Twenty-two people attended Wednesday's info meeting at the future site of HM, Temecula. If BJHN has not yet registered the minimum 30 families/100 people required for parish status it cannot really spare a dozen or two for this venture, I would have thought. Perhaps this is like the "groups of Anglicans" petitioning "repeatedly and insistently"---a narrative we have to accept on faith.There are several implications here. One, from the evidence in the bishops' letter, is that a contingent from the Temecula Valley had been driving to Irvine for DW Sunday mass at BJHN. We've established that this is over an hour's drive each way, and if reasonable measures might be taken to make things more convenient for the Temecula folks, this might be good -- except that no matter how you slice it, this takes two dozen out of the BJHN total, and two dozen looks like the typical number that's put together in Podunk to ordain some ex Reformed guy trying to jump-start a career in the OCSP -- eventually, he's either going to get moved to a bigger parish, he'll age out or retire on disability, or he'll beat his wife. In any of those cases, the group disappears.
But let's say Bp Lopes appears at a question session someplace, and someone in the audience asks, "Bishop, why is there no group for Anglicans in West Virginia?" Bp Lopes will improvise some answer along the line that he'd love to have a group in West Virginia, and it might be a great opportunity for someone to try to put something together -- except that the bishop, if nobody else, knows deep down that there's not enough interest in West Virginia, and even if a family in Wheeling thought this was a good idea, and they might get together with another family in Charleston, the distance involved simply makes this impractical, unless some ex Reformed guy is able to get -- and let's be realistic, not two dozen, not three, but closer to 100 -- people together and establish a practical plan that can be realized in clear steps.
So even if the OCSP hears from 100 people in North Dakota who express interest in forming a group, population density will make this impractical unless all are pretty close to Fargo. I'm not sure why nobody in Houston is applying this fairly simple rule to Southern California, which seems to be sprouting a series -- now up to something like four -- of groups, mostly numbering a couple of dozen, that based on six years' experience are never going to grow, and in fact, based on the same experience, will likely disappear if either the priest or key families relocate.
There's a more serious issue, which my regular correspondent recently raised. These groups of two dozen, especially if they meet in a law firm's chapel or a storefront, aren't going to be exposed to anything like real Catholic parish life. They won't meet Hispanic, Filipino, Italian, Irish, or Polish Catholics. They won't have access to daily mass, adoration, or serious Bible study, such as a parish-sponsored Jeff Cavins course, which would be beyond the audio-visual capabilities of an OCSP group, if not the finances. They won't have access to Lenten mission speakers like Fr Longenecker or any of a wide range of others. The adolescents won't have access to LifeTeen or Steubenville.
And this has bearing on the spiritual lives of these people. Over time, I listen to homilies from our diocesan priests, who sometimes talk about guiding parishioners through very serious crises like clinical depression or unemployment. What the Church has to offer them is in fact remedies like daily mass and adoration in addition to prayer, and of course the counsel of good priests with long experience. How is some jerk who sells insurance part time after training in a Reformed seminary (supplemented to be sure with a couple of night school catchup sessions) going to be able to help some Anglican going through clinical depression? I don't even want to think about this.
The bishops in yesterday's letter spoke of Anglicans being "fully Catholic", but if they don't have access -- which the poor folks hearng said mass from a part-time insurance agent in a storefront will not -- to the range of resources available in Catholic parishes, they aren't going to be "fully Catholic". But that's OK, Mr Schaetzel, Mrs Gyapong, Mr Coulombe, and others will explain the Anglican patrimony to them on a blog, and that'll fix it.
Right. Bp Lopes, you will be held accountable.
