Indianapolis Update

Following up on inquiries from a diocesan visitor to this blog from Indianapolis, my regular correspondent has discovered that Fr Moore celebrated his first Divine Worship mass at Holy Rosary, Indianapolis yesterday. As we read in the bulletin, he is also assisting at Good Shepherd, Indianapolis. It had been reported here that he would only be doing hospital chaplain work there.

As far as I can tell, there hasn't been any announcement from any ordinariate source on Fr Moore's assignment in Indianapolis. The status of the Divine Worship mass there is unique, with a group no longer listed on the ordinariate parish finder on the web site, but an ordinariate priest now serving in the area.

I was looking over the “Parish finder” on the web site to refresh my memory on this subject and noted, not for the first time, how poorly maintained and misleading it is. St Margaret, Katy is still there despite its closure having been officially announced months ago now. On the other hand, St Joseph of Arimathea, Indianapolis is long gone, despite the fact that a Divine Worship mass continues to be celebrated at Holy Rosary every Sunday. Christ the King, Tyendinaga has also disappeared from the list, although I gather that a local diocesan priest says mass for the group once a month—-a similar situation to that of St Gregory the Great, Mobile, which is still on the list. Strange.

As I've said here now and then, my experience of incompetence after a career of seeing it has been that, as opposed to random inadvertencies, incompetence is something habitual and ingrained, and it exists in organizations where those in authority actively foster it. If the powers that be don't want the bungling or nonfeasance, they'll fix things so they don't happen.

A parish finder exists so people who want to learn where to attend a nearby ordinariate group can find one. If it's kept up to date, it's an indication the ordinariate wants to do everything it can to encourage new members. If it isn't, it's an indication that making the sacraments available to new laity isn't a priority. I think we've learned over eight years where Houston's priorities lie.

For that matter, I believe it's been over a year -- someone may correct me here -- since an Ordinariate Observer has been published. Certainly there's been no public announcement for the ordinariate as a whole of the personnel moves in recent weeks, which is routine on diocesan web sites.

In fact, this blog is pretty much the only public source of current information on the ordinariate. The Indianapolis diocesan visitor, after all, e-mailed me, not Houston, to find out what was going on with Fr Moore, and by the way was curious as to why the heck I'm doing this.

You 're welcome, Bp Lopes.