Keen-eyed readers of this popular mind blog might recall the oddity that is Anglo-Catholicism.
That's right, a movement that asserts catholicity for the Church of England and its various branches around the world. It started a while ago, with Pusey, Keble and Newman in Oxford, and spread.
Then in the '70s it went bust with the ordination of women. How could Anglicanism claim sacramental authenticity with the innovation? Not easy and its supporters didn't even try, it was all a matter of equal rights for a disenfranchised, oppressed "minority," women.
Women are oppressed, runs the logic, because they can't have all the jobs men have. So hurry up, Nazis, and make them priests. The Anglican Church in the West fell beneath the irresistible force of this powerful algorithm. And who can blame it.
A creature of the state since Henry VIII, why should Anglicanism suddenly mutiny when its overlords start riding the rainbow?
For the most part it didn't, it embraced the rainbow, lovingly. But Anglo-Catholics held the line, protesting against all the odds that their denomination isn't a denomination at all but part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church founded by Christ to be the Ark of Salvation.
We're at it today and you have to ask, is it a wasted effort? No, it's not. It's one small strike, to be sure, in the fight against evil and that's never a waste. On the contrary, it's a Gospel imperative.
So, give up or hold the line? Ask Charles Martel.
STAND STEADY,
LSP
