CLARIFICATIONS:
(1) There are restrictions on who can formally join an Ordinariate. But there are no restrictions on worshipping in an Ordinariate church.
(2) Our Lady of the Atonement has hitherto been a personal parish of the Archdiocese with borders coterminous with those of the Archdiocese, and has been part of the Anglican Use, the original set-up devised by Ratzinger for formerly Anglican parishes coming into Full Communion with their own liturgical heritage, long before the Ordinariates were set up.
Many readers will have read of the disgraceful treatment which the Anglican Use Church and Parish of our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio has received at the hands of the Archbishop of San Antonio.
The Pastor of that Church, Fr Christopher Phillips, founded the parish with a handful of refugees from the Protestant Episcopal Church of the US of A back in the early 1980s. It has grown into a flourishing and enormous complex in which both the Church and the Academy are packed to the rafters. Splendid Liturgy prevails in the Church, and when I visited the Academy a year or two ago for their Commencement, and nosed around a bit on the ground finding out the facts for myself, I was enormously impressed by the atmospherically high academic standards ... including the large amount of Latin taught. And by the remarkable standards of student piety and devotion in Church. The whole set-up is vastly impressive. When, perhaps, you recollect that most of my working life was spent in a college with academic and Classical ambitions and a claimed Catholic culture, and that I am a critical and cynical old body, you might concede that I have some right to have an opinion and not to have it dismissed out of hand.
The Parish, now that the American Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter is up and running and flourishing under the admirable Bishop Steven Lopes, naturally wishes to join its brethren of the Anglican Patrimony in the Ordinariate. But the Archbishop resents this and has put in a replacement pastor while Fr Phillips is sent off for Reflection and Prayer. The parishioners, several of whom alerted me to what is going on, resent this and suspect that the 'temporary' sidelining of Fr Phillips is, in fact, final. It seems to be their impression ... how am I to know where they got it from ... that such a slippery way of acting is the sort of thing you expect from Catholic bishops.
"We want our priest and our Church back".
The said prelate acknowledges the strengths and excellences of the Atonement set-up, although the letter he sent to the parishioners deftly contrives to suggest that everything was built up by his own predecessor (who died recently) and makes no mention that Fr Phillips might have had anything whatsoever to do with it all. The Archbishop professes to intend to maintain the Parish's Anglican Patrimony for those who come from Anglicanism; suggesting by this sinister qualification that he does not think it right that the large numbers of cradle Catholics (including many Latinos) who worship there should be exposed to the perils of the Anglican Patrimony and the enormities of Anglican-style liturgy.
Why? Any Catholic of any Rite is entitled to worship in any Catholic Church and Rite he desires. Why is it necessary to discourage Latin Catholics of that diocese from attending Ukrainian Rite or Anglican Use or Melkite Rite or Extraordinary Form liturgy? Is the Archbishop afraid that they might discover something he would rather they did not know? Or a spirituality by which he would rather they were not fed? Or a culture which makes him feel threatened?
Otherwise, he makes vague and unspecific comments about the Parish being out of sync with the Diocese. If this man had an Anglo-Saxon sense of Natural Justice he would be man enough to let it be made public what his case against the Pastor is, so that the parishioners had the materials to form mature and adult judgements. All that stuff about Discernment and the Sacrosanctity of Conscience appears to have flown out of some window.
But here we have yet another example of the sad need which a certain sort of sad Catholic cleric seems to have to keep the laity safely and permanently infantilised; a damning reflection on their poor relationships with their lay people and on a profoundly "pre-Conciliar" mind-set towards them.
As Cardinal Ratzinger memorably said about the English Catholic bishops in the 1990s, "What are they so afraid of?"
I have a lot more to say on this.
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34 comments:
This is all the more disgraceful if it is true that the archdiocese originally sold the parish some disused land that they had no purpose for, and made the then small and homeless group pay the full market price for it.
And the "V2 rupture" clericalist machine thinks it will get away with the new dictatorship?
No they will not. They will sow the wind, and they will reap the whirlwind.
I don't get this. I understand that this is a diocesan parish, but is Fr Phillips an Ordinariate priest or a diocesan priest? If the latter, why is he using Ordinariate liturgy; if the former, how is the Archbishop (who would not be his Ordinary) entitled to send him off for "Prayer n Reflection"? Maybe, to answer my own question, he has submitted to a request from the Abp as an alternative to being removed from the (non-Ordinariate) parish.
What we see is the raw excise of power divorced from Christ and Christianity. We see when Bergoglio forces the head of a sovereign state to resign> We see it when liberals impose heterodoxy. The Parish needs to join the Ordinariate. The Archbishop of San Antonio gives Holy Communion to adulterers. That is why he is moving against Fr Phillips. Its to block the parish joining the Ordinariate.
Fr.I find that the Ordinariates are far more Catholic than our sorry shower of Liberal Lefties that we have in The Church.What it boils down to Father is this-our Catholic clergy,in the main,are embarrassed by these former Protestants !They are Catholic to the core and put our own to shame!We have fallen along way now that we are ashamed of our own Glorious Holy Catholic Faith.Long live The Ordinariates!
Fr., is one free to "choose" a different rite if one already received the Sacraments of Initiation in the Roman Rite? My understanding was that Anglicanorum Coetibus only allowed "switching" if one was not fully "initiated."
Thank you for your comments. We remain hopeful and continue to pray for our pastor, Fr. Christopher Phillips, for our Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and for our journey to the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter and that all of this may be concluded soon.
I tremble to say that they seem to be afraid of God, and of those who serve him.
Choose you this day.
"I don't get this. I understand that this is a diocesan parish, but is Fr Phillips an Ordinariate priest or a diocesan priest? If the latter, why is he using Ordinariate liturgy; if the former, how is the Archbishop (who would not be his Ordinary) entitled to send him off for "Prayer n Reflection"? Maybe, to answer my own question, he has submitted to a request from the Abp as an alternative to being removed from the (non-Ordinariate) parish."
As I understand it, the priest in question---Fr. Phillips---is a secular priest incardinated in the diocese of San Antonio. The parish is not using---or at least was not using prior to its publication---the Ordinariate Missal. Rather, it's an "Anglican Use" parish; there were a few of these scattered about under the Pastoral Provision rules that were allowed, on something more resembling an ad-hoc basis than the Ordinariate, to use Anglican or Anglican-derived (I hedge because I do not know) liturgical books. If I am not mistaken, Our Lady of Atonement is one of, if not the, most prominent and successful Anglican Use parish, if not anywhere, then certainly in the U.S.A.
"Fr., is one free to 'choose' a different rite if one already received the Sacraments of Initiation in the Roman Rite? My understanding was that Anglicanorum Coetibus only allowed 'switching' if one was not fully 'initiated.'"
There's an apparent conflict between A.C. I(4) and Article 5 of its Complimentary Norms. As far as "switching," of course, you can go to Mass in any Catholic rite you like.
***
The issue here, of course, is (surely) taxation. The diocese can and does tax diocesan parishes. It would not be permitted to tax an ordinariate parish within its geographic borders. That the bishop has taken such absurd measures over what is, at heart, a budget line item is venality of the very worst sort.
The new Peronist spirit seems to be flourishing. How long Oh Lord?
Father, thank you for your balanced yet forceful critique.
I too noticed that comment in his letter to the Parish that he intends to preserve the Anglican Patrimony "for those who come from Anglicanism". Although he is referring to the Pastoral Provision, this type of thinking was precisely the sort of Anglican-Patrimony-as-a-museum-exhibit that the Vatican and implementing Bishops strenuously said they wanted to avoid by promulgating AC (Cardinal Collins made this very point in March 2011 at Queen of the Apostles, Mississauga, Ontario). In other words, Anglicanorum Coetibus was intended to give the Anglican Patrimony a living presence within the Catholic Church - and if that meant growth, often through intermarriage with Latin Rite Catholics and raising of children in the Ordinariate, so be it. I would think it very much violates the spirit of that Apostolic Constitution for a Latin Rite bishop to stymie the efforts of a proto-Ordinariate parish to "come home", and it shows a lack of Christian charity for him not to allow those cradle Latin Rite Catholics that joined OLA to remain with it as an Ordinariate parish (the Archbishop would have discretion to re-incardinate - is that the right word? - Late Rite Catholics in the POCSP).
I find another public comment made by the Archbishop - about the danger of OLA becoming separate from the Archdiocese, rather than just unique - laughable. I, like many Catholics, know of "ethnic" parishes in North America where the priest, usually from the "old country" is brought in and incardinated with the local diocese, yet the priest says the vernacular Mass in their language, holds parish festivals linked to celebrations from the "old country", flies in bishops from the "old country" to do confirmations and otherwise pretty much avoids all contact with the local diocese - all with the explicit permission of the local bishop. This separateness is not done out of any animosity to the larger diocese, it's just a cultural reality. These ethnic parishes usually assimilate away over three or so generations (perhaps that is why they are given such latitude?) unless they are fed by a constant stream of new immigrants from the "old country".
I am not at all critical of such pastoral accommodations (always better to meet Catholics in the culture they are comfortable with), but why are such separate" ethnic parishes tolerated and, yet, the flourishing of a traditional English liturgy in San Antonio is resisted in this manner?
A sad tale. The SSPX needs to take note and be wary of this crowd. At what point is it ok to take a cue from St. Nicholas and deliver a swift blow to the conk?
What a racist post. Very offended by this entire article. You're not trying to help solve the problem...you're making more of a divide here.
It is almost impossible to resist referring to D. Gregory's bon mot: 'It is no accident that the symbol of a bishop is a crook and the sign of an archbishop is a double-cross.'
It is also hateful to find oneself constantly harbouring thoughts antipathetic to those who are supposedly responsible for the safeguarding of faith and flock.
You will recall better than I, Father, who it was who suggested that while bishops were the esse of the church, they were not necessarily the bene esse...
Father, you probably don't remember me, but I met you when you visited Our Lady of the Atonement several years,. My name is Chuck Wilson. I am a founding member of the parish and also the retired executive director of an apostolate formed to assist Catholics in vindicating their rights in the Church. You can rest assured that we have a team of canon lawyers that is ready to help the parishioners in seeking all the remedies available under canon law.
There is now a website where your readers can keep informed. www.saveatonement.org.
Please keep us in your prayers
Under the same Archdiocese of San Antonio is the church of St George Maronite
https://www.stgeorgesa.org/
"a Christian community of the Syriac Maronite Patriarchal Church of Antioch, a self-governing Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Pope of Rome, Francis."
Surely, this community also has "an identity separate from, rather than simply unique, among the parishes of the archdiocese."
Yet, St George Maronite is not being investigated, their pastor has not been banished from the parish grounds.
Gosh, what could possibly be the difference? That St George is not trying to leave?
Divine Worship: the Missal has replaced the Book of Divine Worship, i.e. the Anglican Use in diocesan parishes. Also, diocesan clergy can use the Ordinariate Use at the request of Ordinariate members.
Pre Conciliar??????? What you describe is most certainly a POST Conciliar mindset. It is the Novus Ordo that is the prime instrument of infantilizing the laity.
Perhaps we need some clarification. I certainly hold no brief for the bishop in this case, but my understanding is that Fr. Phillips did, in fact, have an opportunity to bring Our Lady of the Atonement into the Ordinariate when the Ordinariate first came into existence. I'm told that at that time he decided against it out of concerns that were, at least in part, financial. I don't know this for a fact--I'm only repeating things I've heard, but I've heard them from people with at least some personal connection. In any event, if this in fact happened--if Fr. Phillips decided for whatever reason to remain in the Archdiocese of San Antonio--he would have done so on the usual terms. This could have been a rather short sighted decision, as events have borne out. If these are the facts, it's understandable, at least in principle, that a bishop would not want to allow parishes in his diocese to simply "opt out" at their own discretion, even if there are significant religio-cultural considerations.
Thank you for this wonderful article. May God bless you! The outpouring off support for our cause has been tremendous.
Archbishop Garcia-Siller ordained Fr. David Wagner for the Ordinariate in 2014, to serve in the Northern San Antonio exurb of Boerne, Texas (it was the real boondocks when I grew up in S.A. back in the 60's), and I heard several Ordinariate priests back in Houston shortly thereafter say how charmed they were by the Archbishop. Fr. Phillips himself published on Facebook quite favorable reports of the Archbishop's visits to Atonement in the past, as well, thanking him for his kindness. Thus it is all the more saddening and a little confusing, to see this happen now.
Trying to read between the lines, and noting the text of the Archbishop's letter, it does seem likely that the chancery ("Pastoral Center") in San Antonio fears that if Atonement were to become an Ordinariate parish, they would see a continued drain of faithful and their contributions over to Atonement and away from the archdiocese. While I do not go back over to San Antonio from Houston very often, my impression from the times that I have been there is that, unlike Houston, Atonement is virtually the only "conservative" parish there, so faithful who want good, reverent liturgy and orthodox teaching would have nowhere else to go but to OLA (pace the SSPX and Byzantine Catholic missions). I would like to think that some particularly uncharitable liberal clerics in the Pastoral Center put the idea into the Archbishop's head that this drastic action had to be taken. Unfortunately, it seems undeniable that in an objective sense, the powers that be are acting much as the former Warsaw Pact authorities acted in building the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain, to keep their unhappy citizens inside their territory so that, having no alternative, they would build the socialist paradise.
To continue the analogy one step further, the distinction between the Iron Curtain and what the "Pastoral Center" is doing is that while in the old Communist days, maybe people wanted to leave only because they sought material prosperity or liberal political freedom, but in OLA's case, the good of souls is at stake. We at Our Lady of Walsingham ran into a similar version of this when, in the late 1990's, a parishioner from another Houston parish decided to come over to us, bringing her large bank account with her. Suddenly the wrath of the Chancery descended upon our pastor, the long-suffering Fr. James T. Moore, and charges of sheep-stealing were flung. The old clerical gripe about "sheep stealing" that we have heard so much of, is, as you say, Father, infantilising the laity, implying that the laity have no ability to discern what is best for their souls, if not simply and uncaringly, wanting to keep them, and their money, imprisoned in the unsatisfactory parish. I fear that the Pastoral Center in San Antonio may have some of that mentality in operation here.
Dear Brigid Cooley: how is this post "racist"? What is the nature of the "problem" you refer to? And how is Fr Hunwicke "making more of a divide here"?
I ask these questions as a cradle Catholic who, after having drifted away from the Faith through my early adult years and having married a Protestant by the norms of her ecclesial community, reconciled with the full Faith with my wife being confirmed Catholic within the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter. We now joyfully celebrate worship within the POCSP with our children (the youngest of whom was baptized within it).
Pastoral incidents such as this one in San Antonio challenge me: is the liturgical expression within which I am raising my children somehow "second class"? As a cradle Latin Rite Catholic, should I be trying to steer my family towards the majoritarian form of liturgical worship within the Catholic Church? What of my own resonances with the truly Catholic aspects of the Anglican Patrimony - are these yearnings illegitimate?
I don't mean to make this personal, but a living Church IS personal. It is a living Tradition, and if elements of it are somehow inauthentic or otherwise not Catholic, they should be left behind. So far, I don't see what is unCatholic in what Fr Phillips has done in his wonderful ministry of over three decades.
No doubt, it’s all to do with ‘discernment’ and 'accompaniment’. And no doubt 'mercy' comes into this in a big way.
Is there a suggestion by the Archbishop that a cradle Catholic married to a Catholic who used to be an Anglican should not be allowed to attend the same Mass and receive Communion together?
MARK H: S George's Maronite Church in San Antonio is already part of the Maronite Eparchy of our Lady of Lebanon, so there can be no question of it either leaving, or not leaving, the Archdiocese. The Eastern Catholic Churches have their own separate jurisdictions. The Ordinariates are just trying to catch up with this very natural arrangement!
Will the heavy hand of Bergoglio now descend upon the bishop in order to investigate his behaviour, thus forcing his resignation so that a truly merciful bishop may be appointed? Or is that sort of behaviour reserved only for those whom Bergoglio and his coterie dislike?
Meanwhile have you heard any liberals shouting about Bergoglio's dictatorial behaviour in Malta? It sounds very quiet where I am.
One expects faithful Catholics to be persecuted, but from within the Church? From within the Vatican?
Who can put an end to this madness?
Long live the Dubia Four
Practisinglawyer wrote:
"I don't get this. I understand that this is a diocesan parish, but is Fr Phillips an Ordinariate priest or a diocesan priest? If the latter, why is he using Ordinariate liturgy; if the former, how is the Archbishop (who would not be his Ordinary) entitled to send him off for "Prayer n Reflection"? Maybe, to answer my own question, he has submitted to a request from the Abp as an alternative to being removed from the (non-Ordinariate) parish."
I attempted to post a brief comment in response to this earlier today, but it vanished into the internet ether; and I forgot to copy my response first. I will attempt to do so again, while noting that other commenters have also responses.
OLA was founded as the first "Anglican Use" parish in 1983, under the "Pastoral Provision" for former Episcopalians wishing to become Catholic and yet retain some aspects of their Anglican liturgical and spiritual patrimony, which was promulgated by Rome in 1983. It applied only to the United States. The American (including Canada as well as the United States) Ordinatiate of the Chair of St.Peter, the second-erected of the three current Anglican Ordinariates, was erected in 2012 (the English Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham was erected in 2011; the Australian Ordinariate of the Southern Cross was erected in 2012). The Anglican Use parishes' liturgy was the "Book of Divine Worship" which incorporated aspects of the 1979 Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer into the Roman Rite "Novus Ordo" liturgy; the current "Ordinariate Liturgy" is a revised and amplified version of the rite found in the Book of Divine Worship, drawing on Anglican sources beyond that of the 1979 Episcopalian prayer book, and has been authorized for use not only in the three ordinariates, but in those parishes and congregations which remain "Anglican Use" parishes and congregations within their respective Roman (Latin) Catholic dioceses.
Fr. Phillips is a married priest (a former Episcopalian clergyman) of the Archdiocese of San Antonio. As such (if my understanding is correct) the only parish in that archdiocese which he is eligible to serve as parish priest is OLA. Once the CSP Ordinariate was erected "Pastoral Provision/Anglican Use" parishes and congregations could seek to transfer to that ordinariate (with the approval of their Latin Catholic ordinary, which it was expected would be forthcoming). It is my impression that most, if not all, of those "Pastoral Provision/Anglican Use" parishes which had church buildings of their own (e.g., Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston, Texas, and St. Mary the Virgin, Arlington, Texas, to give but two examples) did so, with the blessing of their Roman (Latin) Catholic bishops - and that despite the fact that a large percentage of the regular attenders of these parishes were from a Roman Catholic background; those that remain within Latin Catholic archdioceses or dioceses as "Pastoral Provision/Anglican Use" congregations are mostly (OLA being the only exception of which I am aware) relatively small congregations meeting in Roman Catholic church building, often with their pastor ministering to Latin Catholic groups or congregations, and so to some extent dependent upon the favor and support of these dioceses and their bishops.
(to be continued)
Per an FSSP Transitional Deacon from San Antonio, the Archdiocese of San Antonio is a pretty liberal place. He even says that Our Lady of the Atonement is where he goes to Mass during the week when at home. They only have the one Diocesan TLM at St. Pius X Parish that is non SSPX. I have found it interesting that Archbishop Gomez was able to bring the FSSP in when he moved to Los Angeles but never could do it in San Antonio and they have been unsuccessful in opening an apostolate under Abp. Garcia-Siller. The bastion of Latin-rite orthodoxy is in trouble in San Antonio. From sources, Fr. Phillips has been welcoming to FSSP Priests saying masses a the Atonement for weddings and etc.
Fr. Phillips's situation is very saddening like what happened to Fr. Michael Rodriguez of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas. Fr. Rodriguez was a priest who stood up for traditional marriage and values but who infuriated his former Bishop when he refused to no longer say the Novus Ordo. Fr. Rodriguez started to say the TLM full time and got banished to a rural area of the El Paso Diocese and got a small parish thriving. He was then placed on sabbatical like Fr. Phillips for further "prayer and discernment." Fr. Hunwicke, let me know if you were familiar with the case of Fr. Rodriguez.
My Father is Anglican, my Mother's family converted in the 1930's following marriage to a Catholic. In the UK until recently all were forced to be married in the C Of E. My Great Grandfather whom I knew was by the Anglo Catholic Edward Burrows of St Augustine's Haggerston. These High Anglicans went and served in areas of great social disadvantage. I was baptized and raised as a Latin rite Catholic. The Ordinariate did not exist. My point is many Latin Rite Catholics have links to Anglicanism through marriage or simply because our ancestors woke up to find they belonged to a government Church broken away from the rest of the Church. When trying to maintain that link was called treason most just caved in. We all have a stake in the Ordinarite's flourishing so that Anglicans can get away from the State manipulated and deformed Anglican Church.
Daniel 11:33-35
“And they that are learned among the people shall teach many: and they shall fall by the sword, and by fire, and by captivity, and by spoil for many days. And when they shall have fallen they shall be relieved with a small help: and many shall be joined to them deceitfully. And some of the learned shall fall, that they may be tried, and may be chosen, and made white even to the appointed time, because yet there shall be another time.”
So when will the FSSP face the chop, the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate already done to death and the Order of Malta defeated without a Turk in sight? I do hope the SSPX is taking this all in.
I am actually wearing my tin foil hat.. and I do love conspiracy theories...that being said, I am left wondering why the hostility toward OLA. Anglicanorum Coetibus , a brilliant document of ideas under consideration for many years by two of the Great catholics ,John Paul 2 and Benedict 16. The document contains , quite intentionally, some time bombs for the Church Catholic. They are revolutionary. I am mindful that The Ordinariate has already been formed.. but although it takes a long process to become incorporated, OLA was just at the beginning of the process and thus was vulnerable. This was probably the only window of opportunity if the Ordinariate was going to be stopped in its tracks. Our Lady of The Atonement was the original parish in the Pastoral Provision of JP2 and it was the beacon by which that others, parishes and people found their way home to Rome. Fr. Christopher Philips had a great vision and and enormous drive. His parish grew and grew, it had a convent, a school and a beautiful church, all from such a small beginning. It will, of course begin failing and heterodox as soon as the changes in leadership begin to take effect. This is where I keep my tin foil hat on... because what happens to OLA will happen to other Ordinariate parishes too. S.JP2 and Venerable Benedict.. your work is not in vain, because future generations will search the archives and see your great work, and those of us most touched by the brilliance of The Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum Coetibus will keep its memory alive.
I have just read the letter to the parish from the Archbishop of Antonio. I note he does not express the difference he has with the pastor. Probably because he is in the wrong. I also not he claims to be guided by the Holy Spirit.... again a presumptive blasphemy. Thee Archbishop does not have the courage or honesty to articulate the reasons for his public act. I wonder if under canon law a bishop can remove a priest without due canonical process. We have seen this sort of capricious maladministrion before. Its being going on since the days of Paul VI in the 1960's. Give Modernists any authority and use it to attack like Operation Barbarossa. I recall the abuse Catholics who would not conform to the looney changes after Vatican II have thrown at them. I recall the insults, removal of clergy and dissipation of Christianity that led to and fed the spiritual and sexual abuse of laity by clergy. the Archbishop is an abuser... what is worse he dares to use the Holy Spirit to cover his own self will.
(continued)
I am not a canonist, nor versed in memory with the details of the documents by which the CSP Ordinariate was erected, but I know of no stipulation in them that an Anglican Use parish or congregation had to make a decision within a set period of time whether it would seek to transfer to the CSP Ordinariate, not that any decision by such a parish or congregation to remain an "Anglican Use" parish was a once-for-all and irrevocable choice. Perhaps more to the point in this instance, I am not aware that the fact that a large proportion of the regular congregants at an Anglican Use parish or congregation may be Roman Catholics, or otherwise not eligible as individuals to be accounted as or to become lay members of the CSP Ordinariate, can in any way act as an inhibition on an Anglican Use parish in a Roman Catholic archdiocese or diocese seeking to transfer to the CSP Ordinariate, although such individuals would (I presume) remain Roman Catholics, canonically speaking. The regular presence and attendance of such people at, e.gg., Our Lady of Walsinghan, Houston, or St. Mary the Virgin, Arlington, does not appear to have caused the bishops of the respective dioceses of which they were formerly parishes to hesitate about allowing them to leave their jurisdiction and to enter that of the CSP Ordinariate.
The situation strikes me as analogous (but not identical) to that of congregations of one or another of the non-Roman rites of the Catholic Church outside of their home territories; parishes of Chaldean Rite Catholics in the United States, for example, were originally under the authority and jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic bishop or archbishop within the geographical bounds of whose dioceses they were located, but once a diocese (or eparchy) for such a group was erected it was only natural and to be expected that such parishes would become part of this new entity, and it would be very strange for any Roman Catholic archbishop or bishop to attempt to retain his jurisdiction over such parishes, even if a considerable portion of those who attended the services there were Roman (Latin) Catholics.
Unlike these non-Roman Catholic churches/rites, the Anglican Ordinariates are not ecclesiae sui juris, canonically separate churches from the Latin Church of the Roman Rite, but a recognized and authorized "separate entity" within the Roman Rite. I do not know whether a Roman Catholic bishop has the authority to refuse the reasonable request of an Anglican Use parish under his jurisdiction to transfer to the Ordinariate - which was created, after all, to give institutional recognition and protection to the liturgical and spiritual patrimony which Anglican Use parishes are meant to embody - but it seems mean-spirited to do so for financial reasons, and absurd to claim as a reason for doing so "because of the pastoral concerns I have for your parish's ecclesial communion" (as the Archbishop of San Antonio's letter states) - as though in seeking to leave the jurisdiction of his archdiocese OLA were seeking to leave the communion of the Catholic Church. Such a claim recalls some of the reasons why American Roman Catholic bishops in the late 19th/early 20th centuries tried to prevent the formation of "Eastern Rite" Catholic parishes in their dioceses, as though anything "not Latin Catholic" were really "not Catholic at all" or that the mere existence of such Catholic-but-not-Roman/Latin entities would "confuse the faithful." It was a bad reason then, and remains a bad reason now.
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