The Tridentine Mass And Spiritual Planes

I've had several comments on yesterday's post about the Extraordinary Form vs the Ordinary Form Latin mass. For my part, reconstructing my memory of the 1950s mass in Elizabeth, NJ, I remember purposeful hand gestures of some sort being made at the altar, some mumbling (but that would have been a 10-year-old Protestant boy's impression of Latin), and bells ringing. It's pretty plain 60 years later that this was the prayer of consecration taking place, which speaks to the accuracy of my memory, as well as the clear sense I had that something of consequence was going on, which our mom pulled us away from.

However, I'm of the view that the 1950s mass in Elizabeth was the same thing as the 2019 mass we get on Sundays here.

The visitor from Greenville, TX comments,

Just a minor correction, while we don't currently have an Ordinary Form Mass in Latin in Greenville right now, our interim pastor has promised to bring it back as soon as he's comfortable with the Latin pronunciation.

As far as the OF in Latin goes, I'm not sure it appeals to any "serious" traddies - the Ordinary Form is admittedly highly problematic in many ways, but so is the crystallized TLM it superseded. I've gotten the impression that for most, a Latin OF is simply an almost-acceptable substitute for a proper TLM according to the 1962 Missal (but certainly not something to choose if a TLM is available within a two-hour radius).

This may sound hyperbolic, but I've actually heard former parishioners of St Williams who migrated to Mater Dei (the big FSSP parish in Irving) say things like, "Fr Paul is great and we're really glad he offers a Latin Novus Ordo, but we've ascended to a higher spiritual plane now".

My regular correspondent comments,

When the Oratory was erected in Toronto in 1979 it took over a slum parish and began offering the OF in Latin as the main Sunday mass. A number of the Oratorians at the time were former Anglicans. It became the go-to parish for local former High Church Anglicans generally—-the sort of people who had hesitated because they found the modern English version of the OF too grating. When Pope Benedict issued Summorum Pontificam in 2007 the parish switched to the EF. They have subsequently been given a second parish where the EF is also offered, and since September 2016, DW. I would be interested to know if the OF in Latin is regularly celebrated much of anywhere now. This post suggests not. The market for it strikes me as very niche.

Of course, as I mentioned previously, many of the objections Traddies have to the OF involve versus populum celebration, Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, communion in the hand and other things which although allowed in the post-1962 rite are not required. In a parish like Holy Rosary, Indianapolis the music and “ritual options” are basically the same for its EF and OF celebrations. But there are textual differences, and the calendar is not the same, as we see here. Presumably diehard EF supporters find the OF Offertory prayers just as objectionable in Latin as they are in English.

The fact that people who previously attended the Latin OF at OLA are unhappy about its cancellation is predictable. It’s what they have become used to, and they don’t like change. But as I stated before, unlike most of the “Anglican Patrimony” identified by Ordinariate spokespersons, which on close inspection is nothing more than Catholic custom which has persisted in Anglo-Catholic circles while falling into desuetude in the Church generally, vernacular liturgy is a core Anglican value (which it shared with the Reformation generally, as you pointed out). A “shared treasure” which the Church already embraced fifty four years ago.

Of course Anglicanism’s commitment to vernacular liturgy led to the production of the BCP in dozens of local languages, wherever the British and/or American Empire set foot. Two communities which worshipped in Spanish as Episcopalians dispersed after joining the OCSP, which has no Spanish version of DW. I am sure that the lack of a distinctive liturgy was a factor in their decision to become part of the Spanish-speaking congregations in their host parishes. The description of the liturgy used by the Australian ordinariate congregations in Japan sounded like a dog’s breakfast, and has undoubtedly not been approved by any competent body. In any event, it was pretty much the Japanese OF. Again, why go out of your way to attend a mass which is indistinguishable from that at your local parish?

Another visitor picked up on my reference to "mumbling" (which as I said above was I think a boy's reaction to hearing Latin from the last pew, not necessarily a criticism of the celebrant). However,

You will see that liturgical "traditionalists" are divided about the audibility of various parts of the Tridentine Mass said by the celebrant. It is not simply a question of "dialogue Mass" vs. "(mostly) silent Mass;" the latter can be seen as as much an abuse as the former is an innovation of the last century (with Irish antecedents). I am not really a "traditionalist", but so much of what formed the "liturgical reform" of the late 60s of the last century was based on fashionable fads (e.g., "Mass facing the people") defended on historical grounds which scholars have now abandoned.

Houston still releases no statistics on any breakdown of cradle Catholic traddies vs genuine Anglican converts among its laity, but I think it's puzzling that so many photos we find on the web of ordinariate masses show ladies wearing chapel veils, when this hasn't been part of the Anglican tradition for some centuries, and indeed is only occasionally seen in diocesan parishes.

Maybe there are people who feel wearing chapel veils at an ordinariate mass puts them on an intermediate spiritual plane, but they'll ascend to the Latin one when they're ready.

Degrees Of Latin Mass?

Let me be clear: I've been to a Latin mass. But this was back when nobody had a choice in the matter, about 1957 or 1958, when my mother took my sister and me to a wedding in Elizabeth, NJ. Apparently this was a friend of some sort, or possibly a distant relative (our family was solidly Protestant), and I'm not entirely sure why she did it at all. My memory of it is that she acted as though she were doing something furtive. I have a vague memory of a darkened nave with a bright gold reredos in the smoky distance with some sort of fussing and mumbling going on up front. We were definitely in the last pew. We probably came in late.

I went on the web to see if I could find any photos of Catholic churches in Elizabeth, NJ, and I think this one, St Genevieve's, best reconstructs my memory:

However, the altar and reredos were lit, and I was seeing it through a screen of adult bodies. At one point, bells started ringing, and my mother became more agitated than usual and hustled us out. This all raises more questions for me, but I'll leave most of them aside.

It does occur to me that my mother was raised Methodist, which would make me eligible for membership in the ordinariate, and that I did attend that Latin mass makes me an Anglo-Catholic, notwithstanding my 30 years as an Episcopalian, which are now thus canonically nugatory as far as Houston is concerned.

Indeed, I think if I were to obtain a correspondence school certificate of some sort, I would qualify for ordination by Bp Lopes as a Catholic priest -- especially if I could get Fr Bartus to put in a good word. That, I suspect, would be key. ("What about Fr Perkins?" you may ask. "He knows what you think of him." I answer that the man would forget who I was in his anxiety to gain a new priest.)

But back to Latin. My regular correspondent raises an intriguing set of questions about the Ordinary Form Latin mass at Our Lady of the Atonement:

Do, or perhaps it’s already “did” the congregation say the responses? Many of the differences between the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form which this blogger notes —-position of the altar, male and female servers, etc—-would presumably not apply to celebrations at Our Lady of the Atonement. But I assume the OF is always done as what used to be called a “Dialogue Mass” (see below). Of course serious traddies also have issues with changes in the prayers themselves, which are there regardless of what language the OF is celebrated in.

The Wikipedia article my correspondent links says,

In 1922, the Holy See gave approval to the practice whereby "at least in religious houses and institutions for youth, all people assisting at the Mass make the responses at the same time with the acolytes", a practice that it declared praiseworthy in view of the evident desire expressed in papal documents "to instil into the souls of the faithful a truly Christian and collective spirit, and prepare them for active participation." The practice was already established without authorisation in Belgium and in Germany before the First World War. Further approval was granted in 1935 and 1958.

. . . The Dialogue Mass never became prevalent in English-speaking countries and current celebrations of Tridentine Mass in these countries are in practice rarely structured as a Dialogue Mass.

So the question becomes whether the OF Latin mass is ever much more than a freelanced, mongrelized dilution of the Tridentine mass no matter what, and whether it could have much appeal to serious traddies. But this in turn raises the question of whom it actually appeals to -- some non-trivial number of people felt disappointment at minimum when Houston discontinued the OF Latin mass at OLA. and the visitor from Greenville, TX, with the OF Latin mass at his home parish no longer available, nevertheless felt the Tridentine versions at FSSP or SSPX parishes come with cliquish baggage.

More On The "1559" Latin Book Of Common Prayer

A visitor comments,

The Liber Precum Publicarum appeared in 1560. It wasn't really a translation of the 1559 Prayer Book, or only in part. It contained things (like a kind of "Requiem Communion Service") that were not in that book at all, and in some cases (such as the formula for a declaration of forgiveness of sins in the Communion Service, which far from being a translation of that of 1559 was actually a Latin translation of that in the 1548 "Order of Communion," which was the Catholic formula of absolution) things contradicting it.

This can be found on line here. The visitor refers me to a fascinating 1856 reprise of a controversy from the late 1500s regarding a rumor that Pope Pius IV would approve the use of this prayer book, provided Elizabeth would recognize his primacy. The thrust of the 1856 reprise was that the rumor was circulated by Jesuit agents about 1581 for the purpose of sowing dissension. (Sounds a lot like more recent Russian bots to me.)

Those writers, who have made the assertion on Ware's authority, have utterly mistaken their author; for he mentions the rumour for the purpose of refuting it. The whole was a trick of the missionary priests, in order to produce divisions in the English Church. On such slender grounds does the assertion rest: and yet we find it repeated by one writer after another, until many persons actually receive the statement as an undoubted fact.

The 1856 summary of the controversy concludes,

It is, of course, a matter of small moment to a member of the Church of England, whether the Bishop of Rome recognised our Orders, and approved our Liturgy, or no; but should any of your readers be curious in the matter, they may see the pros and cons in Courayer's Defence of the Dissertation on the Validity of the English Ordinations, vol. ii. pp. 359-378.

A modern observer of the 1856 controversy concludes,

It is clearly all rumour and hearsay, and the most probable motive for it, if there was a motive and it was not simply accidental (which is the most likely), is that it was used as a wedge issue to divide Catholics. That would fit with the actual appearance of the rumour in the historical record, which was perhaps in the 1580s, when the regime felt the need to counter the impact of the Jesuits and seminary priests.

What this suggests to me is the general level of uncertainty, sorta-kinda, and ultimately duplicity that seems to surface in any serious inquiry into what "Anglicanism" consists of. Isn't this what the "Anglican patrimony" is, especially since those who celebrate it seem otherwise unable to define it with any greater precision?

Is There A Klingon Mass?

I've been looking for a couple of days for either a Klingon mass or a Klingon version of the Book of Common Prayer. So far, I've found neither, but this is a possible substitute:

Actually, that I can't find anything better so far boosts my view of human nature, although I will say that Fr Ian Davies, the current rector of St Thomas Anglo-Catholic Hollywood, did say his inaugural mass there in Welsh. But I promised yesterday that I'd have more to say about "restorationism", or at least its kissin' cousin, ordinariate Anglican Catholicism, or whatever we can properly call it -- I'd be interested to hear suggestions here. Clearly the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, Fr Hunwicke, and other outspoken advocates of this version of "Catholicism" see it as something beyond just the Divine Worship Missal, however vague whatever it is may be.

To get there, I'll cite an e-mail I received the other day from a visitor whom I believe is either a sedevacantist or something very similar (his comments are good-humored and often fun). In response to a remark I quoted from my regular correspondent regarding Article XXIV, he said,

Obviously your current correspondent doesn’t have a clue about the Anglican use of Latin amongst the educated.

I must have five different editions of the Latin BCP and two of the Greek. Also, you’re blessed to have Latin services in SF and in LA at Episcopal parishes, not to mention S. Thomas in NYC which uses a bit of Latin.

The irony is that the article was written in Latin. How to circumvent it? Study Latin!

I forwarded this to my regular correspondent, who replied,

Latin (and ancient Greek) BCPs are a curiosity along the lines of Winnie Ille Pu, although there was the occasional Latin CofE service at Oxford where Latin was fluently understood by some up to and including the early 20th C. That is the point—-that the hearers understand it. I think that trying to strike up a conversation in Latin with even a long-time TLM attendee would be a wash. And of course the Latin mass at OLA was not the BCP in Latin, but the OF of the Roman Rite. No element of the “Anglican Patrimony” there.

I agree that some mixture of linguistic facility and excess leisure among the English educated classes did result in things like translations of Paradise Lost into Latin dactylic hexameter, when Milton himself had too much else to think about. But I think there's more to Latin Books of Common Prayer than that. The sedevacantist visitor sent me a link to a heavily annotated 1964 pamphlet cataloging the numerous Latin versions of the Book of Common Prayer. This is more serious than, say, 1066 and All That.

Why? Why should so many have done this, starting in 1559, with an authorized new translation in 1665 and an unauthorized one in 1865, much reprinted through the early 20th century? (The 1559 is the one the visitor mentions now used at St Thomas Hollywood during Advent.) The dates are certainly significant. Clearly 1559 and 1665 would have been times when such a translation would have lent prestige to the Church of England following political turmoil. The late 19th and early 20th centuries would have been the peak times for the Oxford Movement.

This is not a bagatelle on the order of a Klingon Bar Mitzvah. I think it reflects a deep insecurity in the Church of England that it should need to borrow authenticity via a Latin version of its liturgy, first to reestablish the credibility of the monarchy following periods of political turmoil, and then during the Oxford Movement to provide respectability for the arriviste industrialists who were beginning to marry into aristocratic families and travel in their circles. These people were, I suspect, deeply insecure. They endowed Gothic churches and Gothic university campuses from the same need to invent a pedigree for themselves.

There's a third motive, which I think is more recent, which is to bolster the Anglican "tree and branch" theory of the Christian church. It takes the East-West schism as a given, and then it asserts that if the Orthodox are a branch of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the Anglicans must be the same thing. There's no more need for Anglicans to come back into the Church than for the Orthodox. (I was specificlally taught this in my TEC confirmation class in 1981.) This view is examined and refuted in detail by Bp Butler in The Church and Unity. Anglicanoum coetibus implicitly bypasses it by requiring Anglican laity to be received into the Church and clergy to be ordained, however perfunctory the process may be in practice.

The problem is that a certain hard core of Anglicans, represented by Fr Hunwicke and Mrs Gyapong, take the perfunctoriness of Anglicanorum coetibus's implementation to mean the Church has given up the fight, and in fact it's recognized that it must become more Anglican -- again, I can see no other interpretation for Fr Hunwicke's metaphorical implication last week that he, Mrs Gyapong, and others of like mind are figuratively traveling to Rome and unpacking the Anglican truths from their baggage finally to set the Church straight.

I briefly thought a worthwhile next step for fr Hunwicke might be to see that Thomas Cranmer, John Jewel, Matthew Parker, Richard Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and Jeremy Taylor are also translated into Latin to comport at an equal level with the Church Fathers, but on reflection, I'm sure Fr Hunwicke would dismiss such a step as utterly supererogatory. Rome will instead need to become more fluent in English fully to understand the precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony.

This, of course, is a movement for now closely allied to cradle Catholic "restorationists" and probably explains some of the appeal it has to cradle traddies. I think it's courting danger to go too close to either group.

A Parallel Case In Texas

A visitor e-mailed me following my most recent posts on Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, saying they reminded him of a very similar situation at his own parish. He promised that after a few days to collect his thoughts, he'd send a report. This he did.

I'm going to post the e-mail here without additional comment, because the points it raises go to conclusions I've been coming to myself concerning what Ross Douthat calls "restorationism", the movement in the Church to withdraw from Vatican II and return to some supposed golden age before it -- or in the case of Anglicanism, find some previously undiscovered orthodoxy in a schismatic movement and inject it into the Church, which is pretty clearly Fr Hunwicke's view of Anglicanorum coetibus.

This is dangerous.

The visitor writes,

The ongoing saga of Our Lady of the Atonement, its financial woes, and the apparent personality cult surrounding Fr Phillips and the late Dcn Orr bears many striking similarities to the slowly-devolving catastrophe at my own parish, St William the Confessor in Greenville, Texas.

I’ve been one of Fr Paul Weinberger’s parishioners for very nearly two decades now – first at Blessed Sacrament in Oak Cliff, and since 2004 at St William’s. In that time, I felt that I got to know him very well, and held him in great esteem for his fiery, orthodox preaching and reverent, traditional liturgy (including a Latin Novus Ordo Mass celebrated ad orientem).

The latter is what kept me coming back Sunday after Sunday; St William’s really was one of the only bastions of good liturgy in the Diocese of Dallas. It’s essential to keep this in mind, especially when considering it alongside the situation at Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio. Perceived beauty and reverence covers a multitude of sins, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to have chosen it.

Fr Paul came to Greenville in January 2004 after having been removed as pastor of Blessed Sacrament. It caused a bit of an uproar at the time, and Rod Dreher and several other luminaries attended his last Mass in Oak Cliff. They subsequently wrote about how the evil Bishop Grahmann (perhaps not untrue) removed the innocent Fr Paul for being too traditional. Latin, that’s what got him booted out to the furthest reaches of the Diocese. (“Financial mishandling” is what you’ll hear in inner diocesan circles.)

From an outsider’s perspective, the next decade-and-a-half would likely seem wonderful. We had eight Masses a weekend, ten-plus hours of confession a week, nightly rosary processions, a Latin Mass (Novus Ordo, the bulletin was careful to point out), and for the last three years all Masses were celebrated ad orientem. For someone who knows just enough about liturgy to be dangerous, this was nearly as good as it could get in Dallas.

But many things didn’t add up – not that many of us did the math until recently. Your correspondent from Our Lady of the Atonement says regarding Fr Phillips and Dcn Orr, “Both could do no wrong, and if you wanted to stay at the parish, you’d better not insinuate anything to the contrary”. This describes Fr Paul exactly.

I hardly noticed parishioners and friends falling away from St William’s over the years, but disappear they did, and in significant numbers. (It’s amazing how many old, familiar faces I’ve seen at Mass in the last couple weeks now that we have a new, interim pastor.) Fr Paul’s word was law, and you could not argue with him. I could write at length about the problems that I see through the recent gift of hindsight, but what likely will interest you most is what’s happened in the last year.

Nearly a year ago, Fr Paul had a falling out with one of the bigger families at the parish, who I’ll call the Smiths, due to problems with how Fr Paul had organized the annual confirmation Mass (at which our auxiliary bishop presided). In short, many kids were getting confirmed who were neither parishioners nor prepared – but more confirmations make a parish look good.

Things spiraled downwards over the next few months, and came to a head when Bishop Burns (our current bishop) opened an investigation on Fr Paul, allegedly for financial mishandling (again) and spiritual abuse. While I I can't discuss the details I know, I’ve personally spoken to Bishop Burns, to Fr Paul, and to several others involved, and it’s very clear to me that Fr Paul had been acting outside his bounds as a priest and pastor for many years. (He’s not solely at fault here; the two previous bishops, including now-Cardinal Farrell, washed their hands of him and let him do his own thing rather than acting in a pastoral manner more becoming of their rank.)

In May, Fr Paul privately contacted me and asked to discuss an important matter in secret. Knowing how bad things were, and earnestly wishing to help in any way possible, I agreed to meet him. I was treated to an hour-and-a-half-long, manipulative rant that attempted to play on my emotions by bringing up old memories of good times at St William’s, insinuations that some men weren’t wearing the pants in the family, and even that my wife was suffering because of all this…and I wouldn’t want my wife to suffer!

I realized I couldn’t do anything productive to help at this point, so our meeting ended. That evening Fr Paul emailed me saying he’d come up with a solution, and not to worry about it. The very next Sunday, his infamous (in our parish) “Smiths and Joneses” letter appeared on the back page of the bulletin. In it he gave his own crazy take on the events that transpired a year ago and that led to his being investigated. That was the last straw for many other parishioners, including some friends that have been at St William’s for the better part of thirty years. More letters were written to the bishop, and finally, at long last, Fr Paul was removed as pastor. He was, however, allowed to frame it as a “voluntary resignation”, which it absolutely was not, and included another letter to this effect in the bulletin.

Needless to say, Fr Paul was once again a martyr. A local traditionalist blog wrote a paean to Fr Paul, and it was discovered by some deeply hurt parishioners who unwisely gave the traddies ammo by commenting things like, “That’s the face of a man who makes you hate the Catholic Church”, and many more in like vein.St William’s is polluted by evil parishioners who hate their good, orthodox, holy priest – never mind all the evidence otherwise, like the many people told to their faces to never come back by Fr Paul.

It’s been a miserable year in Greenville, and a hard one – I’ve loved and respected Fr Paul for many years, and still do, but I will not blind myself to the serious problems he’s created and the damage he’s done. I don’t think he’s pure evil, as some parishioners would tell you, but he’s not an spotless victim, as others would claim. As your visitor wrote to Fr Phillips, over the years I’ve seen many good parishioners, benefactors and priests chased away from our parish by Fr Paul.

The lightbulb’s been lit, and it’s now very obvious to me what’s been going on. Fr Paul’s true calling was not being a priest or deacon, sad to say, and in another world he would have made it big. Instead, he’s been reduced to an associated pastor (of St Monica’s in Dallas) with extremely minimal duties. His fan club will migrate there, hopefully leaving St William’s a saner place – but what good he did is already being undone.

The very first act our new pastor did was to turn around the altar and celebrate Mass versus populum. St William’s reputation as the most reverent parish in the diocese will likely soon be done, but in a few months so will I. I won’t be going to the FSSP parish, of course. I can put up with a lot for good liturgy, but the atmosphere there is far too poisonous. This is why some cradle Catholics flee to the Ordinariate – only to find that the grass isn’t greener on the other side.

I could write so much more, and in far greater detail, but at some point I’d no longer be able to tell the difference between the plain truth and a mean-spirited rant. I’m hurt and angry, and so is most of our parish. But by choosing a parish with good liturgy to avoid suffering, we merely traded it for another form of pain. C’est la vie.

I think the cases of St William the Confessor and Our Lady of the Atonement are similar because they come from similar causes. which clearly date back before Benedict, Summorum Pontificum, and Anglicanorum coetibus. Unless more urgent news supersedes, I'll talk more about this tomorrow.

A Former Our Lady Of The Atonement Parishioner Speaks Out

I had an e-mail yesterday from a former OLA parishioner who outlines the history of Dcn Orr with Fr Phillips and the parish somewhat more fully:

I have been a parishioner at Our Lady of the Atonement (OLOTA) for the last 23 years. In March of 2019 the Archdiocese of San Antonio released a list of priests and religious that were credibly accused of sexual wrongdoing. Many priests and religious on the list have been known to us for a long time. But, I was stopped in my tracks when I came across Dn. Orr's name. Many of us who have been parishioners at OLOTA for a long time knew that there was a problem with Dn. Orr's ordination. It almost didn't happen, but we never were told the reason. The reason floated around the parish was something to do with insubordination, but none of us in the pews really knew.

A few days before this list came out Dn. Orr passed away. I knew Dn. Orr pretty well. I always loved his "fire and brimstone" sermons. Over the years I had many conversations with him. We were together on eight pilgrimages to Europe and I was saddened to learn of his untimely retirement from ministry. We even had a lengthy conversation about his retirement plans. In the 23 years that I knew Dn. Orr I never knew him to be in bad health. So when he passed away this year just before his fifty-ninth birthday, I was shocked. I attended his funeral Mass at OLOTA and was dismayed to learn that Fr. Phillips was forbidden to be part of the Mass.

I wondered about all of this. First, Dn, Orr's untimely passing, the list put out by the Archdiocese, and then Fr. Phillips not being allowed to participate in the funeral made me think that something was really wrong here. It immediately occurred to me that perhaps Dn. Orr took his own life. I expressed this thought to Fr. Phillips in an e-mail. He replied that the charge against Dn. Orr was unfounded and that he himself investigated the charge and said there was nothing to it. When I showed up at Mass the next Sunday I was met by Fr. Phillips and was soundly and loudly lambasted for even thinking something like this. I was amused by this display. I was told by Fr. Phillips that I could attend Mass, but I knew that he no longer had the power to remove me from the parish. Now everyone at our parish knew that Fr. Phillips and Dn. Orr were joined at the hip. Both could do no wrong and if you wanted to stay at the parish, you'd better not insinuate anything to the contrary. It is a joke to think that Fr. Phillips investigated Dn. Orr and found no wrongdoing. In fact, in the list that was put out by the Archbishop, the Archbishop makes mention that the diocese was never made aware of the charge made against Dn. Orr. In the interim we have learned that it was not one charge that was made, but several.

. . . Needless to say my relationship with Fr. Phillips has deteriorated dramatically. We do not speak to each other at all. In fact in all of the years that I attended OLOTA I went to the Latin Mass. I would only go to the AU Mass on holy days of obligation or on other feast days where the Latin Mass would not be offered. Two weeks ago in our parish the Latin Mass was ended, so now I attend another parish that offers the Latin Mass. This is all so sad. As we are learning from your blog, Fr. Phillips has a lot to answer for.

This contributes to a growing impression I have that successive archbishops went to great lengths to tolerate Our Lady of the Atonement's independent ways, but under Abp Garcia-Siller, things went too far -- I would guess through some combination of out-of-control spending and multiple surprises relating to Dcn Orr.

The visitor forwarded another e-mail, which he'd sent directly to Fr Phillips. An excerpt reads,

Over the years I have seen many good parishioners, benefactors and priests chased away from our parish by you and Dn. Orr. I would wonder about this fact, but then a lightbulb lit and I knew the reason. I went back and thought about the debacle with the teaching nuns, the run-ins you had with every bishop who served in the diocese, the priests that served at the parish, the many benefactors, large and small that you and Dn. Orr chased away. It all became very obvious to me what was going on. I have long felt that both you and Dn. Orr missed your true calling and that was not being a priest or a deacon, but where your talents truly lie, and that is being business men. You both had the demeanor and the talent to be unscrupulous business entrepreneurs. I truly think you both would have made it big.

On one hand, this is all water under the bridge at this point. Fr Phillips is clearly being edged farther and farther out of the parish, although I noted the plaintive appeal in the recent parish report that a donation to Our Lady's Dowry is not a donation to the parish. This suggests that separate projects under Phillips's control that effectively masquerade as Catholic charities continue.

A question that comes up for me as I learn more about Fr Phillips is exactly what happened between him and the TEC Bishop of Rhode Island to make him leave there and go to Texas. The version that's been accepted for many years is that Phillips was a "brave Rhode Island Episcopal priest" who sacrificed everything to become an Anglican Use Catholic. But we've all been around the block enough times here to suspect there are two sides to such stories, as we've seen most recently with the "Gilbertines". The truth of Phillips's departure from Rhode Island may never be known, but some people out there may yet be in a position to provide insight.

Nevertheless, the problem for Fr Lewis and Bp Lopes will be to find a way forward, since discontinuing the Latin mass is clearly driving away additional parishioners, and it looks as though the extent of the parish's financial problems is only beginning to come to light.

What's increasingly plain is that the picture of OLA that had built up over 40 years as the paradigmatic Anglican Use success story was pretty much a sham, a matter of smoke and mirrors. I think the smoke and mirrors continue with the North American ordinariate, and Bp Lopes will have to solve the problems beginning to crop up at OLA more than once, and on a larger scale. The question is whether the talent to do this is available for such a marginal operation.

New Insights Into Our Lady Of The Atonement's Recent History

After a day's reflection on the insights offered from visitors in Thursday's post, I think we can surmise more about why Abp Garcia-Siller removed Fr Phillips as pastor in January 2017. For starters, I think it's fair to conclude that the parish's financial problems didn't start when it went into the ordinariate. We already know that Fr Phillips had been less than transparent in financial dealings with the archdiocese, but I'm starting to wonder if things were worse than we've been led to believe.

Let's look at the peculiar situation of the unfinished school expansion. The parish took out a $6 million loan from the archdiocese for a school expansion that remains incomplete. The parish hasn't released enrollment history statistics (if indeed it even keeps them), but the Thursday visitor's account of how classes have been reduced over the years suggests it had peaked well before 2017. This in turn raises the question of whether the expansion, and the loan that financed it, were justified.

What led to an apparent long-term decline in enrollment isn't clear, in part because the parish has churned headmasters, which would keep any single one from getting a good handle on circumstances. However, I would guess that informal scuttlebutt over Dcn Orr's conduct with pubescent boys had something to do with it even before the archdiocese forced Orr's retirement. That Phillips had a pattern of enabling Orr couldn't have helped his case with the archbishop.

That several observers familiar with prudent budgeting and financial reporting would express the concerns they did on Thursday about the 2019 parish report suggests there must have been similar concerns of longer standing in the archdiocese, since it would have a schools department tasked with much closer supervision of the Atonement Academy. And the 2019 report, deeply flawed as it is, suggests an attempt at transparency that goes well beyond the attitude that must have prevailed under Fr Phillips.

Regarding the parish atmosphere, in particular the peculiar episode recounted in the google review a visitor cited Thursday, I sent this e-mail to Fr Lewis:

Fr Lewis, one of your parishioners referred me to a google review from a visitor to an Our Lady of the Atonement mass who said that, although he was Catholic, he was not allowed to receive communion. I cited this in today’s post on my blog, but it occurs to me that there may have been some misunderstanding – although the visitor apparently found an attempt to ask a priest about the parish after mass was unsatisfactory.

Can you clarify whether there may have been some misunderstanding on the visitor’s part as to whether he could receive the Sacrament at OLA as a Catholic, or explain what the rule was that prevented him from receiving it?

Many thanks!

So far, he hasn't replied. The consensus among visitors responding to Thursday's post was that we simply don't know enough about what happened in that episode to draw any firm conclusions, but it's clear that Fr Lewis has either been told not to communicate with me, or he has better things to do. This is unfortunate, since it would be an opportunity for him to set the tone. I could draft a perfectly reasonable reply that would go something like,

Mr Bruce, thanks for your e-mail. I'm simply not familiar with the incident the reviewer mentions, but our ushers' job is to facilitate the process for anyone in the pews who wishes to receive the Sacrament and make no judgment on eligibility. I spoke with Mr ____, the head usher, who tells me he isn't familiar with any such episode, so I can't be more helpful in this.

We're preparing a brief backgrounder in our Sunday bulletin, though, that does explain some practices unique to the ordinariate that might make things clearer for visitors and eliminate any possible misunderstandings. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and we'll keep this in mind going forward.

However, Fr Lewis so far hasn't sent this reply or any other. But the report from a parishioner that the parish has discontinued a Sunday leaflet that might contain useful background eliminates that particular remedy in any case.

It's hard not to conclude, though, that OLA is working steadily to evolve from a full ordinariate parish to a group-in-formation, and its school from a full school to a home school co-op. Apparently Fr Phillips tours ordinariate parishes giving useful advice on how to do this.

A Brief Digression Into Theological And Liturgical Confusion

I'd been on the fence about posting on a recent entry by Fr Hunwicke in which he comes down, quite definitively at least in his view, on what constitutes the Anglican Patrimony. (This was forwarded by a visitor; I'm not normally curious about what's on that man's mind.)

What is that Anglican Patrimony which we are supposed to have brought into the Ordinariates? I feel that it must be more than just a few little liturgical goodies. . . [1000 or so unnecessary words omitted}

[Now he gets to his original point.] I think the most succinct summary I know of what the Anglican Patrimony must mean is in a phrase which Cardinal Manning used ... I'm afraid ... in condemnation of Blessed John Henry Newman."I see much danger of an English Catholicism of which Newman is the highest type. It is the old Anglican, patristic, literary, Oxford tone transplanted into the Church"*. Exactly. That is precisely what we are, and what we have brought into the Church packed into our luggage. I pray that we may be able to make our own powerful contribution to the essential reconstruction of a Catholic Church . . .

Although his wording is absurdly imprecise -- the Anglican Patrimony is precisely (huh?) what Cardinal Manning says it is not, viz, a certain Oxford tone transplanted into the Church. Well, shut my mouth! Can't get more precise than that! And to think I've been under the impression that this man was unserious all these years!

But notice the metaphor Hunwicke uses throughout: the Anglican Patrimony is being brought into the Church. It's transplanted. It's packed into our luggage. The odd thing is that as a convert, I'm attracted to the things in the Church I never had and never was taught, or at best understood very imperfectly. I'm acutely aware that I have no qualifications to correct the Holy Father on anything (unless, of course, he claims that it's raining, when I've just come from a sunny day outside, but with the Holy Father, I'll be polite).

Thanks to a very thoughtful visitor, I'm steadily working my way through B C Butler's The Idea of the Church and The Church and Unity. Butler, himself a convert from Anglicanism, argues throughout these books that Anglicans are schismatics. Indeed, he goes to great trouble to show the extent to which the Church Fathers struggled with schisms like Arianism and Donatism, but Fr Hunwicke praises the "patristic" Oxford tone. Huh?

As far as I can see, Fr Hunwicke is taking an imprecise position that a certain Anglo-Catholic tone, polished of course largely by schismatics, is to be brought into the church as a "powerful contribution" to its "reconstruction". As far as I can tell, this can only be interpreted by saying that certain charming schismatics who know how to vest themselves and which way to face, are here to bring their pecuiiar heresies into the Church to help with its reconstruction. As the wag posted on a forum, Anglicanorum coetibus means the Church is to become gayer. We'll see how that works out in Calgary. But indeed, many Oxonian divines of just the stripe Fr Hunwicke admires were gay. Will Fr Hunwicke clarify?

What convinced me to post on Fr Hunwicke, though, was a link my regular correspondent sent me to a recent post by Russell Stutler, That Mysterious Ordinariate in Japan, Stutler, a US expatriate living in Japan, is, like me, a former Episcopalian who expected more of Anglicanorum coetibus than it delivered, became impatient, and instead became Catholic the usual way. His vision is quite a bit clearer than Fr Hunwicke's.

Stutler discusses his experiences visiting the Japanese deanery of the Australian ordinariate, clearly a Potemkin village with two former Anglican Japanese priests and something fewer than two dozen laity, although they've received some type of dispensation (at least, this is the claim) that allows them to provide the Sacrament to not-yet-converted Anglicans, so the exact numbers there, as everywhere else, are not clear.

He addresses, not quite as directly as I would perhaps like, the most peculiar question of what the appeal is to Japanese speakers of a mass in archaic English. In fact, there is a stapled Japanese-language translation (or such is claimed) of the DW Missal in use, but it's primarily from the Japanese novus ordo with the Cranmerian prayers taken from the Japanese edition of the TEC BCP. Apparently it might be possible to rewrite some of the Japanese in a more archaic form than thus appears, but this is not done, and I'm not entirely sure why this would be a good idea.

Stutler thinks it might fix things some if the Japanese ordinariate mass were celebrated ad orientem, but this simply takes us back to the question of "what problem are we trying to solve?" And this gets us back to the conundrum posed by Fr Hunwicke's formulation, such as it is, of what the Precious Treasures of the Anglican Spiritual Patrimony actually consist of. He's correct on one hand: if you can translate the Divine Worship Missal into Japanese (or claim to have done so) leaving out thee and thou, then the "few little liturgical goodies" actually don't mean much, and it's just a dozen Japanese dressing up and attending a somewhat questionable event (it appears there are "obstacles" that aren't elaborated to celebrating this thing in Tokyo, but I suspect the obstacles have something to do with the bishop).

Maybe, Stutler concludes, this would have more appeal if you hold it in a bigger space. .

Visitor Perspectives On Our Lady Of The Atonement's Financial Position

Reflecting on the news from Our Lady of the Atonement, I have a lot of questions, some of which aren't fully formed. Among other things, although the word "bankruptcy" has some up, we don't know if this is just a bluff as part of negotiations, whether it would be voluntary or involuntary, and many other contingencies, so I'm not inclined to press it without more input from knowledgeable parties. However, two visitors have added their perspectives. One says,

If you have not seen or have any interest in what real archdiocesan financial statements look like please see the links. I believe these are the most recent ones for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

This one is Chancery/Pastoral Center Operations.

I believe the Ordinariate has never published such items. I suspect their few parishes never have either. Solvency and transparency go hand in hand, as I am learning this week regarding my own world of prison educational programming.

I perused the materials from Atonement, they tell very little of the story. I would be interested in seeing an independent auditors report, which while intimidating has terrific value in planning and management.

It would be beneficial/interesting for them to publish solid enrollment numbers for each year they have operated. Details should include, retention rate, cost per pupil in each of the school "levels", graduation rate, ratio of new students to current students per year, demographics (inside/outside parish, ethnicity, and parishes they draw their students from). Growth/decline graphic.

With a parish that has admittedly aging facilities, I think that the "academy" expenses should probably take a back seat to building and maintenance issues. I would be interested in seeing what their administration salary expenses are. Unless they have 800 students, do they need 3 administrators?

Someplace there is a rubric the defines x% of parish income that goes to operating a school as healthy, concerning, unfeasible. If anything each diocese has something similar that they use to identify trends and sustainability.

One last thought. . . I'm struck by the tone-deafness of the following. . .

It is important for families to consider their level of giving. Like any other institution, the cost of “doing business” rises every year and we require sufficient financial resources to meet our obligations. As we are all creatures of habit, there is a tendency for parishioners to give the same periodic amount year after year. If the Lord has blessed you with a rise in salary/income, a portion of that could be provided to help support your parish.

We all have finite financial resources at our disposal. Like any family or institution as the cost increases there may be "lean times" when we have to cut back. Perhaps Atonement needs to admit they are in a lean time. Saying publicly that if you cannot meet your obligations and that others should cover your shortfalls is just selfish and self-centered. I fully understand that parishes encounter unexpected expenditures. In those cases soliciting funds to cover the costs is fully justified. But if you know you can't cover next years bills, you need to trim down your expenses.

Another visitor, this one familiar with the parish, took a closer look at the school:

I haven’t heard much as most of my “informants” have been lost to attrition. I did look at the faculty list and at the last five or six “Crusader Times” bulletins and just from that I can see it is pretty dire. Here are some things I noticed:

• The lower school classes have been halved in number (formerly there were two per grade through Fifth grade)
• The boys only/girls only classes format has been dropped
• The number of kids in some of the classes in the pictures look very small, only 16 children in Kinder and about 25 in Second grade
• The library expansion essentially took over the teachers’ office area, meaning they have moved somewhere else. This coupled with the article about the new Reading Rooms for students and Teachers means there must be quite a few empty classrooms.
• The $8900 needed to repair the air conditioning system for the non-classroom portion of the school is not in the operating budget and is not available in operating accounts indicating a pretty severe cash flow problem.

Is it bankrupt? Probably not but it is running very lean. It is a shadow of what it was and it may have to substantially reformat itself again(i.e. dump the high school) if it is to survive, but I think it is doable. It is just a shame they burned all their bridges with the Archdiocese.

What sticks out from these comments is a sense that there are normal professional practices followed in dioceses and Catholic schools, but people in responsible positions in both Houston and San Antonio either aren't aware of them or aren't expected to follow them.

Fr Perkins, as far as I can tell, was pulled out of Episcopalian parish ministry to take over as a vicar general in a Catholic diocese, as far as I can see with little or no experience in personnel or financial management.

Fr Lewis came from a medium size Episcopalian parish were he was coasting in matters like facility maintenance, but as far as I can see, he has no experience managing a school or, now, a major capital campaign.

Neither man seems to have learned much or risen to his new position. Both probably need to be replaced, but this doesn't address the general nonfeasance in Houston otherwise.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,

Yes, there is a Finance Council. Its meetings are not reported on outside its membership. It is apparently preparing an official handbook on financial policies, but this has not yet appeared. Presumably the OCSP inherited debt contracted for by Fr Phillips, possibly without full disclosure to the OCSP of the parish’s exposure. But for the Archdiocese to force the parish into formal bankruptcy seems extreme.

Our Lady Of The Atonement To File For Bankruptcy?

I received this e-mail from a visitor:

Just wondering if you heard that Our Lady of the Atonement will file for bankruptcy. School enrollment is low and I guess donations are down. If this parish and school are supposed to be the model for the Ordinariate, how did this happen? I think this Anglican-to-Catholic experiment is not working out. They should just come in to The Church like all the other converts. Of course they might have to hold their noses at first.

About a week ago I heard from a visitor who asked if I'd received a copy of the parish annual report. The visitor implied it was bad news, but provided no other detail.

I'm posting this sooner than my usual schedule in hopes other visitors may be able to provide more information. A web search provides no other information.

UPDATE: A copy of the annual report is here. The report from the business manager included within it makes it plain that the parish is not meeting its current expenses from revenue, but so far, I don't see the term "bankruptcy". In addition, a letter from Fr Lewis transmitting the report says only,

Dear Friend of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church and The Atonement Academy, We have completed our parish’s very first annual report, “Moving Forward Together,” a report that reflects upon the previous year and also looks forward to the continued development and growth of both our Catholic church and our Catholic, classical school. You may click here to directly access the report on our website.

I hope each of you will review the Annual Report 2018 2019 carefully, and I also hope you will find i n those pages a parish, church and school that incorporates Catholic faith and values in every possible way and that also responds to its community with transparency and dependability. Our heritage and traditions are vital to our future, and so too are th e parishioners and school families that have brought to 2019 2020 with great hope for the future! We pray to continue to be deserving of your support.

May God bless you for your continued support of Our Lady of The Atonement Catholic parish our church and our school. We must “Move Forward Together!”

While the report does outline deficit operations with no clear path to solvency, the financial reports are buried in back, and Fr Lewis's letter, quite bland, reflects no particular urgency and speaks only of "continued development and growth". If anyone has more information, particularly specifics on a plan to file for bankruptcy, I'll be most grateful to learn of it.

UPDATE: A web search is mostly unhelpful in locating exactly what a Catholic parish bankruptcy means. However, this article in The American Conservative offers some indirect insight:

The diocese of San Diego, for instance, reported to the bankruptcy court that it had over 500 accounts. But these were merely entries in a “Parish, School Diocese Loan Trust Account”, maintained in a single bank account at Union Bank of California.

Such pooling saves on administrative costs and allows dioceses to use a surplus in one area to cover shortfalls in another, often a legitimate course of action. But it has presented problems when it comes to working out which assets belong to whom in bankruptcy proceedings.

What I believe is the case at Our Lady of the Atonement is that when it was in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, it could benefit from this sort of pooling within the school account. When OLA left the archdiocese for the ordinariate, it may have lost the ability to fudge its accounts this way, but in addition, it had taken out new loans from the archdiocese for school construction that remains incomplete. It's easy to think Abp Garcia-Siller may not be in a mood to let OLA remain delinquent indefinitely.

Input from knowledgeable parties will be most gratefully accepted.

A Clue To The Kenyon Mystery

A visitor from the UK writes,

I've been following your blog about the antics of Fr Kenyon. A couple of months ago my parish priest told me that Kenyon had suffered a nervous breakdown whilst in Wythenshawe. I don't know anything further about him.

It is indeed strange that Kenyon's name has been removed from the Wythenshawe newsletter. He quite simply seems to have vanished.

As an altar server I have stood alongside many clergy and got to know a number of them quite well, but I have never, ever come across anyone like Kenyon before.

While "nervous breakdown" is not a medical diagnosis, the term is generally used to indicate a crisis based on underlying stress, anxiety, or depression that renders someone unable to function in everyday life. This would suggest that Fr Kenyon at some point became unable to function as a priest in the Diocese of Shrewsbury due to such a crisis.

In such circumstances, based on what research I've been able to conduct, a bishop may find it prudent to withdraw a priest's faculties, especially if instability might make it unwise for him to hear confessions. Added to that is the circumstance that Fr Kenyon is an extern priest in the Diocese of Shrewsbury, who may have to have his faculties renewed on an annual basis.

It's worth noting that he started in Shrewsbury in September 2017, but he disappears from the clergy list as of the end of August 2019. It's certainly possible that the bishop withdrew his faculties effective with the end of his second year, but Fr Kenyon may not have been functioning as a priest as a practical matter for some time before that.

This in turn is an issue that would normally be confidential, and I'm very sympathetic to the distress that this must cause him and his family. On the other hand, this is public problem insofar as two ordinariate-related sources on the web announced that Fr Kenyon would be returning to Canada and taking over for Msgr Reid in Victoria as of this October. I think one might reasonably ask if Fr Kenyon has actually been in a condition to do this.

We previously learned that Fr Kenyon was removed as pastor of a Stockport, UK parish in the Diocese of Shrewsbury less than a month after his arrival. This goes to what appears to be a longer-standing question of his suitability for the priesthood, and this in turn goes to continuing concerns expressed here that the formation process for former Anglican priests in Houston is clearly inadequate.

However, we simply don't know Fr Kenyon's current condition, nor the current location of him and his family. Whether he's in any position to return to work is also a serious question. My regular correspondent notes,

Presumably the OCSP is responsible for him. They can’t just leave him to go on social assistance in the UK.

What About Bad Diocesan Catechists?

I've had a couple of e-mails from a visitor who takes me to task for perhaps putting too much faith in licensed diocesan catechists. This is not to say I've had only good diocesan catechists. Our catechist for RCIA seems to be well thought of in the diocese, and he regularly conducts RCIA for several Hollywood parishes. I would give him maybe a B overall, and I sometimes disagreed with him, since he was something of a lib.

A catechist who was far worse comes to mind. She also works with several parishes, though not primarily with ours. She conducted a class on the Gospel of Luke. We'd come out of a class from Ascension Presents on the Epistole of James, which had outstanding class materials and a very good DVD from Jeff Cavins. My wife and I were sort of led to expect we'd get something similar from the class on Luke, since the class materials were also very good.

Instead, the catechist turned out to take a very condescending tone to our class full of adults, nearly all of whom were over 50. She decided we should have an "icebreaker" in which we'd get into small groups and tell each other about our "favorite Bible story". I was taken aback. I suppose I have some passages in the Old and New Testaments that I often come back to, but I wouldn't call them "favorites", and they might be hard to explain to strangers.

Not only that, but I saw this as an invitation for everyone to shift into Total Phony mode, in which everyone outdoes each other to think of the most goopy sentimental story they can and tries to outdo each other. "I like the one where Christ healed the leper". "I like the one where He healed the blind man." "I like the one where Elijah brought the boy back to life." And so forth.

I would be tempted to say, "I like the one where Eleazar slew the war elephant, but when the elephant died, it fell onto Eleazar and squashed him," or "I like the one where Achan and his family hid the silver they'd taken from the Canaanites in their tent, but Joshua had them all stoned and burned with fire." But that wouldn't be an icebreaker, I suppose.

My problem would be that even if I just sat and politely listened to everyone else being a phony, it would still be a huge waste of my time, when I was actually expecting serious Bible study. And finding sentimental goop in the Bible defeats the purpose.

The catechist then proceeded to give us an example of what sort of Bible stories we should tell, and predictably, she came up with "suffer the little children to come up to me" or some such. So I raised my hand and said, "I'm sorry, but I came here assuming we'd be studying the Gospel of Luke."

"She replied, "Well, but this evening, it's important that we have an icebreaker. This is just to break the ice."

I replied, "My ice is already broken," and my wife and I left.

The catechist more or less said the usual, "Have a nice evening, sir." One of our friends has taken me to task ever since for doing this. He thought the class wound up being good. Who knows? It certainly wasn't my style to be treated like an eight-year-old.

But this goes to whether I have an unrealistic view of diocesan catechists. I did think this episode through, and I decided this wasn't a hill I wanted to die on with the deacon responsible for our Bible study, and I just avoid anything where this catechist is involved from now on. I'm sure she'd prefer to avoid me, too.

The question I have for the visitor is twofold. First, what's the alternative? Even this phony lady did use good class materials, which I was able to read profitably without going to the class. And I keep imagining a class led by, for instance, Mrs Gyapong. It might not go into goopy Bible stories, but it might instead go into the precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony, which might well be even more misleading. And I would in fact prefer a level of commitment that comes from going through a diocesan formation program.

Back To CCD: The Good Shepherd Program

Regarding the Good Shepherd Catechesis program that was brought up last week, a visitor comments,

Good Shepherd Catechesis started in the 1950s as a lay-led catechesis program. It's grown a lot in Canada and the United States in the last several years.

In the last 10 or 15 years, the Montessori method had grown in popularity, at least in my area, among both Catholic, Protestant, and secular families. In fact, the public school system the next city over from mine opened a Montessori elementary school.

That's probably why Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has been implemented in a number of parishes and dioceses in the United States. Near as I can tell, it's spearheaded by Catholic moms. That's certainly the case in my diocese: parishes that have implemented it do so when moms go get CGS training at their own expense.

There are three or four CGS "atriums" in our diocese, including one in a Catholic preschool. An Episcopal parish and one of the ACNA churches each have one too. There has been. . . I won't say an outcry. . . but a strong desire to implement it in more places. All of it's coming from moms in pews. Part of the hold-up has been the expense. CGS training is expensive and time consuming: something like 300 hours to become a "Level III" catechist, and parishes aren't able to shell out for it. It also has to happen at one of a handful of CGS training centers. As I said, a few moms are doing it on their own so they can present it to their pastors as turnkey.

Other parishes (including mine) are adopting aspects of CGS, especially for younger children, without going full-tilt for the program.

I know nothing about Our Lady of the Atonement, but my relatives' Ordinariate parish wants to adopt CGS. Last I heard, they were talking about how to deal with the same sticker shock my own parish saw. But everything I've seen of it indicates that it's worth having.

I see two issues here. One is that, yet again, only a handful of ordinariate parishes would be able to afford it -- if Our Lady of the Atonement is considering it, will it pay the catechists' fees, or will they finance it themselves? But the impression I continue to have is that, beyond the small size of typical ordinariate groups, which would make adopting the program impractical from economies of scale vs expense, even if individual ordinariate members could afford the tuition, I think they'd just be too cheap to pay it -- especially if they've taken their children out of diocesan schools to join an ordinariate co-op.

The second issue is that quality catechesis doesn't seem to be on the minds of either ordinariate laity or clergy. Houston, as far as I'm aware, has issued no guidelines or policy nor recommended any program. It's interesting that the visitor above mentions TEC and ACNA parishes taking an interest in CGS -- but would that be part of what would make the ordinariate attractive to Anglicans? Apparently not, if there's a better chance for Anglicans to find CGS in their own denominations.

Related to that, it seems to me that the merits of a particular catechesis program are an issue that would appeal primarily to conscientious cradle Catholic families in the first place. As far as I can see, Houston's very vague idea of its target market would be disaffected Anglicans who'll jump ship over women's ordination and the 1979 BCP -- I hate to say it, but the issues with McCarrick and the other gay Catholic bishops have taken the Gene Robinson selling point off the table.

The problem there starts with the fact that the people who left TEC in the late 1970s are aging and were never as big a group as they thought they were. But the old observation about "continuers" is still accurate, that they'll tolerate unqualified priests and bishops, so why on earth would they be particular about the quality of a catechesis program? (And did I mention that they're cheap?) So Houston is probably correct in its unspoken assumption that a good catechesis program isn't what the market necessarily wants, except they've still got the problem that the market they're after isn't big and has probably already been fully exploited.

This seems to be an area where diocesan parishes, led by laity, are showing initiative and doing the best they can. Anglicanorum coetibus will have nothing to do with any progress in better catechizing Catholics, though it will evangelize few Protestants, either. This goes to the basic lack of seriousness in Houston and the inward-looking culture of ordinariate laity and clergy.

Fr Mike Schmitz, Crossfit, And CCD

I've had a lot of comments about this week's posts on Our Lady of the Atonement, home schooling, and whether or not there should be CCD at Our Lady of the Atonement. They brought to mind a recent YouTube from Fr Mike Schmitz:

At about 4:55, he talks about something he feels the Church can learn from Crossfit, that there might be a "prescribed workout" for the day, but the program makes it clear that for those who may not feel able to perform at that level (at least at the start), the workout can be scaled. As a new Catholic, I appreciate the idea he presents -- let's recognize that many visitors here have eased into Catholicism from being "Catholic lite" Anglicans in the first place.

keeping in mind that, as the recent letter from Fr Lewis reminds us, the ordinariates are meant to evangelize Protestants, this issue of CCD and Catholic schools is important. On one hand, it isn't an objective sin simply not to send one's children to Catholic school. There could be any number of reasons why this is impossible, and the Church does not demand the impossible.

I know of a few families from my Episcopalian days who sent their children to Catholic school, but it's important to remember that there were highly prestigious Episcopalian schools in the area, and in those cases, the Catholic schools were simply cheaper.

So for evangelized Protestants, the idea of Catholic schools is probably one where scaling the program will work to good effect -- being a good Catholic means effective budgeting. (Our pastor has our diocesan parish provide a course in budgeting, in fact.) Sending one's children to CCD on Saturdays seems like it would be an effective way to scale the program. What on earth is wrong with that?

Several visitors provided background to the absence of CCD at Our Lady of the Atonement based on yesterday's post. The most complete was this one:

OLA's motivation for not offering CCD in the past was so you would enroll your children in the school. The school was where you would get religious education. Again a way to bump up enrollment and their profit.

After joining the Ordinariate, it was announced they would now offer CCD. They began open registration expecting people to line up for classes. Well that did not happen. There wasn't enough interest and they squashed it.

I am now told they are going to use a different CCD curriculum called Good Shepherd. They are "confident" this will work...

Another responded,

When we were at that parish, Fr. Phillips and Jim Orr told the congregation that if we were parishioners with children, we had an obligation to put put them in the Academy. Therefore CCD was not necessary and they stopped having it. They did provide for sacramental preparation if we were new and hadn’t gotten around to getting our kids all their sacraments. AFTER that, you were expected to enroll them in the Atonement Academy. They would call you out on it to your face if you hadn’t complied. We left soon after that, around 2008.

Our diocesan parish has a K-8 school and a girls' high school, but if offers both CCD and RCIA for older teens, so clearly the Phillips approach isn't necessarily the case in the Church at large. (In fact, the parish recognizes that the schools are in a highly competitive environment, and parishioners will send their children to a better Catholic school across town if it comes to that. They take nothing for granted.)

But here's another question. My regular correspondent found mention in OLA bulletins that "training" of catechists is under way for the new Good Shepherd CCD program. What does that "training" involve, and how does it correspond to the three-year formation program for certified catechists that's found in dioceses?

Wouldn't catechesis for the families of converts need to be even more comprehensive than for longtime faithful Catholic families? Isn't there a greater danger that a former Anglican catechist, like the Mrs Schmidlap I've postulated who studied Jane Austen, may think she's got it all down because she used to be Anglican, and anyhow, she's an expert on the Anglican patrimony?

The same goes for the ordinariate priests who supervise these catechists. How many were received, ordained a deacon, and ordained a priest in the course of a weekend? How many were waived in with MDivs from Nashotah House or Yale?

And even if there's halting and belated attention now being paid to CCD in San Antonio, what policies govern it, and what standards exist for licensing catechists, in Houston? On one hand, someone woke up last month and recognized we're dealing with evangelization here. On the other, a decade after the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus, nobody's yet given much thought to catechesis. Why not, for instance, enroll prospective ordinariate catechists in diocesan formation programs? Not sure if anyone's thought of it.

This goes to the lack of seriousness in this effort, and it's a reflection on Bp Lopes.

"Still No CCD At OLOTA. "

A visitor sent me an e-mail with this brief message. To clarify my understanding, "CCD" refers, according to Wikipedia, to "a religious education program of the Roman Catholic Church, normally designed for children." OLOTA is the abbreviation sometimes used here to refer to the Our Lady of the Atonement ordinariate parish in San Antonio. But wait -- they have heavy furniture liturgy at OLOTA, don't they? And the ladies wear chapel veils, and everyone receives the Sacrament kneeling, right? That oughta make up for it, huh?

Someone may be able to clear up any misunderstanding here or provide a better explanation of what's going on -- but the big news from OLOTA recently has been Fr Lewis's cancellation of the Sunday evening OF Latin mass, which, since it'll be replaced with an English mass, makes no change in the availability of the Sacrament there. But that was the issue that got James Henry Schweiter Lowe and the others on Facebook all bent out of shape. In other words, as far as I can see, OLOTA is focused on issues of style -- maybe kneeling to receive the Sacrament, wearing a chapel veil, or having a Latin mass are nice to have, but hardly essential -- but a much more critical piece, religious education for the next generation, is missing.

How much catechesis did those dozens of kids receive at Holy Martyrs, the girls kneeling in chapel veils, before their confirmation last Pentecost, anyhow? A visitor commented on yesterday's post,

No Catholic school curriculum can substitute for or cover all knowledge needed to be a good Catholic, it can only HELP lay the foundation. I would like to think that between the school and my family, we gave our kids a pretty solid Catholic foundation.

That may be so, but the visitor continues, referring to the recent Pew numbers that allege 70% of Catholics do not believe in the Real Presence (I'm highly skeptical, but that's off topic for now):

In a true Catholic sense, priests and Bishops and Catholic Educators should be in full-on panic mode to correct this embarrassing, deadly defect that undercuts the entire foundation of Jesus’ sacrifice and restoration of salvation and our Catholic Faith.

But as best I can see, Fr Lewis and Bp Lopes are doing nothing about that embarrassing defect in one of the showcase parishes in the North American ordinariate. An incomplete CCD program is one thing. No CCD program at all is another -- but the bone of contention there is the Sunday evening Latin mass in any case. The visitor continues,

I agree it seems a little strange that the Ordinariate would confirm so many children and, again, call me jaded, it could be some parents are just checking the “got my kid confirmed by the quickest, easiest route” box but, in all fairness, it could be those folks are in the 30% of Catholics who believe in the Real Presence and do not find that sentiment in the local diocese. Call me jaded, are they are trying to fix the Barque of Peter or setting sail in a completely separate life boat? I think I know what you think.

Well, my view is that chapel veils for one's daughters are far cheaper than full Catholic school tuition, and the evidence we have at OLOTA is that the parents don't seem to care much if there's a CCD program for them for free, either.

One might argue that maybe those families are in fact sending their kids to CCD at a diocesan parish, but wouldn't that contradict a view that the diocese is unfriendly to the Real Presence? I would say that if a major ordinariate parish neglects CCD, that undermines any position that the ordinariate is doing much to keep the Barque of Peter afloat.

Houston, What About Religious Education?

At Sunday's mass, we had a pep talk from a certified catechist at our parish, urging parents to sign their children up for the religious education program in preparation for confirmation next Pentecost. He made the point that caring for children includes taking their Catholic formation seriously, and he noted how thankful he is to his own parents for doing this.

I grew up in different times, raised Presbyterian in a confirmation class that said we're not saved by works. I do think that had I had the opportunity to grow up in a conscientious Catholic family with good religious education, I might have responded differently to influences I encountered when I was young, but that would be in an alternate universe, and I have the life I had -- but I can't underestimate in hindsight the value of good catechesis.

But I keep coming back to the pictures of all the children being confirmed at Holy Martyrs Murrieta. Houston has no program for forming and certifying catechists. In our archdiocese, formation for catechists is a three-year program. Where does the North American ordinariate get its catechists? I have an uneasy feeling that at places like Holy Martyrs, the catechist is Mrs Schmidlap, who studied Jane Austen.

But the girls wear chapel veils, so I guess that makes it all OK. I was listening to a recent talk by Jordan Peterson on home schooling. He said he saw more of a point to home schooling than he would have seen 15 years ago, but the real issue is that parents need to communicate with their children and find out what they're actually being taught, and then determine what other options are available if they're needed. This seems like a good general appraisal of parental responsibility in all areas of education.

The question I have is whether the Catholic parents who take their families out of a diocesan parish and have their children confirmed at an ordinariate parish -- and it's hard to avoid thinking this is what happened at Holy Martyrs -- have given any thought to the quality of religious education their children are getting. If they think Mrs Schmidlap, who studied Jane Austen, is an adequate substitute for a certified diocesan catechist, they're neglecting their actual duties as Catholic parents.

And is anyone in Houston paying any attention to the issue of religious education for ordinariate children? Isn't this an area where parents should be getting serious guidance from clergy? Shouldn't the ordinariate be looking at how to provide adequate resources for this duty? This might go as far as suggesting parents send their children to catechism at a nearby diocesan parish, but that, of course, raises the question of what need the ordinariate parish actually fulfills for them.

Fr Phillips Represents A Dilemma

Reflecting on yesterday's post, my regular correspondent comments,

Fr Phillips was 67 when OLA entered the OCSP. A youngster by Ordinariate standards. Yet he was immediately demoted to “Pastor Emeritus” and replaced with someone who, I am sure, had no thought of relocating from 1600 miles away until approached by his superiors. This was of course presented as a Good News story by the OCSP and its flacks but even at the time there was dismay expressed by Phillips loyalists who saw the appointment for what it was—a disciplinary action.

So why is Fr Phillips the poster boy for the AC Society Conference? He was, of course, a major force in the run up to the erection of the North American Ordinariate—-communicating regularly with Christian Campbell and hosting the Becoming One get-together in San Antonio . Many hoped and expected he would be the first Ordinary. Presumably he did too —-he chose to repost this fawning follow-up article by “Mary Ann Mueller”

But when the OCSP was established he stunned the blogosphere by announcing that OLA would not be joining. This deprived the Ordinariate of financial resources and apparently of experienced leadership, although in retrospect maybe this part was not such a bad thing. But it made for an awkward start. And as you point out, despite his role, now formalised, as a mentor to some aspiring OCSP clergy his recipe for growing a group of 18 adults and children into a large thriving parish with a church and a school has not been reproducible.

He clearly remains a source of division at OLA. Someone suddenly decided that the conversation about him on the Anglican Ordinariate Forum did not showcase the Ordinariate at its best. So why give him centre stage at a conference supposedly celebrating AC? Won’t it just draw attention to the fact that “Ut unum sint” remains as elusive an aspiration in this tiny corner of the Church as it does in the larger Christian world?

The bottom line, it seems to me, is that there's no there there in Anglicanorum coetibus. The draw for the Anglicans is pretty much some combination of liturgy and Anglophile mummery, dressing up as Lady Chatterley and her gamekeeper for the parish picnic.

But this isn't the Catholic Church my wife and I discovered, for instance, when the ordinariate plans crashed and burned in Hollywood. A number of influential parishioners at St Mary of the Angels wound up becoming Catholic via RCIA, and all seem quite clearly better off becoming Catholic via established channels.

We're participating in a full range of activities at real parishes, learning about things like the Doctors of the Church, and finding perspectives on the Faith from many different cultural backgrounds. It seems like all the ordinariates have to offer is self-congratulation that the Catholic Church is finally becoming more Anglican. And of course, Fr Phillips.

Somehow Bp Lopes thinks this is adequate.

People Read This Blog!

Several visitors have e-mailed me to note that the post on the Facebook Anglican Ordinariate Forum with the erudite exchange between James Henry Schweiter Lowe and Christian Clay Columba Campbell has been deleted. Er, might it have been a better idea not to have posted such silliness in the first place?

Why The Veneration Of Fr Phillips?

My regular correspondent sent me a link to a thread on the Facebook Anglican Ordinariate forum from August 20, in which the original poster, who styles himself James Henry Schweiter Lowe, announces Fr Lewis's decision to end the evening OF Latin mass at Our Lady of the Atonement. In the ensuing discussion, Christian Clay Columba Campbell replies, "Perhaps he is doing away with the celebrant as much as the service?"

An extended exchange between James Henry Schweiter Lowe and Christian Clay Columba Campbell ensues, which touches on the issue that Fr Phillips was "involuntarily retired", although they "never told us the full story and actual reasons".

I think there were plenty of public reasons. When Abp Garcia-Siller removed him as pastor, he said it was because the OLA parish, under the Pastoral Provision, had become "not just unique but separate" from the archdiocese, an attitude that continues to seep out in ordinariate-related discussion threads, not excepting this one.

Beyond that, the archdiocese listed Phillips's deacon at OLA, James Orr, among clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse. The specific allegations involved dated from the 1990s, but complaints against Orr, such as kissing pubescent boys on the lips, were reported to me from much more recent years, with the assertion that when they were made to Phillips, he discounted them and took no action.

In other words, Phillips had been enabling and covering up abuse by Orr for at least 20 years. In fact, the parish and school probably could not have operated without Orr, based on accounts I've heard. Up to the time of Orr's death, Phillips continued a strange relationship with him, allowing him on parish property in spite of a ban and taking him on at least one pilgrimage.

Other reports indicate that Phillips cut financial corners, setting up parish accounts outside archdiocesan supervision (from which he apparently paid Orr) and other irregularities in areas like the bishop's appeal.

If Houston ever seeks to engage a church consultant, a worthwhile question would be why Our Lady of the Atonement is the only parish in either the Pastoral Provision or an ordinariate ever to grow de novo into a full Catholic parish with a school. Efforts to send Fr Phillips to other ordinariate communities following his retirement have not resulted in a reproducible formula, and in fact the few bits of advice he's given that have reached me involve things like tips on how to spoof building inspectors.

That the Phillips formula at Our Lady of the Atonement has so far not been reproducible should be deeply troubling.

My own view is that Fr Phillips is largely just an opportunist and a charlatan. That he should continue as some sort of eminence grise among the lay wannabes in the forums and elsewhere says a great deal about the whole Anglicanorum coetibus movement. Why has no stronger leader come along? Why is no younger successor rising in the ranks? Just yesterday Mrs Gyapong announced a forthcoming conference to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus

Our keynote speaker is Fr Christopher Phillips, the first Catholic priest in the world dedicated to an Anglican patrimonial form of liturgy and the founding pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas. He will be joined by other speakers, including respected Canadian Catholic writer David Warren, who has written at times about “things I miss from my Anglican days”.

It's worth looking back, in fact, to the runup to the establishment of the North American ordinariate, when Fr Phillips was a cheerleader who keynoted gatherings at places like St Mary of the Angels Hollywood -- that is, before St Mary of the Angels failed to go in and Fr Phillips himself held Our Lady of the Atonement out, until Abp Garcia-Siller removed him and he had no choice but to go in.

I was thinking just the other day that back in 2011-12, many of us thought Anglicanorum coetibus was a good idea because Fr Phillips said it was -- and we weren't sure quite who Fr Phillips was, of course, but he must have been an important guy.

Some of us are ten years older. Some apparently aren't.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,

Contra the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph, I think Fr Phillips had decided to enter the OCSP before Abp G-S went so far as to remove him. I think that is the obvious reading of “not just unique but separate.” But I now concede that Fr Phillips’ decision to take OLA into the Ordinariate must have been made ahead of some kind of threatened intervention on the part of the archbishop, if not one as drastic as removal from the parish. I have accused Abp G-S of being an enabler as long as OLA and the Academy were contributing to the diocesan coffers, but that does not explain why Fr Phillips woke up one day and decided to join the Ordinariate in the first place. More likely, the Deacon Orr situation and perhaps other instances of Fr Phillips's financial hanky-panky were becoming hard to ignore and Fr Phillips hoped to avoid diocesan reckoning by switching jurisdictions. His immediate sidelining, albeit without the disciplinary language employed by Abp G-S, suggests that whatever it was it was too egregious for Bp Lopes to ignore, whatever Fr Phillips might have hoped in jumping ship.