The Broken Middle

Old news, I know, but I have been reading "The Light That Failed: Reflections on Anglo-Catholicism in the Episcopal Church." The author lists "seven major causes of the tragedy." Once they have been enumerated, it becomes clear that the problem was simple: Kulturkampf . A house without foundations is swiftly wiped away in such a tsunami. It all was so relatively quick and neat, historically viewed: 1947 to 1984 . Postwar exhaustion, passivity, and superficiality; Vatican II; The Sixties (1965-1975); The 1979 Book of Common Prayer; No episcopal leadership (= no schism); No intellectual leadership (= no scholarship and no teaching); No moral leadership (= nothing but laxity and a lack of personal holiness). All in all, that's a pretty tall order. Again: Zeitgeist (1-3), mediocrity (4), and total lack of the requisite formation (5-7). In a word, Bildung . Mein Kampf

Nostalgia, remorse, reparation. These things might as well be my middle name. Like Benjamin's angel ... From Fr. Hunwicke : It seemed difficult to imagine, back in 1968, how anything could happen that would make one wish to fulfill one's vocation as a Priest of the Catholic and Latin Church anywhere other than in the Provinces of Canterbury and York. So much holiness was there and so much real and profound learning; so much were they part of the fabric of every English town and village; so autochthonous. I wonder how many generations it took for those once flourishing churches around Hippo in North Africa to pass into sand and become history and memories. Sic transit ... As Blessed John Henry Newman put it, Canterbury has gone its way, and York is gone, and Durham is gone, and Winchester is gone. It was sore to part with them. We clung to the vision of past greatness, and would not believe it could come to naught; but ... And even Oxford, in a sense, is gone ; the Oxford...