I've Paid A Lot Less Attention Here

to the status of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, in large measure becuase it looks less and less like it's going to be an option for St Mary of the Angels, unless Canon Morello is able to follow through on his promise of assistance from the other side. However, there is a lengthy and typically unproductive discussion from last August still going on at Stephen Smuts's blog on why not many people are going into the Catholic Ordinariates.

This brings me back to the question of how the US Ordinariate is proceeding, especially in relation to the ACA. This post at Catholic Left from last September is somewhat misleading, in that it lists former ACA clergy who have been received into Ordinariate parishes, although it makes no distinction between reception as laity and reception as candidates for the priesthood, and it doesn't say anything about the status of their reception, as far as that's applicable. In addition, other ACA priests have applied with their parishes to join the Ordinariate, but unless those parishes have been scheduled for reception, they aren't on the list, and we don't really have any status there, either.

I count 24 parishes and missions on the web page of the US Ordinariate, including those in Canada, with estimates of membership falling, as far as I can tell, somewhere over 1,000 (if anyone can provide more clarity on this or other points I raise here, I'll be very happy to add to or correct anything I say). I believe the current status of the ACA is somewhere fewer than 70 parishes (of which about 40 are missions with fewer than 20 members in good standing), with my own estimate of total membership being around 1,500.

Both totals are very small; I'm sure there are numerous flying saucer cults in the US with far more members. It does say something, though, that even a half-hearted effort by the Ordinariate for its first year has put it in contention with a major "continuing Anglican" denomination -- but from all I hear, the effort is half-hearted. A small number of former Anglican priests has been ordained to the Catholic priesthood, but the ordinations of others have been stalled in the pipeline -- and those ordinations are inconsistent.

Fr Chori Seraiah, for instance, has been ordained to the priesthood in the US Ordinariate without a parish, but other candidates are stalled under the presumption that they don't have a parish to go in with. One reason that has been advanced for what seems to be a general sclerosis is that the Catholic Church moves slowly -- but the evidence seems to be that it moves slowly except when it moves quickly.

I keep hearing that the US Ordinariate is an in-group centered on former Episcopal Diocese of Ft Worth clergy; I keep hearing that phone calls don't get returned; I keep hearing that things are poorly run. I simply keep hearing this, but from what I've seen in the case of St Mary of the Angels, as well as other instances, I can only conclude that there's a basis for what I keep hearing.

My wife and I decided we didn't have enough time in our lives to wait for the Vatican to move on St Mary of the Angels, so we went with Plan B and are becoming Catholics by another route. But if there are so many obstacles for so many people to join the US Ordinariate, why bother? What's the point? I keep thinking that one point may still be to be a small, exclusive group, notwithstanding that's hardly the goal of the Catholic Church or the Church Universal. Something ain't right.