What Color Is Your Parachute?

This is the title of a best-selling job search guide that was popular when I started my working career in the 1970s. I read it at the time and never found it especially helpful, though I had already decided, after a cursory look at the help-wanted section of the paper, that computers were the field to enter (and I managed to get in after almost getting a PhD in English, clearly an illustration of the wisdom of my choice).

I thought of the title in the context of what I would call an "oh, bleep moment" over the OCSP. This is because, for people who were remotely capable in the computer field, jobs were easy to find, and that in turn meant that jobs were easy to quit. The people I knew and respected would come to "oh, bleep moments" and realize they were facing organizational dysfunction such that the option of updating a resume and getting a new job was more attractive than (say) putting up with the new boss who'd been promoted because she was sleeping with a vice president.

The "oh, bleep moment" was the sudden recognition of what was happening in a particular case, coupled with cascading deductions that, although the new boss and the VP were not likely to last long themselves, the ensuing chaos would not likely fix the underlying problem, and the chances that the situation would improve at Sasquatch Bank were nil. Thus the rhetorical question about the parachute.

Anyhow, concerning the "oh, bleep moment" over the OCSP, I'll get into that later. What Color Is Your Parachute? was an overrated book by Richard Bolles, a former Episcopal priest, which makes it tangential to the topics here. I've always put Bolles in the same category as another overrated Episcopalian, M Scott Peck, who wrote pop bestsellers at about the same time.

But in looking him up for this post, I discovered that he'd passed away just this last April, at the age of 90, and his obituaries, though sketchy, offered intriguing tidbits of further information.

Mr. Bolles had been a clergyman for 18 years when a combination of budget problems and philosophical differences with superiors led to the elimination of his job and his dismissal in 1968 as a pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the flagship church of the Episcopal Diocese of California.

What? He was a pastor at Grace Cathedral in the 1960s with James Pike? Did Pike hire him (or did the dean at Pike's urging)? Other details suggest he was an adherent of the Paul Moore Jr faction of Episcopalianism, so quite possibly. Pike was eased out as Bishop of California in 1966, so the fact that Bolles was pushed out a year or two later is intriguing.

Does anyone have more information on Bolles's TEC career, especially his time at Grace Cathedral? I'll get to the oh, bleep moment tomorrow.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent sent me this link on controversy arising from Bolles's fourth marriage in 2004. TEC Bishop of California Swing, hardly a conservative, objected to a fourth marriage for Bolles, who was still in holy orders at the time, though he had not served as a priest since his 1968 dismissal. It still sounds like Bolles was a member of the very liberal wing of TEC.

Text Of OLA Announcement

Many thanks to a visitor who forwarded this text from the OLA parish e-mail, which is believed to be the same as the bulletin announcement:

Our new pastor, Fr. Mark Lewis, and his wife Vicky, visited the parish for a few days this past week, and they had a wonderful time getting to know more about us. The appointment of Fr. Lewis as pastor will take effect on July 1st, and they will be arriving sometime just after August 1st. Fr. Lewis made it very clear that he is looking forward to carrying on the established vision and practice of the parish, and both Fr. Moore and Fr. Phillips will be working closely with him.

Bishop Lopes has asked Fr. Phillips to visit various Ordinariate communities to encourage them, and to give guidance where it might be needed. Although Fr. Phillips (at the express wish of Fr. Lewis) will be spending most of his time here ministering at the parish, he also will be travelling on a fairly regular basis. The first of his trips will be this next weekend, when he will be at St. Luke’s, Washington, D.C., which is the parish where Fr. Lewis most recently served as pastor. Fr. Perkins will be here with Fr. Moore for our Sunday schedule of Masses.

The visitor questioned why Fr Lewis will arrive only after August 1 if his appointment commences July 1, but I suspect that it schedules a vacation to accompany moving. It's a little puzzling that, although Fr Phillips is clearly being eased out, he is also clearly not in disgrace. On the other hand, for Fr Perkins to be on site for the July 1 weekend speaks to a desire to keep things firmly under Houston's control.

That Fr Phillips is being sent to St Luke's is interesting, too. Fr Lewis previously noted that Bp Lopes has been encouraging that parish to move back into a separate building, and I suspect Bp Lopes hopes Fr Phillips has some formula that will allow a parish to do this, notwithstanding efforts to apply the specific Phillips formula in Irvine and Scranton have not been successful.

The more I reflect on the pictures that have run here of forlorn little communities, often in shabby and provisional surroundings, that make up the majority of the OCSP, the more I'm convinced that the view of circumstances from Houston must be dire. I would guess that sending Fr Phillips around is something of a desperate measure, but I'm not sure what he has to work with.

Fr Phillips Edging Back In At OLA?

A visitor reported that this past Sunday's bulletin at Our Lady of the Atonement mentioned an apparent revision in Fr Phillips's official retired status. The visitor says he threw it out before recognizing that he should have scanned it, but "[e]ssentially it said that Fr. Phillips will be traveling to the OCSP communities as Bp. Lopes wishes but also that he will be present at OLA because the new Pastor Fr. Lewis wants that."

In response to a question at a parish meeting concerning why Fr Phillips was to be replaced, Bp Lopes replied only that this was in a letter from the Holy Father. Nobody outside a small Houston group has seen exactly what's in this letter, and it's not clear how an apparently more active role for Fr Phillips at OLA conforms to this letter.

Normally, a priest of any denomination who retires or leaves a parish for any other reason is ethically constrained to discontinue any formal relations with the former parish. That Fr Phillips would own property immediately adjoining the parish property is a problem in this context, which Msgr Steenson recognized.

There is in fact a faction at OLA -- I don't know how large -- that would like to see the parish make a new start after the controversies surrounding Fr Phillips. I assume Fr Lewis knew what he was getting into when he accepted the assignment to OLA, but the announcement of a more or less official change in Fr Phillips's status is not encouraging for those who might prefer a clean break.

If anyone can send a scan or direct quote from Sunday's bulletin, I'll appreciate it. While there's a page on the OLA site for bulletins, this hasn't been updated since January.

UPDATE: Clearly the matter here is nuanced. My regular correspondent notes,

Well, the original announcement said Fr Phillips would be the "Pastor Emeritus," as I recall, which did not suggest that he would be completely absent, unlike the typical situation of a retired pastor, as you describe. Pastors Emeriti exist in some abundance, I've discovered. The designation is at the discretion of the diocesan bishop.

That may be, but that a bulletin would seek to clarify Fr Phillips's status -- which it's doing -- indicates some clarification was in order, My correspondent replied,

[Y]ou wouldn't name someone Pastor Emeritus if you expected him to give the place a wide berth. If anyone expected that he was indulging in wishful thinking. Bulletin notice was invoking Fr Lewis to underline that it was useless to protest.

Further,

Initial accounts, including Sr Thurley's typically thorough one in VOL, describe Fr Phillips' future role as involving significant ministry in the parish.

But that naturally implies someone was protesting something, or at minimum misunderstood something originally planned and announced. And the protest, perhaps based on misunderstanding, was presumably vocal enough to require a public slapdown. I don't see this developing well.

My advice to anyone with doubts about the OCSP, in San Antonio or anywhere else, continues to be to investigate diocesan options. Diocesan parishes are not uniform, and those that are successful are successful with good reason.

Correction On St Mary The Virgin

A visitor reports,

SMV Arlington didn't build its church as a catholic parish. They built it as an Episcopal parish, and the congregation and building withdrew from TEC under what appeared to be an extraordinary arrangement by Episcopal Bishop of Ft. Worth, Clarence Pope, who was sympathetic to the cause, to let them and the building go, and the Catholic bishop of Ft. Worth, to receive them under the Pastoral Provision. That was in 1991. They then worshipped as an independent congregation, under the care of the Catholic bishop, until Rome approved Fr. Hawkins' ordination in 1994.

Recall that Bp Pope traveled to Rome in 1993 to meet with Cardinal Ratzinger to present the proposal that led to Anglicanorum coetibus. Pope rather clearly had a personal agenda, although married, to become a full Catholic bishop. The release of St Mary the Virgin seems to have been connected with that plan.

Success Stories Or Potemkin Villages?

My regular correspondent sent me an e-mail entitled "Success Stories:

Amid the basement chapels and cafetoria there are of course OCSP parishes that own churches of substance. Holy Nativity, Payson; Christ the King Towson; Incarnation, Orlando; and St Barnabas, Omaha we have already discussed. Two groups---Mt Calvary, Baltimore and St John the Evangelist, Calgary---bought their churches from their respective TEC/ACC dioceses. Two others---St Thomas More, Scranton and St John the Baptist, Bridgeport---bought redundant churches from their respective Catholic dioceses.

And OLW, Houston; SMV, Arlington; and of course OLA, San Antonio have built churches. Once a congregation has its own building and facilities for social events and other activities it can offer the fullness of parish life which every Catholic needs and deserves, and there is a reasonable expectation of stability; when Fr Black retires he can be replaced by Fr White. Naturally this is the vision Bp Lopes has for the OCSP, but it is not easy to attain. Buildings are expensive to acquire and maintain and we can see that even a relatively successful church like SJE, Calgary can lose momentum quickly.

The manpower shortage, which is ultimately a financial shortage, leaves the North American Ordinariate very fragile. The OOLW just ordained ten deacons, all of whom will be holding at least a part-time diocesan assignment. Most have no ministry in any Ordinariate congregation. The OCSP under Bp Lopes has chosen not to follow this model, which I think is wise, but it means finding stipends, and this is very challenging.

I tend to think this assessment is too optimistic. Referring to a "manpower shortage" when the inside joke about the OCSP seems to be "more priests than people" misses the mark, it seems to me. There are three main groups of OCSP priests: those in middle age or approaching retirement, who are probably in surplus, who go to established communities as they are able, though their mobility is restricted. There are marginal candidates looking to come in with new groups-in-formation, though the groups as well as the candidates appear highly marginal, and I think my correspondent is right to call them make-work projects. Then there are the celibate seminarians, who have a good fallback position to move to dioceses should the OCSP go belly-up. Where is the shortage, though, if make-work projects are in train and the best prospects must certainly have Plan B in mind?

Two of eight full parishes, St John the Evangelist and Our Lady of the Atonement, face crises of transition.

The informal message we have is that St Barnabas is shrinking, as are other groups like St Timothy's that seemed promising five years ago. Others are tiny and not moving at all, like Our Lady of Good Counsel Jacksonville.

Every glimpse of real communities I've seen so far suggests I've been pretty accurate in estimating the OCSP membership in the low four figures -- though I would revise it to say low four figures and shrinking.

More On St Timothy's Fort Worth And St John Vianney Cleburne

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent commented

St Timothy's Ft Worth had over [60] people received when it entered the OCSP--- a large group by Ordinariate standards. The fact that their former rector was transferred to another community a year ago and has just been replaced this month, and even then only "pro tem," along with the move from a parish church to this small venue, suggests to me that the game plan is to unite St Timothy's under their former rector when his group---St John Vianney, Cleburne---builds their own church. The property has already been acquired, so this goal could be realised relatively soon.

I replied that this plan seems speculative, and plans for St John Vianney seem off in the indefinite future. My correspondent replied,

Hard to say if the St Timothy's parishioners are in on the plan; there was a notice on their website for at least six months to the effect that they would be getting a new priest in January 2017. It remained there into March. They used to post the weekly bulletin on the website but have not done so since moving to the Diocesan Center. There has been nothing on the website about Fr Kennedy's appointment. I think that the group has shrunk because those who have eyes can see that Houston is phasing them out, and have moved to St John Vianney or to a diocesan parish.

This is a further indication of the desultory and opportunistic nature of the OCSP. It isn't managing growth; instead, it's dodging indications of decline and looking for ways to merge shrinking communities without quite saying that's what it's doing.

Shifting the focus to St John Vianney, my correspondent points out

St John Vianney is one of two OCSP groups currently meeting in a school auditorium. Here is the "cafetorium" of Marti Elementary School set up for Sunday mass. An article in the Ordinariate Observer noted that 110 people attended a confirmation there in Fr Hough III's time so that gives you some idea of the capacity.

Attendance in the photo seems more like 50-60, heavily skewed to older age groups, and if one added the St Timothy group, you'd probably still have empty seats. It would be interesting to see details of the St John Vianney construction plans.

Chapel Veils

My regular correspondent sent me another photo of the chapel interior where St Timothy Fort Worth meets, this time during a DW mass:

Several of the women are wearing chapel veils, which bears out accounts I've had from time to time that chapel veils are common in the Texas communities. Msgr Charles Pope gives a pretty comprehensive discussion of the subject here. In brief, there is currently no Church policy on the subject, and head covering for women is completely voluntary.

On the other hand, this post at the Catholic Answers Forum begins to reflect my own views:

From the days when mastadons roamed the earth (ie pre-conciliar times) this male recalls women normally wearing hats in church. Whether a dressy hat or a beret, it didn't matter. Chapel veils (not mantillas) were generally considered an "emergency measure" and many women kept one in their purse "just in case."

I recall that, in grade school, the nuns always had a supply of simple chapel veils at hand for the girls who didn't have a hat for First Friday or other occasions. Those who could afford it would pay 25 cents. Those who could not got it free. The important thing was a head covering, not the money.

I've always liked the tradition of a head covering for women, and I still do (even though I do not voluntarily attend the OF). At the same, though, I don't have a problem with women going bare-headed, even to the EF.

These days, there seems to be this mantilla-cult that has emerged, and I just don't get it. If the women are of Spanish descent, it's fine because they know how to wear it. OTOH, those who are not, do not: they generally wrap themselves up in the thing, just about like a burka. EF or OF, I do have a problem with that.

The lady in the center of the photo above strikes me as an adherent of the veil-as-burka school, and beyond that, I continue to view photos snapped during mass as tacky. Indeed, I would say that the phtographer, perhaps a church lady of the sort we've seen before, focused on the burka-lady receiving the sacrament as something especially holy.

All I can say is that this is a very small group of a size reflecting the small venues we've been seeing here. A drop-in could well get a sense of ostentatious exclusivity, feel uncomfortable, and not return. Now, maybe I've got the wrong impression, and in that case, this small group will grow and thrive.

Er, how long have they been in that small chapel? How's the building fund coming along?

St George Republic, MO

My regular correspondent comments,

This is the chapel in the former retreat centre which is now the Seraiah family's home. There are three services a week here, one followed by a Bible study. Fr Seraiah is also responsible for two diocesan parishes in the area and occasionally services are held jointly with them. When the group started meeting here last summer it was "Bring your own chair" so progress has been made in upgrading the worship space; the long term plan is to build a church on the property. Fr Seraiah's background is evangelical Protestant and while his theology seems soundly, and conservatively, Catholic I do not see much in his approach that is Anglican. I'm not quite sure why he wants to be in Ordinariate rather than diocesan ministry (he spent the first four years after his ordination as a diocesan priest in Iowa). On the other hand, the local lay leadership was very anxious to find an OCSP priest who would relocate, and unlike some Fr Seraiah has been prepared to do that many times in his ministry.

It seems to me that the Seraiah saga is illustrative of the desultory and opportunistic development of the OCSP -- he was hired by the ACA St Aidan's Des Moines parish on the assumption that it would go into the OCSP, but it backtracked. At that point, he was ordained a married Catholic priest in effect to rescue him from that circumstance. Eventually he has been able to take over a very minimal startup effort on a part-time basis.

So far, it looks like there's nothing unusual in the highly provisional arrangements we see, nor the very low attendance.

St Barnabas Omaha, NE

Here is a view of the interior from this past Corpus Christi Sunday:

My regular correspondent notes,

The congregation does not seem large, if this Sunday was typical; however the community must have considerable resources. [Correction: the parish always owned its property, a matter that was resolved in litigation.] A new organ was installed; extensive repairs and upgrades to the church are continuing;; a new rectory has just been purchased, and I believe the parish has another building which will provide an apartment for the music director, and possibly the sexton. Fr Catania has been resident and assisting at a local diocesan parish but will be taking on full-time ministry at St Barnabas next month. An existing Catholic school is relocating next door to the church. The website has been completely overhauled and there is a general air of energy and enterprise about the place which is a refreshing change from some other communities we've looked at. St Barnabas is not yet a full parish but Fr Catania is working on that.

Pastors like Fr Catania and Fr Stainbrook who came directly from TEC rather than a continuing body seem to bring a different mentality to their new parish responsibilities. They expect to grow and to be connected to the local diocese as well as the Ordinariate. I think too many of the others are content to continue as a tiny outpost of orthodoxy in an unappreciative world

I would say that with the steadily shrinking job market in TEC, for a male priest to have had any sort of sustained career there -- especially in light of increasing demand for women, openly same-sex-attracted, and even transgender candidates -- means they've got to be especially well qualified, and this will carry over into the OCSP. "Continuers", seminarians who weren't ordained in TEC, or those who had more marginal careers, will perform pretty much the same in the OCSP, with some exceptions.

While the interior of St Barnabas is clearly much nicer than the great majority of OCSP communities, it's worth noting that the nave looks less than half full, with many empty pews. This is consistent with my memory of TEC, where on many Sundays, we had to lean across two rows of pews to exchange the peace.

At its best, the OCSP is cloning TEC, but more frequently it's cloning "continuers". I think Bp Lopes has to rethink some basics here. One thing I notice about our successful diocesan parish -- which has been this way for many generations -- is that a diocesan vocations director is in residence there, and promising seminarians spend summer internships there. Associates rotate into other parishes and transmit their experiences and abilities more widely that way.

It seems to me that Bp Lopes needs to pay more attention to personnel issues while closing the least successful communities and relying on the most capable priests to move around and build on success.

UPDATE: A visitor informs me that there was a major bequest to the parish in late 2015, which accounts for the spending that's taken place. However, as reflected in the photo, attendance has steadily declined as well.

Our Lady Of Good Counsel Jacksonville, NC

We know very little about this group, other than what was reported here in this post. Although Fr Waun is a retired Navy chaplain, my regular correspondent has found that he continues as a civilian Catholic chaplain at the Marine Corps Air Station New River, next to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville.

As previously reported, the church is a storefront. My regular correspondent hasn't located a photo of the interior, but says, "the property (3000 sq ft) is divided up into at least 6 suites, so the available space must be similar to the photo below. Other current tenants include a fitness studio."

Storefront chapels aren't unusual for "continuing" parishes, but this sort of thing doesn't seem especially compatible with ad orientem or DW mass. As reported a year ago, what we actually find there is OF and guitar. My correspondent adds that the founding group

contained several members of the Porterfield family. Kevin Porterfield set up the website, etc and was heavily involved in programming but perhaps he lost interest at a point. In the fall of 2015 he started teaching middle school so perhaps he has less volunteer time. Or perhaps as a teacher he has discovered the wisdom of avoiding personal social media. Nothing has been updated for about two years on the OLGC website; the FB page is a stub.

We might reasonably assume that ordination in the OCSP qualified Fr Waun to serve as a civilian contractor Catholic chaplain, which nicely supplements his Navy pension. The apparent lack of activity in the Our Lady of Good Counsel group suggests it is not Fr Waun's first priority.

The other Catholic church in Jacksonville, NC is the Infant of Prague Church. Certainly the interior we see here is at least as nice as those in the biggest OCSP parishes -- notices of choir practice on the parish website suggest some effort goes into a music program, and drop-ins might find something better than a guitar-and-tambourine mass. So your choice is between guitar and OF in the storefront and OF with stained glass and better music at Infant of Prague.

If you found yourself in Jacksonville, NC on a Sunday, which mass would you choose? Assuming Fr Waun were still holding mass in the storefront, of course.

What problem are we trying to solve?

Basement Groups

We've already looked at the Pasadena group-in-formation that meets in a dreary basement chapel. My regular correspondent has sent me views of two others. Here's St Anselm Greenville, SC

Here's Our Lady of Walsingham Maple Ridge, BC (my correspondent says it's not nearly this full on a normal Sunday):

Several things strike me. The first is that both venues are nicer than Pasadena, although the reredos and icon in Greenville are offset by the cinder block walls. However, they're both basement chapels. Beyond that, their maximum capacity is in the neighborhood of two dozen, though they apparently don't fill the space most of the time.

Why are these people doing this -- or expressed another way, what problem are these people trying to solve? During 2012, we saw the original Anglicanorum coetibus model of groups being received into the OCSP and the Church. The assumption was that, as new Catholics, they were going to move ahead, locate a permanent venue, grow as parishes, establish good music programs, and so forth. St Albans Rochester, currently down and awaiting a reboot, is an example. By and large, this model hasn't developed as expected, but I wonder if this isn't still what some people in basement groups have in mind if asked what they expect to accomplish.

Once the target market for Anglicanorum coetibus was expanded to include those baptized Catholic but not confirmed, the canonical membership of groups became more ambiguous, and beyond that, it appears that a substantial proportion (though very small in absolute numbers) of fully initiated Catholics also participates in basement groups.

So as far as I can see, people attracted to basement groups-in-formation fall into three categories:

1. The "continuing Anglican" target market of angry Anglicans who want the 1928 BCP and male clergy
2. Catholics not fully initiated who are somehow drawn to a group for other reasons
3. Fully initiated Catholics looking for reverent celebration that they feel they can't find in the diocese.

The problem I see in all these cases is that the record we have over more than five years is that these groups have in fact not grown. My regular correspondent frequently notes that Our Lady of the Atonement had acquired property and begun construction on its church and school within five years of its founding. No OCSP group in formation has accomplished anything like this, and none appears likely to do so.

One peculiar feature of the St John Fisher Orlando group is that it appears to have many Catholics already eligible to receive the sacraments -- my regular correspondent sent me this photo of Bp Lopes celebrating mass there last October:

The photo was sent to resolve the question of what constitutes the altar in that chapel -- apparently it's the window sill -- but it also suggests the OCSP has departed from the 2012 model whereby the groups of Anglicans are received as Catholics in a well-publicized ceremony. Instead, it looks like the St John Fisher group is already Catholic.

But if this is the case, Bp Lopes is doing them (who are his flock) no favors.

• They're celebrating mass in tiny groups, separate from the life of the Church
• They're cutting themselves off from parish activities like Bible study, weekday mass, and adoration
• Such small groups can't realistically support a music program
• Meeting in basement chapels fosters a pusillanimous atmosphere that probably inhibits stewardship
• Since the groups do not have a record of growth, they will never be able to expand their activities.

I've come to recognize that the flip-flop-and-halter-top, Breaking Bread, guitar-and-tambourine OF mass is a stereotype, and a little enterprise and willingness to explore can allow many diocesan Catholics to find reverent and spiritually rewarding celebration without the need to form little groups based largely on wishful thinking.

Why A Second Orlando Community?

My regular correspondent sent me a link to this announcement of a new OCSP community meeting at Nemours Children's Hospital Chapel in Orlando. A check of Google maps shows this is 24.6 miles from the Incarnation parish. The link makes it very clear that this is an OCSP community:

A new Catholic community is now going to be worshipping at Nemours Children’s Hospital Chapel. The new group is a community of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter: a special type of diocese, completely Catholic in every way, for Roman Catholics who were previously Anglican. Any Roman Catholic may participate in Mass at an Ordinariate parish or community.

(Note, though, how the announcement talks down to the reader. We left our previous diocesan parish in part because the associate talked down so much in a happy-birthday-Jesus kind of way. Looks like this is happening here. What about Roman Catholics who are of average intelligence and maturity? Is Houston aware of, or indeed, originating, this kind of stuff?)

Unfortunately, I think we know why there's a second community forming in Orlando, notwithstanding the existing one can't fill its pews on Christmas. I think it's fairly plain that this is a make-work project like the one in Pasadena (or the failed one in Tampa) to bring in yet another marginal candidate for ordination, when it's not even clear where they can serve when they're ordained. In the Pasadena and Tampa cases, we're looking at individuals with a track record in other denominations of trying and failing to establish and grow small groups -- yet Houston seems to think it's a good idea to keep doing the same thing and expect different results.

Here's the interior of the Nemours chapel, a very nice one, though clearly it's intended as a bright and optimistic place where families can pray for children in distress, not necessarily a place for solemn ad orientem worship. (Does that lectern qualify as an altar at all? Do they turn it around on its casters for DW mass?) But of course, this particular project is to benefit clergy, not people. Bp Lopes, you have a problem with perception here.

Tomorrow I'll look at a couple of groups meeting in basement chapels and offer some thoughts on what may be behind this sort of fecklessness.

Christ The King Towson, MD

My regular correspondent sent me some links to photos of Christ the King, Towson:

At least at the time the photos were taken, the altar is set up for versus populum celebration, so the overall atmosphere is low-church. While there's a little more effort to seem Catholic than at Holy Nativity, this stems largely from cloth hangings, and there's no question that should the need to sell arise, First Baptist would find the property attractive -- this may have been in mind from the start, or this may simply have been a selection from a catalog of prefab church building options (pointed windows or rounded?).

There's no question that there are diocesan parish buildings like this -- and I think the pastor of our successful diocesan parish might say that's part of the problem facing the Church these days, at least if you prodded him. But let's ask what Anglicanorum coetibus is apparently trying to do -- basically, make an extra effort. What we see here is regression to the mean. You can have a DW mass, or within a short time, Pentecostal Holiness can set up a rock n roll band on the dais. That wouldn't happen at St Thomas the Apostle, whatever else would.

It's hard to avoid the impression here that we've-done-enough. Again, there's a bait-and-switch in operation, the OCSP is sold as the new liturgical movement, positive outreach to Anglicanism, but what the buyer gets is still hard to distinguish from First Baptist, or indeed, the don't-quite-care diocesan parish down the street. Let's keep in mind as we move along that this is part of the OCSP's upper tier.

Holy Nativity, Payson, AZ

In some ways, Holy Nativity, Payson is a refreshing change from BVM Ottawa and Incarnation Orlando. Its website is comprehensive and attractive, although the News page carries no mention of the new pastor.

The exterior is quite attractive, although I've seen TEC churches in Arizona where the architects seem to have had greater latitude to incorporate the scenic context.

I also get the feeling that the current pastor has had a greater sense of stewardship of the property, and things don't seem quite so threadbare as they do in Ottawa and Orlando. Here is the interior:

Indeed, though, the interior is hard to distinguish from a Baptist parish. I don't see icons or stations of the cross, though they may be out of frame.

I had a brief exchange with my regular correspondent over my reservations about OCSP interiors, and I replied with this to illustrate what I mean.

This is our former TEC parish, St Thomas the Apostle Hollywood. Certainly someone can object that I'm comparing apples to oranges, TEC has always had the resources to build something like this, while all but a handful of OCSP parishes are operating on a shoestring.

My reply is that this is precisely the problem. At its founding, the bishop named the parish St Thomas because he was doubtful of its prospects, but by 1930, it had erected the basic interior we see. By the early 1980s it had entered a period of decline, but a strong rector, Fr Carroll Barbour, initiated a period of renewal that has been continued by his successor. What's visible is not something that has just been passed down; it's taken considerable sustained effort to bring it to this point.

The OCSP is something of a bait-and-switch, selling the Precious Treasures of the Anglican Spiritual Patrimony and giving the buyer First Baptist instead, at least architecturally, and often not even that.

It brings to mind a recent post by Fr Z, where he says

Dear readers, parishes are not the sole responsibility of bishops and priests. They are your responsibility too.

. . . . Parishes have bills. If you want a parish, you have to pay the bills. The bills don’t pay themselves. Magic wands don’t create money from thin air. You have to be involved with “time, treasure and talent”.

Holy Nativity is not even self-sufficient, since its pastor must rely on a pension. I would say that for the OCSP to survive, much less grow, Houston is going to have to put much more stress on contributions, both monetary and in kind, from membership, but it certainly doesn't help that the clergy fosters an atmosphere of complacency and self-congratulation. Nor is it a coincidence that the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society seems to think that shabby churches like the one in Ottawa are just the thing.

At Last, A Reredos, But. . .

My regular correspondent sent me a link to this post at the New Liturgical Movement blog. As one might expect, it shows photos of liturgically-oriented Catholic parishes' mass celebrations during Christmas 2016, and if you scroll to the very, very bottom of the post, you'll see four shots of a mass at the OCSP parish Incarnation Orlando. Here's an example:

I assume the foggy atmosphere is due to the incense. I would say, though, that there's a very good reason the Incarnation photos are dead last -- there's just no comparison with the other, diocesan parishes. For instance, here's St Mary Norwalk, CT:

Even at a full OCSP parish, I get a sense of a camping trip. Yeah, there's an altar, and it's set up ad orientem, but it's almost a token effort, especially in comparison to the other, diocesan interiors. The same goes for the reredos -- it's almost as if they aimed for the minimum thing that might qualify for the definition of reredos. And apparently this is a Christmas mass, but there's no Christmas decor -- when the trees and garlands in the diocesan parishes stem from English traditions!

The rest of the decor is rather sparse and barren. And, er, this is a Christmas mass, but down there at the lower left -- what appears to be partly or completely empty pews, in a smallish space. At our diocesan parish, the nave overflows at Christmas and Easter. The lines for the sacrament go on for many minutes.

Not here. What's up? Compare it to this shot of the Cathedral of St Eugene, Santa Rosa, CA from the same post:

All things considered, it's almost as if the OCSP is making a half-hearted effort to give its members an inferior experience. The Precious Spiritual Treasures of the Anglican Patrimony indeed. You've got to be kidding. Why go to these cramped, desultory, slouchy, half-done venues when there's so much more available?

Blessed John Henry Newman Irvine And The Problem Of Small Communities

My regular correspondent sent me a link to this photo of the Queen of Life Chapel at the Busch law firm offices in Irvine, CA, where the BJHN group meets.

It's significant, though, that this particular photo is located on the chapel's own website, not on the website or Facebook page of BJHN -- and the chapel site mentions weekday masses held there, but it makes no mention of the BJHN group. Clearly these are separate entities, and BJHN is there at the pleasure of the Busch firm. I'll get to this.

My regular correspondent notes,

The website has an excellent picture of the interior of the Queen of Life Chapel, used by BJHN, Irvine, although in their case the altar would be set up for an ad orientem celebration. Communicants receive kneeling, despite lack of an altar rail. No lack of Catholic devotional objects here! And Fr Bartus has a collection of truly impressive fiddleback chasubles in all colours including blue and black. Venue has pleasant social space, indoor and outdoor, and lots of parking. Big drawback is its size, it would seem to me. I have a theory that people do not like to worship regularly in a place that is more than 3/4 full, regardless of whether that represents twenty people or five hundred. So if he wants parish to grow he has to keep adding Sunday masses, and he now has three, plus Pasadena on Sunday night.

My guess is that each of those pews can seat eight adults, though this would be tight, so full-up capacity would be 64 -- though using my correspondent's ideal of 3/4 capacity, this would actually be 48, which would put best-case three-mass weekend attendance at 144. I suspect it seldom reaches this.

My other regular friend notes this regarding yesterday's post:

[P]lease be careful about disparaging small faith communities. Many large parishes suffer greatly from becoming too impersonal — places where the clergy cannot get to know the majority of the parishioners, and where parishioners don’t get to know one another either, so that visitors are often completely unnoticed and lost in the crowd rather than greeted in a spirit of Christian hospitality and made to feel welcome. The Christian life is often depicted as a wheel in which our Lord is the hub and the four spokes are (1) worship (or prayer) (2) learning (or study), (3) fellowship (or community), and (4) mission (or ministry). Here, worship encompasses both liturgy and personal prayer, learning encompasses both group classes and personal study, fellowship is about members of the community coming together to build one another up in faith, with both spiritual and social components, and mission is outreach most notably to the unchurched, which also may have both spiritual and social welfare components.

. . . . For better or worse, the fact remains that Our Lady of the Annunciation has its own church building — which is something that many ordinariate congregations still lack — because its founding core brought that property with them when they came into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. The fact that the congregation does not completely fill the church is good, as it means that the community has room to grow in its current facility. I’m somewhat frustrated by the lack of public indication as to whether this community is actually growing or not, or even replaced those who left when it decided to enter the ordinariate, but that will come to light in due course.

I certainly agree that a living parish encompasses the four spokes my friend mentions, although at the very low membership levels we see in the OCSP, I question whether every community has enough individuals with the talent and commitment to realize all of them. Also at very low membership levels, we have the problem my regular correspondent raised yesterday, that drop-ins are very conspicuous, and greeters would need to exercise extreme tact in allowing new people to merge at their own pace. I think of a church lady with her camera and cringe.

Actually, I think my correspondent's rule of thumb preferring 3/4 full naves is a little like the laws of physics, where size makes a difference. The much larger nave-transept at our diocesan parish is typically 90-100% full at the 9:30 and 11:00 Sunday masses, such that if you want a good seat, you'd better be 15 minutes early. Which model would a bishop prefer? Also, the ready availability of numerous activities like Bible study, fellowship, and adoration does in fact allow the new members to ease in without being conspicuous and find what's preferable among a wide range of options.

Finally, whether a community owns or just has the use of a small space on other terms, there are problems that won't go away. My friend pointed out not long ago that membership alone is only one criterion for making a full OCSP parish. Others include stability and payment of the cathedraticum. A potential problem we might see with BJHN is that its use of the chapel space is entirely conditional, and it almost certainly doesn't have to meet utility and maintenance expenses there -- or if it does, these would still not be comparable to expenses of ownership. If Mr Busch were to be hit by a truck and some other faction of the family or firm were to take over, the group could lose the space on very short notice, and this would be simply a major crisis.

But the BJHN group also faces the same hurdle as the Annunciation group in Ottawa: whatever wiggle room they have on a small scale, significant growth will represent a major threshold they'll need to cross. They'll need to find a larger venue if they grow past 50 or so at three weekend masses, but the expenses connected with this could still be much greater than the group could accommodate.

I believe the only Anglican-based community that's ever crossed this threshold successfully is Our Lady of the Atonement, but it's worth pointing out that it did so within five years of its founding.

Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Ottawa

My regular correspondent notes, "This is the church where you noted empty pews surrounding the toddler featured in Mrs Gyapong's pictures posted on the AC blog." I got this exterior photo from Google street view.

I'm not an architectural expert, but my overall reaction is "yucch". While there are certainly diocesan churches that are as bad, on the whole, the chances of finding one that's even a little more inspiring strike me as considerably greater -- what's the point of going to such a tiny, mousy venue? Faux Shakespearean English in the prayer book? Is that all?

My regular correspondent reports that since 1991 they have shared the church with a Romanian Orthodox congregation which is now in the process of building its own church. This raises the question of how they will compensate for loss of rental income from the Orthodox group, but it also raises the question of how an Orthodox group is able to outgrow the venue, while the OCSP group is apparently not.

My regular correspondent provided these interior views from Ms Gyapong's blog:

It looks like the pews are capable of seating four adults abreast comfortably, which puts the maximum capacity of the nave in the neighborhood of 50. Decoration is sparse indeed, and I see no evidence of traditional Catholic icons or stations of the cross, though they may be out of view. Again, I'm not sure why someone would choose to go to mass here when there are so many more inspiring options.

The second interior photo raises questions for me similar to the ones the toddler photo raised that my correspondent mentions. For starters, it is simply not good practice in these times to post photos of minor children on social media, and given the Church's focus on protecting children, I hope more mature parties will provide guidance to Ms Gyapong on this matter.

A second issue goes to one thing I always liked about being Episcopalian, the question of restraint, which it seems to me keys to the philosophical virtues of prudence and temperance. Ms Gyapong seems to take photos during mass with some frequency. I ushered at several Episcopal parishes, and we ushers were instructed that cameras were not allowed in the nave, and we were to inform anyone bringing a camera in of this policy. My wife and I, in fact, requested that the wedding photographer and family members adhere to this policy at our wedding.

Beyond that, photography is not permitted inside many public places in the US, including courthouses, hospitals, supermarkets, and fast food outlets. But here we seem to see someone taking a photo of what looks like the exchange of peace during mass, complete with at least one ostentatious hug, perhaps for the camera. At best this is tacky, but it's also a distraction from a reverent celebration, and it's also, at least potentially, an invasion of privacy.

Finally, my regular correspondent notes,

I saw an article recently about parish growth which included the question "Does your parish have a shallow end?" If I were thinking about checking out a (new) place of worship, other than as someone's guest, my first step would be the web. Assuming I can find something there, . . I would want to see a picture of the whole set up. Not the altar, or the sanctuary party, but the whole space where I would find myself. Could I lurk at the back, or in the midst of a crowd? Or would I be conspicuous in a small chapel or a very small group of worshippers? That is not to say that joining a handful of strangers in the Oratory of St Swithun is totally off the table, but I would want to be prepared for that situation. I always suspect that event pictures which show only the sanctuary are meant to conceal the fact that attendance was sparse[.] In any event, it would take a similarly robust ego for anyone to plunge into their local OCSP gathering, since it would typically be in at the deep end, with no lights on.

I get that feeling about the Ottawa group, indeed with the concern that a church lady would grab a picture of me.

Given the disadvantages the OCSP starts with in attracting new members, it seems to me that there are steps it might well consider taking in avoiding practices that actively discourage them.

A Series On Venues

My regular correspondent is starting to send me photos he's found on Facebook, parish web sites, and so forth, of OCSP venues. The main reason from my standpoint is to indicate their relative size to give an indication of overall population in the OCSP, but there may be an additional interest in comparing them to what diocesan Catholics can expect to find, especially if they have some enterprise and curiosity.

As a matter of interest, and by way of initial comparison, here's the nave of St Patrick's Catholic Church, Chatham, NJ. I note this only because I watched an episode of the true crime show Murder Calls last night, which dealt with the 2009 stabbing death of its pastor, Fr Edward Hinds. The show used the interior of a different church, somewhat nicer than this one, but I'd say this is nothing unusual for a medium-size diocesan parish.

My family lived in Chatham from 1957 to 1963, and I went to elementary and middle school in the city schools. I never set foot in St Patrick's; my parents probably wouldn't have been happy if I had. It's something of an indication of what I missed.

Mission Creep

Regarding how other US bishops might potentially look at OCSP groups-in-formation, my regular correspondent notes,

The model was supposed to be "groups of Anglicans" entering together; a clergyman leading his Anglican parish into the Church, and then attracting other Anglicans and other Protestants into the community. Many of the original OCSP communities included Catholics who had been worshipping in an Anglican parish but were reconciled to the Church through the AC process. So this is all good.

But by and large the "gathered" groups have been quite different: former Anglicans who became Catholic years ago, and cradle Catholics who had never met an Anglican until (former) Fr Lacey-Cotta invited them to Evensong and wine-and-cheese. These people have been attending and contributing to Our Lady of Czestochowa or wherever up to this point; their departure to a non-diocesan parish is not building up the Church, not building up the local diocese, it's just the Scilly Islanders making a living by taking in one another's washing.

I can well see that a diocesan bishop would feel that this is a diversion of resources that are currently his.

I would also say that to suggest the OCSP-DW mass is one of only a few alternatives to irreverent, guitar-and-tambourine OF masses in dioceses does a real disservice to the faith as actually practiced. Certainly there are guitar-and-tambourine masses, though they may be all a particular parish can afford. Certainly there are liturgical abuses, though conscientious effort at the diocesan level may be able to minimize them. But the publishers of Catholic hymnals manage to stay in business with hard copy versions like the GIA Gather.

My wife and I have found, both in the LA archdiocese and elsewhere, that there's a great deal of variation in how masses are celebrated in OF. I don't see the point of trying to start an Anglican group in some little chapel when there are so many better alternatives in easy driving distance, pretty much anywhere. Anglicans who want to become Catholic are cutting themselves off from the whole body of the Church, while cradle Catholics who reject a reverent OF in favor of a little group in a chapel are kinda crazy.

Tampa Bay Kibosh

UPDATE: The Tampa Bay site has already been taken down.

Question On Numbers

My friend who frequently prompts me to clarify my thinking responded to Saturday's post:

The Guide to Parish Development for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter does state that a community must have either 100 members or 30 families to become a full parish — and from this, you wrongly jumped to the conclusion that every community that is not a full parish must have fewer than 100 members. Rather, this requirement for membership is only one of several requirements to attain status as a full parish. . . . An ordinariate community actually can have more than a hundred members, but not be constituted as a parish due to lack of some or all of [several] additional elements. Additionally, the change in status requires approval of the governing council, which probably meets only a few times per year.

In other words, this suggests that I may be ignoring groups larger than 100 that are not yet full parishes. However, my estimate goes no farther than to suggest the real "membership" of the OCSP is in the low to mid four figures. To change this significantly, you'd have to find a way to suggest it's in the high four figures, which says to me you'd have to find additional communities with membership big enough to add several thousand to the total estimate.

My understanding is that the Omaha community is reaching the point of eligibility to become a full parish, though we now have a situation where the Calgary group, whose full-time priest is leaving and will not be replaced by a full-time one, could at least technically fall out of parish status. (We don't know, as well, what effect the loss of leadership could have on membership there.)

However, even if there's some chatter at the edges of which communities are or are not parishes, I don't think this affects estimates that I think are credible. Bp Lopes clearly thinks the numbers are roughly double the estimates published here. One can certainly choose to give Bp Lopes more credence.

On the other hand, my regular correspondent points out that there's one very clear indicator of "canonical membership" in the OCSP that's never been published. The How To Join the Ordinariate page of the OCSP web site says those who wish to become members must complete and sign an application form and either submit it to the pastor of an OCSP community or mail it directly to Houston.

Your pastor will verify you have received the Sacraments and/or confirm that your are currently enrolled in catechesis to be received into the Church. Your Pastor will then forward the original, signed documents to the Chancery. 

The Chancery will mail you with notification of receipt of your application and, after review of your application, the status of your request for membership. YOUR MEMBERSHIP IS NOT COMPLETE UNTIL YOU HAVE RECEIVED CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE ORDINARIATE CHANCERY VERIFYING RECEIPT AND APPROVAL OF YOUR REGISTRATION.

This means that at minimum, someplace in the chancery is a metal file cabinet containing completed application forms with copies of letters verifying receipt and approval. It would then be a simple exercise to have a volunteer count these approved applications, and voilà, there's a number. As far as we know, either this has never been done, or if it has, the number has never been released. While such a total wouldn't account for potential attrition, I think nearly everyone would accept it as a very close estimate of OCSP canonical membership.

The only recent mention of application forms has been a reference on Our Lady of the Atonement websites to the need for OLA parishioners to get their application forms in, which suggests that numbers may be disappointing.

But without any announcement citing things like the actual number of application forms on file, observers are reduced to looking at Facebook posts, photos on parish web sites, and estimates of potential attendance based on the size of venues. All of these make figures of 10,000 canonical members and Sunday attendance of 20,000 hard to credit.

Venues

My regular correspondent sent me this photo of the chapel at the Fort Worth, TX Diocese Catholic Center where the St Timothy OCSP group holds mass with supply priests (Fr Kennedy, an associate at St Mary the Virgin, has recently been named parish administrator pro tem). A nice place, but aside from the reredos, sorta Presbyterian-looking, if you ask me.

But it also occurred to me that the altar is set up for versus populum celebration. I noted this with my correspondent, who replied oh, no, they celebrate ad orientem from that altar and commented that this makes things rather tight.

But then it occurred to me that an awful lot of OCSP groups are doing things this way, in tiny chapels unsuited to things like ad orientem celebration, with capacities for ;little more than a few dozen -- and unlikely to grow beyond that. Aside from the likelihood that Bp Lopes's estimate of 20,000 non-canonical "members" simply can't be accommodated in venues like this, it's worth recognizing that even when OCSP cheerleaders point to 41 (or whatever) communities, these are the typical places where they meet.

I'd hate to be celebrating ad orientem from those altars with the constant recognition that a backward step could be disastrous.

OCSP Membership?

From time to time, a knowledgeable visitor e-mails me to correct or rebut something said here. I was interested that nobody, including Fr Baaten, has written to correct or rebut the assertion that my regular correspondent made yesterday, that the North San Diego County group has dwindled from 50 members to a dozen under Fr Baaten's pastoral care. (Fr Baaten has in fact sent me several angry e-mails under a pseudonym, but not over this.)

This brought me back to the question of how, or whether, Houston knows whart the figures are for actual membership anywhere. Could they in fact, if they chose, rebut assertions like the one made about San Diego County? I put this question to my regular correspondent:

St Augustine's, Del Mar has posted pictures of their 2017 Easter Day mass (there was no vigil, as you may recall) and at one point they are gathered outside around the Paschal fire and one can readily count the ten attendees (and two servers). I have to say that the school chapel they are using is considerably more attractive than the one in Pasadena. There is a Facebook notice that Bp Lopes will be visiting on July 9, with the request "It would be wonderful to have the church filled with all members of St Augustine's (active, inactive, attending other churches) and their guests for this special visit." I guess they are aware there has been conspicuous decline.

Two weeks ago an interview with Bp Lopes was aired on Catholic Café in which he apparently gives the figures of 10,000 "canonical" members and 20,000 mass attendees, whatever that means (ASA , or parish members including those ineligible for "canonical" membership?). I haven't listened to the interview, but Mr Murphy reported these figures on the AC blog. The membership figure Bp Lopes gave earlier this year was 8,000, so this sounds like that number plus OLA. I am skeptical. The 10,000 figure must include those who have registered with the OCSP while attending diocesan parishes. They are invisible except to Houston (although since membership requires registration with the Chancery, they must have an exact figure).

But the 20,000 are supposedly attending the 41 OCSP congregations which have regular Sunday masses. Based on my familiarity with bulletins, FB pages, and similar documentation this seems incredible. At least a third are holding a single Sunday mass in a venue which holds fewer than a hundred people, for example. I will keep you posted if more official updates become available.

There are other reasons to question the figures Bp Lopes gives. A full parish must have more than 100 individual members, for instance. This means that assuming eight full parishes, there are about 33 groups with fewer than 101 members. If we make the most optimistic assumption, that all of them have 100 members, this gives us 3300. It sounds as if Bp Lopes is allowing 2000 for the membership of Our Lady of the Atonement, which is the biggest full parish. This gives us 5300. (However, I've heard from a couple of OLA informants that, although all those registered there are eligible for OCSP membership, the cradle Catholics there are apparently unenthusiastic.)

Of the seven other full parishes, it's unlikely that more than one or two number as many as 1000, with most of them in the low three figures. Thus a slightly more realistic but still optimistic estimate might be 7-8000, but let's remember that this assumes each of the 33 non-parishes has 100 members. Considering the actual sizes we see, with photos showing attendance at some in low double digits, this is certainly not the case -- so realistically, OCSP membership is more likely what I've assumed throughout its history, somewhere in the low to mid four digits.

I invite any knowledgeable parties to correct or rebut this.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent reminds me, "Remember to distinguish between 'OCSP membership' ie eligible ex-Anglicans, family, etc and 'membership of OCSP parishes and communities' which can include any Catholic." However, even Bp Lopes in the interview cited above seems not entirely precise on this -- and indeed, even the qualifications for OCSP priestly ordination seem fuzzy in this regard. But also, for instance, if a dozen attended the Easter service at St Augustine's, were all of these canonical members of the OCSP, or does this mean that the actual membership there is fewer than a dozen?

"A Bishop's Job Is To Say No"

Fr Z says this on his blog with some frequency. I think of this in the context of Anglicanorum coetibus, whose rationale, let's face it, was that bishops could say no to the idea of Anglican Use parishes in their dioceses -- especially, we might suppose, half-baked proposals for them. Instead, we have a personal prelature with an incentive to say yes even to half-baked proposals.

I keep ruminating on the current examples we have of a tiny group-in-formation in Pasadena made up of some proportion of cradle Catholics who are somehow dissatisfied with the range of mass options available to them in diocesan parishes within a few miles but want to meet using photocopied liturgy in a dismal basement chapel. (A Latin EF mass is available to them four miles away in Alhambra. At least one reverent OF mass with a professional music program is also available nearby in my own experience.)

I was also puzzled that a group would find music programs unsatisfactory in a place like Toronto, to the point that they would want to raise $650,000 for an entirely new one. I passed this question to my regular correspondent, who replied

My impression is that all or most ex-Anglicans in Toronto, including the family in question, head to the OF in Latin at Holy Family, also run by the Oratorians, a number of whom are ex-Anglicans themselves. It has a very good music program. I believe that one family member, a hold-out, was the organist at Good Shepherd, Oshawa when it was an ACCC parish, so the erection of the Ordinariate brought family unity and they all started attending St Thomas More. They have been joined by some but by no means all of their ex-Anglican friends from Holy Family. Fr Hodgins sister-in-law was a chorister with them in their Anglican days. . . . The ex-Anglicans continue as paid choristers at a number of Anglican parishes, or did. I am not sure how the new 12:30 start time works with that.

Naturally, I don't know what a bishop would do with either proposal, for the group in Pasadena or the music program in Toronto -- I'm pretty certain that even if I had a chance to ask a bishop such a question, I would get only a 100,000-foot reply that made no disclosures. My regular correspondent continues of the opinion that the Pasadena group is a make-work project to facilitate the ordination of a Bartus mini-me -- I was reminded that the San Diego North County group has dwindled from Fr Ortiz-Guzman's former 50 parishioners to a dozen or so under Fr Baaten.

But a bishop's job is to say no. A personal prelate's job doesn't seem to be quite the same thing.

More On Toronto And Pasadena

Regarding St Thomas More Toronto, my regular correspondent reports,

STM is not a full parish of the OCSP; i.e,. it has fewer than 30 families/100 individual parishioners. Pictures showing the congregation ate very hard to find---it is one of the groups that prefers to concentrate on the sanctuary party---but there was a picture on Facebook showing the crowd on hand for Bp Lopes's visit, and it was modest, perhaps 40 people. The core membership of STM is three generations of a very musical family, together with some former fellow-choristers; hence the emphasis on music in their five-year plan. After their "conversion", many years before Anglicanorum coetibus, they sang in the choir at another church run by the Oratorians, so the new congregation is poaching from the old.

This goes to a concern I've had ever since 2012, that the implementation of OCSP is often driven by individual agendas, a little like the condo members who push for the whole residents' association to buy gym equipment that only a few members will actually use. In one of the most important North American cities, apparently a single family wants fewer than 100 people to fund a parish music program from which they will principally benefit. How many other Catholic parishes within easy driving distance in Toronto have a perfectly good music program?

Contrast this with the stained glass at our diocesan parish -- each window has several memorials to the families that donated it. This isn't a one-family show.

Regarding Pasadena, my regular correspondent reports,

The Pasadena group, judging from Facebook, is a group of perhaps 15+ meeting in a small basement chapel. The new keyboard has just been dedicated. Prepare to be conspicuous if you drop in.

A couple of photos were forwarded from the Facebook page. I'm told these were from one of the first masses in March of this year.

What is the appeal here? If I'm on something like a hunting trip and need to fulfill my mass obligation, sure, I might attend something like this in remotest Podunk. But this is the Los Angeles area, specifically Pasadena. Latin masses are available nearby for those inclined, and there are thriving parishes with extensive programs, certainly including professional music, easily to be found. We're looking at a tiny group for whom something is missing that they're trying to find in this forlorn basement.

And from what I understand, many are cradle Catholics. What on earth are they looking for here that they can't find ten minutes away?

Flailing?

My regular correspondent remarked on yesterday's post:

I sincerely hope that former Anglicans living in locations without an OCSP group---that would include 35 out of the 50 most populous US cities---are fully engaged in a local parish, and if they have registered as Ordinariate members it is not at the expense of thinking of themselves as Catholics, first and foremost. If, as seems to be the case, the only new groups forming are those which a former clergyman is trying to gather as his ticket to ordination, we can assume that the number of groups will not increase significantly[.]

I'm curious in particular about the Pasadena-group-vaguely-in-formation. It appears to be made up of otherwise unaffiliated cradle Catholics who want at least to appear traditionalist, though I wonder if there's a certain Anglo-Catholic get-the-prestige-without-paying-the-dues strain here. Since they're already Catholic, are they registered and receiving the sacraments at any diocesan parish? Are they financially supporting a diocesan parish, the archdiocese, or the OCSP in any way but a token bill-in-the-basket?

I would invite Mr Coulombe or anyone else connected with this group to rebut this by indicating at which parishes the members are registered and things like pledge amounts (anonymously attributed) to diocesan parishes, the archdiocese, and the OCSP, sufficient to reassure me that these aren't your grandfather's Anglo-Catholics.

I've seen efforts at two diocesan parishes to steer liturgy in a more traditional direction. Are these people aware of, or involved in, any such efforts in diocesan parishes? Might such efforts be better directed within the diocese? But of course, this would interfere with efforts by Fr Bartus to build a little empire, separate and not just unique.

Further,

[I]ndeed it is more likely that "parishes-in-formation" which have not achieved significant growth in the first five years will will start to disappear as their clergy retire or are relocated. So what is it all about? As I have often stated, the "Anglican Patrimony" is very difficult to define. Is it elements of pre-Reformation Catholicism which were preserved in the separated English church? Or is it distinctive pastoral, spiritual, or liturgical emphases which are nonetheless compatible with Catholicism, or can be made so? Personally I find the whole thing an exercise comparable to cross-dressing and gender reassignment.

Finally, we are told that it is a template for the evangelisation of other Protestant groups, which is particularly absurd. How can something which has achieved so little success with Anglicans be a template for anything? I would like to think that Bp Lopes is seeking to rationalise the OCSP and create a smaller but more vibrant association of viable parish communities. But I am baffled by the apparent incompetence of his diocesan office---the lack of news, the disarray of the website, the apparent lack of "diocesan" discipline.

I draw your attention to the $645,000 fund-raising campaign announced here. Was this co-ordinated with Houston?

The link is to a five-year, $645,000 "strategic plan" at St Thomas More Toronto, which involves making a part-time priest full time, adding a music program, repairing the organ, and so forth. The group currently meets in an off-hour mass at a host parish. The current part-time priest is on the verge of retirement, which raises the question of who will replace him and how such a campaign can maintain leadership during the transition.

There are other things that set off my "bull-oney" detector. The goals are grandiose but too far out for realistic assessment, much like the global warming campaigns that want to do such-and-such by 2050, when nobody now around will be held accountable. The current priest, after all, will be out of the picture when the campaign winds up in 2022, and in fact the 2017 proposal will probably long since have been forgotten by then.

Yes, I'm sorry to say, this probably was coordinated with Houston, but this isn't to Houston's credit. It looks like another effort to distract attention from the actual prospects pf the OCSP with blue-sky estimates. Again, I question whether Bp Lopes is effectively shepherding some of these people, who would be better advised to seek out compatible diocesan parishes and maintain the prayers and sacraments there.

Let's Rethink Anglican Outreach

I've been operating all along from the assumption that Catholic Anglican outreach -- both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus, but we could go as far as to include ARCIC -- has fallen well short of expectations. Some people will argue that Rome thinks in terms of centuries in evaluating success, but Bp Flaherty has a much shorter time frame in mind when he closes and merges parishes. Frankly, I'm expecting some sort of indication from Houston within the fairly near future that things just can't go on this way.

Let's rethink and recalibrate here. Take my own example. I was raised Presbyterian by parents who weren't especially observant and in fact often set a poor example. In other words, I was poorly catechized and an easy target for secular influences in the 1950s and 60s. (Just when Ven Fulton Sheen might have begun to reach me via media, he was forced off TV.) By the late 1970s, I'd come to a tolle, lege moment, but the Catholic Church at the time had no particular message for me. I went to TEC confirmation class.

This was my second confirmation class. The Presbyterian confirmation class that I took at about age 12 contained a great deal of anti-Catholic material and portrayed Luther, Calvin, Knox, Hus, and the like as heroes. The TEC class basically triangulated, portraying Anglicanism as an ideal compromise. It always disturbed me deep down that compromise basically meant nothing. I still remember a TEC tract in the narthex on what Episcopalians believe, and it made the important point that Episcopalians feed their pets. Do not even Gentiles do the same?

A well-directed Catholic message might well have reached me then, no need for the Episcopalian detour. My basic problem was that I hadn't been well catechized and didn't have good examples in parents, clergy, and schools. Anglicanism had nothing to do with it, and Anglicanism wasn't going to fix it.

I wandered into St Mary of the Angels in 2011, finally fed up with our TEC parish priest's second trip into rehab and looking for an alternate, at least until the TEC parish got itself straightened out. My basic uncertainty about Anglicanism was probably part of this dissatisfaction. The St Mary's parish had decided to respond to Anglicanorum coetibus, which with the examples of then-Bp Moyer and Fr Kelley finally showed that Catholicism could be a living option.

But the level of bungling in the OCSP made it plain that for St Mary of the Angels ever to go in as a parish was (and still is) a very uncertain proposition. The problem is that even if Anglicanorum coetibus and the influence of certain Anglicans made Catholicism a living option, the message of Lumen Gentium makes it clear that it was my responsibility to answer that call, whether or not some parish convenient to me would come into the Church at some indefinite future time.

So let's look at the biggest issue here: although there are 30-40 groups of one sort or another in OCSP, most are tiny, only a handful offer anything like a real parish life, and geographically, the OCSP is simply not an option for the vast majority of Anglicans. But the point of Lumen Gentium is that Anglicans and all others who hear the call are obligated to enter the full life of the Church, which means something other than registering for some vague thing on the web. The existence of the OCSP can in fact be construed as something misleading if it suggests that Anglicans can be separate and not just unique.

If Anglicans become Catholic and do not enter the full life of a diocesan Catholic parish if an OCSP parish is unavailable, Bp Lopes isn't doing his job. This would include making a full financial contribution to the available diocesan parish, attending mass, confession, and other activities. So I don't understand the point of the OCSP for Anglicans for whom a local parish or group is unavailable -- but beyond that, going to some DW mass with eight or a dozen in some chapel is hardly a parish life even if it's possible.

My current understanding of the process that led to Anglicanorum coetibus is that there was a liturgical wing that paralleled the "continuing Anglican" wing. But there's a difference between Catholic and Anglican approaches to liturgy. Notwithstanding the priests and deacons dress the same, the reverence in Catholic liturgy celebrates and surrounds the Real Presence. Anglicanism takes no particular position on the Real Presence, which basically makes Anglican liturgy something of purely aesthetic, or perhaps sentimental, appeal -- or simply camp. If Anglo-Catholics see liturgy as that, they've got all they need just where they are, no need to go to Rome.

The "continuing Anglican" wing of Anglican outreach assumed widespread dissatisfaction with the liberalizing trend in Anglicanism would lead to Anglicans seeing the Church as an alternative. Didn't happen in the 1970s and 80s, and the next wave of disgruntlement in the 2000s led to a re-Protestantizing of Anglicanism in the form of the ACNA, not any significant move to the Church.

I think the Church needs to revisit the example of Ven Fulton Sheen with a broad-based and rational evangelical message that offers a serious and intellectually respectable critique of contemporary culture. I would commend again the example of Dr David Campbell in connection with what might be done. Anglicanism is simply a false lead.