I've Said Earlier That The ACA Would Need To Find

an unscrupulous and utterly reliable replacement for the indispensable Anthony Morello. Whether Frederick Rivers proves to be that person is yet to be revealed, but from the record, it looks like he's a contender. The ACA Diocese of the West's web site lists him as on the diocese's ecclesiastical court, and he participated in a hearing on June 19, 2012 that brought a presentment against Fr Kelley on spurious charges. It is believed that he participated in the October 11, 2012 ecclesiastical trial of Fr Kelley, although it has also been suggested that the presence of all members of the court can't be confirmed on that date, and it's also plain from the record that all the proceedings were stage managed by Anthony Morello, although Morello was not himself on the review committee or the court.

There can be little question that Rivers is aligned with the ACA's interest in doing whatever is necessary to seize the parish's property, even though the ACA had said at least three times during 2011 and 2012 that the parishes in the Patrimony of the Primate were no longer in its jurisdiction, and in fact it allowed all other parishes in the Patrimony who wished to do so to leave. So for starters, Rivers ignored the simple question of whether the court had jurisdiction.

Second, a major allegation against Fr Kelley was that he had excommunicated two members of the parish on the mere basis that they disagreed with him. The court ignored, first, the fact that the excommunications never took place, and second, that Anthony Morello had actually excommunicated at least nine parishioners on the spurious basis of "abandonment of communion", even though, with the parish closed to masses on Morello's order, it was not possible for those parishioners to receive communion there.

In his bio on the Church of the Epiphany web site, Rivers says he felt that Episcopal Church seminaries "were more like graduate schools for career-minded men in the 'church business'." But what on earth is he doing in the matter of St Mary of the Angels but putting the particular "church business" of the ACA (in fact, the theft of a non-ACA parish's property) ahead of his conscience?

Farther down in his bio, he says that during the 1970s controversies over the Episcopal prayer book, he questioned "whether he was being a 'Pharisee' for seeking to worship in the historical Anglican way". I would suggest to Canon Rivers that one can be a Pharisee in ways other than those connected with the Book of Common Prayer, and indeed, if it were me, I'd be worried indeed that my conduct in relation to Fr Kelley and St Mary of the Angels could in fact be Pharisaical.

But then, not only is Canon Rivers on the Ecclesiastical Court, but the same guy who isn't much on seminaries himself is also the diocese's Ecclesiastical Recruiting and Development Officer. One thing that I've noticed all along is that the clerics who've been most assiduous in pursuing Fr Kelley's case have also been ones whose own priestly formation has been irregular, including Anthony Morello, Stephen Strawn, and Frederick Rivers. Fr Kelley's priestly formation was by far the most correct of any. Pharisee? You decide.