Fr Ed Tomlinson ...

... my brother priest in the Ordinariate, has written a splendid piece on his blog, redolent of the sense of impotent and puzzled fury which many ordinary clergy are clearly feeling. He is manifestly right in his views about 'Crisis'; and I doubt if he is the only one left wondering about the character and motives of the man who currently occupies the Chair of S Peter.

A practical point: does anybody know what the representatives of the English Bishops have been saying in the Synod? If so, I would be glad to be given a pointer. If not, then, like Fr Ed, I think I do rather resent the clericalist and prelatical attitudes implicit in this veil of secrecy, just a weeny bit. 
UPDATE No, I do not think that the answer (Parrhesia - Amnesia) offered by the former Vicar of Lewisham (Ignatiushisconclave blog) is an adequate response. But where did he get the lovely photograph from?

But more broadly: we do have the Lord's guarantee that His Church cannot fail. So we should not panic. Not now, not ever. But God works through us humans, not in some magical airy-fairy, nothing-to-do-with-human-activity, ab extra sort of way. He works through what we do. Synergy. In other words, our confidence in the indefectibility of the Church does not absolve us from doing. This is not the time to be Quietists.

And, finally, a self-important speculation. As I have been suggesting for some days, the disorders we see coming to the surface in the Catholic Church are precisely the disorders which we witnessed and struggled with in the Church of England. We know from whom all this comes, because his fingerprints are all over it. And we know where he intends it all to lead. Can it be that the Ordinariates happened when they did in God's Providence precisely so that we are here, now, to bear our witness? Perhaps we should take, as an Ordinariate, Blessed John Henry Newman's advice
"God has created us to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to us which He has not committed to another."