My Father Is Smarter Than Yours!

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent notes,

I am sympathetic to the importance you attach to a firm intellectual grounding in the Catholic faith but I am not sure that you want to get into a "My Fr is smarter than your Fr" contest with TEC. With about 37,000 priests, the US Catholic church is sure to count among them many more scholars and men of intellectual depth than TEC, with perhaps a third of that number. But it also has its share of dimbulbs, as anyone with a lifetime experience of Catholic preaching will assure you. Preaching that a TEC congregation, typically far better educated than the average Catholic congregation, would never put up with. And when Catholic parishioners complain that their pastor is preaching (possibly unintentional) heresy or starting to lose his marbles the bishop's response is complicated by the fact that he probably doesn't have anyone to replace that man with. TEC has woes galore but a clergy shortage is not among them.

The fairness or otherwise of the assessment of dossiers in the early days of AC is a troubling issue. The com boxes of various blogs have been full of complaints from mem who literally heard nothing, for years. Everyone in the ACCC had to submit all their documentation twice, as the first time it disappeared into the black hole you mentioned. "Sponsorship" played an unseemly role.

Naturally, I speak from a personal perspective. But here's an exercise: go to YouTube and enter "Episcopal homily", and then enter "Catholic homily". One of the top three Catholic ones that came up on my search was this one. I'm afraid you won't find anything like it in TEC. I did find one in a very nice Episcopal church where the rector droned in generalities -- it's likely a TEC homily won't wander far from generalities, except maybe to urge congregants to be welcoming and diverse.

Nor is this new. The most prominent TEC figures contemporary with Ven Fulton Sheen, for instance, were James Pike and Malcolm Boyd, followed by Paul Moore Jr. I'm afraid I just don't see a comparison. There are probably good reasons for this -- TEC has always been socially linked with exclusive Episcopal prep schools and the Ivy League -- Pike, to establish elite credentials, went to Yale for a doctor of laws, even though he'd received a perfectly good law degree from USC.

The problem is, and I can speak from experience here, that the quality of Ivy League and other elite education is mediocre and always has been -- F Scott Fitzgerald and Ferdinand Lundberg recognized this in the 1920s and 30s. One of the background issues relating to the 2016 US election and its aftermath is the threat President Trump and his supporters represent to this Ivy League-centered cultural dominance. It is no coincidence that Robert S Mueller III is an alumnus of Princeton, as well as a fellow alumnus of St Paul's School with Paul Moore Jr. Trump's business degree, though from Wharton, is derided routinely.

Even a somewhat tepid spokesman like Bp Barron has no contemporary TEC or other Anglican equivalent -- as far as I can see, it's never been in the cultural DNA. I just don't see an equivalent. Even if a Catholic priest might, as my correspondent puts it, be wandering unintentionally into heresy (although unintentional would not in fact be heretical), or losing his marbles, Catholics can drive half a dozen miles and find something better. This basically says to me that the whole Catholic bell curve, while it exists, is skewed to the right of the TEC curve.

And this goes to whether Anglicanorum coetibus is a good idea at all. It was never really accurate to call Anglicanism a "thinking man's religion", but there's currently no "thinking man" visible in any ordinariate who'll draw "thinking people" away from Anglicanism.

Developments At The Hillhurst Avenue St Mary's Commercial Space

While I was out running errands this morning, I noticed that the FOR LEASE sign has been removed from the Hillhurst Avenue commercial property belonging to the St Mary's parish, the main doors were open, and what looked like a 10-yard dumpster was in use just outside, which suggests renovations for a serious tenant are under way.

The vestry has been careful to maintain radio silence on developments, which I think have been in train for several months. However, these changes are now there for anyone to see (and just a block or two from Mrs Bush's luxury penthouse, which has a clear view of the parish).

The OCSP Clergy With "Normal" TEC Careers

My regular correspondent notes,

Current OCSP clergy who came directly from TEC to the Catholic church are few (Frs Bergman, Catania, Chalmers, Duncan, Erdman, Gipson, Lewis, Sellers, Venuti, Vidal, and Wolfe). And Msgr Steenson, although his current connection with the Ordinariate is difficult to discern. Not all were great catches, for various reasons, but I do not think that they were of the same order of nullity as the "continuing" crowd.

The list includes those retired, but it excludes those who came from the ACNA "Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth".

I'm aware of several who had "normal" TEC careers, submitted dossiers, but didn't make it in. Bp Lopes's Vienna lecture outlined the steps in a successful application, but it didn't list the various ways in which an application could derail, including the dossier disappearing down a black hole, no nihil obstat being granted, or a rescript being issued but overridden by Msgr Steenson. I can't second-guess what happened, but I know several individuals involved here, and I think that, had they been able to shepherd groups or parishes, the results would have been at least as good as the results we've seen from the group that made it in.

Beyond that, if the former TEC pool was the best that could be hoped for, I've got to say that on balance, I never thought TEC clergy were the sharpest knives in the drawer. Fr Chad Ripperger, a Catholic priest and an Aquinas scholar, has said he became a priest because he thought his siblings were all smarter than he was. This may have been tongue in cheek. You've got to be awfully smart to keep up with Aquinas. The Anglo-centricity of Anglicanorum coetibus risks leaving the Anglicans who come in unaware of the strong Catholic intellectual appeal and the priests who can elaborate it.

Catholicism for dummies is what we don't want.

But Is It A Consistent Product?

My egular correspondent comments,

Fr Simington, a recent graduate of Nashotah House, was required to do two years of further residential seminary training before being ordained deacon, and then another year before being ordained priest, while assisting the chaplain at St John XXIII School. When we compare this preparation period to that of, say, Fr Erdman it is quite lengthy. Why? I think it was because he had not been previously ordained and had very limited parish experience. As you have pointed out, getting an appointment in TEC is quite difficult. There is vast oversupply. So we can assume that a man who found a position relatively recently must have something going for him, and must have some pastoral and administrative skills. I agree that a solid intellectual and spiritual formation is vital for a priest. But the situation of an Ordinariate priest, isolated in many ways and heading a start-up operation, is not typical. Further gifts are required, and successful pastoral experience should not be underestimated.

I don't believe, though, that an OCSP priest who came from a normal carer path, TEC seminary through transitional deacon through associate or rector, in TEC is the usual case. Several were swept into early retirement when Bp Lopes came in, probably with very good reason. Others were passed over, with less reason.

We frequently find, instead, men with inchoate moves at the fringes, especially in the later waves of recruitment. And these men, whom I would estimate are at best curate material, are sent out with essentially no supervision or mentoring. The evidence I have from my own e-mails is that Fr Bartus, who by his own admission could not get ordained in TEC or the ACNA, had been inhibited by one ACA bishop and was on a collision course with another, is in frequent communication with some of the weaker men. In the absence of constructive supervision, this is to be expected.

More On Formation

My other friend comments,

The comments from your “correspondent” about Catholic seminaries being part of consortia of Christian seminaries in a geographical area in which candidates at any member seminary can take courses at any member seminary for full credit is also commonplace. Here in the Archdiocese of Boston, for example, St. John’s Seminary (our normal archdiocesan seminary), the Department of Theology of Boston College (Jesuit), and the Weston School of Theology (a Jesuit pontifical institute now known as the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry) joined the School of Theology of Boston University (United Methodist), the Episcopal Theological School, and Harvard Divinity School (originally Congregational Church, merged into the United Church of Christ, but now unaffiliated) as founding members of the Boston Theological Institute (BTI) in 1967.

Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (unaffiliated Evangelical Protestant), Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Seminary, and Hebrew College Rabbinical School have subsequently joined this consortium. According to the archdiocesan seminary’s course catalog, “[s]tudents from member schools enjoy cross-registration in more than seven hundred courses, and access to more than two million books in their respective libraries.” What’s especially interesting about this is that Boston College School of Theology and Ministry grants the pontifical degrees of Doctor of Sacred Theology (STD) and Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL), the recipients of which are deemed by the Vatican to be accredited as Catholic theologians.

This may be the case in some dioceses, though I don't believe it's the case in Chicago or Los Angeles, unless someone can correct me. But this basically puts more responsibility on vocations directors, who must presumably make sure seminarians are choosing courses that stress Aquinas and not Karl Barth or Joshua Heschel. If I get lucky, I may get a chance to chat with a diocesan vocations director in coming months, and this will be among the questions I hope to put to him.

This still says that rigorous curricula are potentially available to seminarians if they're correctly guided. But then we have the problem that the OCSP vocations director, a former Anglican, may himself not be well-equipped either to evaluate candidates' formation or recommend remedial courses. Given the general mediocre caliber of OCSP intake due to the limited opportunities available, I doubt if any vocations director will rise above the mean or identify a better candidate or encourage anyone better to apply.

But my regular correspondent also chimes in:

I don't think the exams are particularly rigorous. Fr [redacted], a man without an accredited MDiv, skipped even the webinars from Houston and just wrote the exams. I am sure he is an intelligent man but clearly these exams did not require intensive preparation. We are not talking about the law boards here.

I do not see any evidence that anyone has begun formal preparation while continuing to function as an Anglican clergyman. I believe that the process you describe, of submitting a dossier which includes a letter resigning one's previous orders, has been adhered to in all cases. Fr Erdman resigned from TEC in January 2016 after a six month struggle with the parish Vestry and was received as a Catholic in June 2016. I think he turned to the Catholic option after exhausting his options at Calvary Church. The idea that he was simultaneously exploring a back-up plan is offensive, frankly, as is the suggestion that the CDF would collude.

So the picture that seems to be emerging is that in fact numerous candidates have been ordained without a two-year period of formation, and that the exams are perfunctory. This simply goes to the question I've been raising that if seminary course work alone isn't an assurance that Catholic priests get the formation we clearly see in many cases, then something else about formation must be responsible -- and this must be even more completely absent from Protestant clergy who want to wear a collar but don't really understand the faith, especially if they're mainly trying to jump-start failed careers.

Formulaic?

Bp Lopes in Vienna called the process of ordination for the OCSP "forrmulaic". Observers are still trying to figure out how. My regular correspondent says,

I am trying to sift through recent candidates/ordinands to determine who was selected by Lopes/Perkins and who was a leftover from Steenson/Hough 3. Of this year's three, only Fr Erdman is in the former category. He was fast-tracked, presumably because he had local publicity as a conscientious objector to same-sex marriage who had lost his job in TEC, and because he had successfully put together at least a small group of converts. Messrs McCrimmon and Wills, having been ordained as transitional deacons this summer, will presumably be on the list for priestly ordination next June 29, but that is all we can say for sure. The Bros, Mr Bayles, Mr Mayer---none of these have made it to deacon yet.

Having said that, I agree that they all seem to be damaged goods in some respect, and one has to wonder, or perhaps it is obvious, why a clergyman without a congregation would go the OCSP route rather than the Pastoral Provision, especially since in any event he will be spending most of his time at a diocesan parish, school, or other stipendiary post. I think that Houston is trying to find people who will be either leading a group or available to take over an existing group. From that perspective it appears less interested in phoney publicity than those who decided to ordain Laurence Gipson, Ken Wolfe, or Jon Chalmers.

But the closest Houston can come in most cases is to find a way to put together a minimum-size Potemkin group and then find a candidate who is willing to relocate, like Mr Mayer, or indeed the Pasadena group, which Fr Bartus is assembling but which will eventually go to a new candidate. I question whether this really meets the intent of coetus as expressed in both Summorum Pontificum and Anglicanorum coetibus. Both usages strike me as envisioning a more or less spontaneous, bottom-up or outside-in petition, rather than a collection deliberately assembled by the prelature to justify putting a body into a preferment.

My other friend replies,

Having read your post today, it appears that you missed the second quote from Bishop Lopes’s presentation in my previous post. The bishop said that, in the case of clergy coming with congregations, the Vatican allows Catholic ordination to take place part way through the program of formation. It’s less clear whether ordination typically happens four months, or six months, or some other period of time into the program of formation, but the fact remains that the candidate still completes the rest of the two-year program after ordination.

It also appears that some of the candidates have begun the Catholic program of formation while they were still active clergy in their former denominations, several months before reception into the full communion of the Catholic Church. It’s pretty clear that this happened with the original clergy of all three ordinariates.

But even when he disagrees, my friend expresses uncertainty about what the actual policy is. My regular correspondent suggests Fr Erdman's case was fast-tracked, but we don't know exactly how. Certainly the procedure expressed by Bp Lopes involves the CDF imposing exams on the candidate before finally approving his ordination, and I assume that if the formation process is rigorous, one would need to complete most of it before passing such an exam. Is the exam waived in some cases? I betcha it is.

Also, I followed the progress of some candidates in the 2012 intake, and at least at that time, they were required to resign their Anglican orders before submitting their dossiers. My memory says they had to include the resignation letters with the dossiers. If the process has since been modified, as my friend suggests it may have been, then this simply adds to the growing list of exceptions to expressed CDF and OCSP policy. This is not "formulaic", and it seems to me that Bp Lopes was disingenuous in Vienna.

What I think is happening is that the coetus envisioned in Anglicanorum coetibus has been quite rare, and of those fewer than a dozen occurrences, roughly half had already been assembled under the Pastoral Provision. Only a handful of parishes ever made the transition as integral coetus from an Anglican denomination directly to the OCSP, and no new ones have entered after the first small wave.

As a result, the OCSP has had to shift its model completely, so that the current paradigm seems to be the one we see with Mr Mayer: a minimum-size new group, quite possibly not Anglican at all, gets together but for whatever reason can't continue. In order to justify proceeding with the candidate's formation, the OCSP must find him employment in a friendly diocese, no matter how distant, relocate him, and then hope it can cobble together another new little chapel group, Anglican or not, in that distant location for him to tend.

This is not the Christopher Phillips paradigm, whereby the Anglican arrives, builds on existing interest in the community, and fairly quickly establishes de novo a parish that becomes a major player in the diocese, which the diocese fights to retain.

Whatever his strengths or weaknesses, no current OCSP priest has matched what Fr Philips accomplished. I can only conclude that the OCSP and the CDF are so anxious to find another Phillips -- indeed, they're now sending him around to show other parishes how it's done -- that they'll bend every rule in hopes one will turn up. Sorry, you can't make a Bartus into a Phillips, for good or ill, no matter how hard you try. But the Phillips model, while potentially successful, isn't even the Anglicanorum coetibus paradigm, whereby an existing Anglican parish comes into the Church.

Trying to discover another Christopher Phillips is in fact an acknowledgement that Plan A didn't work, now we need a Plan B! Maybe they can have a special collection to buy lottery tickets. That sounds about as effective a strategy.

More On The Orlando Chapel Group

My regular correspondent has found additional backstory on the chapel group in Orlando whose circumstances are so provisional that Bp Lopes must celebrate ad orientem on a windowsill.

I think I have solved the mystery of why the pastor of Incarnation, Orlando began celebrating a Sunday evening mass in the chapel of Nemours Hospital. Jason McCrimmon, a former curate in Incarnation's ACA days who did not go forward for ordination in the first wave five years ago is being ordained to the diaconate on August 14. Presumably, like Our Lady of Grace, Pasadena, St John Fisher, Orlando is a make-work project spearheaded by a sympathetic pastor to create a congregation for his protégé. Although I bet not one single new Catholic has been added to the rolls.

More information came in a later e-mail:

As we see about midway through this story by the ever-thorough Sr Thurley, at the time most of Incarnation's congregation was received into the Church Jason McCrimmon elected to "remain Anglican and live out his priestly ministry as a chaplain in the US Navy." I noticed his name, however, on the list of Parish Council members on the Incarnation website sometime in the past year. I suppose speculating about whether the chaplaincy gig ended would be too cynical.

I gather there is a significant shortfall in Catholic military chaplains. About a quarter of US military personnel are Catholic, served by only 8% of the chaplaincy staff.

Of course, the chaplains fall under a different prelature, which does Bp Lopes no good.

It looks like we're dealing again here with a clergy-focused opportunistic model, wherein Houston stretches every prudence to create billets for favored candidates whose careers are stalled elsewhere. It's worth noting that in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandals of recent decades, the Church recognized that it was important to cull marginal seminarians and ease doubtful priests out of pastoral roles. By the way, had Mr McCrimmon already been reviewed and passed over five years ago?

Apparently the OCSP goes out of its way to recruit and find posts that will expose Catholics to some marginal candidates and doubtful priests. Er, do I need to list the names of the ones we've already come to know? One more time, I would never go to an OCSP priest for confession, and luckily, it would be easier for me to find an SSPX chapel if I needed to fulfill my mass obligation in some remote place.

The Shrinking ACA Diocese Of The West

A visitor pointed out that the ACA Church of the Epiphany parish in Phoenix, AZ, no longer appears on the ACA-DOW parish list -- there are in fact no longer any parishes listed in Arizona. The site was last updated in June, so this appears to be recent. Its pastor, Frederick Rivers, previously on the diocesan site as vicar general, no longer appears there. Until some months after the Bush group was evicted in 2016, Rivers also appeared on the DOW site as rector of St Mary of the Angels. A web site for the Church of the Epiphany in Phoenix still exists, but it has been edited to remove any mention of the ACA or the DOW.

Rivers continues as a defendant in the vestry's lawsuit against the ACA, the DOW, and individual parties. A reasonable conclusion might be that the defendants have been aware of their deteriorating legal situation for some months and have been moving to protect assets. (Good luck.)

Separately, an ACA California parish, St Columba Lancaster, has announced on its website,

Due to our inability to find a replacement priest, St. Columba's is now closed and there will be no further scheduled services. All of the parish property is being donated to the ACA Diocese of the West and other local area churches and monasteries. . . . Fr. Angus Bower is now retired but can be reached by phone for pastoral emergencies.

The inability to find a replacement priest is probably, at least in part, an indication of perception about the future of the ACA. However, Lancaster is also a hardscrabble place in the Mojave Desert with the usual methamphetamine problem and not an attractive post for anyone. The ACA Diocese of the West is now down to two full California parishes, both small, and a very marginal mission. There is a parish in Portland, OR that meets in another denomination's facility and a marginal mission in Montana.

St Columba is notable for having applied to join the OCSP in the first wave of optimism in 2011. However, Fr Bower, according to what I was told in early 2012, had been ordained in an Anglican-rite Orthodox denomination but had incurred some sort of discipline there on the basis of being "too Western" or some such, from what I hear a common problem in "continuing" Orthodox bodies. Either the CDF or the OCSP then told Fr Bower that it was not its policy to ordain men who were under discipline in former denominations. The parish then withdrew its application to join the OCSP and remained with the ACA, though I'm told that Fr Bower mostly did not return phone calls from the DOW vicars general.

As I've said here, the CDF or the OCSP has in fact approved candidacies from men under discipline in former denominations as it's suited them. Fr Bower and St Columba's parish basically came out on the wrong side of games that were being played.

So What's Next?

On one hand, the developments at yesterday's trial setting conference are very good news for the St Mary's vestry. On the other, neither the vestry, its counsel, Mrs Bush, nor the other defendants now without counsel are going to say anything about their plans going forward. Here are some general observations:

• Mrs Bush is 87 years old. Her legal situation is heading south in a hurry. She doesn't seem to be fully aware of this.
• The other defendants, now without counsel, are potentially liable for serious money in a two-day trial four months away. For them to have gotten themselves into this situation suggests extreme recklessness, but it's not beyond possibility that, already reckless, they may simply try to ignore the upcoming trial.
• It's likely that some degree of liability will be assigned to the ACA, now without counsel. Collection of damages if this happens would probably involve seizing any bank accounts and quite possibly garnishing diocesan tithes. To avoid having their tithes go to pay the judgment, parishes and dioceses could quite possibly withdraw from the ACA. I'm not sure if there will be an ACA a year from now, much less a Diocese of the West.
• My wife asked about any pending mergers with other "continuing" denominations. My view continues to be that no "continuing" denomination will seriously consider merger until Bps Marsh and Strawn are not just retired, but deceased. However, I believe the ACA will cease to exist well before that happens.
• If any of the defendants were remotely prudent, they would be hiring attorneys, who would be on the phone with Mr Lengyel-Leahu in very short order. It is much more likely that they will remain in denial.

Trial Setting Conference LA Superior Court Case BC 487079

I attended this conference this morning in Los Angeles Superior Court Department 32 under Judge Daniel Murphy. This is a case that was brought by the legal Rector, Wardens, and Vestry June 22, 2012, against the ACA, the ACA Diocese of the West, Anthony Morello, Marilyn Bush, and Keith and Diane Kang, for damages. At this point, the damages are in the multimillions.

There were two agenda items. One was that Lancaster & Anastasia LLP are seeking to be "Relieved as Counsel" from some of the defendants, to wit, ACA, the ACA Diocese of the West, Frederick Rivers as successor to Anthony Morello, and the Kangs, who haven't paid them since 2015. Judge Murphy immediately granted this motion. (Just before the conference, the vestry's counsel, Mr Lengyel-Leahu, said he'd been scuba diving, when some sharks turned up. However, they quickly got out of the way as professional courtesy. This may be apropos.)

I was given to understand before the conference that Judge Murphy is becoming impatient with Mr Lancaster's delays. As a result, he scheduled a two-day bench trial for this case for November 20, 2017. He scheduled a status conference for August 10. He directed Mr Lancaster to notify the former clients that he is no longer their counsel and to notify them as well that if they haven't secured new counsel by August 10, they are to appear at the conference in person.

The consensus from the vestry's side after the conference was that this is the best realistically possible outcome from its perspective. I haven't tried to contact Bp Marsh for comment. However, the defendants who have been cut loose by Mr Lancaster, presumably because they didn't want to pay an attorney, are now facing multimillion-dollar liability without counsel.

Is This Just In Canada?

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent replied,

To be fair, Fr Hayman was not the rector of Annunciation, Ottawa when its members entered the Church. He led a very small congregation in Spencerville, ON which ceased to exist after he was received (some former members may have joined him). Fr Carl Reid, then a bishop of the ACCC and now Dean of the Canadian Deanery led the Ottawa group.

I pursued this, and my correspondent replied,

Fr Reid left in April 2014. So of course there has been plenty of time for Fr Hayman, and the Canadian Deanery generally, to get the message out. Fr Kenyon was not a "continuer" and probably had little insight into their ways, so perhaps this is why remediation was not as robust as it should have been.

Further,

At the ACCC synod which more or less unanimously approved accepting the invitation of AC to join the Catholic Church, people received a lot of misinformation. Many of the specific points were similar to those which appeared on an early Anglo-Catholic blogpost in the form of questions and answers from Louis Falk, and were supposed to be codified in supplementary norms for TAC which of course never appeared. In the course of preparation for reception into the Church people should have been disabused of any notion that this was an inter-communion arrangement, that they would still be Anglicans, that this was in any way a buffet rather than a prix-fixe. I am sure that was the message they received from their mentor priest, a religious of the Companions of the Cross, I believe. But these were people who had left mainstream Anglicanism because they felt they knew better than the leaders of the Anglican church what Anglicanism was. As the ACCC limped along with no sign that Anglicans in general were getting the message, AC came along as a lifeline. "Everything must change so that everything can stay the same." But the point was for everything to stay the same, and of course AC could not guarantee that. So, up stakes once again. It's easier the second time, I suppose.

It looks like neither vicar forane in Canada has been aware of, or cares much about, whether the couple hundred members there have been catechized at all. The best part of this is that it involves so few souls. I'm told by my correspondent as well that Fr Martens, recently ordained a priest in Calgary as Fr Kenyon's part-time replacement, is from a Mennonite background and may not have been Anglican at all prior to going into the OCSP.

This brings up another question, which I would one day like to pursue with Bp Lopes. Catholic formation for laity involves a full development within the faith. I'm listing features of it that come to mind, primarily from my experience, but I don't mean to be exhaustive:

• The importance of developing habits of virtue
• The need to develop informed examination of conscience and go to regular confession
• The efficacy of prayer, including the rosary
• The efficacy and availability of other activities like adoration
• The importance of Catholic bible study
• The importance of fellowship with more fully formed Catholics
• The worth of various other Catholic activities like Steubenville.

I look at so many OCSP priests from "continuing" or other Protestant backgrounds -- so many of which are either indifferent to or actively opposed to components of Catholic formation like those above -- and have to ask how these largely ignorant, if well-intentioned, men can offer any sort of effective leadership to other novice Catholics. We assume a Catholic priest has arrived at formation from years of considering his vocation, followed by formal seminary study.

Some guy who didn't work out as a Presbyterian or Methodist or even Episcopalian but sees an opportunity in this new Catholic deal, ordained after minimal formation in many cases, is not the same thing as a diocesan priest -- especially when his immediate superiors aren't much better off.

I wouldn't go within a mile of this thing.

"Anglican Patrimony Issues"

My regular correspondent sent me an odd bit of news:

Apparently two members have left Annunciation, Ottawa recently over "Anglican patrimony issues," although it is not clear whether they left for another parish or returned to the Anglican Church. In any event, the lead article here addresses this subject in a thoughtful way. Reading between the lines one can see the "continuing" mentality still exists in the parish: "Nobody can tell us what to do!" Part of the problem, IMHO, is that in a marginal community it may be difficult to perceive that you are getting more than you are losing.

I had a few extra minutes, so I looked the link over. Just for starters, calling the bulletin of a Church of the Annunciation The Annunciator is one of the clumsiest plays on words I've ever seen -- I can imagine it appearing in something by Evelyn Waugh, which makes me wonder what he'd have done with Anglicanorum coetibus. But we'll pass this by.

Fr Hayman doesn't mention the specific circumstances that led him to address "Anglican patrimony issues", but I assume it was some epiphany that led someone to say, "When they said 'Catholic', I didn't think they meant that." Fr Hayman sort of circles around this question:

Many of us continue to struggle with questions of Anglican Patrimony in the Catholic Church, particularly regarding what we have or have not been able to bring with us into full Communion, and what might yet be part of our life and ministry in the future. Of course when, in our profession of faith, we declared, “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” we acknowledged our willingness to trust the Church to judge what of our Anglican heritage may be gathered in to express full and fruitful Catholic Faith.

The simple answer, it seems to me, is that nobody was sufficiently clear about Catholicism when the parish was catechized before its reception into the Church. When my wife and I took RCIA, we were given copies of the Catechism and the New American Bible. When we took the catechism class for the OCSP-in-formation a year earlier, we were given neither, just a superficial program called Evangelium, which, while it had the apparent tacit approval of Msgr-to-be Steenson and other authorities, didn't say much.

Bp Lopes has been clear at various times that "Anglican patrimony" refers primarily to certain supererogatory paragraphs which have been inserted into the Divine Worship mass and some thees and thous elsewhere -- and that's about it. On the other hand, at the University of Vienna, he gave as a reason for Anglicanorum coetibus the need for "creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost". But if Anglican patrimony is a few paragraphs of liturgy couched in faux early modern English, why the fuss over "distinctiveness"?

There's a certain confusion here, a subtext that the Church is modifying something like doctrine so Anglicans will be more willing to come in, which, of course, no priest or other Church representative would consciously endorse -- but clearly people are getting this impression. Indeed, it sounds as if some people in Ottawa apparently felt they'd been misled. Fr Hayman's answer is remarkably namby-pamby.

This is in some measure their own fault, of course. In 2011, with the option of going into the Church before me, I took a careful look at the Catechism, which is on line and searchable. I didn't consciously say, "Gee, this Evangelium isn't telling me much, maybe I'd better be more careful here," but clearly an instinct along that line was at work. Thus I avoided some of the surprises others have had when they discovered being Catholic meant that, whatever that was. When St Aidan's Des Moines had to be told about that at a very late stage, whose fault was it?

Whose fault was it that some years after Annunciation of the BVM was received, some people got a big surprise over that? One thing that interests me over secular developments in recent months is the decline in credibility among formerly respected media sources and the rise in prestige of fringe outlets that nobody took seriously until they predicted things like the outcome of the 2016 election. By the same token, I listen to Catholic commentators like Michael Voris and recognize that he's right, the Church of Nice fails when it's not clear in its teaching.

Apparently this is all a big surprise to Fr Hayman. But why did it take his parishioners so long to get clear on being Catholic? This isn't Fr Hayman's fault. Someone, though, thought it was a good idea to make him a priest.

So, What Does The CDF Do?

I frequently go to Wikipedia to figure this out. The clearest explanation is this:

The Congregation has a membership of some 18 other cardinals and a smaller number of non-cardinal bishops, a staff of some 38 priests, religious, and lay men and women, and some 26 consultors.

The work of the CDF is divided into four sections: the doctrinal, disciplinary, matrimonial, and clerical offices. The CDF holds biennial plenary assemblies, and issues documents on doctrinal, disciplinary, and sacramental questions that occasionally include notifications concerning books by Catholic theologians (e.g., Hans Küng, Charles Curran, and Leonardo Boff) that it judges contrary to Church doctrine.

Now and then, it issues documents. The most recent in Wikipedia is "Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious" – (Re-affirmed by Pope Francis on 15 April 2013). Something like this comes out every few years.

However, as relates to Anglican outreach (and I use this term non-specifically to define what is practically undertaken with Anglicanorum coetibus and the Pastoral Provision, however one may choose to characterize it), it basically serves as a court of appeals-cum-civil service commission. Applications for ordination as Catholic priests from former Anglicans are evaluated, approved or disapproved, or apparently misplaced in the CDF, I assume by the clerical office.

This process is anything but transparent.

• A priest who has come exclusively from the Charismatic Episcopal Church will apparently not be approved if he goes via the Pastoral Provision, but will be approved if he goes via the OCSP
• A priest may or may not be approved whether he has a seminary MDiv or not
• A priest will be approved if he has an exclusively Reformed or Presbyterian background, at least if he's been ordained pro forma for a few months in the ACNA
• A priest will be approved if he's under discipline in a former denomination, at least if he's Fr Bartus or Abp Falk (whose deposition in TEC is a matter of record, but who by his account received a rescript).

A far as I can see, some number of the 38-member staff, apparently including then-Msgr Lopes, spent a great deal of time and effort on this peculiar process, which clearly has unpredictable results. My understanding is that officers as high as the Secretary are involved in putting the best face on dossiers to get them through the process. My goodness, is there not a better use for people's time here, especially when such high level people give us Frs Baaten and Treco for their efforts?

There may be better reasons for the clerical office. But its actions as relate to the ordinariates strike me as an enormous waste of resources, when there are clearly much more important issues facing the Church that the CDF is responsible for addressing.

If I were on a corporate staff charged with reorganizing one or another function, I would simply recommend dropping the whole ordinariate-related activity and restrict it to a more streamlined and transparent review of Pastoral Provision candidates, either laying off the deadwood thus freed up or reassigning the more capable people. (Er, was anyone in the clerical office busted at the recent gay orgy?)

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,

As we see here and here it is not necessary for a former minister to have had any time in an Anglican denomination to be ordained a Catholic priest. The article on the Baptist minister does not mention the PP specifically but says his application went through the Vatican so I imagine the CDF handled it.

From my own personal knowledge the OCSP approval process is fairly flawed, or was initially. In a diocese there are people on the ground to vet the candidates, and they are often from local parishes but in the OCSP it was easy for a lot to get swept under the carpet.

Certainly I've heard the argument that the OCSP can ordain whomever it pleases, because the Holy See can ordain whomever it pleases. But that multiplies entities: why is the OCSP involved at all, especially if so many supernumerary OCSP priests have to have diocesan assignments anyhow? Take the OCSP out of the process. Let all married candidates go through a single diocesan process, and I'll bet you'd get better results and maybe not some of the mediocrities who were so carefully shepherded in by Msgr Lopes.

Declare Victory In Anglican Outreach And Get Out -- II

The Anglican Use Pastoral Provision continues in effect, although all former Pastoral Provision parishes have been transferred to the OCSP, a situation acknowledged with the 2017 transfer of the Our Lady of the Atonement parish. Individual married clergy from designated Anglican backgrounds can still apply for ordination as Catholic priests via US dioceses. This creates a situation very similar to the one prevailing in the UK, where married Anglican priests who go into the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are typically assigned to diocesan parishes and spend most of their time with them.

This in turn suggests that Anglican outreach has been successful at least in recruiting married priests from Anglican denominations, although practically speaking, US dioceses tend to limit their numbers and place them in less-visible roles. Even so, to the extent this side of the Pastoral Provision has been successful, it has been much more so than in bringing in full parishes, a practice discontinued in the Pastoral Provision. In his University of Vienna address, Bp Lopes in effect acknowledged that the Pastoral Provision had failed in this role, although the reasons for its failure have not been remedied by the changes brought about by Anglicanorum coetibus.

But let's look at two developments that have been far more successful than Anglican outreach. One is the dual phenomenon of the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP). The historical and canonical issues are outlined here. Immediately pertinent to my purpose is their popularity as grassroots movements. A list of SSPX communities in the US is available here. I stopped counting at 60, but I would estimate there are about 200 total, in many places where no OCSP community is anywhere close. This is in spite of the fact that Catholics are mostly aware that sacraments in SSPX chapels are valid but not licit.

FSSP locations can be found here. The locator says, "We are active in 37 dioceses in the United States and 7 in Canada. We have over 93 priests working in 48 apostolates." However, there are Latin masses available outside the SSPX and FSSP. This site, which calls itself "A Catholic directory of approved traditional Latin Masses", notes a total of 759 Latin mass locations added since the site's 2015 launch. Should my wife and I choose, we can find a Latin mass 6.8 miles from our home, although Latin masses are available at about half a dozen locations in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The other development is the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). Contemporary with Anglicanorum coetibus, it was aimed at a generally similar market, Anglicans who want a more traditional theology in their denomination. Founded in 2009, its Wikipedia entry currently notes 1019 congregations and 134,000 members. Even allowing optimistic inflation in these numbers, there's simply no comparison with the numbers for the OCSP. We can find an ACNA congregation 6.1 miles from our home. One can argue that the ACNA appeals to a low-church market, but that indicates the sheer ignorance of Anglicanism among Catholics who proposed Anglican outreach.

The clear difference in interest between the OCSP and similar traditionalist movements indicates that the other movements attract much more widespread support, while the OCSP has probably reached a high water mark in the neighborhood of 40 communities and is in the process of struggling to stay afloat. My regular correspondent sent me a link to this post at a UK blog that covers the OOLW:

The essential issue for the [OOLW] is to find young men wishing to be priests. The present contingent ranges from a few younger men through to a top heavy decidedly elderly batch who will be dropping out of active ministry, if not directly into the grave, over the next five to ten years. The current handful of seminarians will need to double if not quadruple every year if the present numbers are to be maintained.

There is also a heavy dependence upon CofE clergy moving off the sinking ship and on to the barque of Peter. Clergy attracted to the Ordinariate are like a rare breed and fast running out. Those who have joined the CofE since the foundation of the Ordinariate are unlikely to leave and indeed, are unlikely to be accepted by Rome. So we are looking at an ever decreasing pool of ex Anglican clergy who are of retirement age or older. And from that pool many are opting for the direct route via the local diocese.

. . . . Nothing new there of course but it suggests that the present “steady as she goes approach” will need some serious revision unless, of course, we accept the “conspiracy theory” approach which goes something like this. The Bishops of Engkand and Wales never wanted the Ordinariate and have discovered that through acts of extreme kindness they can actually kill it. Offer posts to Ordinariate clergy, who have no income, to run diocesan parishes who thereby become dependent upon the good will of the local bishop. Running one or even two parishes leaves little time for the Ordinariate group which either dies off or is absorbed into the parish structure.

This, of course, is another reference to the problem Bp Lopes outlined in Vienna, that under the Pastoral Provision, priests could be co-opted into diocesan work and neglect Anglican ministry -- but this is a current problem under Anglicanorum coetibus as well, one that never arose in the UK before the erection of the OOLW.

Seems like there are better options for the CDF's time and resources.

Declare Victory In Anglican Outreach And Get Out -- I

I'm going to put on my William James hat here (he and his brother Henry were the sons of Henry James Sr, a Swedenborgian apologist, so this is a little tongue-in-cheek). I want to take a pragmatic look at the reasons for Anglicanorum coetibus and, somewhat as James did in The Varieties of Religious Experience, ask whether the effort has had pragmatic effectiveness. Another way of putting it is to ask what problem Anglicanorum coetibus is trying to solve. (This is a separate question from what problem broader Anglican ecumenism, as represented by the Pastoral Provision or ARCIC, is trying to solve.)

Last April I cited an address by Bp Lopes at the University of Vienna that amounts to a formal, if couched hypothetically, statement of the problems the CDF perceived needed to be solved in drafting the apostolic constitution.

Bp Lopes outlined two basic issues. The first:

if the Holy See worked with a group of Anglicans to elaborate a proposal, and if that proposal was then entrusted to an Episcopal Conference for implementation, and if that Episcopal Conference then simply killed the proposal in committee, then a new approach might involve consultation with local Episcopal Conferences but reserve the actual oversight and direction of the implementation to the Holy See itself.

Clearly the "if" is meant to conceal specific confidential circumstances, though this may refer to a situation that appears to have come up in Canada in late 2011 that resulted in the OCSP being given jurisdiction over both US and Canadian communities. More broadly, the issue comes to opposition to formation of Anglican-based parishes from diocesan bishops, which occurred in the 1980s with St Mary of the Angels. In Bp Lopes's view, Anglicanorum coetibus allows the Holy See to oversee implementation directly and bypass episcopal opposition.

The problem is that as a matter of policy, this may be correct, but as a matter of practice, bishops still have been able to oppose OCSP communities in detail. We saw the Bishop of Rochester, NY refuse to provide residence for an OCSP priest, which forced the Rochester area group to go inactive. More recently, the Bishop of St Petersburg, FL apparently refused to support establishment of a Tampa-area group, possibly by prohibiting use of diocesan parish facilities for a proposed OCSP group.

Assuming an OCSP group in formation had the resources to pay a full time priest and own its facility, this disadvantage could be overridden, but the typical small group of two dozen can't do this and must in fact rely on diocesan jobs to support OCSP clergy and use diocesan chapels. Thus local bishops still have a practical veto and in fact have exercised it. Here's the second issue Anglicanorum coetibus was meant to address, per Bp Lopes:

if a previous proposal for corporate reunion incardinated the converting clergy into local Dioceses, and if those priests were then reassigned or assimilated into the local Diocese so that they could not minister to their former communities and foster the particular identity of those communities, then a new approach might involve creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost to assimilation into the much larger sea of Catholic life.

The problem again is that as a matter of practice, most OCSP communities can't support a full time priest, and those priests who can't be paid from the OCSP often need full- or part-time diocesan appointments. The typical demands of a small OCSP group are inevitably much smaller than the demands of a full diocesan parish, or indeed several parishes. Beyond that, Bp Lopes refers to such small groups as "former communities" to which these priests are theoretically ministering, but these groups are almost always assembled de novo, not as Anglicanorum coetibus envisioned, cohesive entities coming over as Anglican parishes. Indeed, calling these tiny groups "make-work projects" isn't far off the mark.

What we see after five years experience with implementation is that the situation Anglicanorum coetibus envisioned, cohesive groups coming over as full Anglican parishes with their clergy and with the resources to support themselves, have been by far the exception. The fewer than a dozen successful OCSP parishes are mostly former Pastoral Provision. The original paradigm simply hasn't worked, and the replacement, small gathered groups of random people only marginally qualified as canonical members, hasn't gathered momentum.

In effect, Bp Lopes's University of Vienna address acknowledged that the Pastoral Provision had failed and outlined the reasons for its failure, which Anglicanorum coetibus was intended to address. I would say that Bp Lopes's analysis doesn't seem to understand the reasons for the failure of Anglican ecumenism, but in any case, the remedies he outlines haven't been effective.

It seems to me that although William James's approach in The Varieties of Religious Experience is quirky, it works as a rough tool. In effect, he's taking the position that objections raised to religion by Hume and Kant are beside the point, because religion is successful and has good practical effects. But if we apply the rough frontier tool offered by James to Anglicanorum coetibus, it fails, because it doesn't solve the problems it defines for itself, it solves no other problems, and it has no good effects over and above those of the Church as a whole.

But as I said above, Anglicanorum coetibus is only a special case of the larger Anglican outreach project.

Yet More On The CDF

At just about the same time as the news of Cardinal Müller's non-renewal, we got other news of the CDF:

Vatican police have broken up a gay orgy at the home of the secretary to one of Pope Francis's key advisers, it has been reported.

The flat belonged to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is in charge of tackling clerical sexual abuse.

Reports in Italy claim the occupant of the apartment is allegedly the secretary to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio - a key aide to the 80-year-old Pope.

Coccopalmerio heads the Pontifical Council for Legislative texts and was said to have once recommended his secretary for a promotion to bishop.

Although the apartment, per the reports, is owned by the CDF, the secretary who lives there is in a different dicastery, and it isn't clear if anyone at all from the CDF was at the party, though it can't be excluded, and I imagine that the people who work at the curia all socialize with each other.

At first I thought this might be a direct explanation for Cardinal Müller's non-renewal, but presumably Pope Francis made the decision well before this news. The only general conclusion I can draw is that if people at the CDF tend to party themselves blind, they can't be very effective at any real work they might be expected to do.

That in turn raises the question of what concrete things the CDF has accomplished under Cardinal Müller other than a rather indifferent implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. A task one might set to the staff, assuming they aren't too bleary from last night's party, would be to re-examine the assumptions behind Anglican outreach and evaluate whether it's a project worth continuing.

I have some ideas that I'll outline tomorrow. If any party animals in Rome want to crib them, that's fine with me!

More Thoughts On The CDF

My regular correspondent comments,

The only niggling difficulty I have with your analysis is really my own inability to believe that this project is any big deal from the Vatican's perspective. As you also describe, the mention of Anglicanorum Coetibus or the Ordinariates draws a blank look from virtually everyone I know, and I move in circles that are interested in Church issues generally. I suppose that one could argue that the Anglican Communion is the #2 denomination worldwide, and successful outreach to Anglicans in (large) groups would have been a major achievement, with the added benefit of modelling a certain style of liturgy in the vernacular.

Bp Lopes often refers to the Ordinariates as "ecumenism in the front row" and although getting someone to leave one denomination for another is not my definition of "ecumenism" it is apparently his, and probably not uniquely so, and thus the Ordinariate project could be seen as an important ecumenical template. And if you had no knowledge or insight into how Anglican polity differs from the way the Church runs, I suppose you might have thought that there were Anglican leaders out there who could lead hundreds of thousands of their members into the Church. That fantasy, at least, was pretty much exploded fairly early on.

Msgr Steenson and his staff were not up to the job of launching the OCSP, and while Bp Lopes seems much more competent than his predecessor, and his Chancery staff at least qualified for their positions, it would take much, much more than this to make a silk purse out of the sow's ear that is the OCSP. The OOLW has its own, different problems and the OOLSC is silently slipping away, I would imagine. For Abp Ladaria's sake I can only hope that your take on the Vatican's response is somehow wrong.

I would say that for Pope Francis to replace Msgr Steenson (I assume this was with his approval) came as a surprise to just about everyone, as the assumption seemed to be that he would have no interest in it as a Benedict initiative, and if it fell into desuetude, so much the better. By the same token, to put Bp Lopes in as ordinary indicated a desire for a new and energetic direction. If this was the case in 2015, I don't see it changing.

When I met with Abp Hepworth, he was of the opinion that Pope Francis's gestures to the Lutherans in Sweden were part of a consistent view that included Anglicanorum coetibus, and if we suspect Bp Barron knows which way the wind is blowing, calling Luther a "mystic of grace" might be consistent with Francis's views as well. Or not.

I continue to think that the CDF is a small organization, and there are only so many projects it can undertake. If one of its most visible members, Bp Lopes, was on Anglicanorum coetibus, this suggests that project took up a great deal of the organization's time and effort. That in turn suggests Müller was replaced because expectations weren't being met.

The link I posted the other day continues to strike me as insightful. Here's more:

Second, while Müller undeniably has a more restrictive take on the implications of Amoris than many others, it’s hardly as if he’s an implacable foe of the pontiff. Recall, for instance, that the German-speaking bishops at the second Synod on the Family made a commitment in their language group to achieve unanimity on their recommendations, and Müller was part of that consensus. . . . . In other words, even if Francis truly were dividing the blues from the grays, it’s not clear on which side Müller would fall.

Abp Ladaria is seen as not much of a departure from Müller doctrinally, which suggests replacing Müller, not ready for retirement, was done for some other reason. And as my correspondent and I agree, since Anglicanorum coetibus is not well known among Catholics, it's not surprising that there would be mild puzzlement at the reasoning behind the move, and the theory that it was done over the OCSP seems a better explanation than some others.

But I don't present myself as a Vaticanologist here!

Looking At The CDF From A Corporate Paradigm

I've kept thinking along the lines I began in yesterday's post: let's say we're low-level cube denizens speculating in the coffee room about what's going on in Mahogany Row. The Vice President for Compliance, say, has announced he's leaving to spend more time with his family (the CEO also did this several years ago). For that matter, the VP of Finance just went on leave to address sexual harassment charges. People say things haven't seemed right in their division for quite a while. Sales are way down in the regional offices. The cube rats, of course, may or may not have any insights, but they're probably going to put out a number of competing theories, and some may ring truer than others.

I speculated late last year that Bp Lopes, having taken over the OCSP after Msgr Steenson's removal a year before, was acting as though he would be held accountable for the OCSP's performance on the anniversary. A glossy soft-focus brochure was put out to celebrate his achievements. Effort has clearly been made to create the appearance of new groups coming in. Problems like the inability to implement financial software or conduct a parish census are pushed into the shadows. Financial shortfalls, dire as they may be, are minimized.

Msgr Steenson and the key people around him were removed pretty clearly for unsatisfactory performance. This suggests that there were expectations in the CDF that things should have turned out better than they had. In the corporate accountability paradigm, which may apply here at least in part, if A doesn't perform, A-prime, his superior, is held accountable. If A-prime can't fix the problem caused by A, then A-double-prime, his superior, will hold him accountable.

In this reasoning, Bp Lopes was sent in to fix things in the new division, which Msgr Steenson had been unable to do. I suspect that someone in headquarters has been taking a close look at sales and revenue. But A hasn't done any better than his predecessor, as far as headquarters can see. So the ax falls on Cardinal Müller, who is A-prime. (Keep in mind that the six unnecessary months spent sorting things out for Our Lady of the Atonement was 10% of Cardinal Müller's tenure as Prefect of the CDF.) A corporate VP who was this feckless would in fact be let go.

In this model, which may or may not apply, we may surmise that the OCSP has been under major scrutiny. If true, resolving the OCSP issue will be near the top of Abp Ladaria's to-do list. In that case, we can expect further changes.

Cardinal Müller

Aside from a well-publicized assessment of Ms Brzezinski's IQ and facelift, the big news of the weekend has been Cardinal Müller's removal as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Now, I've only been Catholic for a little over four years, and I don't present myself as a Vaticanologist. I tend to lean toward the assessment we see here:

First, as of July 2, Müller reached the end of the five-year term to which he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Granted, such terms can be extended at a pope’s discretion, but the point is that it’s not really as if Müller has been “fired”. His service was up, and the pope decided to name someone else.

But from the perspective of someone who spent time in corporation environments, where such personnel moves aren't unusual and can be just as hard to parse, here's my take.

Müller's term at the CDF has matched almost precisely the time span for implementing Anglicanorum coetibus, which has been a key responsibility of the dicastery. My solid impression of diocesan Catholics, including clergy, is that if you mention Anglicanorum coetibus to them, you'll get a puzzled expression and "huh?" I don't even try, I just give a 100,000-foot version of that papal provision that didn't work out for us.

From what I understand, the CDF isn't all that big, with a staff of about 25. Its proceedings are confidential, so it's hard to assess exactly what it's been doing for the last five years, but recognize that now-Bp Lopes, an up-and-coming member, must have spent a good part of his time there on Anglicanorum coetibus and the ordinariates.

Certainly a bunch of people at the CDF must have been preoccupied for six months or so just with the issues surrounding Our Lady of the Atonement -- issues that had apparently been festering since Abp Flores's time, which ought to have been disposed of at the diocesan level. None of this is a picture of efficiency, I'm sorry to say. Think of all the other things the CDF might have been able to deal with had it not used up some level of time and energy on Anglicanorum coetibus, which has been a damp squib.

The mountain labored and brought us -- a fuzzy cell phone photo of Bp Lopes celebrating ad orientem on the windowsill of a hospital chapel.

I wish the new prefect better outcomes.

Time For Plan B?

Yesterday I talked about a robust job market that gave employees relative free agency, such that it was possible to balance the costs of remaining in a bad job situation against the benefits of updating a resume and seeking new employment. The point at which an employee potentially realized he had reached the balance point I called an "oh, bleep moment". The conditions that permit this include, in the individual, good situational awareness, both of the current work environment and the outside job market, a sense of one's own worth (both economically and in the eyes of the Almighty), and a sense of justice.

As I looked at pictures of the provisional and often shabby worship environments in the OCSP over the past couple of weeks, I couldn't help but think certain conditions were missing, certainly among the laity but even among some of the clergy -- these would include good situational awareness, both of the current worship environment and nearby parishes, a sense of one's own worth in the eyes of the Almighty, and a sense of justice. Now and then I've heard from people, including clergy, who've said the St Mary of the Angels parish suffered injustice at the hands of the Church, and I agree, but frankly, looking at all those sad worship environments in the OCSP, I've got to think a greater injustice is taking place there.

This includes allowing members to hold the illusion that things are going to get better. As my regular correspondent points out, within five years of its founding, Our Lady of the Atonement had acquired its property and commenced construction. Within five years of the erection of the OCSP, nearly all its communities are still in basement chapels or the equivalent. Sending Fr Phillips around isn't going to change things. The injustice includes appointing mediocrities to serve as clergy, many of whom had unsuccessful careers in fringe denominations and have shown no greater success in the Church -- while passing over better candidates. My regular correspondent asks whether Msgr Steenson has worshiped or had any involvement with the Minnesota OCSP community since his move there, for instance -- does this say something?

Indeed, my regular correspondent pointed out

Three men were ordained as priests in the OCSP [last Thursday]. Fr Martens will be taking over some of Fr Kenyon's pastoral responsibilities at SJE, Calgary, but this parish has gone from having a full-time pastor with a full-time associate, to having a full-time pastor with a part-time deacon, to having a part-time pastor. Who will be working with the Bros, which I predict will be a culture shock for both parties. Fr Erdman will be working to grow his community of Our Lady and St John, Louisville; I counted about 25 people at his diaconal ordination in April, and this may have included friends and parishioners of the host church. So only Fr Simington will be available to fill one of the gaps that exist in the OCSP or will appear in the next year (I understand he is going to Rochester). The pace of ordination will need to pick up, especially of priests who will be available to minister to more than a few dozen.

More than a few dozen or less, how much of a difference is there? The whole idea of a shortage is an abstraction created from the idea that the OCSP needs to minister to individual tiny stagnant or shrinking groups, so widely separated that there's no way to merge them. And since nobody irrespective of jurisdiction could countenance paying clergy under such circumstances, the OCSP and the laity are getting the marginal characters they can afford.

The question I have is whether OCSP laity, outside the handful of communities that can maintain a full parish program, has the situational awareness, the sense of their own worth, and the sense of justice to move on. (Indeed, I think of clergy, better candidates than those selected, who were passed over in the runup to the OCSP who themselves had the ability to reassess their mission in life and move on -- it would appear that some of the current marginal individuals serving as clergy in the OCSP, or who wish to, will also be called to do this at some point but are oblivious, at least so far.)

Maybe the "oh, bleep moment" that came most clearly for me was the photo of Bp Lopes celebrating mass ad orientem on the windowsill of the Orlando hospital chapel. Everyone, I think, can do better than this. Folks, look around, see what's available in the diocese and listen to the call.