IT IS TIME TO GO
　
The departure to Rome of the good All Saints Sisters of the Poor underscores the disintegration of the Anglican Communion, and re-affirms the fact - increasingly evident in recent years - that there is no place left for traditionalists/conservatives in that once-admirable body.

There is no need herein to recount in detail the tale of the purported ordination of women and abandonment of the conscience clause leading to the persecution of those who could not accept this novel heresy; of the schemes for "church union" with bodies not accepting the essentials of the Faith; of the deracination of common worship through the abandonment of the Book of Common Prayer and the importing of new beliefs via modern liturgies of diminished faith and impoverished language; of the toleration - even welcome - of a "bishop" named Spong and his heretic brothers and sisters; of the horrors of politicized synodical governance most recently made more absurd by the corrupting of the "indaba" process, appropriate to African tribes who share a common culture and common values but obviously grossly unsuited to a Church where two or more faiths war within the bosom of a single denomination.; and of the obsession with things sexual driven by an organized minority at one with the shrill agenda of the political left which has so dominated the councils of the Church, creating a new Green God and preaching no credal faith beyond the UN Millennial goals.

Until the last 40 years or so, it was possible for generations of holy priests and earnest faithful to believe that we were part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, holding no other beliefs and subscribing to no other Creeds, as indeed it was still credible for Archbishop Fisher of Canterbury to assert in the 1950's.

However, God had another plan for us - to disappear, to surrender from our quotidian lives so much that is beautiful and lovely in Anglican liturgy, music and parish life; and to leave what is now - mostly - but a counterfeit of Holy Church, and to bring those gifts and those experiences with us on a journey that is wrenching personally but right intellectually, placing them humbly at the Chair of Peter before and to whom all Catholic Christians must submit.

We were deeply struck by the words Fr Jeffrey Steele - who swam the Tiber last week - wrote in his admirable Blog De Cura Animarum - "What I became aware of was that it was almost impossible to say 'the Church teaching is' within the Anglican church because there are so many various opinions on matters of sacraments, liturgy, morality, scripture etc. What I did not want to experience anymore was proclaiming the teaching of the Church only to end up defending myself rather than the Anglican church defending me. This has become an ever-increasing impossibility that is no secret to the entire Anglican world. My preaching would always be seen as a matter of personal opinion rather than having the authority of the Magisterium that backs up what I teach publicly. Of course there is dissent in the Catholic Church but it is always that, dissent towards what Mother Church proclaims as authoritatively true."

So now is the time for all of us to consider how we make that same swim. And, somehow, we must shed the bitterness we feel at the way "our" church has treated us and rather, assume the joyful garb of the suppliant, praying - but not expecting - that the Holy Father may ease our path through creating a Personal Prelature for Anglicans who find it impossible to remain in their Church.

As we leave, we look back at a host of associations and experiences and people, all of which formed us and which must have been of God; yet we at the same time know we cannot repeat the error of Lot's poor wife, and become further calcified in a salt casing built up by our further delay, and by the scandal of increasing congregationalism as we seek out a diminishing number of "safe" parishes with male priests ordained by orthodox male bishops and holding fast the faith, Rather we must consider and share the tremulous expectation with which our pilgrim fathers in the faith crossed over Jordan afer their wanderings.

It is time to quit the desert and drink abundantly of the sanctified water of the Church towards which we have always believed it was the vocation of Anglo-Catholics to lead Anglicanism to be re-united. We simply did not expect it would fall to us, and our time, to make the crossing without some of our brethren and without most of those with whom have shared a denominational identity.

But God, as always, had His own plan, and has so worked matters in His own good time so that - eschewing the seemingly attractive call of "continuing churches" which cannot agree on basics of the faith and indeed seem united principally in dissent from current Anglicanism (to their credit) but whose actual number of adherents often seem overwhelmed by many splendidly-attired bishops - we are led to the Source of Catholic Authority and Truth - the Church founded by Our Lord and entrusted to Peter.

It is there that our souls will find peace; and there, too, that while there may be battles to be waged, our worship and our longing for Our Lord and His Sacraments will be nourished by a Faith that is essentially unchanging, for its "old eternal rocks" are not based on the "passing and of little worth" which have grabbed hold of Anglicanism, but rather on the Deposit of Faith once received by the Saints.

"So long Thy power has stayed me, sure it still
Will lead me on - o'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent
Till the night is gone.
And with the morn I'll see those Angel smiles
Which I have loved long since - and lost a while."