The emergence of the true Via Media

Sheffield and South Yorkshire Ordinariate

"Too much change!" "Too little change!" Those are the poles to which proponents of the liturgical extremes tend to gravitate. Those are the basins on either side of a liturgical continental divide into which drains considerable energy, time and resources that could be better spent in service of the New Evangelization.

On the one hand, we have those Catholics who are only content with the Mass celebrated entirely in Latin, save the homily, according to the liturgical books in use prior to the changes mandated by the Second Vatican Council. Can you blame them for valuing the retention of such a beautiful ritual? On the other, there are Catholics for whom the Mass is entirely malleable, permitted to be so by things imagined to be mandated by the same Council. For the former, the Extraordinary Form (EF) of the Mass is more a citadel; for the latter, the Ordinary Form (OF) of the Mass is (much) more a playpen.

The Emergent Way

A way between extremes exists, a middle way. It is not a squishy middle ground that is mere compromise, nor is it a middle that is a bridge to nowhere. It is not a safe middle nor is it an ambiguous middle. It is a well defined middle, clear, in continuity with Apostolic Tradition. It is a via media which offers to the unchurched and christians outside the Catholic Church the opportunity to enter into full communion with Jesus and the Church that He founded, the Catholic Church.

The Old Via Media

Allied in thought or by way of association, Richard Hooker (Treatise on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity), Martin Bucer, Thomas Cranmer and Heinrich Bullinger, and later the Tractarians and those proponents of the Oxford Movement, proposed Anglicanism as a middle way (via media) between Protestantism and Catholicism. However, from the moment Henry divorced Catherine of Aragon and the declaration of his supremacy over the Church, Anglicanism became (much) more Protestant.

Contrary to the clever marketing of the English Protestants and their allies from the Continent, the middle way of Anglicanism is not a middle way. Anglicanism, it would seem proven by its (simulated) ordination of women, its embrace of worldly sexualities and other departures from Apostolic Tradition which has caused continuing Anglicans to flee to their own separate corners, is a diversion away from not toward orthodox Christianity, which is only found in it fullness in the Catholic Church.

The New Via Media

Thanks be to God, a new via media emerged under the pontificate of Benedict the XVI and continues to grow under the present pontificate of Pope Francis.

The new via is truly a middle way in the sense that 'middle' refers to a centre, a centre of thought and praxis characterized by:

1. obedience to Christ and His Church;
2. orientation to Apostolic Tradition;
3. liturgical integrity and the embodiment of truth, goodness and beauty, the transcendentals.

The "new" via is really the one and same via of Jesus, Who is Himself the Way.

The (true) via media has been identified or realized by those unity-minded Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church through one of the Personal Ordinariates (cf Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus). The Personal Ordinariates are a way for non-Catholics to find their way home to Rome, and a way for all Catholics to embrace the authentic renewal taught by the Second Vatican Council. The via of a personal ordinariate is a way of service to unity in Christ. The Personal Ordinariates reunite the Catholic liturgical heritage retained in Anglicanism with the Catholic Church.

A Via for Evanglization

There need not be rancour and lopsided debate which places OF and EF proponents at opposite poles. Those polar regions, kept apart by ideology more than theology, will be, if they are not already, cold places located at opposite ends of the liturgical planet.

While too many folk are distracted by divisive squirmishes fought by ideologues lauding either the Ordinary Form of the Mass or the Extraordinary Form of the Mass to the detriment of the other, the Ordinariate quietly sails along, inviting others into a liturgical patrimony that is becoming a true via media, a middle way for tradition-minded English-speaking Catholics to reverently worship God using an elevated form of their mother tongue (i.e., Prayer Book English, hieratic English), while also inviting Catholics to join the chorus of the canonized saints who knew Latin as their liturgical vernacular. (It goes without saying that, given the frequency of traditional Latin Mass settings employed in Divine Worship, the Mass of the Ordinariate, Latin finds a comfortable home in the Ordinariate.)

Beyond the unnecessary dichotomies that spawn liturgical grievances which sap vitality and which distract Catholics from evangelizing a vastly under-catechized Catholic populace, and which keep the Church from reaching the vast realm of the unchurched, liturgical extremists might consider moving closer to the equatorial centre, Jesus Christ, by visiting an Ordinariate community, to gain a better perspective, to adopt a more viable theological, liturgical, aesthetical and social way, a spiritual hospitality, to engage people who desperately need the hope that the Catholic Church alone can offer to souls thirsty for truth, goodness and beauty.

Find a community of the Ordinariate:

North America: https://ordinariate.net/communities
United Kingdom: http://www.ordinariate.org.uk/groups/groups.php
Australia, Japan and Torres Strait: http://www.ordinariate.org.au/ordinariate-congregations/