There was a thought-provoking post up at Covenant the other day on Fr. Hendrickson’s call for a New Oxford Movement.

Both posts are worth reading and pondering.

But the time is not yet here. Sadly.

Fr. Hendrickson, a figure who needs no introduction to most of my readers, is—by all I can tell for someone who doesn’t attend his parish—a great priest and I count him as a friend. He is one of the core people who assisted in the creation of the Society of Catholic Priests here in North America. There is a point he makes in his original post that I think may explain why we still lack such a renewal: Individualism unchecked.

A friend asked what a group of us thought of the article. A fellow layman explained his experience of being or, perhaps, finding his place as an Anglo-Catholic within a reverent low-church parish. That was something I resonated with very much and this is my reaction…

The elephant in the room is Catholic Anglican identity: What does it look like, what does it mean, how does it live? The chief issue that the Society of Catholic Priests has brought out into the open and laid bare is that organic “Anglo-Catholic” identity has broken down thanks to splits, departures, and arguments. It’s no longer a matter of being formed organically in a loose network of affiliated parishes; it’s largely a matter of self-study by clergy and laity grouped around a set of disconnected idiosyncratic parishes whose ritual practices and theological teachings are, again, based these days largely on the memory/dream/projection of an organic past and whatever self-study the rector/former rector thought was right (or fun, or liturgically titillating). There won’t be a new Oxford Movement for the Episcopal Church until those of use who identify as Catholic Anglicans figure out why we do and what that looks like, and how that theology is expressed, habitually and ritually. And the key point there that my friend has identified is how lay Catholic Anglicans live that stance out in parishes that aren’t Catholic and (these days) may only be marginally Anglican. Like mine too…

A revival of Catholic Anglican substance will not occur by means of priests writing treatises. That ship has sailed; those days are past.

A revival of Catholic Anglican substance will occur when the imagination of the lay faithful are caught by a vision of the church that is deeper, more beautiful, more compelling and that can be practiced even in communities that fail to grasp that vision or perceive a different vision of the church at work.

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