Aaron Bayles (sometime Curate at the Church of the Good Shepherd) is to be ordained by Bishop Lopes as a Deacon in the Ordinariate November 9th at the cathedral. Kindly keep him in your prayers.But leaving all else aside, here's a post from the Our Lady of Grace Facebook page two weeka earlier:
This leads me to several puzzles. The first one is that Mr Bayles (who is the person shown being received here) is only entering the Church within weeks of bring ordained a transitional deacon. As an Anglican, he had served as a chaplain in the US Air Force Reserve. When did he resign his Anglican orders? Did he remain as an Anglican chaplain until just before he was received as a Catholic? If so, isn't that an exception to the normal policy that an Anglican candidate for the OCSP submit his resignation from Anglican orders as part of his dossier to the CDF?
This may not be the case -- the secrecy surrounding Bayles's prospective ordination prevents a better understanding of the situation -- and obviously, a bishop can ordain a ham sandwich. If someone can clarify what's going on here, it will be helpful.
Second, Bayles is being ordained a transitional deacon on November 9, and a comment from Fr Bartus below on that Facebook page says he will be ordained a priest on May 31, 2018. This appears to be another exception to announced policy that all OCSP ordinations are to take place in June.
Third, good grief -- yeah, a bishop can ordain a ham sandwich, but who in their right mind would go to a ham sandwich for confession in other but grave necessity? This guy will be eligible to counsel people and hear confessions after seven months as a Catholic. Diocesan priests, whether or not they attend Catholic schools and colleges, typically spend most of their lives as Catholics in Catholic families and parishes, they certainly attend Catholic seminaries, and they're formed under years of supervision by a vocations director.
But here someone named Rico Aguirre, not a name that immediately suggests an Anglican background, is feeling blessed that in seven months, this ham sandwich will be their priest and presumably hearing their confessions. From the Facebook page, my regular correspondent gets the impression that many in the Pasadena group are cradle Catholics. Why would cradle Catholics be enthusiastic about getting a newly Catholic and sketchily qualified priest, especially when the ordinary kind who went to a Catholic seminary and had real attention given to his formation can be found just down the road? What's the deal here?
That this whole thing should be such a secret doesn't augur well.
