If the issue really is young clergy men who are still in seminary, their retirement is forty to fifty years away. At even average stock market growth of 10.8% per year, an investment of $1,000,000 in the manner of a total stock market index fund will grow to $60,477,025 in forty years and to $168,650,650 in fifty years. A strategy of investing in solid, well-run, growing businesses should exceed a growth rate of 20% -- which will grow the same initial investment of $1,000,000 to $1,469,771,568 in forty years and to $9,100,438,150 in fifty years. The key is to allow sufficient time for the power of compounding to work its magic.My regular correspondent pointed me to this page on the Ordinariate web site that answers at least some questions. From it, we learn that Bp Lopes wants to raise a total of $1 million, "a $500,000 corpus and raising another $500,000 for distribution to retired priests vested in the plan for 10 years."
This isn't entirely clear -- I'm assuming the plan is non-contributory, meaning that simply by being priests in the Ordinariate, apparently for a minimum of 10 years, they are eligible to receive a pension at age 70 or on retirement. But does this apply to non-stipendiary priests? Is the pension expressed as a percentage of salary averaged over a certain number of years, or some similar formula?
If the pension applies only to stipendiary priests, a $1 million amount put in reserve for the minimal number of eligible priests currently in the OCSP might be reasonable. On the other hand, it does seem to me that the future of the OCSP as anything other than an aggregation of fewer than a dozen self-sustaining parishes is a very iffy proposition, and the numbers we're looking at here reflect this.
Another issue is the shaky track record of Ordinariate officers. The first generation has largely been replaced, although my regular correspondent still uses the term "incompetent". None of this, frankly, makes me wish I could find an Ordinariate parish, and frankly, the only thing that might make me consider an Ordinariate vocation if I were an aspirant to the priesthood would be some assurance that Bp Lopes would take me with him when he's promoted out of Houston -- pension or not.
