How Will The Lockdowns Affect The Ordinariate?

Since religious services across all denominations are now effectively "public gatherings", they've largely been canceled until further notice. There are numerous Catholic options for daily and Sunday mass on line or on EWTN, including a daily mass from Bp Barron's private chapel conducted by Word on Fire clergy. Some of the orders are also providing additional devotional materials during this period.

However, a major issue is that no mass means no offering. Each Sunday mass collection is nominally about 2% of a parish's income total from this source, although Christmas and Easter are major ingatherings that can save a budget. But it's by no means certain that lockdowns, often the responsibility of state/provincial or local authorities, will be lifted by Holy Week.

It's generally recognized that lockdowns will have a massive economic effect in coming months. All denominations will be affected, especially if they don't receive normal sabbath offerings.

One possible mitigation, which so far I'm not seeing, is for bishops and pastors to issue urgent requests that parishioners mail in their normal pledges, pay them on line where facilities exist for this, or set up regular deductions to pay the parish. This would be good practice for anyone, including ordinariate members. But again, there's no mention of mass cancellations at all, nor any request that members consider keeping up their pledges via mail or on line, as of this morning on the ordinariate website.

But even this won't fully mitigate what will certainly be a major financial hit for nearly every parish, and although regular members will eventually get caught up, the budgeted amounts that parishes expected from Sunday pledges will probably never quite materialize over the rest of the year.

A number of ordinariate parishes are in precarious financial positions. I question whether all of the smaller groups will survive the lockdowns as well. Among other things, it will be hard for priests who don't have a solid online presence to keep such groups together over a longer period, or to maintain whatever minimal activities their pledges support. My regular correspondent notes,

I assume there will be some flexibility regarding mortgage payments, at least in the short run. But Fr Kenyon is supporting his family on diocesan supply work, now in hiatus. Presumably clergy with regular diocesan appointments will continue to be paid, but the full-time pastors of full parishes will quickly feel the bite. Not to mention the loss of energy and momentum in the Ordinariate as a whole. The worst possible time for Bp Lopes to be hors de combat. Hope his salary is endowed.

My regular correspondent notes that there is now a link to a letter from Fr Hough IV, variously referred to as the Dean, Rector, and Pastor of the Our Lady of Walsingham cathedral, that essentially just repeats the text of the e-mails Bp Lopes has sent to his clergy. The policy appears to be that any communication with faithful in the ordinariate is to go via priests and not the bishop, though this is certainly not what other bishops have done in the current crisis.

There is no mention in that letter urging parishioners to find other ways to submit their pledges than the Sunday basket.

I would guess, though, that Bp Lopes's public silence comes on the heels of whatever pressure he'd been feeling before the lockdowns that may have distracted him to the point that he fell off his attic ladder. especially if the status of the OCSP had been under some sort of review. The new, very serious, financial challenges to individual parishes and the Houston chancery will only exacerbate existing problems.