"Empowered"?

At least one visitor took note of the appearance of "empowered" in the Facebook exchange I covered in yesterday's post. It's so 80s. The visitor said, "Curious someone would think that Ordinariate laity are somehow more empowered." I don't think the word ever meant much. Various feminists would use it to insist that random this and that "empowered" them. Corporatespeak of the time insisted that their employees were "empowered". I remember a Dilbert comic strip from maybe 25 years ago, in which one of Dilbert's officemates, reflecting on his empowerment, said, "Yippee! It's green ink day!"

The problem of course, is that the ordinariate members in the Boston area aren't "empowered" at all. My regular correspondent noted,

As you mention, the Pastoral Provision congregation remained no more than a few dozen strong during its twenty-five year existence, and St Gregory’s was not large enough for Bp Lopes to appoint a replacement when Fr Liias took early retirement. Nor has the combined community experienced notable growth. I think Mr Covert correctly fears being abandoned by both jurisdictions.

There's a fair amount of historical record of ordinariate groups, if they're small and no clear replacement is available, to be dissolved when the priest relocates or retires. I simply don't know what other efforts Mr Covert may have made behind the scenes to continue the group after Fr Bradford's retirement, but the letter to Bp Uglietto that he made public seems completely counterproductive. After all, the group had had the use of an archdiocesan facility, with a priest of the archdiocese, on the basis that at least some of its members were part of an archdiocesan Pastoral Provision parish, although some others were in the ordinariate.

Now Mr Covert proposes that this group become entirely an ordinariate group under Bp Lopes but continue to use an archdiocesan facility. Not only that, of course, but the implication in his letter is that Bp Lopes will be able to come up with an ordinariate priest to say mass for the ordinariate group. We don't know, of course, if any such discussion has taken place with Houston, but it would almost certainly require the archdiocese to provide living quarters and some type of job to supplement the minimal compensation the ordinariate priest would get from the small group. This would depend entirely on the good will of the archdiocese.

However, the somewhat cryptic remark in the Facebook discussion, "BpU didn't want their people to get involved with ours," suggests that necessary good will may not have been available. Could one factor have been the attitude among ordinariate laity, certainly not curbed in any public way by Houston, that their liturgy and "reverence" make them superior to diocesan Catholics?

My regular correspondent notes that a small number of ordinariate groups have managed to continue after relocation or retirement of their founding priests made their future uncertain.

I think that St Alban, Rochester owes its continued existence, after Fr Cornelius’ very abrupt departure, a year or so in hiatus until Fr Catania’s arrival, another hiatus when Fr Catania failed to obtain a supplementary job or even a place to live from the Diocese of Rochester and had to move on, to the efforts of Andrew Jordan, who kept the group together with outings and Evensong until Fr Simington was finally appointed. The Lord helps those who help themselves in the OCSP, so Mr Covert is probably wise to start the local conversation.

And

Matthew Venuti was one of the first TEC clergymen ordained for the Ordinariate, in 2012. His group was very small. Thirty-one years old, with a wife and baby, he became the first OCSP priest to be appointed pastor of a diocesan parish, St Joan of Arc, Mobile. The St Gregory the Great community (note: a dedication which appears ill-fated) held Sunday mass in the rectory chapel, which in pictures appeared to hold about twenty at most. Fr Venuti had a serious heart attack in 2014, and in 2016 another heart attack forced his permanent retirement.

There continued to be a monthly and then weekly DW mass at St Joan of Arc (in the main church) celebrated by Msgr Larry Gipson, later with a local diocesan priest, but last year the community moved to a chapel on the property of another church in Mobile. The parish campus is undergoing major redevelopment so I am not sure how long-term this arrangement is, but in any event the community has continued to this point with little or no help from Houston.

Although I've got to think that anyone with the drive and capability actually to bring something like this off in the Boston area would not use the word "empowered".