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.