The Only Thing Wrong with Anglicanism...

"The only thing wrong with Anglicanism," observed Rob, "is that it's not true."

Well, that brought the house down some years ago now, when he, Justin and I were having a conspiratorial beer together one Friday night... those two have each made the journey from Anglican to Orthodox and now to Catholic, and of all people should know.

In an amazingly unexpected manner, Pope Benedict, most daringly exercising his Petrine power to bind and loose on earth as in heaven, has waved a wand and declared what was nice-yet-but-a-dream to be (potentially) true, once duly vetted for doctrinal accuracy.

Anglo-Catholicism reminds me of the opening lines of that classic film Picnic at Hanging Rock, misquoting Poe: "What we are and what we seem is but a dream, a dream within a dream."  (For its heady opening sequence and air of hopeless yearning for things lost, it - albeit in so feminine a way - conjures up something of the tragedy of Anglicanism, the desire for what is unattainable.)  Bp Anthony Fisher (just moved to Parramatta) once joked that the C. of E. believed in "Salvation by good taste alone" – well, now A-C's can have not just the form, but the substance as well.

For those awakening from a dream turned nightmare, as the much-vaunted Anglican patrimony of sober rectitude has dissolved into vile doctrinal and moral deviation combined with an intolerant, nay, doctrinaire, Robespierre liberalism, there is now, not the suburban light of a drear reality, but a hope of living in all truth what they had hoped and believed to be true.  Man's creative powers have now been blessed with supernatural life.