There’s definitely an attitude of “we’ve got it right, and the rest of the Church has got it wrong,” at St. B’s, as throughout the Ordinariate. It doesn’t surprise me that they are flouting local guidelines the way they ignore authority in general, including Houston, when they don’t like what they’ve been told.It would be interesting to get a similar account from Mt Calvary, but not every parish has truth-tellers. I'm grateful for those that do, but I estimate this whole ordinariate story will be entirely historical in a fairly short time.St. Barnabas is a strange place. Most of the original Episcopalian congregation have gone - the original members who swam the Tiber in 2013 number fewer than 10 at this point. The congregation is almost entirely made up of traddy diocesan Catholics who want the trappings of the Tridentine Mass in English - people who were never Anglican at all. Lots of Pope Francis bashing, and Novus Ordo bashing. Not quite the purpose of Anglicanorum Coetibus, but I digress.
Father Catania is a contentious figure, who is largely responsible for having chased away most of the original congregation after he arrived. Anything deemed “too Anglican” was done away with (Gospel procession down the center aisle, birthday blessings, etc.) in favor of a stodgy “Traditional Latin Mass but in English” liturgy. Naturally, those who were assured nothing would change when they became Catholic, felt like they’d been duped, and left. Father Catania’s lack of pastoral skills made the transition much harder than it needed to be.
Alcohol is, and always has been, a problem at the parish. After Evensong, I’m told it’s customary for people to be at the Rectory drinking until well after Midnight. Fr Catania drinks openly and often.
About five years ago, the parish was left around four million dollars. After buying a bunch of property, including an historic three story mansion for a new rectory, completely remodeling the church, and building a large addition, the money is almost all gone. No effort has been made to grow the small congregation, so income is not nearly enough to cover expenses. The obsession with everything being fancy has left them broke. I’m told Fr. Catania left Mt. Calvary in similar straits after undertaking a renovation there, too.
My regular correspondent reacted,
You titled a column in 2016 “Fr Catania Rehabilitated?” Under the Steenson regime, he was exiled to Siberia, as you noted, and then an unsuccessful attempt was made to find a diocesan assignment for him in Rochester. The arrival of Bp Lopes resulted in a big turn-around in his fortunes.The question for me continues to be that the Church, especially the Catholic Church in the US and some other countries, is under major pressure, both from mobs and vandals who are tacitly encouraged by politicians, and from politicians using a manufactured medical crisis to impose special conditions on Christian and Jewish religious expression. This will have major repercussions on how dioceses operate for some time to come, even if the civil unrest and government persecutions abate.The larger picture—-that the Ordinariate is a sheltered workshop for Traddies, with campy Anglophile trappings but no real connection to Anglicanism or Anglicans—-is evident to me as I look around the web. Explains why at, say, the start-up group in Arden, NC I wrote to you about on July 6 everyone at the first mass was already a communicant. It has nothing to do with evangelism.
There was a cash crunch at St Barnabas earlier this year which supports the visitor’s contention that the endowment has pretty much been used up.
The North American ordinariate is pretty much irrelevant here, and its major challenge will probably be simply staving off financial extinction.
But also, in the context of New Testament psychology, for instance in the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) there's always a secret payoff to censoriousness. It's not hard to think the people who favor the heavy-furniture liturgy use it to compensate for other failings, apparently in this case using this parish as a respectable version of the Delta house.
Anglicanorum coetibus is looking more and more like a footnote to the current series of crises that isn't going to solve any particular problem, especially as COVID lockdowns put a financial strain on the ordinariate, and money that goes to the Church can be better used elsewhere.
