Purely speculative here, but taking as an example St Edmund's, Kitchener, a group of about ten people, who previously had Sunday mass celebrated for them by a diocesan priest at a side altar in his parish church: I am sure they paid him some sort of honorarium, and perhaps made a donation to the parish, but did not pay formal rent. Now they have their own Ordinariate pastor who celebrates Sunday mass for them at another parish church and lives in the rectory with the pastor of the diocesan parish. Again, I am sure a contribution is made, but paying any kind of rent would seem beyond them. The bulletin does encourage donors to make cheques out to St Edmund's, so as you suggest they must have their own bank account and be able to issue charitable receipts. I know that the group in Vancouver/Maple Ridge simply funnels money through their host parish. In a few cases the Ordinariate priest is also the pastor of a diocesan parish, as in Mobile, AL or is on the staff of a diocesan parish (Boerne, TX). So there are creative ways of dealing with financial viability. My bigger concern was the thought of one of the elderly volunteers in a smaller group having to master the intricacies of the software to handle the $73 weekly collection. Which will ultimately be completely swallowed up in paying for the program.This raises some interesting questions, not least about fairness and accountability. As I've been giving thought to how the small groups-in-formation work and eventually develop, I can't help but come back to the question of whether they should grow. Let's look at some ordinary expenses. The Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, an organization that we may assume is comparable in practice to the Ordinariate (or at least we should aspire to be comparable to it), specifies that the honorarium for a supply priest is $125 per one Sunday mass, $175 for two, plus mileage. Let's set this as a fairly nominal amount that a group-in-formation should be wanting to pay a priest.
St Mary of the Angels was, insofar as I can remember, collecting $75 per evening for twelve-step meetings. Based on bulletin board notices, my earlier Episcopal parish was definitely collecting rent for similar meetings, and it was renting the nave on Sunday afternoons to an Orthodox parish. A group in formation might also want to finance refreshments for any after-mass reception -- let's call it $50 for coffee, juice, pastries, cookies, and so forth. A paid organist and choir is a significant expense, $2700 per month at St Mary of the Angels in 2011. A group in formation is not being realistic if it is not at least looking toward meeting expenses at this level.
If I were the Ordinary, I think I would be irresponsible if I allowed any group-in-formation to think it could be successful over any kind of medium term without the ability to meet this level of expenses. Without a paid music program, you're still looking at an absolute minimum of $350 per week to pay a priest for saying mass, serve coffee, and have access to worship space. And if a founding priest is willing to say mass for free, what about his successor? Where does idealism stop and exploitation start? To do anything like this, you'd need a core group that can reliably pledge anything from $30-$50 per week.
Yes, I've seen the elderly parish treasurer who really isn't in a position to learn a computer app -- but the actuarial reality is you can't rely on him forever. When does a group in formation have to start to get serious about five or ten years in the future? How does it seriously expect to grow and evangelize? I'm not seeing this with the smaller groups, at least so far, and I'm not getting the impression that Houston has a sense of this, either -- though a requirement that a group front $450 per year for software is not a bad start.
