Once again, it appears Fr Bartus will be absent from the annual OCSP [clergy conference], being held in Niagara Falls this week. Attendance is mandatory unless one is excused, so I presume that Fr Bartus has again made a convincing case that his teaching job, pastoral work, and/or family responsibilities do not allow him to get away for five weekdays. But this does not strike me as a prudent move for someone so clearly ambitious as Fr B. Perhaps one might have wished to distance oneself from the rather shambolic opening period of the North American Ordinariate, but I think that Bp Lopes is making an effort to make the OCSP a respectable, if tiny, part of the American Church. And as a Catholic Ordinary, he can move a man to another parish, or no parish, in a way unlike the process in TEC.
"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." -- Annie Dillard
Monday, October 10, 2016
Fr Bartus Is Busy
My regular correspondent reports,