(This, of course, leaves aside the literally instant ordinations where ordinariate priests have been received into the Church, ordained deacon, and ordained priest over the course of a weekend. This is apparently to create a big surprise for the priest's former Anglican bishop, which doesn't sound like the best idea, but then, I'm not Bp Lopes.)
Nevertheless, I've got to wonder what the rush was, that Fr Wooten should be treated so differently from Dcn Keyes. Could this be, for instance, to speed construction on rhw new St John Vianney Cleburne church building, for which a secret donor has gifted the parish a million dollars? Might we expect some announcement of progress in this area with such a major positive step in Fr Wooten's ordination?
I went to the St John Vianney website and checked the Land and Building News page, which has had no land or building news since 2017.
October 1st [2017] was a very special and significant day for St. John Vianney Catholic Church. After enjoying a delicious potluck lunch and parish meeting/rally day, we traveled in a caravan up the street to our new property, and blessed our new land for all time (Traversing the15 acres necessitated using a parishioner's pick up rather than the traditional procession!)Well, maybe Fr Wooten has been so busy with ordination and all, he hasn't had time to update the page, huh? But he's on the Staff Page as Parochial Administrator/Pastor, so some updates have been done. Wouldn't a million-dollar gift be worth adding to the web site as well? May as well put up the optimistic message sonner as later. Well, maybe someday.
My experience in my working career was when I took over something new, it would be important to show near-immediate progress, if not a finished project itself, at minimum a credible and professional project plan. And the project plan would need to be buttressed by a near-immediate completion of some milestone, however small, to establish a pattern of success..
So far, we've still seen no new events other than the YouTube videos I linked here in early September, this one and this one.
Even St John the Baptist Bridgeport, with a more modest anonymous gift, has announced it via the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, and it had previously engaged the church consulting firm Cram & Ferguson to develop a parish plan, as I've covered here.
It seems to me that a credible response to a million-dollar gift, one that would justify the apparent haste in ordaining Fr Wooten, would be some type of published project plan that would, at minimum, involve an announcement that Cram & Ferguson or some similar firm had been engaged to determine how best to move forward with this windfall. Instead, crickets.
Well, we do have those two YouTubes from September. But again, what makes me uncomfortable about the YouTubes is that they talk down to the audience, and they have a sorta-kinda-maybe-someday tone, evn though they assert that a million dollars has suddenly materialized to more forward. There are simply no specifics at all.
If Fr Wooten could make YouTubes to talk about the gift, is he not capable of a more formal and explicit written announcement? After all, my impression of Episcopal rectors is that, with elite educatoinal backgrounds, they're fully capable of effective written communication. (Well, that is, Episcopal rectors. Not so much the ex-Episcopal priests recruited into the ordinariate.)
So what were Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins intending to accomplish by fast-tracking Fr Wooten's ordination? So far, I don't see any visible reason for it. And my curiosity is still piqued -- can someone show us the wire transfer receipt for the million bucks? You can blank out the account numbers and stuff. Just show us the money's there. Heck, even last month's account statement from the bank will do.'
Otherwise, I still think there's a more than remote chance that someone's being conned.
