The payoff for the laity, if there is one, is traditional worship. There is not much to choose from in certain parts of Texas. Maybe that is why these parishes, if they succeed at all, do so in areas where there is a vacuum, or are in areas that geographically would have needed a parish.I think there's a series of cascading questions here. The first is "what is 'traditional worship'?" I've heard the objection to the Divine Worship missal that it's just a tricked-out verison of novus ordo, that it's in English, it contains Protestant prayers, and it dates from 2015. What on earth is "traditional" about it? (This reminds me of the Fox commentator Laura Ingraham, who just last week again called herself "Roman Catholic". Right, her Wikipedia entry lists the numerous B-list gentlemen she's dated over her long dating career without marrying any of them -- but she supports Lifesite News. Payoff?)I have a question: Is the laity the target audience of the Ordinariate Observer? I don't feel that it is.
Now, I know the visitor who wrote me about this is from one of the more stable and successful ordinariate communities, so he's speaking from that perspective. But only a dozen of the 40 or so sommunities are parishes, and of the remainder, not all provide ad orientem worship, and many have portable altars, worship in conference rooms or cafetoriums, and distribute the Sacrament standing. Not much tradition even there.
But ;let's go beyond that. The Evangelical pastor much in the news lately, John A MacArthur, has said that in the face of fines and penalties from the county for holding indoor worship without social distancing, attendance at his services has skyrocketed. Yet his church has no candles, no altar, no formal liturgy, no vestments, and normally no sacrament (and I assume it recognizes only two). It isn't "traditional worship", at least as Catholics use the term. But there's clearly a renewed demand for it.
In fact, Ven Fulton Sheen seems to have understood this demand and respectd Billy Graham and Robert Schuller. He preached at Schuller's venue. Catholics aren't required to abjure anything that isn't some version of high church. They're required to get the Sacrament each week, no other fuss and feathers involvd. People are welcome to their preference, and some parishes have a very reverent mass without calling attention to themselves as special -- but the level of churchmanship is up to the parish via its worship committee and the pastor.
But we're back to the issue of whether there's a payoff to being more Catholic than the pope, the worship committee, or the pastor a la Laura Ingraham. Among those could well be the absence of a school and the need to send one's children there, not to mention meeting its other demands on time and finance. Only one ordinariate parish has a school, and it's on shaky ground. Why is this? I suspect it's not a bug, it's a feature. If families simply went to the novus ordo parish across town, it might have a school, and they'd be on the horns of that dilemma.
The same goes for the fellowship, programs, and opporunities of a larger novus ordo parish. One of the things my wife and I miss during the current civil prohibitions has been the fellowship of wonderful Filipino and Latin friends, not to mention cradle Catholics we wouldn't have met otherwise. We've lost weekly Bible study and adoration, as well as regular social events. I question whether more than a few ordinariate parishes have anything like this range of activities. If people refuse to consider them because a parish like that probably also has female servers, that's not a bug, it's a feature.
The visitor also asks of the Ordinariate Observer is actually intended for the laity. Good question. I've asked it myself. I caan't avoid the feeling it's there as something for Bp Lopes to point to. and for whatever reason, he hasn't had to point to it for more than a year. I leave it to visitors to speculate as to why, but the thing to start with is to recognize it simply isn't a priority.
