I was not alive during the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education decision but I did live through its aftermath. I witnessed forced integration and am now witnessing voluntary/promoted segregation. Both are very difficult to watch. That being said, I firmly believe that separate is not equal. True integration requires patience, love, good faith on all sides, and above all, time. That is why I believe the Ordinariate is doomed to fail and so is the OF Mass in the vernacularOur experience in a heavily Filipino parish that's extremely successful may lend a different perspective. There are many Filipinos who enthusiastically speak Tagalog in the parking lot and on the sidewalks, but the masses are in English and Spanish -- no Tagalog. It appears that they're following the traditional American pattern of assimilation, whereby the "old country" tongue is reserved for family and close community use, but English is strongly encouraged for public interaction.It has been 50 years since the Mass was encouraged to be celebrated in the vernacular, to create a rebirth of interest and devotion by the Faithful who just could not understand/get into that pesky Latin. Has it worked? By now, everybody has been trained and educated in this school of thought and yet, people/parishes are experimenting with ad orientem worship again and TLMers are not dying out, they are gaining young, fertile adherents guaranteeing at least one or two more generations of traddies.
Parishes celebrating Masses in multiple languages(or multiple liturgies) truly have diverse populations but are they integrated? My experience has been that when Mass is celebrated in more than one language (or liturgy) at a parish, subgroups separated by language(or liturgy) duplicate basic functions of the community thus cutting in half the resources available to each. So is this strategy bearing fruit? Perhaps it wasn’t the Latin in the Mass that was the problem after all. The success of Latin for almost two millennia is hard to argue with. It was the same for everyone irrespective of your native tongue(or patrimony).
Everybody got the same thus no one could claim someone else was receiving preferential treatment by the pastor. As the Church struggles through this experiment with forced integration and self-imposed segregation, the Ordinariate becomes the poster child for the underlying issue: separate is not equal. Time will tell, of course, but judging from experience and my Faith, the Church will heal itself, even if some fruit dies on the vine or perhaps even is pruned away. Jesus Himself promised us that.
In addition, while the parish is majority Filipino, the membership is otherwise highly diverse, with Latins, South Asians, Armenians, Africans, African-Americans, and Anglos all in the mix. The same applies to the priests. Everyone laughs at Filipino jokes and loves Filipino food, though. My wife admires how extremely well Filipino women dress, but reports that Filipinos do not approve of sleeveless dresses for lectors.
So this is one formula for how things can work. People can be drawn into a parish spirit. The question of how an ordinariate group would work with a diocesan group is something else, and I think part of that model involves parishes that are struggling to survive no matter what, which seems to be the case pretty clearly at St Luke's in suburban Maryland. In such cases, we're talking about small resources overall that will be split for two prelatures.
In our successful parish, diverse communities are working toward one goal under one authority. It takes a remarkable skill set, and in fact remarkable skills among multiple clergy, to bring this off. I could imagine an especially talented ordinariate priest who might encounter a situation with two divergent congregations who could bring this off, but I think he'd be wasted on such a small-scale challenge, and frankly, I don't think the ordinariate attracts that sort of candidate. These are either men who in middle age haven't worked out as Protestants, or young seminary graduates who haven't made a career otherwise.
If there are exceptions, I hope we see them.
