In comments on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog Mr Guivens has twice called recent attention, (with no response) to an article in the latest issue of the Portal, the monthly magazine of the OOLW, on the Church of Torres Strait. This was a TAC member body composed of former members of the Anglican Church of Australia who left over some jurisdictional issue involving the appointment of an indigenous bishop. As first reported they wished to enter the Church via Anglicanorum coetibus as a distinct Ordinariate, with thousands of potential members on the islands and in the diaspora.This brought to mind the Roman Catholic Diocese of Juneau, where priests must presumably rely on boat and plane to say mass, but the circumstances there must certainly be more routinized and cohesive. Instead, I think again of St John the Evangelist Calgary, 2116 miles and a four-hour flight from Houston. Observers on the ground in the Diocese of Shrewsbury are firm on the point that SJE's former pastor, Fr Kenyon, requires close supervision, but he clearly never had it in Calgary.Eventually this was scaled down to potential membership in the Australian OOLSC, but apart from occasional announcements that negotiations were ongoing nothing more has been heard since the OOLSC was established five years ago. Occasionally they are in the news when Peter Slipper, Hepworth's protégé, pays a visit but otherwise few reports. Now it appears from the Portal article that they have "abandoned this ecumenical effort" and are being led "down a different path," with the exception of a single congregation, or part thereof, on the island of Duaun.
This group, however, does not have a clerical leader, so they have become members of the OOLSC parish in Cairns (which is led by the former Vicar-General of the Church if Torres Strait, ordained in the OOLSC in 2013). "The journey to Duaun from the Australian Mainland involves two or three flights and a short sea passage by inflatable dinghy" (you couldn't make this up) and costs approx AUS$2000. I am sure Fr Barnier has a faithful following at Holy Cross, Duaun, but this arrangement typifies the lack of resources at the disposal of the Ordinariates and the precariousness of their existence. And of course the discrepancy between the preliminary hype and the reality.
Again, we're dealing with something like Robert X Cringely's 30-day airplane, probably something that as a practical matter can't be done and shouldn't even be tried. My guess is that Calgary, with no effective supervision over some very sketchy clergy, will, within a fairly short period of time, erupt into a situation that will bring down the OCSP.
