That remark came to mind as I was reflecting on an e-mail chat I'd had a few days ago with a knowledgeable party. He'd basically said (and I'm paraphrasing freely), "OK, I'm now pretty sure that Fr Kelley didn't steal anything, wasn't on drugs, didn't have a naked black girl hidden in the basement, wasn't running a cult. But why did he get so many people ticked off at him?" It's worth pointing out that, in a roundabout way, the knowledgeable party was saying that there was no basis for the charges in the ACA's presentment against Fr Kelley.
What he was saying, though, was that people were angry with him. Really angry. Eight or twelve people, and they were going to do whatever they could to get rid of him. The party listed some of the sore points, which I won't go over here, except to say that they were all within Fr Kelley's province as rector, since they had to do with staff personnel decisions and the use of the property.
In other words, we move from the phantasmagorical to the mundane: every parish has factions, every parish has sore points, every parish has little controversies over the new dossal or the departure of a sexton. It's worth pointing out that canonically, this is exactly what a bishop is supposed to concern himself with: if the factions in a parish get out of control, it's the bishop's job to step in and resolve conflicts between the factions and the rector, generally leaning toward supporting the rector unless the rector is doing something obviously out of order.
The bottom line with St Mary's is that the system wasn't working, and in fact there really wasn't a system to work at all. This is part of the illusion that the "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion" has tried to create: with a few hundred members in any given diocese, topheavy with bishops and prebendaries, the TAC tries to promote itself as an alternative to the outfit run by the guy in Canterbury -- indeed, a full sibling to the Catholic Church, denied its proper status by the churlishness exhibited in Anglicanorum coetibus. Balderdash. These guys have no idea how to run a denomination.
A major reason for the disaster of 2011-2012 is that the bishops weren't doing their jobs, and as far as I can see, this is because the canons weren't being followed, and lines of authority were completely invisible. I keep hearing from numerous sources that Louis Falk was a major player behind the scenes in all the events, which is peculiar, since the man was doubly retired, having left the post of Archbishop in 2002, the post of Bishop of the Missouri Valley in 2007. By comparison, can you imagine what the ACA would do if now-retired John Hepworth tried to involve himself in any ACA parish or diocese? Why is Falk allowed to keep meddling?
By multiple accounts, Falk, retired, nevertheless gave the authority for St Mary's to enter the Patrimony of the Primate in late 2010, in his own words asserting episcopal authority to do so. Where was David Moyer, the bishop nominally in charge of the Patrimony? At the same time, by multiple accounts, Falk verbally gave authority for an Episcopal priest to serve as a priest at St Mary's, though he never followed through with paperwork (this looks more and more like a typical Falk operation).
Although Moyer made an episcopal visit in January 2011 and involved himself in personnel issues at various times during the year, it's clear that on major issues, Louis Falk was calling the shots, though Hepworth was nowhere to be seen. A clerical observer formerly in the Patrimony has noted that in his experience, he was never quite sure who was in charge, Hepworth, Falk, or Moyer. This is a recipe for disaster. Moyer, of course, had been preoccupied with his legal disputes against Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania Charles Bennison Jr since 2002, and throughout 2011 was clearly distracted by his final ejection from the property at Good Shepherd Rosemont. He was simply in no position to offer episcopal supervision to any parish in another denomination.
This left Falk to meddle from the shadows. In late December 2011, when Moyer finally decided (correctly) that the allegations by the angry dissident core were too vague to act on, the angry core had already learned that they could go around Moyer to Falk and Strawn. Falk obliged them by passing a 40-page bill of particulars (which has never been made public by the ACA) against Kelley to Cardinal Wuerl, although as a retired prelate, he had no authority to do so and no standing other than that given by the artificial prestige of the TAC. John Hepworth would never have equivalent standing to do anything like that.
The last ACA Bishop of the West, Daren Williams, had been elected on the first ballot by the diocesan synod despite the fact that he came from Pennsylvania, had no connection with the ACA or the Diocese of the West, and had a complicated marital history. He basically didn't work out and retired suddenly after a few years following a vote of no confidence from his standing committee. A good part of what happened to St Mary of the Angels was a result of weak and inconsistent episcopal authority, giving the small number of angry dissidents ample opportunity to circumvent the rules, and indeed simple common sense.
But as the saying goes, a fish rots from the head. I worked for a company where the CEO went to prison for securities fraud. It showed at every level of the organization -- the company worked the way the clique at the top wanted it to. The ACA and the TAC are Louis Falk's organization.
