Falk's bio on Wikipedia gives some basics -- born 1935, BA from Lawrence University, MDiv from Nashotah House, ordained an Episcopal priest in 1962. Then for some unspecified reason he left the Episcopal priesthood and went into business. It's worth pointing out that this must have been well before the issues of women's ordination and the 1979 prayer book drove small groups out of TEC in the 1970s -- he left TEC when it was a liberal Protestant denomination hardly distinguishable in its social policy from any other, or indeed, from the Catholic Church (all, for instance, supported the Civil Rights movement).
Then at some point in the late 1970s, presumably soon after the St Louis Declaration, he changed careers again and became rector of the tiny prefab mock-Tudor St Aidan's Des Moines, maximum occupancy 60, current membership 25, where he's been ever since in one or another capacity. From that base, he rose rapidly to become Primate of the Anglican Church in America (membership at any time optimistically in the low-to-mid four figures) and the "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion" (membership not a whole lot more). I would suggest there's a very great deal we don't know.
I've heard good things about Falk from several clergy. I don't think it damages Fr Kelley's reputation to relate a comment he once made to me that Falk is a "holy man" not like the "scoundrels" Strawn and Marsh. The Rector of St Stephen's Athens TX said, referring to some ACA figures, "I respect, honor, and love . . . my ordaining bishop Louis Falk (without whom I never would have joined the ACA). . ." Just today I heard from a clerical observer who said, "Abp. Falk has a relatively pure heart. He has been cooperative with Fr. [Kelley] in his and your quest to retain control of St. Mary's temporalities."
I've done jury duty a couple of times. One thing I began to see from sitting on juries, charged officially with finding facts in particular cases, was that in evaluating evidence, a funny thing happened. I'd hear some testimony, and I'd try to match it with other testimony. Sometimes a single piece of testimony would pop out because, like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, it wouldn't fit, no matter which way I turned it. I'd try it one way, then another. I'd go home and think about it. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and try it yet another way -- and it would never quite fit. Those pieces that wouldn't fit, I slowly began to understand, were lies. My job, as it happened, was to be one of 12 people who had to figure out which pieces of testimony were lies. And so I have some experience with lies, and I can't help thinking about just that in the context of Archbishop Falk -- I'm sorry to say this, Fathers, but hold on, let's find an usher and put on our crash helmets. We're going to talk about Falk.
Prior to December 2011, I had just the normal view of Falk, a venerable retired prelate, mentioned weekly in the prayers. But then that December I wound up in a heated discussion with members of the small anti-Ordinariate minority at St Mary's. "We're going to stop this!" one of them said to me. "We're going to Falk!"
(Huh? I thought. Falk?) "Huh?" I asked. "Falk? Falk's retired. He's a lame duck anyhow -- we go into the Ordinariate in a few weeks. What's Falk got to do with it?"
"You can get a lot done even with a lame duck," was the reply. I filed this, but as far as I knew, St Mary's had been told that it would be received into the Catholic Church during the first weeks of January 2012.
Except that, of course, it wasn't. The date was never firm; we were supposed to be making first confessions prior to that, and I began to ask when and how this would take place, but nobody quite knew. Then we learned the whole thing had been indefinitely postponed. Instead, a parish meeting was called for January 22, 2012, at which Msgr William Stetson, who was the representative of the newly-appointed Ordinary, Msgr Steenson, spoke and answered our questions. "Archbishop Falk contacted the Catholic Church with new information that's caused us to re-evaluate what's happening," was the general tenor of what Msgr Stetson told us. He definitely mentioned Archbishop Falk several times, and in fact he mentioned no other ACA figure.
For now, we're talking about one piece in a jigsaw puzzle that won't quite fit. The dissidents at St Mary's had gone to Moyer, the bishop and legitimate authority over St Mary's and gotten nowhere, so they went to Falk. Falk was retired -- at least officially -- and had no direct authority over the parish or knowledge of the circumstances, but clearly too he had enough credibility with Cardinal Wuerl or Msgr Steenson to stall the process on his say-so, and that he did.
But this particular jigsaw puzzle is too big, and there are too many pieces that don't quite fit, to cover this in one post. I'll have more to say.
