"A New Kind Of Catholic Church Is Coming To Jacksonville"

My regular correspondent found this post on the Facebook page of the Anglican Ordinariate Forum, referring to the St James St Augustine, FL group now moving to Jacksonville.

It's accompanied by the photo at left. Just lookinig at the photo, I'm not sure what's "new" about it. Looking closely at the enlarged original on the Facebook page, it's possible to see that the celebration is ad orientem, and we may assume that the sacrament is received kneeling at the communion rail, but neither is especially prominent, and the statues of the Blessed Virgin and the Sacred Heart are just plain ol' Catholic.

In fact, as we've seen, the suburban Baltimore communities celebrate versus populum and incorporate charismatic and pentecostal features in their worship -- but apparently this particular "new" won't be part of the Jacksonville project. My regular correspondent observes,

Unfortunately, those attracted by the prospect of "old traditions" "solemnity" and "formality" in the reasonably attractive church depicted---St Benedict the Moor, St Augustine---may be somewhat dismayed when they discover that the St James, Jacksonville worship space is not exactly as pictured. On the other hand, those who have read a more recent posting on the site, regarding the detestable enormity of the "orans" posture during the Our Father, and the even more objectionable practice of holding hands, " both...touchy-feely borrowings from non-Catholic practices, used in western neo-churches so recently born that no element of their worship merits application of the word 'tradition', " may be alarmed to see the attendees of St James indulging in both these practices in the photos supplied.

As a reminder, at right is their new worship space. What is the objective here? Although there's a reference to "old traditions" in the Facebook post, a school cafetorium isn't especially traditional. And how many tradition-minded Anglicans will they recruit in Jacksonville from the ordinariate Facebook page? The style of worship in the Bible Belt generally isn't like that. My regular correspondent points out that Fr Mayer's background in The Episcopal Church was not Anglo-Catholic; he was running a startup meeting at the Marriott in The Colony, TX, but at this point, he's been Catholic longer than he was ever Anglican.

I think we're looking at a half-baked effort to follow the California model of going after disaffected diocesan traddies. This has been more successful in some cases than trying to clone "continuing" Anglicanism in the Catholic Church, but it has two disadvantages that won't work to its long-term success. The first problem is that diocesan bishops will get wise to what's happening -- their own parishes are being poached -- but in addition, the ordinariate model is to put poorly formed men into unpredictable situations without supervision.

The bishops won't like that much, either.