"Any Of Them Could Have Become Roman Catholics At Any Time"

I had two e-mails yesterday that provide worthwhile angles to approach what I think are contradictions and even obstacles to the faithful in Anglicanorum coetibus. The first:

My appreciation of the generosity extended to the now homeless SMA parishioners is tempered by the fact that any of them, Fr. Kelley included, could have become Roman Catholics at any time during these difficult years. They could have “joined” the Ordinariate as well. This business of holding out until a priest gets in or a building gets in, or “we all get in together,” still seems to me to be a misreading of the ultimate reward of reception.

This is completely correct, and in fact the parish was told essentially this, twice, by Cardinals Manning and Mahony when it sought to go in under the Pastoral Provision in the 1980s. As I've said here repeatedly, I think the cardinals made the correct call at the time.

A major question I have, to which we'll never get a complete answer, is what role Cardinal Law played, along with Msgr Stetson, in allowing this story to continue the way it did from the late 1970s up to recent weeks. Law and his representatives (probably including Stetson) we know worked closely with Fr Jack Barker, then Rector of St Mary of the Angels, not only in developing a plan for St Mary's to leave TEC, but in attempting to get other founders of the "continuing Anglican" movement to enter an inchoate personal prelature in the context of the 1977 Congress of St Louis.

By Fr Barker's account, the "continuers" never took this seriously (not that their own approach was any more productive). But I've got to think some assurance was given to Fr Barker that the parish would be received in some way under Law's aegis, notwithstanding the Pastoral Provision was years in the future, and whatever assurance Law gave Barker proved utterly worthless by the mid-1980s. But we also know that Law continued to pursue the idea of a personal prelature, continuing back-channel contacts with Jeffrey Steenson and other "conservative" (read opportunistic) TEC figures in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Any of them could have become Catholic at any time, for that matter.

Anglicanorum coetibus was effectively drafted by Steenson, very likely with major input from Law, in the wake of a 1993 meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger; it stayed in Ratzinger's desk when St John Paul II proved lukewarm (quite correctly; he'd already promulgated the Pastoral Provision), and it emerged in 2009 only after Ratzinger became pontiff and could implement it himself.

Among the problems I see in it is its treatment of "groups of Anglicans" as something special -- it allows them to enter the Catholic Church on a vaguely streamlined basis, and it creates a major exception for their married clergy. What we see as a practical matter with the clergy in particular is that it's allowed the CDF to bypass effective diocesan vocations procedures and ordain whomever it chooses based on whim -- no MDiv is required; psychological review is cursory; no serious consideration is given to the numerous pitfalls connected with making married men Catholic priests.

By treating "groups of Anglicans" as something special over and above groups of Baptists or whatever else, it also feeds on existing feelings of Episcopalian class bias and exclusivity among both clergy and laity who come in, while at the same time it ghettoizes them into parishes that are outside dioceses and under their own jurisdiction -- as one US bishop put it, not just unique but separate. I agree with the commenter that this is a "misreading of the ultimate reward of reception".

On the other hand, I'm not inclined to be too hard on Fr Kelley and those of the parish who stayed out until the latest developments. The promise that was made to them in late 2011 was that they would in fact come in quickly. Once things began to go south -- a result of bungling by Stetson, Steenson, Hurd, and Mrs Chalmers -- the OCSP provided no serious guidance to the parish and effectively cut it loose, with only token communication in succeeding years. Much of the fault is on the pastoral side here, aided by the false impressions given by Anglicanorum coetibus. It's worth pointing out that the effective pastoral guidance the parish received after about 2014 was from Abp Hepworth, who stepped up to the plate when Houston did not. Fr Kelley also had a continuing pastoral obligation.

In addition, prudence is a virtue. Fr Kelley and the vestry had a fiduciary responsibility to preserve the significant asset in the parish property. I can give a man my cloak, but I can't give him another man's cloak. The property wasn't something they could simply give away. When the legal situation finally changed, their obligation in this matter changed. Given that a promise had effectively been made over decades by Law, Stetson, Steenson, Ratzinger, and many others from within the Church, I can't fault Fr Kelley and the core parishioners for giving it good-faith credence; presumably, this promise will now be carried through promptly.

I say presumably. The second e-mail I had yesterday, from an individual who went through the events of 2010-12 but is no longer connected with the parish or the OCSP, said

I never expected the degree of obfuscation, plausible deniability, and outright deception practiced in OCSP and whatever that continuing Anglican "church" is called. I am no political operator and am certainly unsuited for, and incompetent at, that bs. I pray that Fr Kelley is protected from further harm by those people.

Lucy can still pull the football away, as she has been doing here for decades, for reasons that are inscrutable. Timeo danaos et dona ferentes.

Setting The Record Straight

Yesterday I quoted an e-mail from a visitor who said in part, "Soon after the canonical erection of the ordinariate, Msgr. Steenson told Fr. Kelley and the congregation of St. Mary of the Angels that the Catholic Church would provide facilities for them if they abandoned the property." That sounds awfully authoritative, doesn't it? But it struck me as so much at variance with what I'd lived through, attending all those meetings at the time, and so much at variance with reason (why would an ordinary urge a parish to give up a property that would contribute a substantial tithe?) that I did what I could to confirm it.

I checked with an individual who was even more familiar with all the communications from Houston to the parish than I was, including to clergy, but who no longer lives in the area. His response was, "I have no recollection of that -- good catch. I certainly wasn't told that by anyone; I would have been onboard if it were so." So I got back to the commenter, asking where he'd gotten this. His reply was remarkably mealy-mouthed:

I don’t have the source materials from that time period, and the actual communication probably was verbal through Msgr. Stetson. However, I do know that the blogs reporting on the formation of the ordinariates at that time reported that the parish was given the option of abandoning the claim to the parish property and joining the ordinariate without it, but chose not to do so. There were several blogs over the past several years — yours, The Anglo-Catholic, Ordinariate Expats, Foolishness to the World, Freedom for St. Mary, and others — so it simply is not practicable for me to go through all of them to look for the report, which may have appeared in the discussion comments to an unrelated article, in the few minutes that I can take to pass information along to you.

Well, the guy I checked with would have heard anything verbal via Msgr Stetson, too. It didn't happen. Other than that, the commenter sorta-kinda made it all up, claiming that someone musta put it on a blog someplace, so it's gotta be true. I guess this is a matter that, if I'd done it, I would need to take to confession. My visitor, not so much. Not my problem, but I would suggest it may be his.

Last year our parish had the Jeff Cavins course on James's epistle on DVD.

What strikes me is that the epistle was apparently written within a generation or two of the Resurrection, but James seems to have had a great deal of insight already into what can happen in a parish. Look at this pasage from Chapter 3:

5 In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions. Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. 6 The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire, itself set on fire by Gehenna.

The visitor freqently posts on blogs like the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog and that of Mr Chadwick, whose comment sections are not, shall we say, always a model of Christian charity, and from which I think serious people should normally stay away. He posts under the handle Rev22:1. It's just as well; at least he doesn't post as James3:5-6.

Basically, Norm wasted my time with that comment, where I needed to follow up to determine whether it was true, and it turns out that he spread falsehood with it, making claims about Msgr Steenson, Fr Kelley, and the St Mary of the Angels parish that were derogatory to the parish and untrue. When I confronted him about it, he basically said it was OK, because he thought he'd heard a rumor about it.

In the future, I'm not going to post any more comments from him. Again, I cannot recommend visiting the blogs where Norm posts comments; I think they foster an overall atmosphere where people like Norm thrive.

Two Movies On The Same Screen

I had an e-mail in response to the post on Fr Kelley's letter that I need to respond to here, because it's from someone who spends a great deal of time commenting on other blogs that don't approve my comments when I occasionally submit them. So I may as well get things clear here.

The letter from Fr. Kelley clearly is sad, but I think that it reflects what has been the policy of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter from the beginning, formally stated on Page 6 of the ordinariate’s Guide to Parish Development: “Recognized ordinariate communities cannot be involved in civil litigation in their ecclesial community of origin.” Soon after the canonical erection of the ordinariate, Msgr. Steenson told Fr. Kelley and the congregation of St. Mary of the Angels that the Catholic Church would provide facilities for them if they abandoned the property. They could have done what they are doing now back in 2012. Instead, they have lost six years and spent a considerable sum on legal costs that they could have put toward acquisition of another parcel of land and construction of new facilities. In the end, this case clearly shows the wisdom of the ordinariate’s policy.

My visitor says the letter "clearly is sad", when in my post I called it "really wonderful news", so I think this is a case of what humorist Scott Adams calls people seeing two entirely different movies on the same screen.

Let's back up and look at chronology. In December 2011, Houston's representative to the parish, Msgr William Stetson, who had been closely associated with Cardinal Law and his efforts to establish the Pastoral Provision throughout Law's career, told the parish in a public meeting that it would be received into the OCSP during the first weeks of January 2012. Indeed, it would be the first parish to be received. At the time, there was no litigation pending against the parish from any quarter. The parish had voted to enter the OCSP earlier in the year by the requisite supermajority.

Repeat. No litigation. Parish to be received in early 2012. Period.

However, for reasons that have never been clear, Lucy in effect pulled away the football at the last minute. Two weeks into January, the announcement was made that Houston wanted another vote, which was promptly held, and which resulted in an even larger supermajority in favor of entering the OCSP. At that point, the process simply stalled. Again, the reasons why nothing happened after that have never been entirely clear. I've speculated on them here now and then, but in the spirit of Fr Kelley's letter, there's no sense rubbing that sore again.

The Monday after Easter 2012, the Bush group and the ACA made their first effort to seize the parish physically. However, no litigation was filed, and the police removed the Bush group from the property after it was established that they had no right to be present at that time. At that point, it should have been clear to Houston that delaying their intention of receiving the parish posed greater risks than they may have thought.

It's worth stressing that when I was briefly parish treasurer in 2011, I developed a proposed 2012 parish budget that included a 10% tithe to the Ordinariate, which would have been in the range of $25,000 per year. This would have been possible due to the rental from the commercial space on the parish property. For Houston to have ignored this as a factor in its internal deliberations, which as far as I can see it did, was beyond stupid. I have no other way to characterize it.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the vestry's attorney argued to Judge Murphy that the ACA let every other parish that was headed for the OCSP, including Holy Nativity Payson, go in without trouble. The difference in the St Mary of the Angels case was the income from the commercial property. If Houston was ignoring this factor, the ACA definitely wasn't. I keep referring to Houston's strange behavior in this period as bungling, and I see no reason to change it.

(By the way, if Msgr Steenson urged the parish to abandon its property, this is the first I've heard of it. Houston would thereby be giving up a $25,000 a year tithe, which it would have preferred to have.)

No litigation was filed over the St Mary's property until May 2012. If the OCSP had followed through with its intention in January 2012, or at any time between January and May of that year, the move would have been unencumbered by any current litigation. Houston had between January and May 2012 to resolve any issues they may have had, and I can only conclude that the individuals involved, from Msgrs Stetson and Steenson, to then-Fr Hurd, to Mrs Chalmers, a canon lawyer acting as Houston's attorney, were not equal to fairly simple tasks. All are no longer in the picture.

The visitor's comments above remind me a little of the arguments from the secularists who challenge people like Bp Barron: if the laws of physics explain everything, why do we need God? Bp Barron would ask in reply why we have the laws of physics. By the same token, if Houston's policies retroactively explain what happened in 2012, how did the events of 2012 get started?

There's a very good answer here: Fr Barker and the St Mary of the Angels vestry revised the parish Articles of Incorporation in January 1977 to remove the parish from The Episcopal Church. This ensured that every subsequent event would be driven by the idea that extra-ecclesial actions could supersede any other effort to govern the parish. More than 40 years of litigation were the result. Demons are real. The question I have, which will probably never be adequately answered, is what role then-Bp Law and Msgr Stetson played in this event, because by Fr Barker's own account, they were talking to him at the time. The bungling started much earlier than 2012.

On the other hand, I think it's significant that, at least in the account we have via Fr Kelley and Abp Hepworth, Fr Perkins, and by implication Bp Lopes, are moving quickly to receive the parish even without its once-substantial tithe. This is generous and, if things follow through, good news. Nothing sad about it.

Unless, of course, Lucy pulls the football away once again.

Letter From Fr Kelley

I just received the following from Fr Christopher Kelley regarding the future of the St Mary of the Angels parish:

As many of you will already know, the opposition was awarded possession of the church and cottage. We all know the enormous injustice that this is. But this is not to place to recite it. From this Sunday, July 29, until further arrangements are made, the Ordinariate-bound Congregation of St. Mary of the Angels will gather at Our Mother of Good Counsel RC Church, at the corner of N. Vermont Avenue & Ambrose, in Los Feliz/Hollywood, for the 10am Mass. We do this with the blessing and encouragement of Archbishop Hepworth, and the Vicar General of the Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter (OCSP), the Very Rev'd Fr. Timothy Perkins, in Houston. Fr Tom Davis, OSA, and Fr James Mott, OSA, the parish's chief pastor, welcome us. I have spoken to them, & had the pleasure of showing Fr Davis our new Missal. (He was clearly impressed!)

Let us seek one another out, & worship in close proximity, & meet together afterwards, to retain our fellowship & identity. This is important for our future. And cease not in prayer! It may open up many new avenues of Grace. As the Abbess says to Maria, in The Sound of Music, "When God closes a door, He opens a window."

We expect that in the near time, the Congregation will be received into the Ordinariate, and I will be re-ordained. Until that time, please observe a Eucharistic Fast. Under Roman Canon Law, until we are received, we are not permitted to receive Communion. (It was that way in the Episcopal Church when I was a youth!) So let us courteously observe their rules: "When in Rome..." (Some prior rumors to the contrary were found not to be true. We must beware of unsupported rumors.) I will inquire of Fr Tom whether we approach to receive a blessing, or not. Stay tuned.

With the consent of the clergy of Our Mother of Good Counsel [OMGC], it may then be possible that we might be granted a regular time for our Ordinariate Missal Mass. This could then attract others, for our corporate growth.. Please share the relevant information with others to let them know we will not "disappear." We go forward in Christ, our Savior, our God, our Strength. As St. Padre Junipero Serra said, "Adelante!" --Forward, not backward!

Fr Christopher P. Kelley+

It is certainly generous of Frs Mott and Davis, Fr Perkins, and Abp Gomez, to make this provision. It's also encouraging to see this sudden forward progress toward receiving the parish into the OCSP. If Fr Kelley can be ordained, as seems to be implied here, this is an enormous step.

It's unfortunate to see the property lost, but one of my concerns for a while has been that the St Mary of the Angels plant isn't well suited to serve as a Catholic facility. Parking is limited, and the capacity of the nave and chapel is too small. It's Anglo-Catholic, which is fine in and of itself, but it isn't really Catholic.

The last I knew, the 10 AM mass at OMGC had lost its choir. I'm wondering if the choir that had been at St Mary of the Angels could somehow move to the 10 AM mass at OMGC.

On balance, I think this is really wonderful news. Fr Kelley and the parish have my prayers and congratulations.

Yet More On Chapel Veils -- I

I've had a couple of thought-provoking comments on chapel veils, and a single post responding to them would be too long, so barring more important developments, I'm going to break this in two. A visitor commented,

Veils were not optional for girls and women at the time of my Episcopal confirmation in 1969. When I entered college six years later, it had gone out the window.

This may well be the case, but it brings up several issues. One is that head coverings for women in church seem to have disappeared as a general practice well before any denominations formally recognized the fact. The 1983 revision of Catholic canon law clearly ratified something that had occurred decades earlier. However, I assume TEC never covered the subject at all in its canons (someone may be able to correct me). Nor, I would guess, was it ever covered in a triennial convention. So precisely how it went out the window is an interesting question.

I would guess that head coverings for women was a general Christian practice observed in Protestant denominations as well as the Catholic Church, with clear scriptural authority, until it wasn't, and unlike subjects related to the sixth commandment, the Church has not been insisting that it's still a sin for women not to cover their heads.

On the other hand, the practice seems to date from times before 1534, so it really isn't part of any Anglican patrimony. Another visitor, whose comments I'll cover more extensively tomorrow, said

Head coverings for women were not required at a mass until 1917. It wasn’t necessary, because until the 20th century, a woman wore some sort of head covering whenever she left the house. After the First World War, this custom was dropped (to be followed by more dramatic sartorial changes). The 1917 requirement for the chapel veil was almost certainly a response to changing secular fashions.

The first visitor also sent me a link to a fashion blog, of all places, talking about why "millennial Catholics" (I assume this means millennial Catholic women) are re-adopting the chapel veil. All I can say there is that the reason given is what you'd expect from a fashion blog, everybody's doing it. But if everybody were doing it, wouldn't guys be doing it too? I wouldn't rely on a fashion blog for spiritual direction.

Everybody tells lies, for that matter. Doesn't make it a good idea. More on this tomorrow.

Fr Mike Schmitz On Chapel Veils

One of my favorite Catholic YouTubers is Fr Mike Schmitz, a priest in the Diocese of Duluth, MN (a favorite place of mine, but that's a different story). Fr Schmitz ministers mainly to college-age and younger people, but since I missed being Catholic at that age, watching his YouTube presentations helps me catch up.

Recently I ran into a presentation on chapel veils from 2016, in which he gives the scriptural and doctrinal background of chapel veils.

The point he makes is that while there is scriptural authority and traditional support for chapel veils in the Catholic Church, their use fell out of currency after Vatican II, and there is no requirement that Catholic women wear them in OF, EF, or DW mass. Beyond that, there's the question of whether women who wear them want to single themselves out in some way over and above accepted and prudent ways to dress during mass. If women want to use them for some sort of ostentation, it would be good to have second thoughts.

One thing that puzzles me is that, in 30 years as an Episcopalian, I must have gone to mass at roughly two dozen parishes, and I never saw a chapel veil. Certainly some women wore hats, as many women do at our Catholic parish, but that would be a much more down-to-earth way of covering their heads, less ostentatious, and less more-Catholic-than-the-Pope. But if chapel veils are part of the Anglican patrimony at all, it's not a very big one, and certainly optional.

So I'm not sure what the big deal is about chapel veils in the OCSP. It seems as though some "restorationist" Catholics, those who want to go back to some ideal time before Vatican II, have adopted Anglicanorum coetibus as some sort of ally in this fight. The observers I've talked to think there may be a tendency in the second tier of OCSP parishes, like the ones in California, to attract millennial "restorationists" to replace the disaffected Anglicans who haven't been much attracted to the project.

This may be the explanation for why, as my regular correspondent pointed out, there were no chapel veils to be seen in the early shots of the Pasadena group in yesterday's post, while in the recent shot, the only woman visible in the much smaller group was wearing one.

Growth Or Not

My regular correspondent reminded me of photos I posted on June 8 last year of an early mass at the Our Lady of Grace group in Pasadena:

Compare this to the one I posted yesterday of the Our Lady of Grace group, pretty recent, since it follows Fr Bayles's much-anticipated ordination:

Has it grown? We report. You decide.

My regular correspondent comments, however,

I note from the July newsletter of St Luke, Washington that they have moved closer to purchasing property in the Washington suburbs for the construction of a church, parish hall, and rectory. St John Vianney, Cleburne purchased property last year on which they plan to build a church. Two other parishes, STM, Scranton and SJB, Bridgeport purchased church buildings from their local Catholic dioceses, and SJE, Calgary bought their property from the local Anglican diocese. Why did these groups attract not only members, but members prepared to donate generously, while others have remained small and struggling? STM, Scranton has been around for thirteen years years and of course property values in Scranton are pretty depressed, but I imagine that is not the case in Prince George County, VA. or suburban Dallas-Ft Worth.

Naturally, I'll feel more confident about growth plans when I see cornerstones laid (with Bp Lopes or his successor wielding a shovel for the camera). And I believe the acquisitions of diocesan properties in Scranton and Bridgeport, while at what must have been distress prices, have not been trouble-free.

Nevertheless, several things strike me. I've noted all along that there are two tiers of communities in the OCSP, led by two groups of priests. The first tier, and first group, is made up of solid ex-TEC, ACC, or "continuing" parishes or rumps thereof, or parishes that came in from the Pastoral Provision, with priests who had led these parishes before the transition. The second tier, and second group, is made up of gathered communities led by priests with much sketchier backgrounds and much less experience. So far, the parishes that show much potential are all from the first tier.

However, even of the first group of priests, Frs Kenyon and Phillips represented serious disciplinary problems for the diocesan bishops who had to deal with them. The few in the second group who came in after ordination in TEC have had much less experience and are achieving much less success in the OCSP.

In fact, we will probably start to need to think of a new third tier of communities and priests, those which have been closed, and the priests who have had to be laicized, which would include former Frs Reese and Hurd. This tier, I predict, will grow faster than the first two.

Of Pasadena, Converts, And White Knuckles

I've had a couple of reactions to Monday's post on the Pasadena OCSP group. You will recall that Ms Nicolosi. an associate professor of creative writing, had many favorable things to say about the fledgling Our Lady of Grace group there, in contrast to anything else in the San Gabriel Valley and beyond (which apparently covers a good deal of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles). My regular correspondent passed on to me a photo of a recent mass there, apparently from Facebook:

There may be others in the view out of camera range, but I can count four in the "pews", with an altar party of three. There is a portable communion rail with a capacity of two, and I suspect that even with that limitation, the line is short. My correspondent asked if the lady in the chapel veil is Ms Nicolosi, with the gentleman to her left being Motorcycle Guy, but I can't answer. Perhaps Ms Nicolosi can set us straight herself.

My reaction is twofold. First, it seems to me that you'd have to go some distance to find a worship environment more provisional and less reverent than this, even with Dan Schutte's greatest hits on the menu. At least there'd be a guitar and tambourine, huh? Folding chairs and an altar on rollers. Is this what floats Ms Nicolosi's boat? Er, why? What's in it for her, because something clearly is?

A bigger question is this. As far as I'm aware, Fr Bayles lives in the San Luis Obispo, CA area. Let's take a typical town there, Arroyo Grande, which according to Google Maps is 176.2 miles from Pasadena. A round trip to say DW mass in Pasadena is thus 352.4 miles. The 2018 mileage reimbursement rate is 54.5 cents per mile. A supply priest is entitled to, at minimum, mileage plus a stipend. This means that, irrespective of stipend or any other expenses, Fr Bayles is entitled to $192.05 for his mileage. The drive from Arroyo Grande to Pasadena is also over three hours. I simply don't know what other arrangements have to be made.

Can the half a dozen people in attendance in the photo come remotely close to just reimbursing Fr Bayles's mileage each week? There's got to be a story here, and this ought to be just up Ms Nicolosi's alley. Perhaps she'll tell it.

A visitor also reacted to Ms Nicolosi's claims of white-knuckling mass anywhere else in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and my regular correspondent's remarks about Mrs Gyapong and converts:

Being a cradle Catholic of some years, I have known (and still do know) many converts. As to the truism that converts are more fervent then cradle Catholics, pfft. Some are, some aren’t. At least half (maybe more) of the converts I have known over time have jumped in with great zeal and then, petered out when the newness wears off and the drudgery sets in. The distinguishing thing about the converted person that seems to make them a fervent Catholic is their understanding of what they have chosen. Converts I have known with very little background in the scriptures and no other strong faith tradition are the most likely to drift away or become run of the mill Catholics without some other, more inspiring figure in their lives.

Converts who are extremely well versed in scripture, very well informed of their previous and possibly other faith traditions seem to better understand what it is they are choosing and why their old faith traditions fell short of Catholicism. Their quest for the knowledge of God was very strong in their previous faith tradition and so it continues and grows through Catholicism. If the most important things to you in your previous faith tradition are visual, the buildings are pretty, the vestments are elaborate and the ritual feels the most churchy, you are not going to recognize the beauty of the Eucharist in a Mass with distractive music or distractive art/décor or distractively dressed congregants or a distractive priest celebrant or all of the above.

The Mass is still the Mass in English or Latin, in Ordinary Form, Extraordinary Form, in the Tridentine Latin form or Divine Worship the Missal. White knuckling it through a Mass with distractions (and sometimes liturgical abuses) is a choice. So is attending Mass in your local parish where, if liturgical abuses are taking place, the parishioners should be notifying their local ordinary in a charitable way so the abuses can be corrected. If there are no real abuses occurring, just Mass you don’t find appealing, why haven’t you volunteered to start a choir group that sings in chant for only one of the Masses? Why haven’t you organized a group to raise funds to replace the altar linens, the artwork, the stations, the paint scheme, whatever it is that is distracting you during Mass.

You also have the choice to go to another parish, to another diocese. If you have a house that is to become your home, you pour your heart and soul into beautifying it, fortifying it and making it your own so that it becomes your refuge, your safe place, your happy gathering place for family and friends. If you hop houses because you don’t like the paint scheme, you don’t like the landscaping, you want a bigger kitchen, if you aren’t willing to fix the things that bother you about your house, you will always be searching for the perfect house. If you are always on the lookout for a better house, no place is really home.

But how can mass in a school cafeteria with folding chairs, an altar on rollers, and a portable altar rail be any kind of home at all?

I've got another question, though. Ms Nicolosi appears to be a cradle Catholic, of a sort. From her description of her practice of Catholicism in the quote in Monday's post, she and Motorcycle Guy flit, in her word, from parish to parish. That suggests she's not registered anywhere, and it suggests even more strongly that she and her husband don't pledge anywhere. Real Catholics support the Church, and I think the implication is that they engage in what our pastor calls sacrificial giving.

My question is whether Ms Nicolosi and Motorcylce Guy ever put more than a token amount in the basket anywhere, and that probably includes Pasadena. But I get the impression that whatever else we may think of Fr Bayles, he is spending a considerable amount from his own pocket just to come to Pasadena every Sunday to say mass. Or maybe Ms Nicolosi is supporting this expense herself. She's an associate professor where, based on a web search, associate professors seem to earn somewhere from $50-80,000 per year, and as far as I can see, she and Motorcycle Guy are childless. Maybe she can make clear how she supports this fledgling effort. My e-mail is on the right.

Indianapolis Odds And Ends

Yesterday, July 23, was supposed to be Luke Reese's sentencing, but so far, I haven't found anything new -- even the Indianapolis media has moved on to some new clickbait, and Mrs Fisher hasn't mentioned anything about it. I've asked an Indianapolis visitor to keep me up to date. UPDATE: The visitor reports that Reese's sentencing date was moved to 8/17/2018. Since Reese was convicted of a felony, this would normally mean a year in state prison at minimum, with three years a recommended sentence for his particular crime. My own view is that the ultimate penalty is in the Almighty's hands, but frankly, I don't think he's the only phony in the OCSP.

A visitor tells me that "Saint Joseph of Arimathea Catholic Community" is an assumed business name for Reese Enterprises LLC of Indianapolis. He provided a copy of the certification from the Indiana Secretary of State, which is a public record available to all on the web (click on images for a larger version):

This raises a number of questions. If the SJA Community is an assumed business name for Reese Enterprises, Luke and Gina Reese, owners, what happens to Reese Enterprises now that the Reeses are divorcing and Luke is presumably headed for state prison? Is there some way that some other entity connected with the OCSP can take over this name?

I assume there are bank accounts connected with the SJA Community. What happens to these? By the way, was either Reese a signatory on these accounts? Have they been removed? For that matter, is the SJA Community a non-profit? This is easy enough to do, but it's worth asking the question, and that leads to the issue of what sort of advice (which of course varies by state in the US) these groups get in setting themselves up, and that leads to the question of what sort of advice these groups get in shutting themselves down.

So we've reached a situation where something will need to be done to tidy up the legal situation of the SJA Community. But de facto, the DW mass at 8:00 AM Sundays at Most Holy Rosary, now celebrated by diocesan priests on the diocesan premises, is no different from the Latin mass celebrated there, or the Spanish mass (or Lithuanian or Korean) celebrated in diocesan parishes anywhere else. What, precisely, is the need for an OCSP presence in Indianapolis? Well, of course, it's to transmit the precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony, which are entirely different from the precious treasures of, say, the Spanish spiritual patrimony, which need no interpretation, just a Spanish mass at 5:00.

Just wondering. But there will inevitably be more scandals, due to the distances from Houston, the lack of supervision, and slapdash formation endemic to the OCSP. The diocesan bishops are going to have to keep asking these questions.

The Ordinariate In Los Angeles?

A visitor pointed me to this post at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, which mainly quotes a Facebook post by Barbara Nicolosi, a creative writing professor, plugging the Pasadena OCSP group. Let's start with creative writing professors, which it seems to me are a prominent example of modern academic rot.

Careers in writing are hard to come by, even harder than tenured academic careers, which is probably why there are so many tenured creative writing profs like Ms Nicolosi. (If she could actually earn a living as a writer, she wouldn't need academic tenure, but she gets paid to tell other people how to make a living at it. Go figure.) She survives mainly by teaching "creative writing", which is an utterly useless academic field that damages young people by giving them the impression they can survive as poets, novelists, and playwrights, rather than encouraging them to develop either serious intellectual skills or marketable practical abilities.

By the way, total tuition, room, and board at third-tier Azusa Pacific University, where she teaches, was $46,124 for the academic year just ended. We may assume it will increase well above the rate of inflation this fall. Courses students take from Ms Nicolosi will qualify them to live in their parents' basement on leaving, although the graduation rate there is only 68%.

So professors of creative writing are running a scam, which ought to call for serious soul-searching. Indeed, one of the Bush sympathizers at St Mary of the Angels taught creative writing at another university across town. She made her money by teaching creative writing courses, as well as by selling rooms and meals at a "writer's retreat", where suckers could go to work on their novels or whatever.

So anyhow, rather than giving such people a wide berth, Mrs Gyapong is Facebook friends with Ms Nocolosi and passes on her take on the OCSP group in Pasadena. More to the point, though, is Ms Nicolosi's bashing of diocesan parishes in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles:

Your suffering can be at an end. Motorcycle Guy and I were like you – flitting around from parish to parish in the San Gabriel Valley and beyond, trying desperately to find a Sunday Mass that wasn’t the hardest thing we had to do all week. We finally found an unlikely home, but a great one.

I'm not sure who Motorcycle Guy is, but if I were to identify myself or my significant other that way, I'd expect people to imagine greasy denim, a pony tail, and sleeve tats, or something like that. But Ms Nicolosi is an expert writer, and I must have this all wrong, because otherwise it's hard to imagine how she and Motorcycle Guy would even recognize a reverent mass if they showed up after flitting over on their Harley. I guess I just can't recognize good writing, huh?

My policy is not to mention our parish by name, since one visitor has sussed it out and complained to our pastor, which wasted some of his time and the time of an associate -- and I'm not sure how Ms Nicolosi and Motorcycle Guy would fit in. We have a reverent mass, a server program, a hard-cover missal with lots of Anglican and German hymns, a music director, and a choir with paid section leaders. And we're not that far from the San Gabriel Valley.

But Latin masses are available at (among other places) St Victor Church in West Hollywood, St Vitus Church in San Fernando, and indeed at St Therese Church in Alhambra, right in the San Gabriel Valley. Have Ms Nicolosi and Motorcycle Guy tried that one? Or would Ms Nicolosi look incongruous kneeling in a chapel veil next to the guy in greasy denims and sleeve tats? Instead, she's ga-ga over

The baby parish of Our Lady of Grace is part of the Anglican Ordinariate. They are a group of Anglicans who petitioned to be reunited to the Catholic Church and have recently had their pastor, Fr. Aaron Bayles ordained as a Catholic priest. The liturgy is lovely – basically follows the Latin Rite but using some of the splendidly rich prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. They also have wonderful music – robust, lyrical hymns rich in theological imagery – nothing like what I hear at most Evangelical praise and worship sessions, and far better than what passes for hymnody at regular Catholic parishes these days.

All we need is more people to come! The parish currently is using the cafeteria at La Salle High School, but, hopefully, we will be moving to a real church soon. Meanwhile, they have built a lovely altar and the spirit of the people is very reverent.

There is no need to white-knuckle it through Sunday Mass in Los Angeles any more. You have an option. Do join us some Sunday at 11am (1030am confessions)!

According to this expert writer (she has a PhD!), if you aren't going to a baby parish with one of those microwave Catholic priests, where nobody shows up, you're white-knuckling it through Sunday mass in Los Angeles. I beg to differ, and I'm wondering what's behind this apparent wish to misrepresent what really happens in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Because what she's doing, based on our experience, is a sin against justice.

Swimming The Tiber Or Rerouting It?

A visitor did some poking around on the Continuum blog I linked yesterday:

As I read the linked article from your blog today, I chanced upon this article (What is Over?) referenced in a side column under the subgroup, The Problems With Anglicanorum Coetibus. As I read this article written in 2011, it became clear to me that this guy saw AC as Rome saw it (and, quite frankly, I saw it as I read the documents promulgating AC). It was a vehicle to “warm the waters”, if you will, for Anglican types to swim the Tiber, not a re-routing of the Tiber to bring Rome closer to Anglicanism.

The Roman Church did not compromise any teachings or dogmas, all compromise of change in belief structures is required of the Anglicans putting on their swim suits. This guy clearly sees that there are many who will delude themselves into thinking whatever they want/need as they glom onto Anglicanorum Coetibus. The clarity of this man’s thoughts that Rome must move to Anglicanism, not the other way around, is the reason Anglican Patrimony in the Catholic Church will “fail”.

False premises lead to disillusionment, sustainable for a little while, until the scales fall from the eyes. The misconception that Rome had indeed moved toward Anglicanism by AC is the real reason, IMHO, the Ordinariates are and will continue to be unsuccessful.

I certainly see the attitude that Rome has moved closer to "Canterbury" (whatever that is) at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, as well as at Fr Hunwicke's blog. Mr Chadwick is on a planet that has neither a Rome nor a Canterbury.

But the visitor brings up what I think is the dilemma at the basis of Anglicanorum coetibus, and that I think nobody in Rome understood when it was promulgated: most Anglo-Catholics feel they're "Catholic enough" as Anglicans. This goes once again to the answer I got in TEC confirmation class: they want the prestige of calling themselves Catholic without paying the dues Catholics have to pay (e.g., the Catechism, the sacrament of confession, weekly mass and also on days of obligation, the need to tidy up irregular marriages, etc).

But my confirmation class question was prompted by seeing St Mary of the Angels on the nightly news in the late 1970s. I clearly remember Mrs Brandt, still a member of the Bush group and head of the altar guild during the group's 2012-16 possession of the building, serving as the parish spokesperson on TV 40 years earlier. She said at that time that TEC had abandoned its "catholicity" by ordaining women.

This, of course, was a meaningless statement, and even in the 1970s, before I'd resumed going to church, I thought there was something peculiar about it. If you wanted "catholicity", you went to a real Catholic parish, not a faux one. Unless you're an Anglo-Catholic. We must assume they see no need to go through RCIA or Evangelium and be received; they're "catholic" already.

Then there's the even smaller group that thinks Anglicanorum coetibus meant Rome was going to adjust its doctrines to suit a few thousand ex-Anglicans. I think we can at least give the low-church "continuers" credit for intellectual honesty, if nothing else.

The Threat, As Seen From The Continuum

A visitor sent me a link to this post at The Continuum blog, where a candidate for holy orders in the Anglican Province of Christ the King explains what in his view is the real threat facing "continuing Anglicanism":

I take up the case of the Catholic Anglican, and his echo chamber. He is an inquirer, often a cleric, often of Anglo heritage, who is unhappy with secular modernity. He is introduced to a solution by a missionary. The missionary is a pious convert from the friendly neighborhood Orthodox bookstore, who convinces the inquirer that the Eastern Church lacks the problems of the Western. The missionary makes theologically ignorant, sweeping claims with breathtaking confidence. Statues are idols, for example. By his surety and appeal to antiquity, he deludes the inquirer, just as he had been deluded before. It’s the way that fraud gurus gain converts.

He sees the real threat as Orthodox proselytization. Farther down,

Tens of thousands of Anglo-Catholics in Fort Worth, San Joaquin, Quincy and MDAS are being targeted by [ “Convert Orthodoxy”] missionaries. When ACNA voted to continue WO, orthodoxwest.com was released, Rev. Mark Rowe became active on social media, and Anglican Radio went over. This is likely an intentional strategy of clergy with experience in public relations, who mean to convince Anglicans that the Eastern Church cares, and will suddenly save Anglicans by a “miracle” (dirty PR trick). . . . The only serious counterattack in this game of chess has been the October 2017 agreement between four Continuing Churches. It was heroic, but too little too late. Thousands of Anglicans remain outside the merger. Many are quietly entering the Western Rite, or are in secret talks to do so. The Orthodox are moving to checkmate opponents who don’t know they’re playing chess! If traditional Anglicans don’t widely circulate a serious case for their existence in months, they will go extinct.

The puzzling thing is that the writer refers to himself and his audience as "Catholic Anglican" and Anglo-Catholic, but the one threat he never mentions is the Roman Catholic Church or, in particular, the Anglican ordinariates.

On one hand, this says a great deal about those who characterize themselves as Anglo-Catholic: the prospect of ever actually becoming an unhyphenated Catholic is clearly remote, and by the writer's admission, even more remote than becoming faux Orthodox. His discussion, of course, never touches on whether he and his audience are faux Catholics, but one thing he unintentionally reveals is that it's apparently easy for faux one to become faux another.

Interestingly, he refers to Western Rite Orthodox as "hipsters in expensive denim" -- I have no idea how accurate this might be -- but it echoes a visitor's recent characterization here of people attracted to the OCSP as "Tolkien-y hipsters". But the takeaway for Catholic observers, I think, is that whatever is drawing dissident Anglicans away from their "Anglicanism", the threat is simply not perceived as coming from Houston.

Says a lot about Houston.

Court Session, LA Superior Court Department 32, July 18, 2018

I attended the court session on LA Superior Court Case 12U07875 in Department 32 under Judge Daniel Murphy this morning. This is the case in which the ACA is asking for a permanent injunction granting the St Mary's property to itself and the Bush group, based on the LA Superior Court Appellate Division's overturning of Judge Strobel's 2015 finding that the parish's August 2012 vote to leave the ACA was valid.

Having followed these cases for six years, it's plain that the lawyers and the courts have chewed every possible issue into a fine mush, and the rulings have seesawed back and forth. Thus it's no surprise to me that Judge Murphy issued a tentative ruling granting the ACA's and the Bush group's motion for a permanent injunction that gives them the parish property.

The December 1, 2017 ruling of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court, State of California, County of Los Angeles (App. Div. of Sup. Ct. No. BV031682) along with the March 23, 2018 Remittitur, are binding authority on this Court. Pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code § 128, this Court has the power to “compel obedience to its judgments, orders, and process, and to the orders of a judge out of court, in an action or proceeding pending therein.” Plaintiff in their opposition to Defendant’s motion supplies no sufficient argument or relevant authority to invalidate the judgment of the Appellate Division finding the property and parish are under the control of Defendants. Therefore, this Court must follow the precedent set forth by the Appellate Division’s prior rulings on this issue.

Based on the foregoing, Defendant’s motion for order to transfer control of property pursuant to the judgement of the Appellate Division is GRANTED. Additionally, pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code §§ 3368, 3422, Defendant’s motion for permanent injunctive relief is GRANTED.

On the other hand, Mr Lengyel-Leahu on behalf of the vestry was able to persuade Judge Murphy to re-read the California Appeals Court's 2014 ruling that, as far as I can see, and which Mr Lengyel-Leahu argued, has two parts. First, it found that the legal vestry was the one elected in February 2012. Second, it returned the issue of whether the August 2012 vote to leave the ACA was valid to the trial court.

This brought up the question of what the status quo ante before the August 2012 vote actually was, granting the August 2012 vote to leave was not valid per the Appellate Division's 2017 reversal. Mr Lengyel-Leahu argued that the parish was no longer under the authority of the ACA in any case.

Judge Murphy said he would take the matter under submission and come back with a final decision by the end of the week. He did say he's inclined to stay with his tentative decision. On the way out of the courthouse, I noted to the parish's senior warden that, even if Judge Murphy changes his mind, it simply opens things up for another 20 years of litigation.

Indeed, this could be the case either way. It is truly a modern Jarndyce v Jarndyce, and I sympathize with Judge Murphy, who clearly indicated in January that it was time for things to come to resolution.

The more I look at the history involved here, the more I think the current state of affairs is a direct result of reckless decisions by Fr Barker and the parish from 1976 to 1978 to leave TEC. This lack of obedience to authority is by definition un-Catholic, and Cardinal Mahony in my view was correct in citing it in refusing the parish's application to come in under the Pastoral Provision in 1986.

In effect, the parish's guiding demons brought in an acknowledgement that extra-ecclesial actions would thenceforth govern how things were run. The problem I have is that Bp Law seems to have had some involvement in setting the parish on that course, which from then to now has had nothing but futile and destructive results.

Bp Law has gone to where he must account for that and a great deal else, and we'll not hear anything more from him about it. I doubt we'll ever hear much more from Fr Barker, either, though I'd love to find out from him in more detail what advice Law, and probably Stetson as well, actually gave him.

"Out Of Balance For The Sake Of The Project"

As I noted yesterday, a visitor used this phrase with reference to the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision of John Paul II, but I think it's valid for the whole Anglican outreach project, or however one might wish to characterize it. Coincidentally, another visitor yesterday sent me a long and thoughtful e-mail that goes into more detail on this whole issue.

When a summer cold forced me to rest this weekend, I started reading -- occasionally skimming - -your archives in chronological order. I’m up to mid-2016, and the motif of careerism really pops out of the narrative. Or rather, the failed career of Cardinal Law. Following his fall from power in Boston, he seems to have spent considerable time consolidating his power and rehabilitating his image. Two of his pet projects after his disgrace were the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus and the discipline of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Look at a partial timeline. Everything goes swimmingly for Cardinal Law until Pope Francis is elected in 2013. Then Law’s projects fizzle. [But see my observations below -- things fizzled pretty consistently for the Anglican project throughout this story -- jb]

• December 13, 2002 - Pope John Paul II accepted Cardinal Law’s resignation. Within weeks of his resignation, Law moved from Boston to Rome. The state attorney general severely criticized Law, but said that Cardinal Law had not broken any laws, **because the law requiring abuse to be reported was not expanded to include priests until 2002**. (Emphasis mine).
• May 2004, Pope John Paul II appointed Law to a post in Rome, as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, a sinecure with only ceremonial duties.[However], Law was [also ] a member of the Congregations for the Oriental Churches, the Clergy, Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, Evangelisation of Peoples, Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Catholic Education, Bishops as well as the Pontifical Council for the Family. He held membership in all these congregations and of the council before resigning from the governance of the Archdiocese of Boston, and at that time was also a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He became even more influential in those Vatican congregations and, being based in Rome, he could attend all their meetings, unlike cardinals based in other countries. ... In Rome, Law was considered an active and important conservative voice within many of the Vatican offices in which he served.

  [I would add that after he left Boston for Rome, Law's eyes and ears in the US for the Pastoral Provision were with Msgr William H Stetson, who was secretary to the PP delegate after 1983 and until 2010. Stetson was closely associated with Law since both were at Harvard in the 1940s. Stetson was heavily involved in the bungling that led to the St Mary of the Angels Third Lawsuit in 2012. -- jb]

• April 2006: Six priests of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, along with Bishop Iker, meet in Rome with Cardinal Law to discuss causes of Catholic-leaning Episcopal dissatisfaction.
• April 8, 2008, Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) under Pope Benedict XVI, met with Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) leaders in Rome and communicated that the CDF will conduct a doctrinal assessment of the LCWR, who are a large group of American women religious. Note: As reported by the National Catholic Reporter and The Tablet in May 2012, Cardinal Law was "the person in Rome most forcefully supporting" Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori's petition to investigate and discipline the LCWR.
• December 1, 2008: Steenson was ordained a transitional deacon by Cardinal Bernard Law, the archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.
• November 4, 2009 - Pope Benedict XVI promulgated the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus.
• January 1, 2012: Jeffrey Steenson was named Ordinary of the newly erected Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.
• In April 2012, the CDF "announced a major reform of the LCWR" and described "the need to remedy significant doctrinal problems associated with the group's activities and programs.
• February 28, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI resigned
• March 13, 2013 - papal conclave elected Jorge Mario Bergoglio to be next Pope.
• April 16, 2015, Vatican "unexpectedly ended" the CDF "investigation and oversight of US nuns." The leaders of the LCWR later met with Pope Francis for an hour and emerged from the meeting beaming.
• November 24, 2015, Steenson resigned as ordinary of the OCSP. He was only 63 at the time, well under mandatory retirement age. On the same day, Pope Francis appointed Steven J. Lopes the first bishop of the OCSP.
• December 20, 2017 - Cardinal Law died.

Maybe Bishop Lopes’s orders, spoken or unspoken, are to close this chapter down & truly bury Cardinal Law.

One could certainly extend this timeline backward, going as far as Law's contacts with Fr Jack Barker, an Anglo-Catholic TEC priest already at odds with that church before the 1976 Congress of St Louis. At the time of the Congress, Law was at pains to try to get the secessionists not to set up their own jurisdiction and ordain bishops, but presumably to wait until Rome could set up a prelature to accept them.

In hindsight, this was only the first of many efforts Law bungled; in 1976, he failed to recognize how Protestant the TEC dissidents were, and in the subsequent meetings that resulted in establishing the ACC and ordaining "continuing" bishops, proposals from Barker and messages relayed by him from Law were not taken seriously.

A major flaw in the whole Law project centers on St Mary of the Angels Hollywood. It's hard not to infer that Law encouraged Fr Barker to take his parish out of TEC, which had the result of inciting at least 40 years and three rounds of lawsuits. But as of the late 1970s, there was nowhere Rome could have put the parish had its withdrawal from TEC been unopposed -- so this was a futile and destructive move, and quite possibly Law encouraged it mainly just to cause trouble.

And that's just the start of the saga that continues now. I'm skeptical, though, that Bp Lopes's marching orders differ from those given to Msgr Steenson: since Lopes's arrival in 2015, there has been no essential change in Houston's apparent policies or behavior, which continue to focus on lowering normal diocesan standards for vocations in order to hire supernumerary priests with minimal responsibilities.

If Lopes's instructions were to shut things down, we'd have seen the signs by now. Instead, we're seeing the continuing results of hiring marginal priests with minimal duties, poorly supervised and with time on their hands.

The St Joseph of Arimathea Model?

The other day I asked what would happen to the St Joseph of Arimathea OCSP group that meets at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in Indianapolis, now that its former priest will have an inmate number in state prison. This parish is known as the Italian parish in Indianapolis, as well as the home for the Extraordinary Form mass there. Before Luke Reese's departure, there was a daily DW mass, but this has been discontinued.

There is a DW mass at 8:00 AM Sundays, but unlike the OF and EF Sunday masses, it is apparently said, not sung. (UPDATE: The parish website and the bulletin differ from each other here.) I've heard that the archdiocese has provided a new associate to replace Reese, but he is not listed on the parish's staff page. It seems unlikely that the OCSP can replace Reese with its own priest, since its married priests are not redeployable, and I assume that the pledges from the St Joseph of Arimathea group do not support a normal stipend in any case.

So for the foreseeable future, Fr McCarthy, the pastor at Most Holy Rosary, or a diocesan associate, will be saying the DW mass at 8:00 AM Sundays. I'm not sure how this differs from the 8:00 AM Spanish mass in a great many parishes all over the country and why a special prelature is needed for it. Not long ago, a visitor familiar with this particular parish remarked,

I think it is similar to one of the key problems with the concept of the ordinariate in the United States. These people are not culturally Anglican. They are American English speakers who fancy worshiping in a style that frankly looks foreign to any Roman Catholic who grew up as a Catholic. It's the ordinariate's desire for self-ghettoization, they don't want to worship as Catholics but they want to be recognized as such.

These are people who turn their noses up at the Ordinary Form in English (which while sad and bare boned has its origins in the Mass of Trent), but lavish high praise on the Book of Divine Worship, which is a quaint creation (but entirely not born from any discernible Catholic sources). These are folks who think most current priests and Bishops are absolutely horrible if not "diabolical" in some circles, but they want to pray in a fashion created by Cranmer with prayers populated by Laud.

We're also back to TEC Fr David Miller's brilliant summation in my confirmation class that Anglo-Catholics are people who want to have the prestige of calling themselves Catholic without paying the dues real Catholics have to pay. Thinking of the new example provided by Luke Reese, here's at least one OCSP priest who was so intent on gaining the prestige and power that come from being a Catholic priest that he was willing to jump through all kinds of hoops to get them, suitable for the job or not.

There are others like him out there, and this should give the CDF, the USCCB, abd the CCCB pause.

Hey, Does This Mean More Beer Breakfasts? Oh, Boy!

My regular correspondent reports on developments in Irvine, CA:

Blessed John Henry Newman, Irvine has redone its website once again and I was surprised to note a reference to The League of Ordinary Gentlemen. As you may recall, their previous activities consisted of beer breakfasts and whisky and cigars around the bonfire. However, the LoOG FB page has not been updated since 2016, and I assumed that it had been replaced by the Knights of Columbus Council, which meets at the Busch building at the same time as the Gianna Club. Seems like a more family-friendly set-up, with child care and a potluck meal before the groups meet. So who resurrected the LoOG?

Well, I think beer breakfasts are an example for other OCSP groups to follow, to build interest and participation. If it worked for Bluto and Otter at the Delta House, why can't it work for Fr Bartus and his protégés? In fact, I'm surprised Fr Phillips hasn't recommended it more generally.

I'm gonna ask our pastor why our parish can't have Saturday morning beer breakfasts!

UPDATE: A visitor replies,

Fr. Phillips did encourage such activities but it was wine not beer. I remember quite a scandal at The Atonement Academy that actually was covered by one (maybe more) local television newscasts when the wine from such events was stored in an unlocked refrigerator in the school. Any kid could get in and sneak some wine, and apparently some did or the news team would not have been investigating/reporting. It was a big kerfuffle.

And no, before you ask, this was not the wine reserved for sacramental purposes, that’s why the local press got involved. I know Catholics like to drink a bit but the readily accessible alcohol to minors seems to be a little more Anglicanish. Real Catholic Men’s Clubs and KoC’s ALWAYS have locks on their beer fridges ‘cuz they don’t want anybody stealing their stash.

Well, I knew Fr Phillips had it in him! When I talk to our pastor, I'll explain that if the fridge is locked, it'll be OK!

The REC, Ancestry.com, And The Fate Of Small Groups

An e-mail from my regular correspondent somehow ties together some disparate themes that have been at the back of my mind;

I don't know how typical my local REC parish is, but they have a service of Holy Communion once a month. The other Sundays are Morning Prayer. Fr Seraiah left the REC when his parish closed after an internal dispute and he was only briefly in charge of an ACA parish before his ordination for the OCSP. Thereafter he was the pastor of a diocesan parish until Shane Schaetzel was able to draft him to lead the Ordinariate group he had formed in Springfield, MO.

As the group is very small, Fr Seraiah supports himself and his family as the parochial administrator of a local diocesan parish, St Suzanne, Mt Vernon. My question is, why does Fr Seraiah think he needs the OCSP? As we know, Fr Seraiah was baptised in the Church and raised as a Protestant Evangelical. His Anglican experience was in the proudly Protestant REC; his progression to "Anglo-Catholicism" just a very short stop on his journey to the Catholic church.

What aspect of what personal" Anglican Patrimony" is he trying to maintain in his tiny St George chapel? Why does he not simply dedicate himself to his ministry at St Suzanne? During Holy Week the St George, Republic congregation was invited to join that of St Suzanne for services there. Why can't that happen every Sunday?

I am reminded of commercials for Ancestry. com I see regularly. The gist is that the father always believed he was, say, Scottish. Cue footage of Dad in a kilt playing the bagpipes. Now they have discovered the family has a significant mixture of Italian. Cue Dad playing "Tarentella Napoletana" on the accordion. In this case, Fr Seraiah wants to play "Tarentella Napoletana" because he once boarded with an Italian family. And they were actually from Milan.

Let's start with the Reformed Episcopal Church. As we've recently seen, this was founded in the context of the evangelical Second Great Awakening as a reaction to the viral influence of the Oxford Movement in the US Episcopal Church, and it had definite anti-Catholic elements. (Let's keep in mind that a good part of all Protestant confirmation classes covers the reasons for Protestantism, which are specifically anti-Catholic.)

This does raise the question of what candidates coming to the OCSP from the REC specifically believe. One might say that the REC has become something of a fellow-traveler with the "continuing" movement, and REC ordinations are de facto recognized in "continuing" denominations, although this isn't much help. A candidate for REC orders told me a while ago that a master's degree in any field would be sufficient for ordination there, which goes to the generally low standards exercised outside TEC.

Just last May, we saw now-Fr Matt Whitehead ordained from the REC after a figurative 30 seconds in the microwave. Houston doesn't seem to have published policies on what denominations are "Anglican" enough to be recognized as such, nor for that matter on what constitutes acceptable formation vis-a-vis what sort of remedial courses are needed. Depends on someone's mood is all I can think.

And this goes to Ancestry.com and the remarks from Fr Longenecker, as well as others I've cited here from Prof Guelzo: you're Anglican if you think you are. Ich bin ein Berliner. I drink green beer on St Paddy's day and margaritas on Cinco de Mayo! If my DNA test confirms it, so much the better! The problem is that something very close to this attitude is allowing Houston to waive a very great deal in deciding whom to ordain a Catholic priest, and the fallout from this is proving not to be just theoretical.

And we're back to the issue of the tiny groups-in-formation that never leave that category -- maybe they're better characterized as groups-not-yet-suppressed. (What, exactly, happens to the St Joseph of Arimathea group in Indianapolis when Luke Reese leaves for state prison? I think a diocesan priest says DW mass there now, but is it still in the OCSP?) Why do we keep such tiny groups separate, except possibly to massage the egos of their lay organizers or justify ordaining their marginal priests?

Why Am I Doing This? -- II

Another reason I'm still at this is the continuing question of Anglo-Catholicism -- what, exactly, is it? This is somewhere in our general cultural background. TS Eliot, the overrated 20th-century poet, famously declared himself in an obscure essay to be "an Anglo-Catholic in religion". Trollope's Barsetshire novels contribute, as Fr Longenecker recently pointed out, to our current misunderstanding of Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism.

On one hand, it's worth examining Anglo-Catholicism as a cultural and social phenomenon, since the industrial revolution and its consequences that inspired it are very interesting in themselves. On the other, I think Anglicanorum coetibus is an example of what happens when intellectual misunderstandings play out in the real world -- Marx and Engels writ very small.

The story of St Mary of the Angels, founded by Fr Neal Dodd, a Nashotah House graduate who intended the parish to be Anglo-Catholic from the start, is at the heart of contemporary Anglo-Catholicism. One of Dodd's successors, Fr Jack Barker, was closely involved in talks with Bp Bernard Law in the context of the 1976 Congress of St Louis that led to the 1980 Anglican Use Pastoral Provision, which in turn led to Anglicanorum coetibus.

For the parish and many connected with it, this story has been an ongoing fiasco. This is certainly due in part to the limitations of some of the key players like Msgr Steenson, Fr Hurd, Bp Strawn, and Canon Morello. But if that were the whole story, it would be only a faint modern echo of Barsetshire.

My own view is that the story is playing out as a result of basic dishonesties connected with Anglo-Catholicism. This is what makes it worth the attention, at least, of a small group of people. The legal cases connected with the parish -- this year is the 40th anniversary of the First Lawsuit -- also suggest there are continuing cultural reverberations, not just from Trollope, but from the example of Jarndyce v Jarndyce in Bleak House.

Trollope and Dickens, by the way, are much better writers than TS Eliot.

Why Am I Doing This? -- I

The other day, a visitor e-mailed in part,

As I read your blog post today, I was struck by a question I wasn’t sure how to answer, “Why does the continuing indulgence by the CDF for Anglicanorum Coetibus get Mr. Bruce so riled up?” Don’t get me wrong, I am glad it does because it has produced so many thought provoking ideas and discussions, which ultimately, can and should lead to better understanding and practice of our shared Catholic faith. After reading the linked article at the Federalist and considering your blog, I was again struck by the thought. . . . “Like a grain of wheat that falls on fertile soil, it yields five, ten, a hundred fold.” Looking at the caliber of Catholics who have come into the fold because of AC, yes, some are on rocky soil, in the brambles or simply in sand with no water, but. . . . [i]f each can reach and foster only one seed that yields a hundred fold, maybe your blog and the AC are not such strange bedfellows after all.

As longer-term visitors know, early this year, I gave a lot of thought to either cutting back my effort on this blog or dropping it completely. After prayer and reflection, there seems to have emerged good reason to continue it at existing levels. Why?

An associate at our parish left last month to become a parish administrator elsewhere in the archdiocese. He had previously been a military chaplain with combat deployments; in one, his predecessor had half his head blown off with an IED. When he returned to the archdiocese, he took over a parish as pastor.

However, it appears that he'd carried PTSD and the seeds of clinical depression back with him, and the story he told in homilies was that he essentially lost it when the bride at a wedding became over-concerned that the train on her gown hadn't been properly measured, and it would catch on the pews as she came down the aisle for the ceremony.

I would guess that there was more behind the episode than this, because the upshot seems to have been that he had to take a leave from the priesthood. His service at our parish as an associate was his return from leave. He spoke often in his homilies about what led to his crisis and how he recovered within the Church.

One factor in his depression seems to have been a sense that nobody around him seemed to be trying very hard, and that led him to ask, "Why bother?" One thing that brought him back, by his account, was finding a "we can always do better than this" attitude at our parish. My wife and I found this there ourselves, to the extent that I have to be careful about letting myself try to do too much.

We often mention this priest to each other, and his high expectations inspire us. In contrast, I see all too often a sense in the OCSP that the Church is going to accept minimal effort and recklessly minimal formation from careerist ex-Protestants, and I have a sense that some are saying, "What's wrong with that? At least people are getting the sacraments."

That way lies a great many things, perhaps only the least of which are depression and despair.

So, Where Do The Disappointed Episcopalians Go?

There's been a certain amount of comment on this piece at The Federalist that argues religious belief in the US is not in decline:

New research published late last year by scholars at Harvard University and Indiana University Bloomington is just the latest to reveal the myth. This research questioned the “secularization thesis,” which holds that the United States is following most advanced industrial nations in the death of their once vibrant faith culture. Churches becoming mere landmarks, dance halls, boutique hotels, museums, and all that.

Not only did their examination find no support for this secularization in terms of actual practice and belief, the researchers proclaim that religion continues to enjoy “persistent and exceptional intensity” in America. These researchers hold our nation “remains an exceptional outlier and potential counter example to the secularization thesis.”

Even so, it's hard to argue that main line Protestantism is not in serious decline, and even Catholicism is barely holding its own in the US, bolstered mainly by immigration. So where are the believers going if they're leaving main line denominations? The piece says, "Yes, these churches are hemorrhaging members in startling numbers, but many of those folks are not leaving Christianity. They are simply going elsewhere." But it doesn't say where "elsewhere" is.

I would say they're mainly going to "non-denominational" churches, which is probably another way of saying Reformed. But I would also guess that upscale Protestants aren't going that route and are more likely just discontinuing church attendance. Certainly Douglas Bess's observation from the 1990s that disaffected Episcopalians haven't gone to the "continuers" remains true, and the "continuers" themselves now acknowledge their movement is not sustainable.

So the market for evangelization isn't lapsed main line Protestants. The CDF errs in thinking Rome can find a ready-to-microwave prelature of instant Catholics someplace, complete with clergy who've had 95% of Catholic formation. This is reckless and needs to be put to an end.

But I note two similar developments, one a lecture by the neo-Thomist Edward Feser at Fermilab, available here:

The idea of a law of nature is central to scientific explanation. Laws themselves are often said to be explicable in terms of more fundamental laws. But what about the most fundamental laws? Why is the world governed by those particular laws rather than by other laws or no laws at all? And what exactly is a law of nature in the first place? Are these questions that science itself can answer, or is there a role for philosophy in answering them?

Second, Bp Barron is associated with a new website that seeks to readdress the common idea that there's a conflict between science and Catholicism. Among other things, it offers free posters of Catholic scientists.

Evangelization needs to go back and start with basic issues and drop the idea that there are numbers of ready-made Catholics out there.

Here's A Question

So for its next trick, The Episcopal Church is looking at a gender-neutral revision of the Book of Common Prayer:

The Episcopal Church formed a committee Wednesday to “provide a pathway” toward revising the Book of Common Prayer to include gender-neutral language.

Church leaders called for immediate revisions to correct the “overwhelming use of masculine language” throughout the book, arguing that the language is now a hindrance to spiritual inclusion, according to the Episcopal Church website.

How many people do you think are going to say, "That's the last straw! I'm going over to the ACA/ACNA/REC/ACC/whatever!"? How about the OCSP? Well, if the stars are in alignment, if there's a respectable ACNA parish nearby, if friendships aren't broken, the ACNA may pick up a few. The others, including the OCSP, maybe a dozen at best among them.

In that context, my regular correspondent commented a few days ago,

"Continuing" Anglicanism is chained to its evil twin, real Anglicanism, insofar as almost no one who was never a member of TEC etc is ever going to join a "continuing" denomination. If mainstream Anglicanism were smitten by a punitive plague its continuing cousins would likewise disappear in due course. The depressing math of this situation was an unspoken drag on the TAC which joining the Catholic church was supposed to rectify. "Our Little Parish Will Grow Like a Mustard Seed" was the title of one of Mrs Gyapong's long-ago posts on The Anglo-Catholic.

I don't think the question of why this would be the case was ever thought through; maybe the expectation was that every single Anglican who had ever become Catholic would start attending an Ordinariate parish. Perhaps it was just a sense that one would be part of a major enterprise; as if your little bnb had been taken over by the Hilton chain. How could business fail to improve? In any event, Annunciation, Ottawa did NOT grow like a mustard seed; in fact it lost about a third of its membership in the process of joining the OCSP and has never completely rebounded.

So where is OCSP growth to come from? Tying its fortunes to mainstream Anglicanism seems no more fruitful now than it did in TAC days. So now the target market seems to be not disaffected Anglicans, but disaffected Catholics. They are not in short supply, that's for sure, but their existence paradoxically undermines the appeal to Anglicans.

Wasn't the idea to get away from the infighting and factionalism of Anglicanism, the sense that one was at best able to hole up in a bunker of orthodoxy at some particular parish? Now it seems that OCSP communities are marketing themselves as exactly that parish. Sad.

It's entirely possible that someone of Mr Coulombe's caliber will look at the latest TEC developments and post on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, "Now's our chance! At least 250,000 Episcopalians will now become Catholic! We just have to let them know about us!"

At least since the original 1978 talks between Bp Law and Fr Barker, there's been this fantasy that a last-straw event will drop significant numbers of (fill in the blank) onto the Catholic Church without the Church having to do anything special (such as set up a real prelature instead of a dungeons-and-dragons role play fantasy like the OCSP) to bring them in.

Fr Longenecker And The Product

Yesterday's post from Fr Longenecker, Anglicanism: Practically Perfect Poppinism, raises half the question that's been building in my mind over Anglicanorum coetibus. Is the Church, as a practical matter, trying to sell a Catholic version of Anglicanism, and what the heck is that, anyhow? We've seen this problem most recently in the dilemma of the St Aelred's group in Athens, GA, that I discussed in this post. They seem on one hand to want to "reclaim" the gay-friendly sentimental dilettantery of Anglo-Catholicism and attract what a visitor called Tolkien-y hipsters.

On the other, the up-and-coming instant ordinands in the OCSP seem to want to appeal to conservative Catholics who are somehow turned off by diocesan practices. For starters, this is beyond the original scope of Anglicanorum coetibus, but it's now apparently a recognized, if not approved, strategy in the OCSP. The Church of the Good Shepherd OCSP parish in Oshawa, ON has recently updated its website and makes extensive reference to the Divine Worship liturgy as "not quite" the Traditional Latin Mass, but it "offers a comparable liturgy in English, with all the features (and more!) of the Traditional Latin Mass (known by many as the TLM)". In a bait-and-switch gesture, it then publishes a photo of a TLM being celebrated in some other, much nicer, church.

Msgr Steenson's 2012 letter disassociating the OCSP from the TLM no longer appears on the OCSP website, and we must assume the content of the Good Shephrd web page has been approved by Houston. Fr Tilley, its priest, is a retired firefighter with no MDiv or equivalent. So that's clearly one part of the product, which amounts to fancy vestments and thee-thou liturgy without real content from poorly formed priests, that's now being pushed by Houston. And it really isn't aimed at former or currently dissatisfied Anglicans.

There's more to the conservative Catholic target market. My regular correspondent notes,

In the pursuit of news about the OCSP, news which in the absence of a well-maintained website or a diocesan newsletter or magazine must be gleaned from parish sources and personal blogs and FB pages, I often read posts, etc which reflect the writer's general thoughts on the Church, politics, and Society. Although these are tangential to my quest for facts, a commodity in short supply in the OCSP, inevitably I have formed a picture of the mindset of the typical Ordinariate member. . . . There is a tacit assumption that Vatican II was a disaster and everything in the Church has gone downhill since then. . . . For most groups the faux-Tudor liturgy and Anglophile taste in music and decor underpins this conservative outlook, although perhaps because of the admixture of non-Anglican Protestant traditions of many of the clergy there is no consistency in the way that resistance to modernity presents itself. But as you point out, the key problem is that there is no effort to present the Church's claims intellectually, no effort to witness to the profound, timeless message of the Christian faith which must seek to make itself known, in season and out of season.

From remarks by my correspondent and now some references in Douthat, I'm becoming more aware of a conservative Catholic home-school culture, which strikes me as verging on separatism like that of the Amish or some cults, which Catholics are not actually called to. My regular correspondent has noted the effort at several OCSP groups, with insufficient interest in starting a full-fledged parish school, to implement home-school co-ops. Fr Bartus, in the most recent of his overambitious proposals, is now predicting a Friday-only home-school co-op in Murrieta, depending, apparently, on how many actually sign up.

Fr Phillips came to Scranton two or three years ago to consult with Fr Bergman about the school building on their property---the plan that was supposed to be funded by a café and bookshop, if you recall. Failing a full-fledged school they have a two day a week "academy" which will be adding a third day in the fall. St Barnabas, Omaha seems to have some sort of relationship with the Chesterton Academy in that city. The Reeses ran a home school support group, in happier times, which offered Latin, of course. The Seraiahs floated this idea when they were in Iowa. St Thomas More, Toronto tried unsuccessfully to get a home school/choir school program going in its former location. It seems to be part of the brand.

What's of concern is that this seems aimed almost exclusively at parents of school-age children who for whatever reason don't want to send their children to Catholic schools (which certainly could use the support). Insofar as I'm becoming familiar with a conservative Catholic home-school subculture, I've got to assume these are cradle Catholics, not former or currently dissatisfied Anglicans, who at least at one time were thought to be the target market for Anglicanorum coetibus.

I would take this to be a tacit admission, effectively endorsed by Houston if in no other way than by not contradicting it, that Anglicanorum coetibus did not, and never will, attract the significant numbers of upscale Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians, often in whole parishes like Good Shepherd Rosemont, that were originally anticipated. Instead, it's going for the fringes, the Tolkien-y hipsters who got tired of the Wizard of Oz and never quite caught on to Star Wars, plus the Catholic homeschoolers.

I don't see this lasting much longer.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent responds,

I wouldn't necessarily accuse Houston of having approved the new Good Shepherd, Oshawa website, since it, like at least two others, is not the one linked to the appropriate parish on the "Find a Parish" section of the OCSP website. I sincerely believe no one in the Chancery ever looks at such things.

New Court Hearing

Every now and then, something brings me back to the original purpose of this blog! Ever since the May St Mary's parish meeting to vote yet again to leave the ACA, the potential for legal action against that meeting has been in the background. The plaintiffs -- I'm not completely sure just who they are at this point -- first asked for a July 17 hearing in LA Superior Court Department 97, before The Hon. Deborah Christian, at 1:30pm, to hear "Defendants' Motion for Order to Transfer Control of Property, and for Permanent Injunction. . ." Case 12U07875.

However, the group has got it moved to July 18, at 8:30am in Department 32, Judge Daniel Murphy's court, which has been handling the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry cases. I haven't been able to find a record for this case in the court system, at least so far. On January 4, Judge Murphy made his feelings about these cases clear, noting that over more than five years, there have been seven cases connected with this issue and saying, "It's ridiculous that we're continuing with this."

As far as I can see, the California appeals court ruled in 2014 that the legal vestry was the one elected in February 2012, and that the Bush group was not the legal vestry. It did send a single issue back to the trial court, to determine whether the August 2012 vote to leave the ACA was valid. While the trial court ruled it was, the appeals division of the LA Superior Court ruled it was not.

From my layman's perspective, there seem to be three separate issues here.

1. The main argument of the Bush group and the ACA, which the California appeals court definitely rejected in 2014, was that the "highest ecclesiastical authority" determined the control of the St Mary's property. The appeals court cited the precedent of the "Episcopal Church cases" in ruling that neutral principles of law, in particular the parish bylaws, determined who controlled the property.
2. The court ruled that the legal vestry was the one elected in February 2012, not the Bush group.
3. The court sent the issue of whether the August 2012 vote to leave the ACA was valid back to the trial court.

As far as I can see, the Bush group has no legal standing to bring any action against the real rector, wardens, and vestry at this point. The ACA has a difficult case if it wants to argue that it controls the property, since the appeals court has ruled that neutral principles of law establish that it does not. The ACA is left with what strikes me as a very foggy issue of whether it can object to the May 2018 vote by the parish to leave it. We'll have to see what develops.

However, my own view of the context here has changed since the 2011-12 period of optimism about Anglicanorum coetibus. Fr Kelley is now over canonical retirement age, and the best he could expect from Houston on the off chance the parish would go into the OCSP is an emeritus designation, with a new priest appointed to replace him. I would continue to expect that individual to be Fr Bartus, who had been the ACA's and the Bush group's preferred candidate as of March 2012.

In other words, after six years, the parish would be right back where it started, but with Bartus, one of the new-generation OCSP priests who couldn't even start a career in TEC. At this late date, I would be in favor of the parish winding up its affairs in some other way.

I'll be covering the July 18 hearing and subsequent developments.

Douthat On Context

A I learn more about Ross Douthat, I find a great deal not to trust. As a 2002 Harvard grad, he seems to have hit the fast track -- indeed, the very fast track -- to the Atlantic and then the New York Times. Here's an important lesson I learned at another elite school. My test scores exempted me from freshman comp, but I took it anyway, because I thought I should have it. How right I was -- but i came out of it with a C.

What I found bitterly frustrating was that the instructor was very correctly scribbling all over my papers with comments about vagueness or pomposity or whatever, but the golden-boy writers for the campus daily were doing the same thing and getting away with it (almost certainly they'd been exempted from freshman comp themselves). And they all wound up at CNN or the New York Times, and of course they all got Pulitzers. It wasn't a bug, it was a feature. It took me some decades to recognize how deliberate this is. I don't think Douthat has quite figured it out yet. Like his colleague David Brooks, he self-consciously wrings his hands over how he's a soi-disant member of the elite.

That said, and recognizing he practices approved elite-sanctioned bad writing, he does make some worthwhile observations in To Change the Church. Evaluating the outcome of the "new evangelization" promoted by John Paul and echoed by Benedict, he concludes,

No matter how it reached its positions, the church lost argument after argument about marriage, family, sexuality, euthanasia -- and eventually found itself in a rearguard battle to protect its own liberties from secular encroachment. Politically, sociologically, and theologically, the faith remained as much on the defensive after decades of conservative reassertion as it had during the years of liberal experimentation[.] (p 32)

I can't argue with that. Douthat, without mentioning either by name, cites Summorum Pontificum and Anglicanorum coetibus as Benedict's main achievements, but he makes it plain that they're both overshadowed by his abdication. However queasy I may feel about Douthat as an authority, I can't disagree with his conclusions. Not long ago I had my previous surmise confirmed when I mentioned Anglicanorum coetibus to a diocesan priest and got just a quizzical expression.

Let's also not forget that Anglicanorum coetibus built on the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision, an early John Paul II initiative that, at least as far as creating whole parishes of former Anglicans went, had fallen into desuetude within a decade. As a practical matter, the "new evangelization" never took root, and the mission of Anglicanorum coetibus, after the briefest period of optimism, crept fairly quickly from welcoming and absorbing full Anglican parishes, or even significant rumps, to trying to justify tiny cliques of disgruntled cradle Catholics, angry ex-Anglicans, and riders on the denominational carousel as reasons to ordain poorly vetted Protestant clergy who'd failed to build careers in their former denominations.

As a result, I'm inclining more and more to the view that the OCSP is effectively a remnant of what Douthat calls the "restorationist" faction of the Church, the view that some sort of return to pre-Conciliar aspects of liturgy or other practice would re-evangelize the world at large and reinvigorate the Church from within. It doesn't help, of course, that Anglicanorum coetibus relies on a fantasy of Anglo-Catholicism as a pillar of faith from this period, when it's much more accurately seen as dilettantish romanticism that bears little relation to the Church's central intellectual appeal.

I would not rely on the OCSP remaining in its current form for any significant time. As a practical matter, with the CDF taking all the remaining Anglican Use parishes off the bishops' hands and bishops lukewarm at best over seeing new OCSP groups in their dioceses, I think the organism is already in the process of rejecting the foreign body.