Another Visitor Comments

I received a very thoughtful e-mail from a diocesan Catholic visitor:

I read the comments you posted from one of your visitors and had to laugh out loud at their positing there must be a “toxic management structure” in the OCSP. Yes, ironically, it’s called the Catholic Church.

I’m not a genius here, but using my Spock Logic, I can noodle out the connection between OCSP parishes and communities that had difficulties with their former pastoral provision dioceses and the current “toxicity” of the OCSP management. It’s the same thing for groups that were former Anglican or Episcopal communities that came into the OCSP and seem to be stagnating or dwindling. Why, because the OCSP was set up to be a DIOCESE exactly like (with the exception of the physical boundaries) every other diocese in the Catholic Church. To people who are accustomed to not having to answer to a Pope, accustomed to running their own faith community as they see fit without interference from a bishop and are inured to leaders who, in the past were treated as celebrity mini-popes and all-knowing hero/saviors, I’m sure the hierarchy of the Catholic Church seems pretty “toxic”. BTW, same goes for cradle Catholics who know better than the Pope, better than their Bishop and would rather separate themselves from the “great sea of unwashed” sheeple to foster their own private island of holiness and reverence, secure in the belief that they are smarter, holier and just better than the rest of the chumps in the Catholic Church.

Does this sentiment remind you of anything, say… Protestant Reformation, anyone???

My concern for some time has been that going out of the way to accommodate Anglicans as Anglicans smacks of syncretism. When I think of stories like the recent reading about the Canaanite woman, it seems to me that Our Lord is specifically disregarding the woman's background, not fawning over it or setting up a special provision for Canaanites. My visitor goes on,

Converting to Catholicism is a huge thing! It is a sea-change in thinking and behavior. Part of being a true Catholic is having the humility to be OBEDIENT to the Pope and by extension, his bishops and clergy, even when you don’t like what they are doing or saying (or not doing or saying). This is anathema to some and part of why being a practicing Catholic is so hard and why, in my humble opinion, the OCSP can’t seem to get it’s act together.

I agree completely about the sea change in converting to Catholicism. But a great deal of the transcendent value in it is outside the Anglican tradition -- for instance, St Thomas Aquinas. But if all you meet when you go to church in its whole range of activities is other Anglicans, you have much less chance of discovering what it means to be fully Catholic. In fact, it seems to me that a common Anglo-Catholic view is "we're Catholic enough, we don't need more of this ultramontanism". My visitor goes on,

Resisting using ParishSoft, hiding/withholding information about parish finances and parishioner demographics and other ways these groups obfuscate themselves from their ordinaries/bishops seem like ways to maintain independence but are very short sighted. Bishops/ordinaries use the information they request from parishes for planning and support. How does a Bishop know if an additional parish/school/community center is needed on the south side of town if the parishes in the surrounding community are not sharing attendance and financial information. How does the Bishop know to appoint a bi-lingual priest if the demographics of a parish are not reported? How does the Bishop plan for staff to obtain student visas for Catholic schools if the student population is shrouded in anonymity (ask Bp. Lopes about this—OLA’s Atonement Academy is having heck getting timely support from the OCSP in handling the paperwork for their foreign students because they don’t have the staff/expertise in place to support this). Yes, the structure of a diocese is cumbersome and rigid for parishes so that the dioceses can have the strength and flexibility to contract and expand as needed for the health and benefit of the whole Church, not just one parish.

Well, bishops use information for planning and support, but of course, this can also be used for the necessary task of closing and merging parishes. Unfortunately, a realistic diocesan bishop would probably close all but a few OCSP communities. Keep in mind that in a few cases, these communities are trying to sustain physical plants that diocesan bishops had already closed for parish use -- but their results in these plants haven't been much better.

To some extent, it seems to me that communities are hiding information with the connivance and tacit permission of Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins, because past a certain point, they have absolutely no choice but to recognize that these groups are too small and unfocused to prosper and too distant to supervise effectively when their half-baked clergy need supervision more than anything else.