Money And Related Issues

A San Antonio observer comments,

I see in the OLOTA church bulletin for March 29, 2020, the parish is reminding folks to give financially for the support of the parish. We are told that donations are drastically down for this period and if the parish is to survive we need your generous support. We are told that there is no endowment fund for the parish to rely on. The parish provides for two ways of giving, online and lock-box in the chapel.

I thought about this and it occurred to me, that while their plight might be true, it is the same for not only OLOTA, but for all Catholic Churches throughout the world. I would think because of the suspension of Masses and other services usually performed during the Lenten/Easter season that a loss revenue that the church depends on for the year will not be available. This is all exacerbated by the possible loss of tuition monies from the schools being shut down.

But I think this provides some context to Fr Holiday's recent Facebook post for to the Incarnation Orlando parish, reproduced in a screen shot below courtesy of my regular correspondent (click on the image for a larger copy):

My regular correspondent observes,

You will see from the date of March 15 that this was a letter that went out before the local diocese (Orlando) cancelled public celebrations of Mass as of March 18. However, the defiant tone strikes me as similar to that of Fr Lewis’s letter of March 12. Of course things have moved quickly from week to week in this pandemic and one’s thinking takes a while to catch up. But Fr Holiday makes it clear in a follow-up message that masses have been cancelled at Incarnation, Orlando only because of Bp Lopes’ explicit order, that the schedule for Confession at the church continues as usual, and that he will be “resuming meetings as usual beginning later this week [of March 22}. Really?

Fr Holiday's tone is also pretty fierce on the matter of reception of the Blessed Sacrament on the tongue. Again, this is more than two weeks old, and I have no idea if Bp Lopes will modify this discipline, but reception on the hand is fully licit and endorsed in our diocesan parish during the current crisis. My understanding is that if any ordinariate priest refused to provide the Sacrament on the hand in the US, he would have no canonical ground to stand on, but out of charity, no communicant should drive a priest to that point.

Instead, the prudent step is simply to move to a parish where the option is recognized and let Fr Holiday or any other stubborn man fend for himself. I have no idea whether Bp Lopes will reflect at all on this. Although the ordinariate website now carries videos of stations of the cross and Sunday masses at the cathedral, there has been no other public announcement from Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins.

The general quarantine will certainly put churches in financial straits, especially as civil authorities begin to threaten penalties for any that continue to hold large-scale public meetings. That will inevitably reduce their income, and ordinariate communities, many of which are already in precarious condition, will inevitably be affected.

I tend to agree with commentators who predict that the COVID-19 crisis will have an ongoing impact on daily conditions that will go beyond those that resulted from the 9/11 attacks. If the small business brick-and-mortar model continues to be affected, as it certainly will when so many will lose months of income, the same will apply to small churches in any denomination.

I suspect that pastors like Fr Lewis and Fr Holiday, and Bp Lopes as well, are beginning to read the writing on the wall for the ordinariate, which is reflected on one hand in the defiant tones of the pastors' messages, as well as Bp Lopes's public silence.

Even though Fr Holiday refers to practices of the Church that have taken it through plagues and wars in past centuries, the examples stand out of figures like St Charles Borromeo and Pope Pius XII, who was active and visible with Catholics in Rome throughout its occupation, visiting communities affected by misdirected bombings, and he addressed US and British Empire troops at the liberation in English. Pius's secretary, Giovanni Montini, later Paul VI, visited poor communities and Jews in Rome incognito and was recognized by them only after he become pope.

Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins may wish to consider such examples. Instead, the key men are AWOL, while we avert our eyes from the narcissistic grandstanding of marginal ones. I hope the course of events will lead devout ordinariate members to better places of worship, which will inevitably continue as so many in the ordinariate will not.