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.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.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.
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).
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.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.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.
