Prey Instinct And COVID Updates

I've learned that dog trainers, when they screen rescue and police canine candidates, look for something called "prey instinct", which might be characterized as energy, eagerness to work, and goal-directedness. One thing I've begun to notice about how Anglicanorum coetibus has shaken out in implementation is how, the more "Episcopalian" an ordinariate priest is, the less prey instinct he seems to have.

Instead, the inner circle appears to take on an air of clubbiness and complacency that I remember from my Ivy days. The ordinariate priests from non-Episcopalian backgrounds seem to work a lot harder.

As an example, my regular correspondent reports on the situation at St Margaret's Katy, TX:

The website and the Facebook page of this group remain up, but the former has apparently not been updated since Fr Mitchican’s priestly ordination in August 2018, and the last post on the latter is from December of that year. I did find references to celebrating mass at St Margaret’s on Fr Sellers’s Facebook page earlier this year, so I have no basis to pronounce the community defunct, but although Fr Sellers is clearly still involved he also celebrates Sunday mass elsewhere around Houston.

Fr Sellers was abruptly removed as President of the host school, so although he is the parochial administrator of St Margaret’s on the website, I can see that things might have become awkward for him in that role. Fr Mitchican, the school chaplain, streamed mass for the school community until recently (I think the school year is over), but no mention of St Margaret’s on his Facebook or Twitter pages. Fr Mitchican is an odd duck: he is one of three clergy (two Episcopalian) involved with this site; he writes for The Living Church; he blogs here. Despite his robust on-line presence, he has not felt motivated to do anything with St Margaret in this regard.

While I don't mean to detract in any way from my appraisal of Fr Perkins's foresightedness in self-quarantining well before there was a virus, my regular correspondent suggests I may have been too hasty in a blanket assertion in yesterday's post that The ordinariate community in Athens, GA is not listed on the ordinariate's parish finder.

It turns out that if you know exactly what to look for, you can find it there. I replied that if you click on the parish finder screen on anything near the state of Georgia on the map, the only group that comes up is the one in Charleston, SC.

It does, but until the map is enlarged by clicking the plus sign on the right of the screen it is impossible to see that the relevant cross-in-a-bubble is rooted in Georgia, because the one for South Carolina overlaps. Likewise only when the map is quite enlarged can one see that there are two communities in Orlando, one slightly east of the other. If you keep enlarging the map, locations becomes quite specific, but as you have demonstrated, the system is not ideal for those just taking a preliminary look at the map.

It doesn’t help that the list of parishes on the left does not include the names of states or provinces, and putting them in the “Search” box turns up nothing. It also doesn’t help that a lot of the information provided when you click on the community names is wrong: Our Lady of Hope has not met at 2552 Gillham Rd for years, to pick a random example. But it is not accurate to say that the chancery has not included St Aelred on the parish finder.

So I stand corrected and modify my opinion to suggest only that those in Houston who are theoretically responsible for directing potential members to ordinariate communities may not have the requisite prey instinct. However, the last I checked, the players on the opposing team still have that instinct in spades. I wish the best for Bp Lopes's continued recovery. Perhaps he can also plan for a carefully phased reopening of the chancery when all possible health conditions are exactly right.

In other developments, the request for an injunction by the Beloved Church in Lena, IL, was denied by the federal judge on Sunday, May 3.

“The Court understands Plaintiffs’ desire to come together for prayer and fellowship, particularly in these trying times,” U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee wrote in his opinion. “But even the foundational rights secured by the First Amendment are not without limits; they are subject to restriction if necessary to further compelling government interests — and, certainly, the prevention of mass infections and deaths qualifies. . ."

The Sunday service went forward despite Lee on Saturday night denying, without comment, Cassell’s request for a temporary restraining order to allow “worship without limitations” on Sunday morning.

Lee later issued his full opinion on Sunday night.

. . . Despite the church’s defiance of the stay-at-home order, [a spokesman] said the morning was “uneventful” and there’s no indication Cassell nor his parishioners were issued citations or faced other legal repercussion.

Finally ,several visitors have pointed out that the Romanian parishes that sued Illinois Gov Pritzker on similar grounds are Baptists and Pentecostalists, not Orthodox. The Orthodox Church in America in fact continues to support the civil COVID restrictions. I've commented that resistance to the restrictions will likely come from Evangelicals and other radical Protestants in any case. It appears that there's some consensus that limiting attendance at church services to ten people is acceptable, but this nevertheless does rule out any but the smallest gatherings.