The outcome of the Spartanburg meeting was that there was no outcome. The ACC was all for unification, except that Falk in particular questioned the consecrations of the bishops in any competing denomination, so that intercommunion, in the sense of each denomination recognizing the episcopal actions (such as ordinations) of bishops in other denominations, would be impossible. Falk was all for unity except when it involved unity! This has been a typical pattern for Falk all along.
Interestingly, St Francis Spartanburg tells me that it has on its records that "In 1987, Father Connors was elected Bishop of the Provincial Synod of New Orleans." This diocese remains in the rump ACC, but does not appear as an ACA diocese, while Connors, as we've seen, followed Falk into the ACA after the 1991 split. At the same time, it appears that St Francis Spartanburg never left the direct supervision of "Archbishop" Falk, so that his home parish wasn't in his own diocese.
AEC-ACC unity talks continued without a resolution into 1990. An added complication was Falk's desire to create the Traditional Anglican Communion as a worldwide body incorporating the ACC. At a meeting in Des Moines in 1990, the ACC bishops were still unable to decide whether they could rule on the validity of AEC orders. Nevertheless, the Traditional Anglican Communion was formed in a meeting that same year in Victoria, BC, with Falk elected its first Primate, though at the time this was essentially just a retitling of the ACC-under-Falk, incorporating as well the small, Falk-allied Anglican Catholic Church of Canada.
Falk either continued to politic for unification with the AEC, or he began laying the groundwork for a future withdrawal from the ACC, according to which side is recounting the events. He began circulating to strategically placed priests, without the knowledge of his fellow bishops, drafts of a pro-unity proposal that he was encouraging them to put forward at their diocesan synods leading up to the Provincial Synod in October of 1991. . . . He was also quite possibly establishing connections by which a potential withdrawal on his part from the ACC could lead to the greatest possible success. (p 199)He and "Archbishop" Anthony Clavier of the AEC then issued a "Call for Unity", inviting all continuing Anglicans to another "ecumenical" conference in Deerfield Beach, FL in October of 1991.
. . . Falk quickened the pace of his behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Just as the majority of the laity within the Continuing movement had been unaware that he had seeded resolutions into local diocesan synods, and that he had attempted to monitor debates held on these resolutions, they were also largely unaware that he was taking allegedly disgruntled parishes in the Diocese of the South under his wing. In July of 1991, two parishes from Florida and North Carolina contacted Falk with requests to be placed under the Patrimony, the stated reasons revolving around internal parish disputes that had not been handled properly by the diocesan bishop, William Lewis. However, just as likely, the real issue could have centered upon a desire by these churchmen to accompany Falk in what was no doubt perceived as an inevitable coming split in the ACC. (p 200)From early in Falk's career with the ACC, we're seeing a pattern of intensely duplicitous activity, aimed entirely at furthering his own ambitions at the expense of the overall movement, although by 1990, as Bess points out, a "continuing Anglican" movement was a chimera. The pattern includes working through unscrupulous proteges like Robin Connors, behind-the-scenes maneuvers, extra-canonical actions including the frequent creation of "peculiers" in order to bypass the normal workings of dioceses, and intervention in parish politics at the behest of disgruntled minorities where the agendas of the minorities matched his own.
There's nothing new in what happened at St Mary's in 2010-2012, and the strategy is vintage Louis Falk. Now and then, people have contacted me in effect urging me to back off Falk, his heart is in the right place, he's done things to help St Mary's behind the scenes. Baloney. The only guy he wants to help behind the scenes is Louis Falk. Based on the pattern we've seen, characters like Anthony Morello or Stephen Strawn have acted either on his specific instruction or with his tacit approval. The best way for Falk to demonstrate that I'm incorrect would be for him to announce publicly that he does not support the ACA's campaign of legal harassment and character assassination against Fr Christopher Kelley.
More to come.
