So, What About Evangelization?

A visitor responded to yesterday's post:

Reading the letter you posted [from the bishop's secretary], I wonder if the author considers evangelization, and the growth that can result. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. The Ordinariate chancery should be concerned that their parishes are growing.

I think we can say that Houston has recognized for several years at this point that the market for Episcopalians to come over into the North American ordinariate is played out. But recall that in 1993, TEC Bp Clarence Pope, with Jeffrey Steenson in the room, told Cardinal Ratzinger that 250,000 would join an Anglican personal prelature. I won't dwell on John Hepworth's claim that 500,000 TAC members would swell those ranks. Instead, the North American ordinariate is stuck in the mid four figures, with the addition of Our Lady of the Atonement a major disappointment.

So for the past few years, Houston has instead relied on rebranding itself as a new kind of Catholic church, seeking to attract disaffected cradle Catholics. I'm not sure if this is working out much better, since the semi-official line appears to be that it offers a serious liturgy along pre-Conciliar lines, with de facto compulsory communion kneeling, in both kinds, and on the tongue, at least in some parishes. (But as far as I can see, the interest and growth at parishes like St Timothy Catonsville, which do not do this, is not much different from those that do.)

But here's an example of the "evangelization" I get from ordinariate members who are trying to change my own mind about their liturgy:

Surely you agree that the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi implies that some forms of worship are more pleasing to God than others, and that this especially applies to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

So given a choice between three options:

A) A Mass with direct origins in the earliest practices of the Church;
B) Mass A, but in English with additional prayers from a particular local tradition;
C) A made-up Mass originating in a brief (and retrospectively embarrassing) period of cultural giddiness.

I'm not sure why anyone would choose C*, but I'd love to hear your reasons.

By "C", the visitor is referring to the Ordinary Form, with the strong implication that the Second Council was "a brief (and retrospectively embarrassing) period of cultural giddiness". "A" I assume is the Latin mass, while "B" is the DW. So basically he's saying I'm a teeny-bopper Catholic. What a way to encourage me!

But let's say I reflect on this and decide this guy really has a point. So I go looking for a place to worship in a way pleasing to God, when Fr Jim just hasn't seen the light at our diocesan parish. I'm in luck! There's a community only 25 miles away! A one-hour round trip! So I go and find a dreary rented termite-ridden pile with a couple dozen there for Sunday mass, singing raggedly to an electronic keyboard. But they're effectively forced to take the sacrament in both kinds, kneeling, and on the tongue, which is far more pleasing to God than anything Fr Jim could possibly drum up.

At least, when we all get to go back to mass.

As far as I can see, only a few ordinariate parishes offer anything like the fantasy they want us all to believe in, the clone of All Saints Margaret Street (but of course, without all the gay guys). That's a bait and switch and just plain dishonest.

But the appeal to cradle Catholics is more troubling. The evangelizer above is edging close to pre-Conciliarism or sedevacantism, since he's more or less explicit in saying the Second Council was somehow misled by cultural giddiness. (I'm sure he'll offer an angry serving of word salad to deny this, with insults in the bargain.)

Bp Lopes himself speaks enthusiastically of the CDF's origin in the Inquisition. Yet as far as anyone can tell, it takes powerful pressure from his brother bishops to do anything about people like Vaughn Treco, who created a small following for himself by preaching just that sort of thing.

I don't know what the community is of which the angry visitor I quoted above is a member. His pastor should be concerned -- but more likely, Bp Lopes should maybe be concerned about the pastor. I think there are other Vaughn Trecos in the ordinariate that haven't been addressed. I pray for the sincere and capable priests in the ordinariate who must certainly be looking at their better options.

By their fruits. The good thing is how small this movement is. Evangelization won't fix it, that's something these folks don't do.