What Color Is Your Parachute?

This is the title of a best-selling job search guide that was popular when I started my working career in the 1970s. I read it at the time and never found it especially helpful, though I had already decided, after a cursory look at the help-wanted section of the paper, that computers were the field to enter (and I managed to get in after almost getting a PhD in English, clearly an illustration of the wisdom of my choice).

I thought of the title in the context of what I would call an "oh, bleep moment" over the OCSP. This is because, for people who were remotely capable in the computer field, jobs were easy to find, and that in turn meant that jobs were easy to quit. The people I knew and respected would come to "oh, bleep moments" and realize they were facing organizational dysfunction such that the option of updating a resume and getting a new job was more attractive than (say) putting up with the new boss who'd been promoted because she was sleeping with a vice president.

The "oh, bleep moment" was the sudden recognition of what was happening in a particular case, coupled with cascading deductions that, although the new boss and the VP were not likely to last long themselves, the ensuing chaos would not likely fix the underlying problem, and the chances that the situation would improve at Sasquatch Bank were nil. Thus the rhetorical question about the parachute.

Anyhow, concerning the "oh, bleep moment" over the OCSP, I'll get into that later. What Color Is Your Parachute? was an overrated book by Richard Bolles, a former Episcopal priest, which makes it tangential to the topics here. I've always put Bolles in the same category as another overrated Episcopalian, M Scott Peck, who wrote pop bestsellers at about the same time.

But in looking him up for this post, I discovered that he'd passed away just this last April, at the age of 90, and his obituaries, though sketchy, offered intriguing tidbits of further information.

Mr. Bolles had been a clergyman for 18 years when a combination of budget problems and philosophical differences with superiors led to the elimination of his job and his dismissal in 1968 as a pastor at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, the flagship church of the Episcopal Diocese of California.

What? He was a pastor at Grace Cathedral in the 1960s with James Pike? Did Pike hire him (or did the dean at Pike's urging)? Other details suggest he was an adherent of the Paul Moore Jr faction of Episcopalianism, so quite possibly. Pike was eased out as Bishop of California in 1966, so the fact that Bolles was pushed out a year or two later is intriguing.

Does anyone have more information on Bolles's TEC career, especially his time at Grace Cathedral? I'll get to the oh, bleep moment tomorrow.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent sent me this link on controversy arising from Bolles's fourth marriage in 2004. TEC Bishop of California Swing, hardly a conservative, objected to a fourth marriage for Bolles, who was still in holy orders at the time, though he had not served as a priest since his 1968 dismissal. It still sounds like Bolles was a member of the very liberal wing of TEC.

Text Of OLA Announcement

Many thanks to a visitor who forwarded this text from the OLA parish e-mail, which is believed to be the same as the bulletin announcement:

Our new pastor, Fr. Mark Lewis, and his wife Vicky, visited the parish for a few days this past week, and they had a wonderful time getting to know more about us. The appointment of Fr. Lewis as pastor will take effect on July 1st, and they will be arriving sometime just after August 1st. Fr. Lewis made it very clear that he is looking forward to carrying on the established vision and practice of the parish, and both Fr. Moore and Fr. Phillips will be working closely with him.

Bishop Lopes has asked Fr. Phillips to visit various Ordinariate communities to encourage them, and to give guidance where it might be needed. Although Fr. Phillips (at the express wish of Fr. Lewis) will be spending most of his time here ministering at the parish, he also will be travelling on a fairly regular basis. The first of his trips will be this next weekend, when he will be at St. Luke’s, Washington, D.C., which is the parish where Fr. Lewis most recently served as pastor. Fr. Perkins will be here with Fr. Moore for our Sunday schedule of Masses.

The visitor questioned why Fr Lewis will arrive only after August 1 if his appointment commences July 1, but I suspect that it schedules a vacation to accompany moving. It's a little puzzling that, although Fr Phillips is clearly being eased out, he is also clearly not in disgrace. On the other hand, for Fr Perkins to be on site for the July 1 weekend speaks to a desire to keep things firmly under Houston's control.

That Fr Phillips is being sent to St Luke's is interesting, too. Fr Lewis previously noted that Bp Lopes has been encouraging that parish to move back into a separate building, and I suspect Bp Lopes hopes Fr Phillips has some formula that will allow a parish to do this, notwithstanding efforts to apply the specific Phillips formula in Irvine and Scranton have not been successful.

The more I reflect on the pictures that have run here of forlorn little communities, often in shabby and provisional surroundings, that make up the majority of the OCSP, the more I'm convinced that the view of circumstances from Houston must be dire. I would guess that sending Fr Phillips around is something of a desperate measure, but I'm not sure what he has to work with.

Fr Phillips Edging Back In At OLA?

A visitor reported that this past Sunday's bulletin at Our Lady of the Atonement mentioned an apparent revision in Fr Phillips's official retired status. The visitor says he threw it out before recognizing that he should have scanned it, but "[e]ssentially it said that Fr. Phillips will be traveling to the OCSP communities as Bp. Lopes wishes but also that he will be present at OLA because the new Pastor Fr. Lewis wants that."

In response to a question at a parish meeting concerning why Fr Phillips was to be replaced, Bp Lopes replied only that this was in a letter from the Holy Father. Nobody outside a small Houston group has seen exactly what's in this letter, and it's not clear how an apparently more active role for Fr Phillips at OLA conforms to this letter.

Normally, a priest of any denomination who retires or leaves a parish for any other reason is ethically constrained to discontinue any formal relations with the former parish. That Fr Phillips would own property immediately adjoining the parish property is a problem in this context, which Msgr Steenson recognized.

There is in fact a faction at OLA -- I don't know how large -- that would like to see the parish make a new start after the controversies surrounding Fr Phillips. I assume Fr Lewis knew what he was getting into when he accepted the assignment to OLA, but the announcement of a more or less official change in Fr Phillips's status is not encouraging for those who might prefer a clean break.

If anyone can send a scan or direct quote from Sunday's bulletin, I'll appreciate it. While there's a page on the OLA site for bulletins, this hasn't been updated since January.

UPDATE: Clearly the matter here is nuanced. My regular correspondent notes,

Well, the original announcement said Fr Phillips would be the "Pastor Emeritus," as I recall, which did not suggest that he would be completely absent, unlike the typical situation of a retired pastor, as you describe. Pastors Emeriti exist in some abundance, I've discovered. The designation is at the discretion of the diocesan bishop.

That may be, but that a bulletin would seek to clarify Fr Phillips's status -- which it's doing -- indicates some clarification was in order, My correspondent replied,

[Y]ou wouldn't name someone Pastor Emeritus if you expected him to give the place a wide berth. If anyone expected that he was indulging in wishful thinking. Bulletin notice was invoking Fr Lewis to underline that it was useless to protest.

Further,

Initial accounts, including Sr Thurley's typically thorough one in VOL, describe Fr Phillips' future role as involving significant ministry in the parish.

But that naturally implies someone was protesting something, or at minimum misunderstood something originally planned and announced. And the protest, perhaps based on misunderstanding, was presumably vocal enough to require a public slapdown. I don't see this developing well.

My advice to anyone with doubts about the OCSP, in San Antonio or anywhere else, continues to be to investigate diocesan options. Diocesan parishes are not uniform, and those that are successful are successful with good reason.

Correction On St Mary The Virgin

A visitor reports,

SMV Arlington didn't build its church as a catholic parish. They built it as an Episcopal parish, and the congregation and building withdrew from TEC under what appeared to be an extraordinary arrangement by Episcopal Bishop of Ft. Worth, Clarence Pope, who was sympathetic to the cause, to let them and the building go, and the Catholic bishop of Ft. Worth, to receive them under the Pastoral Provision. That was in 1991. They then worshipped as an independent congregation, under the care of the Catholic bishop, until Rome approved Fr. Hawkins' ordination in 1994.

Recall that Bp Pope traveled to Rome in 1993 to meet with Cardinal Ratzinger to present the proposal that led to Anglicanorum coetibus. Pope rather clearly had a personal agenda, although married, to become a full Catholic bishop. The release of St Mary the Virgin seems to have been connected with that plan.

Success Stories Or Potemkin Villages?

My regular correspondent sent me an e-mail entitled "Success Stories:

Amid the basement chapels and cafetoria there are of course OCSP parishes that own churches of substance. Holy Nativity, Payson; Christ the King Towson; Incarnation, Orlando; and St Barnabas, Omaha we have already discussed. Two groups---Mt Calvary, Baltimore and St John the Evangelist, Calgary---bought their churches from their respective TEC/ACC dioceses. Two others---St Thomas More, Scranton and St John the Baptist, Bridgeport---bought redundant churches from their respective Catholic dioceses.

And OLW, Houston; SMV, Arlington; and of course OLA, San Antonio have built churches. Once a congregation has its own building and facilities for social events and other activities it can offer the fullness of parish life which every Catholic needs and deserves, and there is a reasonable expectation of stability; when Fr Black retires he can be replaced by Fr White. Naturally this is the vision Bp Lopes has for the OCSP, but it is not easy to attain. Buildings are expensive to acquire and maintain and we can see that even a relatively successful church like SJE, Calgary can lose momentum quickly.

The manpower shortage, which is ultimately a financial shortage, leaves the North American Ordinariate very fragile. The OOLW just ordained ten deacons, all of whom will be holding at least a part-time diocesan assignment. Most have no ministry in any Ordinariate congregation. The OCSP under Bp Lopes has chosen not to follow this model, which I think is wise, but it means finding stipends, and this is very challenging.

I tend to think this assessment is too optimistic. Referring to a "manpower shortage" when the inside joke about the OCSP seems to be "more priests than people" misses the mark, it seems to me. There are three main groups of OCSP priests: those in middle age or approaching retirement, who are probably in surplus, who go to established communities as they are able, though their mobility is restricted. There are marginal candidates looking to come in with new groups-in-formation, though the groups as well as the candidates appear highly marginal, and I think my correspondent is right to call them make-work projects. Then there are the celibate seminarians, who have a good fallback position to move to dioceses should the OCSP go belly-up. Where is the shortage, though, if make-work projects are in train and the best prospects must certainly have Plan B in mind?

Two of eight full parishes, St John the Evangelist and Our Lady of the Atonement, face crises of transition.

The informal message we have is that St Barnabas is shrinking, as are other groups like St Timothy's that seemed promising five years ago. Others are tiny and not moving at all, like Our Lady of Good Counsel Jacksonville.

Every glimpse of real communities I've seen so far suggests I've been pretty accurate in estimating the OCSP membership in the low four figures -- though I would revise it to say low four figures and shrinking.

More On St Timothy's Fort Worth And St John Vianney Cleburne

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent commented

St Timothy's Ft Worth had over [60] people received when it entered the OCSP--- a large group by Ordinariate standards. The fact that their former rector was transferred to another community a year ago and has just been replaced this month, and even then only "pro tem," along with the move from a parish church to this small venue, suggests to me that the game plan is to unite St Timothy's under their former rector when his group---St John Vianney, Cleburne---builds their own church. The property has already been acquired, so this goal could be realised relatively soon.

I replied that this plan seems speculative, and plans for St John Vianney seem off in the indefinite future. My correspondent replied,

Hard to say if the St Timothy's parishioners are in on the plan; there was a notice on their website for at least six months to the effect that they would be getting a new priest in January 2017. It remained there into March. They used to post the weekly bulletin on the website but have not done so since moving to the Diocesan Center. There has been nothing on the website about Fr Kennedy's appointment. I think that the group has shrunk because those who have eyes can see that Houston is phasing them out, and have moved to St John Vianney or to a diocesan parish.

This is a further indication of the desultory and opportunistic nature of the OCSP. It isn't managing growth; instead, it's dodging indications of decline and looking for ways to merge shrinking communities without quite saying that's what it's doing.

Shifting the focus to St John Vianney, my correspondent points out

St John Vianney is one of two OCSP groups currently meeting in a school auditorium. Here is the "cafetorium" of Marti Elementary School set up for Sunday mass. An article in the Ordinariate Observer noted that 110 people attended a confirmation there in Fr Hough III's time so that gives you some idea of the capacity.

Attendance in the photo seems more like 50-60, heavily skewed to older age groups, and if one added the St Timothy group, you'd probably still have empty seats. It would be interesting to see details of the St John Vianney construction plans.

Chapel Veils

My regular correspondent sent me another photo of the chapel interior where St Timothy Fort Worth meets, this time during a DW mass:

Several of the women are wearing chapel veils, which bears out accounts I've had from time to time that chapel veils are common in the Texas communities. Msgr Charles Pope gives a pretty comprehensive discussion of the subject here. In brief, there is currently no Church policy on the subject, and head covering for women is completely voluntary.

On the other hand, this post at the Catholic Answers Forum begins to reflect my own views:

From the days when mastadons roamed the earth (ie pre-conciliar times) this male recalls women normally wearing hats in church. Whether a dressy hat or a beret, it didn't matter. Chapel veils (not mantillas) were generally considered an "emergency measure" and many women kept one in their purse "just in case."

I recall that, in grade school, the nuns always had a supply of simple chapel veils at hand for the girls who didn't have a hat for First Friday or other occasions. Those who could afford it would pay 25 cents. Those who could not got it free. The important thing was a head covering, not the money.

I've always liked the tradition of a head covering for women, and I still do (even though I do not voluntarily attend the OF). At the same, though, I don't have a problem with women going bare-headed, even to the EF.

These days, there seems to be this mantilla-cult that has emerged, and I just don't get it. If the women are of Spanish descent, it's fine because they know how to wear it. OTOH, those who are not, do not: they generally wrap themselves up in the thing, just about like a burka. EF or OF, I do have a problem with that.

The lady in the center of the photo above strikes me as an adherent of the veil-as-burka school, and beyond that, I continue to view photos snapped during mass as tacky. Indeed, I would say that the phtographer, perhaps a church lady of the sort we've seen before, focused on the burka-lady receiving the sacrament as something especially holy.

All I can say is that this is a very small group of a size reflecting the small venues we've been seeing here. A drop-in could well get a sense of ostentatious exclusivity, feel uncomfortable, and not return. Now, maybe I've got the wrong impression, and in that case, this small group will grow and thrive.

Er, how long have they been in that small chapel? How's the building fund coming along?