The Out-Of-Print Altar Missal -- Is There Any Plan At All?

The more I reflect on the Divine Worship altar missal going out of print just in time to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus -- with "nothing certain" about a second printing and the publisher "gauging interest" -- the more I begin to think there was never a serious plan for the whole project, and there's certainly no strategy for going forward. My regular correspondent commented,

At first I thought that it was perhaps harsh to task Houston with helping the CTS “secure funding,” given that all three Ordinariates share DW, but on further reflection I realised that the OCSP is the only real market, since most of the OOLW groups use the OF, and would be hard pressed to come up with £300 to purchase a DW missal even if they wanted to use it, and the OOLSC, with its dozen congregations, is not going to be much help.

What do we think constituted the first run? A hundred copies? Hard to see there ever being demand for another hundred copies, but perhaps I am too cynical.

Let's back up, though, and ask how the number for the first print run was estimated. The DW Missal was published in 2015, fully six years after Anglicanorum coetibus. Whatever the actual print run, and however it was funded, it was never going to accommodate many more than the existing ordinariate groups at the time it was published (and very few have been formed since 2015 in any case). This suggests there wasn't a high level of optimism about the project as of the missal's publication. At best, there must have been a "cross that bridge when we come to it" outlook that simply deferred serious evaluation.

But I think this also reflects a steady change in how Houston, and probably the CDF, see the growth model for the North American ordinariate. The initial idea, outlined by Cardinal Wuerl in the summer of 2011, was that Episcopalian parishes would be lining up with their clergy, wardens, and property to join the ordinariate. After an initial very rocky start, with key parishes and clergy staying out, fewer than a dozen Anglican parishes that weren't already in the Pastoral Provision came in with those clergy, wardens, and property.

So then Houston seems to have moved in practice to the "gathered group" model, in which an Anglican priest or recent seminary graduate identifies a group of two dozen or so to meet in someone's front parlor or a diocesan chapel or school cafeteria in hopes that it will somehow grow to critical mass. Although Houston has tried to maintain a brave front, no new gathered groups of this sort have emerged in the last few years, and some are disappearing. This model also requires that the ordinariate priest rely on a diocesan job, either as a parish priest or a lay employee, which in turn requires a friendly bishop.

The most recent model appears to require a serious source of funding to establish a new facility that will attract a large-enough group de novo, which we might call a "fake it til you make it" strategy. The disadvantage here is that it requires a serious source of funding. Of the two examples we've seen so far, the one in Murrieta, CA a single family appears to be the source, and it may well be forgiving or heavily discounting the rent on a facility it owns.

In The Woodlands, TX, the Presentation parish has clearly been able to raise money in the low six figures to purchase a property with an expensive house on site, and it appears to be renovating a temporary structure to use as a mass site. I'm told it has acquired used pews from a Catholic parish. All of this, including mortgage payments, takes money, and it can't be coming from plate and pledge. I simply don't know if the foundation that was behind the Houston chancery might also be funding this effort, but clearly such deep pockets don't come along every day.

The bottom line, though, is reflected in the clear uncertainty about whether any further copies of the Divine Worship altar missal will ever be printed. Certainly if someone were able to put together a serious group, say, in Boise, ID that seemed to have promise, Houston would probably either scrounge a copy somewhere (maybe in the UK from a group that never uses it there?), but given the experience we've seen, this'll happen around the time pigs grow wings and start to fly.

So realistically, what we're seeing is Bp Lopes has no serious plan for growing the ordinariate, and this is reflected in the minimal likelihood that any further printing of the altar missal will take place. But given the groups that have already closed, I'm wondering why Houston hasn't retrieved the copies that those groups had been using and kept them for redistribution if it's ever needed.