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."