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.
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.)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.
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.
