MINT-AND-CORN COUNTRY, INDIANA — I realize that Anglican-Catholic concerns aren’t exactly the primary focus of Post Right, but I do believe that relations amongst orthodox, apostolic Christians — Anglican, Roman, and Eastern — should be (and often are) of interest and concern to alternative/crunchy/paleo/post-right/front-porch conservatives. Emphasis on traditional morality, humane economics, and the natural law all rank highly with us, and are intrinsic to apostolic Christianity. Moreover, we probably ought to care that one of the premier dailies in the country (elite liberal media or not) allows something as egregious as below to make it to print.

My friend Roque tipped me off to this doozy from Sunday’s Washington Post, a mind-bogglingly bad opinion piece on Benedict’s recent opening of the gate — building a bridge over the Tiber, if you will — for Anglicans. You know that it’s going to be atrocious when you see that the title asks, “Is Pope Benedict a closet liberal?” You incline toward turning to the comic pages, but cannot help yourself: Must. Read. Foolishly. Titled. Piece.

David Gibson writes,

Thus far, Benedict’s papacy has been one of constant movement and change, the sort of dynamic that liberal Catholics — or Protestants — are usually criticized for pursuing. In Benedict’s case, this liberalism serves a conservative agenda. But his activism should not be surprising: As a sharp critic of the reforms of Vatican II, Ratzinger has long pushed for what he calls a “reform of the reform” to correct what he considers the excesses or abuses of the time.

Reasonable enough. Reading this after a series of paragraphs in which Gibson carries on about the purportedly “extraordinary concession” that Benedict made in the form of the “principal innovation” of opening the Church more fully to the Tridentine Mass is a bit disconcerting, insofar as it suggests cognitive dissonance on Gibson’s part: Restoring the Mass that predominated for nearly four centuries is hardly innovative, and the only thing extraordinary about it, really, is the form of the Mass, itself. Nonetheless, Benedict has been “liberal” inasmuch as his actions may not always strike the observer as being “conservative” in the sense of prudential and moderated, but when the revolutionaries strike, one ought to don the reactionary’s cape.

Things take a turn from the absurd, though. Having made quite clear that Benedict, however “liberal” his means, is stridently “conservative” (Really, he’s just an orthodox Catholic, but debating religious semantics with David Gibson, I fear, is probably a battle unworthy of my time.), Gibson proceeds to smack the reader across the face with this gem:

More important, with the latest accommodation to Anglicans, Benedict has signaled that the standards for what it means to be Catholic — such as the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Mass as celebrated by a validly ordained priest — are changing or, some might argue, falling. The Vatican is in effect saying that disagreements over gay priests and female bishops are the main issues dividing Catholics and Anglicans, rather than, say, the sacraments and the papacy and infallible dogmas on the Virgin Mary, to name just a few past points of contention.

That is revolutionary — and unexpected from a pope like Benedict. It could encourage the view, which he and other conservatives say they reject, that all Christians are pretty much the same when it comes to beliefs, and the differences are just arguments over details.

*FACEPALM*

The sacraments, the infallible dogmas on the Blessed Mother, and even, to a lesser degree, the papacy (with the Anglo-Tridentines primarily, I think) are already points of contention within the AC, and not merely apparently not-as-important divisions between Rome and Canterbury. Gay priests and female priests and bishops may be the camel’s-back-breaking straws, but Anglicans have been a fractured group over more theologically profound questions far much longer than they’ve cared about how priests are using their penises — or if they have them at all. Some Anglicans, of course, accept the Assumption, and a good number the Immaculate Conception. Others prefer Eucharist as “symbol” (To hell with it!) and Calvinistic nonsense about predestination.

If anything, that female priests (not to mention bishops!) are out of the question in Catholicism and that openly gay priests will not be tolerated are enticing to, rather than problematic for, the Anglicans who are most likely to come home. What will keep them — those otherwise most inclined toward Rome — in the Continuing Anglican Church, or elsewhere within the crumbling AC, are reservation about the papacy, inter alia. Absolutely nothing from Benedict has suggested otherwise; permitting Anglicans to keep an Anglican Rite (just as we now freely hear the Tridentine Mass, as I do every Sunday, in Chicago) is not at all the same as permitting them to reject the Real Presence or the papacy. Benedict hasn’t If the latter, especially, were the case, they’d probably remain smell-and-bells Anglo-Catholics. B XVI is not opening the door without reservation; he’s decidedly not trying to turn the Church into the new “Roman Communion”, where you can believe just about anything and still be a good Catholic (a term that I use aware of the potential danger: A number of Catholics who don’t fall in line at all still think themselves to be good Catholics, and I mean not to judge them, but the distinction is clear: Catholics are supposed to believe X, Y, and Z to be Catholic; Anglicanism, lamentably, really is an à la carte religion).

Please, Washington Post, EDIT.