Putting On The Style

This dates me terribly, but as sometimes happens, I suddenly sat up in the small hours this morning remembering this:

It came to me in the context of the efforts at Our Lady of Walsingham Houston to start up its own high school. For the past several days, we've been looking at how parishes and groups many miles from Houston are trying to turn their amateur home-school co-ops into more professional-looking schools (but rather clumsily trying to avoid using the term "Catholic school", which I'll get to tomorrow). As we've seen, these "schools" are independent efforts not quite supervised, endorsed, or approved by the North American ordinariate (for reasons we'll go into tomorrow), but sorta-kinda operating in its name. Recall that the ordinariate has no schools department the way a real diocese does.

But my regular correspondent brought this page on the Walsingham web site to my attention regarding a New Cathedral High School Study:

[W]e are looking at the need for and level of interest in a Catholic high school here at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham. Our parish is truly blessed to have Holy House Academy here in our community and serving families with its unique and highly successful program. Our intention is to have Holy House Academy grow, flourish, and continue to enrich our parish life. To continue to respond to the call from God, the mandate of the Church, and the mission of the Ordinariate, and to serve more fully the needs of our growing parish community, and the Ordinariate, a new high school warrants consideration at this time.

Note, for starters, that up to now, the parish has been using the "[fill in the blank] Academy" dodge to avoid using the term "Catholic school", which under Canon 803 must be recognized by a competent ecclesiastical authority. Up to now, the OCSP seems to have been reluctant to step on territorial bishops' toes in this area. However, it's continuing to hedge with the term "Cathedral High School". The proposal continues,

Before we can consider undertaking the planning and opening of a new school program, we need to measure objectively the level of interest among our parish and other Catholic families to determine the enrollment potential. In addition, we must carefully assess the potential impact a new school may have on enrollment at Holy House Academy as well as existing Catholic schools in our area. This is to ensure that Holy House Academy, the proposed Cathedral School, and other area Catholic schools each can be sustained, build enrollment, and remain vibrant for the long-term.

To examine effectively the need for a new school, a feasibility and market research study has been commissioned by our Bishop, Most Reverend Steven J. Lopes, and our Rector and Pastor, Very Reverend Charles A. Hough. Meitler, a nationally recognized Catholic school strategic planning firm, is partnering with our parish to conduct this study. Sr. Thomas Aquinas, O.P., the Director of Education at our Cathedral parish, is managing the project.

In addition to data gathering and analysis, a market research survey will be available online to parish and Catholic school families to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children at a new high school, and to measure the level of support overall. The survey process will take place in the fall with a final presentation of findings in November.

So we're talking about a professional feasibility and market research study conducted by a nationally recognized Catholic school strategic planning firm. Beyond that, the study will be managed by Sr Thomas Aquinas, OP, the Director of Education at the parish. But wait -- she works for the parish, not the ordinariate. The ordinariate has neither a director of education nor a schools department. As a result, independent groups of lay people not in Houston, guided by utterly unqualified (and in some cases opportunistic) clergy set up little "schools" in parish basements or broom closets in hopes that something bigger might come of it. Good luck.

Why the difference, the enormous care and expense to conduct a feasibility study in Houston, versus the situation in Calgary, where the "headmaster's" only educational experience is as a condom outreach educator for AIDS Vancouver?

My regular correspondent suggests one explanation, which is a donor in Houston who's willing to fund this -- but why is the donor funding it for the parish, but no equivalent effort for the other "schools" in the ordinariate? It also sounds as if Sr Thomas Aquinas simply wouldn't allow a half-baked effort like those in Calgary, Omaha, or elsewhere -- but why is she working for the parish and not the ordinariate? It sounds, for that matter, as if Bp Lopes is calling the shots here. So again, why the difference, if he calls the shots not just in Houston but as far away as Hawaii or the Yukon?

Well, maybe the donor will front up for a parish study, but can't quite make it to set up a schools department in the ordinariate. Well and good, but we're left with the question of whether the ordinariate itself is worth the trouble if there isn't enough money to make it doable across a whole continent. Not only that, but Bp Lopes must be fully aware of the discrepancy (and I suspect Sr Thomas Aquinas tries not to think about it).

So Houston, as far as I can see, is the showcase operation, the one conveniently close to Cardinal DiNardo, presumably designed to make prominent observers think the whole ordinariate effort is as hoity-toity "Episcopalian" as the Walsingham parish. The most charitable explanation is that it's like the phony family that holds hands around the table and says grace when the pastor comes to dinner, but not otherwise. Putting on the style.

There's another explanation that I'm just putting out there, not necessarily saying it's the whole case. Enron, recall, had its headquarters in Houston. Part of the Enron hoax was a phony front operation. According to the London Telegraph,

Executives had misled the analysts about how far they had got with the project, though according to the Enron ethos, that was not so much a problem as a challenge. Thus, a trading floor was hastily created from scratch, complete with banks of flashing screens and fake dividing walls. Secretaries and technicians ran around the set, yelling into telephones and pounding computer terminals, 'playing' energy traders.

How much of the ordinariate's Houston operation is the same sort of thing? Let's face it, half a dozen parishes account for the vast majority of the OCSP's budget and membership. I'm becoming more troubled about what's going on, and indeed, what sort of a shepherd Bp Lopes is becoming.