Two more groups---San Agustin, Pinecrest, FL, and St Anselm, Greenville, SC---have folded. San Agustin has been absorbed into the parish at which it met. There is no Spanish-language version of DW so apart from the social connection of the founding members it is hard to see what was on offer there. St Anselm, Greenville was one of the groups meeting in a basement chapel in a school which you featured last year. Its members have apparently drifted away to parishes with children's programs and the other sorts of parish activity which a small group with no weekday meeting space could never offer. In these groups the priest is active in the local dioceses; it is lay demand which has disappeared.Last year, my correspodent reported of the Pinecrest group,
According to the calendar posted at the St Louis, Pinecrest FL site the San Agustin Ordinariate Mission is still celebrating mass here every Sunday. Fr Pedro Toledo and a group of 21 of his former REC parishioners were received there in 2014. He is listed as the Mission Administrator in the bulletin. As far as I know this is the only Spanish-language OCSP congregation. There is no Spanish Ordinariate Rite, so they use the Spanish OF. Clearly they have chosen to worship as a group, despite the fact that there are two other Spanish masses at St Louis every Sunday.Fr Toledo came originally from Venezuela, was raised Catholic until he was 10, but became a Pentecostal with his family. He eventually attended seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando and headed various Reformed and then Anglican Hispanic groups until he took the San Agustin group into the OCSP. He continues to serve as a priest in the Archdiocese of Miami.
Regarding the St Anselm's community, my correspondent reports,
St Anselm's previous arrangements are described here. This was I believe a community gathered by Fr Jon Chalmers before he left Greenville to become the President of a school in Birmingham, AL. He is now also the Administrator of a diocesan parish there. He has apparently not attempted to start an Ordinariate community. His TEC career was quite marginal, as you can see here.I think these closures give some insight into the somewhat frantic efforts by Houston to identify potential new groups -- it must run pretty fast to stay in the same place. The reason for these groups closing is one I've identified -- an OCSP group-in-formation is simply not a diocesan parish, and it offers little of what Catholics can expect to find at a diocesan parish. If the group meets on diocesan parish premises, the range of "real" Catholic activities (probably including masses at normal times, if nothing else) will eventually draw the fringe group into the full community.
That, of course, is the good potential outcome.
