On the Via Media—and the Ordinariates:
But what just occurred to me this past evening is that the via media spirit continues on within many of us in the Anglican Use inside the Catholic Church! I think many of these sort of small epiphanies will occur within many of us as we suddenly realize what this Anglican patrimony that we have really is after all! And by virtue, we really understand better just who we truly are. The realization came about when I was talking with a long-time visitor to Bl. John’s who told me that he feels like foreigner among us but at home at one of the traditional Latin Masses. Why? Because we do not think like he does. This caused me to remember that we are not the only ones with this problem and that what caused the tension is indeed our patrimony!
As Anglican Use Catholics we are liturgically, morally and doctrinally very traditional but we are not literalistic or fundamentalists. We are liberals in the original true sense of the term. G.K. Chesterton famously wrote in his book Orthodoxy: “As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.” So while we come to the same conclusion as so-called Traditionalists, we do not do so for entirely the same reasons; the thought-process is vastly different in some areas. We tend to laugh at very serious things while understanding the difference between humor using solemnity and humor mocking it. We are very literal but not at all literalistic.
Foolishness to the world 