[T]he Australian Ordinariate . . . has been given less than a year by the Vatican to become financially viable or their future will be decided by the Australian Bishops (who will wipe them out). There is no way they will meet these financial goals.The letter itself, which was attached to the e-mail in a pdf, is reproduced below (click on the images for larger copies). The bottom line is pretty clear. Toward the bottom of the first page:Below is the message the Australian Ordinary emailed out to selected Ordinariate members with the attached file in the attachment of this email- but they never intended for the information to go public as they are keeping the information from others parties who should know. I ask you to publish the information in its entirety to bring some transparency into the matter as the former Ordinary Harry Entwistle is an incompetent fraud . . . who doomed the Australian Ordinariate, and Reid is little better: both appointed TAC bishops by Hepworth himself, and the apples did not fall far from the tree.
Dear Friends and Supporters of the Ordinariate,By now you will be aware that we have been, for some years, attempting to encourage the clergy, faithful and supporters of the Ordinariate to use various evangelism talents and tools to build up the membership. And that’s important if we hope for there to be subsequent generations in our communities, with one of the most pressing related problems to small membership being the ability to support financially new priests when our current clergy must retire. Most of them are on pensions of some sort, and many also have their own accommodation, so the issues of stipend, housing etc. have not been at the forefront of our collective thinking. We’ve been trying to make it more pressing, and now our Rome “parent” has requested that there be some concrete benchmarks or milestones looking ahead.
The attached letter from our Episcopal Vicar lays this out, following on from a Governing Council meeting last week.
With my prayers that we can ensure that there will indeed be future generations who have a stable church home in the Ordinariate!
Monsignor Carl Reid, Ordinary
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a timeline, and that timeline is dependent on us, the priests and laity of the Ordinariate.The Australian ordinariate has been the smallest and weakest of the three that were erected under Anglicanorum coetibus. What I find significant here is not that it's likely to be closed a year from now, but that the CDF appears to be monitoring all the ordinariates for signs of growth and financial health. It's simply not encouraging to say, "Well, at least it's not the North American or UK ordinariate that's threatened, huh?" That's not the good news. The bad news is that the CDF seems now to be interested in whether the whole project is worth the trouble.
- The major city parishes must be able to sustain financially a priest. These communities must generate and have in hand $30,000 by the end of 2021, and have the same amount in pledged donations for 2022, ending in 2023. The amount will be matched by the Ordinariate, provided each major city parish achieves the target.
- If this benchmark above is not met, then letters will be sent to the ACBC by January of 2022 at the latest, asking counsel regarding the future of OLSC.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
