Let's Take A Closer Look At The Barnabas Academy in Omaha

With the help of several knowledgeable visitors, I've been learning some of the functions dioceses perform over the past several weeks and comparing them to the North American ordinariate, which is described to the public as "like a diocese", except that it functions on a continental, supernational basis. It owns and renovates property, but unlike a diocese, it doesn't have a building or property department. It runs schools (or more accurately, schools function in its name), but it has no school department. Nobody at ordinariate headquarters supervises or enforces policies over either function, even though dioceses typically concern themselves with key matters like building codes and accreditation.

Yesterday in examining this problem, I mentioned the Barnabas Academy attached to the St Barnabas ordinariate parish in Omaha. The visitor who provided the very useful and informative information on diocesan school departments in yesterday's post decided to follow the link there, repeated here, and take a closer look. He then asked the sorts of questions an experienced school administrator might be expected to ask. He sent me this e-mail:

I did some cursory looking into Saint Barnabas Academy. . .

It appears to me that doing a check of the Nebraska DOE listings Saint Barnabas Academy is not accredited through the Nebraska DOE, which for non-public schools is optional in that state.

It also appears that only 1 teacher has a teaching license. The "Headmaster" does not have a building administrators license and his teaching experience is through a charter school network out of Arizona.

It is not a far stretch to assume that 1. with out accreditation and 2 without licensed teachers the high school diplomas from Saint Barnabas Academy are not recognized by the state of Nebraska as an indicator of educational achievement.

I would also assume that the local archdiocese does not really want Saint Barnabas to be under their umbrella. 1 continuously non-accredited school can jeopardize the legitimacy of an entire district and can impact grant funding ie. Title 1, Special Education. . .

I asked the visitor what a building administrator's license implies, and it appears to be basically a principal or headmaster's credential:

Principal licensure ensures that the individual running the school has the education and experience to run a school in a safe secure and legal manner... think special education laws, mandated reporter laws, professional development, how to handle children, adolescent psychology, pedagogy. . .

I was concerned enough to e-mail the contact address on the Barnabas Academy web page:

Several individuals interested in the North American ordinariate have been reviewing the St Barnabas Academy website. One, with an educational administrative background, has checked into your status with the Nebraska Department of Education and determined that Saint Barnabas Academy is not accredited through the Nebraska DOE, which for non-public schools is optional in that state.

It also appears that only 1 teacher has a teaching license. The "Headmaster" does not have a building administrators license and his teaching experience is through a charter school network out of Arizona. It is not a far stretch to assume that 1. with out accreditation and 2 without licensed teachers the high school diplomas from Saint Barnabas Academy are not recognized by the state of Nebraska as an indicator of educational achievement.

Can you clarify the status of the school with the Nebraska DOE? Are prospective parents informed of these circumstances, if true? Also, has the Archdiocese of Omaha given its approval for the use of the term “Catholic school” on your web page? What is the official value of a diploma from the St Barnabas Academy?

I got a very quick reply from Carter Lowman, who is listed as the headmaster on the faculty page of the website:

John,

Thank you for your inquiry. Feel free to give me a call at [redacted] to discuss.

Thanks,
Carter

I hate it when people e-mail me and ask me to call them. I make only very occasional exceptions. I replied,

Carter, I simply hesitate to handle these things in a phone call – things just aren’t clear enough verbally. I’d much, much prefer a written response. If you have to get approvals for the written response, just let me know and I’ll wait. But be advised that a lack of response will be published. Thanks very much for your cooperation! It’s in your interest, naturally, to have your side of things out there.

So far, there's been no further response from Mr Carter, Esq. I looked our unaccredited headmaster up on Google and discovered that his day job is, or was, as an attorney. He apparently passed the Nebraska bar in 2018. His Linkedin profile says he was a summer associate at Koley Jessen, a major Omaha law firm, but is not currently listed as an attorney at that firm. He is listed as an Omaha area attorney on Avvo, but the listing is not active. His thumbnail on the Barnabas Academy page says,

Before passing the bar, Carter taught Humane Letters at Glendale Preparatory Academy in Phoenix, Arizona for two years, focusing on such texts as the Federalist Papers and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America.

His favorite book is Hemingway's The Old Man And The Sea. Really? He majored in philosophy and that's his favorite book? So, the school's headmaster has at best two years classroom experience at an Arizona high school.

One question I have is why he seems to have changed his career goal from attorney to startup school headmaster. He spent years in law school, but hasn't done any course work in school administration. If his goal was to work as an associate lawyer, this would, of course, be a massive demand on a young associate's time, and even a part-time school headmaster job would be out of the question. But even if he couldn't find work right away as an attorney, there are many, many jobs available in a place like Omaha for someone with a legal background in the insurance, finance, or rail industries. What's his direction? This is troubling.

But this is just the start of many questions that are coming to mind about the schools in the North American ordinariate.

"It Just Baffles Me. . ."

says a visitor, "With all of the other 'issues' that the Ordinariate and their congregations have, they are thinking of schools." He says, "My mother was a Catholic school teacher in the suburbs and the inner city, I worked in parishes with schools, I know from experience what it takes to run a school. I cannot for the life of me understand what their end game is." He told me about his current work as an educational administrator in a state prison system:

I’m familiar with what goes into running a small school system. We have 14 schools in adult prisons with an average daily student count that numbers somewhere just over 2000 students. We have around 125 teachers, 3 regional managers, 14 site managers/coordinators (principals), 13 administrative assistants, and 3 yes 3 central office staff including myself (2 lowly functionaries and a Director). We administer almost $3,000,000.00 per year of state and federal grant money (we just submitted a $750,000.00 grant application which we have to do every year) and an education provider contract that totals over 7 figures for 2 years of provided services. . . . We take very seriously our responsibility.

He puts this in the context of a diocesan education staff.

I cannot fathom why the Ordinariate would want to embark on a piecemeal education endeavor, spread potentially over 50 states and Canada. 51 different sets of rules and regulations. [My regular correspondent says that education in Canada is a provincial/territorial responsibility, so it's potentially 63 sets of rules and regulations.] Most dioceses at a minimum have a superintendent and an assistant superintendent and a programming coordinator. Perhaps they also have a secretary. If you look at this link, you can see what the Diocese of Gary, IN schools do. It’s no small task and that’s just to keep things consistant, above board, education that is of sufficient duration and quality, and LEGAL! If you look at a larger archdiocese like Chicago, they have a large Catholic Schools Office with a superintendent, several assistant superintendents, coordinators and directors with various divisions that they head, not to mention assistants. Not to mention a funding source which Francis Cardinal George initiated in life and bequeathed money to upon his death.

As you know, I think the Ordinariate likes to see themselves as separate but equal. That somehow they are going to offer people something that is better than the local diocese because of their, “Anglican tradition”. I think there is a bit of a delusion within the Ordinariate that they are somehow something more than a version of the Byzantine Eparchies (which they should have been more closely structured as from the outset). I don’t know what the Ordinariate’s Education Office staff numbers, but I cannot imagine that they have the ability to offer any meaningful programming or assistance to Ordinariate congregations. I can assure you though they do not have the capability to fully support current or future schools. I think encouraging the founding of schools within Ordinariate congregations is reckless and irresponsible without some really meaningful discernment from the Chancery. Recklessly running an education program can entangle you in protracted legal battles and funding issues. Not to mention that the Ordinariate in their role as a “diocese” would likely be caught in the middle of such issues.

I think we’re seeing the Ordinariate and it’s congregations devolve into what they were before they joined the Church of Rome, a bunch of rather loosely affiliated Anglicans. When it comes to hierarchy and structure for most non-Catholics, including Episcopalians and Anglicans, the mentality toward bishops and diocese is, “don’t come to us, we’ll come to you”, I think this is the approach that the Ordinariate is taking if not encouraging. But for most Catholics, we know that the bishop and the diocese are an ever present reality in living out our corporate faith, that’s an ingrained part of Catholic ecclesiology.

What I find disturbing is, for example, the web page of the St Barnabas Classical Academy in Omaha, which is apparently representing itself as Catholic, since it appears over Bp Lopes's name, although intriguingly, it isn't calling itself a "Catholic school". (Would this cause problems with the Archdiocese of Omaha?) But nobody at ordinariate headquarters is supervising anything. Fr Phillips apparently visits the ordinariate schools, although much of his advice from what I hear consists of things like tips on how to spoof the building inspector. Putting Bp Lopes's name on the web page is close to misrepresentation if prospective parents think they'll get something equivalent to a diocesan school.

My regular correspondent reports,

Formerly when one clicked "Find a Parish" on the OCSP website a drop down menu appeared offering a choice of "Parishes" or "Schools." The only school which ever made it on to the website was "St Vincent's Academy"---a preschool run out of Incarnation, Orlando. But someone early on had the idea that the Ordinariate would get involved in education. After Fr Sellers became chaplain at John XXIII prep in Katy, TX he was appointed Director of Schools for the OCSP (in 2016?) a job with few demands, needless to say, but perhaps a consolation prize for the loss of the Director of Communication job he was clearly not up to. This title no longer exists, and there is apparently no one on the Chancery staff co-ordinating educational initiatives. . . . In any event, Ordinariate education is not a co-ordinated effort although as you point out there is plenty of opportunity for negative outcomes in which the OCSP would inevitably be institutionally implicated. Meanwhile, no consistent standards or clear accountability.

I'm more and more convinced that someone at the CDF thought it was a good idea to make Steven Lopes a bishop, but he's clueless on what a bishop and a diocese actually do.

Ordinariate Schools: What Problem Are We Trying To Solve?

I keep thinking of poor Phil, my co-worker whose spontaneity was stronger than his political savvy, and in the middle of staff meetings where the boss was outlining his vision of an excessively complex, incredibly showy "solution" to a non-existent wrinkle in something, would often pipe up, "But -- but -- what problem are we trying to solve?" The "problem", of course, was the boss's lack of visibility on mahogany row. I don't think Phil ever quite figured that out.

I had a lengthy e-mail exchange yesterday with the visitor who insists that home school co-ops do sometimes solve problems. I can't really disagree there, because she points out that circumstances differ around the country, and dioceses differ in their support for schools. She showed me numbers that say the Archdiocese of San Antonio has far fewer schools per Catholic than, say, the Diocese of Wichita, and in San Antonio there are waiting lists and difficult entry exams simply to get into decent Catholic schools.

On the other hand, even within the Archdiocese of San Antonio, the Atonement Academy represents a conundrum. Since neither the parish nor Houston releases firm numbers, we've got to rely on informed conjecture, but as we've seen, even in a diocese where schools are relatively fewer, the Atonement Academy's enrollment probably never justified the expansion Fr Phillips undertook, even before the parish went into the OCSP. Following the move, the parish lost roughly half its families, and the school lost about a quarter of its enrollment. These numbers come in part from the visitor above.

The school was working under the handicap of the administrative structure Fr Phillips had imposed on it, primarily via Dcn Orr. But we need to recognize this was a constant in both the archdiocese and the ordinariate, something from which visitors say the school is only slowly recovering even now, years after Orr's retirement. We must also assume that the parents were informed consumers and had some recognition of the pros and cons with the Atonement Academy and were discounting the administrative issues to keep their kids in the school. (Some, of course, did take their kids out before 2017, but not the mass exodus after the move.)

Still assuming the school parents were informed consumers, we have to look for a factor that caused significant decline in enrollment after 2017 if the Orr situation had been a constant (and Orr had in fact been forced into retirement several years prior to the move in any case, something we might otherwise see as a factor in the school's favor).

The issue that's not constant over the period is, of course, that the parish and school left the archdiocese in 2017. Significant numbers in fact voted with their feet, notwithstanding the Kool-Aid We Hate the Archbishop faction stayed. I still think informed consumers had in mind many of the issues I outlined in yesterday's post:

• The ability to pool resources across a diocese
• The ability to compete in diocesan athletic programs
• Support from diocesan staff, diocesan policies, and diocesan experience
• Parish clergy experienced in running schools -- good or bad, Phillips was out, the inexperienced Lewis was in
• Diocesan financial assistance where required -- the archdiocese did, after all, finance the expansion

And adding to it, one more

• The loss of an archbishop in charge who could eventually fire incompetents.

This brings us to Bp Lopes and the problem we're trying to solve. My regular correspondent now thinks Bp Lopes is moving to a strategy of encouraging schools as a way to increase seriously flagging interest in the OCSP. The problem is that he doesn't have a penny to fund them with, nor any sort of staff to support them. Some like the visitor above will say what she did say an en e-mail yesterday, "You also seem to have a bit of a Polly Annish view of diocesan support for Catholic schools. Not all Bishops make Catholic education a priority." Surely that's true -- but on the other hand, we can safely say that most include support for their schools in their bishops' appeals, at whatever level.

Bp Lopes, no matter how he may like the theory of ordinariate schools, does not, as we've just recently seen. Nor does he have staff to support them at all -- not just bad staff or incompetent staff or LGBT friendly staff, just no staff. If Fr Perkins has time, he'll look into whether the headmaster used to be a condom outreach educator, if he has time. I've got to think the school parents who voted with their feet in 2017 had this in mind.

I certainly agree with my visitor who says that, given the range of conditions that parents face, home-school co-ops can be one possible solution. On the other hand, given the range of non-existent options available to Houston, the only one they can seriously propose is some version of home-school co-ops, notwithstanding the range of other possible good options that may be available to parents in Southern California, Calgary, Omaha, Scranton, or wherever else. I notice, for instance, that the two schools attached to our own parish both won the "best private school" competition for their categories in the local paper last year, but I believe there were still enrollment slots open last August. A home school co-op would probably be a pusillanimous solution in our area given the range of better options.

So, what problem is Bp Lopes trying to solve? He's been given an idea that nobody quite thought through when it was proposed in the 1970s and revived in the 1990s: a prelature aimed at Anglicans that would be "like a diocese" but have no serious money, and in fact that would compete nationally with territorial dioceses for funds. The original idea was that the members would all be converts, but (again because no numbers are made public) some significant number are cradle Catholics who hate their archbishop or whatever. Some bishops, like Barnes in San Bernardino, seem to be fully aware of this but have limited redress.

Even so, without financial resources, the OCSP clearly hasn't been able to repeat the results in San Antonio. Bp Lopes is forced to promote fantasies that other leaders have proposed in other contexts, barefoot doctors treating the peasants in the fields, backyard blast furnaces pole vaulting a country into industrial might. Looks good back in Rome at the CDF. Maybe.

Ordinariate Schools

When I was an Episcopalian, I knew a great many families who sent their children to Catholic schools, notwithstanding some were quite well off and fully capable of sending them to the prestigious Episcopalian private schools in the area. For that matter, the rabbi of the late Leonard Nimoy's temple in Hollywood went to Catholic school as a boy (he said he struggled with singing the name "Christ" in hymns and eventually determined he would lip-sync the word but not sing it).

A Catholic school in downtown Los Angeles had a wall facing the Harbor Freeway with the slogan A CATHOLIC EDUCATION IS AN ADVANTAGE FOR LIFE painted for everyone to read as they drove by. (Their mascot was the Mad Monks.) As I've become Catholic, I feel bad now that I never had a Catholic education, although some visitors would emphasize that what I really mean is a good Catholic education, because these days I'm told there is such a thing as a bad one.

But I'm puzzled that some of the communities in the North American ordinariate are spending what appears to be a lot of time and effort on what amount to shoestring startup projects to create schools attached to their groups, even though the groups themselves often haven't been able to achieve parish status, or if they have, they're among the most marginal. My regular correspondent tells me

St Barnabas, Omaha is now running a full-time secondary school on its property. Bp Lopes is very keen on getting more Ordinariate-branded educational enterprises up and running. Unlike OLA Academy the other operations have hired part-time instructors who teach in the basement or other adapted spaces.

A visitor has been emphatic with me in explaining that standards in Catholic schools have often fallen with those of public schools, and I'll accept that. On the other hand, I have a problem with the idea that a few dozen, or for that matter a few hundred people can get a school going that's any improvement. Even granting that a local Catholic school may fall very short, I can't see how a group calling itself "Catholic" but operating independently of diocesan resources can overcome the following obstacles"

• Nonexistent facilities, including gyms, audiovisual resources, language and computer labs, and I'm sure much more
• A range of experienced and credentialed faculty across all disciplines, including computers and modern languages
• The ability to pool resources across a diocese
• The ability to compete in diocesan athletic programs
• Support from diocesan staff, diocesan policies, and diocesan experience
• Parish clergy experienced in running schools
• Diocesan financial assistance where required.

I've been around the block enough times -- indeed, I've seen enough situations like the small-clique pitfalls at places like the St Mary of the Angels parish -- to be deeply suspicious of tiny groups of amateur parents who figure they have all the answers, especially if they think the answers center on learning Latin from Billy Throckmorton's mom, who minored in it 20 years ago, or for that matter having a headmaster whose main educational experience was handing out condoms in Vancouver public parks. Friendships and clique alliances will inevitably create conflicts of interest in weeding out incompetents or disciplining problem children.

We just had a Lenten mission at our parish from a visiting priest who made the point that cliques are dangerous, in that they foster and reinforce bad habits of life, and he contrasted them with communities of the faithful. I have a very hard time getting over the idea that the groups of parents at tiny ordinariate communities who want to start "home school co-ops" or some such are more likely cliques of Kool-Aid drinkers who are doing their kids no favors.

These people are reinventing the wheel. I think about a parishioner I knew at my first Episcopalian parish who now and then would say of someone, "He drives a new Mercedes, but he sends his kids to public school." This echoes the pastor at our current parish, who frequently suggests in homilies that rather than buy a new car every couple of years, families consider sending their children to Catholic schools. I'm told by parents who've been through the process of putting their kids through Catholic school that it's expensive, not just in terms of money, but in terms of the effort the school demands of parents.

I can't get over the idea that a lot of these home school co-op people are trying to do things on the cheap. Let's face it, the target market for the ordinariates is affluent former Anglicans. Even if one local Catholic school is substandard, I don't see how that justifies giving up on the whole idea and trying to reinvent the wheel with a tiny group of angries. There's got to be something better not far away -- you just might need to pay for something that's worth what they ask for it.

Failure To Thrive

The Vatican announced yesterday that Fr Carl Reid, previously dean of the Canadian deanery in the North American ordinariate, would be appointed ordinary of the Australian ordinariate, Our Lady of the Southern Cross, effective August 27. Let's put this in context. As I mentioned yesterday, as late as mid-2011, Cardinal Wuerl, the designate to implement Anglicanorum coetibus in the US, gave the US bishops a progress report that included an assumption that there would be a separate ordinariate in Canada.

Later in the year, the Canadian bishops pulled out without any public announcement that I'm aware of. I first learned of it while working with the St Mary of the Angels vestry trying to set up its entry to the OCSP, and Margaret Chalmers, the canon lawyer on the project on behalf of Msgrs Stetson and Steenson, told me there'd been a change of plans, and Houston would be in charge of Canada as well. Subsequently, Msgr Steenson established the Deanery of St John the Baptist in Canada and appointed Fr Kenyon as dean.

Fr Kenyon, however, left the St John the Evangelist parish in Calgary, as well as his position of Canadian dean, for unspecified reasons in mid-2017. This left Houston with the problem of naming a new dean, and Fr Reid, the priest at the Blessed John Henry Newman community in Victoria, BC, was the replacement. The Victoria community had to find a new venue last summer when its host parish added new OF masses to its schedule, which says something about the relative priorities of the group and the DW liturgy in Canada. As far as I'm aware, no replacement for Fr Reid at either the Newman group or as Canadian dean has been named.

I think we can reasonably draw several conclusions from this move. The first is that the Australian ordinariate is on life support, since it appears that none of the priests currently there was a credible home-grown candidate for ordinary. My regular correspondent points out, "The OOLSC has only about a dozen clergy (plus two in Japan) so presumably responsibilities are not a full-time job." However, Canada is not much better off. My regular correspondent pointed out that a 2017 meeting of the clergy in the Canadian deanery had an apparent attendance of four.

Fr Reid, born in 1950, will be 69 this year. Like most of the Canadian clergy in the deanery, he is from the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, a "continuing" group founded by Louis Falk as part of his re-schism from TEC and then the US ACC. My regular correspondent points out, "I note that Fr Reid is identified as holding an M.Div from St Bede's Theological College. This is a distance education project of the ACCC without ATS accreditation." Photos suggest that he at least looks the part, which may be all that will ever be required of him.

I think it's reasonable to suggest that the personnel situation in both Canada and Australia is dire, as in both places, clergy are steadily aging, while no new serious candidates are emerging -- and who will replace Fr Reid in Canada -- Fr Shane, the condom educator? But the situation in the US isn't much better. There's a continuing two-tier formation process, with married candidates being receved, ordained as deacons, and ordained as priests in a single weekend, or at best a matter of months, with celibate candidates nevertheless going through three years of seminary.

The inevitable result is that phonies, grifters, and con artists are continuing to slip through the system, with Houston's scarce resources being diverted to removing and laicizing the bloopers, as well as minimizing the public impact of their scandals.

What's The Real Status Of The Atonement Academy?

Two visitors have helped me understand the current status and financial situation of the Atonement Academy, the Pre-K-12 school attached to Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio. However, both stress that the parish and school make very little information public, and as one says, there have been no elections for either school council or parish council since the turn of the millennium, which of course now means 20 years. It's troubling that this hasn't changed under Fr Lewis.

My understanding is that Fr Phillips as of about 2011 deferred expanding the school until the parish went into the proposed US ordinariate (changed at the last minute to a North American ordinariate when the Canadian bishops apparently did not approve a separate one there). This was to avoid having the parish finance the expansion via the archdiocese but then owe the money while in the ordinariate. However, Fr Phillips's personal agenda intervened when it became plain that Msgr Steenson could potentially reassign him, and he kept the parish out of the ordinariate in March 2012. It's worth pointing out that according to another visitor, none of this was made public to the parish at the time.

A visitor explains the school expansion as planned:

The main function of the new building was to add facilities for the high school: another gym, a theater stage/auditorium, additional classrooms and locker rooms. With the loss of 135 students, the need for new classrooms disappears. The school can no longer participate in the Archdiocesan CYO program so there are no longer any lower school sports which also lessens the need for a new gym/locker rooms. If I am not mistaken, there is a classroom or two finished in the new building so it is not just vacant.

However, when the parish stayed out of the OCSP, Fr Phillips proceeded with financing the expansion via the archdiocese. The visitor quoted above explains some of the issues and uncertainties involved:

I don’t know how they worked it out with the Archdiocese, but because they had to have at least half the money up front before they could even begin construction, it is possible that they built out all they actually had money for and the rest of the financing agreement was cancelled leaving them with a completely dried-in building and the ability to finish build-out on the inside one classroom/section at a time.

Whatever the specifics, the bottom line is that work on the the expansion stopped after the transfer to the OCSP in 2017, and except for a couple of classrooms, it remains empty and unused. The other visitor, however, believes that the parish does owe money, possibly a substantial amount, to the archdiocese, referring to "the debt the parish is in". Again, no information has been made public, but a remark by Fr Perkins at the time of the transfer called the process "like untangling fishhooks", which suggests financial obligations of some complexity. UPDATE: The second visitor comments,

I would think that the note would have been transferred from the Archdiocese to Houston. But the parish is fully responsible for it, just as before under the Archdiocese.

"like untangling fishhooks" - This sounds like it refers to the complex [dis]-organizational structure in which Fr. Phillips, with James Orr, used to control every aspect of everything.

The first visitor continues:

The Atonement Academy’s enrollment numbers have been a fairly closely held number over the last few years, I suspected to hide dropped enrollment. People I know there when asked are a little cagey about what the enrollment numbers are. At the peak of the Atonement Academy enrollment was right at about 535 students from Pre-K4 through 12th grade(this was around 2015-2016). The school has since added Pre-K3 so they have potential extra kiddies. All the sites I can find advertising the school are using numbers from 2016 or before. I did, however run across a job search site that lists current (2018-2019) student enrollment at 400 (you have to scroll to the very bottom in section titled “About The Employer”). That would be about a 25% drop and confirms what I suspected, they lost a lot of people. It looks like they are trying to/got back into TAPPS (Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools), which is a good thing(why they left TAPPS in the first place is another story).

The other visitor comments,

When the school building was conceived the enrollment already had leveled off. A small building addition would have been more sensible.

So it sounds as if the expansion originally envisioned by Fr Phillips was a bit too grandiose from the start; there's been a serious enrollment loss following the transfer to the ordinariate; we don't know what the financial picture is; but the parish and school are trying to claw their way back, although without any sort of published plan. The first visitor comments,

If they can put the Fr. Phillips/Dn. Orr scandals behind them, they have a good fighting chance of being pretty successful. Again, not necessarily because of the draw of the DWM Mass or even their parish, but because regular Catholics have so few options for Catholic schools, especially in Northwest San Antonio. I have noticed that with some of the new personnel, they have focused on hiring teachers with relevant degrees and they have changed the recruiting message somewhat to be more inclusive, not exclusive. The new school logo is not so fussy; the new catchphrase is very succinct: Catholic + Classical. They have the bones to build a great little school if they can survive long enough to weed out the last remnants of the resistors and let go of the “We hate Archbishop Gustavo” sentiment. I hope they make it.

I would say, though, that when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles appoints a pastor to an important parish with one or more schools, it is able to draw from a talent pool that includes priests with this additional leadership experience. I don't believe Fr Lewis at OLA has this in his background, which would be a drawback.

I have more thoughts on schools in the ordinariate, but I will defer these, as this post is plenty long for today. I will appreciate any additional information, corrections, and clarifications to this account.

“Where Did All The Big Givers Go?”

Referring to Saturday's post on its 2019 bishop's appeal goal, a visitor familiar with the Our Lady of the Atonement parish reminded me of an e-mail she'd sent me at the time OLA left the Archdiocese of San Antonio:

I was later considering the financial situation of OLA and I wondered exactly how did OLA stack up against other parishes in the San Antonio archdiocese. [The e-mail linked to a 2016 bishop's appeal page that has since been deleted.]

As you look at some of the other parishes’ numbers and Atonement’s numbers, please know that the amount each parish is assigned as a goal is directly related to the cathedraticum each parish pays to the archdiocese annually.

Looking at OLA, you can determine that their original goal was $37,137.00 but that they had a few hefty donors to bump them up to the $85,791.49 that they actually collected. By reviewing the list of parishes that had the highest participation rates, Atonement is not listed so they had to have a participation rate less than 40%. As a comparison, my parish of [redacted] had a parish goal around$124,000 but fell short of making it. [It] actually collected in the neighborhood of $119,000 and also had a pretty dismal participation rate.

The goal of the appeal was 4.5 million dollars so Our Lady of Atonement’s expected share = $37,137.00 / $4,500,000 or 0.825% of the total appeal meaning OLA’s expected tithe on an annual basis is less than one percent of cathedraticum income for the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

The visitor updates her observations in the context of the 2019 ordinariate bishop's appeal:

Before they jumped to OCSP, they were contributing almost $86K to the Archbishop’s Appeal. Considering all the money Fr. Phillips and Dn. Orr funneled into the off book Our Lady’s Dowry account, if OLA is still the same size group, and they are being honest with Houston about their finances, $50K seems pretty modest indeed. I guess my question for OLA would be, “Where did all the big givers go?” Could it be they were more attached to Fr. Phillips than the whole Anglican Patrimony after all?

Well, the "Anglican Patrimony" is interpreted uniquely by each presumptive heir to it, it's pretty clear. I betcha if you asked two "experts" -- Mrs Gyapong, say, and Fr Bartus -- without giving them the opportunity to coordinate their answers, you'd either get two different replies, or replies so vapid as to be indistinguishable. I assume this would apply to Fr Phillips as well. In fact, I would guess that Fr Phillips mostly told people what they wanted to hear, which would of course vary by the individual hearer. Then if you went to Fr Shane, you'd get something entirely different as well, and he might slip and include the need to use a condom or something.

The visitor estimated that at the time it left the Archdiocese of San Antonio, OLA had about 800 families. Later impressions would indicate that its current size isn't as big, though apparently the actual numbers are closely guarded and not released to the public. This makes me think that the $50,000 a visitor gave for the 2019 bishop's appeal goal represents an increase imposed on a smaller parish.

But it's hard for me to avoid thinking that overall interest in the "Anglican Patrimony" has plateaued, and given the need to raise operating expenses from the bishop's appeal, existing interest is probably not enough to make the North American ordinariate financially viable.

UPDATE: A visitor replies,

“Where did all the big givers go?

The entrance into the Ordinariate saw a number of families leave the parish and the school. Unless you were a part of the inner circle, the parish laity were never informed that we were re-attempting to enter the Ordinariate. I suspect many identified with the Archdiocese.

Consider the debt the parish is in. The new school building addition is vacant and unfinished inside.

And cites a published statistic,

"272 households (67%) are comprised of converts and/or formerly-lapsed Catholics, eligible for membership in the Ordinariate."

This would make 100% of the households in the parish to be 408, half the number the visitor above gave for the (presumable) number at the time the parish left the archdiocese.

More Questions On Bp Lopes's Bishop's Appeal

I've had a chance to reflect on several comments by visitors on the overall subject of the 2019 bishop's appeal from the North American ordinariate. The first big one is the note that my regular correspondent had in yesterday's post: it simply funds current Houston chancery operations over and above the parish tithe. Several issues cascade from that.

A visitor sent me links two two much more typical diocesan bishops' appeals, a current one from the Diocese of Albany and a 2014 one from the Diocese of Savannah. The visitor said, "Almost every diocese puts out an appeal with real breakdowns." (Bp Scharfenberger of Albany is one of the current bright lights anyhow.) The bullet-point beneficiaries of the Albany appeal include:

• our parish Faith Formation Programs
• The Diocese of Albany Catholic Schools
• Nurturing an Ongoing Culture of Vocations
• agencies and programs of Catholic Charities like Sunnyside Child Development Center.

The closest corresponding category in the 2019 Houston bishop's appeal is the $75,000 for "clergy and seminarians", although this seems to go almost entirely to seminarians and current clergy, not to fostering vocations among younger members. The money budgeted for parish support in Houston is described as going to "Chancery support for communities’ development; canonical services; digital tools to gather and track parishioner information; and Safe Environment activites". In other words, none of it will go to any actual communities outside Houston, which will use it for staff and computers there.

In contrast, our own bishop's appeal in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles almost always in my experience includes pitches in homilies from visiting priests at poor parishes outlining the difference those parishes make in communities with gang, drug, and homeless problems. These include stories of gang members who reform their lives and come to mass; most recently, we heard from a former associate at our parish who'd become pastor at a poor parish up the freeway that not only had masses in four languages, but had produced one priest with a second in the pipeline.

So far, we see nothing of this sort of thing in the North American ordinariate. Let's recall that the target market for Anglicanorum coetibus has always been the affluent disgruntled, whether that be senescent refugees from the 1979 BCP or diocesan millennials impressed with the phony thees and thous in the DW missal and the air of exclusivity in their little groups. Masses in Tagalog or Vietnamese don't register. Drugs and gangs are someone else's problem.

Beyond that, a visitor reports that the goal at Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio for the 2019 Houston appeal is $50,000. It took a day or two for this to sink in. OLA, one of the largest parishes in the North American ordinariate, still has membership somewhere in the mid-three figures of families; the word I have is that its membership had been overstated coming into the ordinariate and has since been somewhat disappointing. This makes it quite small by diocesan standards.

Yet the two parishes my wife and I are familiar with in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, both much larger by factors of three to five (at least), have goals for our bishop's appeal in the $90,000 range. But this money, again, is going to programs outside the chancery -- schools, poor parishes, outreach to the genuinely poor, and so forth. So Our Lady of the Atonement is being assessed far more, proportionately, than normal diocesan parishes, for purposes normally covered by parish tithes, not charitable donations above-and-beyond.

This says quite a bit about the viability of the whole Anglicanorum coetibus concept. A normal diocese is financially self-sustaining to the point that it can self-insure and self-finance building projects. The response to Anglicanorum coetibus after nearly a decade has been nowhere near showing an ability to become anything like that.

It's also worth updating once again the question raised about the Ordinariate Observer in Thursday's post.

I would also, if I were an OCSP member, ask why the 2018 appeal asked for $63,281,25 for "communications outreach", while the amount for 2019 has been increased to an even $75,000 -- but as far as my regular correspondent can determine, no issues of the Ordinariate Observer have been published since 2017. Where has this money gone?

I updated this to reflect an e-mail from a visitor who said he'd been receiving regular quarterly copies of the Ordinariate Observer in the mail. However, my regular correspondent double-checked this and found

There was one issue in 2018. As you can see, it is Fall 2018 Vol 4, No 1. The issue linked on the OCSP is Fall 2017 Vol 3, No 1. So your correspondent has not been receiving it quarterly, although the appearance of Vol 5, No 1 this Spring suggests that there is going to be an effort to get it out more frequently than once a year.

So budget amounts in the $60-65,000 range in 2017 and 2018 have still gone to one issue of the Ordinariate Observer per year. With $75,000 budgeted for 2019, maybe they'll sorta do better. The visitor who submitted the correction acknowledges his memory was faulty.

This is simply not a good record for Bp Lopes, and I suspect this is contributing to a reputation among his colleagues, if indeed any are noticing him.

Troubleshooting The Canadian Bishop's Appeal

I mentioned in this post that the goals for the North American ordinariate's bishop's appeal have declined by roughly two-thirds across all Canadian parishes within the space of only a few years. The possible explanation I raised was that up until recently, donations to the appeal from Canada haven't been eligible for Canadian tax deductions.

However, on reflection, this seems less likely, because the decline has been drastic and fairly recent, while the tax issue has existed since 2012. In fact, with the tax issue now fixed, you'd expect a slight increase in the goals, but so far, this hasn't happened.

Here are some other possible explanations:

• Goals for the bishop's appeal are based proportionally on each parish's contribution to the ordinariate's diocesan tithe. Drastically declining goals would presumably reflect proportionally declining receipts in the Canadian communities, which would be reflected in each year's actual tithe payments to Houston.
• As outlined in this post, nearly all the Canadian ordinariate priests are at or near retirement age, with eight of them over 70. No replacements are in the pipeline. Members must certainly recognize this.
• My regular correspondent suggested, "The object of the Bishop's Appeal seems to be just the operating expenses of the Ordinariate, the same expenses parishes support through the cathedraticum. Perhaps Canadians don't feel connected enough to the Chancery to make a second, voluntary donation."
• Shortfalls from each year's community goals are invoiced to each group the following year. But if members lack confidence that the group will last another year in any case, this issue is moot -- cf the effect that if people knew the big asteroid were about to hit the planet, they'd load up their credit cards with new charges, knowing there'd be no need to repay them.

For an outside observer, troubleshooting these issues is an interesting intellectual exercise and little more. It reminds me, actually, of the current interest by amateur aviation fans in troubleshooting the MCAS problem with the Boeing 737 Max 8 and 9. But if you're a pilot who flies one of these planes, or if you're Boeing's CEO, your interests are very different. Troubleshooting is urgent, not just fun.

It seems to me that Houston has a troubleshooting problem here of some urgency. I don't think either Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins is equal to this sort of task, though.

Numbers And Houston's 2019 Bishop's Appeal

My regular correspondent sent me a link to the brochure for the North American ordinariate's 2019 bishop's appeal, which you can find as an Adobe Acrobat document and download here. For comparison, I covered the 2018 bishop's appeal with screen shots of that brochure in this post.

The total amount for the 2019 appeal is $300,000, compared to $253,125 for the 2018 appeal. These amounts are notable, since each community is assessed a goal toward the total, and communities that don't meet the goal for the year are invoiced for the shortfall and must make it up from plate and pledge the following year. The increase from 2018 to 2019 is about 19%. The first question I have is whether it represents a growth in numbers, in which case it imposes no particular burden on existing groups, who can meet their goals with donations from more members, or whether it represents an effective "tax increase".

So I asked both my regular correspondent and another knowledgeable visitor whether any good information has come out recently on how many "members" are in the OCSP. (We could ask, for that matter, how many of these are from the original Anglicanorum coetibus target audience, former Anglicans and Episcopalians, but for now, let's keep things real.) The information we have is conflicting.

Last August, my regular correspondent reported that Sr Amata Veritas, one of the Dominican nuns now in residence at OLW Houston, had been given the task of developing an OCSP census. Apparently this project is complete. My regular correspondent reports,

I know that the OCSP Chancery gathered and submitted parish statistics to the 2018 Official Catholic Directory. This was the first time they did this, I believe. As you can see from the link this information is available only to paid subscribers, but perhaps you know someone who has access to it. I think Sr Amata Veritas has been in charge, pretty much full time, of trying to get parish and Ordinariate membership records in order and the submission to the OCD suggests some success. The numbers are not generally available, inside or outside the OCSP. I note that the bishop's appeal material speaks of the St Alban, Rochester congregation "doubling" and St Margaret, Katy growing "sixfold" which would mean congregations now numbering about 24 and 72, respectively. Percentages clearly look better than actual numbers.

The other visitor, closer to Houston, reports that this information is held very tightly there and not generally given out to anyone. But the visitor added,

The numbers will come out, unfortunately, it takes a year or so to correlate and publish the books which house them.

They are required to report those numbers every year and have been doing so since 2012. A link to the site where the reports are published is here. [The most recent years reported, 2014 and 2016, show 6,000 members with no increase.] Maybe the last few years they weren’t reported correctly and they got some sort of a waiver. Or maybe the Vatican stopped believing that the population in the Ordinariate was exactly 6,000 every year for three years in a row.

I suspect if the numbers were much greater than 6,000, we would be hearing all about it. It might have taken that big jump after OLA joined (note the big leap from 2500 to 6000 in just a few years) but not as many made the leap as they wanted and I suspect also the number of parishioners at OLA before the jump was a little exaggerated, too. Given the attrition at OLA and most likely some of these other big groups, I would guess it is a bit of a wash.

This is consistent with my estimates over the past several years that the OCSP numbers no more than the mid-four figures, but if one were to eliminate non-Anglicans, the numbers would be even fewer. On one hand, this indicates that the increase in the bishop's appeal goal is a tax increase, not a reflection of membership growth.

On the other hand, this increase falls entirely on US communities, because donations from Canada have drastically declined over the past several years. According to its website, St John the Evangelist Calgary's goal for 2019 is CDN$6055, an amount that has steadily declined from low five figures over the past two years. My regular correspondent surmises this must reflect massive shortfalls. St Thomas More, Toronto has announced on the website that this year's goal is CDN$1,000. In 2017 it was US$2,125. In 2016 it was US$2,500.

This is partly reflected in the fact that only recently has Houston made the necessary changes to make donations to the OCSP bishop's appeal, a US charity, tax-deductible in Canada (an omission that falls entirely on Houston). On the other hand, with that oversight corrected, one might reasonably expect Canadian goals to be increased to reflect the new status. Apparently not, so I would guess that the decline in Canadian donations can also be traced to a drastic decline in interest north of the border.

I would also, if I were an OCSP member, ask why the 2018 appeal asked for $63,281,25 for "communications outreach", while the amount for 2019 has been increased to an even $75,000 -- but as far as my regular correspondent can determine, no issues of the Ordinariate Observer have been published since 2017. Where has this money gone?

UPDATE: A visitor informs me that hard copies appear in the regular mail on a quarterly basis, but the web site hasn't been updated to reflect new issues since 2017. This raises the question of whether copies are available via pdf or on line, and why the web site isn't updated to reflect new issues.

Catholics have an obligation to be well-informed. Maybe Mrs Gyapong, a Canadian who specializes in communications, can help us Catholics understand what's going on, both north of the border and in Houston.

What's Really Going On With Anglicanorum Coetibus?

A visitor wrote in response to yesterday's post, "What is it about power structures that they cannot admit to making a mistake?" This started the wheels turning -- I'm not sure we're looking at a traditional power-structure simply in denial. Let's take the typical social-media scandal. Twitter, say, cancels someone's account for some mildly non-PC remarks, and it causes an utterly counterproductive storm of bad publicity. In that case, the CEO of Twitter goes into hiding on the assumption that this will blow over soon enough, and the on line oversharers will be back to their habits with no permanent harm done. That would be the conventional power structure figuring it can get away with being powerful.

I don't see Houston operating in this context. I see things much more in the paradigm I'm familiar with -- and of course, that could be my bias -- of the failing tech firm circling the drain. One such firm I worked for was small enough that I ran into the CEO in the men's room one day and asked about a sudden ad campaign the company had bought, with utterly horrible ads. I sort of said that, given the company's situation (which he'd actually explained very straightforwardly in a staff meeting), why were we doing this, and doing it so badly? I think, in fact, that he understood I genuinely wanted to know, I wasn't just needling him. The answer he gave was probably the most honest he could, that this was the advice he'd had, and he had to trust that the marketing people knew what they were doing.

I think the subtext was that of course, at this point, nobody knew what they were doing, if I didn't have my resume out, I should be doing it. In hindsight, he was a good man in a tough situation. But I think the ordinariates are in a situation much more like the tech company that was about to go under than Twitter, which will limp on indefinitely. Twitter's CEO has power, the poor guy in the men's room didn't.

Let's back off to a much longer perspective here. I think Benedict XVI is shaping up to be a well-intended but ineffectual pope along the lines of Adrian VI.His three main projects seem to be Summorum Pontificum, pretty clearly the most successful, Anglicanorum coetibus, briefly hyped at its inception but of no consequence, and what seems to have been a Quixotic effort at financial and managerial reform under Abp Viganò, which appears to have been effective enough that Viganò was promptly demoted. Fallout from this failed project appears to have led to Benedict's resignation.

This suggests to me that other factions in the Vatican were successful in resisting any serious efforts by Benedict at reform, but I question whether, like Adrian VI, Benedict had the authentic vision or fortitude to follow a reformist course. I would guess that Summorum Pontificum was seen as at best de minimis, while Anglicanorum coetibus was never more than a redirection or misdirection. Indeed, I see waggish comments now and then on YouTube and blogs that maybe its real intent was to bring more gay priests into the Church. I can't argue too hard with that. The one project from Benedict that was absolutely stopped in its tracks was Viganò.

So who did the CDF send to replace Msgr Steenson? A career Vatican bureaucrat who hadn't been through the normal promotional path for US bishops, which suggests to me he had no real experience with clergy formation, no experience with diocesan personnel, finance, property management, publicity, or any of the other functions that a real diocesan bishop supervises. Nor did he have the staff to support him. I suspect he's a useful idiot, has been recognized as such throughout his career, and was dispatched to Houston for that reason. They had no need for him in Rome would be another way to see it.

Not that anyone could do a better job in his position. I think the whole Anglicanorum coetibus project was set up to fail, although it probably has failed sooner than expected, with no real opportunity to create any hype that might reassure or distract what Ross Douthat has called the "restortationist" faction in the Church, the people who feel that simply by celebrating mass ad orientem or adopting a pseudo-Olde English liturgy, the Church can correct problems that are wrongly attributed to the Second Vatican Council.

I think that the laity and a number of good bishops were never really distracted by the redirect efforts, and reform will continue. On the other hand, Houston will continue to circle the drain -- like the hapless CEO I chatted with in the men's room, Bp Lopes will have the budget for a while to run his equivalent of a silly ad campaign, but it won't affect the outcome for Houston, and it will be irrelevant to what eventually takes place in the Church.

The Transfiguration And Good Advice

Yesterday's gospel was Luke's version of the Transfiguration. I was expecting a more or less standard homily on Peter's misunderstanding of what happened, but our pastor gave us something different. He mentioned St Vincent Ferrer's writing on tents, and when I went home, I looked it up -- it turns out it's from his sermon on the second Sunday of Lent. Our pastor's an interesting guy.

He talked about the tent that protects the faithful, which he summarized as basically, go to mass. Go to mass every week. Show up on time. Stay through the recessional. Go to adoration. Go to confession. I wasn't raised Catholic, but I'd say I wish I'd had that sort of advice when I was a lot younger. I hope I would have followed it. I'm grateful, though, for the work my guardian angel did do to get me there eventually. This is the sort of good advice our priests consistently give us.

Then I asked myself if ordinariate priests give good advice like that. Maybe some do. A visitor, though, sent an e-mail reflecting concern about the self-satisfied tone she sees on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog:

I was surprised that with only a little scrolling down I was able to discover what seems to constitute Anglican Patrimony, at least for the author of the page. Here it is from the page titled Three or Four Queries a Week, "and we find that spiritual ethos now expressed in our Catholic Divine Worship Missal, our offices, our hymnody, our spiritually meaty sermons, and community life."

My first thought was what tradition exactly? The Divine Worship Missal is less than 10 years old; “our offices” are nothing more than the ages old Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. Hymnody? Well, if you only like singing songs from a very limited timeframe of history, OK, I’ll give you that. Spiritually meaty sermons? Really? Implying Latin Catholic sermons are not “meaty”? Here’s a little tip for ACS, Catholic Churches do not have sermons, they have homilies. There is a difference and they should look that up. And last but not least, that great community life, mostly made possible by a few angel donors or the generosity of diocesan parishes lending their facilities (you know, those folks with the spiritually vegan sermons) seems to be pretty sparse compared to your average run of the mill diocesan parish.

A little further down, it lists the criteria for becoming a member group of ACS, “If one is a clergyman or a lay person eligible for membership in the Ordinariate, the Society hopes you will consider forming a patrimonial group. It is as simple as holding a monthly Evensong at a fixed time and location and letting us know so we can put you on the map at our website.

I went to that map and looked at some random entries. The Tampa Bay ordinariate group seems to have attempted a restart in late 2017, but its last Facebook entry is more than a year ago, in February 2018. The Denver group is more up to date, with an evensong listed for this past February 26, but nothing scheduled for March, it appears. What do these folks do for mass, though? A monthly evensong isn't the sort of tent that protects the faithful. If they aren't Catholic, are they doing anything else to come into the Church? Being maybe received as a group at some indefinite future date hardly seems like a plan. Why not find an RCIA program at a real parish and stick with it?

If they're Catholic, do they go to mass in a diocesan parish? What's wrong with that parish? There are 42 parishes in Denver. It seems like ordinary good advice would be to find one where you can go to mass, go to adoration, go to confession, go to Bible study. Why on earth would you want to go to an evensong, where in fact you won't get a meaty sermon? I went to the links at the Denver group's site and found only two entries. One is to the Ottawa group (not a parish, of course), which says, "Fr. Doug Hayman offers in-depth sermons, with a particular emphasis on Holy Scripture." Well, there you have it! His sermons have a particular emphasis on Holy Scripture! Betcha won't find that anywhere near Denver, huh?

There's a strange disconnect here, people who seem to be looking for something distant in an Anglican patrimony that seems to be watery gruel indeed, when Catholicism is actually close at hand. Go to mass. Go to mass every week. Show up on time. Stay through the recessional. Go to adoration. Go to confession.

Seems like some of these people want to do everything but take ordinary good advice.

The Ordinariate Observer And The Latest From The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society

My regular correspondent has pointed me to a post at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, in which Mrs Gyapong says,

Members of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter will have received their copy of the Ordinariate Observer in the mail, and it’s chock full of good news about how we are growing and where.

Exactly when this will come out isn't clear. In an earlier but still very recent e-mail, my regular correspondent noted,

The latest post [from March 9] quotes from "the most recent edition of the Ordinariate Observer," which is puzzling, since the most recent issue available anywhere I can find appeared in late 2017 and the reference is to a statement by Fr Rick Kramer, who became Vocations Director in July, 2018. Perhaps the AC blog poster had access to a draft of a forthcoming issue. The deadline for submissions, originally sometime last September, is now the end of March and may yet be extended---who knows?

Well, regarding communications from Houston, who knows? Mrs Gyapong mentions her contribution to a forthcoming Festschrift to celebrate Anglicanorum coetibus:

The topic for my paper is lay initiatives to promote Anglican patrimony within the Ordinariates, and to that end I have done many interviews with people who took it upon themselves to do something in this vein. Of course I ended up with far more material than I could ever use for a 4,000 word article, so I hope to use some of that material here when the deadline crunch is over.

We're back to the puzzling question of what is this thing "Anglican patrimony". The basic issue is whether we're talking about Catholic England pre-1534, in which case "Anglican" doesn't apply -- as I understand it, the term "Anglican" was originally derisive and didn't come into common use until about 1600. And the Church of England's theology was officially Reformed, as embodied in the XXXIX Articles, so strictly speaking, "Anglican patrimony" is about as meaningful in a Catholic context as "Presbyterian patrimony" or "Lutheran patrimony". So if we look back wistfully at, say, the Gilbertines, we're not really talking about "Anglican patrimony", we're talking about Catholic England pre-1534, a worthy field of study, but not "Anglican" at all.

If we look at context, it appears to me that Mrs Gyapong interprets "Anglican patrimony" as a version of Catholic lite that she and some other posters at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog represent as Catholicism. So I've pointed out in the past that she's previously been explicit that the need to avoid near occasions of sin is not part of the "Anglican patrimony" and thus, in her view, not authentic Catholicism. So I would even go as far as to say that, in context, Mrs Gyapong, a recent convert, regards herself and a small number of like-minded people who have expertise in things Anglican as the only interpreters of authentic Christianity as it has come down to us.

Actually, I wonder if the Anglican patrimony, now that it's in the Church, supersedes, say, the Spanish patrimony. Or maybe the Italian patrimony, for that matter. Mrs Gyapong may be able to enlighten us. Woggery begins at Calais, huh?

Otherwise, I'm aware of yet another observation from other quarters, apparently expressed with something of a sigh, that OCSP members aren't very well catechized.

Dioceses And The Alternate Universe

A visitor comments,

In the regular Roman Catholic universe, all the territory of earth (and even the moon) is assigned to a particular diocese. In order for a priest to become a Bishop, he has to be given a jurisdiction, thus if all the jurisdictions are covered (meaning no vacancies), the Church must carve out some territory from an existing diocese and rename it and then ordain and/or appoint it a Bishop. If new territory is discovered, the Bishop from the point where the expedition was launched that discovers the new territory becomes the new territory’s de facto Bishop, thus the Bishop of Orlando, Florida became the Bishop of the Moon.

The Ordinariate was not formed this way. It was made up by the Vatican. Most dioceses that I am aware of are self-sustaining entities. They raise their own funds for survival and growth, they manage their own accounting systems and are self-lending and self-insured, and thus have a certain amount of “critical mass”, if you will. The Ordinariates do not seem to follow this pattern. I can’t imagine the North American Ordinariate (or the other Ordinariates for that matter) have the wherewithal to be self-insured or self-lending. If they can’t implement a common accounting system, how could they possibly follow a unified building code.

I would assume that if the Chancery of the Ordinariate can’t collateralize itself for insurance and property, its member parishes would have to secure insurance and loans on their own. So there is your contrast, a vibrant churning, growing, constantly dying and renewing itself galaxy of the Roman Catholic Church and a sputtering system trying desperately to get enough material and momentum (critical mass) to ignite a fiery core and begin its own process of renewal before it is either ripped apart by the monstrous gravity of a nearby galaxy or collapses back in upon itself as a cold, dark lifeless chunk of rock.

Either way, there will still be a Catholic jurisdiction for all the folks who would be left without a Bishop if the Ordinariate goes dark. It’s like what Dorothy Gale realized after she defeats the witch and gains the ruby slippers, ". . .if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!” See, there really is no place like Rome, oh- I mean, Home.

While we were leaving mass last Sunday, i heard a voice behind us say, "I'm not really used to a traditional mass." This puzzled me, because I don't think our parish sets itself up as "traditional", it just has a serious music program and a reverent OF mass with vested cantor and servers. It certainly isn't ostentatious about chapel veils, for instance, and it doesn't host a Latin mass. The pastor wears a cassock only on the most important occasions; often it's jeans and tennies with his clerical collar, and I think that's largely because he seems to work from sunup to late at night.

I think it's just a well-run diocesan parish, and I can't imagine that they're that unusual. Yes, if a visitor is used to flip-flops and halter-tops, it may come as a shock. So one thing that puzzles me is how some people are attracted to a faux, Medieval Times "traditional" mass in the North American ordiariate, although this is by no means consistent, and you find guitar masses there, too. I just don't think you need to go outside a diocese to find a worthwhile parish, but there's a real danger if you go looking for these things at the fringes.

The Problem Of Scale

A visitor remarked on my posts about dioceses by saying,

Why do you say that the Chancery is under staffed? In small mom and pop businesses, the owner is also the accountant, and is also the pest control guy, and so on. . .

Well, you can kinda still have a mom and pop grocery, or hardware store, or whatever, but it's worth recognizing that in the 21st century, this is harder and harder. Chain groceries use their buying power to get deals from wholesalers that mom and pop groceries can't match. Mom and pop hardware stores face competition from big-box stores, and they have to scramble to provide personal service that customers will value above price. Many types of stores, from bookstores to specialized hobby shops, have been driven to near-extinction by competition from the web.

I don't know if you could ever have a real mom-and-pop bank along the lines of Bedford Falls's Bailey Building and Loan, but you certainly can't do it now. Having spent some of my career in the banking industry, I would say that an unacknowledged factor in the changes that turned the industry upside-down in the past 30 years was the prevalence of fraud and the rise of new systems to prevent it. These systems cost money, require an unavoidable minimum staffing level, and add numerous steps to to-do lists. Banks had no choice but to get bigger and automate to absorb those costs.

The Catholic Church has responsibilities that go beyond banks. Everyone who puts a check in the basket has a right to expect the money will be effectively used, but then there's the issue of making sure personnel can be trusted, not just with money (which a bank must also do), but to keep kids safe and to avoid fostering an organizational culture of immorality. This means there must be an unavoidable minimum staffing level and numerous extra steps on to-do lists. But there's less room for automation.

What experience with the North American ordinariate is showing is that you can't have a mom-and-pop diocese, any more than you can have a mom-and-pop bank. While the procedures I cited yesterday from the Diocese of Harrisburg may seem daunting, something like them is certainly necessary when you're dealing with major building projects to prevent corruption and provide effective supervision. My regular correspondent has looked for similar policies, either formally or informally in effect, in the North American ordinariate and can't find them:

So far I have found nothing comparable to the policies you forwarded on the OCSP website or referred to elsewhere. SJE, Calgary and Mt Calvary, Baltimore bought their properties from the local Anglican/TEC diocese; STM, Scranton and SJB, Bridgeport bought their buildings from the local Catholic diocese. STM, Scranton; St Barnabas, Omaha; Christ the King, Towson have undertaken significant building/renovation projects and SJB, Bridgeport is beginning the process, as you have seen from the parish bulletins. St John Vianney, Cleburne has acquired a building site and St Luke, Washington is in the process of doing so.

I have only read informal accounts of all these in newsletters and on websites and FB pages, but while in some cases consultation with Houston has been mentioned, it seems to be an informal process; for example, when Bp Lopes was last in Scranton he had a walk-around of the former convent and school on the property and gave some advice. Fr Phillips had also done this, earlier.

We recall the shambolic scheme to run a bookshop/cafe in the former Guild Studio building in downtown Scranton which would fund the reopening of a school at STM. I am not saying that there are no policies in place, only that they are not referred to and it seems unlikely that there is anything as detailed as the examples you have researched.

The example of the bookshop/cafe in Scranton is especially pertinent. It involved an angel who was going to sink major money into reopening a bookstore that the diocese had previously run in a building it had sold (but who on earth opens a bookstore to compete with Amazon these days?) without, apparently, knowing that in purchasing the property from the diocese, it almost certainly came with a non-compete agreement that specifically ruled out running a bookstore!

So we've already seen a well-intended but half-baked effort at trying to do something a diocese had rightly recognized was no longer commercially viable. If there had been procedures and staff in place to review the Scranton project -- indeed, if we hypothetically imagine a Houston chancery comparable to a territorial diocese -- the Houston building department would likely have touched base with the Scranton building department, and a lot of time would have been saved and some donation money probably not wasted.

Someone might say, with reference to Anglicanorum coetibus, that you've got to start somewhere. Now and then people tell me the Church thinks in terms of centuries, not decades, and certainly not quarters. On some matters, maybe so, but you can't use that to justify pie-in-the-sky thinking. "I know our Ponzi scheme looks like it's gonna collapse now, but you've got to keep the vision of how rich you're gonna get five years from now!!" I would simply ask why the CDF canceled last year's symposium to celebrate Anglicanorum coetibus. If it looked like a winner, would they have canceled it, especially with the golden boy Lopes's career hitched to that particular star? The real outlook must have been grim indeed.

A basic question I would ask about the Southern California building projects is why the Irvine group, after years of work, seems not to have reached critical mass. Why did nobody look at moving to a bigger venue there? And what's been the growth of the Murrieta group now that it's in a semi-permanent location? How do the pledges look from any of these groups? Who are they, and where are they going?

Dioceses ask these questions. From what I see, priests are evaluated based on questions like these; the good ones go to the best parishes. So far, a system like diocesan systems doesn't seem to have taken root in Houston, and it's not a good sign.

"An Ordinariate Is Like A Diocese"

This is what the illuminati who understand such things have frequently explained to us benighted laity as they talk down to us about Anglicanorum coetibus. Exactly what a diocese does isn't really covered in RCIA, except that the bishop is in charge, so I've been learning about dioceses piecemeal. Many thanks to visitors who've been helping me along this path from time to time.

But what I've gradually been learning is troubling as it relates to the North American ordinariate. Normally, for instance, a rising bishop is promoted through posts like seminary rector and auxiliary bishop. Fairly early in his career, he goes to "baby bishop school" in Rome, where, as I understand it, he learns the role of Vatican dicasteries and other offices. But at home, in the seminary and chancery, he also learns about internal functions like vocation directors and, importantly here, the construction services department.

What I find troubling about Bp Lopes is that, as a protégé of Cardinal Levada, he attended the elite North American College in Rome, got his parish ticket stamped briefly back in the Bay Area, and went straight back to Rome, where he seems to have made his career mainly in Anglican liturgy with the CDF. I just don't know how much practical experience he's had with vocation directors -- this may be an explanation for why he was so eager to ordain the OCSP's own former gay porn writer -- nor, I think we can start to see, with the diocesan construction services department.

Poking around the web, I find that many dioceses have these departments. The Dioceses of Harrisburg, PA and Orange, CA have them, although some smaller and newer ones, like the Dioceses of Worcester, MA and San Bernardino, CA, do not. While their titles differ, they have similar functions. The Buildings and Properties Department of the Diocese of Harrisburg, for instance has the responsibility of

Advising all entities of the Diocese regarding construction, renovations, maintenance and general building upkeep for all properties including:

• Environmental issues, such as asbestos, underground storage tanks, and lead
• Processing requests for projects in accordance with the Required Procedures for Construction/Renovation/Repair/Maintenance Manual.
• Technical Review of Projects
• Providing sources and advice for the solution of problems related to facilities and properties

Since the Catholic Church is a major property owner worldwide, these are key functions. I assume that dioceses that don't have separate construction departments either have them as parts of other departments or rely on services from their archdiocese. What's beginning to trouble me is that the OCSP does own and maintain buildings -- sometimes old ones cast off by territorial dioceses -- and even more troubling, is looking to acquire more. But I see no evidence of policies that would be second nature to a real diocese. That Bp Lopes doesn't seem to have come through a promotional path that would include practical experience in this area doesn't help.

In contrast, just as an example, here is the Project Planning and Construction Procedures Manual for the Diocese of Harrisburg, PA. Even the Executive Summary contains worthwhile advice:

2.1.1 Before You Start - Some thoughts as you begin a Parish building program.

Do not leave prayer or God out of the process.

Your work is an act of Stewardship of God’s gifts.

Develop your Vision of “Who we are” and “This is where we are going”. . . .

Understand this is not about individuals; it is about your whole Parish community.

Pray and chose the Planning and Building Committees wisely; include a diversity of people, ideas, abilities and approaches.

Keep your whole Parish continually informed about the project status. . . .

Consider a Master plan for your site, dream the impossible dream, and think about tomorrow but realize you have to be able to pay for that dream. . . .

One thing that's puzzled me about the whole Southern California project, for instance, is that it's disorganized and opportunistic. The Irvine group has remained in the Busch office facility for some years without any apparent plan to expand or build -- but suddenly, when an angel appeared in Murrieta, an ad hoc construction project sprang up to remodel a former gym in a mall rental into a storefront church. Leaving aside a few families who may formerly have commuted to Irvine for mass, this serves an entirely new community, with the Irvine group remaining on some kind of back burner.

But now, there's an even more ambitious project to buy an obsolete property in Covina, 60 miles from Murrieta, 37 miles from Irvine. A visitor can tell me only that Fr Bartus intends to raise 1.3 million for this project, but it isn't clear what this money will buy -- is it for the chuch building itself, or the rectory and parking lot as well? Does the total cover all renovations? Precisely what will the renovations be? Is there a master plan for this project? (By the way, who are we? Where are we going?)

Normal guidelines require detailed review and approval of such projects at the diocesan level. Again, from the Diocese of Harrisburg:

3.8.3.1 All projects over $200,000 will require review by the Diocesan Building Commission and the College of Consultors with their advice to the Bishop on project approval. A four phase approval process is required.
3.8.3.2 Submit a letter or email package to the Vicar General requesting approval for the project. Letter will include:
3.8.3.2.1 Completed Form B (Information as indicated in Appendix A and B)
3.8.3.2.2 Facts demonstrating the need for the project including analysis of alternative options.
3.8.3.2.3 Preliminary or actual cost estimates including a 10% contingency. Three bids are mandatory. Identify the preferred bidder.
3.8.3.2.4 Discussion of ability to fund the project
3.8.3.2.5 Project timeline
3.8.3.2.6 Any drawings, specification, description of work, and warranties
3.8.3.2.7 Certificate of insurance from the contractor
3.8.3.2.8 Indication of what municipal approvals are needed and if they have been obtained
3.8.3.2.9 Contract to be signed if available
3.8.3.2.10 Indication that the parish or board has approved the project.

The impression I have, based on limited public information and somewhat more from a visitor, is that renovations are now in progress to the sanctuary in the Covina building, but purchase is something much more up in the air. Huh? What happens if the purchase doesn't go through? Where's the liability during all this transition? Has anyone given any thought to this? Is there a published plan available anywhere?

Frankly, this is something that Houston, or perhaps the building committee of the Covina group, or maybe an informed visitor, ought to make available to me to reassure anyone who encounters these questions and wonders if anyone in Houston, or indeed in Covina, is doing much other than smoking stuff, however legal it may now be out here.

The History Of The Building God Sat On

My regular correspondent has found more on the Sacred Heart Chapel in Covina, CA, which Fr Bartus is raising funds to buy for an OCSP group-in-formation. According to the Pasadena Star-News December 10, 2011:

Sacred Heart Chapel – not to be confused with Sacred Heart Church on Workman Street – is the original Sacred Heart and first opened its doors at 126 S. Fifth St. to devout Catholics on March 30, 1911.

And while it flourished at the time, the now privately owned chapel has grown quiet over the years and relatively unknown – a trend that owner Terry Barber wants to turn around.

“We’ve kept a very low profile, and no one knows we’re here,” Barber, 54, said. “When people see it, they are blown away by the beauty. I want to expose this beautiful chapel.”

Influenced by American Gothic Revival style, the 3,400-square-foot facility features arched wooden doors, high wooden beam ceilings, low lighting, granite stone lower walls, original lumber benches and many jewel-toned stained glass windows and religious statues.

Built of stone extracted from the nearby San Gabriel Mountains, the 100-year-old house of worship was first built with $5,500 raised by parishioners through chicken dinner sales, Barber said.

The parish church closed in 1959 when parishioners bought the more well-known Sacred Heart Church. It was then occasionally used for Masses and weddings before falling into disrepair, Barber said.

Barber bought the chapel and original rectory, built in 1927, from the archdiocese in 2003, when he founded St. Joseph Communications, which specializes in Catholic educational materials, audio and video tapes.

. . . After extensively renovating the facility, Sacred Heart became home of the Divine Liturgy of St. Jude Maronite Mission and the Annunciation Melkite Mission, Catholic communities that are of the Syriac and Byzantine traditions, respectively, which hold services in the chapel.

I've been doing a fair amount of research on diocesan policies covering construction and renovation, which lead to questions beyond those I'll put in this post. But I do have one basic question: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles closed this parish in 1959. While closures are an unhappy event and sometimes controversial, we must recognize that real analysis goes into such decisions, and they go to the heart of issues like stewardship of God's resources.

So, if the Archdiocese of Los Angeles did its due diligence in 1959, looking at attendance, demographics, the nature of a changing community, and other issues, why does the North American ordinariate suddenly feel moved to buy it back? Let's recall that, just looking at the reviews on the Holy Martyrs Murrieta Facebook page, the market these OCSP parishes in Southern California seem to serve is not, in fact, ex-Anglicans. It's cradle Catholics who for whatever reason don't like the mass at their diocesan parish. (Or just as likely, think they wouldn't like the mass at their diocesan parish if they ever actually went to mass there.)

In fact, a visitor tells me that Fr Bartus is having some in his parish agitate for the Latin Mass. Now, this is a separate question, with a separate set of facts to bring to the table. The Latin Mass of Los Angeles site shows 11 locations for Latin masses in the Archdiocese now, including one at 1:00 PM every Sunday at the Saint Therese of Lisieux parish in Alhambra, 12.6 miles from the Sacred Heart Chapel. However, this is a real diocesan parish with a range of real Catholic activities, which potential Sacred Heart parishioners may find to be a turnoff.

So, what problem are we trying to solve? The implication seems to be that Fr Bartus isn't finding enough ex-Anglicans to fill his pews, in Irvine, Murrieta, or now Covina, so he's casting his nets farther to bring in the disaffected from other traditions. But in effect, he's assuming there's a market for a Catholic mass that somehow suits all these malcontents right in Covina, a dozen miles from where a Latin mass is already available every Sunday -- but in an area that certainly hasn't been productive for "continuing Anglicans" or high-church Episcopalians, the original target market.

And how many of the disaffected will be willing to pledge big bucks to renovate and maintain that musty termite trap in Covina, rather than pop in now and then to play Ain't It Awful at coffee hour?

But a bigger question is whether there are any adults in Houston who are supervising this process, which I'll go into tomorrow.

The Building God Sat On

This was the informal name for my alma mater's campus chapel, a Richardson-Romanesque pile of stone.

Its distant cousin, shown at left from Google street view, is the Historic Sacred Heart Chapel in Covina, CA, currently a wedding venue, formerly a Catholic church, which, based on remarks on the Facebook page of the Our Lady of Grace OSCP group-in-formation, that group is somehow saving up to purchase. My interest was piqued when I mentioned it in yesterday's post.

The first question that occurred to me was how a group of two dozen or so (I'm sure they'll immediately scream, "WRONG!! We had 38 on Christmas!!") can possibly come up with the money to buy this property. The address listed on the web site linked above is 126 S 5th Ave, Covina, but this appears to be the adjoining property that must have been a rectory at some point. It's apparently still of a piece with the chapel. Possibly it's where the business maintains its office, and perhaps also the owner's residence.

Whether it would sell with the chapel is an open question, but Zillow gives its value as $1,102,070. This would at least place a range for market value of the property, in whole or part, of seven figures. I asked in yesterday's post if they intend to come up with this kind of money via desultory $20 checks. But according to my regular correspondent, they're already undertaking renovations, so they must be serious.

My regular correspondent does put this in the context of other Bartus projects:

This is the same man who blueskyed a Rosary Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham or some such at the Santiago Retreat Center, where his protégé Fr Baaten is the Chaplain. Twelve Guardians putting up some hefty sum for a perpetual endowment---the details elude me but I'll look them up. Also a K-12 school, for which they were seeking a Director. Now he can barely find Blessed John Henry Newman Irvine on a map. He has been fortunate in finding a sugar daddy for the Holy Martyrs refit but as you say this is a rental, no more permanent than BJHN's tenancy at the Queen of Life Chapel.

But let's put the best possible face on this and assume Fr Bartus has found another angel to front up very serious money for this building. The information on the web site says it dates from 1911. As someone who was briefly a parish treasurer, I shudder. How long until it needs a new roof, new HVAC, paint and gutters? What do utilities and insurance run per month? New organ? Currently Fr Jack Barker, retired from the Diocese of San Bernardino, is serving as priest, so his medical costs and living expenses are on someone else's dime, and he's probably just getting a three-digit honorarium each week. But that won't last forever.

And this is for how many people? As of 2011, parish expenses for a similar building, St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, were $1620 for utilities, $2300 for insurance, $1200 for cleaning, $100 for a groundskeeper, and $850 as a reserve for plumbing and other emergencies. My calculator says this comes to $6070; let's round it off to $6000. (Don't need cleaning, you say? What about coffee hour?) And that reminds me I've left out pest control, termite control, and trash collection. I betcha the place already has termites and rats.

If there are two dozen pledging entities, each will need to pledge $250 per month to cover this sort of expense. We can quibble about the exact amounts in each category, but you're still talking in the mid four figures per month no matter what. $250 a month would put a pledging family at the very top tier of just about any parish. (But I can't get around the feeling that the sort of millennials Fr Bartus attracts are pretty cheap.) Whoops! I didn't mention a music program at all, did I?

My regular correspondent tells me Bp Lopes has already visited here, so he must be in the loop, and I've got to assume this is all OK with him. But this just confirms once again that he simply doesn't have a staff in Houston that's anywhere equivalent to what a normal diocesan chancery has, and it's clearly a continuing problem.

If there's an angel behind this -- willing to front seven figures to purchase the property, six more to renovate it, and then an ongoing five figures each year just to keep the lights on, the floor swept, and the lawn mowed, what's the motive for this kind of boutique effort? Vanity? Spite? ("I'll show that bishop, I will!") Are you sure there's no better use for that money?

But I still can't get over what an ugly building this is.

Are OCSP Members Easier To Con?

I've given a lot of background thought to why apparently so many OCSP priests have been shuffled away, forced into early retirement, or out-and-out removed. I continue to be suspicious of others. Then, looking for a video of Bp Lopes in Murrieta, I ran across these comments at the Holy Martyrs Facebook page:

. . . Truly, it is/was everything we would hope for: celebration of the mass in a traditional manner; the priest said the mass in a very reverential way; the people attended to the mass in a respectful way with great reverence; the music and liturgy were beautiful. I long for a church like this in Northern California.

. . . This is a beautiful, young church which goes back to the traditional ways of the Mass being about Our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is so reverent and loving-a joy to Jesus! The love of Jesus is so apparent! NO ONE leaves early. The Tabernacle is on the altar. Prayers are to Jesus.

. . . Fosters a beautiful, more traditional, and intellectual community for Catholics.

There's no church like this in Northern California? Really? There are numerous Latin masses all over California, which you can find at latinmasstimes.com. Just skimming through the list, there are examples in Los Gatos, Burlingame, Newark, Oakland, Petaluma, and many other places. They far outnumber the four OCSP groups, none of which is a parish, and none of which offers anything like a range of parish activities.

But there's such a thing as a reverent OF mass. My wife and I attend at St John the Baptist Napa when we're up there. A photo on the Diocese of Santa Rosa web page shows Bp Vasa censing an altar, and our impression of him -- he made a special visit to St John the Baptist during the 2017 fires to thank first-responders in person -- is that he's a remarkable man. I believe the mass at the St Eugene Cathedral is noted as being especially reverent. So if the issue is "our own parish is flip-flops and halter-tops", I would say the corrective is drive another 15 minutes and see what else is out there. I strongly suspect laziness is involved here.

All the comments suggest the mass in Murrieta is "traditional". Right. The Divine Worship Missal was approved in 2015. The OF mass dates from 1969. Which is more traditional? The DW mass is basically some Cranmerian prayers grafted onto a version of the OF mass that was tarted up with some thees and thous emended into the text by a Viennese (!) professor. It's about as authentic as an evening at Medieval Times. Oh, but it's such an intellectual community at Holy Martyrs Murrieta!

Well, if beer breakfasts and whiskey evenings with Fr Bartus are intellectual, I guess, suit yourself. There's a con going on here. And as the truism goes, you can't con someone who doesn't want to be conned. The gushy reviews about how "traditional" the DW mass is (not like our awful parish down the street) suggest some people use this as an excuse either not to go to the awful mass at all, or not to work to improve that mass, or not to drive another 15 minutes for something better that nevertheless may not be a cousin of Ye Olde Pastry Shoppe.

There's another issue that stood out in the news from the Our Lady of Grace group: they're going to buy the event hall they'd been using. Now, I know a little -- still not a whole lot -- about building funds. Our pastor hit us up for ours. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles doesn't mess around when it comes to building funds. They are years in the inception and approval process. The diocese requires an approved planning firm for such things. And when the fundraising starts (believe us), you don't just sign a pledge card. You set up an automatic monthly deduction from your bank account, and oh-by-the-way, a first lump sum of 10% of the pledge.

Is the Our Lady of Grace group doing anything like this? Are there any guidelines from Houston at all for doing this? Is anyone in Houston aware that this is going on? Does anyone look this over and approve it? Is the funding done via anything other than desultory $20 checks? I assume that buying the property involves a 6- or 7-figure expenditure. How is a group of two dozen remotely going to manage this?

But maybe someone can fill me in. Otherwise, the people who gush over reverent masses in storefronts are simply marks, and their bishop is not shepherding his sheep.

Enthusiasm Fades For The Project

My regular correspondent notes,

The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society planned a conference in Houston sometime in 2017 or perhaps 2018 that did not come to fruition. Then they announced their participation in a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus, sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As you see, this was also canned. Then Mrs Gyapong mooted something in Rome around the canonisation of John Henry Newman but opined that time did not permit. Now 2020 is being put forward. I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, as you see below, a parishioner of Fr Bartus who regularly leads pilgrimages to Rome has photoshopped him (or rather a hilariously younger version thereof) and Fr Barker on to his standard Rome brochure. It will be interesting to see if this is a go.

Bp Lopes was in Murrieta recently; you can see a video of him ducking his mitre under the doorway while the choir sings "Ecce Sacerdos Magnus" on the Holy Martyrs, Murrieta Facebook page. [I couldn't locate this. If it can be found on YouTube, I'll be delighted to include it.] Our Lady of Grace, Covina is apparently planning to buy the former church, now event space, in which they hold Sunday mass.

So "Springtime for the SoCal Ordinariate," while pretty much "winter for the AC Society." Posts on the blog have dwindled to one or two a week; "Dr" Lerner is going to medical school to become a real doctor and will not longer have time to contribute bios of St Swithun and St Polydore Plasden, those models of Anglican patrimony. Other contributors seem to have lost enthusiasm in these dark times.

As far as I'm aware, the symposium originally scheduled for last November was canceled by the CDF itself. I assume Bp Lopes was in on this decision, which gives a good indication of where he thinks things are headed. (My memory suggests that Msgr Steenson had earlier scheduled a pilgrimage to Rome to thank Pope Benedict for Anglicanorum coetibus; this was overtaken by events as well.)

Regarding the Southern California groups, I've got to wonder why the effort is so scattered. The Irvine group, after some years' effort, seems to have stalled and doesn't look like it has the potential to become a parish, even though Fr Bartus had put effort in that direction. Now the Murrieta group is clearly the focus -- but suddenly the Covina group wants to buy a facility. What's its chance of becoming a parish? And the Murrieta facility is a storefront rental; if they bought, they'd have to relocate. Has anyone thought this thing through? There's one piece here, another there, but nothing quite comes together so far. Is there a plan?

The other day, I was reflecting on how the North American ordinariate we see in 2019 is nothing like what we'd been led to expect in 2011. For such a limited effort, it's been hobbled recently by several scandals, but even before then, problems began to appear within the first few months of its erection. I would say in hindsight that a number of Anglican rectors who were left out, including David Moyer and Christopher Kelley, would probably have performed better than a number who came in -- let's recognize that of the select clique who were ordained, several have subsequently been removed. Would Moyer and Kelley have done worse?

The marquee figure of the whole group of Anglo-Catholics, Fr Phillips, in hindsight clearly represented a problem for his diocesan archbishop and then both Msgr Steenson and Bp Lopes, on several grounds. We know there were issues of obedience and financial irregularities, but his strangely enabling relationship with the now-disgraced Dcn James Orr won't go away, and I hear there's a faction at Our Lady of the Atonement that wants to limit Phillips's involvement in the parish still further.

I'm back to Fr Ripperger and his summary of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: you can't give what you don't have. I think there's a lot of re-examination yet to do.