Australia’s Ordinariate Lays Out Plan for Evangelical Growth, Financial Viability

SYDNEY, Australia – The COVID-19 pandemic upended the Catholic Church all over the globe, but many local churches have taken the opportunity to rethink and recalibrate their mission to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross is emerging out of Australia’s lockdowns with a new community in Guam, and a new plan to grow its parishes and achieve long-term financial stability for its mission.   

Msgr. Carl Reid, the ordinary of the OLSC Ordinariate since July 2019, discusses with the ACS the Ordinariate’s graces coming out of the pandemic, their plans to kick-start lay-driven evangelization, the Governing Council’s roadmap for parishes to achieve long-term viability, and the development of new vocations to the Catholic priesthood.

Monsignor Carl Reid, the COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the Church globally along with the rest of society. What are some of the graces that you can count from the challenges and opportunities the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross has seen so far?
There have been a few positives out of that experience, that are all based on the necessity of having to live stream Mass. Certainly, livestreaming is not ideal, as the people still cannot receive Communion, which is a major negative; however, one of the positives, recognizing that we are so geographically widespread and not all of our smaller communities have Masses beyond Sundays, is that members of the faithful in those small communities have been watching the “central” live stream I celebrate daily here in Sydney. In a sense, in an important spiritual way, it has brought Ordinariate members closer together, even if we are still physically very far apart. So that's been helpful.

It's also helped us train a couple of Catholic priests in Guam to celebrate the Ordinariate form of the Mass for our very new community there.

At the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Sydney, where we have an Ordinariate seminarian, Bradley Le Guier, their senior seminarians assist at St. Mary's Cathedral for the Triduum and Holy Week; therefore, they don't celebrate those services in the seminary chapel. Most of our Ordinariate communities have never been able to do the Ordinariate Form of the Triduum: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Vigil [due to limitations from lacking full use of their own buildings]. Very graciously, the rector of the seminary has invited me to livestream the Triduum from the seminary chapel this year, so that we can reach out and provide the Ordinariate Form of the Sacrum Triduum this year. That will be kind of a first.

So one of the graces that you mentioned was the formation of a new Ordinariate community, this time in Guam. Can you tell us more about that?
Well, they first contacted us not quite a year ago asking about the Ordinariate Form for funerals. The call was from a layman, part of a lay association of the faithful who do a wonderful charitable work of burying the unclaimed dead, and he had somehow been exposed to the Ordinariate Form of the funeral. He thought it was quite splendid and was seeking permission [to have it celebrated for the dead]. He then asked about the possibility of setting up an Ordinariate community, as he knows a lot of either Episcopalians or former Episcopalians who are now Catholics in Guam, whom he thought might be interested. So I contacted simultaneously both Bishop Lopes [of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter], as Guam is a U.S. territory; and, also the CDF in Rome. They both observed that Guam geographically is part of Oceania and therefore suggested that we run with it in Australia, to see what might develop. It's gone swimmingly well so far. The archbishop in Guam, Michael Byrnes, is from Detroit, and I'm from across the border in Canada about 300 km almost due east. I was born near Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, so we had some common ground in that sense. And it's been just one cooperative thing after another. So we now have a community called Santa Cruz in Guam.

In recent communications with the Ordinariate's Catholics in Australia, you relayed benchmarks that you and the Governing Council had agreed upon for Ordinariate communities to achieve long term viability. Could you explain those particular benchmarks, how they came to be and how they're informing the Ordinariate's next steps?
The rationale goes back to a clergy gathering in 2016, where it was observed the Ordinariate communities that currently exist in Australia simply popped up in the location where they are, because there was an Anglican priest and a group of people that wished to be part of the Ordinariate. Now, had there not been that, and had the Church decided, "Let's set up the Ordinariate in Australia," logically the first five locations would have been the five capital cities Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, where we do happen to have communities. (Of course, we're missing Darwin in the Northern Territories, as we didn't have a community start there; and, as capital cities go, it's considerably smaller than those other five.)

Certainly, we are equally concerned about the other communities in the less populated locations. A compounding problem is that we don't have priests to replace the current priests (most of whom are at or beyond retirement age and living on pension income), both in the major cities and also the smaller population centers, when those priests have either to retire or pass to their greater reward. In all cases, we don't know how we can continue to keep those communities alive and going; therefore, the need to jump start growth and income to provide for succession.

As mentioned, logically we want to somehow ensure the viability of the communities in the five major capital cities. Perth, is on its own merit viable, in that they own a presbytery and have sufficient annual income to support a stipendiary Ordinariate priest. In Sydney, there exists a model where our Ordinariate priest also runs a small diocesan parish and is paid mostly by the diocese. As long as our priest can serve in that “two hats” situation, we also consider that as an ongoing viable scenario. Thus, the nature of the appeal is to the communities of the other three capital cities (Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane) to prove in a tangible way that there is the potential for ongoing existence of the parish as fully viable.

Underlying this is that, during the existence of the Ordinariate since its inception, there's been very little growth in any of our communities. That is compounded by the reality that Australians in general – not just Ordinariate Australians -- are not terribly good givers to the Church. The financial [support] is noticeably at lower levels per capita than we were used to in Canada and the United States. So the appeal is to try to "kickstart" (for want of a better word) these communities based on "you raise X dollars by the end of the year, and the Ordinariate will match it." Additionally, those communities must garner pledges for two more years after, thus providing a strong indication of the ongoing viability financially of those communities.

What else is needed for these parish communities to achieve long-term viability?
An essential aspect of achieving those benchmarks is to grow. Now, what's not mentioned in the letter sent out by our Episcopal Vicar, is that last September, we requested all of our parishes to have a general parish meeting. At those meetings, the priest was to turn over, in a very tangible way, the evangelical activities aimed at parish growth to the lay people of the parish.

So no “Let's get Father to do it" approach to parish-based evangelization?
Correct. And an essential approach was “no hard and fast rules; think outside the box.” If you know some people that are curious, you don't have to insist they go to RCIA, or read the Catechism one chapter per week as the only means. Think outside the box. There are so many good resources out there, and we suggested a number of them: all that wonderful stuff that comes out of the Augustine Institute in Colorado and a lot of the early Bishop Barron stuff, like Catholicism or the Pivotal Players; those really resonate. We found that in our days leading up to becoming Catholics that Bishop Barron’s Catholicism series was especially informative and helpful. Then there are: study groups, prayer groups, the ancient concept of a cell, five people huddling together in the catacombs praying -- that's just a figurative sort of thing -- but think of different ways to do something to evangelize, and get people to recognize that something happens after this life and are you going to be ready for it.

So the benchmarks in the subsequent letter were based on that [evangelization-based growth] happening, going back to those meetings last September. Therefore the benchmark letter at the end of January should not have been a surprise. Of course, it was publicly posted without this context information of the earlier encouragement from last September for each parish to get their lay people doing active evangelical work. So it's all part of a logical sequence, trying to ensure better the ongoing viability of the Ordinariate.

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the Church hard – even the Vatican has hit a cash crunch in supporting Catholic dioceses in mission territories – has the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross been hit badly by this?
No. Because we are generally speaking so small, and the restrictions were quite temporary before [the authorities] lifted them, with the provision of social distancing. Even with the social distancing measures, essentially our full congregations were able to attend church. I've also noted in discussions with Bishop Lopes and others, that the income of most of our Ordinariate communities has not gone down; in fact, in many cases it has gone up. It’s been fairly level here in Australia. I'm just gathering the information for last year, as at this time of year we are requested by the Church to provide our statistics for the preceding year. They're trickling in and, as mentioned, things seem to have been pretty much on par with the previous year.

So this benchmark initiative really comes from the Ordinariate’s Governing Council, and not from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith?
Correct. The benchmarks are aimed at trying to achieve ongoing financial incomes that would enable each of those communities, as an ideal, to have a full-time Ordinariate priest. Yes, some have read a rather rigid warning into the letter: "well what happens if they don't meet it." There are other models of course, such as the one we have in Sydney. We have a priest who is able to be paid by the diocese because he takes care of a small diocesan parish.

There are other ways to make this continue to work in the future. Our preference would be to have full time Ordinariate priests, because that's really the best way for communities to grow, as then he can provide daily Masses, if church space is available. And from my experience in Canada, that was a key contributing factor in seeing some of our communities to grow; and not just daily Masses, but also study groups, dinners - you name it. All those kinds of extra-curricular activities (to borrow a school term) create a greater sense of family, which is often very appealing to people who are seeking church families.

What initial fruits of initiatives have you been able to see from that appeal to kick-start lay-driven evangelization in the parish communities?
Not as much as we'd hoped for in these first 5-6 months, but here in Sydney some of the university-aged people have brought friends and a few of them have shown some ongoing interest … we're hoping that they'll make it more permanent. Statistically, some 75-90% of the people starting to come to church do so because a friend asked them. It's not because the clergy did the evangelism; apparently, this is true across all denominations. The most permanent evangelization is done by the lay people: friends inviting friends to church. That was the basis for the whole instruction to our parishes: have a meeting, get your lay people out there, not just talking to the people they have coffee with every week, but their extended sphere of friends and acquaintances.

What are some of the things that you'd like to see particularly in the development of vocations?
We have a vocation website, and my Vicar General is also our Vocations Director. Through him, we have an annual vocations appeal, which begins on the first Sunday of Advent every year. It’s pretty much front and center for us all the time. We encourage our communities not only to support the current vocations we have, as that is our largest expense item every year; but, also to pray for more vocations. Coupled with this effort to establish ongoing financial viability for full-time Ordinariate ministry in these parishes is the need for more vocations. We're not being flooded with current Anglican ministers seeking to become Catholic priests. We have three seminarians. One in Perth is doing post-grad work in canon law, because we don't currently have an active canonist in the Ordinariate. He's doing that through the Leuven in Belgium, by distance. Then next door at the seminary here in Sydney, we have the young chap who hails from Perth, in his third year [of seminary]. Also out in Perth, we have an Indonesian medical doctor in his mid-40s, who is in his third term of Notre Dame courses in philosophy, history, and other pre-seminary courses.

One of the exciting developments for the Ordinariate is the new Divine Worship: Daily Office. The Commonwealth edition is expected later this year. What’s an example of the role you see for the new daily office in Catholic discipleship and evangelization?
It is interesting. With younger new Catholics -- some that grew up around the Catholic Church and were never exposed to the Daily Office in the English patrimony – for some reason, our Office resonates better with them than the current breviary in the Roman practice. So some of our younger people are praying the Daily Offices. This too may have evangelical benefits. In anticipation of it being released, we started our first Choral Evensong here in Sydney. And it went very well, actually.

We've had a reasonable pre-order interest on the part of people asking for it -- certainly factors more than the number of priests we have. So there's a strong indication the faithful at least are also going to avail themselves of the [Divine Worship: Daily Office] book when it's printed. And that's encouraging.

It's a traditional form of praying that resonates with people in the same way that the Ordinariate Form of the Mass does. The Office book, just as does the Altar Missal, uses Sacral English. Additionally, the classical hymnody we tend towards is similarly traditional in its use of sacral English. So the Office book is yet another valuable tool that is completely synchronized with the patrimony of Divine Worship: the Missal. And it will be much less expensive than buying a copy of the missal!

Thank you so much for this interview, Msgr. Reid. As a final thought, how can all Catholics, wherever they are, support the growing mission and ministry of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross?
Prayer. That's key. Because when you're separated by such geographic distances, it's the logical thing. And of course, this has always been the exhortation on the part of the Church. As St. Paul says, “pray without ceasing.” 

Visit the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross website to learn more about its mission, as well as how to support its mission or join its congregations. 

Peter Jesserer Smith is the vice president of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, and a staff writer for EWTN’s National Catholic Register.