There is one additional complication, too. In a diocese, a bishop can move clergy from one parish to another with relative ease.My regular correspondent adds,The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter and the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, however, must play by a completely different set of rules. Most of their congregations are not near to one another, so a reassignment is likely to involve a relocation to a different geographical area with children going to new schools and a spouse also needing to find new employment or to arrange a transfer through an employer. Such reassignment is certainly possible, but it takes a lot more preplanning and groundlaying.
- The potential impact of a move on a presbyter's family usually is not an issue because most presbyters are celibate. There's no issue of a spouse needing to find new work or to transfer her place of employment and no issue with transferring children into a different school at a new location.
- And in the cases of the relatively few married presbyters received [in dioceses] from Anglican or Protestant bodies, it's often possible to reassign them within a short radius of their homes to minimize the impact on their families[.] In many cases, the family will not need to move to a new home.
The situation in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is somewhere in between. The congregations of that ordinariate tend to be much closer together, making it feasible to reassign a presbyter to another congregation that is within commuting distance in enough instances to make a major difference.
There are currently six full OCSP parishes: Calgary, Scranton, Arlington,TX, Houston, Orlando, and Towson. I imagine that Philadelphia, Washington, and Baltimore might soon be ready to join that list. I assume that one requirement of a full parish is the ability to provide the pastor with housing and a stipend, although predictably the OCSP has yet to develop guidelines about compensation . This means that most of the other 30+ groups have to depend on priests with some combination of a pension, private means, and diocesan or other employment to support themselves.Already the OCSP has at least a dozen clergy who are working entirely outside the Ordinariate, presumably for financial reasons. None of the pastors of these parishes, or near-parishes, is due to retire imminently; some are decades away. Mr Simington, the young celibate candidate who was ordained to the diaconate yesterday, is going back to seminary next year. He will also be working part-time assisting at St Margaret's, Katy. What does Bp Lopes have to offer him when he is ordained to the priesthood? Something is being cooked up, no doubt, given the special treatment he has been given, but perks are in short supply in the OCSP.
The OOLW has already conceded that its non-retirement age candidates will go into local ministry with Ordinariate activity, if any, as a sideline. I think this is the kiss of death (along with the general rejection of the Divine Worship liturgy) for the UK Ordinariate. The OCSP still has potential, but it could be a very boutique operation indeed.
