This parish has struck me as one of the OCSP's success stories. I was not surprised that Msgr Steenson appointed the pastor, Fr Mark Lewis, as the first Vicar Forane in the US (although I was surprised that while Fr Lewis is Dean of the Eastern Deanery, there is no Western,Southern, or Northern Deanery, which strikes me as illogical). In any event, one of the sources of St Luke's strength, IMHO, is the fact that it chose to leave its previous church in Bladensburg, despite the willingness of their TEC diocese to rent them the building with an option to purchase. No doubt this was a wrench, but they traded the headaches of an aging building in a less central location for a suitable facility in downtown DC whose expenses they share with the much larger host congregation.Financial prudence and realistic goals may be ingredients for a successful parish, but the LA archdiocese's associate director of vocations gave me a new perspective when he celebrated mass at our parish yesterday. (Since it was Trinity Sunday, with great good humor he introduced us to the term patripassianism. My kind of homily.) But in his remarks at the end of the mass, he noted that two men from the parish will be ordained to the priesthood next month, with three total in the past two years. The parish has produced something like 70 priests in its history. The parish we left last year has produced just one in 90 years.So I was somewhat dismayed to see in the February newsletter that the long-term goal is still to have a separate church building. Of course if the congregation grows to many hundreds and needs so many mass times and facilities for activities that sharing is no longer an option, that would be great news. But the more likely reality is that they have a hankering to join the many congregations of many denominations pouring all their energy into the support of a building for its own sake. Generally speaking denominations with a strong central authority, mainly Catholics and "official" Anglicans, are able to be fairly ruthless about closing marginal parishes. Where local congregations hold the power, there is more likelihood of magical thinking.
Fr Ward implied as well that vocations come from generations of Catholic families. If there are ingredients that keep a parish from failing early in its formation, it seems to me that a big sign of a successful parish is vocations. I'm not seeing much in the way of vocations from any Ordinariate, when, considering the average age of current clergy, they will be urgently needed very soon.
