I don’t really don’t know what the issues are, but the parish has been around a long time (30+ years) and has attracted a lot of cradle Catholics, who I think are the majority. From that point of view, it perhaps makes sense that we will remain with the Archdiocese of San Antonio and not join the Ordinariate. But it is disappointing for those who labored for and dreamed of the Anglican Ordinariate for all these years.
I deeply sympathize with this predicament. I pray everyday now about this.
If membership in the Ordinariate is limited to those who have left the Anglican communion within the last 5 years, it is** unlikely that it will be able to exist** as a sustainable significant body of the Church.
Even of those who are ex-anglicans many are old and have very few children (not to deny there are some families with 10 children here and there as well, but they are the minority). This means that within 30-40 years the majority of founding members will have passed away and left very few descendents.
These - the moderately traditional catholics and ex-anglicans - are two groups who badly need each other, both have suffered seemingly betrayal or at least poor decisions, by their respective former/current hierarchies, they are I think, a match made in heaven. To separate these groups, which are not unlike two lovers, from each other would be a tradgedy. The “marriage”, so to speak, must be allowed for them to be able to be fruitful and multiply and serve to help souls attain Salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy sacrifice of the Eucharist.
The biggest issue here is how in fact one defines a cradle catholic.
There are millions of catholics who have on either the mother or fathers side, within the last one hundred years, an adherant to some form of protestantism. Anglican and Lutheranism being two of the more common ones.
At the bare minimum, if one has either Anglican or Lutheran heritage within the last generation or two one ought to allow this to qualify, regardless of what they were originally baptized as.
Without “cradle catholics” of one sort or another, the ordinariate is all for naught. I should think any intelligent hierach knows this. Something must be done to remedy this situation immediately. Something rather unexpected and distasteful may otherwise occur.
Please pray ceaselessly for this intention.
Music such as this needs to live and breath freely:
youtube.com/watch?v=EdwksFvtsng
In english, it has no other home, except perhaps for the western rite vicariates of the eastern orthodox churches.
What is good for traditional english language liturgy, is ultimately beneficial to communities focused on traditional latin language liturgy. One can not enrich the other so easily, without both being allowed to exist.
