Are Anglican fears unfounded?

Fr. Anthony Chadwick brings some realistic analysis to the fore when it comes to Anglicanorum coetibus. An excerpt:

The real issue, as manifest in the two letters from American bishops and the lengthy fisking of Archbishop Hepworth’s letter in the Continuum blog by Canon John Hollister of the Anglican Catholic Church, is that of the degree of absorption Anglican groups will suffer on going into communion with Rome. I attended the Portsmouth meeting in October 2007, and was present at every session. Archbishop Hepworth was clear about everything: we were to profess the Catholic Faith as in the Roman Catechism, give the Roman theologians nothing to say. Simply we assent to the Church’s teaching. Secondly, we were to ask for a corporate solution, something on the lines of a prelature or a uniate church with a degree of autonomy. We were not talking about asking Rome for a concordat of intercommunion, because we all knew this was unrealistic, and that Rome doesn’t work like that. There is full communion, or no communion with a variety of ways to tackle the problem of ironing out the obstacles that impede communion and maintain a state of schism. I found the Archbishop to be honest about everything. We were to take a humble approach, not ask too much from Rome or lay down conditions other than wanting to be received corporately in the respect of our Anglican patrimony, and we determined to ask the Holy See for guidance. They surely know better than we do about what will work and what will not.

What came out from Rome in October and November 2009 was not only a response to our request, but also that of the Forward in Faith bishops who were going to Rome at various times for secret meetings. For three American bishops and a number of English clergy, the issue is absorption. Absorption into what?

The answer is absorption into an ecclesial organisation that has had a long record of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and legalism. The feared factor is the spectre of clericalism and the long shadow of the Inquisition. What is most feared is that Rome has some ulterior motive for creating such difficulty for Anglicans that we will become discouraged and go away, or give up our personalities and our very humanity to become an anonymous part of a machine. The anti-Rome Anglicans will tell us that everything will be done in such a way as to break us, destroy our continuity by taking away our clergy, disqualifying them from receiving Catholic ordination or putting them into training and having the laity attend Mass in the modern Roman rite in their local parish while they wait five years for their old priest to get the proper level of training in a seminary (whilst his wife and children have to live in the street and starve). Were that to be the case, the Ordinariate scheme would be totally unacceptable and impossible to implement in the real world.

This is a real fear, and our Anglican groups will need to receive reassurance. I am given to believe that the ordinariate scheme is going to be generous in order to make it implementable and realistic: priests in pastoral ministries would be dispensed from formal seminary training and allowed to study by correspondence and occasional residential sessions. But, we will see.

I believe the Holy See will be generous. That's what the Holy Father has asked of his bishops.