The Catholic Church normally does not publish news about receptions of persons baptized in other Christian denominations into the full communion of the Catholic Church for two reasons -- first, to respect the privacy of the individuals being received and, second, to avoid any appearance of triumphalism that would be an affront to our partners in ecumenical dialog.in fact, OCSP or OCSP-related receptions have been regularly publicized, including here and here.
A review of the posts here estimating the size of groups and parishes shows that they proceed systematically, using the best available information, including published numbers where available, photos of events, parish bulletins, web site information, and so forth. It's possible to allow for incremental growth -- the six full parishes in the OCSP as of March 2015 are now eight -- but almost all the parishes are in the low three figures, and the groups number only in dozens.
In opposition to our systematic and empirical efforts, other estimates are all over the landscape. In an interview with Crux in November 2015, Bp Lopes is quoted as saying
the ordinariate for the United States and Canada has 42 parishes, 64 priests, four deacons, and roughly 20,000 faithful. It’s in an expansion phase, he said, both because other Anglican communities are still requesting entrance, and because his parishes tend to be keenly missionary and are attracting new members.But if it's in expansion mode, why did he, a year later, give an estimate of 8,000 to Canadian TV? I think the answer is that in both cases, he was pulling numbers out of the air, but clearly, as he became more familiar with how things really were, he adjusted his best-case number well downward. A dithyrambically uncritical report of Bp Lopes's enthronement at Virtue Online says,
The North American ordinariate spans all of the United States and Canada and has about 6,000 souls worshipping in nearly 45 congregations which are served by more than 70 priests.This strongly suggests to me that the people who are giving these numbers out, almost certainly connected with Houston, are nevertheless trying to put the best possible face on the actual situation, though they clearly haven't coordinated their stories. It's also worth pointing out that whatever actual information Houston has other than the wildly inconsistent estimates it occasionally makes, it doesn't release.
People are entitled to draw their own conclusions about the numbers discussed here. My effort in this blog is to understand for myself the factors that have led to the uniquely unhappy circumstances surrounding the St Mary of the Angels parish. The history is long and illuminating, but one thread in it is that the Anglo-Catholic project has had, from the start, a considerable element of hokum. The faithful need to be aware of this for their own protection.
