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):
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.
