OCSP 2018 Bishop's Appeal

A visitor sent me a picture of the recently-released brochure for the 2018 OCSP Bishop's Appeal, in hopes that I might be able to pass it on for more informed opinion. I've cropped it to focus on the amounts and percentages -- many visitors probably have received a copy in the mail. You can get a larger version by clicking on the image.

The visitor's view is, "The budget allocations strike me as a quite administration-heavy, and the category definitions are pretty interesting, too." I passed this on to my regular correspondent, who said,

In a typical diocese seminarians get student loans to cover their tuition, etc which their diocese assume if/when they are ordained. Presumably this is the OCSP practice. Not sure how it funds the on-line instruction and semi-annual residential seminars for former clergy or its candidates for the permanent diaconate. "Parish Development" clearly the ongoing attempt to get a handle on membership files and other record-keeping tasks like Safe Environment, which are all a mess. "Communication Outreach" has also been a weak link from Day One. Hard to believe anyone has put five cents into it up till now.

My first reaction is that $253,125 isn't much, no matter what. How much of an impact any expenditure of this size can have on the OCSP's problem areas is going to be hard to discern. A bigger question is that $30,075 is going for the bishop's travel expenses, and I'm assuming that overnight accommodations will be in Church facilities. Normally, a diocesan bishop doesn't need to fly hundreds or thousands of miles to make episcopal visits, and this is just the most visible indication that maintaining cohesiveness in such a scattered prelature will be difficult. Regarding other areas, my regular correspondent added,

"Evangelization" a bit of a stretch for the Ordinary's travel expenses, and I would put production of an annual Pastoral Letter down as an office expense. Going back to "Communication," as you have probably noticed I am constantly puzzled as to why the OOLW can produce a monthly magazine, on-line and in print, and maintain a comprehensive and up-to-date, if not particularly exciting, website, while the OCSP fails to report anything, including ordinations, unless someone outside the Chancery takes the initiative to submit a news item, manages one "infomercial" magazine a year, and cannot maintain even an up-to-date list of parishes on its website, let alone accurate service times and contact details.

And again, given the relatively small amounts allocated to these areas, regardless of intent, I'm not sure how much of an impact any measures can really have, if the current direction and level of effort has been so unavailing.

Regarding the allocation for clergy and vocations, I'm struck yet again by what continues to be a two-tier approach. An upper tier of parishes and more successful groups is apparently eligible to receive seminarians once they complete their formation. A much larger lower tier gets the Protestant retreads, whose quality has been steadily diminishing over the life of the OCSP.

I think this is important, because the lectionaries for the TEC 1979 BCP and the Roman Catholic missal are the same. I went through ten three-year cycles in 30 years as an Episcopalian, and since 2013, I've been through more than one cycle as a Catholic. I've got to say that the homilies I hear on significant readings -- let's say the raising of Lazarus, the woman at the well, if you forgive the sins of any -- are night and day between TEC and Catholic. They go to what Bp Barron calls the physics of salvation, and as far as I can see, whether this is at Nashotah House or Yale, the interpretations Anglican seminarians learn are at best pale imitations of what we hear from priests infused from the start with Augustine and Aquinas. Let's not even mention the substantial number of OCSP priests who went to Reformed seminaries.

We hear, or surmise, that some diocesan bishops are pushing back over allowing OCSP groups-in-formation in their territories. Given in particular the poor formation of the lower-tier priests and their quickie ordinations, I've got to say I have a lot of sympathy with these bishops, and I don't see that Bp Lopes's apparent direction for the OCSP will do much to solve this problem, or for that matter, any other. The overall spending levels don't strike me as enough to make any real changes.

In contrast, my wife and I have been increasing our financial support of our diocesan parish and related charities year by year. The reason for this is twofold: the effective preaching by parish clergy about the need for sacrificial giving, and the visible good use to which the parish and the archdiocese put our money. If any OCSP members find the 2018 bishop's appeal budget troubling from this perspective -- I would guess that if a visitor sent me a copy hoping to get outside input, this may be the case -- I would suggest they investigate possible alternatives if strong diocesan parishes are available nearby.