Our Lady of Hope/St. Therese Parish

We got into the Anglican Use ministry here at St. Therese, not because we planned it, but because an opportunity presented itself. After a couple of years of experience, it appears that it has advantages and disadvantages. For the Anglicans and Episcopalians who came to us, we have been able to offer the welcome, experience, and security of being members of a Catholic parish. Granted, St. Therese is not your typical parish with a thousand or more families, so there are programs and ministries that are not available here that could be found somewhere else. But St. Therese has been able to offer the experience of being part of a larger whole, and the experience of being in a much larger parish than most Episcopalians are used to, but much smaller, welcoming and personal than most Catholic parishes. St. Therese has been able of offer opportunities for ministry - and our Anglican Use community has jumped right in - serving on the Pastoral Council, joining Knights of Columbus, volunteering with the food pantry and Christmas basket programs, participating in our neighborhood needs assessment - and on and on.

Those who might want to replicate this as a model, if it can be replicated within the overlapping structures of Ordinariate and Diocese, should know there are disadvantages, too. As a parish and as Our Lady of Hope Society, we probably suffer most from cultural and identity conflicts. Having a clear identity is a big help in doing mission and being part of a parish with an established identity means that the Anglican Use community is part of a larger whole rather than having its own clear identity. In addition, converts are enthusiastic about being Catholic, and tend to identify Catholicism with a clear set of beliefs. Episcopalians and Anglicans also tend to identify Anglo-Catholicism with a way of doing liturgy correctly. Many of our Catholic members may identify more strongly with the parish than they do with the Catholic Church and with the Catholic faith in the Catechism. Many of our members have been wounded by the Church and have found a refuge here.

As a parish, we may tolerate and even may enjoy the diversity of liturgies within the parish. Some question why "they" do the things they do, but are willing to make room for it. But if we had to make to clear choices about what we believe in order to clarify the mission of the parish and our strategies for putting our mission into practice, I think we'd have difficulty.

St. Therese is an experience of Catholicism.