I was thinking the other day all three Ordinariates have a combined population of around 12,000 (11,531 reported in 2016). which is the size of a large parish in any substantial Roman Catholic diocese, yet they have one Bishop and two Ordinaries to oversee this. They also have a total of 177 priests to serve this population (12,000 /177 = 67.79 parishioners per priest). In a parish of 16,000 parishioners, that would be the equivalent of having a pastor and 235 parochial vicars to assist him.My regular correspondent comments as well,Looking at the three Ordinariates, I have no real idea what Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia is like as I rarely hear any news from Down Under, but a quick perusal of the congregations on their website indicates they are a lot like the OCSP: they meet at/are given use of local Roman Rite parish facilities and have very few locations of their own. On their website they state the have 18 worship communities and communities in formation.
Our Lady of Walsingham in the UK has about 3,500 people and 91 priests (3,500 / 91 = 38 parishioners per priest) and seems to be fairly stable but a closer look at their congregations reveals the same pattern, smallish groups meeting in local Roman Catholic facilities.
Whew, what a conglomeration! Short of a miraculous occurrence of some sort of mass revelation to Anglicans and Episcopalians world-wide causing a stampede of new Catholic converts, this looks like a future footnote in the Vatican archives. With official numbers to be reported to the Vatican this year and the time it takes to compile the official census document and publish it, the days are few indeed ( I am predicting March to mid-April in 2020) before big changes are in store. I guess none of the Ordianriates can afford to have any one of their flock run off or turned off by a poor shepherd. Perhaps that is the danger of the Fr. Kenyons in this game and why the SJE situation required the Bishop and the Vicar General to fly to Calgary. Time will tell. Tick, tock, tick, tock
The OCSP hiring model---taking in other peoples' mistakes and bad judgement calls---might be seen as hard to avoid when you are out of any meaningful local or denominational loop. I am sure we are going to see more flame-outs.
So many men. So few good ones.
It's hard to avoid thinking that the clerical shuffle between the UK, Calgary, Victoria, and Omaha was the result of pressure on Bp Lopes -- the recent personnel shuffle in Houston, wih a new secretary for Bp Lopes, was conceivably a result of that pressure then being passed further down onto Fr Perkins, with the result that he got additional "help". More flame-outs would probably result on the removal of both, but the problem isn't personnel, the problem is that Anglicanorum coetibus was poorly conceived.
