The Society

Saturday, 1st October, I drove down to Brighton to attend the launch of the Society of St Wilfred and St Hilda, aka SSWSH, aka (a little cruelly) Hinge and Bracket.  The idea is that The Society will provide some means by which Catholic Anglicans may be assured that they have other catholic clergy (and most importantly, bishops) to whom they may relate.

Goodness knows if it will work. On the other hand it is all we catholic traditionalists have if we are to remain faithful to our parishes.  Yes, our evangelical friends are working up there own networks, but evangelical Christianity has a very different flavour to Anglo-Catholic, so we will have to make the very best of The Society, at least for the time being.

Long-term, who knows.  To be frank I see the CofE embracing more and more the feminist and the gay agenda.  Evangelicals will probably do their own thing, after all, as I have heard some admit, the CoE is as good as a 'flag of convenience'.  This is not evangelicals being disloyal,  more being true to their ecclesiology.  High Anglicans, on the other hand, have always been intensely loyal and that loyalty has carried over into Anglo-Catholicism, and I think that this might be a part of the reason why the Ordinariate is now quite a quiet thing. Two possibilities seem to offer them selves.  The liberal mainstream of Anglicanism might ignore us, which will leave us at peace where we can become increasingly isolated, bitter and eccentric.  Or we will suffer what amounts to constructive dismissal.  In the mean time we carry on witnessing to the fullness of the catholic faith within the Church of England.