As you can see here, Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston has cancelled weekday masses (I saw this up yesterday, not sure when it was posted) and is determining the weekend schedule after the possible exposure of one of the clergy to Covid-19.Six months ago, of course, goes back to January, well before COVID and lockdowns were a thing. This applies to my observation on Fr Perkins's foresight in self-quarantining well before there was a virus. Speaking of Fr Perkins, or actually, not speaking of him, my regular correspondent reported earlier this week,Meanwhile, someone on the ordinariate informal discussion Facebook page complained that he had tried to contact the Chancery by email two months ago and got no response, then one month ago ditto, and an Our Lady of Walsingham parishioner responded that “our office said about 6 months ago that they were only accepting snail mail” which as someone else pointed out makes no sense.
Especially since in that period of time both the Bishop’s Appeal and the Seminarian Formation Fund Appeal have kicked off. In any event, the retirement of Laurie Miller seems to have left a large hole in the OCSP’s operation.
Bp Lopes made a visitation to St Barnabas, Omaha last Sunday [July 12] and I see from the photos on the Facebook page that Mr Vasquez-Weber accompanied him. Comparing pictures with those from a previous visit used to promote the event it appears that in the past Bp Lopes made such trips on his own. Of course this was before he broke his leg. Maybe J Henry helps with the bags.Although in the past, Fr Perkins in his capacity as vicar general did travel to Calgary last summer with Bp Lopes to address concerns there arising from this blog, and Fr Perkins did visit that parish earlier to make other assessments, which seem to have gone by the board. With J Henry's promotion to chancellor, it appears that Fr Perkins's role is decreasing -- but if the chancery is now responding only to hard-copy inquiries, the question is whether anybody there is doing much of anything.
Er, does Bp Lopes fly first class and J Henry fly coach, or what? Certainly in the days of Trollope and Henry James, the gentry rode to weekend country-house events in fist class railway coaches, while the servants who came with them rode in third. And what does the extra fare for J Henry do to the travel budget? (Don't forget to keep up your pledge to the bishop's appeal, by the way.)
UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,
Apropos of the relationship between J Henry’s appointment as Chancellor and Fr Perkins’ current low profile, I will point out that the previous Chancellor was also Bp Lopes’ Executive Assistant, as you can see near the end of this article and many other places round the web. She did not accompany Bp Lopes anywhere, nor did Msgr Steenson travel with his Executive Assistant.
If there is a concern that in-person office work could lead to COVID transmission, it seems to me that it would be logical in a work-from-home environment to conduct as much business as possible via e-mail, but based on the account we have, that's been the mode of communication that hasn't been used since even before the virus.
Another thing that strikes me is that our diocesan parish has been extremely resourceful in responding to this week's order forbidding inside masses by Gov Newsom. The parish is fortunate in having a fair-sized campus, with an enclosed patio beside the church building. Although the fully expanded schedule it briefly implemented last weekend hasn't been continued, it will be offering three Sunday masses on the patio in addition to a separate on line mass from inside the church, with lector and usher programs expanded to accommodate them.
It looks as though the strategy of the California bishops will be to do whatever they can to operate as normally as possible by interpreting the governor's orders creatively and permissively, while making sacrifices and going to extra lengths to do this. I simply don't see the same level of resourcefulness in the report from Houston.
