Craziness At St Aidan's: A First Look

Via replies from a person named Michael Frost relating to my posts about St Aidan's on Fr Chadwick's blog, I'm starting to piece together a story. Frost says he's Eastern Orthodox and not a member of St Aidan's, but apparently has been moved to post enthusiastically on their behalf, a puzzling factor in itself. But here's the story he gives, which I piece together from several comments he makes on that site:

• Per Fr Seraiah's blog post from November 2010, St Aidan's took some type of a vote in favor of the Ordinariate, enough to convince him he should move from Virginia to Iowa, selling his house in Virginia in the process, to become Rector of St Aidan's.
• St Aidan's appears to have gone into the Patrimony at roughly the same time that Fr Seraiah started there.
• Acording to Mr Frost, "When I attended St. Aidan’s in April 2012, I was told they had just recently started celebrating the Anglican liturgy on Sundays. I believe with the recent Palm Sunday. I was told that prior to that, as part of the Ordinariate process, they had ceased celebrating liturgy and were doing mainly morning prayer and catechesis." What on earth was Seraiah doing there if he wasn't celebrating an Anglican liturgy mass? St Mary's had catechism during 2011 to be sure, but since they were not yet Catholic, there was no reason an ACA priest couldn't have celebrated mass at St Aidan's the same way it was done at St Mary's, another Patrimony parish. I can say at first hand there was no "Ordinariate process" that required them to stop saying mass!
• Mr Frost quotes from a letter sent to the parish by the senior warden in July 2012: “As you know, a more informal vote was taken last autumn which seemed to indicate a strong majority in favor of seeking such admission [i.e., to the Ordinariate]. However, during the period of catechesis associated with such a move, it became clear that the mind of the Parish was not so definitively positive, and the decision was taken to seek a clarifying vote. That is the vote we are now taking. … Ballots will be opened and counted on July 22nd upcoming. By Vestry action, a majority of [sixty] (60%) of ballots cast will determine the outcome.”
• The result of that vote, according to Mr Frost, was ". . . the parish officially voted 15 No and 3 Yes to the Ordinariate."

On one hand, this confirms the estimate of 25 members in good standing that I've cited in earlier posts. On the other hand, I've got to shake my head and say "wow" about this whole story. Two votes in favor of the Ordinariate, the parish hires a rector who seems to be pro-Ordinariate and is himself headed that way, it goes into the Patrimony of the Primate, but, er, once they learn a little more about Catholicism, they change their minds big time. Gee, what was it they didn't know about? Artificial birth control? Sex outside of marriage? Divorce and remarriage? The authority of the Pope? None of these things was a secret, it seems to me.

This is the home parish of His Grace the Archbishop, the Most Rev Lous Falk, founder of the TAC whose avowed purpose was unity with Rome, and his parish at the last minute starts to learn about Catholicism and changes its mind? This is absolutely screwy. What was Falk's role here? As Fr Seraiah posted on his blog, Falk then elected to stay with the parish and, according to Mr Frost, re-enter the ACA. So, perhaps facetiously but perhaps not, what didn't His Grace the Archbishop know about Catholicism prior to the catechesis that was taking place? Did he change his mind about it in 2012 as well?

I'm seeing less and less reason to take the ACA seriously if this sort of thing is going on at what is, in effect, its heart. The other week I estimated an average membership of the 25 or so parishes in good standing at 60, but I'm seeing that St Aidan's clearly has about 25, if the 15-3 vote represented a quorum but not the full membership. Mission status in the ACA is below 20, so even the mother church isn't much more than a mission!

This denomination is tiny. It's corrupt. It's flaky.