Dioceses And The Alternate Universe

A visitor comments,

In the regular Roman Catholic universe, all the territory of earth (and even the moon) is assigned to a particular diocese. In order for a priest to become a Bishop, he has to be given a jurisdiction, thus if all the jurisdictions are covered (meaning no vacancies), the Church must carve out some territory from an existing diocese and rename it and then ordain and/or appoint it a Bishop. If new territory is discovered, the Bishop from the point where the expedition was launched that discovers the new territory becomes the new territory’s de facto Bishop, thus the Bishop of Orlando, Florida became the Bishop of the Moon.

The Ordinariate was not formed this way. It was made up by the Vatican. Most dioceses that I am aware of are self-sustaining entities. They raise their own funds for survival and growth, they manage their own accounting systems and are self-lending and self-insured, and thus have a certain amount of “critical mass”, if you will. The Ordinariates do not seem to follow this pattern. I can’t imagine the North American Ordinariate (or the other Ordinariates for that matter) have the wherewithal to be self-insured or self-lending. If they can’t implement a common accounting system, how could they possibly follow a unified building code.

I would assume that if the Chancery of the Ordinariate can’t collateralize itself for insurance and property, its member parishes would have to secure insurance and loans on their own. So there is your contrast, a vibrant churning, growing, constantly dying and renewing itself galaxy of the Roman Catholic Church and a sputtering system trying desperately to get enough material and momentum (critical mass) to ignite a fiery core and begin its own process of renewal before it is either ripped apart by the monstrous gravity of a nearby galaxy or collapses back in upon itself as a cold, dark lifeless chunk of rock.

Either way, there will still be a Catholic jurisdiction for all the folks who would be left without a Bishop if the Ordinariate goes dark. It’s like what Dorothy Gale realized after she defeats the witch and gains the ruby slippers, ". . .if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!” See, there really is no place like Rome, oh- I mean, Home.

While we were leaving mass last Sunday, i heard a voice behind us say, "I'm not really used to a traditional mass." This puzzled me, because I don't think our parish sets itself up as "traditional", it just has a serious music program and a reverent OF mass with vested cantor and servers. It certainly isn't ostentatious about chapel veils, for instance, and it doesn't host a Latin mass. The pastor wears a cassock only on the most important occasions; often it's jeans and tennies with his clerical collar, and I think that's largely because he seems to work from sunup to late at night.

I think it's just a well-run diocesan parish, and I can't imagine that they're that unusual. Yes, if a visitor is used to flip-flops and halter-tops, it may come as a shock. So one thing that puzzles me is how some people are attracted to a faux, Medieval Times "traditional" mass in the North American ordiariate, although this is by no means consistent, and you find guitar masses there, too. I just don't think you need to go outside a diocese to find a worthwhile parish, but there's a real danger if you go looking for these things at the fringes.

The Problem Of Scale

A visitor remarked on my posts about dioceses by saying,

Why do you say that the Chancery is under staffed? In small mom and pop businesses, the owner is also the accountant, and is also the pest control guy, and so on. . .

Well, you can kinda still have a mom and pop grocery, or hardware store, or whatever, but it's worth recognizing that in the 21st century, this is harder and harder. Chain groceries use their buying power to get deals from wholesalers that mom and pop groceries can't match. Mom and pop hardware stores face competition from big-box stores, and they have to scramble to provide personal service that customers will value above price. Many types of stores, from bookstores to specialized hobby shops, have been driven to near-extinction by competition from the web.

I don't know if you could ever have a real mom-and-pop bank along the lines of Bedford Falls's Bailey Building and Loan, but you certainly can't do it now. Having spent some of my career in the banking industry, I would say that an unacknowledged factor in the changes that turned the industry upside-down in the past 30 years was the prevalence of fraud and the rise of new systems to prevent it. These systems cost money, require an unavoidable minimum staffing level, and add numerous steps to to-do lists. Banks had no choice but to get bigger and automate to absorb those costs.

The Catholic Church has responsibilities that go beyond banks. Everyone who puts a check in the basket has a right to expect the money will be effectively used, but then there's the issue of making sure personnel can be trusted, not just with money (which a bank must also do), but to keep kids safe and to avoid fostering an organizational culture of immorality. This means there must be an unavoidable minimum staffing level and numerous extra steps on to-do lists. But there's less room for automation.

What experience with the North American ordinariate is showing is that you can't have a mom-and-pop diocese, any more than you can have a mom-and-pop bank. While the procedures I cited yesterday from the Diocese of Harrisburg may seem daunting, something like them is certainly necessary when you're dealing with major building projects to prevent corruption and provide effective supervision. My regular correspondent has looked for similar policies, either formally or informally in effect, in the North American ordinariate and can't find them:

So far I have found nothing comparable to the policies you forwarded on the OCSP website or referred to elsewhere. SJE, Calgary and Mt Calvary, Baltimore bought their properties from the local Anglican/TEC diocese; STM, Scranton and SJB, Bridgeport bought their buildings from the local Catholic diocese. STM, Scranton; St Barnabas, Omaha; Christ the King, Towson have undertaken significant building/renovation projects and SJB, Bridgeport is beginning the process, as you have seen from the parish bulletins. St John Vianney, Cleburne has acquired a building site and St Luke, Washington is in the process of doing so.

I have only read informal accounts of all these in newsletters and on websites and FB pages, but while in some cases consultation with Houston has been mentioned, it seems to be an informal process; for example, when Bp Lopes was last in Scranton he had a walk-around of the former convent and school on the property and gave some advice. Fr Phillips had also done this, earlier.

We recall the shambolic scheme to run a bookshop/cafe in the former Guild Studio building in downtown Scranton which would fund the reopening of a school at STM. I am not saying that there are no policies in place, only that they are not referred to and it seems unlikely that there is anything as detailed as the examples you have researched.

The example of the bookshop/cafe in Scranton is especially pertinent. It involved an angel who was going to sink major money into reopening a bookstore that the diocese had previously run in a building it had sold (but who on earth opens a bookstore to compete with Amazon these days?) without, apparently, knowing that in purchasing the property from the diocese, it almost certainly came with a non-compete agreement that specifically ruled out running a bookstore!

So we've already seen a well-intended but half-baked effort at trying to do something a diocese had rightly recognized was no longer commercially viable. If there had been procedures and staff in place to review the Scranton project -- indeed, if we hypothetically imagine a Houston chancery comparable to a territorial diocese -- the Houston building department would likely have touched base with the Scranton building department, and a lot of time would have been saved and some donation money probably not wasted.

Someone might say, with reference to Anglicanorum coetibus, that you've got to start somewhere. Now and then people tell me the Church thinks in terms of centuries, not decades, and certainly not quarters. On some matters, maybe so, but you can't use that to justify pie-in-the-sky thinking. "I know our Ponzi scheme looks like it's gonna collapse now, but you've got to keep the vision of how rich you're gonna get five years from now!!" I would simply ask why the CDF canceled last year's symposium to celebrate Anglicanorum coetibus. If it looked like a winner, would they have canceled it, especially with the golden boy Lopes's career hitched to that particular star? The real outlook must have been grim indeed.

A basic question I would ask about the Southern California building projects is why the Irvine group, after years of work, seems not to have reached critical mass. Why did nobody look at moving to a bigger venue there? And what's been the growth of the Murrieta group now that it's in a semi-permanent location? How do the pledges look from any of these groups? Who are they, and where are they going?

Dioceses ask these questions. From what I see, priests are evaluated based on questions like these; the good ones go to the best parishes. So far, a system like diocesan systems doesn't seem to have taken root in Houston, and it's not a good sign.

"An Ordinariate Is Like A Diocese"

This is what the illuminati who understand such things have frequently explained to us benighted laity as they talk down to us about Anglicanorum coetibus. Exactly what a diocese does isn't really covered in RCIA, except that the bishop is in charge, so I've been learning about dioceses piecemeal. Many thanks to visitors who've been helping me along this path from time to time.

But what I've gradually been learning is troubling as it relates to the North American ordinariate. Normally, for instance, a rising bishop is promoted through posts like seminary rector and auxiliary bishop. Fairly early in his career, he goes to "baby bishop school" in Rome, where, as I understand it, he learns the role of Vatican dicasteries and other offices. But at home, in the seminary and chancery, he also learns about internal functions like vocation directors and, importantly here, the construction services department.

What I find troubling about Bp Lopes is that, as a protégé of Cardinal Levada, he attended the elite North American College in Rome, got his parish ticket stamped briefly back in the Bay Area, and went straight back to Rome, where he seems to have made his career mainly in Anglican liturgy with the CDF. I just don't know how much practical experience he's had with vocation directors -- this may be an explanation for why he was so eager to ordain the OCSP's own former gay porn writer -- nor, I think we can start to see, with the diocesan construction services department.

Poking around the web, I find that many dioceses have these departments. The Dioceses of Harrisburg, PA and Orange, CA have them, although some smaller and newer ones, like the Dioceses of Worcester, MA and San Bernardino, CA, do not. While their titles differ, they have similar functions. The Buildings and Properties Department of the Diocese of Harrisburg, for instance has the responsibility of

Advising all entities of the Diocese regarding construction, renovations, maintenance and general building upkeep for all properties including:

• Environmental issues, such as asbestos, underground storage tanks, and lead
• Processing requests for projects in accordance with the Required Procedures for Construction/Renovation/Repair/Maintenance Manual.
• Technical Review of Projects
• Providing sources and advice for the solution of problems related to facilities and properties

Since the Catholic Church is a major property owner worldwide, these are key functions. I assume that dioceses that don't have separate construction departments either have them as parts of other departments or rely on services from their archdiocese. What's beginning to trouble me is that the OCSP does own and maintain buildings -- sometimes old ones cast off by territorial dioceses -- and even more troubling, is looking to acquire more. But I see no evidence of policies that would be second nature to a real diocese. That Bp Lopes doesn't seem to have come through a promotional path that would include practical experience in this area doesn't help.

In contrast, just as an example, here is the Project Planning and Construction Procedures Manual for the Diocese of Harrisburg, PA. Even the Executive Summary contains worthwhile advice:

2.1.1 Before You Start - Some thoughts as you begin a Parish building program.

Do not leave prayer or God out of the process.

Your work is an act of Stewardship of God’s gifts.

Develop your Vision of “Who we are” and “This is where we are going”. . . .

Understand this is not about individuals; it is about your whole Parish community.

Pray and chose the Planning and Building Committees wisely; include a diversity of people, ideas, abilities and approaches.

Keep your whole Parish continually informed about the project status. . . .

Consider a Master plan for your site, dream the impossible dream, and think about tomorrow but realize you have to be able to pay for that dream. . . .

One thing that's puzzled me about the whole Southern California project, for instance, is that it's disorganized and opportunistic. The Irvine group has remained in the Busch office facility for some years without any apparent plan to expand or build -- but suddenly, when an angel appeared in Murrieta, an ad hoc construction project sprang up to remodel a former gym in a mall rental into a storefront church. Leaving aside a few families who may formerly have commuted to Irvine for mass, this serves an entirely new community, with the Irvine group remaining on some kind of back burner.

But now, there's an even more ambitious project to buy an obsolete property in Covina, 60 miles from Murrieta, 37 miles from Irvine. A visitor can tell me only that Fr Bartus intends to raise 1.3 million for this project, but it isn't clear what this money will buy -- is it for the chuch building itself, or the rectory and parking lot as well? Does the total cover all renovations? Precisely what will the renovations be? Is there a master plan for this project? (By the way, who are we? Where are we going?)

Normal guidelines require detailed review and approval of such projects at the diocesan level. Again, from the Diocese of Harrisburg:

3.8.3.1 All projects over $200,000 will require review by the Diocesan Building Commission and the College of Consultors with their advice to the Bishop on project approval. A four phase approval process is required.
3.8.3.2 Submit a letter or email package to the Vicar General requesting approval for the project. Letter will include:
3.8.3.2.1 Completed Form B (Information as indicated in Appendix A and B)
3.8.3.2.2 Facts demonstrating the need for the project including analysis of alternative options.
3.8.3.2.3 Preliminary or actual cost estimates including a 10% contingency. Three bids are mandatory. Identify the preferred bidder.
3.8.3.2.4 Discussion of ability to fund the project
3.8.3.2.5 Project timeline
3.8.3.2.6 Any drawings, specification, description of work, and warranties
3.8.3.2.7 Certificate of insurance from the contractor
3.8.3.2.8 Indication of what municipal approvals are needed and if they have been obtained
3.8.3.2.9 Contract to be signed if available
3.8.3.2.10 Indication that the parish or board has approved the project.

The impression I have, based on limited public information and somewhat more from a visitor, is that renovations are now in progress to the sanctuary in the Covina building, but purchase is something much more up in the air. Huh? What happens if the purchase doesn't go through? Where's the liability during all this transition? Has anyone given any thought to this? Is there a published plan available anywhere?

Frankly, this is something that Houston, or perhaps the building committee of the Covina group, or maybe an informed visitor, ought to make available to me to reassure anyone who encounters these questions and wonders if anyone in Houston, or indeed in Covina, is doing much other than smoking stuff, however legal it may now be out here.

The History Of The Building God Sat On

My regular correspondent has found more on the Sacred Heart Chapel in Covina, CA, which Fr Bartus is raising funds to buy for an OCSP group-in-formation. According to the Pasadena Star-News December 10, 2011:

Sacred Heart Chapel – not to be confused with Sacred Heart Church on Workman Street – is the original Sacred Heart and first opened its doors at 126 S. Fifth St. to devout Catholics on March 30, 1911.

And while it flourished at the time, the now privately owned chapel has grown quiet over the years and relatively unknown – a trend that owner Terry Barber wants to turn around.

“We’ve kept a very low profile, and no one knows we’re here,” Barber, 54, said. “When people see it, they are blown away by the beauty. I want to expose this beautiful chapel.”

Influenced by American Gothic Revival style, the 3,400-square-foot facility features arched wooden doors, high wooden beam ceilings, low lighting, granite stone lower walls, original lumber benches and many jewel-toned stained glass windows and religious statues.

Built of stone extracted from the nearby San Gabriel Mountains, the 100-year-old house of worship was first built with $5,500 raised by parishioners through chicken dinner sales, Barber said.

The parish church closed in 1959 when parishioners bought the more well-known Sacred Heart Church. It was then occasionally used for Masses and weddings before falling into disrepair, Barber said.

Barber bought the chapel and original rectory, built in 1927, from the archdiocese in 2003, when he founded St. Joseph Communications, which specializes in Catholic educational materials, audio and video tapes.

. . . After extensively renovating the facility, Sacred Heart became home of the Divine Liturgy of St. Jude Maronite Mission and the Annunciation Melkite Mission, Catholic communities that are of the Syriac and Byzantine traditions, respectively, which hold services in the chapel.

I've been doing a fair amount of research on diocesan policies covering construction and renovation, which lead to questions beyond those I'll put in this post. But I do have one basic question: The Archdiocese of Los Angeles closed this parish in 1959. While closures are an unhappy event and sometimes controversial, we must recognize that real analysis goes into such decisions, and they go to the heart of issues like stewardship of God's resources.

So, if the Archdiocese of Los Angeles did its due diligence in 1959, looking at attendance, demographics, the nature of a changing community, and other issues, why does the North American ordinariate suddenly feel moved to buy it back? Let's recall that, just looking at the reviews on the Holy Martyrs Murrieta Facebook page, the market these OCSP parishes in Southern California seem to serve is not, in fact, ex-Anglicans. It's cradle Catholics who for whatever reason don't like the mass at their diocesan parish. (Or just as likely, think they wouldn't like the mass at their diocesan parish if they ever actually went to mass there.)

In fact, a visitor tells me that Fr Bartus is having some in his parish agitate for the Latin Mass. Now, this is a separate question, with a separate set of facts to bring to the table. The Latin Mass of Los Angeles site shows 11 locations for Latin masses in the Archdiocese now, including one at 1:00 PM every Sunday at the Saint Therese of Lisieux parish in Alhambra, 12.6 miles from the Sacred Heart Chapel. However, this is a real diocesan parish with a range of real Catholic activities, which potential Sacred Heart parishioners may find to be a turnoff.

So, what problem are we trying to solve? The implication seems to be that Fr Bartus isn't finding enough ex-Anglicans to fill his pews, in Irvine, Murrieta, or now Covina, so he's casting his nets farther to bring in the disaffected from other traditions. But in effect, he's assuming there's a market for a Catholic mass that somehow suits all these malcontents right in Covina, a dozen miles from where a Latin mass is already available every Sunday -- but in an area that certainly hasn't been productive for "continuing Anglicans" or high-church Episcopalians, the original target market.

And how many of the disaffected will be willing to pledge big bucks to renovate and maintain that musty termite trap in Covina, rather than pop in now and then to play Ain't It Awful at coffee hour?

But a bigger question is whether there are any adults in Houston who are supervising this process, which I'll go into tomorrow.

The Building God Sat On

This was the informal name for my alma mater's campus chapel, a Richardson-Romanesque pile of stone.

Its distant cousin, shown at left from Google street view, is the Historic Sacred Heart Chapel in Covina, CA, currently a wedding venue, formerly a Catholic church, which, based on remarks on the Facebook page of the Our Lady of Grace OSCP group-in-formation, that group is somehow saving up to purchase. My interest was piqued when I mentioned it in yesterday's post.

The first question that occurred to me was how a group of two dozen or so (I'm sure they'll immediately scream, "WRONG!! We had 38 on Christmas!!") can possibly come up with the money to buy this property. The address listed on the web site linked above is 126 S 5th Ave, Covina, but this appears to be the adjoining property that must have been a rectory at some point. It's apparently still of a piece with the chapel. Possibly it's where the business maintains its office, and perhaps also the owner's residence.

Whether it would sell with the chapel is an open question, but Zillow gives its value as $1,102,070. This would at least place a range for market value of the property, in whole or part, of seven figures. I asked in yesterday's post if they intend to come up with this kind of money via desultory $20 checks. But according to my regular correspondent, they're already undertaking renovations, so they must be serious.

My regular correspondent does put this in the context of other Bartus projects:

This is the same man who blueskyed a Rosary Chapel of Our Lady of Walsingham or some such at the Santiago Retreat Center, where his protégé Fr Baaten is the Chaplain. Twelve Guardians putting up some hefty sum for a perpetual endowment---the details elude me but I'll look them up. Also a K-12 school, for which they were seeking a Director. Now he can barely find Blessed John Henry Newman Irvine on a map. He has been fortunate in finding a sugar daddy for the Holy Martyrs refit but as you say this is a rental, no more permanent than BJHN's tenancy at the Queen of Life Chapel.

But let's put the best possible face on this and assume Fr Bartus has found another angel to front up very serious money for this building. The information on the web site says it dates from 1911. As someone who was briefly a parish treasurer, I shudder. How long until it needs a new roof, new HVAC, paint and gutters? What do utilities and insurance run per month? New organ? Currently Fr Jack Barker, retired from the Diocese of San Bernardino, is serving as priest, so his medical costs and living expenses are on someone else's dime, and he's probably just getting a three-digit honorarium each week. But that won't last forever.

And this is for how many people? As of 2011, parish expenses for a similar building, St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, were $1620 for utilities, $2300 for insurance, $1200 for cleaning, $100 for a groundskeeper, and $850 as a reserve for plumbing and other emergencies. My calculator says this comes to $6070; let's round it off to $6000. (Don't need cleaning, you say? What about coffee hour?) And that reminds me I've left out pest control, termite control, and trash collection. I betcha the place already has termites and rats.

If there are two dozen pledging entities, each will need to pledge $250 per month to cover this sort of expense. We can quibble about the exact amounts in each category, but you're still talking in the mid four figures per month no matter what. $250 a month would put a pledging family at the very top tier of just about any parish. (But I can't get around the feeling that the sort of millennials Fr Bartus attracts are pretty cheap.) Whoops! I didn't mention a music program at all, did I?

My regular correspondent tells me Bp Lopes has already visited here, so he must be in the loop, and I've got to assume this is all OK with him. But this just confirms once again that he simply doesn't have a staff in Houston that's anywhere equivalent to what a normal diocesan chancery has, and it's clearly a continuing problem.

If there's an angel behind this -- willing to front seven figures to purchase the property, six more to renovate it, and then an ongoing five figures each year just to keep the lights on, the floor swept, and the lawn mowed, what's the motive for this kind of boutique effort? Vanity? Spite? ("I'll show that bishop, I will!") Are you sure there's no better use for that money?

But I still can't get over what an ugly building this is.

Are OCSP Members Easier To Con?

I've given a lot of background thought to why apparently so many OCSP priests have been shuffled away, forced into early retirement, or out-and-out removed. I continue to be suspicious of others. Then, looking for a video of Bp Lopes in Murrieta, I ran across these comments at the Holy Martyrs Facebook page:

. . . Truly, it is/was everything we would hope for: celebration of the mass in a traditional manner; the priest said the mass in a very reverential way; the people attended to the mass in a respectful way with great reverence; the music and liturgy were beautiful. I long for a church like this in Northern California.

. . . This is a beautiful, young church which goes back to the traditional ways of the Mass being about Our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is so reverent and loving-a joy to Jesus! The love of Jesus is so apparent! NO ONE leaves early. The Tabernacle is on the altar. Prayers are to Jesus.

. . . Fosters a beautiful, more traditional, and intellectual community for Catholics.

There's no church like this in Northern California? Really? There are numerous Latin masses all over California, which you can find at latinmasstimes.com. Just skimming through the list, there are examples in Los Gatos, Burlingame, Newark, Oakland, Petaluma, and many other places. They far outnumber the four OCSP groups, none of which is a parish, and none of which offers anything like a range of parish activities.

But there's such a thing as a reverent OF mass. My wife and I attend at St John the Baptist Napa when we're up there. A photo on the Diocese of Santa Rosa web page shows Bp Vasa censing an altar, and our impression of him -- he made a special visit to St John the Baptist during the 2017 fires to thank first-responders in person -- is that he's a remarkable man. I believe the mass at the St Eugene Cathedral is noted as being especially reverent. So if the issue is "our own parish is flip-flops and halter-tops", I would say the corrective is drive another 15 minutes and see what else is out there. I strongly suspect laziness is involved here.

All the comments suggest the mass in Murrieta is "traditional". Right. The Divine Worship Missal was approved in 2015. The OF mass dates from 1969. Which is more traditional? The DW mass is basically some Cranmerian prayers grafted onto a version of the OF mass that was tarted up with some thees and thous emended into the text by a Viennese (!) professor. It's about as authentic as an evening at Medieval Times. Oh, but it's such an intellectual community at Holy Martyrs Murrieta!

Well, if beer breakfasts and whiskey evenings with Fr Bartus are intellectual, I guess, suit yourself. There's a con going on here. And as the truism goes, you can't con someone who doesn't want to be conned. The gushy reviews about how "traditional" the DW mass is (not like our awful parish down the street) suggest some people use this as an excuse either not to go to the awful mass at all, or not to work to improve that mass, or not to drive another 15 minutes for something better that nevertheless may not be a cousin of Ye Olde Pastry Shoppe.

There's another issue that stood out in the news from the Our Lady of Grace group: they're going to buy the event hall they'd been using. Now, I know a little -- still not a whole lot -- about building funds. Our pastor hit us up for ours. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles doesn't mess around when it comes to building funds. They are years in the inception and approval process. The diocese requires an approved planning firm for such things. And when the fundraising starts (believe us), you don't just sign a pledge card. You set up an automatic monthly deduction from your bank account, and oh-by-the-way, a first lump sum of 10% of the pledge.

Is the Our Lady of Grace group doing anything like this? Are there any guidelines from Houston at all for doing this? Is anyone in Houston aware that this is going on? Does anyone look this over and approve it? Is the funding done via anything other than desultory $20 checks? I assume that buying the property involves a 6- or 7-figure expenditure. How is a group of two dozen remotely going to manage this?

But maybe someone can fill me in. Otherwise, the people who gush over reverent masses in storefronts are simply marks, and their bishop is not shepherding his sheep.

Enthusiasm Fades For The Project

My regular correspondent notes,

The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society planned a conference in Houston sometime in 2017 or perhaps 2018 that did not come to fruition. Then they announced their participation in a celebration of the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus, sponsored by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. As you see, this was also canned. Then Mrs Gyapong mooted something in Rome around the canonisation of John Henry Newman but opined that time did not permit. Now 2020 is being put forward. I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, as you see below, a parishioner of Fr Bartus who regularly leads pilgrimages to Rome has photoshopped him (or rather a hilariously younger version thereof) and Fr Barker on to his standard Rome brochure. It will be interesting to see if this is a go.

Bp Lopes was in Murrieta recently; you can see a video of him ducking his mitre under the doorway while the choir sings "Ecce Sacerdos Magnus" on the Holy Martyrs, Murrieta Facebook page. [I couldn't locate this. If it can be found on YouTube, I'll be delighted to include it.] Our Lady of Grace, Covina is apparently planning to buy the former church, now event space, in which they hold Sunday mass.

So "Springtime for the SoCal Ordinariate," while pretty much "winter for the AC Society." Posts on the blog have dwindled to one or two a week; "Dr" Lerner is going to medical school to become a real doctor and will not longer have time to contribute bios of St Swithun and St Polydore Plasden, those models of Anglican patrimony. Other contributors seem to have lost enthusiasm in these dark times.

As far as I'm aware, the symposium originally scheduled for last November was canceled by the CDF itself. I assume Bp Lopes was in on this decision, which gives a good indication of where he thinks things are headed. (My memory suggests that Msgr Steenson had earlier scheduled a pilgrimage to Rome to thank Pope Benedict for Anglicanorum coetibus; this was overtaken by events as well.)

Regarding the Southern California groups, I've got to wonder why the effort is so scattered. The Irvine group, after some years' effort, seems to have stalled and doesn't look like it has the potential to become a parish, even though Fr Bartus had put effort in that direction. Now the Murrieta group is clearly the focus -- but suddenly the Covina group wants to buy a facility. What's its chance of becoming a parish? And the Murrieta facility is a storefront rental; if they bought, they'd have to relocate. Has anyone thought this thing through? There's one piece here, another there, but nothing quite comes together so far. Is there a plan?

The other day, I was reflecting on how the North American ordinariate we see in 2019 is nothing like what we'd been led to expect in 2011. For such a limited effort, it's been hobbled recently by several scandals, but even before then, problems began to appear within the first few months of its erection. I would say in hindsight that a number of Anglican rectors who were left out, including David Moyer and Christopher Kelley, would probably have performed better than a number who came in -- let's recognize that of the select clique who were ordained, several have subsequently been removed. Would Moyer and Kelley have done worse?

The marquee figure of the whole group of Anglo-Catholics, Fr Phillips, in hindsight clearly represented a problem for his diocesan archbishop and then both Msgr Steenson and Bp Lopes, on several grounds. We know there were issues of obedience and financial irregularities, but his strangely enabling relationship with the now-disgraced Dcn James Orr won't go away, and I hear there's a faction at Our Lady of the Atonement that wants to limit Phillips's involvement in the parish still further.

I'm back to Fr Ripperger and his summary of the Principle of Sufficient Reason: you can't give what you don't have. I think there's a lot of re-examination yet to do.