Is this a Continuing Anglican blog or not?

My life is about to get more splendidly complicated, but it gives me thought about just how far I have come over the eleven-and-a-bit years of blogging. It is remarkable that I have now been in the Anglican Catholic Church for more than half my bloglife. This can probably be considered a Continuing Anglican blogling now.

For the first half of my bloglife, I was developing as a progressively more ultramontane Anglican Papalist and defending the existence of the Anglican Papalism that, for me, came out of the logical progression of Anglo-Catholicism. While I was in this state, I could not consider the Continuing Anglican movement as being an option. To me, it was an American phenomenon of a fissiparous nature. However, as I reflect more on things, it was my engagement with these Continuing Anglicans that gave me great encouragement and support. It was precisely this support that enabled me to stand up to the Church of England and especially to Mrs Rural Dean who was the architect of my departure, and say "no more!"

Continuing Anglicanism is still a hotch-potch of little churches which can be swayed by larger-than-life characters. I have met some very passionate, eccentric, and caustic individuals - some who have at times been thoroughly unpleasant. I have also met some extraordinary Anglicans who have subsequently become Roman Catholics through the Ordinariate - indeed I have had some very pleasant discussion with one of the people involved whose kindness to me was of such great value. The one thing that I have consistently found in the people whom I have met is a deep seated authenticity and self-consistency. Those who were Ordinariate-bound I did question how they were capable of seeing their orders as null and void: they found their reasons with which I couldn't agree, but I could agree that this was something that was consistent within themselves. What I found with these Continuing Anglicans were people with the strength of character to leave that which is established, socially acceptable, and "nice" for the way that is true but out in the wilderness away from the approval of society.

That was the pull.

But I have received pushes. There were pushes from the CofE who saw me as an obstacle to getting their own way with the parish I left: once I was gone, they seem to have suddenly been able to "ordain" a woman in that church - a woman "deacon" whom I was told never wanted to be a priest.

I could have gone to Rome. I was pushed away from that too. I found myself repulsed by the smugness of the cradle Romans who looked down on converts. I found myself repulsed by the smugness of converts who looked down on the place whence they had came seeing nothing but the pig-sty from which they themselves had been seeking to eat the husks. I found this hierarchy of smugness quite intolerable. Indeed, my confrere, Fr Anthony Chadwick seems to be battling precisely the type of smug individual who actually drives people away from communion with the Holy See. Such individuals will say that I'm just being too precious. I wonder if they would say that to the others whom their attitude has pushed away, but then, it's not their problem is it? Evangelism is always someone else's problem.

"Ah!" they will say, "you're a recent convert. Look at the way that you've vilified the CofE! You push people away with your attitude, too!"

Perhaps I do - to my shame. I know that I have lost friends in trying to put my case across too strongly. My deep problem is that I don't actually hate the CofE: I hate the ideology that has infected her. I see her like some great oak dying of some horrible blight seeing still lush green branches with acorns, yet seeing others wither, moulder and drop off.

It is because I love her that I became a Continuing Anglican, though as my Archbishop will warn, by "Anglican" I mean an adjective describing my heritage and qualifying my approach to the Catholic Faith. If the See of Canterbury is the blighted oak, then the Continuing Anglican movement is a group of little cuttings seeking to grow hopefully having escaped the blight. Still other cuttings seem to be wanting to grow, but they are multiplying difficulties, cutting themselves of for the wrong reasons and are probably still infected with that blight. It is really better for disaffected Anglicans to find sanctuary within the original Continuing Anglican movement: our cutting seems to have taken and is established.

To all those who do want to make a change to traditional Anglican belief, I offer an invitation to check us out and look beyond our size to see our vision. We pray that it is part of the Vision Glorious!