Fr Lewis is not an inspiring presence, sorry. Fr Moore continues to wear an Anglican style clerical collar. A visitor noted not long ago that he doesn't seem to have made the full transition. What's up with that?
This is simply not how I would do media, but there's nobody in Houston to provide guidance, and as far as I can see, there's nobody in the North American ordinariate who would be more telegenic or articulate, and that includes Bp Lopes. Maybe someone at Word on Fire could coach the bishop, or maybe he could study YouTubes of performances from Ven Fulton Sheen or Billy Graham. Press packages with photos of him raising the chalice ad orientem don't make it.
My regular correspondent sent me a link to the Christmas mass, said to be the third of the day on this past December 25, at Incarnation Orlando.
I would note that 25 people were visible in the nave. At a Christmas mass. Fr Holliday's delivery of the heavy-furniture liturgy is an irritating, monotonous drone. I suppose the 25 people there think mass is supposed to be this way. It took fully 20 minutes to get through the confession and start the mass of the catechumens.
My regular correspondent says,
A Toronto tourist/lifestyle blog recommending churches for Christmas Eve put St Michael’s Cathedral here in the #1 spot, but warned that it was likely to be filled to capacity (1600) for each of the three masses and two carol services. Today on the Anglican ordinariate Facebook page, someone volunteered that the Christmas Eve mass at St Thomas More, Toronto attracted “about” 60. They had no mass Christmas Day, so this was the total attendance for a Holy Day of Obligation, not to mention a feast which traditionally attracts those who otherwise attend church rarely.I've got to say that if the new line from Houston is to appeal to Catholics who'd prefer pre-Conciliar styles, the picture of priest-as-set-in-his-ways old guy is not appealing -- nor is the picture of a bishop as a wannabe set-in-his-ways old guy. Ad orientem at Incarnation Orlando with the unnecessarily repetitious, deliberately archaic and overformal liturgy that takes longer (over 90 minutes) to serve mass to 25 than it took our OF parish to serve maybe 1000 at a Christmas mass is not an argument for the ordinariate.
I've got to say that at Episcopal and "continuing" parishes that celebrated ad orientem, I had a much better sense of pace and delivery than I got from watching the Incarnation video, but then, they were using 1928 BCP or 1979 Rite One and not the DW Missal. If ordinariate masses are anything like that awful production at Incarnation, the CDF really needs to scrap this thing and start over -- or maybe leave evangelization to Bp Barron.
