Prompted by some very helpful leads, I began piecing details together, and I was finally in a position to e-mail the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac with a query. I received the following reply from the Diocesan Archivist and Historiographer:
Thank you for your inquiry. According to our canonical register and consulting diocesan journals, Louis Wahl Falk, III was ordained a Deacon on 23 January 1962 and a Priest on 6 August 1962 by the Rt. Rev. William Hampton Brady. He served as Rector at St. Augustine, Rhinelander from 1962-1965. He was suspended from ordained ministry on 24 January 1966 and deposed 24 September 1966."Deposed", of course, is the proper Episcopalian word for "defrocked". In addition to the record of the diocese, I found a mention on the website of St Barnabas, Tomahawk WI (which the web site notes is served by supply priests) that a Louis W. Falk had served that parish from April to May, 1965. My guess is that by the spring of 1965, Falk was already in bad odor in Rhinelander, and someone was trying to do him a favor, or perhaps he was all St Barnabas could get.
I don't want to get into the reasons Falk was defrocked -- I've heard them, of course -- but I'll say that a surmise that serious scandal was involved would not be off the mark. The Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac has always been among the most conservative, and 1966 was well before "continuing Anglicanism" in any case -- it's safe to say that theological punctiliousness was not Falk's failing. A move to Iowa would be consistent with wanting to start over in a new career, at a distance from the scene.
A clerical observer says,
That information was put pretty tightly under wraps all the years I was in the Continuum...and I know some pretty rabid "Falk Haters" in the ACC who never even said THIS!!! ... I may have heard rumors... but never knew for sure. Suspended...then deposed. Wow.Wow indeed. While Falk is nominally retired, this information is still pertinent because Falk is still active behind the scenes, where he seems to be happiest. He transmitted the 40-page list of complaints against Fr Kelley from the small group of St Mary's dissidents to Cardinal Wuerl in late 2011. Via Anthony Morello, he told an outright falsehood to David Virtue in 2012, claiming he had never offered episcopal oversight to St Mary's, when in sworn testimony a few months later he was forced to admit that he had. He's a shadow man.
This information says a lot about Falk and the "continuing Anglican" movement. First, it confirms the impression I've always had that the movement is just faintly disreputable: the ACA and the TAC were started by a defrocked Episcopal priest, after all. The whole point of "continuing Anglicanism" has been that it's holier than The Episcopal Church -- it adheres to higher standards, a purer prayer book, no priestesses, and no gay bishops (whoops, Bishop Willars doesn't count). Except, er, two major "continuing" denominations, the ACC and the ACA/TAC, were founded by a defrocked Episcopal priest. In other words, maybe The Episcopal Church has higher standards after all.
Second is simply the issue of hypocrisy: with Falk pulling the strings via a unanimous vote in the ACA House of Bishops, the Diocese of the West conducted a kangaroo proceeding that deposed Fr Christopher Kelley on fabricated charges. Falk himself, on the other hand, was defrocked for reasons that were all too substantial and covered it up. Considering that both Louis Falk and Anthony Morello left TEC under clouds of scandal, I've got to wonder if their animus against Fr Kelley was simply because Kelley is a good man and a conscientious priest, when Falk and Morello were neither.
The third problem with "Archbishop" Falk is sincerity: once it became plain that Anglicanorum coetibus wasn't going to grandfather anyone in as a priest, and nobody was going to be a bishop, the issue also arose that nobody who was under ecclesiastical discipline would be considered for Catholic ordination. While Falk almost certainly wouldn't have become a Catholic priest due to his age, there would still have been the lingering question that he had left The Episcopal Church under discipline. His own tiny parish had so many members with divorces and remarriages, or Masonic connections, that it finally stayed out of the Ordinariate. Unspoken was the fact that Falk himself could not possibly have become a Catholic priest even if he'd wanted to: he'd left The Episcopal Church in disgrace. Another clerical observer said:
One wonders what bearing an old scandal like that could have on the more recent issues surrounding St. Mary's. Is it a permanent indictment of Falk's character? Since archbishops should be held to the highest moral standard, how is it that a man with that sort of resume, as it were, could later become the primate of the TAC. Maybe he left that little tidbit out! Perhaps the Catholic authorities at the ordinariate or the CDF did their research, found this old skeleton in Falk's closet and quietly denied him postulancy to their holy orders. Maybe that is why didn't answer my inquiry as to why he is not in the lineup for ordination in the ordinariate. After all, he is the one who brought us to this dance!There's more about Falk that doesn't quite fit. Why did he leave the business career that was supposed to be such a success after at most 15 years? Why did he leave that and go back to the "priesthood" at tiny, prefab St Aidan's? And I've got a little man about other key players -- there's lots we don't know about "Presiding Bishop" Marsh, as well. Episcopal priest looked like a good, solid, respectable gig to him, too, or he wouldn't have become an aspirant and then a postulant and then gone to General Theological Seminary. What didn't work out there?
Gentlemen, it's Lent. You need to turn around and make things right. This isn't going to stop until you do that.
