But as far as I've been able to determine, St Luke's has never put a full mass on YouTube at any of its venues. You'd think they'd be proud of it, huh? How's that all working out in the DC area, anyhow?
Actually, the most YouTube videos from ordinariate communities may well be from Incarnation Orlando. At least three feature visits by Bp Lopes. I'll say in passing that the interior at Orlando, like a number of other full [parishes in the ordinariate, comes off as pretty shabby -- even a little effort to dress the place up would pay huge dividends, and if the selling point is to make the ordinariate a foretaste of heaven, it'll help to lose the purgatory part there.
The video below is from a mass celebrated there by Bp Lopes on August 13, 2017.
It's worth noting that Bp Lopes speaks clearly and audibly even when facing the altar. We can probably attribute this to his Catholic formation as a priest, which of course the Anglican converts in the ordinariate have not had -- in fact, those who come from "continuing" backgrounds, or those with only marginal Episcopalian careers, won't have had good speaking skills you'd expect from a successful pastor in any mainstream denomination. But let's focus on the homily, which begins at about 14:30.
He refers to that weekend as "a time for us to be front and center with who we are as Catholics of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, what we do in the celebration of liturgy, in our evangelization, with our school, with all of the things that go into bringing up and bringing together our life in God. . ."
This is another example of what I've already noted is a tendency by Bp Lopes toward grand but gaseous generalities. He clearly points to "who we are" as something important and unique, but he never quite gets down to what that is. He mentions a "school" at Incarnation, but this is in fact a very iffy thing. My regular correspondent recently noted,
In checking the Incarnation, Orlando mass schedule for Christmas I noticed that there is a 7 am TLM celebrated “privately” on Thursdays for the “Homeschool Ministry.” When one looks under “Ministries” on the (unattractive and amateurish) website there is no mention of anything involving home schooling. The parish hosts a preschool established by Louis Campese’s daughter, although she no longer seems to be involved. When the OCSP website was first set up, the drop-down menu under “Parishes” included “Parishes” and “Schools,” of which the only one was St Vincent’s Academy, the Incarnation, Orlando pre-school. This has now disappeared from the OCSP website. In any event, I doubt anyone involved with the daycare is showing up at 7 am for the TLM.Bp Lopes himself never evangelizes, in the sense that Anglican converts to Catholicism have evangelized in the past (from John Dryden onward, in fact). Nor does he evangelize as Catholics sympathetic to Anglicanism, like Hllaire Belloc, have. Mostly he congratulates himself and his little flock, the size of a single average diocesan parish, for nobody's quite sure what.
The other thing I notice here is his condescending tone. "So, Catholics come here, and what we do -- is the mass -- and what we do -- is recognizable -- as the mass -- and get the little distinct accents -- that we have -- these prayers -- that we do. . ." He's almost apologetic over using the word "recognizable" which might be hard for eight-year-olds to absorb, so he goes slowly.
One thing that came back to me in watching the video of the Easter mass at St Thomas Episcopal, and recognizing some of the faces, is that Episcopalans continue to be prosperous people, intelligent, capable, accomplished professionals. If you get involved in an Episcopal parish, you inevitably meet doctors, attorneys, judges, PhDs, accountants, administrators, teachers. The clergy themselves, especially in prestigious parishes, are accomplished people. You do not talk down to Episcopalians.
So how well does Bp Lopes understand his audience, or indeed his flock? Incarnation Orlando was previously always a "continuing" parish, so it may not be at an Episcopalian cultural level to start with. But we're getting back to the question of what Anglicanorum coetibus was trying to accomplish. If ordinariate members in fact aren't Episcopalian types, and you do need to talk down to them like eight-year-olds, what was the point of setting up a whole special prelature?
On the other hand, if Bp Lopes is talking down to Episcopalians, what does this say about him as an evangelist? When St Paul addressed the Areopagus, he respected them as intelligent people. He knew his audience. If Bp Lopes doesn't know his audience -- either in Orlando or in the target market of Episcopalians -- he doesn't know his job. If in fact the people in Orlando need to be talked down to, then something else is wrong, but it's certainly wrong.
But our diocesan parish clergy are intelligent men themselves. In fact, although the parish has widely diverse occupational and educational levels, they speak to all of us directly. They don't talk down. Something's off kilter here.
