Response to your post on Katy, TX. Lopes is at it again - looking to establish a parish in an area with deep pockets. You pointed out, "It's hard to avoid thinking Houston is basically hoarding priests for some future project that might emerge. Three priests for a gathered group that worships in a school cafetorium, although since it's near the Houston nerve center of the great enterprise..."I think it's hard to draw a parallel between Episcopalian missionary bishops like Leonidas Polk (a highly complex figure in any case) and 21st century Catholics in the US. The Catholic infrastructure has been in place since it was established in times contemporary with Polk. An Anglican-directed missionary effort on the larger scale the visitor envisions would inevitably bring converts into an existing Catholic infrastructure. The visitor continues,That poor Portuguese bishop, has probably given away his hand... In an interview recently profiled by you, the Bishop says he is planning to build a High School in Houston:
We are looking at, you know, the building of a new Ordinariate high school here at the cathedral parish in Houston, and there's going to be a way that we embrace an educational mission that is very particular to us, with emphasis on music, art, classical learning — all of the great hallmarks of the English Cathedral School. And that will be new. That is a new expression of Catholic education.It is becoming obvious that Lopes is trying to build something of a monument to himself in the form of a high school. But the real question is, what is he doing to help support Anglicans wishing to enter the Catholic Church across America and Canada?It is becoming obvious he is trying to model himself after a typical territorial Bishop, when he should be looking to the Episcopal circuit riders, like Bishop Polk and Bishop Chase. Rather hoarding priests to try and build a Houston prep school system (which will appear to be for White Catholics and NOT Mexicans) he should be working with a skeleton crew and other Bishops to build a network of parishes with a formidable liturgical life.
If he offered something completely, as many successful religious societies have, Bishop Lopes might find many opportunities to grow things. Instead, is he trying to establish Lopes Prep, complete with feeder parishes to serve it.My own view is that Episcopalian parishes entering the Catholic Church on a corporate basis has never been much more than a fantasy, given the real-world experience from the late 1970s on. A more realistic strategy might be for a group from a TEC parish to agree the time had come and then to locate a compatible diocesan Catholic parish, with the group going to RCIA and being received at Easter in a coherent body.And how is this going? Is he forming clergy at any real rate?
When I became bishop, we had one celibate seminarian; now we have seven. That’s not bad for four years. And all seven and I would point out also three applicants for next year, all come from our parishes... we have marvelous vocations to the religious life. We have Ordinariate members in the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. We have Ordinariate members studying for the priesthood in other Catholic dioceses; we have Ordinariate members at the Benedictine Sisters of St. Walburga in Colorado. So there’s a way also that the Ordinariate is contributing to the vocational vibrancy of the Church in North America in ways outside of our own diocese.Isn't this like admitting his own failure? Why is a Bishop not building up his own jurisdiction? Is not letting these vocations "slip away" a sign that something isn't going right?How many married clergy are there? Doesn't he need to support them into old age? The Bishop is on the wrong track here.
My prediction, Lopes will start getting complaints sent to Rome and the CDF. If he can't oversee his jurisdiction, he will be forced to give authority back to other Ordinaries. If a local group of Anglicans were to appear, in Chicago for example, and developed a relationship with the local Cardinal Archbishop, rather than Lopes, there is little precluding them from forming a parish or starting the Ordinariate Mass at an established Parish.
Considering the wise man who built a house on sand, the reality of worship in a McMansion and the disinterest of Houston in all but Texas, it is the prudent path for any Anglican Catholic organization seeking Communion with Rome, is doing so outside the Ordinariate.
There's a certain amount of existing precedent for this -- our parish, in addition to the parish council, also has a Fil-Am council, in which Filipinos, a prosperous and influential group in the parish, can represent their particular concerns. (My wife and I find the Filipino input is always highly sensible and contributes to the reverence of the mass.)
But even there, how many actual diocesan parishes would ever wind up with a functioning Anglo Catholic council?
