Is Australia Unique?

It seems to me that the problems the CDF has identified with the Australian ordinariate differ from those in the UK and US only in degree -- all suffer from stagnant growth and financially weak parishes that can't pay a priest's stipend. Most clergy require outside incomes, either from pensions or day jobs. All have aging clergy with little depth in the replacement pools. So why single out Australia, except as the worst of an unpromising bunch? My regular correspondent comments,

The Pastoral Provision was allowed to totter on for 22 years—-indeed technically the congregation of St Athanasius, Chestnut Hill is still a PP parish. Why is the CDF taking a hard line with the Australian ordinariate? Why not just allow it to die a natural death? Is the whole ordinariate project being seen, belatedly, as a bad look for the Church?

If the plan is to make the ordinariates justify their existence, the UK will be next in the crosshairs. It has one building to its name, no stipendiary clergy apart from those in local diocesan employ, and as we have often discussed is the least interested in maintaining Anglican liturgical patrimony, since most of its clergy used the OF even when in the CofE.

Its financial resources are few and it has failed to grow; indeed the latest data at catholic-hierarchy.org from the Annuario Pontificio shows that its membership has declined by about half since 2014-16 and it has lost five communities since its high point in 2014. For purposes of comparison, the Australian ordinariate had 1,200 members in 2019.

With an official membership of 6,040 the US ordinariate is twice as big as the other two Ordinariates combined. It has some buildings and some money. But if the project is coming under scrutiny in Rome we know that there is plenty of cause for concern in Houston as well.

The passing of the project's most powerful patron, Cdl Law, and the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI mean that the opportunity for reassessment is growing. Insofar as the talent pool even in the US is mainly marginal ex-Protetant clergy, I think bishops would be correct in having a concern that people who walk into an ordinariate parish that calls itself a "Catholic church" don't get a consistent product.

For now, thouigh, the bishops have other priorities -- a scandal couild change that. The situation at St Barnabas Omaha is an indication that parishes aren't well supervised, and serious problems aren't addressed before they're out of control.

Australian Ordinariate Threatened With Closure

An Australian visitor sent me the following e-mail:

[T]he Australian Ordinariate . . . has been given less than a year by the Vatican to become financially viable or their future will be decided by the Australian Bishops (who will wipe them out). There is no way they will meet these financial goals.

Below is the message the Australian Ordinary emailed out to selected Ordinariate members with the attached file in the attachment of this email- but they never intended for the information to go public as they are keeping the information from others parties who should know. I ask you to publish the information in its entirety to bring some transparency into the matter as the former Ordinary Harry Entwistle is an incompetent fraud . . . who doomed the Australian Ordinariate, and Reid is little better: both appointed TAC bishops by Hepworth himself, and the apples did not fall far from the tree.

Dear Friends and Supporters of the Ordinariate,

By now you will be aware that we have been, for some years, attempting to encourage the clergy, faithful and supporters of the Ordinariate to use various evangelism talents and tools to build up the membership. And that’s important if we hope for there to be subsequent generations in our communities, with one of the most pressing related problems to small membership being the ability to support financially new priests when our current clergy must retire. Most of them are on pensions of some sort, and many also have their own accommodation, so the issues of stipend, housing etc. have not been at the forefront of our collective thinking. We’ve been trying to make it more pressing, and now our Rome “parent” has requested that there be some concrete benchmarks or milestones looking ahead.

The attached letter from our Episcopal Vicar lays this out, following on from a Governing Council meeting last week.

With my prayers that we can ensure that there will indeed be future generations who have a stable church home in the Ordinariate!

Monsignor Carl Reid, Ordinary

The letter itself, which was attached to the e-mail in a pdf, is reproduced below (click on the images for larger copies). The bottom line is pretty clear. Toward the bottom of the first page:

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a timeline, and that timeline is dependent on us, the priests and laity of the Ordinariate.

• The major city parishes must be able to sustain financially a priest. These communities must generate and have in hand $30,000 by the end of 2021, and have the same amount in pledged donations for 2022, ending in 2023. The amount will be matched by the Ordinariate, provided each major city parish achieves the target.
• If this benchmark above is not met, then letters will be sent to the ACBC by January of 2022 at the latest, asking counsel regarding the future of OLSC.

The Australian ordinariate has been the smallest and weakest of the three that were erected under Anglicanorum coetibus. What I find significant here is not that it's likely to be closed a year from now, but that the CDF appears to be monitoring all the ordinariates for signs of growth and financial health. It's simply not encouraging to say, "Well, at least it's not the North American or UK ordinariate that's threatened, huh?" That's not the good news. The bad news is that the CDF seems now to be interested in whether the whole project is worth the trouble.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls.

Out Of Court Settlement For Most Recent St Mary's Hollywood Lawsuits

A knowledgeable party has told me that there's been an out of court settlement for the most recent set of St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, CA lawsuits. Over the past 45 years, that Anglican parish has been involved in litigation more often than not, with three major groups of lawsuits, the first over its leaving The Episcopal Church, the second over its leaving the Anglican Catholic Church, and the third over its leaving the Anglican Church in America in an attempt to enter the North American ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church under the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus.

The settlement comes for a subset of the most recent litigation. In it, over the course of nearly a decade, the courts seesawed in a series of opinions and appeals over which vestry, one backed by the ACA or one comprising a group intending to enter the ordinariate, controlled the parish property.

The legal fees involved could be met only because the parish received substantial rental income from a commercial property it had developed in the 1980s. The successive vestries were able to use the income and the collateralized value of the commercial property to pay at least five teams of lawyers in successive lawsuits. But ten years of litigattion meant that this was more than even a multimillion-dollar commercial property could sustain.

Most recently, the victorious vestry, faced with the need to keep payments up on a loan that had been secured by the losing vestry to pay their own lawyers, refused to pay that loan on the basis that the losing vestry had no authority to take it out, since they'd lost. The lender obviously disagreed and wanted the loan repaid. This cycle of litigation went on for several years, delayed in 2020 by COVID.

The individual who contacted me said he'd known generally that talks were under way for an out-of-court settlement, but that the attorney for the lenders had contacted him just the other day to confirm that the settlement had taken place, saying only "St Mary bought out our liens (though at a steep discount) and sold one of the properties to fund it.”

The knowledgeable party interpreted this to mean that the ACA vestry was forced finally to sell the income-producing commercial property, leaving only the parcel on which the church building itself is located. But since such an out of court settlement is likely to be confidential, it hasn't been covered in local media, and this must be considered speculation by a party who has been close to the situation, but not privy to the current settlement.

However, legal actions over the past decade have resulted in the church parking lot being deemed part of the adjoining commercial property, so that the church no longer has any off-street parking available, in an area where any on-street parking is very difficult to find.

But the weekly offerings to the parish have never met its expenses without the rental income from the commercial property. I served briefly as the parish treasurer during its initial attempt to join the ordinariate, and weekly offerings from the several dozen regular members were in the $1000 range. Periodic total closure of the parish, its uncertain disposition, and the general controversy have decimated even this group. As of 2011, the parish's general expenses were in the $250,000 per year range. Utilities, heating, insurance, and maintenance costs on an aging building will continue.

A major part of the ACA's desire to keep the parish, we must assume, was the diocesan tithe from the annual rental income. It appears that the ACA has lost this (it probably never got much in any case), while the parish now continues as a potential major liability to the denomination. It can now only sustain very marginal, poorly supervised "continuinng Anglican" clergy who will inevitably be up to mischief.

But in addition, the church building is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 136. According to Wikipedia, this does not prevent demolition or alteration. However, the designation requires permits for demolition or substantial alteration to be presented to a historic monument commission. The commission has the power to delay the demolition of a designated property for up to one year.

It's extremely doubtful that the parish can meet its continuing major expenses without the income from the commercial property, and its membership is probably minimal at this point. I would not expect it to survive as a corporate institution much longer.

More On The Spending At St Barnabas Omaha

Since St Barnabas came into the North American ordinariate, there's been an enormous amount of construction activity and property acquisition that I hadn't really spent much time tracking down. In hindsight, it was far out of proportion to the size of the parish.

Just as a start to getting an idea of what had been going on, my regular correspondent sent me this link to a 2017 story (it may require you to answer a quiz question before you can see the text):

In 2013, St. Barnabas made a cash payment to the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska allowing the church to permanently occupy its historic building at 129 N. 40th St. The congregation and the diocese reached the out-of-court settlement after a Douglas County District Court judge ruled that church members must surrender the structure, the rectory and other property to the diocese.

Renovations on the building started in September 2016, with routine repairs to the plaster ceiling, Catania said. In the process, workers discovered more serious problems and opened up the ceiling to the peak of the roof.

“We thought ‘If we’re doing this, what else can we do?’ ” the priest said.

The church ended up with new paint and lights and refinished pews and floors. The sanctuary floor also was lowered nine inches to accommodate the three steps up to the altar that are common in older Catholic churches.

My regular correspondent provided updates on post-2017 spending:

Presumably purchasing its property from the local TEC diocese depleted any endowment the TEC parish had. The new legacy, however, made it possible for the parish to undertake the renovations described [above]. In addition, the rectory was demolished and a landmark house in the neighbourhood was purchased. It sold for $800,000 in 2013 and presumably for more than that when the parish bought it in 2019. Converting it from a nine-bedroom bnb to the uses described in the linked article must have also cost a fair bit.

I believe the parish also purchased two apartment buildings next door to it which now house the St Barnabas Academy and possibly the music director. Fr Catania lived there before the Offutt-Yost mansion was purchased. In 2018 the church bell was refurbished and a new electrical ringing apparatus installed.

You reported on the purchase of the apartment building(s) on June 23, 2017. I see that a new organ had also been installed. Presumably the demolition of the former rectory was related to the long-standing parking problem described here. The lot was poured and painted in April 2019.

The church also purchased a bus to collect Sunday attendees in what I assume is an area poorly served by public transit. It is evident that the $150,000 +/- budgeted for annual givings would not sustain the parish without the addition of substantial income from other sources, and if the recent endowment has been used for these other projects there is no other income.

A parish of this size (I counted about 50-60 people in the pews in a FB picture of Bp Lopes’ visit last Sunday) can’t afford this, certainly not in the space of three or four years.

Whatever the specifics, it appears that the parish's current financial situation is dire. I still have a difficult time envisioning exactly what buildings are in the current complex, exactly how they're used, exactly what the parish's current programs are, and whether any bring in any significant income.

I would be interested to hear any serious plans for how the parish intends to dig itself out of this situation -- the new priest will, it seems to me, have challenges that are greater than would normally be faced by ex-Protestant clergy with often marginal or part-time careers serving small and desultory groups. But if no new leadership of any sort will arrive until July, I wonder if the parish can even last until then, if that's when any serious work will even begin.

UPDATE: A knowledgeable party adds:

Some clarifying info regarding your latest post:

1) The settlement with TEC for the building was paid for with an advance from the bequest before the parish received the full amount (after the parishioner died).

2) The Offutt House was acquired via a house-swap. After tearing down the original rectory, the parish, at the instigation of Bishop Lopes, purchased a house two blocks down the road for use as a rectory. In the meantime, the owner of the Offutt House had been trying, unsuccessfully, to sell it. She approached the parish to see if they were interested in buying it, since it was contiguous with the parish property. At the time, she wanted to sell it with an adjoining house that she also owned, and wanted $1,000,000 for the package. The parish had an independent appraisal done, which found that she was asking for far too much money, and offered her less. She balked and moved on. After several more months of being unable to sell the house, she contacted the parish again and proposed a house-swap. She would take the then-current rectory; St. Barnabas would take the Offutt House. When this was presented to the Parish Council, it was said that the parish would write her a “tax letter” for the $200,000 or so difference in additional worth of the Offutt House over the then-rectory, so she could write it off on her taxes. They were told no money would be exchanged. As it turns out, the parish ended up being on the hook to pay that $200,000, which they are still chipping away at.

3) The bus came with the Offutt House.

US Supreme Court Partially Lifts California Ban On Indoor Worship

I have a post covering this at my new blog.

More On Fr Catania's Removal In Omaha

My regular correspondent discovered a video report from the St Barnabas finance committee that was put up on the parish website just before Christmas last year, outlining what was being done in what the committee (and presumably the parish laity) had come to recognize was a financial crisis. The video has since been removed from the parish website. UPDATE: You can find it on this page if you click on the small link below the title.

The report strongly suggested that there'd been a pattern of unauthorized expenditures, which the committee had been moving to correct, although the implication seems to have been that whatever measures the committee had been taking hadn't been supported. (As someone who's served as a parish treasurer, it's hard for me not to conclude that there was an authorized signature for parish accounts who should not have been. The pastor, in any denomination, is not normally an authorized signature on business accounts.)

The video concluded by saying the finance committee planned to "reach out to the chancery in January". It appears that they did this. I asked a knowledgeable visitor if the initiative for Fr Catania's removal came from the parish, not the chancery. He replied,

I’m told the Finance Committee was behind the ouster. They spent the better part of a year cutting spending, including on the priest, but didn’t receive much cooperation from Father Catania in terms of fundraising. The frustration with Catania’s inaction just kept growing as time went on. Once the Ordinariate business manager visited in January and saw how dire things were, the process moved pretty swiftly. Given his record in Baltimore, in Canada, and now in Omaha, Catania just doesn’t seem to be a gifted administrator. I have to wonder if it’s really his fault - was he trained to be one before being ordained a Catholic priest? Or are these guys just imported, scrubbed off, and set loose?

Via my regular correspondent, the business manager is Dcn Arthur Stockstill, an older man, formerly a financial analyst with Fidelity Investments and then a senior analyst with the Bank of America. He seems to be doing an effective job. A few weeks ago, a visitor forwarded this letter from Fr Lewis at Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio (Click on the image for a larger copy):

His comment:

Last week, Fr Lewis put out a release stating that the Bishop came to do a review of the office and as a result, several changes were made. The thing about these changes is that they are basically reversing organizational shifts made by Fr Lewis. Whereas Fr Lewis’ approach seemed to be to hire his way out of the mess, even turning down volunteers that wanted to help. Someone must have finally identified that approach as being unsustainable. Took 3 years to figure out.

It appears that when prompted, the chancery can move effectively to resolve issues -- though these issues seem only to surface when they're out of control. Dcn Stockstill has my best wishes.

Since becoming Catholic and seeing what deacons do, I have a great deal of respect for them.

Ordinariate News Update: Pastor Removed From St Barnabas Omaha

I noted when I placed this blog in inactive status that I would update it as needed if important developments warrant it. Yesterday, I received the following e-mail:

Bishop Lopes held an emergency meeting at St. Barnabas on Sunday [January 31]. Father Catania is being removed as pastor, and transferred to St. Luke’s in Washington, D.C. as an associate, effective March 1st. This is a result of his having completely spent the endowment totaling several millions of dollars. The parish has been broke for several months.

Further information indicates that Deacon Patrick Simons has been appointed Parochial Administrator until then. A replacement pastor from the ordinariate will not arrive until July 1, and the visitor tells me that there will be supply priests from the Archdiocese of Omaha saying mass until then. The replacement priest from the ordinariate has not been named, but a rumor is that he'll be married with a family.

The St Barnabas parish is one of very few that were dissident Episcopalian or Anglican Church of Canada and came into the North American ordinariate as a corporate body with property and endowments. (However, the expectation in promulgating Anglicanorum coetibus was that there could be scores or even hundreds of these. This has beern a significant, if unacknowledged, disappointment in Benedict XVI's papacy.)

In additon to the property it brought over from The Episcopal Church, St Barnabas had received a multimillion-dollar bequest after becoming part of the Roman Catholic ordinariate. Over the past several years, I've heard variouis expressions of concern over the level of spending there. My regular correspondent sent me this screen shot of a 2017 Facebook post covering a dinner welcoming Bp Lopes on a visit (Click on the image for a larger copy):

The comment:

Beef tenderloin stuffed with truffles and foie gras for at least twenty-four. Wine, probably not from a box. Hundreds of dollars worth of flowers. Upscale table settings, and those candelabra! Sometimes Bp Lopes is entertained with a potluck in the parish hall. Guess that’s not how things are or perhaps were done at St Barnabas, Omaha.

I've also heard in recent weeks as well that there has been a significant lay staff reorganization, with cuts, at Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, following an audit from Houston. This may provide a context for the Omaha action, and Bp Lopes may be under pressure to exercise greater supervision over parishes.

One thing I've learned over doing this blog and after eight years as a Catholic is that the chancery plays an important role in finance, construction, and schooling and provides resources and supervision that generally don't exist in Protestant denominations. After all, Protestants focus much more exclusively at the parish level and doctrinally are much less inclined to recognize a higher church authority.

Ex-Protestant priests who come into the ordnariate are probably much less used to having effective supervision from a body other than a parish vestry, session, or similar committee. Fr Perkins, as ordinariate vicar general, is probably much less used to exercising it, though I've always questioned his interest in his job or his ability to fulfill it.

However, Bp Lopes was never a Protestant, and it seems to me that he has much less excuse for allowing this situation to develop.