What's Missing

In the interactions I had in early 2012 with Ms Chalmers, the Ordinariate's disappointing Chancellor, she told me, "We're making it up as we go along." Well, maybe that could have been barely acceptable as an excuse in early 2012 (shouldn't there have been planning before things were launched?), but three years later, I don't get the impression that much has changed.

In the various discussions I've had with lay people involved with groups-in-formation, I simply don't get the feeling that there are any guidelines available on how to do it. Should the groups pay clergy? How much? How can a group without a priest connect with priests without groups? Who in a local diocese is best to contact in identifying worship space? Do we need to incorporate? Roughly how much money should we be expecting to raise? What other practical advice can anyone give?

Frankly, I can't avoid the impression that nobody's quite sure who in Houston answers such questions, or whether such a person, if he exists, is motivated enough to answer them at all. ("But we're all just volunteers!")

If I google "clergy pay guidelines Episcopal", I get page after page of hits from nearly every diocese. Picking one at random from the Diocese of East Carolina, I get clergy compensation guidelines, as well as many other useful policies, including those on background checks and alcohol use. On the other hand, if I go to the Ordinariate Questions & Answers page, I get desultory chit-chat about Anglicanorum coetibus but, significantly, nothing about what next steps I might take if I'm actually interested. There are references to application forms in the chit-chat, but no place on the site I can find them. Someone might want to undertake a project of requesting such forms from Houston -- I'd be interested to hear the result.

Msgr Steenson, formerly Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, must certainly be familiar with how such bodies disseminate policies and make forms available. Here's a page from his former see. Check out the "12 marks of healthy church behavior assessment sheet", by the way. Three years in, there's nothing like it on the Ordinariate site.

A visitor commented,

What would be great, if there's some sort of event or conference for of all the Ordinariate and interested people to gather for some Q&A and some news and a simple "suggestion box" type of function that doesn't make the CoSP Ordinariate seem so mysterious and inscrutable (read: disorganized) and it would do well to establish a "Friends of the Ordinariates" analogue with laypersons involved.

My first question might be more along the line of what form we need to fill out to request a new Ordinary. Seriously. Where in the Vatican do we get to make our feelings known? Does anyone have suggestions?

UPDATE: A form can in fact be found from a JOIN link at the top of the home page, but there is no other reference to it that I can identify. And how hard would it be to add a link to the form on the Q&A page? In addition, there does not appear to be an equivalent way to inquire about forming a group, which of course is the coetibus part of the whole thing.