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.My regular correspondent noted,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.
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.
