I'm sorry to say that priest has since left the active ministry. Perhaps a part of it was that she understood the madwomen who wear straw hats and velvet hats to church a little too well. The old-media reporters on the religion beat have typically been part-timers not judged competent for the society or business pages, and they've tended to see their audience mainly as those same ladies in the straw hats and velvet hats, coating their stories with cloying sentiment, trying above all not to give offense. The new media, bloggers on the "continuing Anglican" beat like David Virtue and Fr Stephen Smuts, still owe quite a bit to their old-media models. They'll flirt with controversy over stories like St Mary of the Angels, but they'll beat a hasty retreat into received opinion and conventional wisdom at the first poisonous comment from some pseudonymous yahoo on their sites.
Not much sensible has been said, in my opinion, about any of the current developments surrounding Anglo-Catholicism, the journey of the Traditional Anglican Communion and its various bishops, the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, and the complicated and unhappy situation at St Mary of the Angels Hollywood. There are few white hats (Fr Kelley wears a biretta). I seem to be the first to take a serious look at some of the players, their dodgy histories and unverifiable qualifications, and the tiny but ever-shrinking numbers involved. I think John Hepworth has been a major figure, for good or ill, who has brought circumstances to their current pass. Some knowledgeable visitors here have sent me some worthwhile information on the Hepworth case, and I want to present as complete a version of that story as I can, but it probably won't resemble much of what's been said up to now.
