As A New Parishioner At St Mary of the Angels

in early 2011, I was completely unaware of the bitter opposition that had begun to arise within the ACA and the TAC to Hepworth and his endorsement of Anglicanorum coetibus. (Naturally, the clergy, although more aware of it than many of us, acted properly in not stressing it with us themselves.)

Some bloggers have offered the opinion that the Holy See deceived Hepworth in how Anglicanorum coetibus would be interpreted, but based on my research into events, it's hard for me to see any deception on the part of either the Vatican or Hepworth. Although the Portsmouth letter petitioned for the TAC to be admitted as a body, I can't imagine how this could have been done from a practical standpoint. Especially since Hepworth had been citing a wildly inflated number of 500,000 members in the TAC (even 50,000 is probably too many by an order of magnitude), common sense alone suggests that not all those people would wish to become Catholic.

Although most of the TAC bishops had signed the Roman Catholic Catechism as part of the Portsmouth Declaration, this in itself presented problems: based on that Catechism, TAC members who had divorced and remarried without securing Catholic annulments would be in violation of the Church's teaching. In fact, many Catholics leave the Church and go into Anglican denominations specifically as a result of divorce and remarriage. And leaving that aside, there are issues like artificial birth control, abortion, sex outside marriage, the authority of the Pope, and less visible doctrinal differences that would present obstacles to many other Anglicans. There's no practical way any Pope can go "Poof! you're all Catholic!" to a theoretical half a million people, even if they all wanted him to do so. I can see no indication that Hepworth ever seriously thought this would happen, or that the Holy See ever deceived him into thinking this. In fact, some of his published letters stress that he thought the process would be at best gradual, and certainly recognized that some might never go in.

Second, ordinations of TAC clergy as Roman Catholic priests presented an even bigger problem. Some TAC clergy -- including Hepworth himself -- had left the Roman Catholic priesthood. The Catholic Church does not re-ordain priests who've left the Catholic priesthood, period, full stop. Also, the Catholic Church puts priests through rigorous seminary training; when it does ordain a priest coming from a Catholic seminary, it's sure of his commitment and formation. While some TAC clergy had been to reputable Anglican or Episcopal seminaries, others had not. Beyond that, some clergy (again, like Hepworth, but also including ACA Bishops Strawn and Williams) had divorced and remarried. The Catholic Church will ordain priests from other denominations who are married on a case-by-case basis, but the same restrictions on divorce and remarriage apply as to lay people. There is no practical way the Vatican could admit all TAC priests on a blanket basis. Inevitably some wouldn't make the cut. I've seen no statement from either Hepworth or the Vatican that could be construed otherwise.

Third, the Catholic Church was not going to make anyone in the TAC a bishop. While it does consider married priests, it does not have any married bishops and is unlikely ever to, since it wants to retain the possibility of reunification with the Orthodox churches, which also do not have married bishops. (Jeffrey Steenson, the married former Episcopal bishop that Rome placed in charge of the US Ordinariate, was made a Monsignor and given the title of "Ordinary", not bishop.) Beyond that, the dioceses in the TAC are pitifully small and in any mainstream denomination would not warrant bishops. As a result, not only would many TAC bishops not be eligible for Catholic ordination as priests, none of them could possibly hope to retain the power and prestige they had as "bishops" in their tiny denomination.

Clearly many in the ACA were having second thoughts. Although he had signed the 2007 Portsmouth Declaration, Daren Williams, then ACA Bishop of the West, sent the following letter to his clergy in September 2010:

It appears to me that the Diocese of the West as a whole is a long way from accepting this offer from the Roman Church.

At this time I declare to you, the clergy of the diocese, my position and perspective. I am not led to request application to enter the Ordinariate.

Two other ACA bishops, Strawn and Marsh, followed suit. Hepworth began to realize he was losing the support of most TAC bishops. He wrote to Marsh, Strawn, and Williams

Very clearly, you have renounced this understanding of your fellow bishops, and no longer teach with the same voice as them. Equally clearly, you have not taught and led the people committed to your care with that one voice of a united College. Each of us has started from the same position as that which you have confronted. Tragically, I am forced to the conclusion that some have led their people, others have followed them.

The letter carried veiled threats of unspecified disciplinary action, but it's likely that even then, he wouldn't have had the votes in the College of Bishops to carry his position. A year later, they would demand his own resignation.

Williams continued his bitter opposition to those in the ACA who favored the upcoming Ordinariate. He refused to ordain two deacons who'd expressed their intention of going into the Ordinariate as priests, and he went as far as inhibiting one of them for saying favorable things about it. However, Williams by then was in poor health, and late in 2010 he suddenly resigned as Bishop of the West. But the opposition of the three US bishops made Hepworth aware that he would need to take steps to protect the priests and parishes who'd followed the intent of the Portsmouth Declaration and intended to avail themselves of Anglicanorum coetibus.

As a result, he set up a device called the Patrimony of the Primate in October 2010, only weeks after the defections of Williams, Strawn, and Marsh, quite conceivably once he saw that opposition bishops would be taking the sorts of actions Williams had already taken. Certainly one way to interpret Bishop Strawn's actions against St Mary of the Angels beginning in April 2012, following Hepworth's departure and the dissolution of the Patrimony of the Primate, would be to see them simply as a continuation of what the like-minded Bishop Williams had been doing just before the Patrimony was established.

I'll say more about the Patrimony of the Primate and the continuing bitterness toward Anglicanorum coetibus in my next post.