CCD is returningMy regular correspondent confirms,Addition of Saturday vigil Mass
When the bishop came to visit the last few times Fr Phillips was not present at the altar when all the other clergy was.
It appears that the entire school and church is being reorganized. The Phillips family members, wife and daughter, are no longer heads of departments.
Bp Lopes made an episcopal visitation to the school last week, presumably to put the official stamp on a new regime there."CCD", Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, is commonly referred to by its abbreviation, or simply as "Catechism," and provides religious education to Catholic children attending secular schools. The visitor who reported this says it had been absent from OLA for at least ten years. This would be another indication that the "corporate reunion" movement, left to itself, pays only lip service to mainstream Catholicism and must be closely monitored.
The emerging picture of the changes that have been reported here is that, had the parish remained in the archdiocese, Abp Garcia-Siller would likely have made very similar moves. His removal of Fr Phillips appears to have been fully justified, and Phillips's replacement as "pastor emeritus" has been largely cosmetic, meant to assuage a pro-Phillips faction in the parish, but Bp Lopes and Fr Lewis have made it increasingly clear that Fr Phillips is no longer in charge.
This in turn suggests that if an OCSP parish is close enough to be effectively supervised from Houston, and if it's big enough to make the supervision worthwhile, Bp Lopes is able to give it his attention. However, communities thousands of miles away are not as likely to be in this position and represent real vulnerabilities for the OCSP.
