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.