Is This Thing Sustainable At All?

By my possibly imperfect count, four OCSP groups have gone inactive at minimum after losing their priests: St Edmund Kitchener, St Alban Rochester, St John Fisher Virginia, and now St Gregory the Great Stoneham. The reasons in each case are slightly different, but the bottom line is that the OCSP is unable to replace a priest who retires, loses his visa, has to move for family issues, or can't get diocesan support. Surely additional circumstances will arise that bring the same result.

Add to that the implication in both comments I had yesterday on St Gregory the Great that congregations are aging along with their priests, which means they will inevitably lose mobility and be less able even to commute to a parish not especially distant. But beyond that, as the parishioners age, actuarial reality will catch up, but I don't see those who pass on being replaced.

Nor is this problem new: the loss of Fr Tea at the Anglican Use parish St Mary Las Vegas had exactly the same result. Within five years of its founding, the OCSP has lost roughly 10% of its parishes and groups and is clearly unable to sustain many of the others if any adverse situation comes up. I think a reasonable projection would be that within a fairly short time, it will revert to the roughly half-dozen prosperous parishes that came in as that sort of special case.

Cheer Up, Things Could Be Worse -- Except, Er. . .

I've had two comments on the challenge St Gregory The Great Stoneham faces with Fr Liias's retirement. From my regular correspondent,

Apropos of Fr Wolfe's age, if Fr Liias (his seminary classmate) was the minimum canonical age for Episcopalian ordination in 1974 (24) he will be 66 this year. The congregation of St Gregory the Great, Stoneham has been encouraged to begin attending St Athanasius, whose PP pastor was ordained in TEC in 1970, making him at least 70. Of course aging is not a consistent phenomenon, but until 2009 70 was the mandatory retirement age for clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston (now it is 75; whether this reflects better health care or a priest shortage I can only speculate). So St Athanasius, Brookline will be facing its own leadership issue soon enough.

However, a regular visitor points out,

With respect to your blog post yesterday regarding the imminent retirement of Fr. Jurgen Llias and the fact that the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter does not have an immediate replacement available, it would be highly impracticable for the members of the Church of St. Gregory the Great, currently worshipping at St. Patrick's Church in Stoneham, Massachusetts, a suburb to the north of Boston, to worship with the members of the St. Athanasius Community, which worships at St. Lawrence Church in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood at the junction of the municipalities of Boston, Brookline, and Newton.

These communities are only about ten or fifteen miles apart as the crow flies, but the saying in local parlance is that "you can't get they-ah from hee-ah." The only major road into the Chestnut Hill area is Massachusetts Route 9, which is a secondary divided highway (limited access in some segments but a few signals in others) going due west and city streets to the east, so access to St. Lawrence Church is reasonably convenient only for those who live in the western neighborhoods of the city, in the nearby inner suburbs, and in the suburbs to the west.

From the suburbs to the north or to the south, one may either take the inner beltway around Boston, originally built as Route 128 and now designated as I-95 and the southernmost segment of I-93, around the city to Route 9 and then head eastward on Route 9 -- a route that is anything but direct -- or muddle through a labyrinth of congested city streets and winding secondary roads.

The highway route from St. Patrick's Church to St. Lawrence Church is over twenty-five (25) miles -- and St. Gregory the Great Church has already moved fifteen miles southward from its original location in Beverly, Massachusetts, to its present location, so the additional commute simply would not be viable for many of that congregation's parishioners.

And going the other way, many of the members of the St. Athanasius Community undoubtedly depend upon public transportation -- which does not provide convenient access to St. Patrick's Church, so a merger at St. Patrick's Church also would not be viable.

Retirement Of Fr Ken Wolfe

My regular correspondent brought me this piece of news. Fr Wolfe was one of numerous former Episcopal priests ordained in the OCSP without groups but apparently with connections.

Fr Wolfe was one of my least-favorite figures in the OCSP. I contacted him in his capacity as Director of Child and Youth Protection, wanting to bring to his attention that wine was regularly served after Sunday morning mass at the Newman group. I saw this myself when I visited the group at its Placentia location in late 2011. The group at the time met for fellowship after evensong in a children's classroom at the Blessed Sacrament parish. Even then I thought it was incongruous to see bottles of wine on a table amid the children-size furniture and crayon drawings on the wall.

Following repeated reports that wine was regularly served in an after-mass "coffee hour" environment where toddlers and children are present, I thought Fr Wolfe should at least investigate the potential problem. Initially, I thought he showed appropriate interest. However, apparently after consultations with Fr Hough III, he revised his opinion and essentially demanded the confirmation of three male eyewitnesses.

My regular correspondent provided this summary of his very brief career in the OCSP:

On his ordination to the priesthood In January 2015 Fr Wolfe was named as the Chancellor of the OCSP. Then in June 2015 he became Director of Child and Youth Protection, with a glowing write-up of his qualifications for this job appearing in the Ordinariate Observer. This is the issue in which Fr Benedict Soule's (illicit) appointment as Judicial Vicar was announced and he was described as consulting with Margaret Chalmers, the "first Chancellor," with no suggestion that there had been a second.

You discussed this on your blog on May 20 this year. Now Fr Wolfe has retired from his new position after fourteen months. During this time embarrassing misinformation about the Ordinariate's non-compliance with the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People appeared in a USCCB audit.

Did Fr Wolfe fumble the ball? Was his term of office unexpectedly brief? The official announcement of his retirement was complimentary, however, unlike the cursory statements about the retirements of Msgr Gipson amd Fr Hough III. He was apparently a seminary classmate of Fr Liias, who is retiring next month. Fr Liias was ordained in TEC in 1974, I believe.

Although he did not have pastoral responsibilities in the OCSP and began his work as Director of Child and Youth Protection in June 2015, the OCSP was one of only two dioceses and four eparchies that did not participate in the USCCB's 2015 audit of compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The USCCB is happy to report that the OCSP will participate in the 2016 audit. Fr Wolfe, meanwhile, has retired.

UPDATE: The USCCB issued a correction to the 2015 audit report, saying "the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was mistakenly named as an eparchy and as non-compliant." However, the OCSP after the designation of Bp Lopes is a diocese. The question of what the audit report said about the bodies that did not participate, though, is less clear. The report as linked said "due to a lack of information, [the bodies] cannot be found compliant or noncompliant by the auditors", not that the OCSP was noncompliant. In corporatespeak, though, it's still a black eye, and I'm not sure if the correction changes anything. (I'm told the OCSP complained about the report.)

Since Fr Wolfe was only appointed Director of Child and Youth Protection in June 2015, when the audit was almost over, it's hard to say what he might have done to change things -- it's possible he was quickly named to the position to avoid repercussions once the issue arose. And he had apparently been superseded as Chancellor by then, so they had to give him something.

Bottom line: he's retired, and the USCCB is happy. Not necessarily connected.

Another OCSP Group Loses Its Priest

My regular correspondent reports,

The problem of replacing retiring clergy becomes more acute. The parochial administrator of St Gregory the Great, Stoneham is retiring next month and Bp Lopes met with the congregation last Sunday to inform them that no replacement would be forthcoming for the foreseeable future. There is, of course, an Anglican Use congregation in the Greater Boston area with which this community can worship, so the situation is not completely bleak.

But in any event the bishop would seem to have few alternatives. It will take years to have a pool of celibate priests who can be deployed around the country. An affluent parish like St Mary the Virgin, Arlington can attract a Pastoral Provision priest by offering a salary, rectory, and benefits, but this is a distant dream for most groups.

Perhaps there are still married, Episcopalian/ Anglican clergy without groups waiting to be ordained for the OCSP and prepared to take on responsibility for a leaderless group while supporting themselves with diocesan work, chaplaincy, or teaching, but we haven't heard much about them recently. We certainly heard about Glenn Baaten for years before he was finally ordained. The fast track for those with connections may have slowed down, making the Pastoral Provision a more attractive option for the target group.

I think those on the fast track wanted things on their terms -- serving parishes they wanted, in locations that were convenient. I've got to say that in my working career I was no stranger to commutes between LA and Texas, Chicago, or even Connecticut. I don't see this attitude among Nashotah House alumni, even if the OCSP could pay the air fare. This is another factor that Anglicanorum coetibus didn't consider -- Episcopal clergy are not set up to emulate the likes of St Paul.

Takeaway From Dr Currie's Account

I want to stress how much I respect Dr Currie and how grateful I am that he allowed me to quote his e-mail yesterday. He subsequently followed up with this:

Jeanne and I were Anglican Use Catholics in L.A. without a parish. It was a disappointing position to be in. It was in L.A. that the Anglican Use had its origin -- and L.A. is one of the largest, if not the largest, populated Archdioceses in the USA [it is] -- so you might expect at least one teeny, tiny parish ... but no. Nothing.

We gravitated toward RC Latin Traditionalism, since that was the closest to our Catholic training and tastes. Jeanne and I moved to Bakersfield 10 years ago (2006). (Jeanne and I taught Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. for 21 years after we got back to L.A. from Marquette in Milwaukee. We taught at various places before and since. LMU has been steadily losing its Catholic identity since Vatican II. We definitely did our best to help it retain its proper Tradition.)

I would go beyond this to say that in reflecting on his account, I realized that the process of taking St Mary of the Angels into the Catholic Church began in the context of the 1977 Congress of St Louis, with discussions involving Cardinal Law through the early 1980s. By 1984 -- seven years later -- all of two St Mary's parishioners made it into Anglican Use, although by then a mildly successful Anglican Use parish had been established in Las Vegas.

My wife and I took eight months to become Catholic via RCIA.

Whether or not Cardinal Manning or Cardinal Mahony was opposed to Anglican Use, the problem I have is whether diocesan bishops were friendly or not, the overall numbers have never been enough to command any bishop's attention. I hear now that Bishop Vann has been ducking out of commitments to attend Newman-related events in Irvine. Perhaps even someone so friendly to Anglican Use as Bp Vann has begun to balance the demands on his time against the numbers coming into the Church via the Anglican path.

In fact, it would be interesting if a bishop ever were to ask how many ex Episcopalians were coming into his diocese in a given year via RCIA vs Anglicanorum coetibus.

More On St Mary's In The 1980s

Dr Chris Curry, a St Mary's parishioner in the early 1980s, sent me a long e-mail with very worthwhile information (he also attended mass at the parish this past September 3 and talked extensively with Fr Kelley and others):

You were trying to recapture some of the news from back in the early 1980's concerning Fr. Jack Barker and St. Mary of the Angels' trek toward Roman Catholicism via the Anglican Use Rite.

Well, perhaps I can help a bit. St. Mary's was undergoing a major Catechism course (from 1982 through 1984) on Sundays in the parish hall after Mass in order to prepare people for the trek. We were covering all of the early ecumenical Church Councils, so people could, hopefully, see the rationale for becoming Roman Catholic.

I taught a few of the classes. My wife, Dr. Jeanne Curry, taught some of the classes. Each class would cover a council and we would have questions and answers afterwards. The other priests who were working with Fr. Barker were Fr. Saintjohn Brown and Fr. McFarrin. Canon Albert DuBois had already passed away in 1980 -- he was highly revered and some even thought of him as a Saint due to his Apostolic zeal in the U.S. trying to make Anglo Catholicism a formidable presence within the Episcopal Church -- and later -- a formidable presence outside of the Episcopal Church.

Well, in July 1984, two of the parishioners -- namely my wife (Dr. Jeanne) and I -- were ready to be confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church via the Anglican Use Rite. We, in fact, were the very first from L.A. to be confirmed -- from St. Mary of the Angels (or St. Mathias). But -- we were not confirmed in Los Angeles. There was a different plan.

After discussing the matter at length with Fr. Barker, it was decided that we, who would be the FIRST, should be confirmed in Las Vegas, Nevada by Fr. Clark Tea, who was the pastor of the AUR church of St. Mary the Virgin's in Las Vegas -- under the permission of the Bishop of Las Vegas, of course. This way we could by-pass any potential problem that might arise from Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Manning in L.A. We carefully orchestrated all of the necessary arrangements.

The Bishop of Las Vegas fully approved. Our official sponsor for Confirmation was Fr. Bill King, a Roman Catholic priest who was the prior of the Claretian Order in Los Angeles. He was an old friend of Jeanne's and mine and he worked with the Anglo Catholic community in Los Angeles, so he was familiar with the situation.

Fr. King even worked with the Anglo Catholics within the Episcopal Church as well -- especially the group of Episcopalians who left St. Mary of the Angels around 1976 and who utilized little Episcopal chapels in L.A., which included, but were not limited to, first - St. Columba's Chapel which was located on the property of the Episcopal Cathedral in downtown L.A. -- both of which were bulldozed by 1981; then the little chapel inside the diocesan office in L.A. under Bishop Rusack and Archdeacon Donald Behm (who was an Anglo Catholic priest), then St. Francis Chapel in Atwater Village.

This group called themselves "St. Mary's in Exile," under Senior Warden Walter Kressel. (We were introduced to Anglo Catholicism through "St. Mary's in Exile," via their ads in the L.A. Times, but once we went to "the real St. Mary's," we never went back.) The "Exile" group was intimately involved in the law suit to get St. Mary's church property back into the hands of the Episcopal Church. They lost the case. Fr. Barker and his legal team prevailed (due to the way that Fr. Dodd, the founding priest, had written the legal papers regarding the property of St. Mary's).

To make a long story short: Our Confirmation took place on July 20, 1984 in Las Vegas as planned. This was the precedent. St. Mary of the Angels now had official members who were confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church via the Anglican Use Rite. It was a "done deal." It was all official. So, July 20, 1984 was a significant milestone for the St. Mary of the Angels in Los Angeles -- and for the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury.

Fr. Barker and St. Mary of the Angels could now move forward -- but cautiously, because they still had to clear the hurdle of Cardinal Manning. And about a year later, they had to clear an even bigger hurdle -- the new Archbishop, Roger Mahony. My wife and I could be Anglican Use Catholics in L.A., and not be under Manning or Mahoney, since our official diocese and bishop were in Las Vegas. It was like having immunity from prosecution. But there was no church in L.A. where the Anglican Use Rite existed or was permitted.

We wound up moving to Milwaukee where I received my Ph.D. at Marquette, one of the last bastions of Jesuit orthodoxy at the time. Jeanne already had her Ph.D. from Yale in 1976, with the highest honors. Our concern has always been that the Catholic Church should make available the most dignified and theologically accurate Mass possible -- with Latria for the Eucharistic Christ; and that the Church should encourage the greatest possible devotion to Christ the King and to the Immaculate Queen Mary.

We pray and work for these ends.

Some of the story does allude to the divisions in the parish, which is something Cardinal Mahony referred to in his own subsequent letter. It would be interesting to hear more about the factionalism in this period -- it can't be neglected in the context of continuing developments.

Playing The Numbers

My regular correspondent reports,

[T]he Evangelium course is being offered at [the Blessed John Henry Newman group in] Irvine starting this Sunday. According to the Facebook page set up for this event 17 [now 16] people are going (of the 1671 invited), which is a reasonable turnout, but after looking at the Facebook pages of the 17 [now 16] I can say confidently that all but one or two are currently practising Catholics. The others may also be, judging by their ethnic background. Of course Evangelium is also valuable for those who wish to explore their faith in greater depth and these people may already attend BlJHN, but the scope of the invitation list suggests that this event was "shared" with every Catholic in Orange County for whom a Facebook link could be found. It is difficult to see how this advances the mission of either the OCSP or the Church in general.

One thing I've noticed is that in publicity over all the Newman-related activities -- the group itself on its website, as well as in separate announcements covering the Silverado chapel and the Pasadena formation meeting -- Fr Bartus is unspecific as to what sort of "Catholic" is involved here. He often just refers to a "Catholic church", giving an impression that this is a diocesan parish, but now and then he makes a soft-pedaled reference to the OCSP, sorta-kinda implying that he reports to Bp Lopes. But he also refers to "Anglican Use", suggesting Bp Vann is involved, either as Bishop of Orange or the delegate for Anglican Use.

Does this bother anyone? Catholicism stresses authority and obedience, but these public statements tend to blur important distinctions. This may apply as well to whatever numbers he's sending to Houston -- diocesan Catholics who've completed the sacraments of initiation are welcome to go to mass at any Catholic parish, but those without a vague Anglican tie aren't "members" at BJHN. On the other hand, parish registration is an elusive concept as well, so maybe none of this means a whole lot.