Monday, January 22, 2018

Crossovers

My regular correspondent points out several instances of an OCSP priest serving in a diocesan parish.
Fr Luke Reese is a Parochial Vicar at Holy Rosary, Indianapolis where he celebrates DW for the St Joseph of Arimathea OCSP community but also celebrates mass and carries out other pastoral functions for the OF and EF congregations. This is similar to the situation at Our Lady of Sorrows, Kansas City, as we have noted. And before his early retirement Fr Venuti was Pastor of St Joan of Arc, Mobile, celebrating both a DW and an OF mass there on Sundays. Fr Patrick Allen of the OCSP is also Parochial Vicar at St Mary of the Annunciation, Charleston, where both that parish and the Corpus Christi OCSP congregation celebrate a Sunday mass.
I do note that the St Mary of the Annunciation parish has a detailed schedule for masses, adoration, and rosaries, but no times listed for confession. Have I misunderstood this, or is this a lucky break for Fr Allen, who might not be well versed in hearing confessions?

My correspondent continues,

I noted somewhere that St Martha, Murrieta had 6200 registered families. No OCSP group is in this league; even the full parishes are mostly three numbers, struggling to pay for/maintain a building for a parish of a size which a regular Catholic diocese would close in a heartbeat. If the Ordinariate must exist, sharing clergy and buildings seems to avoid many of the objections we have raised. Of course it would leave the Ordinary in a fringe role. Where an OCSP priest has later been incardinated into a local diocese we must assume that either he was not interested in gathering a local Ordinariate group, or he was not really interested in the group he already had (Fr Davis and Fr Wagner, formerly of St Gilbert, Boerne, fall into this category). Otherwise it seems possible to keep a foot in both camps.
Considering numbers and opportunities, the existence of OCSP priests helping out in diocesan parishes seems quite unusual, especially recognizing that there's a shortage of Catholic priests overall, and OCSP priests serving small groups aren't heavily burdened. And think of the cases where an OCSP priest has a diocesan job like property manager, where ordination isn't needed. This seems like another instance suggesting diocesan bishops may not be especially well-disposed toward the OCSP -- I think with some reason.