"What About The Victims?"

One of the conventional responses to the latest (or for that matter, prior) iterations of the Catholic abuse crisis is to say, "This looks like various factions in the Church arguing with each other, but what about the victims?" Actually, I think the victims have been addressed in numerous ways. They, their families, and their attorneys have been paid off in the billions over decades. Prelates from the pontiff on down have made pro forma apologies and various other demonstrations of concern, often worthy of Oprah's or Ellen's approval.

But I agree with Fr Longenecker, who recently said,

The real problem of sex abuse by priests will continue to go away because the new rules really will be working, and the bishops (most of whom are doing the best they can) will enforce the new policies and seminary rectors will be more careful in who they approve.

Now, that applies to real dioceses, and as I've said here, the new rules (including Virtus training) aren't being seriously applied in the OCSP, and at least as far as ordaining ex-Anglican priests, we have no sign that the OCSP is being anything but reckless in whom it approves. The formula of the complacent higher-ups is in force -- other than routine anodyne pronouncements, Houston has said almost nothing about Luke Reese and is simply assuming things will blow over.

I think a better question than "What about the victims?" is "What about the laity?" The whole OCSP enterprise is being run for its strange collection of clergy, as my regular correspondent puts it, "the no-hopers, the denomination-hoppers, the nakedly careerist specimens the OCSP has in fact attracted." As far as I'm aware, though, there has been a project to conduct a parish census in the OCSP for some years, with so far no result.

As I've suggested before, a simple start would be to get a middle- or high-school level volunteer to come in afternoons part time just to count the paper applications for membership that must exist in a file cabinet somewhere in the Houston chancery. That even this seems an unattainable goal strikes me as a good indication of the level of competence that must exist there, top to bottom. But this level of "incompetence" usually exists because those who run the show want it.

I sometimes had fun in my working career starting a new assignment and being told, "such-and-such needs to be done, but the technical issues are so difficult we've been waiting for the budget to be approved." I would often discover that a few days of manually counting things that already exist in the office will solve the problem -- fun to do, but not good for a long-term career. Nobody ever said, "Gee, we never thought of that! Good job!"

One question I have is how many of the OCSP laity are not ex-Anglicans but traddy Catholics who've had all the sacraments of initiation but are looking for an environment that will make them feel superior to other Catholics -- as we've seen now and then in sources linked here, many of these like the DW mass because it's snooty, and they can wear chapel veils, but they don't need to know Latin. A variation of all the prestige without paying the dues, it seems to me.

One reason Houston just can't seem to complete a parish census is probably nobody wants to know how many people are going to mass in places like Pasadena or Murrieta who are not eligible to be OCSP members. Another is how one should address the traddy group pastorally. Even Fr Ripperger, by his admission a great friend of traditionalist Catholics, has spoken very forthrightly on the "grave" problems in the movement. The typical no-hope jurisdiction-hopper in the OCSP is not equipped to deal with these issues pastorally.

My regular correspondent reports,

I see that the OCSP Chancery is advertising for an Administrative Assistant. So far they seem to have decided that the services of a Director of Communication and/or a COO can be dispensed with; not a great idea IMHO. I think given the apparent paucity of good news either within the Church or the Ordinariate this would be a good time to issue an Ordinariate Observer and put lipstick on some pigs. Instead the website is out of date, the "Latest News" is confined to the most minimal references to the summer's ordinations

My guess, actually, is that they'll try to find someone they can pay to be an administrative assistant, but try to get them to do the work of a communication director or COO. But whatever, the job of finishing the parish census will still be too daunting for anyone!

Anglicanorum Coetibus, Subsidiarity, And The Current Crisis

I'm having a hard time shaking the idea that Anglicanorum coetibus is not only a bad idea, but if we're ever able to trace its development and implementation, there will be some sort of tie to the Vatican issues behind the current McCarrick-Viganò crisis. Two things strike me after several days reflection.

First, Anglicanorum coetibus appears to have been intended from the start as a violation of the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, "an organizing principle that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority." Discussions of Anglicanorum coetibus frequently note that it was promoted to avoid a problem that had arisen with the Pastoral Provision, that individual diocesan bishops could approve (or not) the formation of Anglican Use parishes and the ordination of Anglican Use clergy.

St Mary of the Angels Hollywood has always been cited as the primary example of a diocesan bishop refusing to allow the admission of an Anglican Use parish into his diocese. My position here has consistently been that both Cardinals Manning and Mahony were correct in their respective refusals. (I would guess, by the way, that their postures were developed by chancery staff. Whether or not they themselves were liberals who might have supported other aspects of a liberal agenda driven by Cardinal Law, the staffs likely had a grasp of the issues that they could sell their archbishops.) My sense of things has also developed more slowly that Mahony saw the potential for interference in his diocese from Law and possibly allies in the Vatican and wanted to avoid it, again on the principle of subsidiarity.

Anglicanorum coetibus has removed, pretty clearly on purpose, the option bishops had of approving Anglican Use parishes and ordaining Anglican Use clergy, although Anglican Use still exists as an option for married ex-Anglican priests. However, the Luke Reese case in particular has shown that the US-Canadian Ordinariate clearly has lower standards than diocesan bishops have for ordaining ex-Anglicans under the Pastoral Provision -- the Reese record strongly suggests that his process toward formation in a diocesan seminary was much slower than would have been expected of Anglican Use candidates, and he was ordained without an MDiv from either a Protestant or Catholic seminary.

We have other hints indicating diocesan bishops have had reservations about allowing OCSP groups or clergy. Late last year and early this year, it appears that Bp Barnes in San Bernardino had reservations about an OCSP group in Murrieta that probably stemmed from the group's connection with a prominent Catholic layman and resulting discord. In 2017, Bp Parkes in St Petersburg apparently resisted with more success having now-Dcn Mayer start an OCSP group in Tampa as part of a new path to ordination when his progress in that diocese under the Pastoral Provision had apparently been unsatisfactory.

Another frequent explanation of Anglicanorum coetibus is that the ordinariates formed under them function "like a diocese". In other words, there's a non-territorial prelature that extends over North America that decides, independently of territorial bishops, what shall be a parish and who shall be ordained. The problem is that this becomes an alternate choice for marginal candidates for the priesthood. Experienced vocation directors in dioceses, we're beginning to see, can recognize unsatisfactory candidates in seminary and recommend they not be ordained, but the candidates can then go to Houston and get a second opinion. My own view is that the evidence we have suggests this happened with Luke Reese and probably with Philip Mayer as well.

This goes against the near-universal recommendation from good priests and bishops that bishops be stringent in ordaining candidates. The OCSP is already paying the price for its laxity.

The second problem is this: who benefits? What's been set up is a fully parallel competing jurisdiction that applies over most of a continent. We see from Abp Viganò's letter that Pope Francis doesn't like the orientation of US bishops like Chaput and Gómez, and by installing Cardinals Cupich and Tobin outside the normal course of nomination, he is willing to override the principle of subsidiarity to put in people more favorable to his own views.

My impression of Abp Viganò's letter is that forces in the Vatican that have been working under Pope Francis are nothing new. I'm still puzzling out how Bernard Law, disgraced under circumstances similar to those which have come up with ex-Cardinal McCarrick, figures into this. General discussions of Law's career indicate that after his removal from Boston, he moved to Rome and was able in person to continue as a key behind-the-scenes player -- this must certainly have included implementing Anglicanorum coetibus.

The delegate chosen to implement it in 2010-11 was Cardinal Wuerl, another seriously compromised figure. In that context, I think poor Jeffrey Steenson was groomed by Law from the 1980s onward as a useful idiot, and he was discarded as soon as he became unnecessary, replaced in 2015 by a 40-year old Vatican bureaucrat with no prior diocesan experience. He runs an organization that I believe is generally regarded as incompetent. It may be good that the devil's workers are feckless, but observers of organizational behavior also know that it's to the advantage of higher-ups to have bunglers lower down, as they can be replaced at will and meantime do what they're told.

I think at minimum, Fr Perkins's position is untenable. He is not qualified to serve as either a vicar for clergy or a vocation director. This suits Bp Lopes, at least for now, but he'll be out the door whenever that suits Lopes, too. But Lopes as well knows to do what he's told.

I notice that good priests who comment on the current crisis urge concerned Catholics to seek out their good priests and bishops and continue with their prayers, sacraments, and devotions. I believe concerned Catholics in the OCSP need to distance themselves from their poorly formed and sometimes corrupt priests and get to diocesan parishes and do the same as diocesan Catholics.

St James Jacksonville, FL Announcement

Fr. Nicholas Marziani of the St James, Jacksonville, FL OCSP group has announced,

[O]ur man Philip Mayer will be created and declared in Houston, TX, as among the Sacred Order of Deacons! . . . "Phil and fam" will be moving to our area in about a month and a half, and the bishop has assigned him to St. James, pending the highly anticipated official announcement of his appointment as our new priest administrator, effective sometime in February, 2019. As I have already indicated, I will certainly still be around for a while thereafter, to help with the transition in any way that I can.

Fr Marziani is 68, which is not quite canonical retirement age, so we must assume that either he wants to leave early, or Houston wants him to leave, or it's mutual.

Philip Mayer, we've come to know, was a Pastoral Provision candidate for the priesthood in the Diocese of St Petersburg frm 2011 to 2017. By his account on social media, he was attending the diocesan seminary for at least part of that time. My understanding is that seminarians are evaluated periodically by diocesan vocation directors, and recommendations are made on their progress and suitability for ordination.

We've also learned that two years is the normal time for priestly formation for ex-Anglican priests under the Pastoral Provision. It's very hard to avoid thinking that Mayer's progress toward ordination in the Diocese of St Petersburg was deemed unsatisfactory, and he then turned to the OCSP. When Bp Parkes of St Petersburg learned that Mayer was forming a Tampa-area OCSP group as part of a new path to ordination, he immediately requested that it be shut down. Houston subsequently found Mayer a job in a Catholic school outside the diocese. It sounds very much as though Bp Parkes did not want Mayer functioning as anything like a priest in his territory.

We now see that Mayer will be relocating to St Augustine, on the other side of the state and two dioceses distant. We anticipate that he will receive some sort of diocesan job to support his family.

What about the St James group in St Augustine? My regular correspondent reports,

Fr Marziani began leading this group within the ACA Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family, under Louis Campese, while he was a Catholic layman. The second link below says that There were seven people regularly attending Evensong at that time. Estimates of future attendance in the blog obviously quite inaccurate, given the size of the original venue---the House of Prayer in St Augustine (they moved to St Benedict the Moor in 2014). I can find no account of the reception of any non-Catholic members---nothing even on Fr Marziani's FB page, normally quite newsy. Perhaps they were received with Incarnation, Orlando? It is also possible that non-Ordinariate Catholics attend, as the only other Sunday mass at St Benedict's is at 8 AM.

A 2015 photo shows 25 at mass. However, my regular correspondent reports,

In May 2016, Fr Marziani noted in the current "Midweek Musing" that 21 people at mass was a new best. At that point St James had an organist and hymns. That seems to have gone by the boards, although he is now hoping music can be reintroduced into worship at St James. This does not sound like there has been growth in the interim; more like the reverse.

So what is the point of this exercise? Mrs Fisher has been skeptical, given the OCSP's history with Luke Reese, of its policy of ordaining poorly vetted priests and giving them minimal supervision. Houston is 908 miles from St Augustine, FL. Apparently for some period of time, Mayer will have cursory supervision from a recent convert priest whose own formation is at best half-baked, though he seems eager to be out the door, but after that, he's got probably fewer than 20 people to help or hurt, though whatever happens, Houston will be among the last to know, I assume.

Meanwhile, this group of 20 will be ghettoized in some sort of backwater sharing the precious spiritual treasures of the Anglican patrimony but otherwise isolated from Catholic diocesan and parish life, including Catholic fellowship, devotions, retreats, and the sacramental and spiritual leadership of fully formed Catholic fathers. But maybe they can get some sort of music program restarted, huh?

Why is Rome doing this?

Bp Barron On The Crisis

Bp Barron strikes me as a moderate. I like his positions here.

Fortitude

As I imagine many Catholics did, I spent a good part of yesterday trying to absorb the meaning of Abp Viganò's letter. Much of it is simply above my paygrade as a new Catholic, and it's only tangential to the scope of this blog. But there are concerns in the letter that echo my concerns about Anglicanorum coetibus and its implementation.

Certainly one issue is that Anglicanorum coetibus was a pet project of the prior generation's disgraced cardinal, Bernard Law. Another issue is the allegation of unholy hidden agendas high in the Church, and I think this leads to legitimate questions about who in Houston is trying to bring what into the Church by systematically and deliberately bringing in men who, irrespective of marital status, would not be ordained by any but the most corrupt diocesan bishop.

I recognize that Our Savior was fully aware that one of His first group of bishops was working for the other side, and He allowed this. I think we may assume that He allowed this in part to present an example of what the faithful must contend with. I also thought of Matthew 7:15-20:

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16 You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. 18 A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will know them by their fruits.

The level of scandal and creepiness we're seeing in the OCSP in just a short period of time should be a matter of serious concern. The lack of growth -- indeed, what seems to be a pretty furious effort in Houston to avoid the appearance of decline -- in the OCSP should be another.

One of my favorite priests on YouTube is Fr Mike Schmitz. He had this to say after the Pennsylvania report came out but before Abp Viganò's letter (and I don't know if he'll comment on that).

His remarks beginning about 5:30 on how he, an ordinary priest, simply never experienced anything like what is being alleged in the reports, brings to mind our own diocesan priests. At about 7:30 he talks about the good priests and good bishops he knows, including two bishops who are fully capable of refusing to ordain men about whom there can be any question.

I'm sorry to say that Bp Lopes is not one of these.

What's incumbent on me for now is to continue with prayers, sacraments, and devotions. I'm beginning to think that what may be incumbent on sincere, thoughtful Catholics who may find themselves involved in OCSP activities would be to distance themselves from a part of the Church that strikes me as being corrupt and, however new, due for a thorough housecleaning.

The best thing anyone can do is seek out a real diocesan parish with real, conscientious, hard-working priests and laity and undertake a real program of prayers, sacraments, and devotions.

Prudence

Let's back off and try to take an objective look at whether it's prudent for any Anglican, Catholic, Anglican Catholic, or Catholic Anglican to go anywhere near an OCSP community -- with a few exceptions, primarily Our Lady of the Atonement and Our Lady of Walsingham, which appear to be large enough to support professional staff who can perform the administrative tasks in support of the Virtus program. Frankly, I'd be skeptical of even the smaller full parishes.

In fact, in light of the scandals in Pennsylvania, closely following on the still-developing story of ex-Cardinal McCarrick, I think it would be fully acceptable for anyone seriously considering involvement in any OCSP community to ask the priest involved to show them the Virtus training records for all clergy, staff, and volunteers connected with the community. This would include ushers, greeters, eucharistic ministers, catechists, "lay administrators", acolytes, and so forth. If the priest refuses to do this, it is fully appropriate to go find a diocesan parish with reverent OF liturgy and a music program -- Virtus is not iffy in dioceses.

There are several advantages to a requirement that parish staff and volunteers be Virtus certified. For starters, the knowledge that candidates will be fingerprinted and undergo a background check is sufficient to deter most potential predators -- this is explained in the class. But the occasional case where someone with a record falls through and is identified also takes place. The case of the New Jersey priest who was murdered when he had to fire the parish janitor is sufficient illustration.

But also, the cautions and illustrations in the classes build community awareness. Ushers, for instance, are instructed to pay attention to children running loose in and around the nave, and especially any who go to the restroom without escort. There are foolish parents even among Catholics, as we see in Calgary. Participants are told about being careful who rides with whom in the back of the parish van, for that matter. Uncomfortable as it may be, participants are warned about situations like Dcn Orr, who kissed pubescent boys on the mouth.

And there's Fr Weirdo, the camera amateur who takes lotsa pictures of the kids. The case of Fr Ratigan in Kansas City comes to mind. Folks, stay away. Bishops don't always take action.

There's a bigger problem in the OCSP, where there are many small and startup or intermittent groups. There must be people who are de facto sorta-kinda volunteers, potentially with access to children and at-risk adults, who aren’t actually crossing a “volunteer” threshold. And the groups presumably have no real knowledge of how and where to schedule diocesan Virtus training even if they wanted to do it. But I still question how many ushers, “lay administrators”, or whatever in any OCSP parish get Virtus training, and I doubt if any request from Houston is taken seriously.

I also question the proposals for home school co-ops. Has anyone seriously considered whether the part-time people involved in these should be Virtus certified? Would Bp Lopes go so far as to insist that all potential adults connected with these co-ops be certified -- and if not, he'll refuse to allow them to operate? My guess is he won't, because his main interest appears to be creating an impression of a thriving operation, and withholding permissions would be contrary to that. But I would also guess that enforcing Virtus certification would result in closing most of the OCSP communities.

The more I've learned in doing this blog, the more I'm convinced serious people should get involved in real diocesan parishes. The good ones are everywhere.

Flannery O'Connor And Anglicans?

Bp Barron, according to recent YouTubes, is working on a new feature that focuses on key Catholic players, including Fulton Sheen and Flannery O'Connor. An interesting sidelight to Sheen is that he seems to have had more ecumenical sympathy with Billy Graham and Robert Schuller than any Anglicans -- I would guess Sheen respected their understanding of media. But Flannery O'Connor -- what did she think of Episcopalians?

I 'm not a Flannery O'Connor scholar, but a while ago, it was easy for me to read through all her work -- her career was short -- and I don't believe any Episcopalians appear specifically in her stories. But there are people who might well be Episcopalians. There's one character in her story "The Enduring Chill" who could well be one. A young man, Asbury (now, there's an Anglican name), has gone to New York to become an artist, but has had to return home due to illness. This summary brings out the situation:

But now, he’s convinced that he’s dying and has badgered his mother into calling a Roman Catholic priest to visit him. Asbury had met a Jesuit priest in New York who was hip, witty, intellectual—all the things he fancied himself to be. Starved for intellectual stimulation, Asbury assumed that another priest would be the perfect conversation partner. At least he would be far better qualified than any of the narrow minded, uneducated Protestant clergy in town. When the local priest finally arrives, however, he is not at all what Asbury was expecting. What entered his room was not a polished intellectual but “a massive old man” who introduced himself as “Father Finn—from Purgatory”:

“It’s so nice to have you come,” Asbury said. “This place is incredibly dreary. There’s no one here an intelligent person can talk to. I wonder what you think of Joyce, Father?”

The priest lifted his chair and pushed closer. “You’ll have to shout,” he said. “Blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.”

“What do yo think of Joyce?” Asbury said louder.

“Joyce? Joyce who?” asked the priest.

“James Joyce,” Asbury said and laughed.

The priest brushed his huge hand in the air as if he were bothered by gnats. “I haven’t met him,” he said. “Now. Do you say your morning and night prayers?”

Other than CS Lewis, I don't believe Bp Barron has much to say about Anglicans, either. In fact, I'll bet he has a lot more to say about Billy Graham.

The OCSP And Children

I see the most recent outbreak of scandal and allegations in Pennsylvania as outside the scope of this blog, and although others have commented on the situation in general, I haven't. On the other hand, I think it's worth bringing the issue up as yet another reason I would not go anywhere near an OCSP parish.

Last Sunday, our pastor read a statement after the homily in each mass expressing his sorrow over the disclosures in Pennsylvania, but stressing the parish and diocesan policies requiring all parish employees and volunteers to participate in the Virtus program. I can think of at least one example of how effective the Virtus program actually is in preventing abuse: in 2009, the parish janitor at St Patrick's, Chatham, NJ murdered its pastor, Fr Edward Hines, when Hines fired him for not undergoing a background check required by the Virtus program.

Fr Hines discovered the janitor had an arrest warrant in Philadelphia from the 1980s for sexually touching a child and had used aliases and fake identification over the years to hide his past. The fact is that since the child abuse scandals came to light, diocesan policies have been very effective at minimizing the problem, to the extent that a priest has died in the process of enforcing them. In effect, our pastor said last Sunday that if you're concerned about the Pennsylvania scandals, there's something you can do -- support and participate in existing policies.

Frankly, the OCSP's record hasn't been as good. Dcn James Orr of Our Lady of the Atonement was forced into retirement when the parish was in the Archdiocese of San Antonio due to violations of child protection guidelines, including kissing pubescent boys on the mouth. The archdiocese later announced that there had been a credible allegation of abuse against Orr. However, repeated attempts to bar Orr from the OLA property under the OCSP have been unsuccessful, according to photographic evidence published here, and Orr's strange relationship with OLA's pastor emeritus, Fr Phillips, continues, also according to photographic evidence.

In 2015, I e-mailed the then-Officer for Child Protection Compliance, Fr Ken Wolfe, bringing to his attention the number of alcohol-related parish functions at the Blessed John Henry Newman group in Irvine, including a "wine hour" following Sunday mass, in which there did not seem to be sufficient concern about the presence of underage children and toddlers. Wolfe's reaction was to refuse to discuss it on the basis of my supposed "animus" against Fr Bartus.

I believe Houston eventually advised Bartus to cut down on references to alcohol-related events in web announcements, but if I were Fr Perkins (or in fact an alternate-universe Fr Perkins who was capable), I would be interested in whether there's a "wine hour" with children and toddlers present after mass in Pasadena, Murrieta, or Irvine now.

Beyond that, I decided to double-check the OCSP Safe Environment Policy. Let's keep in mind that of about 40 communities total, well under half are full parishes; a significant number are very marginal groups that form and disperse within fairly short periods of time. The candidates for ordination who form many of these groups likely haven't been through relevant background checks, and a bigger question, given their small size and highly informal organization, is who qualifies as a "volunteer" and thus who goes through Virtus training.

Thus they seem able to use the name "Catholic" and may even meet under the auspices of a diocesan parish, but I would be most hesitant to give such groups the level of trust I would give to a Sunday school or LifeTeen group at the same parish. If I were a diocesan bishop, although i'd hate to have to spend the time on it, I'd definitely want to know who was a "volunteer" for such groups and see the record of their Virtus training. If I were Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins or Lynn Schmidt, the current Safe Environment Coordinator, I'd want to know. I'd want to know who is involved at the maybe-maybe not Tampa Bay group, the Athens, GA, group, the Bath, PA group, and I'd want to see their Virtus records.

Fat chance, I betcha.

I went to the Recordkeeping section of the OCSP Safe Environment Policy linked above and found:

1. Information gathered during individual background checks, as well as other personnel records, will be maintained by the parish, activity or the Ordinariate in accord with civil and canon law.
2. The Ordinariate shall maintain, in accord with the provisions of civil and canon law, all records related to any report of sexual abuse of a child, youth or at-risk adult by any Church Personnel, including those made anonymously.
3. All attendance at Safe Environment training will be documented.

Given how many other records Houston has apparently been unable to obtain from most OCSP communities, I strongly suspect that this policy is somewhere at the bottom of the priority list. Given the highly informal arrangements at what must be half of all OCSP communities, I strongly suspect no one is clear on who among the laity should even attend Virtus training, nor where to go to get it.

This is yet another reason why I would not go anywhere near an OCSP community, and those who do with toddlers and young children are simply reckless. They are better off getting serious and just switching to the 10 AM OF mass and other events at the same parish where they go for the DW mass. The ushers, greeters, and other lay volunteers there will have been through Virtus training. The nice people at the 5 PM DW mass, probably not.

I would ask Mrs Gyapong and Mr Coulombe at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, for that matter, to confirm that the Pasadena and Ottawa communities conform, if nothing else, to the recordkeeping requirements of the OCSP Child Protection Policy.

Fat chance.

The OCSP, Growth, And The Future

My regular correspondent notes,

St Luke, Washington, DC. This started with 68 members received or reconciled in October 2011, with ten others in preparation. So not far to go to the necessary 100.

St John the Baptist, Bridgeport. The amalgamation of two groups: Fr Ousley's community of 25 and David Moyer's group of about 35. They were able to buy a church in fairly short order and became a parish later the same year.

St Barnabas, Omaha. About 50 people were received in 2013. The community had a church and a rectory, and was able to support a full-time priest even before becoming a parish thanks to a substantial legacy which is also enabling them to make significant renovations.

Mt Calvary, Baltimore. Also an endowed parish with its own building and a full-time pastor even before it became a parish. I think about 40 people entered or were reconciled, initially.

None has repeated the OLA scenario, of 10 adults in rented facilities growing to 40 families in four years, building a church, etc.

St John Vianney, Cleburne is on this track; more slowly, however, and from a larger base. The current Parochial Administrator of St John Vianney, Fr Stainbrook, is a celibate man of private means who owns a house. He does on-call visitation at local hospitals but is otherwise able to devote his attention to the group. The group was started by Fr Chuck Hough III with ten adult members, but if Fr Duncan, its second PA and the man who closed St Anselm, Greenville, had remained in charge it would not be holding volunteer days to clear the building site it has acquired. This probably explains why it is growing and progressing towards building a church.

As I have mentioned, Fr Phillips seemed able to work several diocesan jobs to pay the bills while building up the Our Lady of the Atonement community, but I would imagine that for a more typical man with a diocesan/school assignment and a family, the Ordinariate community would come a distant third. The retirees may have more time, but probably less energy. So the little groups limp along until the priest whose ordination they justified gets a better gig or retires again.

So it appears that of the full parishes, none has been registering exceptional growth, while other than the top three or four, the rest continue to hover around the minimum number that qualified them for elevation to parish status.

And as new Potemkin groups form, others disappear, with Bp Lopes apparently having to spend some significant portion of his time tending to those that have lost their leadership and defending their existence against skeptical diocesan bishops.

In light of the much bigger continuing challenges facing the Church, I'm wondering if this is a good use of CDF resources overall. As I've said, it's hard to avoid thinking that much of the effort in the OCSP is devoted to creating a favorable picture, not even of Anglicanorum coetibus to an audience of Anglicans, but of Bp Lopes to a small audience in Rome.

Working Through The Obscurities

In response to the upcoming ordinations and the potential recklessness, or not, connected with them, my regular correspondent has some reflections. I am going to intersperse my comments.

Justin Fletcher and Jonathan Mitchican did not have to gather groups. Nor, of course, did the two men recently ordained who will be serving as military chaplains for the foreseeable future. Nor did the Bros. Clearly some kind of triage is going on. Granted, this still allowed the Bros to get ordained, but no system is perfect.

Well, let's take the case of Mitchican, the only one of these to be well publicized. The photo at right is from the St John XXIII School web site. Now, if I were casting for an actor to play the curate at a hoity-toity TEC parish in horse country, could I find a better candidate, someone who more looked the part? (He could also have been the liberal Protestant priest played by Donald Sutherland in Little Murders -- you can see it here -- for that matter.)

The reason he didn't have to gather a group is that he's perfect. A shock of prematurely white hair. An old-boy suck-it-up rictus that bares teeth that need treatment. A squint toward the middle distance, which says he ain't gonna notice much closer at hand. I would think the prosperous families in the Houston area can be reassured that even if this is a Catholic school, they can feel as if it's St Grottlesex, a solid TEC institution. And when he moves to an upper-tier OCSP parish, the faithful there can be convinced it's all solidly Episcopalian at heart.

But what of Fr Longenecker, who told our parish this past Lent that Anglicanism "looks like" Catholicism? Why on earth is Catholicism in this case turning around and trying to "look like" Anglicanism? Mitchican is clearly the star of this cohort. Whether he can do more than look an oddly incongruous part is still an open question.

If I were in charge I think I would forget about the group-gathering, or even finding replacements for marginal groups whose leaders are retiring (I think this has failed, or is failing, in every instance). Instead I would focus on finding good candidates to support the ministry of currently successful OCSP parishes (unfortunately Canada is a special case). Celibate seminarians---first choice---and successful TEC/ACC (former) clergy who would consider the OCSP over the PP if they had the prospect of a "real" job. An educational institution that advertises only sessional/adjunct positions is not going to attract distinguished academics as applicants.

Gregory Tipton and Philip Mayer strike me as sincere but desperate. David Hodil was ordained as a transitional deacon with Jason McCrimmon in August 2017. But the latter is now Fr McCrimmon, while Mr Hodil remains Mr Hodil. Did something go wrong with his "ministry plan" at the Tampa Bay Ordinariate Group? The article in last November's Ordinariate Observer stated that "both Floridians are expected to be ordained to the priesthood in the summer of 2018." I don't think they are going to wind up on the 6 o'clock news, but I don't think they are going to build strong OCSP communities, either. Better, IMHO, to let St Swithun, Podunk close than prolong the agony with a no-hoper. Or a careerist who will abandon it at the first opportunity.

I get the impression that the OCSP is being run primarily to look good to outside observers -- but these are not even Mr and Mrs John Q Anglican, who might be thinking about coming over -- that market's been exhausted. I think Bp Lopes is playing exclusively to higher-ups in Rome, downplaying the mediocrities he's ordaining to swell the numbers of little Potemkin groups, playing up the very occasional poster boy that might fit someone's preconceived notion of incoming Anglicans.

Let's just accept that the North American Ordinariate has no more legs than the PP it replaced, and focus on sustaining the communities it has successfully created. This is not nearly the challenge, for a competent and godly pastor, that building up a community from scratch would be. That is a rare gift, and often comes with significant ego-baggage. Bp Lopes knows nothing from HR, and Fr Perkins is clearly feeling his way on an unfamiliar path. Msgr Steenson could at least draw on the TEC net, although when this failed him he made some pretty bad stabs in the dark. What's he thinking, up there in Minneapolis-St Paul?

"Why Did Nobody Notice That Luke Reese Was A Terrible Person?"

My regular correspondent asked this question, assuring me that there was no intention of flippancy. I don't sense any lack of charity or hyperbole here; this is a Catholic priest who was convicted of a felony on the basis of clear testimony. The judge in the course of sentencing observed that he was "a 'dangerous person' who fooled a lot of people."

According to the Wikipedia summary of the John Jay College report on Catholic clergy sex abuse, "over a 50-year period, out of more than 100,000 priests deacons and religious order clergy, 4,392 (~4.4%) were accused of sexual abuse, 252 ([less than] 0.26%) were convicted and 100 ([less than] 0.1%) sentenced to prison." While Luke Reese was not accused of child sex abuse, and I'm not sure if there's an equivalent statistic for priests accused of non-sexual felonies, I would guess that this gives a general idea of how many Catholic priests are convicted of felonies -- a microscopic number and percentage, I'm sure.

If we assume there are currently about 60 priests in the OCSP, for one of them to be convicted of a felony puts the percentage at about 1.7%. This is about 20 times the historical number, and not only that, we might expect those electing to convert to Catholicism as fully catechized adults would represent an especially devout and committed group. Except we've come to recognize that there are a good many opportunists and fringe-denomination Protestants who've come to the end of careers otherwise. My own estimate is that of these, even if none commits an actual crime, several more in this group are fully capable of scandals or disastrous errors in judgment.

My regular correspondent and I agree that the judge in Indianapolis was speaking from evaluations in a pre-sentencing report by forensic psychologists trained to look for sociopathic tendencies, and indeed, following a felony conviction, fully entitled to find them after the fact. But could anyone have forestalled the problem by ringing alarm bells or waving red flags beforehand?

I heard from a visitor close to the situation at Holy Rosary who said that in his view, there was always something off about Luke Reese, including what appeared to be a sense that ordinary standards of conduct didn't apply to him. OK -- but of course, he was speaking after the fact. I don't get along with every last priest I've met either. Is that enough to raise questions about their priesthood? Even if he tried to raise this with the pastor at Holy Rosary or the vicar for clergy, I doubt if he'd have been taken seriously, and it could well have hurt him to do it.

But I think there were other red flags. Reese was first ordained in one of the fringe "continuing" denominations, and he hopped from one to another before becoming Catholic. I've heard suggestions there could have been issues that led to his earlier jurisdiction-hopping, and I doubt if much effort was spent in tracking those down. But much more to the point, he didn't have an MDiv, and despite spending four years as a day student at the St Meinrad seminary, he didn't get one.

And Pastoral Provision formation, I've recently discovered, normally takes just two years. If Reese took four years, that should have been an issue in itself. By the same token, the recent case of Philip Mayer, who was in a Pastoral Provision formation program but doesn't seem to have made satisfactory progress after six years, should be a matter of concern. Even if he likely won't beat his wife in front of the altar, his many posts on social media should have been more closely reviewed with an eye to his stability and judgment.

The problem I see with the OCSP is not just a willingness, but indeed an eagerness to ordain highly marginal candidates. In fact, if it was visible under Msgr Steenson, it seems to have accelerated under Bp Lopes. One issue is a concern I've begun to have over whether Fr Perkins is qualified to serve as either a vocation director or a vicar for clergy, but he's in his position because Bp Lopes wants him there. What's going on is happening because Bp Lopes is OK with it.

This is a continuing problem. I suspect there are diocesan bishops in both the US and Canada who are aware of it, and I suspect it will be addressed.

A More Encouraging Story

Fr Jonathan Erdman was ordained deacon in the OCSP in March 2017 and priest in July 2017. According to my regular correspondent, he seems to have had a solid, twelve-year career as a TEC clergyman; he left TEC only after trying unsuccessfully to save his job in a struggle with his vestry. In one of those unpublished "policies" that's sometimes followed and sometimes not, when he contacted the OCSP he was told that gathering a group was the ticket he needed punched to get ordained, and he gathered a group, Our Lady and St John, which meets at the St Martin of Tours Parish, Louisville, KY.

Apparently when he started, he worked in a facilities manager job with the Archdiocese of Louisville, but it doesn't seem to have been noticed up to now that he soon became an associate at the St Martin of Tours parish. This is unusual in itself -- while some OCSP priests serve as diocesan supply priests or parochial administrators in very small diocesan parishes, only one -- Luke Reese -- seems to have become an associate at a normal-size diocesan parish fulfilling a normal set of diocesan parish duties in addition to celebrating DW mass.

But now my regular correspondent has discovered that Fr Erdman is no longer at the St Martin of Tours parish, but as of June is now an associate at a larger diocesan parish, St Margaret Mary, Louisville. This says to me that Fr Erdman has transitioned into a full diocesan rotation of associates, and this in turn suggests to me that the archdiocese's vicar for clergy has decided he is a real Catholic priest. What a contrast to characters like Philip Mayer, who seems to have been someone the diocesan authorities preferred to cut loose.

How this may affect the Our Lady and St John group, still at the St Martin of Tours parish, is an interesting question. My regular correspondent says,

I counted 25 in the congregation in the OL&SJ July 15 Sunday mass pic posted on their FB page. If they are all Ordinariate members that is about triple the initial size of the group, so not too bad. But nowhere near a self-sustaining community.

Based on occasional remarks I hear from our parish clergy, the workload on associates is daunting. I'm only beginning to understand its full range. The impression we get is that the main work of an OCSP priest is wearing just the right vestments while saying the DW mass in just the right way. But I'm learning that saying mass isn’t a big part of an associate’s time. They are giving last rites, counseling big time, comforting the bereaved, visiting the sick, etc etc etc. This in turn makes me wonder how much time Fr Erdman, if he’s fully occupied at another parish, can give to 25 in an OCSP group. My regular correspondent comments,

I'm sure OL&SJ now includes people who never previously met an Anglican, but like the music, or the coffee hour, or being part of a small community. He may well feel they have served their purpose. There are a number of former OCSP clergy who have moved on to diocesan jobs and let their former groups fend for themselves or fold: Fr Chalmers, Fr Wagner, Fr Sly, to name a few. I don't get the feeling Fr Baaten is knocking himself out for St Augustine, San Diego. So Fr Erdman may well be moving up and on.

I think the lesson we might draw from this, at least tentatively, is that if OCSP priests are brought more fully into the actual work of the Church, Anglicanorum coetibus quickly fades in importance. But it's also a matter of serious concern that the great majority of OCSP priests or candidates have so far been proving themselves unsuited to the actual work of the Church, although when a diocese occasionally finds a keeper, he seems to be recognized in fairly short order and his talents put to more appropriate use.

No Prison For Luke Reese

Via WTHR Indianapolis:

INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) - A former Indianapolis Priest has been sentenced to Community Corrections and home detention for a felony battery conviction.

Father Luke Reese was sentenced to 3-years with two years suspended Friday morning after a scathing rebuke by a Marion County Judge.

* * *

Magistrate Stanley Kroh told Reese he had not taken responsibility for his own actions and saw "absolutely no remorse." Kroh called the former priest a "dangerous person" who fooled a lot of people. Magistrate Kroh said he was heartbroken to read a letter from Reese's adult daughter about her father's behavior behind close doors.

Kroh then warned Reese that any violation would send him directly to prison.

"You are in need of significant mental health counseling. It's time for you to look in the mirror. You are here because of no one but yourself," Kroh said.

In handing down the sentence Kroh noted that the only reason Reese was not leaving the court in custody was because he had no criminal record. Reese showed no reaction to the Magistrate's words.

Full story at the link.

The June 12 Tampa Bay Post And More On Mayer's Resume

A very helpful visitor located at least a version of the deleted June 12, 2017 post regarding Mr Mayer and the Tampa Bay group in the Wayback Machine. I believe this may be a later draft, as the initial one I saw seems to have mentioned Bp Parkes by name, but in any case, any reference to it was subsequently deleted completely.

While the original request was that I delete that post, I'm concerned that the information in it now tends to raise questions about Mr Mayer's conflicting stories about his ride on the denominational carousel, his overall sincerity, and his generally unstable career. Recall that elsewhere, he portrayed himself as a Pastoral Provision candidate in the Diocese of St Petersburg. But the version we see here makes no mention of this:

Moving to Continue Discernment

Dear Friends,

Thank you for coming out to our evensong and potluck service on June 4, 2017. The attendance and support was greater than I expected and I believe that seeds were planted, that there might be an Ordinariate parish established in the Tampa Bay area at some point in the future.

I recently learned that in order for me to continue my discernment of a vocation to priesthood within the Ordinariate, I will need to relocate. At the same time, my present employment is scheduled to end this calendar year. It thus becomes essential that I redirect my energies, and so I will not be continuing to develop a local Ordinariate community.

We will not offer evening prayer on July 16 or August 13.

I deeply appreciate your encouragement over recent weeks. Please keep my family and me in your prayers, and join me in praying for the success of the evangelizing mission of the Ordinariate across North America, and for a continued appreciation of the unity in diversity that the Ordinariate offers our Church.

Yours in Jesus and Mary,
Philip Mayer

So what we learn that's new here is that his "present employment is scheduled to end this calendar year". Let's put this in the context of what we've learned from his accounts of his career elsewhere: from 2011 to 2017, by his version, he was a Pastoral Provision candidate for the priesthood in the Diocese of St Petersburg, attending the Boynton Beach seminary and working in various diocesan jobs to support his family. But Pastoral Provision formation is normally, we've learned, a two-year process. I already thought it was unusual that he should be spending six years at it.

I've got to surmise that the Diocese of St Petersburg also began to think this was unusual. After watching the video I linked yesterday, I even wonder if, past a certain point, the diocese simply never took him seriously, and may have decided the merciful thing to do would be finally to cut him loose, end the provisional employment arrangements with generous notice (which I think is implied in his post), and urge him to find a line of work to which he was more clearly suited.

Instead, having failed at the TEC priesthood, he appears also not to have been deemed suitable for the Pastoral Provision -- and I've got to raise the possibility that he must have been regarded as rather a sad case by the authorities in the diocese. But no matter, Houston's standards are even lower! He didn't work out after six years of trying to be a Pastoral Provision priest, but the OCSP is going to ordain him after little more than a year and send him to rescue a failing mission, exactly the sort of job that his track record says he won't succeed at.

Having watched the video, I'd say that one step he might have taken could have been to lose the scraggly beard and weird shoes, but I would guess that the vocation directors in St Petersburg realized the problems were deeper than that. But I'm also seriously concerned that the problems in Houston lie deeper than Mr Mayer.

More On Mr Mayer's Background

My regular correspondent has done more digging and reports,

Mr Mayer led St Peter's, The Colony, TX. When he started there it had about 60 members and met in a hotel banquet room. It is later referred to as St-Peter's-by-the-Lake, 4809 S Colony Rd, The Colony. This address is currently a Lutheran Church, so,perhaps they shared space. In any event St Peter's, The Colony has now closed.

UPDATE: This video indicates that the St Peter's mission was earlier in the Lutheran parish, but left it for the Marriott location. You can get an idea of Mayer's style in the video. He has exciting news to share -- never a good sign.

Mr Mayer did his BA in Pastoral ministry at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL---an Assemblies of God institution. I assume this was his denominational background, but at some point he discovered Episcopalianism. Then TEC seminary and a brief stint in ordained ministry in TEC. Not entirely successful. This profile of an OCSP candidate is starting to look quite familiar.

My correspondent updated me yesterday and had discovered that Mayer's MDiv is from Nashotah House. This adds to the puzzle, because to attend a TEC seminary, one must be sponsored by a TEC parish and be approved by a TEC bishop. Yet by the time he'd left undergraduate studies, he was an evangelical. What led him then to consider TEC, whose publicly asserted values on issues like gay priests and bishops, as well as long-standing traditions on things like the sacraments, are diametrically opposed to evangelicals? Er, when did he see the light, and what light was it?

What parish did he attend in TEC, presumably for long enough to impress it with his sincerity in wishing to pursue holy orders? What did he tell the bishop? Has anyone seriously asked him about why he's so intent on becoming a Catholic priest when he's spent so much of his life on a denominational carousel? Is this an authentic vocation at all? Is this a question someone like Fr Perkins is now even qualified to address?

It's also hard to square the strange record we have from May-June of 2017, in which as best we can determine, Mayer was in the process of pursuing ordination in the OCSP and starting a Tampa Bay group without quite leaving his Pastoral Provision formation program, in which he seems not to have made the progress that would have been expected toward ordination there. Would this indicate a tendency to do things behind a bishop's back? Or is this simply attributable to incompetence in Houston in not communicating with Bp Parkes? We'll never know.

In any case, ordaining this guy is simply copacetic with Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes. Frankly, the more I learn, the more I'd drive 50 miles on a Sunday to avoid having to attend an OCSP parish mass. Yeah, the sacrament is valid, but so would be a mass celebrated by Fr Geoghan when he was in the Archdiocese of Boston. Best not to get too close if there are options. There is something seriously wrong here.

What Really Happened In Tampa Bay?

My regular correspondent has done more research on Mr Mayer's background and the timeline of the Tampa Bay group's formation and demise. As already noted here, the explanation from Mr Mayer on a post that was briefly up on the group's website but taken down on June 12, 2017, was that Bp Parkes of the Diocese of St Petersburg had requested via Bp Lopes that the group-in-formation not proceed.

Unfortunately, I didn't think at the time to keep a record of what exactly was said in the post, and apparently it was taken down so quickly that I wouldn't have been able to copy it had I visited it a second time. I know it was there briefly, because Mr Mayer himself asked me to remove my reference to it here.

However, a post from May 12, 2017 at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog substantiates at least some of what had been on the Tampa Bay group's website before it was taken down:

We’ve been asked to post information about this new group forming in Florida.

Here’s an excerpt of news from the site:

Philip Mayer, who formerly served as an Episcopal priest before becoming Catholic, was recently asked by the director of vocations and clergy development of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter to begin seeking to establish a community in the Tampa Bay area with the goal of building a parish. Once the community has been formed, Philip will, God willing, be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in order to say Mass for the new community and to lead it to becoming a parish.

We would like to invite you to come and celebrate Pentecost and pray with us for the formation of this community by joining us for Evensong (chanted evening prayer) and a potluck Sunday, June 4, 2017 at 5:00 PM at St. Mary Catholic Church, 15520 North Blvd, Tampa. Children are welcome.

We wish this new community well! Please send us some pictures to post!

Here's interesting fact number one: within a week of the group's first meeting, Bp Parkes appears to have asked Bp Lopes to shut it down; the announcement of the shutdown took place within the octave. My regular correspondent, however, discovered that a Facebook page for the group still exists, which "shows gatherings scheduled for June, July, and August which of course never took place".

But there's another, bigger question. Exactly whom did Mr Mayer report to in June 2017? The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog post above says Mayer was "asked by the director of vocations and clergy development of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter to begin seeking to establish a community in the Tampa Bay area". However, my regular correspondent has discovered from public information available on the web that from September 6, 2011 to July 2017, Mayer was what he describes as a "Pastoral Provision candidate" in the Diocese of St Petersburg, attending the Boynton Beach seminary. During this time, he worked in various jobs in the chancery and elsewhere in the diocese, but he was never ordained.

So even in the May-June 2017 period, Mayer was by his own account a Pastoral Provision seminarian in the Diocese of St Petersburg. As my regular correspondent asks, "I recall that the local bishop got Bp Lopes to intervene. Why didn't he just call Mayer on the carpet?" Good question. Here's another. Mayer was a Pastoral Provision candidate for six years? Recall that Luke Reese, who had no MDiv and was in hindsight about as unsuitable as you can get, attended the St Meinrad seminary for only four. And diocesan seminarians spend only three years in seminary!

But Mayer was an ordained TEC priest, presumably with an MDiv -- yet he seemed to be making slow, even imperceptible, progress toward ordination in the Pastoral Provision. I'm wondering if the Diocese of St Petersburg was in the process of cutting Mayer loose, to tell the truth, and news that Mayer was pursuing ordination in the OCSP came as an unpleasant surprise to Bp Parkes, under whose nominal authority Mayer continued to be. Also, this comment at the post linked above discusses a two year period of formation for former Anglican priests established under the Pastoral Provision. So something was clearly hinky in Mayer's case.

Since August 1, 2017, Mayer has been Director of Campus Ministry at Santa Fe Catholic High School in Lakeland, FL. This is in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orlando. However, apparently as of January 2019, if not sooner, he'll be heading to St Augustine as a transitional deacon and priest. He'll serve an OCSP group that meets at the St Benedict the Moor mission, which is in the Diocese of St Augustine. One interpretation of all this is that the Diocese of St Petersburg would prefer not to have any further dealings with Mr Mayer.

The information on Mayer's prior career is that he served from 2008 to 2011 at a St Peter's Episcopal Church near Dallas, which I believe is St Peter's McKinney, TX. I believe he was an associate there, although the job info on the web says he was "pastor", which is not a formal title in TEC. If he was a vicar, it sounds as if the bishop wasn't all that warm about his service. It sounds as if his TEC career stalled, but somehow he wasn't able to make it to ordination in the Pastoral Provision after six years of trying.

I tend to agree with my regular correspondent's summation of Mayer's career to date:

I think Mayer got the idea for the group and then lights started flashing. But impossible to know, really. In any event, result was "Hit the road, Phil." What did you make of his account of his career in TEC? "Many fabulous offers, but went with marginal parish in Dallas." Seems to fit your profile of TEC no-hopers turning to The One True Church.

Why is the OCSP so intent on digging these guys up? In light of experience with Luke Reese, they aren't just ciphers, they're liabilities.

The Philip Mayer Puzzle

Several ordinations are scheduled to take place on August 22 at OLW, Houston, just a little more than a week from now. Regarding these, my regular correspondent notes,

I remain baffled at the lack of publicity surrounding ordinations in the OCSP. I was aware of the August 22 date only from following up the story about Jonathan Mitchican in the SJB, Bridgeport newsletter a while back (he was received there). There is more recent information about his ordination here. But the news that there will be two men ordained to the diaconate on the same date came as a surprise; Mr Meyer's picture of the printed invitation on his FaceBook page was the first time I had even heard of Justin Fletcher. The ordination has not yet been mentioned in the OLW, Houston Sunday bulletin. I suppose there will be the usual one line announcement on the OCSP website directing us to the FB video, a few days after the event. So odd.

Certainly at our parish, upcoming ordinations, not just of parish seminarians but all others in the archdiocese, are proudly announced. And they take pace in the cathedral downtown, not in our parish church! It's hard to avoid thinking this is something about which the OCSP is not as proud. Which brings me to the question of Philip Mayer.

Prior to June 12 last year, Philip Mayer was a lay person leading a small gathered group headed for the OCSP in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. Mr Mayer lives in Lutz, FL, which is a Tampa suburb. As of June 12, Bp Parkes of the Diocese of St Petersburg requested that the group be shut down, which was briefly noted here.

Mr Mayer had announced the shutdown on the group's then-website, but the tone was apparently not to Bp Parkes's full satisfaction, and Mr Mayer contacted me to request that I delete my reference to it. He cited possible further career opportunities in the Church as a reason not to irritate the bishop, and I complied.

It was then announced that Mr Mayer was pursuing ordination in the Diocese of St Petersburg under the Pastoral Provision. However, my regular correspondent found Mr Mayer's Facebook page, on which my correspondent did not need to "friend" him to read extensive personal information. This included

that he terminated his association with the Diocese of St Petersburg a year ago; they employed him at the chancery there and had him doing work at local parishes. He describes this as a "period of discernment"---perhaps Bp Parkes discerned that he was not right for his diocese.

"A year ago" would be roughly August 2017 -- so if he was an OCSP candidate as of June in that year, he actually seems not to have spent much time pursuing ordination under the Pastoral Provision. Frankly, these are dates and circumstances that would have HR professionals screening secular candidates out without much further deliberation; this looks like a pretty consistent record of not working out after short times in jobs.

My correspondent has learned that Mayer's priestly ordination is scheduled for January, 2019. Apparently he will be assigned to St James, St Augustine, FL. This meets at St Benedict the Moor Catholic Church in St Augustine. It has a minimal website. Of interest are minutes from a desultory February 2018 meeting called to develop a "strategic plan", with pertinent remarks such as

1. Change the Mass time to noon; most of the current members did not think this would work for them.
2. Midweek prayer and study time, maybe 5-6 PM. Cinthia, Don, and Fr. Nick thought this would be a good place to start. (not on Wed.)

Fr Nick, the current priest, is Fr Nicholas Marziani, who my correspondent notes "is now 67, previously held a number of jobs in addition to administering St James, so I assume it has not become self-sufficient." Lutz, FL is 169.1 miles from St Augustine, 3 hours 5 minutes on I-75. It is not known if Mr Mayer will be relocating with his family. Given his record, I frankly wouldn't be planning a move.

I would also note again that, given the minutes of the strategic planning meeting for the parish, the observation that the accomplished and talented lay staff and vestry that are present in TEC parishes never moved to the OCSP holds true in this case as well.

Blessed John Henry Newman Victoria Must Move

The web page of the Blessed John Henry Newman community in Victoria, BC carries this announcement:

In order to make space for two additional Sunday Mass celebrations at our current host parish of Our Lady of Fatima, our community of Blessed John Henry Newman will be moving on Monday, August 27 to Our Lady Queen of Peace, located at 851 Old Esquimalt Road.

This points yet again to the instability of the smaller groups, and it appears that these groups will be kicked out of host parishes if other uses for the times and spaces supervene. My regular correspondent notes that OCSP groups are also potentially lower-status in Canada than in the US:

In Canada the ACC is a much more mainstream denomination than TEC. The poke in the eye to ecumenical partnerships which Anglicanorum coetibus represents far outweighs the Canadian Deanery's drop in the bucket evangelising efforts. Virtually all OCSP clergy are former "continuers"---a group of dissidents that most in the Catholic hierarchy would disapprove of on principle. The three members of the ACCC episcopacy came to the original conference hosted by then-Abp Collins in 2011 dressed in Gammarelli's finest, up to the purple zucchetti and down to the purple socks. He ignored them completely. He, of course, was in a black suit.

In addition, none of the Canadian communities is growing, and most have clergy who will soon be retiring, with in most cases no identifiable replacement.

The Fr Gonzalez y Perez Ordination

My regular correspondent reports,

Fr Gonzalez y Perez was a Evangelical Lutheran Church of America clergyman working as head of pastoral care at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights and licensed to assist at a nearby TEC church (the two denominations have been in full communion since 2001). Here is an account of his ordination as a Catholic priest for the OCSP.

LICH had closed by that point, but Fr Gonzalez y Perez owns a house in Brooklyn and his wife is a professor at Brooklyn College so relocating would not have been an attractive option.

Widespread commentary at the time of the full communion agreement between ELCA and TEC said that it reflected the shrinking market for main line Protestantism, which we can see reflected in the loss of Protestant job opportunities for Fr Gonzalez y Perez. On the other hand, I worked in a highly unstable tech job market; especially in the 1970s and 80s, as companies like Apple and Microsoft grew, other tech companies shrank or were acquired. So tech workers migrated from company A to company B freely.

But this assumes programming and analytical skills are fully transferable among tech companies, and by and large, this is true. On the other hand, theological understanding and pastoral skills don't seem to be as transferable between Protestants and Catholics. (In fact, I started out in the IBM mainframe environment; when that faded, I had to transfer my skills to Windows and Unix, which wasn't easy, so there's some parallel even there.)

At some point, there seems to have been some sort of unspoken assumption, reflected in the clear willingness to ordain just about anyone with an arguably Anglican background into the OCSP, that these skills were transferable, and the Church can act like a secular corporation and hire from a general employment pool. I think experience has begun to show that, despite some success stories, often pastoral skills aren't transferable from Protestant to Catholic. This probably reflects both ignorance of Protestantism and wishful thinking in the Catholic Church.

Formation as a Catholic priest generally requires an authentic vocation that begins to manifest in adolescence, which is tested and evaluated by multiple parties over a period of years. On the other hand, the decision to become an Episcopal priest appears in many cases to be something arrived at in adulthood, often after trying and failing at various other careers. It's something of a last resort in and of itself. For a TEC or Anglican priest then to have to scramble for yet another career opportunity is even more of a last resort.

Back to Fr Gonzalez y Perez's career move:

However, just at this point a group of about 50 Spanish-speaking Episcopalians in Flushing, NY lost their former TEC clergyman who was preparing them to enter the Catholic church. By OCSP standards this was a huge group and Msgr Steenson made a flying visit as you can read here. But in the event they were received at a diocesan parish and absorbed into its Spanish-speaking congregation. Fr G y P was slightly involved in the preparation, but did not assume leadership of the group and when last heard of was doing supply work for the Diocese of Brooklyn.

It's worth noting that although Houston has made a policy statement that it does not ordain men principally for diocesan work, this policy, like others, is very flexible, to say the least. At the same time, it looks like many of the OCSP ordinands haven't distinguished themselves in dioceses and wind up as chaplains or supply priests.

The Group In Bath, PA

My regular correspondent has brought to my attention a biweekly DW mass that takes place at the Sacred Heart parish, Bath, PA. My correspondent says, "Bath has a population of fewer than 3,000 and I can hardly imagine that Sacred Heart has a lot of resources to share." In fact, I'm somewhat familiar with the area, which is known as the Cement Belt, located near Allentown-Bethlehem, PA, and while there are many Catholics, they tend to be blue-collar ethnics who work, or used to work, in the railroad, steel, and mining industries. It's hard to imagine upscale Anglicans in Bath, but someone may be able to correct me.

The biweekly DW mass in Bath does not appear on either the OCSP Find a Parish feature on its site or on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society map. The history of this group is puzzling. As best my regular correspondent can determine, the group began in January 2014 as a venue for Fr Richard Rojas, who was ordained a priest in the OCSP in 2013 while serving as a military chaplain in Guam. He had been a Presbyterian pastor who subsequently joined the Anglican communion (although I assume this was not a denomination in communion with Canterbury).

My correspondent notes that Fr Rojas was in fact able to switch denominations twice while a chaplain with no interruption to his military career. However, once ordained in the OCSP, he remained in Guam only three months before moving to Scranton, where he and his family lived in the former convent on the STM, Scranton property for a little over a year before he was excardinated to the Diocese of Scranton.

During this time, he celebrated the DW mass at Sacred Heart, Bath. At one time there was a website for the Bath group, but since it appears on neither the OCSP map nor the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society map, there appears not to have been much sustained interest or enthusiasm. In any case, Fr Rojas no longer serves the group, having become administrator of the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Dushore, PA.

Now Fr Bergman travels to Bath twice a month for the 5PM DW mass and social hour. However, this requires that a local priest from the Diocese of Scranton celebrate the 7PM Sunday mass at STM. I assume the local priest receives a stipend. My regular correspondent notes,

Whatever Fr Bergman's limitations he is totally committed to the Ordinariate enterprise. Fr Rojas on the other hand seems to have used it merely to parlay his career into a congenial place.

Bp Lopes will be visiting the congregation in Bath, PA this month. My correspondent speculates that he may wish to evaluate the future of the community. The new administrator of Sacred Heart has already canceled an EF mas that had been held there.

I can only conclude that this case illustrates the desultory and unstable nature of so many marginal OCSP communities, and it also carries with it a troubling suggestion of opportunism among clergy who come into the OCSP, no matter how marginal their Anglican connections, along with the willingness of the ordinaries to enable it.

Letter From Fr Kelley

I received this e-mail from Fr Kelley:

August 9, 2018

Dear Deacon John, Vestry, & Flock,

Recently I met a man named Sameh, who told me he was Egyptian: from Giza, to be more precise, the area near Cairo where the ancient pyramids are. He was out- going & gracious. Later, I saw him doing something I didn't expect of a muslim. I got a chance to ask him about it. "Sameh, you told me you're from Egypt; are you muslim?" "Oh, no!" I asked, "Are you Coptic?" He said, "Yes!" I greeted him as a brother; I told him how I'd met Copts from Egypt years ago, who told me of the Apparitions of Our Lady, over a Coptic church in Cairo, in 1967. She appeared from April to August; the first two to see her were two muslim garage mechanics. I said, "Our God does have a sense of humor!" He said, "And yes! She has begun to appear there again, in the last two years!" He told me how patrons of a coffee house across the street from the church were seeing her -- all muslims! The owner (a muslim) has even installed a huge painting of her in his coffee shop!

He told me, "The [low church Egyptian] Anglicans didn't believe it... But the muslims are telling them, 'It is true!'" [In the 19th C, when the British 'opened up' Egypt, so they could build the Suez Canal, they thought that a "low church" presence would be non-threatening to muslims. So the mission came to bring "education & medical service," & such, in a low-key fashion. It hasn't been a very dynamic presence; very little mention was made of Our Lady, despite her miracles in that region, of which Sameh told me many. -- There is a strong tradition the Holy Family stayed in that neighborhood after fleeing to Egypt.] He said his home was destroyed in the rioting in 2011, along with 80 Coptic churches. His family escaped with their lives. "But," he told me, "every single one of those churches has been rebuilt, fresh, new, complete! 80 churches! GOD has restored them in ways we could not do! In the past, under Egyptian law, if you even went to paint a church, you'd be arrested! [Shari'a law forbids repair of churches.] But now, 80 churches, rebuilt! God restores things when we can't!"

I thanked Sameh for his witness, & this glad news. It is news we all need to take to heart, when we've been dispossessed so hurtfully. We need to acknowledge that God is at work! He does wonderful, "unexpected things" for those who are faithful to Him, who humbly expect Him to act. I hope Sameh's report will inspire & encourage you! Hold it in mind, if you face discouragement. Our parish custom has been, for some years, to make a united effort in the 40 days between the Feasts of Transfiguration & Holy Cross {Holy Wood!}. Will you please make that effort in daily prayer, when it is so vitally important for our future? You can use the attached prayer, -- or adapt it for your own use in some suitable way. [I apologize that I was unable to get this to you earlier this week, for the whole 40 days; family needs took priority.]

This coming Sunday, August 12, we'll gather again at Our Mother of Good Counsel, on N. Vermont Ave, at Ambrose, for the 10am Mass. Please look for those of our Flock, & sit as near as possible. We've been about a third of the way into the Nave, on the right side. We remain on a "Eucharistic Fast" until reception "into the fullness of Catholic Communion." (If you wish a priestly blessing, approach him with arms folded; the Lay Eucharistic Ministers cannot give such blessings, of course). Please share the information, and encourage others to join us on our pilgrimage. The "Pilgrimage of Grace," in 1536, was a witness of the Catholic heritage of England. In that heritage we stand. Let us support one another in this witness. God will show us our next steps forward. Faithfully,

Fr Kelley+

PS. Mr Bill Gould, of Troy/Gould, died after a lengthy illness, Monday, August 6. He was 79. His Requiem will be at Good Shepherd RC Church, Beverly Hills, on Monday, August 13, at 10am. To the very last, he was praying for our parish, & sent me a deeply touching note, upon hearing of the injustice lately done to us. May he rest in Christ's everlasting Peace. May the Angels escort him; may the Martyrs welcome him. May the Lord comfort his widow, their family, his friends, & his firm.

I would compare the diligent and persistent pastoral concern we're seeing from Fr Kelley with the sort of thing we've been seeing instead from -- with exceptions, of course -- the assortment of instant ordinands, opportunists, phonies, and wannabes, plus one convicted felon, who've been ordained in the OCSP up to now. These circumstances speak for themselves.

Tampa Group On Again-Off Again?

Regarding Dcn Hodil, the transitional deacon mentioned in yesterday's post, my regular correspondent has found:

Last sighting of Mr Hodil was on the Tampa Bay Ordinariate FB page in February of this year, with the note that "Fr William Holiday at Incarnation in Orlando has placed him with us for an indefinite length of time for each of our monthly sessions." This was the group that was shut down at the behest of the local diocesan when Philip Meyer was leading it. Seems to have restarted, meeting at the New Port Richey home of a laywoman (Barbara Westcott), a former Methodist who became a Catholic in 1976 (scroll down this page for her story).

The group is still linked to the map on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society site (though not on the OCSP Find a Parish) but it does not seem to have met since February 2018. Shut down again? Mr Hodil has preached more recently (May) at Incarnation, Orlando. His description on his Instagram account reads "Former Presbyterian minister Transitional Deacon Someday maybe Catholic priest (????) 'I have been crucified with Christ.' " Perhaps this indicates that a Potemkinville is a must if one wishes to be ordained priest, especially for someone who seems to have had no background in Anglican ministry.

One characterization I might make of this is "loosey-goosey". A little group that wants to be Catholic Anglican or Anglican Catholic meets in a nice lady's front parlor once a month for potluck and evening prayer. There is no schedule for reception. The is no apparent effort at catechesis. Their deacon, while transitional, will someday maybe become a Catholic priest. (Wait a moment -- isn't a transitional deacon ordained priest within at most a year of being ordained deacon?) Dcn Hodil, maybe not. All depends.

Here's what bothers me about this as a true crime fan. We've already looked at the story of Martin Sigillito, a con artist who represented himself as a "continuing Anglican" bishop. He was convicted in 2012 on 20 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in his trial for a massive real estate Ponzi scheme that swindled investors out of more than $56 million.

Exactly how do prospective OCSP members protect themselves against a hypothetical Fr Chichester, who sets up a monthly potluck-and-evening-prayer in the front parlor of some helpful mark and winds up swindling the little group that gets together? With a little research, our hypothetical Fr Chichester can say he has the endorsement of Fr Phillips (or anyone else) for this little project, and wearing clericals with a Luke Reese demeanor, he will likely get away with it.

Every once in a while, we see in our parish bulletin announcements to the general effect that a male representing himself as a Fr O'Flaherty is turning up on parish properties within the archdiocese. Fr O'Flaherty is not a priest of the archdiocese. If anyone encounters him, it is urged that they contact the Vicar for Clergy. Several things protect the faithful here. One is that there are designated parishes with designated priests. There is a Vicar for Clergy who is concerned about these things and will take action. There is an official communication from the archdiocese about the matter to the faithful.

The OCSP is so loosey-goosey that our hypothetical Fr Chichester can even set up a Facebook page representing itself as the St Alphonsus Liguori Ordinariate group, make announcements, post photos, and more important, pitch the new building fund. It's a very dodgy thing whether anyone in Houston would even notice it. What's the difference between this and the maybe-sorta-kinda Tampa group?

But also, while "stability" in and of itself doesn't seem to be a specific virtue, Benedictines do take a vow of stability, and the word does pop up in the Catechism as a beneficial feature of the Church. Where is the stability in these groups that appear and disappear with such regularity? Why are the faithful being encouraged to go to monthly potlucks when there are daily and Sunday masses, RCIA, confessions, Bible study, and so much else likely within half a mile distance?

Why is there no definite schedule for reception for the Tampa group, or if the group has folded, why is there no announcement from Houston? This, of course, applies to the loosey-goosiness that's emerging with respect to the St Mary of the Angels group.

I would not go anywhere near this thing. I assume, by the way, that an RCIA program will begin at Our Mother of Good Counsel next month. It might be a good idea for those in the St Mary's group to sign up -- at least they'll definitely be received at Easter.

What's Happened To St John Fisher Orlando?

Prompted by curiosity over who, if anyone, is updating the OCSP Find a Parish feature, my regular correspondent noted,

I noticed that the mass times (actually mass time, singular) at St John Fisher, Orlando was no longer posted on the Diocese of Orlando website, nor, as of June 27, on the Incarnation, Orlando website or FB page (SJF has never had either a website or a FB page). Does this mean that as of Fr Jason McCrimmon's ordination to the priesthood on June 29 the SJF group, such as it was, has served its purpose and been quietly folded? Bp Lopes visited there in October 2016; you posted a picture (June 21, 2017) of him celebrating mass on "the windowsill"---one of my favourites among your lines. But as we noted then it seemed to have no raison d'être other than to be part of Fr McCrimmon's ministry plan.

David Hodil, who was ordained a transitional deacon at the same time as now-Fr McCrimmon, remains a deacon, BTW.

As best anyone can determine, Fr McCrimmon is now assisting at the main Incarnation Orlando parish, and the St John Fisher parish seems to have disappeared. Exactly what his status is, paid or unpaid, is an open question, but he's featured in a new Facebook page for Incarnation Orlando:

Incarnation FB page has saturation coverage of Fr McCrimmon's ordination, first mass, a special "Sung Mass for the Propagation of the Faith through Fr Jason McCrimmon" offered on June 27, ways of celebrating his ordination by contributing to the parish, etc. The FB page is new, so Jason McCrimmon-related info currently constitutes 90% of its content.

My correspondent referred me to my post here from July 20, 2017 for more background on Fr McCrimmon. He decided not to go into the OCSP with the rest of the Incarnation parish when it was received, because he was an Anglican chaplain. But then he went from the ACA to the ACNA and seems to have changed his mind about becoming Catholic later still. (The ACNA is notably low-church, so it would appear McCrimmon's theology is quite flexible.)

This raises a number of questions. I believe the St John Fisher group was initially proposed as an example of "satellite" groups that would form to ease the task of driving to more distant central OCSP communities and encourage growth -- and I feel pretty confident that it was used as an example to convince Bp Barnes of San Bernardino that there was no ulterior motive in starting the Holy Martyrs storefront in Murrieta. But now it's hard to avoid thinking the St John Fisher group lasted two years at best, and interest fell off to the point that it was no longer worth anyone's time.

Except, apparently, as a reason to justify Fr McCrimmon's ordination, following much hesitation and postponement on Fr McCrimmon's part. Dcn Hodil, on the other hand, remains a transitional deacon. Depends on who's on the bishop's good list, I guess.

Meanwhile, none of this is publicized. We don't know if an announcement was even made to the St John Fisher group, or if interest had fallen off to the point where no announcement was thought necessary. It's probably just as well that the OCSP sees no apparent need for a Director of Communications (although this could potentially be a good intern-type job for a college student in the OLW parish or nearby who might be considering a career in the field).

If I were doing it, though, I'd feel deeply uncomfortable trying to put any sort of positive or consistent face on what's going on. And if one "gathered" group can disappear so quickly and easily, what of all the others? Who'll be left holding the bag when the Murrieta group fails? Will Fr Bayles even ever be compensated for his mileage on all those trips to Pasadena, for that matter?

Cuts In Houston?

My regular correspondent reports,

I note that the name/picture of Jenny Faber, formerly? COO and Vice-Chancellor of the OCSP, has disappeared from the "Staff" page of the OCSP website. The Business Manager of OLW is now shown as the Vice-Chancellor. I know that Bp Lopes is performing a number of confirmations in Ordinariate communities in the NE this month, so perhaps he is on the road. If Ms Faber has indeed left this would leave only Fr Perkins holding the fort, if indeed he is not on holiday.

Ms Faber did an excellent job of preparing material for the four annual appeals conducted by the OCSP, and one issue of the Ordinariate Observer, but in every other respect her performance in the area of "Communications" (her original title was Director of Communications) was quite inadequate. I'm not really familiar with the role of a COO but at the moment the OCSP apparently feels it can do without one.

When I noted again that the tithe from St Mary of the Angels would have been in the $25,000 range had it come in, it also occurred to me that $25,000 doesn't buy much. It certainly covers nobody's salary plus benefits. But I also figure that $25,000 would have been in the upper tier of contributions from any OCSP parish, quite possibly second only to OLW Houston.

And my guess is that OLW's business manager is paid by OLW, whatever the OCSP title, not the OCSP, and cutting whatever was paid to Ms Faber could have been a necessary move. A secondary question is that if your staff is incompetent -- a complaint Msgr Steenson is known to have made about the chancery when he was there -- any amount that's paid them is too much.

My understanding is that since the failure of the ParishSOFT implementation, Houston has struggled to identify the incomes of OCSP communities and collect the appropriate tithes, and as far as I'm aware, the project of making a census of OCSP communities, begun years ago, continues without much result.

None of this augurs well.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds,

The task of getting an accurate list of Ordinariate and parish membership has been delegated to Sr Amata Veritas, one of the Dominican nuns now in residence at OLW. I think she has been plugging away, but even the low-level paperwork required seems to be beyond the capacity of a number of parochial administrators.

As far as Ms Faber is concerned, perhaps now that the Chancery has a template for its annual appeals they feel her services are no longer needed. But her departure creates an added burden of correspondence for the bishop's PA. Soon it will be time to organise the annual clergy retreat. This is a year in which wives will be invited, involving more complicated arrangements, I would assume.

This Week's Letter From Fr Kelley

I was forwarded a copy of this week's letter from Fr Kelley to the St Mary's group:

Saturday, August 4, 2018

Dear Deacon John, Vestry & Flock,

With courage let us face forward, & upward, to our Heavenly Lord, resolved to do His Will. Scripture assures us that He will not give us more than we can bear. The saints before us faced circumstances far more trying than these. Let us ask their holy prayers as we face our present hurdles and decisions. He has a plan to make saints, even of us! -- Keep that in mind. It is a time for all of us to grow in our personal devotion & discipleship. HIS WORSHIP IS our primary Obligation on all Sundays, without exception. We cannot afford to be indifferent about it, for our souls' sake! He does care for our wounds, so fear not to offer them, & release them to Him; don't hold onto them. Do spend time in daily prayer & Scripture-reading, awaiting the Lord, in active, attentive silence --not distraction-- to enliven what you read, speaking to your heart as one of His sheep. He tells us, 'My sheep hear My Voice!' It takes practice -- listening, & discerning.

I am sorry that the day has not afforded me opportunity to get this sent earlier. There is much I have to do. But please share this information in every appropriate way.

Tomorrow, let us again gather for the 10am Mass at Our Mother of Good Counsel, & seek one another out, that we may be relatively close together. Last Sunday, many were on the right of the main aisle, about 1/3 of the way in. Perhaps we can find space in the same general location. Our continued fellowship is highly significant for our future. Until our formal Reception, however, we continue our Eucharistic Fast. I'm informed that we may go forward for a Priestly blessing, crossing our arms to indicate that we will not receive the Blessed Sacrament. (For this reason, do not approach a Lay Eucharistic Minister.) I have been in touch with the Ordinariate Office in Houston; things are not at a 'stand-still;' but they do require some time. The Lord is teaching us patience, once again.

Last Sunday, due to the pressure of time for packing out the Dodd Cottage, I was compelled to leave early. I do not expect that kind of pressure this week! So let us gather somewhere after the Mass to see & speak with each other. Our focus now is not the past, but the future in Christ.

In our Most Holy Saviour, Jesus Christ,

Father Kelley+

At this point, I'm not sure what my involvement will be with the group. There is a certain amount of bad feeling in the OMGC parish toward me and this blog, if no one else, that was the immediate cause of our leaving that parish two years ago. This could cause difficulty for the St Mary's group there if we were to present ourselves. Beyond that, our current parish has numerous resources for growing as Catholics that are available to us there that aren't available at OMGC.

As a result, for the time being, while I wish Fr Kelley and the St Mary's group well, it's best to take a wait-and-see attitude. As I've said already, this isn't the first time that a promise of quick reception was made to the parish, and that someone should now need to deny that things are at a standstill is not a good sign, to tell the truth.

More On The Personal Prelature

My regular correspondent comments,

The usual explanation for the structure of the Ordinariates is that the personal prelature protects and promotes the existence of "Anglican Use" parishes in a way that the Pastoral Provision was unable to do in the US. It is true that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles rejected the idea of a PP parish within its boundaries, despite significant interest there, and perhaps that is a sufficient argument. The other problem situation pointed to is that of St Mary the Virgin, Las Vegas, which closed when the local bishop declined to appoint a replacement for the departing Fr Clark Tea.

At least two other parishes---St Margaret of Scotland, Austin and Good Shepherd, Columbia---were suppressed. But can the OCSP prevent similar occurrences? Three OCSP groups folded when their parochial administrators relocated. Two others underwent specious "mergers" with not very conveniently located communities. Two have, like Good Shepherd, Columbia, withered away for lack of interest. And at least a dozen more are vulnerable owing to being led by an aging priest who is unlikely to find anyone to replace him when he retires.

With the exception of those leading the full parishes, younger clergy must supplement any stipend the OSCP group can offer with diocesan employment---in other words, they will depend on the goodwill of the local diocesan which the establishment of a personal prelature was supposed to make irrelevant. We recall that Fr Catania had to leave St Alban's, Rochester because the local bishop was unwilling to provide him with a diocesan appointment or even a place to live.

I'm not sure if enough attention has been paid to why some bishops have resisted either Pastoral Provision or OCSP parishes. Let's note, for instance, Bp Matano of Rochester seems to have had reservations about Fr Catania, although he is celibate but not formed in a Catholic seminary, while he's apparently approved a new priest for the Rochester group who is both celibate and has spent time in a Catholic seminary. (This, by the way, might also suggest that he was more fully vetted by vocation directors while there.)

If I were a diocesan bishop, or a diocesan auxiliary, or a diocesan vocation director who had the auxiliary's ear, I might have very similar reservations about bringing in an Anglican, no matter how "respectable", who had not been through a Catholic vocation process, no matter what. We need refer only to the examples of Frs Phillips, Kenyon, and Reese for support of such cautious views.

We're also back to the question of Fr Phillips and why some observers have asked how he survived so long in the Archdiocese of San Antonio despite what appear to have been conflicts of long standing with the chancery there. I've suggested before that Phillips had Cardinal Law's protection, though I would go father and suggest that Msgr Stetson, who was Law's secretary for much of this time in Law's capacity as Delegate for the Pastoral Provision, was also close to Abp Gomez when Gomez was in San Antonio.

It would not surprise me if some of the resistance by Cardinals Manning and Mahony to admitting St Mary of the Angels under the Pastoral Provision came, not just from suspicion of how the parish itself would fare under Catholic authority, but from concerns that, if it created disciplinary issues for the archdiocese (as OLA did), it could become an occasion for Cardinal Law to interfere in Los Angeles's internal affairs as well. I'm increasingly of the view that diocesan bishops who resist either the Pastoral Provision or the OCSP are doing it less on grounds of prejudice than on grounds of wanting to avoid outside meddling in diocesan affairs on petty issues.

As best we can determine, Bp Barnes of San Bernardino did in fact resist the establishment of the Murrieta group, and the fact that it had to start in a storefront suggests that he was unwilling to allow diocesan facilities to be used for it.

Again, we're looking at the OCSP as a personal prelature that fosters an "alternate universe" Catholicism, in which standards for ordination are clearly relaxed and lay people of no particular qualification or training, like Mr Coulombe and Mrs Gyapong, can replace diocesan catechists and interpret the "Anglican patrimony" to modify Catholic doctrine as they please. This is certainly a potential reason why a small but vocal number of cradle Catholics seem drawn to the OCSP -- there's an equivalent appeal to that of Anglo-Catholicism, the ability to insist they're really Catholic in a pre-Conciliar way, without the need to know Latin well enough to appreciate an EF mass, or indeed the need to register at a real parish.

I simply don't know what other dues they may feel they don't need to pay, but I assume there's always something.