What's The Payoff?

By coincidence, just as I was planning to look for a photo of the reredos in St Thomas Episcopal Fifth Avenue to use in today's post, a visitor sent me one he'd taken, so here it is:

And here's a counterpart on the opposite coast, our former parish, St Thomas Episcopal Hollywood:

In contrast, here's a shot of the reredos at the latest little club in the North American ordinariate, the Church of the Presentation:

Now, someone will certainly answer that I'm being completely unfair, those churches took decades to bring to their current state, and this is just the ordinariate group's hopeful start, and who knows what they'll have in 50 years, the longest journey blah blah blah.

And my regular correspondent notes that the Presentation group just recently announced they've "come to an agreement" to buy a property that they'll convert to a church, but a photo on the realtor's site shows a Texas McMansion that's going to take one heck of a lot of renovation to turn into anything like St Thomas on either coast. Meanwhile, we get a reredos just back from the laundry.

And let's recognize that almost all the ordinariate parishes have interiors closer to the Church of the Presentation than either St Thomas. Indeed, both Our Lady of Walsingham and Our Lady of the Atonement are low-rent in comparison.

This isn't the first time I've mentioned this contrast here, and certainly not the first time I've thought of it. It always brings to mind the initial bait-and-switch that Bernard Law sold Cardinal Ratzinger through intermediaries, that 250,000 Episcopalians were going to come into the US Catholic Church as parishes and bring their property with them. Surely this was what Ratzinger-as-pontiff envisioned as the outcome of Anglicanorum coetibus.

And while a St Thomas Episcopal may not be matched in many US Catholic dioceses, few Catholics have that reredos-from-the-laundry as their only option. In many cases, all they need to do is go up the stairs from that basement chapel and attend the 9:30 OF Mass in a much, much nicer venue. So let's get real. There must be some reason people are deliberately avoiding something that, as Msgr Pope recently suggested, ought to remind them of heaven in favor of a cobbled-together thee-thou liturgy and almost nothing else. (Don't give me that crap about Dan Schuette, either, you don't have to have that in a diocesan parish.)

Here are some tentative conclusions.

• Ordinariate priests have come to that vocation at the end of disappointing careers in other denominations, often not even Anglican. They're hanging onto paychecks they cobble together from outside diocesan jobs. These men are desperate. They can be manipulated. They aren't going to challenge parishioners to grow or sacrifice. This isn't a bug, it's a feature.
• The small groups can be dominated by people who are otherwise not going to rise to leadership in larger and more successful communities. One experience I continue to have in our large and successful diocesan parish is to say, "Boy, now I realize why X is on the Y committee. He listens, and he's flexible." I see results like that all over the parish. I'm not seeing results like that in the ordinariate.
• The low expectations of clergy and laity in the small groups are self-perpetuating. Nobody wants to be challenged, say, to give sacrificially. This requires clergy to address laity as adults and point out that they can drive a new car every couple of years and take expensive vacations, or they can send their children to Catholic schools. Instead, the small groups are apparently satisfied with jerks who talk down to them in singsong voices, as long as they don't challenge them to get serious.

I'm reminded of a woman talking on a TV show some time ago -- she apparently had some experience dealing with suicides. She noted how some people actually commit suicide by hanging themselves from the back of a chair, i.e., by fastening the noose to the chair back and just lying down on the floor so it'll choke them lying down. "All they need to do is get up," the lady said, "and they don't get up."

I've got to wonder if this is going on in the North American ordinariate, and whether Bp Lopes is complicit.

New Venues For Two Groups

Via my regular correspondent, here is a video from Fr Mayer introducing members of the former St James St Augustine, FL group to their new chapel.

In addition to the uninspiring environment -- where is the roodscreen, the choir, the reredos, the intricately carved pulpit? -- I've got to say that Fr Mayer's tone is off-putting. He's talking down, but I would say that whatever height he's talking down from isn't very high, and his delivery is disturbingly close to sing-song. It fits, I suppose. This is what the local Anglicans special Catholics think are precious treasures, huh?

My regular correspondent also sent this link to the interior of the chapel being used by the spin-off community from Our Lady of Walsingham now meeting at St Anthony of Padua in The Woodlands, an exurb of Houston. Fr Justin Fletcher, who was ordained priest in January with Fr Philip Mayer, is priest for this group, which appears to be nothing but a make-work project. I don't know if Fr Fletcher also needs a visit to a speech therapist.

I have a big question here. No priest in the North American ordinariate is a Frederick Kinsman, a Ronald Knox, or an Abbot Butler. Indeed, none is a Jeffrey Steenson at this point. The two best possibilities the ordinariate had, Christopher Kelley and David Moyer, were scrubbed at the start. None, certainly, is a Dwight Longenecker. Instead, we have callow nonentities in acoustic-tile chapels with portable altars and at best electric organs.

Who on earth will be motivated to attend this? How is any of this remotely "Anglican"?

An unrelated question from Msgr Pope: "Does Your Parish Church Remind You Of Heaven? It Should!"

"Why Is Someone Who Is Outside The Church Doing A Better Job Than We Are Explicating It?"

Dr Jordan Peterson has put up his podcast that contains his dialogue with Bp Barron, which took place last March. I've already linked to Bp Barron's YouTube presentation on this encounter here. I find the Peterson version annoying on several counts, not least of which are the two minutes of ads that precede the actual podcast. This reminds me of the complaint about Bertrand Russell that he was constantly and visibly scrounging for petty commercial deals to supplement his income.

But a more basic issue in the Peterson unabridged version of the encounter is that he seems uncomfortable. This is in contrast to the YouTube broadcasts of his classroom sessions, his stage lectures, or even his interviews with hostile journalists, where he's fully in charge, and although he often adopts a troubled or working-through-this persona, he's comfortable -- he's ready with answers even to angry politically-correct journalists.

I think the problem is that although Bp Barron is not Thomas Aquinas, nor even Fulton Sheen, he's Peterson's intellectual superior, and Peterson knows it. To a certain extent, Barron is being polite in asking the question in the title here.

I mention the Fringe TV series here fairly often, and I'm convinced it's an important cultural document, however unintentional this may be. In part, it's a sendup of Harvard in the character of Dr Walter Bishop, whose imaginative antecedents clearly include such Harvard luminaries as Ted Kaczynski, Kaczynski's tormentor the psychologist Henry Murray, Timothy Leary, Henry Kissinger, B F Skinner, and even the Harvard dropouts Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.

Jordan Peterson, who taught at Harvard for five years, isn't all that far from this territory. The problem is that Peterson's intellectual foundations are wacky, something the Fringe series's creators seem to have grasped on a deep if unconscious level, but which so far has escaped Peterson himself. He begins with a flawed set of a priori principles that come from 19th and 20th-century psychology, such as Freudian drives and Jungian archetypes, and he tries to apply established principles of reason that date from the Greeks and the Catholic Church, which clearly came to him later in his career.

But having built his career on Freud, Jung, and even Skinner, he doesn't quite know what to do when principles of reason want to supervene. He has to bend himself into pretzels to show how Genesis or Pinocchio somehow illustrate principles that are consistent with his sanitized version of Freud, Jung, and Darwin, when a better approach would be to eliminate the unnecessary detour through modernism. I think Bp Barron, if he applied himself to that task, could dismantle Peterson with little effort, but he's got a different pastoral goal. I think at some level, Peterson understands this.

Bp Barron himself, in his own account of the discussion linked above, finds a "winsome" quality to Peterson, which I think also appears in the character of Dr Walter Bishop. The two aren't all that far apart.

On the other hand, the encounter I'd like to see would be between Peterson and Edward Feser. Bp Barron has reasons not to dismantle or humiliate Peterson; Feser would have no such scruple. But for effective evangelization and catechesis, something like that is going to have to take place.

Situational Awareness: Why Is Bp Lopes In Houston, Anyhow?

Our Jeff Cavins Bible study group has reached the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. The class materials encourage us to apply the stories to our own life conditions. In looking at the means by which the Council arrived at its conclusions, I'm struck by the idea that they were influenced by the Holy Spirit, but exactly how it worked is simply not explained. So I'm looking at how the Holy Spirit may be working through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the specific case of proposals for an Anglican personal prelature. There are results, which we may trust come from the workings of the Holy Spirit, but how they get there is not explained.

Let's recall that an Anglican personal prelature was first proposed by Bp Law in the late 1970s in the course of his discussions with a small group of Episcopalian dissidents, prominent among whom was Fr Jack Barker, regarded by his colleagues, no matter how sympathetic, as a hothead. Despite inconclusive discussions in Chicago and the Vatican that led to premature departures from The Episcopal Church, no personal prelature emerged, and only the Pastoral Provision resulted, several years later, as a Plan B. The California parishes Fr Barker led were never able to enter the Pastoral Provision. We have few other details.

Bp Law, now a cardinal, revived the Anglican personal prelature idea with Cardinal Ratzinger, at that point Prefect of the CDF, in 1993, in a meeting that resulted in what appears to have been a draft of Anglicanorum coetibus. We know that Ratzinger took the proposal to John Paul II, who told him to put it to a vote of the CDF, which both apparently understood to be a certain nay, so Ratzinger dropped the proposal rather than see it defeated outright.

When Ratzinger became Benedict XVI in 2005, Cardinal Law had already arrived permanently in Rome and was apparently in a position to revive the Anglican personal prelature proposal, which Benedict could put through on his own initiative as pontiff, notwithstanding it hadn't prospered in two prior attempts. As a result, he issued Anglicanorum coetibus in 2009. I wonder, in fact, how it was ever viewed among those in the Vatican more open to the workings of the Holy Spirit.

Certainly both the Pastoral Provision and the North American ordinariate have paralleled their Protestant counterparts, the "continuing" Anglican denominations, which from the start have attracted disappointing numbers of laity while creating openings for opportunists and con artists among their clergy. I can't imagine that this would be lost on well-informed Vatican observers -- and with agents and informants placed in local communities around the world as priests, the Vatican is recognized as having an extremely effective intelligence apparatus.

So how would a hypothetical mid-level CDF manager potentially regard any assignment connected with the ordinariates? This is an interesting question. Let's recall the repeatedly canceled or postponed symposia, conferences, and celebrations of Anglicanorum coetibus that have failed to materialize, in some cases due to official actions, since 2017. I'm told that Dr. Hans-Jürgen Feulner, the Viennese liturgy professor, got the Divine Worship missal project through Ratzinger family connections, so that prestige may be contingent, as may be then-Msgr Lopes's connection with the project. My regular correspondent comments,

The connection with Anglicanorum coetibus, of course, was the work Lopes did for the committee which produced Divine Worship: The Missal. I note, by the way, that the publication of an official Ordinariate Daily Office book by this committee has been stalled for years; supposedly it is complete but awaiting official approval. Meanwhile the UK and Australian ordinariates have issued unofficial versions. But what could be the holdup? Does the committee still exist?

Whatever pull Bp Lopes may have had with the project in Rome or Vienna seems to have faded. In fact, it's hard to avoid thinking Bp Lopes over the past few years has primarily been in reactive mode, putting out fires in San Antonio, Minnesota, and Calgary, in the latter two cases probably under pressure from above. He is not proving to be a star.

I’m thinking more and more that Lopes was sent to Houston to ease him out of Rome, and the ordinariate was seen as a no-hope project by insiders from before the time Anglicanorum coetibus was issued. I’ve got to think that his handling of recent situations like Calgary and Treco indicates he was always a problem in the CDF, and after Levada left, something had to be done. So he was sent to Houston the same way Captain Queeq was sent to Iowa.

But I would also guess Bp Lopes thinks the OCSP is his big chance to be a hero and show he was misunderstood, the OCSP will be his opportunity to restart his career! But the Gilbertines and the St John Henry Newman parish are primarily a fantasy, and even lay outsiders who comment here begin to wonder if Lopes is all there in areas where he should be much more conversant. Time will tell. And I'm just doing the sort of thing Jeff Cavins urges us all to do.

"Fr Bruce, Er, John Bruce, Whatever His Name Is . . ."

As it happens, the May 25 meeting with Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins at the St John the Evangelist parish in Calgary was recorded. A visitor has been working to make a transcript of the recording. A copy of the audio file has been made available to me, and I've got to say the quality is very marginal, and my hat's off to the visitor who's doing the work of making a transcript. I did let my regular correspondent know about the audio file, and the take was:

I've listened about halfway through so far. It is dawning on me that these two men apparently flew all the way to Calgary to defend themselves and the Bros against John Bruce. I'm absolutely blown away. I mean, I can't wait until 11:30 am EST rolls around every day so I can read your blog, but I did not realise you had become an influencer. Wow.

This is actually not an exaggeration. Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins spent much of the hour and 15 minutes in the meeting cautioning the parish about John Bruce. My reaction wasn't that far from my correspondent's -- as Rush Limbaugh puts it, I'm living rent-free in their heads. I would say that this, in addition to the fact that both men flew to Calgary at the cost of several thousand dollars to hold this meeting, is an indication that Bp Lopes is under a great deal of pressure.

Although the visitor is still working on a full transcript, I did make my own version of certain remarks by both Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins. Bp Lopes spoke first, and he outlined the ordinariate's unavailing efforts to stop this blog, including, by his account, an effort to have me declared an online bully. However, at 7:00 in the recording, he says,

Fr Bruce, er, John Bruce, whatever his name is --- I attempted to work through the Archdiocese of Los Angeles –- I know that he received a letter from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles –- I know this, because he put the letter right up on his blog – he said ‘Look, I’m getting under their skin finally’.

Now, I hate to have to put it this way, but this statement is an untruth, the thing which is not. The only correspondence I've ever received from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has been periodic fundraising appeals and corresponding thanks and receipts for our contributions. I have never received any correspondence, e-mail, letter, or anything else from anyone in the archdiocese about this blog, and of course, since I never received such a thing, I never posted it on this blog.

That Bp Lopes would slip and unintentionally call me "Fr Bruce" is an indication of how agitated he must have been to be making these statements. One thing I've learned in a lifetime of dealing with untruths is that people who tell these things never just fabricate out of whole cloth -- they don't just say out of the blue, "Joe Blow is a registered sex offender," when he is not. They'll use some grain of truth -- Joe Blow told a tasteless joke that put a sex offender in a positive light one day, for instance -- and they'll build on that to sort of fudge things into making Joe into a registered sex offender himself.

The grain-of-truth episode that did appear on my blog was this. In March of last year, I posted that Fr Longenecker had conducted a Lenten mission at our parish. I had a feeling that someone still seething over the St Mary of the Angels debacle would use this bit of information to track down our parish, and this in fact happened. However, it was not anyone in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, it was a lay parishioner at our former parish who had been a member at St Mary of the Angels, where she was a member of the Bartus faction. She apparently maintains contact with Fr Bartus, now down in Orange County.

The Sunday after my post on Fr Longenecker appeared, an associate at our parish pulled my wife and me aside after mass and asked me if I was the John Bruce who had a blog about the ordinariate. I said I was. Fr ___ was both puzzled and amused. He said our pastor had received an e-mail that wasn't entirely coherent making a not fully understandable complaint about the blog, and that in fact he wasn't sure if it had been written by a native English speaker. Although this was enough for me to identify the close follower of Fr Bartus, Fr ___ never showed me a copy of the e-mail, so there is no way I could have posted it here. I did mention the episode in one paragraph of this post, but I don't believe I was gloating, and I said nothing about getting under anyone's skin.

I gave Fr ___ a 50,000-foot view of the situation, mentioning in passing things like instant ordinations and the priest who beat his wife before the altar. The conversation turned to other more local controversies, and it ended with a chuckle from Fr ___. No one from the parish or the archdiocese has mentioned this to me again. I would caution anyone who considers contacting our pastor, a very busy and outstanding priest, with any complaint about me that his first response will probably be to say he knows my wife and me as leaders in a large parish. Please do not waste this man's time.

What concerns me about the statement from Bp Lopes above is that it contains two clear untruths.

• I never received any letter from the Archdiocese of Los Angeles
• I never posted it on my blog, since I never received it.

Bp Lopes used this purported episode, which did not take place, to back up other statements about me, including at 3:10 “He’s made his life’s mission the destruction of the ordinariate;" at 11:00 “It is manifest to me that there is deep spiritual sickness – woundedness". It does seem to me that Bp Lopes in this case follows a pattern of behavior that I've seen elsewhere in people who have a habit of telling untruths of taking a minor episode -- in this case, a not fully coherent e-mail to our pastor from a deeply troubled person -- and turning it into a "letter" from the "Archdiocese of Los Angeles", which I posted on my blog to claim I'm taking satisfaction from "getting under their skin".

It does interest me that this strange episode does seem to have been communicated to Bp Lopes, and it's reasonable to conclude he was satisfied to hear it and used it to embroider it out of recognition and try to assassinate my character with it. Either that, or he never heard it and made the whole letter from the archdiocese up himself.

It occurred to me, after reading my regular correspondent's reaction, that if I were simply a narcissistic troll seeking attention, I'd be flicked away like a mite. Instead, I've got a bishop and a vicar general who appear to be taking me very seriously, to the point that they feel the need to tell stories and attack my character.

In fact, I'll have some choice quotes from Fr Perkins tomorrow.

Two Interiors

Based on my comments yesterday about not knowing how big the interior of the Mt Calvary Baltimore parish is, my regular correspondent went looking and found this image on Facebook:

Trying to judge from the people I see and the number of pews, I would put its maximum capacity at about 100, so if the Mystery Worshipper said it was about two-thirds full, I would guess about 60 people were there. Since the reporter himself was a guest, and since someone was apparently being confirmed at the mass, I would expect some of those 60 were not members, or would not have ordinarily attended. So it sounds like we're about at the level the parish was when it came into the ordinariate, barely meeting the minimum parish status.

A couple of other things strike me. The interior seems quite bare and even depressing. I've got to wonder when it was last painted -- over time, candles build up crud on the walls, and I have a sense of crud buildup. There are some figures in surplices in the choir loft at the far left, but I assume that's about the extent of the music program -- an organist and not much else. So based on the Mystery Worshipper's report, there's a catered brunch following the mass (presumably courtesy of an endowment), a thurifer swings the thurible in full circles (a circus act), there's the Viennese neueste Ordnung Liturgy -- and that's it. My regular correspondent reports,

There's a methadone clinic across the street from the church so I imagine the young families are making a trip into downtown Baltimore from some distance. To attend a parish "independent of many of the liturgical reforms of the 1970s," no doubt.

A parish is more than a thurible, some vestments, and a thee-thou prayer book. More even than a catered brunch. Just for starters, there's a physical plant that has to be maintained, and an interior that needs to be brightened periodically. I don't see Mt Calvary as a real parish with a real parish life.

My regular correspondent also informs me that the St James, St Augustine FL group is definitely moving 30 miles up the I-95 to Jacksonville on July 28. "This is the school chapel where they will be meeting":

Needless to say Jacksonville is well-supplied with Catholic parishes. No offence to the school, but why would anyone choose to attend Sunday mass here except in some kind of logistical emergency?

Just one thing. Here is the main nave at the host parish, St Joseph's Jacksonville. All the two dozen or so who've come up the I-95 for the neueste Ordung liturgy have to do, apparently, is go in a slightly different direction once they get to the St Joseph's parking lot, and they can worship here, rather than in the school auditorium.

There's a full web page of ministry opportunities at St Joseph's, with the opportunity to serve as a sacristan, lector, eucharistic adoration, and even Latin mass. These are the sorts of opportunites people can have at a real parish, not a group of two dozen meeting in a school auditorium.

But certainly parishes differ, and St Joseph's may not appeal to everyone. As my regular correspondent says, there are other Catholic parishes in Jacksonville.

What's beginning to disturb me here is how people -- thankfully, not all that many -- are somehow being conned into thinking they need to go to some special kind of Catholic church, and they're entitled to stay away from what often appear to be outstanding diocesan parishes that are much more convenient and offer a great deal more than cheap veneer and a portable altar, or that depressing pile of bricks in Baltimore.

The Mystery Worshipper Visits Mt Calvary Baltimore

The Ship of Fools website has a feature called the Mystery Worshipper, in which "volunteers who warm church pews for us around the world" report on church services they attend. The Mystery Woreshipper attended the Pentecost (sorry, "Whitsun", I forgot I'm at high tea) mass at Mt Calvary Baltimore this past Sunday, June 9. Theoretically, this should be a "blinded" exercise, in which a visitor, perhaps traveling to see relatives or on a work assignment, visits a new parish anonymously and reports without particular bias on the experience.

For starters, this didn't exactly happen here. The visitor reports at the end,

What one thing will you remember about all this in seven days' time ?

Being present for the reception into the Catholic Church of a long-time friend (and erstwhile Mystery Worshipper) along with his entire family.

So this won't be a "blinded" exercise; this Mystery Worshipper is known to, and a longtime friend of a parishioner, so he's guaranteed to be favorable. And of course, everyone in the parish already knows who he is, or will once the review is published, so there's a clear conflict, and in fact I would say there's a misrepresentation here. But we've just been discussing the strange where's-the-parish shell game being played for the bishop in Irvine and Murrieta, so this is no surprise for the North American ordinariate.

The visitor explains,

As is to be expected of one of the flagship ‘Ritualist’ parishes in the country, the ceremonial was of very high quality, precisely the liturgical patrimony that Pope Benedict called ‘the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared.’

I suppose Mt Calvary is a legend in its own mind, but it's hard to call it a "flagship". I posted on its elevation to parish status in 2017 here. It was significant at that time that the parish, although it was one of only a few that came in as a corporate body from an Anglican denomination with its property following a valid legal action by its members and vestry, it still took five years to reach the minimal membership level required of parish status in the ordinariate.

Since Houston has yet to publish actual membership numbers of any sort, we must assume that the membership there remains somewhat marginal. According to the worshipper, the nave was "about two thirds full", but this may be a generous estimate, and in any case, we don't know its actual capacity. The visitor reported, "the thurifer led the altar party down the main aisle, swinging the thurible in full circles" and referred elsewhere to a "20-page 8½ x 11 service leaflet" that "contained all of the text and music of the hymns, liturgy, and readings". He didn't mention sentimental clip art, but I wouldn't rule that out. Clearly we're dealing with the whole Anglo-Catholic nine yards.

An interesting note is "The only book in the pews was the Hymnal 1940 of the Episcopal Church." Frankly, this is strange -- is it a sort of wink that says we aren't really quite Catholic here, dontcha know? The editor of the Mystery Worshipper feature herself notes in a comment,

I've never seen a RC hymnal that I'd be proud to sing out of. Their website points out that Mount Calvary was formerly Episcopalian, then RC Anglican Rite, and now RC Ordinariate.

This woman, who may not be Catholic herself, is ignorant. Hard cover hymnals with readings are a staple of Catholic publishers; the one in our parish has roughly 700 hymns, with all the Anglican standards, many Lutheran and US evangelical hymns, Catholic ones (not Dan Schuette) that don't make the Protestant books, and Latin chants. The music program has not only a paid choir and a large organ, but an orchestra with strings and brass.

I don't feel comfortable with the Mystery Worshipper's sense that they're somehow doing things right at Mt Calvary that aren't being done in Cahtolic parishes outside the ordinariate -- and the 1940 hymnal somehow proves it, when I'd say it suggests instead there's something wrong, and the description of the mass there suggests a stuffy pedantry over liturgy.

There's some discussion about children. One thing I note at our parish is that if there are 3-500 people at mass, the nave is full, there's a good sound system, and the clergy keep the mass going without pointless pauses, children aren't a distraction, adult bodies absorb a lot of random noise. Beyond that, in large families, the older siblings keep the younger ones in line, which is more like how things should be anyhow.

Why did the Mystery Worshipper even feel the need to make a point about the kids? Is it perhaps part of what secular bourgeois culture seems to have become, that all public space is to be treated as a nursery? That's not what I see at a well run diocesan mass. Indeed, Latins, Filipinos, and other traditions in fact observe decorum where it belongs. Is our man slightly embarrassed that millennials don't?

My current thinking is that I became Catholic as part of spiritual growth. I'm grateful to our angels that we were directed away from some boutique version of Catholicism that, clinging strangely to its archaic hymnal, doesn't even seem entirely Catholic. Instead, we've engaged in a diocesan parish where we're continuing to grow. I'm not sure if the tiny groups of self-satisfied people in the ordinariate have that opportunity.

UPDATE: Just today, Bp Barron makes the point that "We are not here to be curators of a museum."

California Newman Group Plans

My regular correspondent sent me a screen shot of a Facebook post from Fr Bartus regarding the next steps for the California Newman group (click on the image for a larger version):

There are several bits of "news" -- or maybe "this is new" -- here. The first is that the Newman group will become "the world's first canonical parish dedicated under the patronage of St John Henry Newman following his canonization." The group is, of course, not now a parish, and my understanding is that it has struggled unsuccessfully to be designated as such up to now. In fact, it's hard to avoid the impression that Fr Bartus had shifted his interest to the Holy Martyrs Murrieta group, which apparently is larger than the Irvine group, and in fact he'd been putting effort to acquiring a building in Covina.

Instead, the focus is now back to Irvine. But it's still hard to escape the impression that the California efforts have all been scattered, a series of attempts to create a parish-sized community, none of which quite qualifies.

My regular correspondent comments,

A rehash of the idea for a "Walsingham Chapel" at Santiago Retreat Center sponsored by the Newman group. The wealthy donors necessary to realise that plan did not step forward, as I recall. You also pointed out in an earlier post that this area is susceptible to wildfires and probably not a great place for a substantial and expensive building. The current buildings at Santiago Retreat Center are prefabs. Not sure how Holy Martyrs , Murrieta fits into this scheme. Will Fr Bartus be the Pastor of St John Henry Newman while continuing to be the Sunday celebrant at HM? He has mentioned on the HM website that the storefront is only temporary and that the disproportionately large statue of Our Lady of Walsingham they recently acquired will anchor the Lady Chapel in a future building. All pie in the sky, IMHO.

Exactly what's going on here is made more puzzling by the statement farther down in the Facebook post that the Newman parish-to-be will "ultimately" be "a two-campus parish, still having one Sunday mass at the Busch Firm Queen of Life Chapel in Irvine" to cover Orange and Los Angeles counties, and a new building at the Santiago site to cover Orange and Riverside Counties. The Riverside County part, I assume, refers to Murrieta-Temecula, and this might at least theoretically be taken to mean that the Holy Martyrs storefront will be folded into a larger parish centered on the Santiago site.

However, as a 50-year LA resident, this makes little sense to me. Just to be sure I wasn't suffering from some sort of tunnel vision, I ran a direction search on Google Maps and found that the Santiago Retreat Center is 58.8 miles, 1 hour 22 minutes from the Holy Martyrs Murrieta location. If you don't believe me, see here (click on the image for a larger view):

Recall that the explanation Bp Lopes gave Bp Barnes of San Bernardino for the Murrieta group was that it was inconvenient for the folks in Riverside County to drive to Irvine for their neueste Ordnung thee-thou mass. Yet it's certainly possible to conclude from the announcement here that under a full St John Henry Newman plan, the Murrieta group will go into a "two-campus" parish, with their closest option nearly 60 miles and over an hour away.

It's hard for me to avoid thinking that Bp Lopes is being told what he wants to hear, and he's disinclined to ask questions. I know that even people from Northern California, like Bp Lopes, are unaware of actual distances in Southern California, and it sounds from the Facebook post as though he's being led to assume it's a quick and easy drive from Murrieta to Silverado, or Covina to Irvine, so hey, if we add everyone in all these scattered startups together, we'll come up with a full parish somewhere in the middle!

Right. I don't think this will survive any serious scrutiny, and I wonder what the take will be in Murrieta, which as I understand it is a bigger group than Irvine anyhow.

St. Michael’s Prep: What Problem Are They Trying To Solve?

On Thursday, I posted initial news on the closing of St Michael's Prep School in Silverado, CA with the 2020-21 school year. Several visitors have raised additional questions. The first, which I thought even on Thursday was entirely reasonable, was that we probably don't know the actual reason for the closing. Visitors have forwarded Facebook posts to me, now taken down, that suggest there's good reason to wonder.

A first post, apparently from Facebook but forwarded via e-mail, reads much like the announcement on the Newman ordinariate group's web page:

It is with sadness that the Norbertine Fathers are closing St. Michael's Prep due to the need to sell the property to get needed revenue for the new Abbey site. We will have one more year next year, but that's the end. This new void is coupled with the existing void of having a similar classical education for girls in Orange County. BUT, I'm not giving up without trying hard to meet the even greater need. This news, with the forced sex ed by the State of California, is dire indeed for current and future generations. St. Michael's isn't closing because of lack of enrollment or financial solvency; there is a huge waiting list and they are financially solid. It's just a practical need for big money to pay the bills of the new site by selling its current property. So... If there's a desire to reclaim traditional Catholic education in Orange County, classical in curriculum and strong in religious education, daily Ma! ss in the Ordinariate Form, and a co-ed parochial day school, we need to inc [forwarded text ends here]

This was followed by a second message intended to clarify the first:

I wanted to clarify something. I had previously written that the reason that St. Michael's Prep was closing was a matter of needing money. There's actually other related matters: the Abbey doesn't have the personnel to run two pieces of property, there has been a growing interest among confreres to open a seminary (which is great news!), and other matters that go along with it. I did not mean to give the impression that the decision was merely about the bottom line. If anyone was thinking, especially because of what I wrote, that there was anything less than good intentions or actions by the Norbertines, please forgive me! That is not the case! They have been, are, and will continue to be nothing but the best for Orange County and beyond!

Nothing to see here, move on! Nothing but good things! Nothing! Nothing!

My regular correspondent asks a more specific question: why, "after more than 50 years", are the Norbertines closing the school? The question that the post just above tries to answer is why they don't want to run a school in the old building while moving the abbey to the new building -- but why was a school apparently left out of the plans for the new facility from the start? Other than a "growing interest among confreres to open a seminary", no reason for such a major change in direction is given, especially if there's a "huge waiting list". But everything is perfect, perfect perfect!

Actually, a visitor who's followed the St Michael's story for some years says that original plans for the move did include a school at the new site, along with a summer camp, but at a certain point, these plans were dropped without explanation. However, the report is that over the years, there were allegations of practices like fagging, hazing, bullying, and worse, which would not be unusual for any boys' boarding school, but legal complications may have arisen in the case of St Michael's which have mostly been kept quiet.

But let's return to the announcement on the Newman group's web page, linked in Thursday's post:

With the closing of the boys high school of St. Michael’s Prep, the previously existing need for a girl’s equivalent, and the coming challenges posed by the gender/sexual curriculum in public and charter schools, the need for classical Catholic education in Orange County, California has never been greater.

The remedy proposed is a vaguely defined home school co-op. But how does a home school co-op replace a fully accredited boarding school? And how does a home school co-op fill a need for a new Catholic girls' school? The co-op, for starters would be co-ed, at least as the vague plans suggest.

Beyond that, there are two Catholic girls' high schools in Orange County now, Rosary Academy in Fullerton and Cornelia Connelly School in Anaheim. There are several other Catholic high schools in Orange County that may be either boys' or co-ed, Santa Margarita (co-ed) in Rancho Santa Margarita, Junipero Serra (co-ed) in San Juan Capistrano, Servite (all male) in Anaheim, and Mater Dei (co-ed) in Santa Ana.

So someone is going to have to be clearer on where the "void" is for Catholic education in Orange County, but even the announcement on the Newman site is unclear about it: if the public schools are to implement unsatisfactory sex ed classes, that's certainly one more good reason to send children to Catholic schools -- but what's wrong with the ones that are already in existence? Those are two different problems. And of course, the schools listed have existing programs and accreditation, while the co-op would have to start from scratch.

This leaves out the question of why parents who could apparently well afford to send their sons to a Catholic boarding school would want to turn around and send them to a cut-rate co-op with Mrs Schmidlap teaching history. OK, you pack your son up for prep school in Silverado, or you pack him up for prep school wherever else. Where's the void?

What problem are they trying to solve?

Maybe Someone Can Help Me Think This Through

So, however this came about exactly, Fr Barbour of Catholic Answers celebrates the 9AM Sunday mass at the Newman ordinariate community in Irvine, CA. Fr Barbour, I know from experience, is an engaging and often amusing homilist. He's an effective evangelist and apologist. As the son of an Episcopal priest, he has better Anglican creds than, say, Fr Bartus.

So why has the Newman web site never pointed out, "Fr Hugh Barbour of Catholic Answers celebrates mass with us at 9AM Sunday mornings. Come discover the Anglican patrimony through Fr Barbour!" Of course, having hymnody from Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, John Mason Neale, and Ralph Vaughan Williams and a choir at the 11AM would make things even more effective. but let's take baby steps.

Hey, the Ordinariate Observer could run a feature on Fr Barbour at the Newman group, no?

Why not have a news blurb on the ordinariate website about it, for that matter? Even a quote from Bp Lopes about how delighted the ordinariate is to have Fr Barbour's gracious assistance?

Why couldn't this be blurbed on Catholic Answers, for that matter?

Let's keep in mind that just last Saturday was the garden party in Irvine where Bp Lopes and Fr Bartus were to schmooze potential angels who'd donate to whatever activities they could pitch. But I'm puzzled that they've had a worthwhile resource in Fr Barbour at their disposal for over a year and haven't taken what would strike me as logical and reasonable steps to make full use of it.

I assume that in a metropolitan area like Orange County, the presence of Fr Barbour at a Sunday mass would attract at least some minimal extra attendance, though this would present its own set of problems -- Fr Barbour, with minimal publicity, would almost certainly outdraw at the 9AM mass whatever mediocrity was taking the 11.

Fr Barbour with choral music, minimally publicized, at an 11AM mass would probably overflow the Busch chapel, which would create additional problems, although I assume these would be problems Bp Lopes would be delighted to face. On the other hand, I suspect these would be problems Fr Bartus is not equipped to handle.

Best to keep Fr Barbour under wraps and use him as a supply priest. Can someone help me see where I've got this wrong?

Finding Fr Barbour

In yesterday's post, I was at best uncertain about whether the Newman group in Irvine, CA mentions Fr Barbour at all on its website or Facebook page. After some searching, my regular correspondent in fact came up with two mentions, an initial Facebook announcement on May 12, 2018 (below)

And a picture on Facebook of Fr Barbour celebrating the 9 AM in Irvine on Palm Sunday 2019.

Let's get this straight. Fr Barbour is a star. If you search for him on YouTube, there are pages of hits, including an appearance with Bp Barron. I simply don't know if Fr Barbour is in Irvine every Sunday or not, but he's a remarkably eloquent and engaging speaker.

• Why wouldn't the Newman group make a special point of his presence, especially if it's every week? Instead, there's near total radio silence.
• Beyond that, if Fr Barbour is available on Sunday mornings, why is he at the 9 AM mass, which has no choral music, instead of the 11 AM high mass?
• If Fr Barbour is showing his favor to the North American ordinariate in this way, why on earth isn't it acknowledged by Houston, at least in the Ordinariate Observer?

My regular correspondent points out,

[T]he names of ANY clergy are conspicuous by their absence on the websites of Newman, Holy Martyrs, Our Lady of Grace, and the new website of St Augustine, San Diego. I have looked at many hundreds of church websites in my time and a "Staff" and/or "Clergy" page is a standard feature, often with picture(s) and a bio or bios, phone numbers and email addresses. The new St Augustine website has two pictures of Fr Baaten illustrating "Becoming Catholic" and "Evangelism and Devotion" but he is not identified (his name and contact info appeared on the old site). It's like a franchise, I guess: Look for SoCal Ordinariate, don't worry about the individual owner.

The theory I have, knowing Fr Bartus personally, is that he's a guy who works through back channels, not in the open. It reminds me of mediocre bosses I had when I was working, who were basically terrified that a subordinate might outshine them and bypass them in their careers, so they were careful to keep the spotlight off everyone. So basically, the important thing is that Bartus is saying what needs to be said to Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes, and nothing else is all that important.

Including keeping the spotlight off Fr Barbour and using him as a supply priest at the 9 AM mass.

Might a priest with just ordinary skills make more of a success at the Newman group? just asking.

St Michael's Abbey Prep School In Silverado, CA Is Closing

The Norbertine St Michael's Abbey in Silverado, CA appears to be thriving and prosperous, to the point that it is moving to an entirely new facility. The former longtime prior at the abbey, Fr Hugh Barbour, is the son of the late Fr Carroll Barbour, the revered Anglo-Catholic rector of our former Episcopalian parish, St Thomas Hollywood.

It appears that Fr Bartus was able to use his association with St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, however troubled it had been, to ingratiate himself with Fr Hugh, and when the St Mary's attempt to join the North American ordinariate failed, Fr Bartus was able to obtain a teaching job at St Michael's School to sustain himself while trying to plant a parish in Orange County -- though he had clearly expected to become the parish priest at St Mary's as Plan A.

A visitor with an understanding of Roman Catholic monasticism gave me some background on Fr Hugh's situation. It appears that he was very successful as the abbey's prior, holding that post for a remarkably long period, but it is normal for a superior, on leaving such a post, to separate himself from the community to give his successor full ability to establish his own regime. As a result, Fr Hugh left the abbey and became a priest-in-residence at a San Diego diocesan parish. He became chaplain to Catholic Answers, and at least for a time, he took the 9AM Sunday mass at the Bl John Henry Newman group in Irvine, CA.

It was always puzzling to me that neither the Newman website nor its FaceBook page ever made mention of Fr Barbour's participation, when his name would have been far more prestigious than that of Fr Bartus, so I simply don't know if he's still involved, and as I remarked earlier, to use him simply as a supply priest would be to invoke the principle that God is not mocked. Whatever. It does appear that Fr Barbour's departure from the abbey has in fact lessened Fr Bartus's ability to hitchhike on his prestige.

Up to now, according to my regular correspondent, both Fr Bartus and Fr Baaten of the North American ordinariate have had part-time teaching positions at St Michael's Prep, presumably due to Fr Barbour's good offices. We must assume that this income was needed to sustain their households, as neither the Murrieta nor the Irvine communities is apparently able to sustain Fr Bartus independently, and with only about a dozen members, Fr Baaten clearly must rely on income sources outside the San Diego group.

However, the St Michael's Prep website now announces (scroll down),

After more than 50 years of transforming high school boys into well prepared Catholic young men, St. Michael’s Preparatory School will be closing its doors after the 2019-2020 school year, in anticipation of the move to our new abbey home.

This means Frs Bartus and Baaten will apparently need to find other supplementary work to sustain their incomes. This, if nothing else, is an indication that the California communities, after seven years, have still not reached the point where any is self-sustaining.

In response to this, the Newman website announces,

With the closing of the boys high school of St. Michael’s Prep, the previously existing need for a girl’s equivalent, and the coming challenges posed by the gender/sexual curriculum in public and charter schools, the need for classical Catholic education in Orange County, California has never been greater.

Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church, a parish [sic] of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, is gauging serious interest in starting a robust Home School Co-op program at Santiago Retreat Center in Silverado, next door to the new Norbertine Abbey of St. Michael’s location. The goal would be to have both volunteer parent teachers as well as paid full-time teachers to provide a flexible format of education from the traditional core curriculum of the liberal arts.

My regular correspondent noted,

Fr Bartus has seen this as a fresh opportunity to get a BJHN home school co-op up and running, at Santiago Retreat Center. He always has a scheme on the go; unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he does not usually follow through.

I asked,

But do any BJHN parents send their kids to St Michael’s? What particular gap is a new co-op filling? A boarding prep school ain’t the same as a co-op, and parents who can afford to send their kids to St Michael’s will presumably send them to an equivalent.

My correspondent replied,

Certainly the co-op will not fill any gap St Michael's is leaving behind, although Fr Bartus previously envisioned BJHN running a K-12 school.

It seems to me that, from our experience at our parish, which operates two well-rated schools, running a Catholic school is a serious business in a highly competitive environment. The schools clearly take up a good part of our pastor's time, even with highly qualified faculty and administrators.

By the same token, the financial commitment and personal attention required of parents are substantial. To imagine that a startup home-school co-op could fill anything like the gap left by St Michael's -- and we know nothing of the actual factors that led the abbey to its decision to close the school -- is simply fantasy.

I continue to shake my head at the air of unreality that surrounds the California version of the ordinariate -- but my regular correspondent stresses Fr Bartus's track record of not following through on previous school proposals. The current one, it seems to me, can appeal only to unserious parents who are doing their children no favors at all.

More Clarity On Missions

A visitor notes,

There is a difference between a Mission Diocese (which receives funds from the larger group of Dioceses (USCCB)/Church to help fund specific and particular ministries and activities in a sparsely populated diocese, e.g. Santa Rosa receiving funds to maintain two college Newman Centers since college kids are notoriously broke and cannot sustain it by themselves, but the ministry produces good fruit) and Mission churches within a diocese which are too small to remain viable on their own or be classified as a parish and receive funds from within the same diocese to provide basic sacraments and Mass to sparsely populated areas.

There is also a difference between an active small mission group, supported by a Diocese where there are very few people because the next nearest parish/mission is tens or hundreds of miles away, they(and their families before them) invested over time, have a physical church and some facilities but don’t have enough people to justify a full time/live-in priest versus a group of people with a dream, no facilities, no real ties to a location, and other actual viable parishes within easy driving distance.

The first group needs funds to have the bare minimum of Catholicism, the latter group needs funds to avoid attending Mass where they do not like the priest or the vestments or the liturgy or the. . . (insert pet peeve here). It is easy to see which model will be sustainable over time and which will become a footnote in the history of the Church. $155,000.00 is not small change. It will be interesting to see how long the brother Bishops will let go of that kind of money if there are not some better numbers in the future.

If you go to the USCCB Mission Territory page that I linked yesterday, the entry for the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter lists "Areas of Need: Ordinariate Travel; Communications Support; Diocesan Administratation" as the uses to which a $155,000 grant will be put -- in other words, entirely internal to the chancery and travel. Compare that to a $125,000 grant to the Diocese of Laredo for "Mission Support; Religious Education for Children; Religious Education for Adults and New Evangelization; Seminarian Education and Vocations; Youth Ministry; Refugee and Jail Ministry; Diaconate Formation and Permanent Diaconate; Family Life Ministry".

Just last March I took a look at the 2019 Bishop's Appeal for the ordinariate, which seeks to raise $300,000, $225,000 (or 75%) of which will go to chancery functions ("communications outreach" and "parish development") and the bishop's travel ("evangelization"). In our archdiocese, the bishop's appeal is called "Together in Mission", and it goes specifically to support parishes and schools in poorer areas that need the extra money.

In contrast, everything from the USCCB is going to Houston bureaucracy and the bishop's travel, while 75% of the ordinariate bishop's appeal goes to the same (the other 25% goes to seminarian support). I would say there's a major disconnect between what Houston calls "mission" and other Catholic bishops call "mission". So I think another answer to the question the visitor raised yesterday is, "It depends on what the meaning of 'mission' is."

Another conclusion one might draw is that the tithe from individual communities can't support even the internal functions of the ordinariate, such that it has to go begging to pay for office staff and air conditioning. (

There's something seriously wrong here.

Anglicanorum Coetibus vs Mission Dioceses

A visitor comments,

I'm a Roman Catholic in the diocese of [redacted] with family both in the Ordinariate and in the Episcopal Church. I've been reading your blog for a few months. I think you raise some important concerns, but I wanted to push back on the idea that ordinariate groups are irredeemably small compared to "regular" Catholic dioceses.

You mentioned that most groups/parishes don't grow beyond a few dozen. I imagine that's true, but that tracks pretty closely with what we experience in mission dioceses in the Midwest and South. Of the diocesan parishes I have numbers for, the majority have fewer than 125 registered households. Parishes with 20-30 families are common, and two parishes have, respectively, six and seven registered households. "What will we do when Fr. X retires or is moved?" is a live question in many of these places. Even our cathedral parish is only a little bit bigger (~850 families) than OLW Cathedral (~600?).

To be fair, these numbers are balanced out in our diocese by eight or ten parishes with 1,000-2,500 households. I imagine the North American ordinariate doesn't have those numbers in any parish. But it's not unusual for a Catholic diocese, for historical, geographic, or other reasons to have a generous definition of "stable group" and for a parish to max out at a few dozen. Unless all the US mission dioceses have failed, I don't think a small target audience should be used to claim that the Ordinariate has failed.

This got me thinking pretty hard, and I ran it past my regular correspondent as well. I looked up the term "mission diocese" and could only find Home Mission Diocese on the USCCB site, which says, "These dioceses lack the resources to provide basic pastoral ministry to their populations." The practical effect of this designation is that they receive grants from the USCCB for specific purposes. In fact, the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter does receive a $155,000 grant for travel and administration. (Does Bp Lopes fly first class?)

On the other hand, if I think about "mission diocese", I normally think more in the direction of Prince Gallitzin or Bp Lamy. My regular correspondent thinks of a mission parish as being in a very poor area, a sparsely populated area, an area where Catholics are in a small minority, or an area where the population is entirely unchurched. The problem with calling the North American ordinariate a "mission" is that the target population, and the groups actually being reached, fit none of these categories.

Let's try to parse out the original intent behind Anglicanorum coetibus. Bishop-then-Cardinal Bernard Law was behind the project from the start, working through intermediaries with dissident Episcopalian clergy in the controversies surrounding the 1976 Episcopalian General Convention. The dissidents intended to set up a secessionist Anglican jurisdiction responding to TEC's approval of women's ordination, with a subsidiary issue being the projected revisions to the Book of Common Prayer. It goes without saying that everyone involved was a baptized Christian, and Episcopalians have always been recognized as an affluent and influential group of people.

The accounts we have make it clear that, although then-Bp Law worked with about half a dozen Episcopalian clergy interested in joining a new Roman Catholic jurisdiction, this was a minority view among the 1976 dissidents, and in fact the group was seen as hotheaded and unserious by the majority. But beyond that, Douglas Bess's indispensable history of the movement, Divided We Stand, makes it plain that all the dissidents, who coagulated as "continuing" Anglicans, wildly overestimated their size and influence from the start

Exactly why Law associated himself with a splinter group among a larger assortment of oddballs is unclear. The best insight I've had, from someone who knew him in the 1970s, is that Law was extremely ambitious, and he may have felt that bringing in a significant group of Protestants would be a feather in his cap. By the late 1990s, he in fact expected to succeed John Paul II as pope, and this may have been part of a case he expected to make with a conclave.

Law's first effort was with the Pastoral Provision, although this was itself a Plan B after John Paul resisted creating a personal prelature for the dissident Anglicans in the late 1970s. The problem was that only a handful of parishes succeeded under the Pastoral Provision over the 1980s, with a notable failure when successive archbishops of Los Angeles refused to allow several former Episcopalian parishes to come in under the provision. Clearly Law, probably for the sake of his own agenda, felt the concept had more potential than it did. He apparently still hoped a personal prelature would somehow change its dismal prospects.

Law facilitated a meeting between several conservative Episcopalian clergy and Cardinal Ratzinger in 1993, which resulted in a draft of Anglicanorum coetibus. John Paul, still skeptical, told Ratzinger to put it to a vote with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which presumably both understood wouldn't pass, and Ratzinger kept it in a drawer in his desk, figuratively speaking. It's worth pointing out that during the 1993 meeting, an Episcopalian bishop gave Ratzinger the estimate that 250,000 Episcopalians would join a Catholic personal prelature.

The best estimate we have is that as of 2019, the North American ordinariate numbers in the mid four figures, somewhere between 1% and 2% of the original estimate. I think a perfectly reasonable question would be whether Pope Benedict XVI would have issued the apostolic constitution if he'd been aware of its actual level of interest. Indeed, might Cardinal Law have been better advised to focus his efforts elsewhere? My regular correspondent points out,

[S]ome of the smallest OCSP groups are in cities with very large Anglican populations. The Anglican Diocese of Toronto has 54,000 people on its parish rolls. The ["continuing"] ACCC community in Greater Vancouver led by the now-administrator of Our Lady of Walsingham, Maple Ridge had 100 members and had purchased a church---it was probably the second-largest group in the ACCC. The target market is large, but the Ordinariate uptake is almost non-existent. . . . in calculating the size of the target market here, there must be hundreds of thousands of current Catholics with family connections to the United Church of Canada or the ACC, (Canada's two largest Protestant denominations), qualifying them for Ordinariate membership.

Missions or not, bishops are called to be effective stewards of the Church's resources. Closing and merging parishes are part of their job. Ending one form of outreach can enable a more effective one.

Yeah, Well. . .

In the context of yesterday's post, my regular correspondent told me Mr Shane Schaetzel, the prime mover behind the tiny Ozark ordinariate group, has highly endorsed Taylor Marshall's Infiltration. Further,

The Papal States? Give me a break. I am reminded of a First Things article I once read which referred to "the unjustly-maligned Spanish Inquisition." Sounds like a punch line. I think that Fr Treco was preaching something not unrelated to Marshall's thesis, and I can see why Bp Lopes would want to nip this in the bud, and put the onus on Treco to demonstrate that he was not wandering into the suburbs of sedevacantism. The last thing Bp Lopes wants, from a career perspective and I hope from a personal one, is for the Ordinariate to become, or even be perceived as, a bolt hole for radical traditionalists.

I note that, along with the greatly reduced output of the AC blog, Mr Schaetzel's "Catholic in the Ozarks" blog is now available only to "subscribers" and the Anglican Ordinariates Informal Conversation Forum on FB is a closed group. I think that evangelism is giving way to the secret handshake.

Another visitor remarks, regarding Bp Lopes,

Thinking about your comment about what other bishops say about Bishop Lopes, the casino slot machine game Jackpot/Super Jackpot Party comes to mind. In case you are not familiar with the game, you spin the reels to get matching symbols to go to the bonus round where you get to pick random prizes until/unless you pick the Party Pooper which ends the bonus. My guess is that the Ordinary/Bishop position of the North American Ordinariate was bit like being offered the bonus round of priestly jobs and then picking the pooper right off the bat. Maybe the other Bishops wag their tongues and heads but maybe they are just grateful they did not have to try to avoid the pooper. Maybe that is why they have become so gun-shy when it comes to embracing Ordinariate activities in their dioceses. Nobody wants to pick the pooper.

One reason I started this blog was the massive disconnect I saw between the potential of a Catholic prelature for Anglican converts and the disappointing reality. A tradition that came from Dryden, Newman, Chesterton, Knox, Waugh, and Butler is carried forward by Marshall, Gyapong, Schaetzel, and Coulombe. Serious men like Fr Longenecker just get on with the work.

So, This Catholic Convert Walks Into A Bar

I had Taylor Marshall's blog on my blogroll for a period of months after I expanded the scope of this blog, but I began to have my doubts, and soon enough, I took it off. As a Catholic convert myself, I'm acutely sensitive to the risk of deciding, on the basis of a few years' experience, that the Church has got it all wrong, and that way lies the punch lines to jokes, some of which Old Nick may be chortling over as we speak.

So Taylor Marshall has come out with a book. Fr Longenecker has a good post. He's pulling his own punches very charitably, since he and Marshall are both converts, but he does include links to some very severe reviews. After relatively brief exposure, I decided Marshall's intellect is somewhere below third rate. There are guys out there who are Chesterton or Belloc wannabes, but Marshall isn't even at that level, and unfortunately, he doesn't have a clue that it's the case. I won't even bring up Ronald Knox or Abbot Butler. Or Edward Feser, who so far seems to have had better things to do than notice Marshall.

As best I can tell from the reviews -- the heck if I'm going to risk perfectly good money to buy a book that seems this hinky -- Marshall regards the loss of the Papal States as the beginning of the end for the Church, among other things. So, what are we to make of Vatican I, not just Vatican II, if Vatican I was in part a response to this event? And in that case, aren't there various Old Catholic groups that emerged in response to Vatican I that Marshall might find more congenial, if so many errors followed in its wake?

Just wondering. And let's keep in mind that the four US "continuing" groups that are moving toward merger are now also considering merging with the Polish National Catholic Church, and in fact The Episcopal Church has already been in communion with the Philippine Independent Catholic Church. Perhaps becoming Roman Catholic was a rash move for Marshall in the first place, huh? There are options for Anglican losers who still want to pursue careers beyond the ordinariate.

But this has me thinking further about the traditionalist con and why the North American ordinariate seems to have so much appeal to Catholic traddies -- in fact, it would seem it has more appeal to them than to the target market of Anglo-Catholics. And this goes to the question Fr Longenecker poses to Marshall:

So instead of arguing against this book or calling the book “stupid” and picking it apart line by line, I’d simply respond by saying “so what”?

Let’s assume, for the sake of this blog post, that everything Taylor says in his book is 100% accurate. The Catholic Church has been infiltrated by a host of nasties from the deepest, darkest corner of hell. Nefarious influences intent on world domination have met in secret to set up a long term plan to bring about a one world government and the takeover of the Catholic Church is crucial to their overall design.

So this is news?

The Dave Armstrong review that Fr Longenecker cites discusses "radical traditionalism" and suggests Marshall has been drifting toward it. This seems credible, although so far, I haven't seen outright sedevacantism or anti-Semitism in Marshall, or in fact ordinariate traddies. But these aren't the only wacky viewpoints people can hold; my regular correspondent thinks there's a strain of young-earth creationism in some of the ordinariate homeschoolers. The overall sense of everyone-else-has-got-it-wrong is pervasive here, but it's allowing these people to be had by bad actors who tell them what they want to hear.

All I can think is there's a con going on. Marshall is running it with his book, but there's more to the con than Marshall's particular take, and there are ordinariate communities that are marks for this con as well.

More On The Small Groups

Going beyond the shrinking San Diego group, my regular correspondent comments,

: Most small groups aren't shrivelling away like St Augustine, San Diego---they just aren't growing. That doesn't mean the membership is unchanged, of course. In 2012 twelve members of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, including the former clergyman and his wife, were received into the Church at the cathedral in Vancouver. Two years later the former clergyman was ordained and began celebrating Sunday mass in a former convent chapel on the grounds of the parish church in Maple Ridge, an exurb of Vancouver.

In 2019 the ASA remains about a dozen, but not the same dozen. Half of the original twelve can no longer make it from downtown Vancouver to Maple Ridge, because of health or lack of transport. One or two new members have joined and attend regularly. Some new families started attending, but have since moved away. Some local families split their time between the DW mass and the TLM parish in downtown Vancouver. So a precarious group remains precarious.

Why? I suppose one issue is the Maple Ridge location. Another is the utter lack of publicity: no website, no FaceBook page, no indication in the bulletin of the host parish that the DW mass is celebrated there. Nothing on the "Mass Finder" page of the Archdiocesan website. There are no activities outside of Sunday mass and coffee hour. The current administrator lives on his pension so the community remains viable. But when he goes it is hard to see Houston replacing him. I think this group is typical of about a dozen current OCSP communities.

Well, one question that comes up is, "what does 'viable' mean here?" How is a dozen people viable? An accountant auditing a business takes into consideration the ability of the business to continue. If I made a million bucks selling hula hoops when they were a fad, how will I attract new investment if I don't have a serious plan to sell other items when hula hoops are no longer popular? This group is "viable" until the administrator's health makes it no longer "viable", if for no other reason. So it's actually not viable at all.

But there's a bigger question. How many groups or parishes in the North American ordinariate are growing -- not just the marginal operations? Growth in new communities comes from two sources now, either evensong groups meeting in front parlors mainly to justify ordaining some freelance Protestant loser, or the Southern California groups that draw their membership from disgruntled Catholics, not evangelized Anglicans. It's been several years since an existing coetus of any denomination came into the Church as a body with its clergy.

And referring to the San Diego nursing kerfuffle on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, my regular correspondent commented,

I had forgotten that "Mrs Schmidlap" mentioned that such growth as her group had experienced came from"people who are attracted to Latin Mass...looking for an English version of the Latin Mass." I think this is ubiquitous in the OCSP. In other words, AC is not just a poach job, it's an internal poach job.

I think the diocesan bishops have begun to exhibit a greater or lesser degree of skepticism over this project. I'd love to be a fly on the wall to hear them get together to talk about Bp Lopes.