A Closer Look At The Ordinariate -- II

I've been tossing around the terms "parish", "mission", and "group-in-formation" as though I were confident in what they meant, but I'm not. I asked my informant, who replied that no one in fact is exactly sure what the criteria are. He said, "When the Toronto group was applying for admission to the OCSP the leader posted on his blog that 24+ signed-up Ordinariate members were required for mission status." However, according to my informant, other blogs dispute this.

He later pointed me to this page, which says

In a conversation with Fr. Steenson following Evensong, he told me that the process of developing the particular norms for the Ordinariate were underway, and that when the new rules were complete, which will encompass everything from the way parishes are to be incorporated to the acceptance of individual petitions for membership in the Ordinariate, they will be reviewed in Rome and need to receive approval. Fr. Steenson said that three "classes" of groups were anticipated, Public Associations of the Faithful for some of the smaller groups, quasi-parishes for larger groups (but which do not have a church, for example), and parishes, of which he was sure Mt. Calvary would be one. Parishes would likely be individually incorporated, with a governing board that would include the ordinary and vicar general and pastor; in other words, the parishes would be incorporated in a way that Rome has preferred for decades, one which recognizes parishes as juridic persons in their own right, and not the corporation sole that is typical in the US dioceses.

This is all very well, but no one is aware of what stage any such proposals have reached -- but certain parishes are currently recognized as such. My informant told me earlier,

[W]hen the OCSP announced with some fanfare last October that five additional congregations had been raised to parish status, the pastor of one of them, Fr Bergman of St Thomas More, Scranton, opined in the newsletter that he would have been more excited about this had he been aware that it had not retained its parish status when it entered the OCSP from the Pastoral Provision eighteen months previously. This had legal and insurance implications, which fortunately did not have any practical consequences during the hiatus, but no thanks to the OCSP.

So the bottom line here is that for now, like so many other things in the Ordinariate, what constitutes a "parish", "mission", or "group-in-formation" is apparently in more or less constant flux and mainly in the heads of a few insiders.

Not a recommendation, frankly. But with this necessary clarification, I'll continue with the entities and their status tomorrow. Many thanks for the supportive and informative e-mails.