As A Good Aristotelian, I Look For Causes

My regular correspondent reminded me that 90,000 people a year in the US go to the ER with injuries sustained in falling from a ladder. I won't disagree, but I assume an equivalent statistic is zero Roman Catholic bishops in the US go to the ER with injuries sustained in falling from a ladder. Except for 2020, when the number will be at least one.

Now, I have no good single explanation, although the consensus among the few visitors who've weighed in seems to be that Bp Lopes was under some sort of pressure that affected his concentration at the very least. My sense of such calamities is that they don't just happen, they come in some sort of context.

My regular correspondent found an odd piece to add to the puzzle:

I note that Bp Lopes was supposed to officiate at a Confirmation at a diocesan church on February 22. Maybe it was too much to face.

Bp Lopes's fall took place, I believe, on February 21, the Friday before the confirmations were to happen.

I simply don't know enough about etiquette among bishops here. I assume that confirmations are a second-level priority that are normally handled by auxiliary bishops, or indeed other clergy to whom bishops delegate the function. In The Episcopal Church, retired bishops also perform confirmations.

I would guess that it would be extremely uncommon, and perhaps a gaffe, for a diocesan bishop in one geographical territory to ask a diocesan bishop in another to perform routine school confirmations -- an exception might be a situation where a foreign bishop's relative was involved, or perhaps that bishop actually went to the school.

However, it's hard to avoid wondering if the request was made to Bp Lopes because the auxiliaries in the Archdiocese of Houston were too busy, and Bp Lopes, with time on his hands, was being asked to pitch in.

It may or may not be relevant that Bp Lopes and his staff are increasingly referring to the ordinariate as a "diocese". Perhaps this was a reminder that Bp Lopes is a pretty junior guy, and if an archbishop requests a favor, he'd better comply.

I also wonder if that bizarrely campy letter from "J Henry" that usurps the function of the vicar general and reiterates that all issues for the bishop are to go through him is just a vignette of life in the ordinariate chancery. Perhaps other vignettes of life around Bp Lopes have come to his brother bishops' attention, and pressure is being applied from that direction.

If anyone has insights into how things operate with bishops not terribly busy being asked to do school confirmations, I'll be very interested to hear them.

A Visitor On The Situation In Houston

I had an e-mail from a visitor who sometimes helps me with what the actual job roles and duties are in Catholic seminaries and chanceries. His insights remind me of what I learn about cars when, as an English-major non-mechanic, I'm exposed to what actually happens under the hood when something goes wrong.

In this particular case, he echoes other concerns I've had from people who've commented on the e-mail from Bp Lopes's secretary: expressed in other words, it reflects "unhealthy boundaries" between him and Bp Lopes, which is not a good sign and suggests, like the visitor's other comments, that something's very wrong in Houston:

My confusion is with the structure of the chancery staff and the “hierarchy” therein at Houston. If you looked at the top of an org chart for a regular diocese, there would be a direct line from the Bishop to the Bishop's Secretary. There would be connected lines from the bishop to the V.G. and Moderator of the Curia

The Bishop’s Secretary is really a gatekeeper/handler of sorts. They handle the diary, meetings, functions, event planning and all of the “things” which the bishop is involved in around the diocese. They handle sensitive matters, draft sensitive letters and responses. The discretion most people in this position practice is phenomenal. If you want to get something done or want something to end up at the top of the correspondence pile, you want to be on good terms with the bishops secretary. In many diocese this position is staffed by a lay person. In some cases it is staffed by a religious and in other cases (fairly few) it is staffed by a priest.

The Vicar General is responsible for the day to day running of the diocese in the bishops absence. Remember there are 3 “munera” or gifts that a bishop receives through consecration/ordination to the episcopacy (teaching, administrative, sacramental). The Vicar General must be a priest.

The Vicar General can ordinarily carry out the teaching and administrative (not legislative or judicial) acts of a bishop in the bishops absence. Now, that being said, there are some limits imposed by Canon Law and basic prudence. The Vicar General cannot sell property, close parishes, issue decrees of excommunication, excardinate or incardinate priests, a vicar general may never sacramentally ordain. In exceptional cases (long term illness) a Vicar General could be the ordinary minister of confirmation in a diocese as delegated by the bishop.

The Moderator of the Curia is there to see that the chancery functions in a clear and effective manner. They really are not there to take the place of the bishop in any circumstance. They are there in a way as an “operations” manager for chancery offices. They also monitor administrative functions and assist to ensure coordination with in administrative and ministerial functions. Moderators of the Curia are not required positions to have, a bishop could choose to carry this out himself.

All of the above is to say... Why the communication from J. Henry? If anything... In the real world something from the Vicar General or something FROM THE BISHOP would arrive in people’s inbox which would address the bishop falling and breaking his leg/ankle. It would just be facts and not have any commentary surrounding it... But apparently there is a power struggle in Houston. The line, “you are to bother me, and not the Bishop.”, is something bizarre for him to say... The Vicar General is in charge, not the bishop’s secretary.

I’m also just weirded out by the overly affectionate nature of the letter. The reference to keeping him on bedrest, his version of the story, paragraph 3, the good behavior quip and the end of paragraph 5. It’s just weird. The facts could have been said in 2 paragraphs, with a little humor... But clearly, J. Henry is trying his hand at comedy as well... I suppose if the Ordinariate is suppressed, right? I think this is hinting at your “clique” suspicion... The campy tone of the whole letter is off putting... But than again, the Ordinariate does trend toward “camp” performance. Let’s not forget some sermons we have seen/heard, along with the rather weird pronunciations used when presiding over the Anglican communion ser... I mean Holy Mass....

I read that letter as part neediness and part power play. It is unfortunate that there has seemed to be no coordinated information release. All this goes to do is muddle the necessary information, which is His Excellency broke his leg/ankle, here’s how it happened. he has a few months to recover from surgery, he will be cancelling visits, here is who to contact in the meantime and pray for me and continue to pray for Himself (the Bishop) and the diocese.

Oh and J. Henry is not even listed on the ordinariate staff page. . . So. . .

My Inner Detective Keeps Tugging At My Sleeve

As it inevitably would, a copy has reached me of the only announcement of any sort that we've had from Houston on Bp Lopes's broken leg and the status of his recovery. I believe it was issued a week ago Monday, February 24, and so far, there's been no followup. (click on the image for a larger copy):

My inner detective keeps wanting me to come down to the station and clear up a few things, so to speak:

• How does a Roman Catholic bishop fall off an attic ladder, especially when he has people to carry things up to the attic for him?
• What became of the promise in the February 24 note from his secretary that he will in "his own words" "send you a note later this week"?
• Why has there been no more official or more general notice to the members of the ordinariate and other interested people? There are hundreds of members who don't attend ordinariate masses and would not hear of the accident during announcements.
• What does the secretary mean when he tells the bishop, "You will recover once, and you will recover well"? Does the bishop intend to go snowboarding over spring break, or what? Most people in their 40s with a broken leg do in fact recover once. Why the apparently supererogatory admonition?
• Bp Lopes has a staff, including a vicar general, who are at least theoretically capable of drafting a communication from the bishop to his flock for his signature, regardless of the bishop's medical condition. Why hasn't some upbeat message been drafted on the status of his recovery, thanking everyone for their cards and prayers?

Instead, it seems as though nobody's in charge and the bishop is being held incommunicado in an undisclosed location. On one hand, I'm not a doctor, and we know very little about his condition, except that it's a fracture of both the tibia and fibula that will require additional surgery, apparently next week. This would place it in the serious category, and this could in fact require four to six weeks recovery, but beyond the semi-official basics, themselves apparently not for general release, we've been told nothing.

I can think of several possible hypotheses that could answer the puzzling questions my inner detective keeps pestering me about.

One might involve an additional condition, not disclosed, that would require special care, especially if the patient had to be admonished to recover just once.

Another might be other deliberations taking place on the overall status of the ordinariate or its leadership, possibly precipitated by the bishop's fall or any underlying issue that may have led to the bishop's fall.

The somewhat campy, entre-nous tone of the secretary's letter, with no other, more official communication from Houston on the bishop's status, simply reinforces a sense that things are going on that are known only to a small inner clique. Or maybe it's just my inner detective going overboard.

UPDATE: As far as I've been told, some ordinariate priests have announced the bishop's accident at mass, though apparently not all have. If the bishop had been scheduled to visit in upcoming weeks, quiet announcements are made of cancellation in parish bulletins or Facebook pages, such as this one at St Luke's suburban Maryland:

• Keep Bishop Lopes in your prayers.

  He fell and broke his leg rather badly. So he will be unable to make his visitation this Sunday. Confirmations will be re-scheduled after April. Please watch the bulletins and emails for further details.

Why is this being kept so seemingly quiet?

The Toledo Catholic Hospital Murder

As a true crime fan, I've been familiar with the case of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl, a Sister of Mercy murdered by Fr Gregory Robinson at Mercy Hospital, Toledo, OH, in 1980. The case went cold for over 20 years, but Robinson was convicted of the crime in 2006. There have been at least two books and a number of TV shows on the case and trial. A new TV show appeared Sunday night on the Investigation Discovery series The Lake Erie Murders.

Each telling of the story has been flawed by anti-Catholic bias or ignorance of how things work in the Church, but each adds new perspective as well. At the same time, I followed the story first as a non-Catholic and then as a Catholic, so I've brought new perspectives of my own with each new version. The thing that stood out to me this time, which I may have missed in some way earlier, is that there were two priests assigned to Mercy Hospital in 1980 as hospital chaplains. One was Fr Robinson; the other was a Fr Rybicki. (I may not have the spelling right, since I'm going off the TV narration.)

The show interviewed a man who had been a security guard at the hospital in 1980 and knew all the figures involved, including Frs Robinson and Rybicki. He said that, although Fr Rybicki was a hearty man who could tell lots of jokes, he'd been an alcoholic who'd nevertheless turned his life around and seemed to have been making up for his earlier problems as a down-to-earth chaplain.

What I've learned since becoming a Catholic is that hospital chaplain is in fact more of a career path for men who aren't deemed suitable for parish work. Rybicki apparently had an earlier record that put him in that job. It sounds as though Robinson, although, a very quiet and unassuming man, may have had issues on his record that raised questions in his case as well. According to the Wikipedia link,

The case remained unsolved, with no new leads, until 2003 when police received a letter from a woman who claimed that Robinson had sexually abused her when she was a child in a series of Satanic ritual abuse that also involved human sacrifice. The woman, using the name "Survivor Doe", also filed a civil lawsuit against Robinson seeking financial damages for having been a victim of ritual abuse by Robinson and other adults dressed as nuns. The case was dismissed in 2011 due to having been filed too late.

This complaint was apparently based on the somewhat squirrely theory of "recovered memory". On the other hand, according to the most recent TV show, investigators found a book on the occult hidden in Robinson's quarters during a search, as well as a letter opener later determined to have been the murder weapon. The pattern of Sister Pahl's wounds and position of other evidence was determined to have been consistent with Satanic ritual, and the timing of the murder, on the morning of Holy Saturday, might also have been consistent with that motive.

The takeaway I have from this most recent version of the case is that both Rybicki and Robinson appear to have been marginal priests for whom the diocese may have been hard put to find a productive assignment, and they wound up as hospital chaplains where the damage they could potentially do was limited. Nevertheless, although nobody connected with the diocese or the Jesuit order is in a position to shed light on any other personnel issues that may have arisen in the course of Robinson's career, it's fairly plain that this man should not have continued in the priesthood once questions arose, as I would guess that they did well before the murder.

The continuing problem I see is that while the Church in general is, however slowly and imperfectly, addressing the problems connected with stringing marginal priests along, Houston is in a very different class and has actively been recruiting and retaining men with uncertain backgrounds, some of whom are Protestant versions of the kind of Catholic priests who are banished to hospital chaplain jobs.

I'm increasingly convinced that the Church will, fairly soon, need to wind down the operations of the ordinariates. A major question will be what to do with the collection of marginal men it's accumulated in the course of this misguided effort.

What About Contingencies?

Thinking about the deteriorating state of ordinariate facilities, a related question occurred to me. My wife and I travel to wine country frequently, and we go to Sunday mass in the Diocese of Santa Rosa. In the 2014 earthquake in Napa, the school at the St John the Baptist parish there was damaged to the point that the buildings couldn't be used. As a result, a good part of the parking lot was taken up with temporary trailers that were used for classrooms until the school could be repaired.

Recovery of this sort requires someone with a rolodex and a certain amount of cash up front to pay the temporary office space vendor to bring the trailers in on short notice. I've got to assume this was part of a diocesan function, probably in the building department, and the diocese in cooperation with the parish had a plan in pace and the serious money available to follow through. Contingency planning is part of a responsible organization. Auditors, regulators, and boards of directors expect it in the secular environment.

My brief experience at St Mary of the Angels, which almost went into the ordinariate and is typical of facilities that did in fact go in, is that plumbing, HVAC, flooding, and similar emergencies are routine. (Legal emergencies can be added to the list in that specific case.) Most won't necessarily prevent use of the facility for Sunday mass, but it's hard not to think emergencies could arise that would prevent access to the nave for either a short or longer term.

In colder climates, heating failure in subzero conditions would prevent use of the facility. Likewise, in the sun belt, air conditioning failure in a 105F heat wave could have the same effect. A fire could be a more permanent problem -- even if the facility were insured, arrangements would have to be made for mass until the facility can be restored. Completely unpredictable events like hazmat spills nearby could have an equivalent impact. Regulatory issues -- failure to pass a building inspection, or change in municipal policies on parking -- could be just as crippling.

It looks like dioceses have staff that plans for cases like these, and I would guess that even in cases where a diocesan parish facility is completely unavailable for Sunday masses, the diocese can communicate effectively on the nature of the problem, refer parishioners to nearby parishes, and has necessary resources to remediate the situation as needed.

The ordinariate, which is increasingly calling itself a "diocese', as far as I can see has no such plan in place, and it certainly doesn't have the resources to assist a parish that's lost its facility.

Small-to-medium size companies ether have an employee who plans for such contingencies as part of their duties, or they hire a consultant on a short-term basis to develop such a plan. This is increasingly a requirement. It's hard to avoid the impression that the ordinariate does not have staff that would be capable of developing and maintaining such a plan, although in the ordinariate's case, the central plan might not be much longer than a dozen pages. However, the bishop would also need to task individual pastors with developing a risk assessment for their individual parishes and strategies for responding to likely events. These in turn would probably not need to be much longer than a few pages, but they need to be done.

Again, I seriously question how many ordinariate clergy are capable of completing such a fairly simple project. I imagine some could -- Fr Vidal is probably on this list -- but others, all of whose surnames begin with B, would not.

This is just another factor that contributes to my view that the ordinariate is in large part a fantasy, and Catholic media that enable this is complicit.

Capital Projects In San Antonio

A visitor e-mailed me to say that Our Lady of the Atonement is starting a capital campaign to raise $4,000,000 to finish out the unfinished school expansion and other improvements. Clearly that's necessary, as the unfinished part of the school is a fire and safety hazard. Let's hope a revitalized school can attract new enrollment to fill it.

But the visitor also sent along links to the Archdiocese of San Antonio's "On the Way - ¡Andale!" capital campaign. Its purpose and scope are explained in this link.

Thanks be to God! We have surpassed $55 million in gifts and pledges and are at 92% of our goal! So far about 18,000 families have contributed, and I am most grateful to them, our priests, and all our volunteers who have persevered in running this race of the On the Way - ¡Andale! Capital Campaign!

I have already approved over 230 Parish projects and 7 Archdiocesan Projects that are now in progress. From parking lots, A/C units, and roof repairs to Catholic School renovations, a Science Wing, new kitchens, new classrooms and Adoration chapels. Every project is important and makes our parishes more beautiful, more inviting, and a welcoming home for all of us, new and current Catholics alike.

In the Archdiocese of San Antonio, we are growing!

This link provides a more detailed look at the individual projects, the fundraising goals, and the amounts pledged -- in some cases, pledges and gifts far exceed goals. Typical parish projects listed include "Grounds landscape at new campus"; "New HVAC system for the church; upgrade church interior; eliminate school debt"; "relocation and redesign of the HVAC system"; "Build new restrooms"; "Roofing of the Hall with Metal Roof", and so forth.

Since many existing ordinariate parish facilities are in the sun belt, I've got to assume these need regular upgrades and replacement of HVAC. Plumbing ages in all buildings. Our Lady of Walsingham, as far as I can tell, is the only ordinariate facility that is remotely new, which says to me that just about every other one is probably due for a new roof. St Barnabas Omaha got lucky with a major bequest, although I would bet that if the parish were to list needed upgrades to their aged facility, the total would exhaust that amount and more.

Yet so far, there hasn't been a peep from Houston on the need for a capital campaign, even though the ordinariate is approaching its tenth anniversary, and as far as I know, there have been no serious capital projects anywhere in the ordinariate during that period.

As far as I can see, Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins are giving no thought to the future, while doing what they can to paint a soft-focus and sometimes completely misleading picture of the present. But Houston struggles just to run its bishop's appeal. It doesn't have the resources to run a capital campaign.

This to me is just one more reason why new Catholics concerned about stewardship should be looking carefully about where their contributions are, and aren't, going in the ordinariate.

What Were They Thinking?

The more I learn about Catholic dioceses, the more I think, among many other things, that Cardinal Roger Mahony is an underrated figure. At minimum, I've run into a lot of outstanding Catholic priests in late middle career who advanced to responsible positions under Mahony. This says to me that, whatever glitches may have taken place, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles had been an operation that did in fact promote the right people. I continue to think that Mahony's 1986 decision not to accept St Mary of the Angels as a Pastoral Provision parish was correct and in fact foresighted.

This was a parish that seems to have had considerable promise, first under its founding rector, Fr Dodd, and then under his successor, Fr Jordan, who in the view of the former vestryman I quoted yesterday had considerable foresight, not least in acquiring adjoining property to expand the parking lot, something his successor, Fr Barker, neglected in favor of a seven-year plague of feckless litigation that left the parish with a pyrrhic victory but no denominational affiliation. (I assume I'll never have an opportunity to address Fr Barker about this in a townhall.)

But another program that had been neglected throughout the parish's later history was facility maintenance. The former vestryman told me,

When the [commercial] tenants, upstairs and down, were in place, there came a heatwave, which overloaded the air conditioning apparatus on the roof. We undertook to get this sorted out, and had an HVAC professional survey the problems of the antique system -- nearly original to 1984, by all appearances. He was servicing it, to make the rehab center temperatures get a bit lower than 85F. It was critical for their business that this be fixed. But about that point, we were ejected.

The parish had changed hands three times over the past decade, and maintenance wasn't a priority, even if the money had been there -- but it was going to continued litigation.

But another factor I see as I get to know Catholic dioceses better is that they spend a lot of time in property management. In part, this is simply because the ownership responsibility for parish facilities is much more clearly with the diocese, rather than among Episcopalians, where primary ownership is with the local parish corporation in the form of the rector, wardens, and vestry, who can maintain the facility or not as they choose. I would guess that among other things, a Catholic diocese self-insures, so that it's much more in the diocese's interest to pay attention to safety.

But let's turn to the example of Fr Mark Lewis, who clearly is now the lead pastor in the North American ordinariate, selected by Bp Lopes to take over from Fr Phillips at the most prestigious and visible parish in the ordinariate. As far as anyone can tell, Fr Lewis's skill set simply does not extend to facility maintenance, since his former Episcopalian parish allowed its building to deteriorate to the point that once it went into the ordinariate, it had to return the property to the Episcopalian diocese due to its condition, which the parish could not maintain.

How does this relate to Fr Lewis's potential ability to maintain the Our Lady of the Atonement property, which is aging with the additional burden of an unfinished school facility?

The parishes in Bridgeport and Scranton, PA have limited resources to maintain, and certainly not to upgrade, old and possibly dangerous facilities that had previously been closed by Catholic dioceses, at least in part due to the continued expense of maintaining them or bringing them up to standard. Other ordinariate parish facilities in Baltimore and Orlando appear to be aging, and my instinct is that neither has the resources to renew roofs or HVAC.

Yet for all Bp Lopes's talk of building a diocese from scratch, Houston has nobody on staff to supervise facilities, and the ordinariate does not have the resources to finance parish capital programs. This is going to show more with each passing winter and summer.

I think Cardinal Mahony, who did in fact know a thing or two about how to run a diocese, had a pretty good idea of what he'd be getting into by bringing St Mary of the Angels into his archdiocese under the Pstoral Provision. Certainly the public issue he stated was simply that if the parish had a problem with Episcopalian authority, it was going to have a bigger one under the Catholic Church. But there's a continuing but more subtle problem that constitutionally disgruntled, fractious, and pusillanimous parishes aren't set up to do the daily work of prudence, temperance, and fortitude of maintaining and upgrading their facilities.

That would be problem enough for an archdiocese that had such a parish under the Pastoral Provision. How much worse will this be for a scratch-built wannabe diocese with neither the staff nor the resources to make sure this is done?

I think this is a central defect in the thought processes that led to Anglicanorum coetibus.