Thanks for the "real news," Matthew. Your assessment appears ominously
verified. And therefore, I have to wonder about the new applicants who
entertain dreams of attending Winona: by the time they can go there,
it will have been abandoned. Very disappointing to think about.
As for your question,
But wouldn't it be tempting to combine a massive, "materially successful"
organization with approval from Rome?
You must admit, the temptation would be there to water-down a bit, to
seek approval from the World/Rome.
Otherwise who is going to fill that massive structure?
Two possibilities strike me immediately:
1) The NewChurch has been known recently to lavishly spend funds on
elaborate buildings that are utterly useless from a traditional perspective,
while they abandon right and left very traditional and marvelous buildings
all over the world, buildings that would serve the needs of a traditional
Catholic seminary or monastery quite well. I am reminded of the sacking
of the monasteries of England during the Bloody Persecution of Bloody
Queen Elizabeth. Bloody Beth "officially" went by the misnomer "good
queen Bess" while the good Catholic Queen, Mary, had a monicker that
endures to this day as a beverage: "Bloody Mary." We could order our
drinks with edification by asking for a "Bloody Bess," and if asked what
that is, say "it has an extra dose of vodka." But I digress... Remember
that monstrosity to JPII, a museum or center for interreligious luv or
whatever? It's vacant. Nobody cares. So perhaps this VA project is
an attempt to pamper that great urge that NewChurch obviously has, to
make vast structures that will be the setting for their New World Religion
somehow.
2) Vocations in NewChurch are way down. Let's be honest. They're in
the dump. Nobody wants to be a NewPriest. And who can blame them,
when NewChurch is so actively engaged with re-defining the priesthood
as irrelevant? The constant backdrop of irksome questions from well-
intentioned sedes accusing them of invalidating Holy Orders is a cattle
prod to a mule who doesn't want to budge. Who can blame them when
the pederasty scandal is festering like cancer and no bishop, no bishop,
no bishop is willing to admit the problem and abjure his longstanding
error. Therefore, perhaps this VA compound is meant to lure some of the
latent vocations out of the shadows of the Novus Ordo communities,
with the promise of having a more traditional formation, a training that
is rooted in the doctrines of the Doctors of the Church, rather than in
subjectivist COMMUNIST fantasy? And if it is, then perhaps it will evoke
an upsurge of responses from young men who otherwise would not have
tried to answer God's call, because places like the Pink Palace (St. John's
Seminary, Camarillo, CA) are simply out of the question due to their
reputation for everything Liberal and Modernist and Sodomist.