Let's Get Real

Ms Gyapong seems to see enough substance in my post here Wednesday to mount a reply. People are naturally entitled to their own judgments, but what interests me here is how little Ms Gyapong and a commenter can marshal to provide a counter-argument to what they refer to as an overly gloomy picture of the OCSP.

Ms Gyapong first concedes my point as to overall scope by referring to various highly specialized jurisdictions, but she concludes,

clearly an entity the size of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter or the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are [sic] viable in the Catholic Church. The viability of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross may seem a bit more tenuous, but the reception of the Church of the Torres Strait will strengthen it considerably. This is an area in which Mr. Bruce clearly has missed the mark.

But within the past week, I quoted remarks from Msgr Newton, the ordinary of OOLW, to the effect that its numbers there were unsatisfactory as of 2014. Those cited were "around 85 priests and 1,500 lay members", and this prompted Msgr Newton to comment, "We must be honest and say the ordinariate has not grown as much as we hoped it might. The vision has not been caught[.]" This isn't me saying it, it's Mr Big. The OCSP has never released any verifiable total membership count, but I believe the most optimistic estimate would give an order of magnitude -- somewhere in the low to mid four figures -- consistent with the OOLW. By extension, this would also be unsatisfactory.

But note that even Ms Gyapong effectively concedes that the numbers in Australia are not satisfactory, but perhaps with the addition of the Church of the Torres Strait, they might become so. I don't see this as a rosy picture at all.

She cites the Roman Catholic Diocese of Juneau, with about 10,000 members. This exceeds any realistic estimate of OCSP membership by at least double, but it's worth noting that it has 11 priests, not the 60 or more in the OCSP. I assume these priests and their bishop must often travel to their parishes and missions by plane or boat. This suggests to me that the allocation of resources is more efficient and productive than what we're seeing from Houston, which struggles to provide even the bishop's travel. The 11 priests there are paid, several more than in the OCSP. I just don't see a comparison between a functioning diocese and a someday-maybe-it-will-get-better prelature.

I would also say that we know so little about Albanian, Bulgarian, or Greek Catholics that any comparison is a stretch -- but let's get a little Abrahamic here. The Diocese of Juneau is, it seems to me, at least double the size of the OCSP, and it appears to own more properties, as well as being better able to fund clergy and their travel. I would say it's really out of range for comparison. But let's look at the Eastern churches cited, just on the basis of numbers.

What's a viable number, leaving all other considerations aside? 10,000, sure. 1,500, according to Msgr Newton, awfully shaky. Less than that, like three figures in Australia, by Ms Gyapong's concession, no. The OCSP won't release a hard number, with wildly varying estimates from Bp Lopes between 8,000 and 20,000 -- not credible, based only on what we see for numbers in the four or five largest parishes. The best Ms Gyapong can suggest is that in places like Albania, if you dig, you can find a jurisdiction that might be around the same size as the OCSP. We know little or nothing else about it.

I would cite Herbert Stein's Law in economics: if something cannot continue forever, it will stop. The Church will continue forever, parishes will be suppressed.

So where do we draw the line? Will the Almighty destroy the city if there are ten righteous men there? Well, Fr Kelley is fond of pointing out that the Lord said he wouldn't destroy the city for the sake of the ten -- but he did in fact destroy the city. It seems to me that we have very sound scriptural basis for the idea of negotiation, as well as the idea of lower limits on things.

Is 1,500 a viable number? Is 300 families at OLA a viable number? We have some evidence for the idea that these numbers are unsatisfactory.

Regarding whether the St Mary's vestry and Abp Hepworth are correct to set conditions on things, I'm puzzled that Ms Gyapong would equate her somewhat shabby worship environment in Ottawa with a property whose total value, including the Della Robbia, is somewhere in the high eight or low nine digits, according to Abp Hepworth. He and the vestry have a fiduciary duty to see that the value of this resource is most appropriately used. I could, for instance, conceive of a disposal of the resource, should it be prudent, through a sale, with proceeds donated to a Catholic cause other than the OCSP, though this would be entirely up to the vestry and Abp Hepworth.

They would have the very serious duty, however, of determining the best use of the resource, pace Ms Gyapong.