The Power Of Wishful Thinking

I've mentioned now and then that I'm a true crime fan. One of the shows I watch is American Greed, which had a recent episode on Troy Stratos, who conned his marks out of millions by claiming to be a Hollywood producer. One reason I follow true crime is the insights it gives me into the more mundane motives behind the petty chicanery I see closer to home. While watching the MSNBC show on Stratos the other night, something kept bringing me back to Fr Scott Wooten and the mysterious million dollars that's going to build the church in Cleburne, TX.

Although Stratos claimed to be a producer, he was also playing a con that for want of a better name I would call the Saudi Royal Family scam. In this scam, the perp claims to be a member of, or to have close connections with, the Saudi royal family. His collateral-- the trappings that give him credibility -- is driving Rolls-Royces and living in hotel penthouses, spending lavishly at nightclubs and resorts. All this is, of course, heavily leveraged and paid for by house-of-cards arrangements that inevitably collapse.

But in the meantime, the heart of his operation is basically to say, "My share of the royal family's fortune is $2 billion. I'm impressed ty the brilliance of your _______ project, and I want to invest at least $42 million in it. However, I'm having some difficulty getting the transaction through your Treasury Department for final approval. I've been on the line to Secretary Mnuchin and even President Trump, of course, but this may still take a few more weeks. In the meantime, could you help me out with a mere $3.3 million to satisfy the requirements of _________ to secure final approval?"

The basic incentive is that via flattery and the prospect of great wealth in a few weeks time, the con artist milks the mark for large incremental amounts, with the prospect of the ultimate boodle always remaining a short distance away -- until the perp disappears, adopts a new name, and continues his schemes, leaving multiple marks holding the bag. This was the essence of the Troy Stratos scam.

I make no secret of my view that there's something hinky about Fr Wooten's mysterious million-dollar gift. I feel quite certain that if anyone prompted him to verify it in the most minimal way -- Father, could you show us just last month's bank statement? -- he'd give a folksy sorta-kinda rigamarole about how it's not that simple, you probably aren't all that familiar with how these things are done, the money is in a separate whoopdedoodle brokerage until it can be released, but it's the vice of curiosity to ask too many questions about this. Blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't put it past him to invite me into the confessional to confess my sin of curiosity, frankly.

I think the million-dollar gift is always going to dangle just out of reach, but in the meantime, he's gotten Houston to waive its maximum age requirement for ordination, ordain him priest on the fast track, and heaven knows what else. I'm sure there's a what else. He didn't resign his Episcopal orders for nothing in my view. Did Houston even try to contact Bp Iker? The plus for Houston is that it gives a distant hope of looking successful in the Fort Worth area, which had once had prospects of being a hotbed for new ordinariate parishes. My regular correspndent remarks,

This part of Texas has been quite the merry-go-round. Fr Chuck Hough III we have discussed before. Fr Kennedy has been posted here and there. Not much evidence of a coherent plan.

Anoher visitor comments on what this portends for Bp Lopes's future;

He can retire a Bishop if the Ordinariate lasts long enough and if it goes under, meh. Next stop, back to Rome or some other administrative job for a nuncio in DC or other such post. It’s all very rosy for Bishop Lopes and his live-in secretary/whatever–position-he-is, friend. There doesn’t seem to be a fire under him to produce results, but I also don’t see Rome investing new money or any effort into helping him out, either. Foot note in history, perhaps.

That Houston is placing bets on Fr Wooten and his mysterious donor is not a good sign.

Cleburne And The Millionaire

I'm just old enough to have vague memories of The Millionaire, a 1950s TV show that, according to Wikipedia,

explored the ways that sudden and unexpected wealth changed life, for better or for worse. It told the stories of people who were given one million dollars ($9.54 million in 2019 dollars) from a benefactor who insisted they must never know his identity, with one exception.

My memories are so vague that it's taken me a couple of months, now and then waking up suddenly in the early morning hours, to realize how much this hokey plot line resembles the bill of goods that's being sold in Cleburne. (The city of Cleburne, TX for that matter is named after Patrick Cleburne, a Confederate general who died a glorious but futile death in an ill-concevied charge at the Battle of Franklin, TN, just for some context here.)

Around the time I was waking up with repressed memories of the TV show, I was also thinking about the corrupt bosses I'd had who maintained some semblance of control in their orgainizations by fostering the illusion that they were just one happy working family, like say on Mary Tyler Moore, where everyone is flawed but lovable, which covers up for the reality that everyne is screwing everyone else's wives or husbands, and the whole department will be downsized next month due to ubiquitous nonfeasance.

Thus did brain-dead TV pollute our culture. But this brings me back to the instant issue: I sat up in bed early this mornimg recognizing that John Beresford Tipton, the anonymous benefactor in The Millionaire, is still active, still handing out random million-dollar checks for each week's episode, this one featuing the lucky parish of St John Vianney Cleburne. And Fr Wooten cautions us that the donor must remain anonymous, true to the TV fantasies of 1957.

But I keep taking this strange fantasy puzzle piece and trying to fit it into a hole in reality. For starters, there's no such thing as a random million-dollar grant. The version Fr Wooten gives in his YouTube presentation -- and there's no reference to it anywhere else insofar as I can find one -- is that some version of the John Beresford Tipton Foundationi -- presumably the Catholic Charities Departmet -- goes looking for worthy small Catholic parishes that it wants to turn into big ones, with million-dollar grants.

Fr Wooten's version is that he sorta-kinda got a phone call, in response to which he sorta-kinda put together a "little proposal", and a few weeks later he sorta-kinda got another phone call telling him it was on. (I still want to see the wire transfer receipt or just the bank statement.)

But let's take the real-world example I mentioned in yesterday'a post, St John the Baptist Bridgeport. It received a matching donatoin much smaller than a million dollars to complete just a portioni of the existing plan that had been developed by Cram & Ferguson, the church consulting firm. That seems like a much more credible story.

A serious grant proposal would go to the John Beresford Tipton Foundaion with something that had already been developed by Cram & Ferguson or equivalent. What is the current size of the group? What is the potential? What is the potential use of the property? Where on the property should the initial church phase go? What are the potential later phases? More important, what's the fundrasing plan going forward? How does the group plan to grow and upport the new building?

Every indication from Fr Wooten's YouTube presentations is that absolutely nothing like this has been prepared. If an actual million-dollar grant had been approved, we would see at least portions of the proposal on the parish website -- indeed, we'd have seen them well before the specific application was made. None of this would violate the Tipton Foundation's confidentiality.

On one hand, the audience I'm addressing here, at least the formal one that I target rhetorically, is of lay interested parties who are, however, just distant observers. I suspect actual ordinariate members are not numerous among visitors here, nor I would expect many actual donors to ordinariate parishes or Houston itself.

But I'm starting to have questions that need to be addressed more specifically. Why is Bp Lopes alllowing Fr Wooten to make these strange blue-sky YouTube presentations that have more in common with 60 year old TV shows than modern reality? Is he even aware of them?

Second, if there's been a million-dollar grant to further the growth of the St John Vianney parish, even if the John Beresford Tipton Foundation wants to be anonymous, why isn't Houston publicizng it? Why hasn't it even reached the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog?

Has Bp Lopes met with the movers and shakers at the John Beresford Tipton Foundation? Has he possibly tried to steer them toward sending the million where it might be more effectively used, for instance toward the existing serious plan at St John the Baptist Bridgeport?

We already have a parallel case in Houston's history, where Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes were duped into buying the "Gilbertine" hoax in Calgary. I'm increasingly convinced the million-dollar grant in Cleburne is just another episode of this same TV show. But when adults begin to buy into brain-dead TV fantasies, reality does have a way of stepping in, sooner rather than later.

Why The Rush To Ordain Fr Wooten In Cleburne?

My regular correspondent pointed out yesterday that Dcn Keyes was ordained transitional deacon in May with now-Fr Wooten. No date has been set for Dcn Keyes's priestly ordination, but Fr Wooten's took place just a week or so ago, after only five months as a transitional deacon, when the normal time for the ordinariate is more like a year.

(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.

More On Ordinariate Vocations

In yesterday's post, I was probably thinking unconsiously about the homily in Sunday's mass, which was given by the newly ordained transitional deacon who was one of our parish's regular celibate vocations. This celebrated his transitional ordination as well as his return to the parish for a visit. A major point he made was that his discernment and vocation process lasted 15 years. Since he appears to be in his mid-twenties, this would have put the start of the process in his early teens.

The target audience for Fr Mike Schmitz's YouTube presentations, which also stress discernment and vocation, also appears to be people in their teens, probably pre-college. As I think back to that stage in my life, if I'd had a vocation, I would definitely have needed the steady advice of a solid priest, as well as the support of my family (an uncle or even a brother in the priesthood wouldn't have hurt). Without real support in my mid-teens, it wouldn't happen.

But the Episcopalian process doesn't work that way. It's not a life decision, it's a career decision made late in college -- and as trends continue, it's made more and more as a second career, as well as a career option for women and gays. Anglicans follow the Episcopalian trend, and probably even more as a second career when the candidate fails to be ordained by an Episcopal bishop and falls back on the ACNA or a "continuing" group.

This means that Anglicanorum coetibus is recruiting Catholic clergy who are not only married but formed under entirely different circumstances. Even the celibate Episcopalians are most likely as gay as their TEC colleagues, and this applies to the celibate ex Episcopalians now in the North American ordinariate.

This is why I'm increasingly skeptical of the idea that Anglican priests can become Catholic with just a little touchup. Regarding this year's ordinations to the diaconate and priesthood in the ordinariaate, my regular correspondent notes,

Mr Keyes was ordained to the diaconate in May, at the same time as Scott Wooten, who was ordained priest last Wednesday. Have not seen any date posted for Mr Keyes’ priestly ordination, which according to the recent practice of the OCSP should not take place until the spring of 2021.

I hope the million dollars which has materialised for the construction of a church for Fr Wooten’s community did not play any part in his abbreviated stint as deacon, because that would be simony.

I would say that there has been no report anywhere of the OCSP Clergy Conference and no pictures, even on social media, of anything but Fr Wooten’s ordination in the cathedral in Houston, so at least it gave some sort of focus to what seems to have been a poorly attended gathering.

I continue to be puzzled at what appears to be a con job from Fr Wooten. If he's received a million dollars for construction of a new parish building, I would expect to see near-immediate signs of progress. Our novus ordo parish provides constant updates on construction. In fact, in addition to a major building project, it's taken advantage of the COVID restrictions to undertake a $100,000 renovation of the adoration chapel, with a separate new fundraising appeal and continual updates.

So far, all we hear from Fr Wooten is sorta-kinda-maybe-someday. As someone who's getting more and more used to the Catholic Church, the problem I see for the North American ordinariate is that it just isn't very Catholic. I go back to the associate who was delegated to query me about this blog after our pastor received a complaint several years ago. One of the first concerns i raised with him about the ordinariate was "instant ordinations" -- of some, that's been literally true, with candidaes received into the Church, ordained as deacon, and ordained as priest in the course of a weekend.

But even where a candidate has been Catholic for years and ordained a deacon but waits a decent interval before becoming a priest, there's a lot missing, and this leaves aside men who've been ordained in the ordinariate after seriouis problems in TEC or "continuing" groups. Oddly, when I mentioned this to our associate, he simply nodded, chuckled, and basically dropped the discussion with a remark on the complainant's grammar.

I doubt if any novus ordo priest would ever specifically disparage the ordinariate to me. On the other hand, I'd go so far as to wonder if anecdotes have already made their rounds in clergy conferences and rectories.

News Of St Augustine San Diego

Because nobody else reports it, I post it here. My regular correspondent says

St Augustine, San Diego—-formerly St Augustine, Carlsbad—-will soon become St Augustine, Escondido, as it will be celebrating Sunday mass in the “chapel tent” at John Paul the Great Catholic University there starting next Sunday. Samuel Keyes, ordained to the diaconate in May, is a professor at JPCatholic. He was named Glenn Baaten’s successor as administator of the St Augustine community, presumably his ordination ticket, so one can see that he has a vested interest in trying to revive it. Mass has not been celebrated at its former location since March. As we have frequently noted, attendance was down to about a dozen, so it will be interesting to see who turns up in Escondido, and who will be celebrating.

My correspondent has commented from time to time on Keyes and his relationship to the dwindling St Augustine community. From last June:

Still musing on why the Keyes, living in Murrieta, joined an Ordinariate community an hour away in Del Mar Heights. . . . The Easter Vigil was cancelled in 2019 so that Fr Baaten could celebrate at BJHN. More recently, however, there have been a number of special services—-Advent Lessons and Carols with the choir of HM, Murrieta, for example, and a regular monthly choral Evensong—-with more people visible, including Mr Keyes, serving or acting as subdeacon. I assume these have been his initiatives; there is a new Permanent Deacon at St Augustine’s but he was an original member of the community, so not the one bringing fresh energy into the group. I suppose it is possible that Mr Keyes will be taking over when Fr Bartus returns to Holy Martyra, although the Facebook page is very vague about plans for the fall. Indeed, nothing indicates that Fr Baaten has left.

Murrieta is 38 miles from Escondido, a 76 mile round trip. The 2020 IRS mileage rate is 57.5 cents per mile, so the group should be paying him $43.70 for expenses to celebrate mass (assuming he's ordained), in addition to a regular stipend. It sounds as though the group left its previoius venue at least in part because, with a dozen or so members, it couldn't pay rent.

Why is Keyes doing this, and why is Bp Lopes allowing it? Continuing the St Augustine group seems nothing more than an empty charade, and for Keyes to be ordained to say mass for a dozen there, when real Catholic parishes are plentiful in the area, suggests that he's little more than dressing up for a weekend of role-playing games. I can't imagine that his novus ordo parish colleagues privately take him seriously at all.

Would it not be more productive for him and others like him to dress up in Civil War attire to impersonate Stonewall Jackson at weekend reenactments? At least there's a greater sense that this is a fantasy exercise, and nobody is in much danger of believing it's 1863 depite the cannons and muskets.

I think Keyes, and others like him among ordinariate clergy, should be ashamed of themselves. This business we now see about soul-searching over continence with their wives is an indication of the overcompensation that stems from their own ambivalence and insecurity over why they're doing this. Deep down inside, these men know they're phonies. I would estimate they're embarrassed to encounter real Catholic priests in the rare occasions when this happens.

This is also a reflection on the completely inadequate supervision and psychological evaluation in Houston's vocation process. The vicar general and vocation director are complicit. All the phony guys would be well advised to resign their orders and undertake a serious effort to live sincere lives as Catholic laymen.

Ordinariate Prediction

From my regular correspondent:

I predict that the communities in this list will not be around five years from now:

Good Shepherd, Oshawa, ON *
Our Lady of Good Counsel, Jacksonville, NC *
Our Lady of Grace, Covina, CA
Our Lady of Hope, Kansas City, MO
Our Lady of the Sign, Fredericton, NB*
Our Lady of Walsingham, Maple Ridge, BC *
St Benedict, Edmonton, AB *
St Gregory the Great, Chestnut Hill, MA
St Michael and All Angels, Denison, TX *

The six starred communities were “continuing” groups which came into the Ordinariate in its early days. Since that time they have failed to grow beyond the initial dozen or so members. It is hard to imagine that Bp Lopes will consider it worthwhile to replace any of their clergy, all currently well past retirement age, once they depart. The locations are generally unpromising.

Our Lady of Grace was a group started in Pasadena by Fr Bartus as an ordination ticket for Aaron Bayles. Now in its second location, Fr Bayles seems to have no further connection with it, and Fr Bartus’ other protegé, Fr Baaten, drives many miles to celebrate Sunday mass there. When he retires I think Fr Bartus will be out of surrogates.

Our Lady of Hope was a former PP parish, now with its third leader, for whom it was an ordination opportunity, and in its third location. I think it will have difficulty finding a fourth leader when Fr Wills retires. But in all three cases the OLH PA has shared duties at a diocesan parish with leadership of the group, so one assumes that relations with the Diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph are good. Perhaps the group can continue to find a home in a local parish.

St Gregory the Great, on the other hand, currently led by the PP Pastor of St Athanasius, Chestnut Hill, Fr Bradshaw, may not be so fortunate. A previous attempt to find a way for the group, then in Stoneham MA, to be led by an Ordinariate priest with a diocesan assignment to support him was stymied by a lack of co-operation from the Archdiocese of Boston. This stance does not seem to have softened. Meanwhile Fr Bradshaw’s retirement is imminent.

My correspondent added this screen shot from Facebook concerning the Our Lady of Good Counsel group in Jacksonville, NC. It raises seriouis questions about whether the program at the small groups does more harm to the ordinariate than good (click on the image for a larger copy):

Which way the celebrant faces, I've begun to see after seven years as a Catholic, makes little difference to the whole scope of parish life. Based on what I see from prominent ordinariate members in these tiny groups, they fall short in areas like catechesis, music, fundraising, Bible study, and social activity. Between severely limited financial resources and the minimal talents of their members, they're unlikely to step up their game.

Ordinariate Groups That Have Already Closed

In view of yesterday's post on marginal ordinariate groups that are likely to close in coming months, my regular correspondent sent a list of ordinariate groups that have already closed, or are on some type of hiatus, This is in addition to the ones I mentined yesterday that haven't yet formally closed.

Christ the King, Tyendinaga, ON
Our Lady of Mt Carmel, Savannah/Augusta, GA
St Anselm, Corpus Christi, TX
St Anselm, Greenville, SC
St Augustine, Pinecrest, FL
St Augustine, San Diego [in hiatus]
St Bede, St Louis Park, MN
St Bede, Halifax, NS [still shown on website, but no PA or scheduled services]
St Edmund, Kitchener, ON
St Gilbert, Boerne, TX
St Gregory the Great, Stoneham, MA [still on website; some members worshipping with St Athanasius PP parish, Chestnut Hill, MA]
St Gregory the Great, Mobile, AL [in hiatus]
St Margaret, Katy, TX

This is 13 groups that have closed over the eight-year life of the North American ordinariate. The official total of ordinariate groups listed on the website is currently 40, The ordinariate has previously claimed totals in the mid-40s, so it hasn't been able to make up the overall deficit caused by losing the 13 above -- and more are likely to close in coming months.

My regular correspondent comments on the question I raised yesterdy about whether Houston makes any attempt to provide for the continued pastoral care of these groups in the Church:

In some cases (St Anselm, Greenville; St Augustine, Pinecrest) the decision to fold was made collectively by the congregation and their priest. Both groups wanted more in the way of “parish life” than their communities could provide.

Msgr Steenson was sent as a temporary replacement for Vaughn Treco in St Louis Park, MN and presumably communicated with the St Bede community his recommendation that it be closed. But in the cases where a priest died, retired, or transferred and no replacement was provided there did not seem to be any effort made to assist Ordinariate members with finding a new place of worship.

Small groups which have survived the departure of their priest seem to have relied on a committed layman or, in the case of St Joseph of Arimathea, Indianapolis a supportive diocesan clergyman. Latter is interesting in that it has been gone from the OCSP website since Luke Reese’s flameout, but Fr Jeffrey Moore was appointed to the (nameless) OCSP community this summer Probably more about the situation at OLA, Fr Moore’s previous assignment, than any desire to meet the needs of the community in Indianapolis. A post from happier times.

After seven years as a Catholic, my view is that I was baptized as a Protestant, but the Catholic Church recognizes my baptism, and overall, I've grown as a Christian throughout my life. Conversion to Catholicism was an important milestone, but it wasn't something black-to-white. Passing from Presbyterianism via Episcopalianism to Catholcism was a gradual transition in which I slowly began to recognize the importance of liturgy and the sacraments.

Anglicanorum coetibus sets up a highly artificial distinction. It seems to suggest that Anglicans are very close to Catholics, but they're so close that they need a special constitution. The informal impression I get from chatting now and then with ELCA pastors is that there are also "high church" Lutherans for whom a transition to Catholicism would not be drastic.

So the other side of the Anglicanorum coetibus coin is the implication that conversion is such a difficult matter for Anglicans that they need something to sweeten the deal. But think about it: people are socially mobile all over North America. Not only do their Protestant pastors retire or their Protestant parishes dissolve, but they move to a different community, and they may find a parish in a different main line denomination closer and easier to attend than the one in their former town. Changing clergy and changing denominations is not a big deal. (The big deal is church on Sunday at all.)

So I'll be interested to hear if members of these closed groups, having become eligible for Catholic sacraments, have had this explained to them and have been brought to see that the Church is what's important, and the Church is what continues to be available to them.

As I said yesterday, I'll be most interested to hear any experiences from members of closed ordinariate groups.

The Marginal Ordinariate Groups And The Exit Plan

I haven't concealed my view that Anglicanorum coetibus is a deeply flawed concept, and the ordinariates have a limited prospective life. (My assessment is also that if I'm going to continue blogging, I need to branch out into areas other than the Anglican stuff, which I'm doing.) But a couple of recent e-mails from my regular correspondent raise the question of whether there's a realistic exit plan for the ordinariates.

Canada of course has only one full parish, St Jphn the Evangelist, Calgary. Neither of the nearest contenders: Annunciation, Ottawa, which started as an ACCC parish, nor St Thomas More, Toronto—-a gathered group, mostly of former ACC members who converted long before the proclamation of Anglicanorum coetibus —-has grown to parish size over the last eight years, and the other six communities, all formerly ACCC, remain in the low double digits, ministered to by men well past secular retirement age, with the exception of Fr Kenyon in Victoria. It is safe to predict that most will fold in the near future. St Bede, Halifax, while it remains on the OCSP website list, has not held its monthly mass since Fr Richard Harris’s retirement in July.

In the OCSP as a whole, the last group to attain parish status was St Barnabas, Omaha, in 2018.

We recall that Fr Bartus announced that St John Henry Newman, Irvine was going to become the first Catholic parish dedicated to Newman after his canonisation, but that did not happen. Presumably one obstacle to other groups’ attaining parish status is the requirement that they have 30 families/100+ individual members who are eligible for Ordinariate membership. Groups which have shown growth—-Holy Martyrs, Murrieta; St Aelred, Bishop; Presentation, Montgomery—-seem to be attracting lifelong Catholics rather than Anglican converts.

Parents of young children who receive Sacraments of Initiation in the Church will become eligible for membership, so there is a way forward for some of these groups, but in the meanwhile we must expect that, as in Canada, small groups led by retirees and stuck in mission status for a decade will simply cease to exist when their parish administrator departs.

The number of OCSP “parishes” is given as 42 in this 2016 article The latest community to be put on the OCSP website is Presentation, Montgomery, established in February, 2019. The current number on the site is 40. Meanwhile three communities on the list are not currently holding services. At two of these communities, mass was formerly celebrated once a month.

A second e-mail covers the most marginal groups:

Fr Mayer has just sent out a notice that St James, Jacksonville will be worshipping from this Sunday on at a new site, its fourth since he assumed leadership of the group in 2019. The new site, a retreat center chapel, is available Sunday morning, whereas the previous venue could only host a Vigil mass. This change of time was necessitated because the site before that, the chapel in St Joseph’s School, Jacksonville, ceased in March to be available to the the group, which had previously paid rent for its use.

Likewise, St Augustine of Canterbury, San Diego has not been able to use the chapel at Cathedral Catholic High School in that city since the lockdown despite the fact that the school reopened in August. In the case of this community, the group has not relocated.

Meanwhile, two other communities, St John Vianney, Cleburne and St John Fisher, Orlando, both closed temporarily during the lockdown, now continue to meet for mass in the cafetoria of local elementary schools. I am interested in why the Catholic schools have apparently evicted their previous OCSP tenants for the foreseeable future. In the case of St Augustine, already down to a handful and currently without a priest, its survival looks doubtful.

These circumstances raise the question that especially since the COVID lockdowns, the smallest groups have lost their ability to pay rent to their hosts from the weekly offerings, much less pay a normal stipend to the priest or even reimburse his travel expenses. It appears that already, some of these groups will never recover. And in Canada, there's the additional problem that most of the Canadian priests are over secular retirement age.

Of the groups that have already closed de facto, or of those likely to close in the foreseeable future due to retirement of their priests without an available replacemeent, what provision is Houston making to ensure their members continue as faithful Catholics?

Let's keep in mind that a fairly major selling point Houston makes, though often in whispers, is that novus ordo parishes aren't really Catholic, and if you want to be really Catholic, you go to your little ordinariate group and reassure each other about how Catholic you are.

What does Houston tell these people to do when their groups close? Or does Houston say anything at all? I'd be most interested to hear from people formerly in ordinariate groups that have closed. Do they still go to mass at novus ordo parishes? Do they go back to Anglican parishes? Do they go to church at all? Did Houston ever give them any guidance?

Anglo-Catholicism: There's Never Been A There There

A visitor e-mailed me the other day:

I've just come across your light-hearted blog of 24 April 2019: So Why Not Houseling Cloths? I'm reading Eamon Duffy's Stripping of the Altars in which he mentions houseling towels and my subsequent search of the term led to you and your question about whether houseling cloths were ever in Anglican or Anglo-Catholic usage.

Until I left the area a couple of years ago I worshipped at Our Lady Saint Mary South Creake in Norfolk, Diocese of Norwich. OLSM is an example of the late flowering in the 1920s of the Oxford Movement in Norfolk (it's just a few miles from Walsingham). There indeed a houseling cloth is permanently attached to the sanctuary side of the communion rails (see for instance https://flic.kr/p/Jh6hYr - note these rails are placed in front of a nave altar) and, until she had to go into sheltered accommodation a few years ago, the sacristan would pull the cloth over the rail to cover her hands as she received communion.

If such matters interest you, the history of OLSM and its encounter with Anglo-Catholicism in the last 100 years are worth exploring. Fr Roger Arguile has written a short but scholarly history of the church 'A Church in a Lanscape: A History of South Creake Church'; a much abbreviated version of this can be found on the church website, and you can buy a copy of the book if you contact Barbara Allen, one of the Churchwardens, via morleysfarm@afiweb.net. I think she asks for £5 plus postage.

Although Anglo-Catholic ritual continues in the liturgy at OLSM, I think it's fair to say that the original fervour has faded somewhat over the years. The worshipping congregation enjoy the smells, bells, and Angelus and works hard to sustain the pre-Reformation look and atmosphere of the interior complete with rood and images. But I suspect there is limited understanding of what it's all about, certainly so speaking for myself. Although I did discover that what the aforementioned sacristan was doing was to save fragments of the Host falling to the floor, I didn't know until now that she was using something called a houseling cloth. No-one else ever used the cloth and its presence was never discussed or questioned.

I have moved to London where coincidentally the nearby parish church of S. Paul's Deptford sustains a far more vigorous and rigorous Anglo-Catholic tradition. However whilst I'm not certain of this, I don't think the ritual includes a houseling cloth.

This account presents at best a puzzling picture. Anglican papalists in the UK, from everything I've been told, went to the novus ordo mass when Rome did, since their intent was to do as the Romans. Thus there has been relatively less interest in the Divine Worship missal, since that is itself an artifact of the late flowering in the 1920s of the Oxford Movement that the visitor mentions. something that was never really Catholic, as opposed to Anglicn Papalism, which tries to follow contemporary Rome more closely.

What the visitor describes strikes me as eccentrically English, and I think the visitor suggests as much in referring to the sacristan befpre she went to sheltered accommodation. But even as Anglo-Catholicism, it's clearly something at the fringe.

I replied ro the visitor asking whether any UK parishes carrying out this punctiliouis quasi-Catholic observation had any interest in the UK ordinariate, but he didn't reply. And on a day's reflection, I can't imagine they would. They're living out a fantasy of Catholicism, and even the rubrics of the Divine Worship missal would break the spell.

But this brings me to news from my regular correspondent. The Daily Office volume of the Divine Worship missal, we recall, has been delayed due to disagreements between Houston and the other ordinariates.

I refer to Divine Worship: The Daily Office, which is apparently nearing completion, at least the “Commonwealth Edition,” to be used by the UK and Australian ordinariates. Still no word on progress on the Houston version. Canadians just starting to become aware that for purposes of Divine Worship, they are not in the Commonwealth. These are people who still haven’t recovered from the fact that Dominion Day was renamed Canada Day in 1982. Personally they are having none of that. I predict a howl of protest when it all sinks in.

Bemused, I asked from how many the howls would actually emanate, since I don't believe there are more than a few hundred total Canadians in the North American ordinariate, if even that many.

This whole enterprise is a fantasy, a sort of group reification of something that has only an abstract existence.

UPDATE: A visitor comments,

My own impression is that English "Anglo-Catholic" parishes that tried to revive this sort of pre-Reformation stuff - houselling cloths, Easter sepulchres, "Sarumy" stuff - tended to be in the non- or even anti-papalist Anglo-Catholic camp, followers of Percy Dearmer and others like him

These tended to "sarumize" rather than "romanize." Many of these sort of "Anglo-Catholics" have accepted priestesses (so long as they're willing to do so "Medieval Fayre" style church services - and there are a few such priestesses in the Church of England); a few (in England) became Orthodox in the 1990s; and a few tried to start up English "Continuing Anglican" cheuiches, without much success.

And this is specific to the UK. In North America, it's less precise. My regular correspondent says,

OCSP adopters of disparate English Catholic/Anglican/Anglo-Catholic liturgies and vestments are happily piecing together Canterbury caps and lace albs, St Swithun and E. B. Pusey, because it’s all English and therefore somehow “Patrimonial.” People who actually live in the UK don’t have the same romantic notions.

Or perhaps their romantic notions are more particularly specified.

Another Houston Headscratcher

My regular correspondent has been wondering for several days what Houston had in mind in planning a visit by Bp Lopes to St Thomas More Toronto for October 18 (it appears, for example, on the schedule here). The difficulty is that Canadian COVID regulations continue to require, in part, that

All persons entering Canada, unless exempted – no matter their country of origin or mode of entry – must isolate themselves for 14 days if they have symptoms of or confirmed COVID-19 or quarantine themselves for 14 days if they do not have symptoms of COVID-19.

My correspondent says,

Bp Lopes's visit had been publicised since at least early July, despite the ongoing closure of the Canada/US border to non-Canadian citizens, with a few specific exceptions for family members and health care workers, and the quarantine requirement.

Houston conceded a month ago that no Canadian clergy would be attending next month’s ordinariate Clergy Conference there, because of the necessity of fourteen days’ quarantine upon their return.

Just as of this past Sunday, however, the St Thomas More mass schedule was revised to read, in part;

• Our next Choral Mass will be on October 18th. Bishop Lopes was scheduled to offer Holy Mass for us on this day, however border and quarantine restrictions have forced the cancellation of his parish visitation.
• Those scheduled to be received and confirmed by Bishop Lopes will instead be received and confirmed by Fr. Hodgins on All Saints Day, November 1.

As my regular correspondent puts it, "Hope the ticket was refundable". Well, as far as I can see, bishops travel full-fare, first class. No standby for Bp Lopes!

What makes this oversight relatively less remarkable is the tiny size and general unimportance of the North American ordinariate. As I understand this, the bishop's secretary handles his schedule and at least orders up his travel. For an issue like this to go unnoticed for at least two months, with some people in Houston fully aware of Canadian travel restrictions due to the clergy conference, is still significant in itself and a reflection on the competence of personnel in the chancery.

The picture that's beginning to form in my mind is that the bishop's secretary, J Henry, has, as we've already seen, announced that he's running the show. But from what we've begun to see, he does things like lift the dispensation for mass attendance without recognizing that in many areas, Catholics still have civil obstacles to attending mass. And now we also see that, nominally in charge of the bishop's schedule, he's been forced to revise it because he was unaware of basic COVID restrictions.

Apparently the bishop continues to be indisposed, and he's left key functions of his office in J Henry's not-so-capable hands.

As a regular viewer of the late lamented Live PD, I can only think that if Bp Lopes were operating a motor vehicle, he'd be swerving outside his lane, running stop signs, and otherwise driving erratically. A police officer would have no chokce but to pull him over and give him a sobriety check for his own protection and that of the public.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent asks how Bp Lopes's lifting of the dispensaion applies to the ordinariate groups who have ordinariate priests, like Fr Vidal, Fr Wills, or Fr Lewis, who have both diocesan and ordinariate groups in the same building, or in fact who attend at the same mass times.

Talking Down To Catholics

A visitor responded to the excerpt from the St James Jacksonville parish newsletter that I covered in Saturday's post:

Fr. Mayer makes mention of correspondence between Bp Lopes and priests:

Bishop Lopes recently wrote to us priests that he has been intending to revisit this issue, but that the Vatican beat him to the punch when Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, wrote to the presidents of the Bishops’ Conferences to remind them of the urgency of encouraging the faithful to return to in-person Mass.

On an issue as important as this it would seem that direct communication with the entire People of God would be appropriate. And why the Cardinal Sarah reference?

If you are not in this vulnerable group and you do not have some other grave reason to miss Mass, you have an obligation of holy obedience to your bishop and as a member of the Ordinariate to return to Mass and the Sacraments

Do you read this as talking down to the reader?

If you are not in this vulnerable group and you do not have some other grave reason to miss Mass, you have an obligation of holy obedience to your bishop and as a member of the Ordinariate to return to Mass and the Sacraments.

So Bishop communicates with his priests and this information gets filtered out - in less than perfect ways it seems.

Be that as it may, the pastor could have easily listed one or two of the reasons why Catholics should attend Mass, easily available on the internet or Catechism. Those reasons would include a benefit for the attender as well.

But he chooses obedience to your bishop as first, and membership in the Ordinariate as second.

Yes, the first puzzling thing is that we don't see the original text of the bishop's letter at all (although my guess is that the actual text in question is an e-mail from the bishop's secretary in any case). So wwhat we get is Fr Mayer's interpretation of J Henry's interpretation of what the bishop may have wanted to say.

Contrast this with, just as a random example, the Diocexe of Madison, WI, where the bishop's letter lifting the dispensation is fully published.

I ran the visitor's note by my regular correspondent, who said,

Cardinal Sarah, like Pope Benedict, very big in Ordinariate circles. Mrs Gyapong, a big fan, posted recently that she had stopped using the Daily Office app prepared by St Gregory the Great, Chestnut Hill member John Covert because Cardinal Sarah was quoted (in 2017) as saying that praying the Daily Office with an electronic device “is not worthy: it descralizes prayer.” (Glad he wasn’t around when the printing press was invented, is all I can say.)

She then went on to say that learning how to “juggle a bunch of different books” was part of the Anglican Patrimony. I was happy to see that a number of commenters pointed out that Cranmer’s program in revising Morning and Evening Prayer was the exact opposite: to rectify the situation where “to turn the Book only was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” But Mrs G’s acquaintance with Anglicanism is, of course, passing.

More to the point with Bp Lopes, why October 1 and not the first Sunday in October?

The question I have is why, if it was so important that Bp Lopes conform so quickly to Cdl Sarah's exxhortation, his brother bishops in the USCCB amd the CCCB seem to have approached the question with greater prudence and reserve. If you think about it, even the Evangelical pastors who've reopened their churches to in-person services have clearly implied that in-person attendance is optional, and not just for those in exempted health categories. Livestreams are available, and social-distancing options are also available on site.

I can only cnoclude that Bp Lopes's response to Cdl Sarah was not very carefully thought through, and I would guess that even the most junior diocesan bishop could provide a cogent explanation for why a diocese outsude Alaska, South Dakota, or Wisconsin would be slower to lift the dispensation.

Unfortunately, this suggests to me that Bp Lopes's judgment is impaired, and this may be a possible reason for why a full text of his letter is not available, as it doesn't exist. If this reading is correct, J Henry and Fr Perkins are the sort of marginal figures that impaired leaders select to cover for themselves. Even if the bishop were to say, "I'm short of time to do this, could you draft a letter lifting the dispensation for my review and approval?" neither would be capable of doing anything like this.

I've got to ask why any ordinariate members do not decamp and go into diocesan parishes with all deliberate speed, given these likely conditions in the chancery.

Houston Is Mailing It In

Almost at random, my regular correspondent found this notice in the September 24 newsletter of the St James Jacksonville, FL ordinariate group:

Bishop Lopes has directed that beginning October 1, 2020, the commutation of the obligation to attend Mass only applies only to those persons who are at higher risk for the Coronavirus (according to the CDC, those who are 60+ years of age, those with underlying medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, COPD, kidney disease, or are immuno-compromised). If you are not in this vulnerable group and you do not have some other grave reason to miss Mass, you have an obligation of holy obedience to your bishop and as a member of the Ordinariate to return to Mass and the Sacraments.

A whole bunch of questions come up. The first is why, when Bp Lopes announced the ordinariate's response to COVID measures in March, he instructed each community to follow the guidelines of its local diocese. As of September 2020, though, I'm only aware of dioceses in Alaska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin that have lifted the mass dispensation. This means that all the other North American dioceses still see obstacles to reopening and lifting the dispensation.

For instance, the St Augustine of Canterbury group in San Diego still can't return to its venue, since the school where it had been meeting remains closed. So, what are the members of that group to do, since Bp Lopes, their bishop, now tells them it is a grave sin not to go to mass? Do they go to a diocesan parish? But in California, attendance at any mass is still severely limited, and it must be outdoors only. Regular parishioners at those parishes must reserve spots, but in any case, due to the difficulties of getting to mass, their bishops continue to have the dispensation in place.

Someone might remind me that if it's impossible for any Catholic to get to mass under any circumstances, it's not a sin to miss mass. But why didn't Bp Lopes make this point himself in the letter, especially snce it's still unusual for churches to be open for general attendance anywhere in North America? Bp Lopes's letter apparently exempts only those deemed at health risk from the obligation, not those who could risk arrest by trying to get to mass.

The next question is why Bp Lopes announced this only via a letter to clergy. What puzzles me is that there isn't now, and as far as I can tell has never been, any announcement on the North American ordinariate website concerning COVID, mass guidelines, lifting of the mass dispensation, or anything else. In contrast, every diocesan website I visit, such as at random the Diocese of Fresno, CA , has exttremely detailed information on status. Dioceses that have lifted the dispensation on mass attendance have this prominently noted on their websites.

My regular correspondent noted,

Lifting of commutation mentioned on an ordinariate Facebook forum by a St Barnabas, Omaha parishioner; someone asked for a link to Bp Lopes’ letter to this effect and it was conceded that such was not available: “Our chancery is not known for well publicizing documents or rules...”

In other words, what else is new? Fr Perkins, having foresightedly quarantined himself well before there was ever a virus, is clearly exercising prudence in continuing to stay away, notwithstanding the dispensation from attending mass has been lifted, at least in Houston.

If you want my theory on what's going on, it's this. The letter was generated by Bp Lopes's secretary, J Henry, and broadcast via e-mail to priests, to do with as they saw fit. J Henry thought of including the bits about being over 60 and such, but it never occurred to him to address anything about what might be the case regarding lockdowns elsewhere in North America. He's in Houston, after all.

He probably didn't run this by Bp Lopes, as the bishop is indisposed.

Hey, did I say something recently about Anglicanorum coetibus being a hoax?

Anglicanorum Coetibus As Hoax

As we run through more and more hoaxes of the sort we've seen so far this century -- Saddam's WMDs, the housing bubble, Hillary's 2016 landslide, the Russsian hookers peeing on the bed -- I won't go into COVID-19 -- I see more and more parallels with Anglicanorum coetibus.

The big difference is that, although ingredients were there -- weepy sentimentality, Episcopalians coming home, grassroots activism -- it didn't catch on with corporate media. It didn't matter if the Episcopalians weren't coming home, nor was there grassroots interest, the media would have created it if it didn't exist.

A big part of the problem for corporate media is that it painted a potentially attractive picture of Catholicism, with educated members of the elite at least theoretically drawn to it. Never mind it wasn't happning, the media would have invented it if it had suited them. A bigger problem was at the source, Benedict XVI was, as the US president would put it, a highly overrated person. Anglicanorum coetibus was one of his major initiatives. He was also going to fix the money issues via Abp Viganò. Instead, he retired.

It's worth noting that not even the National Catholic Register spends much ink on the North American ordinariate. It started out mostly as a creature of Anglo-Catholic alternate media, but within a few years of the ordinariate's establishment, those disappeared.

Anglicanorum coetibus also emerged as a response to the "coontinuing" Anglican movement, which as its historian Doublas Bess has pointed out in Divided We Stand has always been a creature of wishful thinking and hucksterism. With the exception of David Virtue, neither corporate nor alternate media ever paid much attention to it, either.

It's also symptomatic that the ordinariate has attracted a remarkable number of frauds, con men, and phonies, chief among whom is Fr Christopher Phillips, but he isn't unoique, with the Gilbertine "brothers" a close second. And I'm still waiting for Dcn Wooten just to show us the wire transfer receipt for the mysteriuous million-dollar gift. No need to mention names, just blank account numbers out in the copy. A cobfirmaton that a transfer took place and a bank balance is plenty.

The best treatment of contemporary hoaxes by far is the film The Big Short. I highly recommebnd it. My wife and I watch it a couple of times each year. If there were a way to short the North American ordinariate, I'd do it. But in any case, the best strategy is not to send good money after bad, and certainly not to plan long-term careers on it, or expect most communities to continue in a way that will support a family's spiritual growth.

If you can't short, it's time to pull your money out.