Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Shrinkage

The St Mary's dissidents may have updated their calendar, but that for the neighboring ACA parish, All Saints Fountain Valley, CA, still carries the schedule for Holy Week. Interestingly, the schedule for Easter Sunday lists only "Festal Morning Prayer" at 9:30 AM, which suggests they're having some difficulty lining up supply priests. It doesn't appear that they have had a regular priest to say mass since Robert W. Bowman left, after I pointed out his child pornography arrest. (The parish was slow to act, and I finally notified Fountain Valley police of the situation, after which it appears to have been cleared up.)

Looking at the ACA Diocese of the West generally, it lists a parish and a mission in Arizona, four parishes and a mission in California, a parish in Oregon, and a mission in Montana. The missions seem iffy indeed. All Saints Fountain Valley has not had a rector since the death of Anthony Morello more than two years ago, and it seems to have difficulty finding even supply priests. St Mary of the Angels is very much up in the air, with the results of the legal appeal suggesting control will revert to the elected vestry in August of this year. At that point, the ACA Diocese of the West will be down to five parishes in three states, the status of the missions very much in question. This will probably still be too much for "Bishop" Williams to handle.

Meanwhile, the St John Fisher Ordinariate community in Potomac Falls, VA will merge with the St Luke's parish in DC. As far as I can see, this amounts to a reduction in the total number of Ordinariate communities.