OCSP Career Paths?

My regular correspondent says,

Leaving aside the motives of the current OCSP crop, about which we can only speculate, what are the prospects of the next generation? The OCSP has seven parishes at the moment, and we could predict that another two or three congregations will attain this status in the next year or two. So the pastors of these parishes can expect stipends, housing, and benefits at least as generous as those provided by a diocesan parish, with a substantially smaller workload. Beyond that, the prospects are mixed.

Most of the younger OCSP clergy, like Fr Bartus, are cobbling together a livelihood from part-time ministry to their quasi-parish group, teaching, chaplaincy, and similar employment. The Complementary Norms of AC made provision for priests to engage in a "secular profession" if necessary but I do not know of any instances of this. In any event this is a demanding arrangement: a combination of part-time jobs all too familiar to younger people today. It is the norm in many fringe denominations but I cannot imagine that many men entering the Catholic priesthood would find this a congenial prospect, when so many diocesan parishes are desperate for full-time clergy. No doubt some believe that with energy and vision they can transform a small congregation into a large one, but we have not seen any recent instances of this. I think it is safe to say that growth of this kind will always be the exception, not the rule.

A compromise is illustrated in the ministry of Fr Luke Reese, at Holy Rosary, Indianapolis. This parish offers DW, OF, and EF masses on Sundays and through the week. On Wednesday there is DW Evensong combined with Benediction. Fr Reese, Parochial Vicar of the parish, participates in all three forms of the mass. This is also the arrangement at St Anselm, Corpus Christi, where Fr Vidal celebrates both an OF and a DW mass every Sunday. Social events and parish activities at these churches are open to members of all Sunday congregations. This could be an attractive arrangement for a priest who was committed to Anglican Patrimony and wished to offer the DW mass but was not attracted to the full-time/part-time model. Whether it guarantees the long-term survival of the Ordinariate congregation is another matter, of course.

So my correspondent suggests here, as once or twice elsewhere, that the main selling point for a prospective celibate seminarian considering the OCSP would be a possibly higher salary and a lower workload, but this would apply to perhaps half a dozen open billets -- the rest would be unattractive in comparison to a diocesan post.

One problem I see is that the OCSP is shifting to a radically different model of clergy; a first generation of (mostly) married former Anglican priests, many in their sixties and seventies, is rapidly retiring. What attracted this group was the prestige of going to a Catholic clone of TEC, complete with a diminishing parish of aging upscale fuddy-duddies. But how is it in the Church's interest to emulate a model that's patently on its way out everywhere in the West?

The next generation will be celibate seminarians. For some reason I think of Fr N, an associate at our diocesan parish, who had previously been a pastor of his own parish. He is, from what I can gather, returning from a leave of absence, and from what I can put together from occasional remarks in his homilies, before becoming pastor, he had been a military chaplain who saw combat in Gulf deployments. He survived this apparently without PTSD, but when he took over parish duties, he presided over a wedding in which the bride became hysterical because a measurement in her train was off. This brought Fr N to some type of breakdown.

I've got to assume that Fr N found his vocation via a set of reasons largely inconsistent with the question of whether a bride's gown was a precise fit. I suspect as well that what would bring a celibate seminarian to a vocation would be in many ways inconsistent with ministering to some small clique of affluent fuddy-duddies, however high the pay or low the workload.

I have enormous respect for Fr N and his colleagues. For the vast majority of current OCSP clergy, less so -- and it appears that Bp Lopes is easing them out with all deliberate speed. But how can he replace them if what could motivate their successors is not the sort of thing that would motivate a Fr N?