But Anglicanorum coetibus added a puzzling piece of unnecessary complexity to its implementation, the concept of "membership" that appears in Article 5 of the Complementary Norms. For instance,
Those who have received all of the Sacraments of Initiation outside the Ordinariate are not ordinarily eligible for membership, unless they are members of a family belonging to the Ordinariate. . . . may be admitted to membership in the Ordinariate. . . . may be admitted to membership. . .This adds a factor that doesn't occur in diocesan Catholic parishes, where the faithful are "registered". This may entitle them to certain sacraments like marriage that would not be available if they weren't registered. But in Anglican denominations, being a "member" carries additional canonical and legal implications that don't occur in Catholic parishes, such as the eligibility to vote in parish elections or serve on the vestry. Why the CDF has elected to Protestantize the ordinariates in this way is a puzzle, but it has had implications in particular for the big Texas Pastoral Provision parishes that went into the North American ordinariate, a substantial part of its population.
So let's start with Our Lady of the Atonement. Following the removal of Fr Phillips as pastor by Abp Garcia-Siller at the start of 2017, the parish went into the ordinariate at the order of the CDF. This was plainly disruptive, no matter the merits of Fr Phillips's removal. But an additional factor was whether the existing parishioners who were "registered" in the diocesan Atonement parish would then become "members" of the ordinariate. A deal was offered by which all existing parishioners would be grandfathered in as "members", a gesture that plainly indicated their status would change in some important but unspecified way.
I ran into a 2017 post here that unintentionally gives an idea of the impact of this move. I quoted a visitor who gave an informed estimate of how many should have come into the ordinariate as a result:
Ordinariate population figures for Chair of St. Peter were from the Annuario Pontificum book from 2015 (so numbers from 2014) and listed 6,000 members. Assuming 1,500 or so new members via OLA’s entrance, the total population is probably still less than 8,000. . .We still don't know how many "members" came into the ordinriate from Our Lady of the Atonement in 2017, but it appears that the number was so much lower than the 1,500 estimated here as to be profoundly sobering. Add to that the impact of the recent discontinuance of the Latin mass there on Sunday evenings. A visitor who was impacted reports,
Three weeks ago, with a three week notice, the Latin Mass was ended at our parish. The parish that I attended for 23 years no longer has the Latin Mass. I have moved on to another parish that has the Traditional Latin Mass. . . . . For the life of me I can't see how this makes any sense. OLOTA is financially hurting so one would think Bp.Lopes and Fr. Lewis would at least look at the lost revenue and now the loss of parishioners. The Latin Mass was attended each week by at least 350 to 400 parishioners.The problem I see is that, whatever the merits or otherwise of Fr Phillips, he had established a parish that in a diocesan context successfully served a range of liturgically conservative Catholics. They didn't have to show an Ausweis to prove their eligibility for whatever version of worship they preferred there, but now the ones who attended under a set of expectations set up in the archdiocese have officially been thrown overboard by the ordinariate. By the visitor's account, which seems reasonable, there may have been hundreds who attended OLA specifically for its Latin mass and have now had to leave.
How is this a good thing? Since Houston has never released statistics, we'll never know for sure.
Another visitor recounted her experience at Our Lady of Walsingham:
I am a cradle Catholic who has been a parishioner at OLW since 2005. I started attending Mass here because at the time, it was the only Catholic church in town that had decent choral music. I am a singer who wanted to sing 16th Century polyphony in a Catholic church that valued reverence and beauty, joined the choir, and never looked back. I was married, and my children were baptized and have received other sacraments of initiation at OLW. . . . . I don't know much about other ordinariate communities. I will say that over the past few years our church has mainly attracted conservative Catholics, and not just white ones, who want a faithful community that values reverent masses. There has recently been a big inflow from Holy Rosary, a Houston archdiocesan church that has fallen apart because the Southern Dominican order that runs it brought in pastors who liberalized the Mass and fired a much-loved, orthodox DRE.I checked the web, and as far as I can see, Holy Rosary continues to be an outwardly successful parish that in fact seems to have better architecture than OLW, a music program, and a Latin OF mass. I probed the visitor a little farther, and she responded that her reasons for making the move were probably more in the direction of finding better religious education for her children. I reflected on this, and it occurred to me that in a post-Conciliar world, it's completely licit for her to drive wherever she pleases to attend whatever parish suits her and her family's needs, and in a pre-2012 world, that would have included Our Lady of Walsingham.
But post-2012, a cradle Catholic named Schultz or Bonelli would have to go onto Ancestry.com to discover an Episcopalian great aunt someplace to qualify as a "member" at Our Lady of Walsingham. Or alternatively, she could attend as a non-"member" but get her children confirmed there, making them in effect anchor babies but assuring her own "membership" in the ordinariate.
I wonder -- when you come through customs at the airport, there's a line for citizens and one for non-citizens. Is there a separate line for ordinariate members at the pearly gates?
There's another problem, which is that when the two big parishes were in archdioceses, they were under supervision by building departments, they were subject to audits by experienced staff, they were subject to safe environment policies and Virtus requirements, and they had leadership from experienced bishops who'd risen through the US hierarchy. This is not the case here -- I can't imagine a US diocese retaining a priest who'd turned out to be a gay activist with prior aliases. Now, they basically have Fr Perkins making excuses for what's no longer done there.
