Anglo-Jansenism and Immobilism

Dec 5th
by Fr. Anthony Chadwick

Not being American, I perhaps pick up things with a different level of sensitivity. I am English and have spent more than half my life in Continental Europe, mostly in France. And so, each morning, I go through the blogs and other sources of news and information. Some of those blogs are written and commented by men who identify with a form of Anglicanism (something that would have been strange to me as an esrtwhile Anglican layman in the 1970’s). I am mildly surprised to find comments written by priests who are neither Roman Catholic, nor Anglican or even belonging to a church of the Union of Utrecht. Well, I won’t go on and on about the relative risks of walking into a Roman “fly-trap” or belonging to a small church body that has a more than doubtful future on its own.

My subject for this posting is a certain vision of Anglicanism that I can only perceive as unreal, a caricature like certain forms of extreme Catholic traditionalism like sedevacantism. Like the sedevacantists, certain priests I have come to label, tongue-in-cheek, as Anglo-Jansenists, become increasingly shrill and intemperate. What is it with these people? What is the vision they are trying to uphold, or is it merely a bid for power and spiritual monopoly? Under all the rhetoric, there is an underlying vision...

Read the rest of Fr. Chadwick's post at The Anglo Catholic.