More On RCIA And Whatever Problem They're Trying To Solve

Regarding the ordinariate groups that have been catechized via parish RCIA classes, my regular correspondent adds,

The St Aelred, Athens community, including their intended priest and his wife, was part of the 2017 RCIA class at St Joseph, Athens. The priest there celebrates DW for them once a month, and is apparently mentoring Mr Tipton as he prepares for priestly ordination this summer. Our Lady and St John, Louisville had a similar experience at St Martin of Tours, Louisville, and of course Holy Rosary, Indianapolis provided Luke Reese with a job as Music Director for four years while he attended seminary, and then gave the group a daily DW mass slot.

I think it is very much up to the individual pastor. When Blessed John Henry Newman, Victoria lost its service time at Our Lady of Fatima, Fr Reid canvassed most of the parishes in Victoria without success until the pastor of the parish that also hosts the local TLM group agreed to take them in, although he could only offer an afternoon service time. St Luke, Washington shares a diocesan parish. But most OCSP groups without a building of their own use free-standing chapels which do not put them in apparent competition with a diocesan parish.

The St Alban Rochester group also meets in a diocesan parish. This still leaves open the question of how other groups-in-formation receive, or will receive, catechesis. I wondered here what's up with the Denver group, for instance -- we don't know if they're Anglicans-in-waiting or already Catholic, and in either case, whether they're somehow connected with a diocesan parish for the sacraments or RCIA. Isn't it odd that this doesn't seem important, it's just there for evensong? The same applies to the Tampa Bay group, which may or may not still be active at all -- are any Anglicans in need of reception, or, if they're all diocesan Catholics, have they simply dispersed back to existing parishes?

So we're still looking at unanswered questions, the range of which certainly includes how many attendees at ordinariate parishes are diocesan Catholics. A visitor reports,

Your comment about the Infant of Prague statue in Murrieta reminded me to ask this of you.

My friend (who had NO affiliation with the Anglican/Episcopal before the Murrieta group started) mentioned that there is a basket of veils in the back for women to wear when they attend Mass at Holy Martyrs. Is veil-wearing an Anglican tradition?

I'm sure that you are aware that Catholic women until Vatican 2 wore something on their heads for Mass. Horror of horrors if you forgot your veil. Thank goodness a kleenex would suffice (a memory from 1st grade). Of course, women a la Jackie Kennedy wore hats until the late '60's.

Episcopalians have a pretty wide range of styles and behaviors, but I never noticed chapel veils in any of the TEC parishes I visited, and certainly no baskets in back. As far as I can see, the veils in ordinariate parishes are an affectation for the Anglicans. For the diocesan Catholics, who are apparently a majority in the California communities, I assume they are ostentatious markers of pre-Conciliarism, and the basket in back would indicate an assumption that they're compulsory in this particular alternate universe.

There is, of course, no canonical requirement that either women or men cover their heads, and in our parish's reverent OF mass, only two or three women out of the hundreds I see at Sunday masses wear them. The visitor continues,

I'm a bit put off with the veil-wearing of today. There are some very strange explanations why women should don the veil.

When you speak of formation of the ordinariate members, I wonder how a small parish could make that possible. (I belong to a medium-sized parish in [redacted] diocese. Our RE program includes RCIA, RCIC(hildren), 3 different confirmation classes for youth, youth graduated from high school & adults , as well as, classes for elementary grades. Needless to say, it takes an army of volunteers to make this happen.)

With the limited number that would be versed in RC teaching, it could become a rather timely commitment if those coming into the ordinariate parishes do so all year long. I don't think a married priest with children would have the time to add this to all the other duties he might have administering a parish & possibly working a job for some hours a week to support his family.

As I say, one question to start with would be how many at ordinariate parishes are diocesan Catholics, so catechesis (as opposed to ongoing formation) would not normally be an issue -- and if, as I begin to surmise, these people verge on sedevacantism with their pre-Conciliar pose, they've got it all figured out anyhow. Why bother with formation?

The question I would put to Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins if I ever made it to an open forum would be whether the North American ordinariate would survive at all without more or less sedevacantist Catholics swelling its ranks. And that goes to the question I'm still wrestling with -- what on earth did Bernard Law have in mind with this whole project?