We need funds to support our clergy and their families, train our priests, acquire church buildings and to help us play a full part in the New Evangelisation. The Friends of the Ordinariate was set up to help the Ordinariate with practical and financial support. I welcome you to its website and invite you to find out more. We count on your support.A google of "Friends of the Ordinariate" brings up a page of links to events and press releases; it is clearly an active and enthusiastic organization. There is also an Australian Friends of the Ordinariate.
There is no equivalent group in the US.
I've been puzzled about OCSP fundraising before, to the extent that I've speculated that the admission last year of the Strafford Newman Fellowship as a group-in-formation may have been related to the need for pledges, donations, and bequests. But this may attribute too much rational motivation to the Houston clique. Someone, though, presumably donated the money for the chancery.
But even the chancery is a puzzle. I suspect that what corresponds to a chancery in most "continuing Anglican" denominations is an obsolescent desktop and a couple of metal file cabinets, and I would guess this is more than enough -- given the current size and realistic projections for the OCSP, I would think this would be enough for it as well.
This leads to other questions. Assuming all the OCSP prebendaries are volunteers, I'm nevertheless told that there's one paid employee, presumably either the Executive Assistant to the Ordinary or the Assistant to the Ordinary. (Here's a conundrum: assuming Steenson wants something like a letter taken, does he first call the Executive Assistant to the Ordinary to order the Assistant to the Ordinary to take a letter, or what? Didn't this happen once in a Preston Sturges film?)
Actually, it does seem like we're in this sort of a world: not all that long ago, I worked for an executive, in an IT department no less, whose secretary printed out all his e-mails and put them in his in-box. Then, after he'd read his printed e-mails, he'd call in his secretary and dictate his replies, which she would dutifully type and send. Yup, things like this still happen.
I'd be asking myself, assuming the Executive Assistant To or the Assistant To is the paid staff member, just how demanding this person's duties actually are, given the size of the OCSP and Steenson's own leisurely schedule. Then I would ask whether either of these people, presumably literate and indeed in possession of advanced academic degrees, might spend part of her working day issuing press releases and even updating the News section of the OCSP web site.
Just a thought.
On the other hand, based on the glimpses I see, I wouldn't give an organization like this a penny.
