It Seems Less and Less Likely

that the Ordinariate will receive St Mary of the Angels Hollywood -- in response to my probing, I received the following from a knowledgeable party, which I take to be an unofficial version of what would, if one were to press hard enough, be the Ordinary's position:

A new Ordinariate group in Los Angeles will not be a continuation of St. Mary's any more than it will be a continuation of [redacted]. It will be a wholly new Catholic community that will, God willing, leave behind the conflicts and bitterness of our Anglican past. The symbols of that past would not be celebrated in a new fellowship/congregation. Any former St. Mary's or St. Thomas or St. James or All Saints or Blessed Sacrament parishioner will need to leave their past behind and embrace their new identity as a Catholic. If one is attached to former Anglican leadership then one might need to remain Anglican until he or she is moved by the Holy Spirit to convert. I am happy to make referrals to Evangelical or Anglo-Catholic Episcopal or Anglican Church in North America congregations where any St. Mary's member could find a spiritual home as an individual or together with other St. Mary's friends. That is an option for all the people of Fr. Kelley's St. Mary's congregation to consider. . . . .

I have known many people who were forcibly expelled from their homes during or after World War II. They lost everything, including their churches. They went on living and gave birth to another generation for whom home is somewhere else. They couldn't and still can't possibly regain their former homes in Konigsberg, Pomerania, Bohemia, Banat, Transylvania, Hungary or Istria. The injustices done to them are unknown and unlamented by most everyone, but they made new lives and raised a new generation.

This leaves some matters unresolved, however. The elected members of the St Mary's vestry have a moral and fiduciary obligation to provide stewardship over the parish's temporal resources until the parish's legal situation is fully resolved. They can't in good conscience simply leave that matter behind, and my wife and I have a great deal of sympathy for their situation, and frankly, we support them in it, although our own choice has been to become Catholic. It's unfortunate that the Ordinariate, having effectively led them into the situation in which they find themselves, has simply washed its hands of the whole business.

And while it's possible to find scriptural authority for nearly anything, I've sometimes found the Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-5) apposite to the St Mary's situation:

And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint; Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man: And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary. And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man; Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.

Certain types of persistence, it would appear, Our Lord admires. On the other hand, when I pointed this parable out to the late Canon Morello, he threatened legal action against me for harassment. I guess that serves as its own validation.