St James, St Augustine FL under the leadership of Fr Nicholas Marziani apparently continues to meet at 4:30 pm on Saturdays at St Benedict the Moor Catholic Church in St Augustine. Until October 2014 Fr Marziani maintained a fairly active webpage but it seems currently untended except for the monthly calendar which perhaps posts automatically. In his "Midweek Musing" of September 18, 2014 Fr Marziani reported proudly that there was a record number of worshippers that Saturday at St James'--21--but whether this was, as he hoped, the beginning of a "roll' or whether it was a high-water mark it is not possible to know. Fr Marziani's Facebook page seems to be lying fallow, and the St James community apparently never had one. There is nothing about St James in the bulletins of the host parish. Difficult to imagine that growth is taking place under these circumstances.I'm beginning to see several characteristic patterns in the marginal groups that have priests assigned to them. The first is that there doesn't seem to be any consistent set of expectations, either from Houston or among peers, for what sort of publicity these groups should have. A web or social-media presence is clearly optional. The particular talents among individual priests for attracting members will naturally vary, but it's clear that no minimum level of effort seems to be expected, and we certainly don't see it.
This may be a result of the previous Houston management style, in which the main emphasis seems to have been membership in the "club", with no accompanying requirement for competence or performance. One hopes that Bp Lopes's style will change this.
