"'Boutique'. . . Could You Elaborate On That?"

A visitor wrote,

On today's post, you write, "I'm not sure if I disagree, to tell the truth. I'm not here to say the ordinariate shouldn't be that, I'm just saying some of these people need to get a life, and that would include the prayer, sacramental, and fellowship life of the Catholic Church."

Could you elaborate on that? I am unsure just what you mean. I have not met the in crowd, who are going to Toronto and I am curious about them. Is it your position that they are too inward looking, and failing because of this?

I am shocked by the missionary zeal of the Ordinariate Priest I know. He works to jobs, one to serve a growing Ordinariate group, also serving at a local Diocese Church. From what I can tell, he is beloved in both communities.

His Ordinariate Parish works hard to be in step with the ministries of the Local Diocese and they seem to fit right in. Far more, say, than the Latin Only groups.

In other places, do you think this isn't the case? I worry that certain elite attitudes, instilled in us by Episcopalian Culture, prevents the Ordinariate from being effective, though this hasn't been my personal experience.

Well, just for starters, we have first-hand testimony on how the in crowd handles pastoral duties:

It does bother me that Fr. Fletcher is the OLW parochial vicar living in a house in The Woodlands that is worth almost a million dollars and that I haven't seen him since I found out about this Church of the Presentation.

Well, you've got to allow for how much time a dad has to take to get his family settled in their new McMansion, right? I think, from the details the visitor gives in his e-mail, we can narrow down who the ordinariate priest is who's serving both a diocesan parish and an ordinariate group and is busy at it, because, I hate to say it, there are actually so few in that position. I assume he won't be in Toronto trading pleasantries over wine and cheese with Mrs Gyapong. Dictionary.com defines "boutique" as

a small shop or a small specialty department within a larger store, especially one that sells fashionable clothes and accessories or a special selection of other merchandise. any small, exclusive business offering customized service.

The North American ordinariate fits that definition pretty closely, at least in what it wants to be, and I suppose that in a very few instances, it does fit that definition. Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston is probably the closest, if not the only, example. There's an upper tier of ordinariate priests, the graduates of Yale Divinity or Nashotah House, who form an elite, at least in their own minds, although they actually haven't been stellar performers -- most of them, in fact, have flamed out or never seriously undertook the work. But the current bishop is of Polish and Portuguese descent and was never Anglican.

In other areas, the North American ordinariate simply doesn't follow its own policies, and the bishop is pretty clearly OK with that. For instance, the Guide to Parish Development specifies that the relationship of ordinariate communities with their local dioceses should be "non-adversarial" or "supportive", and that they should act in concert with their local dioceses.

Yet the newest groups, in Murrieta and The Woodlands, appear to have been set up primarily to poach disgruntled cradle Catholics from the local dioceses, and Bp Barnes of San Bernardino appears to have expressed such reservations directly to Bp Lopes. The ordinariate's strategy is pretty clearly to get the cradle Catholics' families to confirm their children at the ordinariate groups, making them anchor babies for their parents, notwithstanding the parents were never anything but Catholic.

By the same token, the relationship between Our Lady of the Atonement and the Archdiocese of San Antonio appears to be bitterly adversarial. The conduct of Vaughn Treco appears to have irritated Abp Hebda to the point that Bp Lopes was forced to remove him and close that ordinariate group.

But this inclines me to post at greater length on how things stand with Anglicanorum coetibus on its tenth anniversary. And I wish I could schmooze over wine and cheese at some happier celebration, but I can't.