The Matthew Fox Effect.

The Ord Boat/
Soon will be making another run/
The Ord Boat/
Promises Orders for everyone.

9 more Catholic ladies are trying to get ordained on a boat, this time on the St. Lawrence River. Actually, I'm not going to talk about WO today. Rather, I'm going to follow up on a comment made by someone at Amy Welborn's thread on the article:

"What I don't get is why they don't just go and join the Episcopalians."

One poster had a good insight--the recognition, however subliminal, that the Church is still true, still the only game in town.

With all due respect to faithful Anglicans still strugging within the ECUSA, another reason is this:

Because if they did become Piskies, virtually nobody--and I mean no-buh-dee in the media--would give a crap about what they said or did thereafter.

Think about it. Before the Gene Robinson Ordination Circus in 2003, when was the last time there was national discussion of anything done by the ECUSA? And since? It will be thus until they ordain, say, a transsexual. Again, with all due respect to the 20-odd orthodox diocese left in the EC, it's a media novelty act, nothing more. Look what happened to former Dominican Matthew Fox--once a famed Victim of the NeoInquisition, he decided to become an Episcopalian.

Result? The religious equivalent of Mira Furlan's character in Lost: Vanished without a trace, years ago.

But if you're a Catholic dissenter, that's a different story. Then it's cue the cameras and the lengthy, reverent quotations in the NY Times.

Call it the Matthew Fox Effect: making the leap makes you irrelevant.