Two men were ordained to the diaconate for the OCSP this July at Our Lady of Hope, Kansas City, MO, but you will search in vain for any mention of this on either the OCSP website or the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, (or the Our Lady of Hope website or FB page, for that matter). Ditto the diaconal ordinations of two men at Incarnation, Orlando in August. Mrs G says that the AC blog "welcomes news" as long as she doesn't have to actually gather it, but it must be provided by an AC Society member. I think that someone with an interest in OCSP matters might have welcomed a link to this article even if provided by a Snake-Handling Baptist.Well, if news of diaconal ordinations were to be published, someone (the diocesan visitors to this blog are pretty sharp, anyhow) might ask if these were permanent or transitional, and if transitional, why. The OCSP is somewhere around 30% overstrength in its priests, yet Bp Lopes had to ordain one new man and plan to ordain another to replace Fr Kenyon. What's up with that?
This leads to another question, the formation of all these ordinands, past and present. The tendency, no matter what, is for the OCSP to go "Poof! You're a Catholic priest/deacon!" with at best some perfunctory distance-learning program. A Catholic priest is more typically formed in the parish, in the family, often sometimes in the school, before entering seminary, and the process is facilitated by parish clergy and a professional vocations director.
Recent problems with Frs Phillips and Kenyon, two stalwarts of the whole Anglican outreach movement, suggest that going poof is not adequate as formation. I repeat, pace Bartus partisans at Ms Gyapong's blog, that there are devout, prayerful, and thoughtful people who feel this man's ordination was ill-advised, and the processes in the OCSP are not capable, then or now, of screening out unworthy candidates. I would not advise anyone to go to an OCSP priest for confession, again, without grave reason. My correspondent continues,
Meanwhile she has recently reposted pictures of personal oratories, where I note Byzantine-style icons, a copy of the Crucifix which spoke to St Francis of Assisi, the da Vinci "Last Supper," Durer "Praying Hands" (both in copper tooling), and St Faustina's Divine Mercy image. A real festival of Anglican Patrimony! Only things missing are the Sallman Head and the Infant of Prague. Originally posted on a closed Ordinariate FB page, which underlines the clubby nature of what little news trickles out. Lots of space for another CV of the musical Mahon family, or another picture of Cardinal Burke. But none for, say, the Chesterton House initiative of St Benedict, Edmonton https://chestertonhouse.wordpress.com/ up and running since last year.Well, the precious treasures of the Anglican patrimony are what Ms G says they are. Poof!
