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.
