Fr. Lewis then introduced the founding pastor, Fr. Phillips, to repeat the pitch that everyone who considers OLA as their parish should consider Bishop Lopes as their Ordinary, and register with the Ordinatiate. Otherwise neither Houston nor the Vatican can recognize the success of the parish.
For reference, a visitor knowledgeable about the Archdiocese of San Antonio recently told me, "I would be surprised if OLA has 800 families." I would say that my gut feeling since getting to know more about OLA and Fr Phillips is that everything about the place is probably overstated. This would include the number of families and the proportion of them that supported moving to the OCSP. If 800 families is a high estimate, then half or fewer seem to have had much enthusiasm about leaving the archdiocese, despite the hype of the Save Atonement group. The argument now seems to be that it's done, you've all now got to get with the program.
Another interpretation could be that 800 families is not just a high estimate, it's a very high estimate, and 300 may be much closer than believed to actual membership. Fr Phillips's apparent unwillingness to cooperate with the archdiocese could support this view, that nobody really had a clear picture of the parish, and only with Fr Lewis's arrival are we going to start to see what the reality is.
None of this can be encouraging to Houston, whether it's a question of enthusiasm or actual numbers. I think Bp Lopes anticipated that the addition of OLA would change things for the OCSP, and I think there's now some reason to question the assumption. It's significant too that the visitor who told me about this said that the announcement wasn't mentioned in the printed bulletin or the web version.
