Let's Think Some More

about what we can know of the proposed merger of the Philadelphia Ordinariate groups. A commenter elsewhere makes the point

Perhaps disputes about how often the premises will have to be sprayed for termites are breaking out because of the paucity of other news to comment on. I would hold out the hope that a new issue of the OCSP Ordinariate Observer is due shortly, but that is never a sure thing. Garnering news from parish websites, bulletins, and Facebook pages requires the skills of Kremlin-watchers of old, the kind that scanned pictures of the May Day reviewing stand to note any changes in seating precedence.

Well, it is what it is. I've said that the reason the Philadelphia groups are important is simply that the Ordinariates are so small that nothing else is going on, and that in itself is important. But, like Edward G Robinson's claims manager Keyes, my little man keeps pestering me about this stuff.

When I itemized an annual nut for St Mary of the Angels at a little over $72,000 I forgot that, in trying to compare that parish to the ones in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia buildings must be heated in the winter, and their parking lots must be plowed after snowstorms. Via Google, I found an article in a Buffalo paper (unfortunately blocked) that puts the cost of heating Catholic parishes there at $30,000 to $60,000 each winter.

Buffalo is colder than Philadelphia, each building is different, and whether the heat is gas or oil are all factors -- but the average combined water and electricity bill for St Mary's, which would cover air conditioning in the summer (but also include lights year round), was $1200 per month or $14,400 per year in 2011. So winter costs of heat and snow removal in Philadelphia would be far greater than air conditioning costs in Los Angeles.

Why is this important? It seems to me that someone with any familiarity with running parishes must understand what the basic maintenance costs of older parish buildings actually are. An estimate of $72,000 in the US Northeast, I now recognize, is unrealistically lowball; the real cost in Philadelphia would probably be at least 50% more. Msgr Steenson, let's recall, was once Rector of the Good Shepherd Rosemont Episcopal parish from which the Strafford Newman group broke off. I would have to think he has some idea of how unrealistic it would be for a group with 56 members to take over an old Catholic parish building.

This brings us to the first question my little man is pestering me about: Whose idea was this in the first place? I don't think it came from Msgr Steenson: his leadership style is anything but vigorous; the man is practically invisible. Can't have been his idea. Fr Ousley? The tone in his newsletters verges on befuddled surprise. He avers that neither the Newman nor the St Michael's group have even met each other, and they would need to learn to work together. (Given the history of contention and litigiousness behind both groups, good luck.) One discerns a glimmer of realism behind Fr Ousley's statements, and he pretty clearly did not think this idea up himself.

So I think the idea of combining two Philadelphia Ordinariate groups in a redundant parish building came from the Philadelphia Archdiocese, and somehow the Archdiocese imagined that the two groups were larger and more prosperous than they actually are. In fact, I think someone in Philadelphia simply envisaged Ordinariate groups as roughly equivalent in size to diocesan parishes and decided that merging two was something the Archdiocese did all the time -- so someone in Philadelphia called someone in Houston, and the idea took off.

I can't imagine someone like Fr Hough III thinking very hard about anything, much less whether the idea was remotely workable. But beyond that, as a prebendary in what seems both a sedentary and collegial bunch, the last thing he'd want to do would be disabuse anyone in Philadelphia of the idea that the Ordinariate groups there were anything but prosperous, large, and growing. So he ran the idea past Jeff and told Philadelphia sure, we'll look it over, we'll put Ousley on the case. Like the centurion with the paralyzed servant, I'm taking my experience in a different field to impute how things work in ecclesiastical matters: this reminds me of corporate boondoggles that take off simply to create an impression of activity.

The best possible outcome for this would be for the Philadelphia Archdiocese to recognize fairly soon what they're really dealing with here and quietly drop the offer. It would be an embarrassment for Houston, but it would be the best possible outcome.