What About St Augustine San Diego?

As I posted over the last few days, Fr Baaten, who had been the administrator for the St Augustine San Diego group, has moved to cover the group in Covina, which is in suburban Los Angeles County, more than 100 miles from San Diego, so it would not be practical for him to continue with both communities, at least under current conditions -- and the school where the St Augustine group meets remains closed until fall in any case.

But there;s another question: now-Dcn Keyes had followed \his path to ordination as a member of the St Augustine community, actually lives with his family in Murrieta, which of course is much more convenient to the Holy Martyrs community there. My regular correspondent comments,

Still musing on why the Keyes, living in Murrieta, joined an Ordinariate community an hour away in Del Mar Heights. This group, a former ACA parish based in Carlsbad, entered the Church in 2012 with 38 people. Fr Ortiz-Guzman’s retirement provided an ordination opportunity for Glenn Baaten , but from my observation of pictures on the Facebook page, attendance gradually dwindled to about a dozen (See picture from Easter 2017 below):

The Easter Vigil was cancelled in 2019 so that Fr Baaten could celebrate in Irvine.

More recently, however, there have been a number of special services—-Advent Lessons and Carols with the choir of Holy Martyrs, Murrieta, for example, and a regular monthly choral Evensong—-with more people visible, including Mr Keyes, serving or acting as subdeacon. I assume these have been his initiatives.

There is a new Permanent Deacon at St Augustine’s but he was an original member of the community, so not the one bringing fresh energy into the group. I suppose it is possible that Mr Keyes will be taking over when Fr Bartus returns to HM, although the FB page is very vague about plans for the fall. Indeed, nothing indicates that Fr Baaten has left.

I still don't understand the appeal of meeting in such small numbers -- if a group of three dozen shrinks to a dozen but grows to four dozen, it's still not viable no matter what. And Catholic missal publishers continue to print hard cover missals with hundreds of traditional hymns featuring Joachim Neander, Charles Wesley, Isaac Watts, and Ralph Vaughn Williams, among many others, clearly intended for large congregations with choir and organ at a reverent mass.

Come to think of it, we're registered at just such a parish, which in fact is recognized as an important part of its overall community. Surely such parishes exist in locations far more convenient than these widely scattered ordinariate groups, which, let's face it, have shown no real promise over nearly a decade -- not just in California, but anywhere.

It would be nice to imagine that Bp Lopes is using personnel reassignments in California to rethink how the ordinariate is going about things, but I kinda doubt it. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic didn't become an overused metaphor for nothing.