I'm Not Sure If We're Looking At The Same Church

I note another blog post from Fr Longenecker today, Quo Vadis Traditionalists?, in which he discusses options that might be open to traditionalists who may be frustrated by recent restrictions on the Latin mass. On one hand, I'm not sure of his definition of "traditionalist", and in that light, he's been clear to say he isn't one, which separates him from someone like Fr Zuhlsdorf. But Bp Barron also calls himself a "traditionalist" if by "tradition" one means "adherence to the Church's ecumenical councils, incluiding the Second Vatican Council".

Fr Longenecker proposes avenues for Catholics who disagree with restrictions on the Latin mass:

[W]hat will be the response of those Catholics who are devoted to the Traditional Latin Mass given Rome’s latest round of restrictions? Several things: Some will migrate to the SSPX. Others will seek out other forms of reverent, traditional Catholic worship– an Ordinariate parish, a Byzantine parish or a Novus Ordo that is celebrated in a traditional manner. Others, who are more hard line, will practice subversive obedience. “We can’t have the Latin Mass in the parish church? OK. We’ll move it to the parish fellowship hall, the gym or the Rectory chapel. In fact, what we’re doing is raising the money to build a Latin Mass chapel on the church campus. We’ll worship there instead of the parish church.”

He puts this in a somewhat peculiar context:

What complicates this problem even further–and something which the Englishman [Cardinal] Roche doesn’t seem to understand at all is the entrepreneurial spirit of American conservative Catholicism.

Having been a close observer of the first ten years of an "entrepreneurial" option among those he lists, the North American ordinariate, I've got to say that the reality on the ground isn't what Fr Longenecker suggests it might be. He suggests conservative Catholics might raise money for their own projects, and indeed, that's what we've seen over and over in the ordinariate, with results that have been at best disappointing, but also in some cases like the St Barnabas Omaha ordinariate parish, flagrantly mismanaged. There, its pastor was removed for out-of-control spending that resulted in the need to sell off parish property, but a new administrator has since been faced with continuing divisive issues within the parish. As a visitor put it to me in an e-mail,

To me, those who give their typical diocesan parish a failing grade and then try to get an Ordinariate parish going are like parents who give up on the local school system and try to get a charter school going, or a private alternative . This may benefit the small number who attend, but does nothing to improve local education generally. Perhaps the issue of personal responsibility in the area of education s a political one, but in the case of the Church I think it is moral. Establishing a little enclave of "people like us" is the exact opposite of evangelisation. The financial saga of St Barnabas, Omaha is a depressing example of how “privatisation” is fundamentally the wrong approach, IMHO.

Beyond that, I've got to say that in my case, a thwarted attempt to enter the Church via a parish that failed to join the ordinariate forced me, kicking and screaming, to discover how reverent and worthwhile a diocesan parish can be. What's continued to fascinate me is that the St John's Seminary of the Los Angeles archdiocese, which has been a conspicuous target of conservative agitators who don't live here, continues to provide a steady supply of remarkable priests. Some of them rotate through our parish, either as residents while in seminary or associates after ordination, and then go on to other parishes throughout the archdiocese. What strikes me is that these priests set an example that makes me think the Catholic priesthood has actually become a viable career option for capable, healthy men seeking a worthwhile use of their talents.

Their standard of education, communication, pastoral leadeership, and management style is uniformly high. It's also plain that the level of support and the level of expectation from the archdiocese are both just as high. Our parish programs also involve parishioners from other parishes in the area, and the sense I have is that the level of pastoral care isn't unique to our own parish. Nobody I've gotten to know is disgruntled, and certainly not to the point that anyone is proposing a campaign to build aomething like a Latin mass chapel.

Fr Longenecker deosn't mention what I think are two much more significant "entrepreneurial" phenomena, Ascension Presents and Bp Barron's Word on Fire. Ascension has sponsored two widely available series on YouTube and elsewhere, Bible in a Year and now Catechism in a Year. I'm following the Catechism in a Year, which at the moment has about 110,000 subscribers on YouTube. This is the 1992 St John Paul II Catechism, which is explicitly based on the Second Council.

Word on Fire is, among other things, a high-quality publishing outlet; last year it published an edition of the Second Council documents with commentary by Bp Barron. I bought this and read it. I can only agree with Bp Barron that if people have a problem with the Council, they at least ought to read its documents and commentary. But Word on Fire publishes a great deal else.

One big point I'm taking away from the Catechism in a Year is that salvation is corporate and takes place in the context of the Church. I'm not at all sure that it solves anything to suggest that people set up little enclaves of the like-minded, especially when the US Church is currently displaying remarkable energy. I'm back to the question I used to ask on my old blog, "What problem are we trying to solve?" What problem, for instance, is the North American ordinariate trying to solve if it's attracted so few disaffected Episcopalians after ten years? After all, even Fr Longenecker acknowledges that the point of ordinariates was to allow Anglicsns to preserve their traditions and liturgy in a Catholic context, but now he's suggesting they're actually for disgruntled Catholics.

And of course, we've got to acknowledge that fairly soon after its founding, the US ordinariate extended its target market to Methodists and AME. Isn't it worth asking why this was done and why, in light of a Methodist schism even bigger than the "continuing" movement for Episcopalians, not a single Methodist parish has shown an interest? Instead, the ordinariate is being proposed as a boutique option for Catholics to practice what Fr Longenecker recommends as “subversive obedience”. I'm scratching my head.