As of July 1, this community will be getting its fourth parish administrator since its creation in 2012. The founding members were former congregants of Fr Charles Hough III who followed him into the Church. Fr Hough III was appointed Vicar for Clergy of the OCSP in 2012 and then promoted to Vicar General. while remaining Vicar for Clergy. At that point he relinquished leadership of St John Vianney to Fr Jonathan Duncan.It doesn't appear that there are that many Plumsteads Episcopi in the North American ordinariate, and St John Vianney perhaps would be one if it could, but it isn't. Since the startup of the ordinariate, it looks like it's reserved for B-list priests, several of whom may have shown promise but eventually didn't quite turn out to be A-listers.In January 2016 Fr Duncan left Texas to take over Fr Chalmers’ congregation in Greenville, SC. Subsequently that community folded and Fr Duncan is now incardinated in the local diocese. Meanwhile, Fr Christopher Stainbrook, who had led St Timothy, Ft Worth into the Ordinariate, was asked to take over St Jphn Vianney. At the time I assumed this was because SJV was considered to have the more robust prospects for growth.
In May 2016 Fr Perkins was appointed Vicar-General of the OCSP and Fr Hough III seemed to disappear from the picture—-no longer Priest in Residence at OLW, no longer supplying at St Timothy, Ft Worth despite the fact that they had been left without a parish administrator since Fr Stainbrook’s departure. I assumed that there was some health issue, so I was surprised to discover his name popping up at several recent events at St Bartholomew, Katy, (a diocesan parish) as here, where he is described as “one of our favorite visiting priests.” Presumably his abrupt departure from his position as vicar general shortly after Bp Lopes took over was not on friendly terms.
Now Fr Stainbrook, whose departure left St Timothy, Ft Worth (now St Thomas Becket) without an administrator for over two years, is becoming Pastor of St Mary the Virgin, Arlington as of July 1. It appears from this letter that the new SJV administrator, Mr Scott Wooten, ordained to the diaconate last month, is on the fast track to ordination as a priest.
The congregation currently worships in an elementary school cafetorium and numbers about fifty, I would estimate. One hopes that Mr Wooten stays with them longer than their previous leaders.
Getting an ordinariate parish over the hurdle of several dozen members to parish status seems to be much harder than anyone would have predicted in 2011-12. On the other hand, from the group's history, it seems plain that the point of the ordinariate isn't so much to grow parishes as to provide careers for favored clergy.
What puzzles me is that at least in our archdiocese, priests are promoted for overall pastoral and administrative skills. In the North American ordinariate, either this isn't the case, or there are too few in the pool of priests, or the good ones aren't effectively used.
