Friday, June 9, 2017

"A Bishop's Job Is To Say No"

Fr Z says this on his blog with some frequency. I think of this in the context of Anglicanorum coetibus, whose rationale, let's face it, was that bishops could say no to the idea of Anglican Use parishes in their dioceses -- especially, we might suppose, half-baked proposals for them. Instead, we have a personal prelature with an incentive to say yes even to half-baked proposals.

I keep ruminating on the current examples we have of a tiny group-in-formation in Pasadena made up of some proportion of cradle Catholics who are somehow dissatisfied with the range of mass options available to them in diocesan parishes within a few miles but want to meet using photocopied liturgy in a dismal basement chapel. (A Latin EF mass is available to them four miles away in Alhambra. At least one reverent OF mass with a professional music program is also available nearby in my own experience.)

I was also puzzled that a group would find music programs unsatisfactory in a place like Toronto, to the point that they would want to raise $650,000 for an entirely new one. I passed this question to my regular correspondent, who replied

My impression is that all or most ex-Anglicans in Toronto, including the family in question, head to the OF in Latin at Holy Family, also run by the Oratorians, a number of whom are ex-Anglicans themselves. It has a very good music program. I believe that one family member, a hold-out, was the organist at Good Shepherd, Oshawa when it was an ACCC parish, so the erection of the Ordinariate brought family unity and they all started attending St Thomas More. They have been joined by some but by no means all of their ex-Anglican friends from Holy Family. Fr Hodgins sister-in-law was a chorister with them in their Anglican days. . . . The ex-Anglicans continue as paid choristers at a number of Anglican parishes, or did. I am not sure how the new 12:30 start time works with that.

Naturally, I don't know what a bishop would do with either proposal, for the group in Pasadena or the music program in Toronto -- I'm pretty certain that even if I had a chance to ask a bishop such a question, I would get only a 100,000-foot reply that made no disclosures. My regular correspondent continues of the opinion that the Pasadena group is a make-work project to facilitate the ordination of a Bartus mini-me -- I was reminded that the San Diego North County group has dwindled from Fr Ortiz-Guzman's former 50 parishioners to a dozen or so under Fr Baaten.

But a bishop's job is to say no. A personal prelate's job doesn't seem to be quite the same thing.