Litany.

Another of Andrew Burnham's great enthusiams is John Henry Cardinal Newman, which is no surprise. Anglican papalists have been sobbing at the latter's somewhat overcrowded grave for years. (The cardinal insisted on being buried with Father Ambrose St John Cong.Orat. you will recall.) I find the papalists' grief highly suspicious, and I rather think the recent beatus would too. Given some of the terms like tyranny which he used in reference to it, Newman would hardly have shared Forward in Faith's unblinking adoration of the papacy. Indeed, if he were alive today, I confidently predict that he would be an enthusiastic supporter of the Movement for the Ordination of Women, and might even have entered into a civil union with Ambrose St John. He wasn't described by a member of the Roman curia as 'the most dangerous man in England' for nothing - and that was after his conversion.

Perhaps the defection of the flying bishops and those like them will be a blessing in the long run. It should certainly help to restore the honesty and integrity of English Anglo-Catholicism. The whole concept of the Two Lost Provinces of the Western Church, torn from the bosom of the Roman Pontiff, and longing to return to it, is an unhistorical fantasy we can well do without.