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.