the church in Bladensburg was leased from the Episcopal Diocese, an agreement which will soon expire. While purchase of the facility was an option, it would have been a costly move for the small parish family.My regular correspondent adds, "St Luke's was given option to buy the Bladensburg building but apart from location it had not been well-maintained and needed potentially expensive renovations." The lack of maintenance, of course, would have been the responsibility of the St Luke's parish itself and raises the question of whether the group was ever capable of surviving as a full parish.
This news was an inspiration to me at the time, and I asked Fr Kelley why St Mary of the Angels Hollywood couldn't do the same. (I only gradually learned the answer: if the members of the St Mary of the Angels parish were received as Catholics as part of the process, but the parish bylaws were not revised, those received would no longer be members of the parish and thus ineligible to vote on the needed changes to the bylaws. Thus the parih could be seized legally by a rump of dissidents who stayed out of the ordinariate. Fr Kelley seems to have made himself unpopular in Houston by trying to point this out to Msgrs Stetson and Steenson, as well as Fr Hurd.)
How much we've all had to learn.
In any case, St Luke's was one of a very few Episcopalian parises to come into the ordinariate as a continuing entity. By June 2014, it became plain that the parish could not afford to lease its facility in Bladensburg, and it became a tenant of the Immaculate Conception diocesan parish in Washington.
My regular correspondent notes that Msgr Steenson made St Luke a full parish sometime in 2015, although it did not have a permanent facility as called for in the ordinariate guidelines. The long term goal was for St Luke's to have its own new property, something Fr Lewis noted in the parish newsletter, and last year they made an offer on a suitable building site. This plan apparently ran into problems. My correspondent has now found that the parish has announced another move, from the Immaculate Conception parish to St Ignatius Church in Fort Washington, Prince Georges County, MD.
As far as I can see, one important change is that Fr Vidal will be paid at least part time as a diocesan pastor, similar to Fr Sly's arrangement in Kansas City or Fr Seraiah's in Missouri. My regular correspondent confirms that Fr Vidal, prior to this move, had not had any part-time assignment at St Ignatius. Further,
No doubt the merits of this arrangement have been carefully considered. But it does mean that St Luke's will move for the second time in its eight-year history, to another building owned by the Archdiocese of Washington, which will also be paying part of the Pastor's salary, as he ministers to the several hundred diocesan attendees. Not the most solid example of stability and sustainability.It's hard to avoid thinking that St Luke's was always a very marginal candidate for parish status, and in the light of day it was not realistic for it ever to own or try to maintain property as an ordinariate parish. But it sounds also as though Fr Vidal has had enough free cycles in his day that he won't, in the judgment of Abp Gegory, be overburdened now with a diocesan parish in addition. And the question is whether the St Luke's parish was able to pay Fr Vidal's salary, supplemented as it may have been by a possible pension. My regular correspondent comments,
Fr Vidal did put out an APB about a place to crash in DC while "Seton House" was being renovated. Don't know if he's hard up or just thrifty
And of course, we now know that Bp Lopes is determined in some way not fully clear to make the Bl John Henry Newman community in California a full parish, bending whatever criteria will certainly have to be bent to do so. It doesn't bode well.
