It seems to me that two OCSP priests in particular, Frs Bergman and Bartus, have intended specifically to imitate Fr Phillips, setting out while young to plant parishes de novo using Anglican-style liturgy, paying attention to music, and attempting -- though so far, only attempting -- to establish schools. Neither has had anything like Fr Phillips's success. In fact, OLA, which I believe is somewhere in the mid four figures in membership, is just a single middling-size Catholic parish, but it probably outnumbers the entire OCSP. This simply has not turned out to be a winning or reproducible formula on any kind of scale. What's missing?
Freedman spends quite a bit of time on the eponymous Mr Johnson, and I'm old enough to remember those franchises and their fried clams on many family trips. Johnson was a typical kind of American entrepreneur, a version of Rockefeller or Harriman on a smaller scale, obsessed with process and efficiency, but therein he was able to develop reproducible results that worked. This type is not entirely foreign to the Church; I can think of St Charles Borromeo, who as I understand it developed the modern diocesan model.
Freedman cites demographic as well as technological changes that led to the rise and fall of Howard Johnson's. The chain appealed to a prosperous middle class that could afford to travel as a family in a car, but found a need for a clean, consistent dining experience while on the road. Existing truck stops and greasy spoons did not fill the bill, while newly standardized highways on the autobahn pattern provided opportunities to serve a captive audience in service areas, another place for a formula to be useful.
Howard Johnson's declined and disappeared for a number of reasons. Mr Johnson's original vision was dissipated by his successors in the company. My own view is that declining prosperity made food service careers less sustainable for the middle class, and later franchises like McDonald's had to hire workers at minimum wage to survive with a cheapened overall product.
There have been figures in the Church who've understood technological change, Fr Coughlin was one (and it would be interesting to revisit his example in the context of Limbaugh or Hannity), but a much better case would be Ven Fulton Sheen, who not only understood the new technology but also understood the forces like Marxism and psychoanalysis that he needed to address. However, nobody continued using his approach.
Both Howard Johnson and Schrafft's began with entrepreneurs who started small, using drug stores and candy shops as vehicles to test new ideas until they found a model that took off. They also understood their markets extremely well. Freedman briefly examines the question of Schrafft's imitators, Childs and the Horn & Hardardt's automats. Schrafft's, interestingly, appealed to middle- and upper-middle-class women who ate lunch as part of shopping expeditions. But it was never recognized as gay-friendly, while Childs and Horn & Hardardt, which kept later hours, were (and the automats eventually failed when they also became homeless-friendly). I remember once very vividly -- I couldn't have been more than seven, if that -- when my mother took me to an automat and had to fend off a "masher". One can't imagine this at Howard Johnson's or Schrafft's.
What's missing in Anglicanorum coetibus? Based on Freedman's analysis of successful franchises, I would say several things. Probably most important, there is no single, driving genius with a near-obsessive need to understand, refine, and control all aspects of the enterprise. Part of that is a very sharp understanding of the market and its needs, as well as an understanding of what the market doesn't want. In addition, there has to be trial and error in earlier stages, although under the elder Johnson's leadership, that brand branched out geographically and into motels in its later years with great success.
What we see now among the Anglican franchisees is nothing like any of this. A clutch of retirees, small-time opportunists, and petty careerists with the vague intent of imitating one guy who is only moderately more successful isn't going to cut it. But beyond that, nobody's asking if this is even something people want to buy. So far, after all, nobody's interested. Someone needs to look at what's on sale and decide what the market really wants or, if not, get out of the business.
