At One Point In My Journey,

I was satisfied in calling the story of Holy Week the central event in history, but of course, it's actually the central event in creation, part of the plan from the start. I didn't fully understand that until I came to St Mary's and had several Bible studies and adult-forum discussions with Fr Kelley.

Maybe because it comes up at different points in the lectionary, I've also been drawn in recent years to the story of the anointing in Bethany, which according to the scripture takes place only a week before the Passion:

Mary therefore took a pound of ointment of right spikenard, of great price, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, he that was about to betray him, said: Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? Now he said this, not because he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and having the purse, carried the things that were put therein.

It isn't part of the Palm Sunday reading, and it's less dramatic than the kangaroo proceedings before Pilate and Herod, the scourging, and the stations of the cross, but it's part of the overall picture, and it's got Judas in it. Here, he isn't just the Betrayer, he's the treasurer, on the vestry, an officer of the church. Somehow, he's part of the plan here as well.

The events at St Mary's in 2011 and 2012 certainly put my wife and me through a spiritual crisis, and we're not alone: not just laity, but clergy in and out of the parish have been seriously affected as well. But from what I've learned, the events that led to Fr Wilcox's departure in 2005 and 2006 put others through just as much of a crisis; some who went through that period have suggested that maybe they're no longer even Christian.

I think again of the individual who suggested to me earlier this week that he'd thought going into St Mary's might be an easy way to become Catholic. He and the rest of us couldn't have been more wrong. I think for all of us, it's led to a form of spiritual growth we couldn't have anticipated, and it's likely not over, but then, the Catholic priest of our new parish prayed over us, in anticipation of our full reception at Easter, that we would continue to grow.

Someone Pointed Out

a post on Stephen Smuts's blog regarding what the Huffington Post piece that he links sees as the Catholic Church's attempt to deal with a shortage of priests by creating a US Ordinariate that would back-door married Anglican priests to relieve the shortage.

First, I'm not sure if Smuts understands about the Huffington Post's agenda: it is, of course, anti-Catholic and bitterly disappointed at the latest Pope's renewed assertions that the Catholic Church continues to be just what it is. The piece needs to be seen in that context: it feeds the notion that perfidious Jesuits are plotting to dupe yet more generations of believers by hypocritically allowing married priests sub rosa, but still condemning just about anything that's fun, for the priests or anyone else.

I think the reality of the situation is that the US Ordinariate is far too small, and in fact too poorly run, to make much of a long-term difference in a shortage of priests (although my understanding is that conventional Catholic vocations are up). It shares with "continuing Anglicanism" the problem that it is largely an abstract entity with few examples on the ground; Anglo-Catholicism of whatever color is a tough sell to the mainstream demographic, and except for the very small number of localities where an Ordinariate parish is an option for worship, Anglicans who want to become Catholic will need to go through the RCIA process and worship at a Roman parish, which, frankly, ain't so bad.

I continue to wonder what "Fr" Smuts's agenda really is here: he seems to play kissy-kissy with the idea of Ordinariates and the like, while being fully aware that such will not take place within thousands of miles of his shark-infested beaches, and perhaps even understanding in lucid moments that he wouldn't qualify for ordination as a real priest in either the Catholic Church or a US main line denomination. Catholic, Episcopal, whatever, it ain't Smuts. So he finds ways to be sorta-kinda snarky about everything but his own tiny, corrupt splinter group, without taking responsibility for it.

However, the comment section degenerates into a food-fight among the usual suspects, which may be the reason the thread was brought to my attention. All I can say is, folks, this is what I'm saving you from. My gratitude to priests like Fr Seraiah, and my sympathy.

Anglicanorum Coetibus As A "Continuing Anglican" Phenomenon

I've said a lot less about the US Ordinariate here than about the ACA and other "continuing Anglican" quasi-denominations, but someone remarked to me yesterday that he'd considered himself an "opportunist" in seizing on St Mary's attempt to go into the Ordinariate as a way (I suppose he meant an easy way) to become Catholic. Actually, of course, there's been nothing easy about it, and relatively few parishioners from 2011 who'd intended to go into the Ordinariate have actually become Catholic (my wife and I will be received this coming Sunday via the RCIA process).

I did notice in my bookmarks the other day, though, this link to a highly optimistic post at the now-inactive Anglo-Catholic blog:

Let’s assume that the 36 groups currently on the map in the U.S. would enter a newly erected American Ordinariate with an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 2500, which I think would be an incredibly conservative estimate. . . . In all, this would make an American Ordinariate—in a worst case scenario—larger than 21 of the domestic dioceses of The Episcopal Church. [emphasis in original]

This post is from February 2011, about a year before the erection of the US Ordinariate, but it's also just a little over two years ago. I count 24 parishes total on the website of the US Ordinariate, of which three are in Canada, which wasn't the situation envisioned in the February 2011 post (that post expected 30 parishes in Canada alone).

Of the 21 US parishes, some number are missions and meeting between Roman masses at Catholic parishes; very few have their own buildings. Unfortunately, this puts the Ordinariate as of now -- and I simply don't know how many additional parishes are in the backlog -- at roughly the same standing of size and iffiness that applies to the ACA, the APA, the ACC, the APCK, the UEC, etc etc etc. The only upside is there's only one ordinary, as opposed to the half dozen or so that we'd see in each of the other groups.

Not only that, but the sentiment among Catholic observers in Los Angeles was that the admission of St Mary of the Angels to a Catholic Ordinariate would be a positive development for traditionalists within the Catholic archdiocese, many of whom support the Latin mass where it's available. However, Msgr Steenson has issued a statement emphasizing that it is not the primary purpose of the Ordinariate to celebrate the Latin mass, which is reasonable in itself, though it does raise the question of what the purpose of the Ordinariate actually is. (I would point out, though, that Msgr Steenson is not a scoundrel, as opposed to his counterparts in the "continuum", and the clergy and laity in the Ordinariate are not being had in the same way that those in the "continuum" are.)

The thing my wife and I miss about being Episcopalians is the organ and the hymnal. Partly from experience and partly via EWTN radio, I see that it's possible, especially in cathedrals, to hear the organ played in Catholic churches to accompany traditional Christian hymns, Latin unnecessary. The mass is going to have certain essential wording in English no matter what, and from what I understand, the Ordinariate Book of Divine Worship will owe a great deal to the Episcopal Church's 1979 prayer book in any case.

So what, after all, is the Ordinariate for?

Yet Another Check

of the St Mary of the Angels website reveals a new "Priest" (though Rivers is still "Priest in Charge"), Fr Michael Eldred, of whom more momentarily. Almost too late, it now has a listing for Friday evening services during Lent, although naturally by now there should have been a listing for the Holy Week schedule. (Normally, new adult Christians are baptized at Easter, but I'm not sure how many of the core angries now running St Mary's are interested in converting to Christianity.)

A web search on Fr Michael Eldred shows him in cassock, biretta, 70s-hipster sideburns, and sunglasses on the Facebook page of All Saints Fountain Valley, where he appears to have served as a supply priest. The history page for the Episcopal Church of the Blessed Sacrament in Placentia notes that he has been on staff there since 2003, although that site elsewhere says that Eldred has a day job.

Eldred's ecclesiastical status is puzzling; I've got to assume that Bishop Bruno thinks it's OK for Eldred to be doing this, assuming Eldred is still an Episcopal priest (he's still listed on the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles clergy page). Blessed Sacrament Placentia, however, is under the episcopal supervision of TEC Bishop Ed Little of Northern Indiana, a noted traditionalist. On top of that, it has an ACNA parish meeting on its property, so I assume Eldred is familiar with angry people.

Eldred will be the third temporary priest at St Mary's in the year since the ACA seized the parish. The first two, Fr William Ledbetter and Fr Nicholas Taylor, were chewed up and spat out in a matter of months. Another priest turned down the offer after Taylor left. Eldred faces the same situation of his predecessors, an absentee priest in charge, an unelected "vestry" dominated by angry people who know little of religion, and an episcopal visitor who wishes Anthony Morello were other than where he is. We'll have to see what happens with Eldred, but I'm not impressed with the biretta, hipster sideburns, and sunglasses. I guess if his style is 40 years out of date, it makes him a traditionalist, huh?

Another Visitor Asks

I wonder if you might consider analyzing the earlier years of ACA? There seems to be a big blank spot as to what happened the first ten years of ACA (1991-2001), and why DEUS (APA) and many parishes began to leave ACA after a couple years. The ACA began under the impression of being a 'broad' church (as Bess describes-- a tool of FCC/phalanx), but by the end of the nineties it had lost some of the FCC supporters and moved in [a] distinctly anglo-catholic direction via Falk. What happened? Not long ago I ordered Brian Marsh's manuscript/history on the ACA. Marsh billed it at the Victoria conference in 2012, Saints and Buccaneers. I was hoping to fill in some holes left by Bess, but no luck. Marsh is oddly silent on the years between Deerfield Beach and, say, 2002. But, this was a time when ACA decisively transformed itself, expelling not only DEUS but alienating the phalanx in general. What happened? No one seems to want to talk about it, and whatever transpired evidently became a pattern that would eventually create the disaster at St. Mary's of the Angels, etc..

I think one major problem in looking at the "Anglican continuum" is what a logician would call hypostatization, which is treating an abstract concept as something that has a distinct reality. This is one problem with Douglas Bess's history, although despite its flaws, it's the best we have. Basically, the "continuum" consists of small groups of people who give themselves grandiose titles, which give the inevitable impression that they're something more important than they are -- indeed, that they have a distinct existence, when they're little more than the partially shared fantasy (based, however, on individual hidden agendas) of a few key people.

The "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion" is as good an example as any. It started, as we've seen here based on Bess's narrative, as a way for Louis Falk to bypass political problems within the Anglican Catholic Church by creating his own superdenominational body that would run according to his rules. It was theoretically based on the fallacious notion that large numbers of Anglican Communion members outside the US would defect when the Church of England began ordaining women -- but this didn't happen, any more than large numbers of Episcopalians left when TEC revised its liturgy and ordained women in the 1970s. (However, I'm not sure if even Falk ever really believed this would happen, or whether he ever saw beyond his personal issues with being deposed by TEC.)

Despite John Hepworth's eventual claim of TAC membership in the half-million range, it appears that actual membership in Canada, Australia, and South Africa has never been more than the mid-three figures; in the UK, even fewer; in India, the TAC franchise appears to be essentially non-existent, little more than a legal vehicle for Samuel Prakash to try to seize former Anglican Communion properties. This also raises the question of how big the principal TAC component, the ACA, has ever been. Both the TAC and the ACA seem to have a large number of family missions that somehow appear on lists of parishes as more than they are; inactive parishes; sorta-kinda missions that maybe worship and maybe don't; and so forth.

To call them "denominations" in the sense of, say, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod or the Reformed Episcopal Church, is a mistake; it's hypostatization, giving something that's little more than the personal agenda of a few mail-order "bishops" and a web site a concrete existence. It's even misleading to write a history in that sense: one thing that makes me uncomfortable about Douglas Bess's book is that he implies that the Philippine Independent Church's Anglican Rite Jurisdiction of the Americas was something more important than it was, if in fact it never had more than a dozen parishes, yet had at least four bishops.

In other words, when do we stop writing history and start writing about pathology? The bottom line here is that people are being conned. The most important thing is to point this out. Louis Falk and Brian Marsh are at best -- at best -- con artists. Exactly how Falk in particular has chosen to dress up his con under one or another ecclesiastical title is less important than for people to recognize that it's a con.

A Visitor Asks

We Anglo-Catholics were never among the majority but back in the 50s and 60s we were heard. . . . where has Eucharistic Adoration, Confession gone except underground in ECUSA?

This question goes to my current understanding of Anglo-Catholicism. I was a member of an Anglo-Catholic ECUSA parish for a dozen years, although it was of the "affirming" variety, which means it is gay-friendly, and it's worth pointing out that this has always been part of Anglo-Catholicism. Largely gay, Anglo-Catholic ECUSA parishes are still there and in fact thriving, and I've discussed some of the reasons here. "Not that there's anything wrong with that," as they say, especially in a liberal Protestant context, which is what ECUSA is, after all. Bishop Bruno tolerates Anglo-Catholicism of this style, as does Bishop Bennison, both very liberal.

However, we're also up against the other style of Anglo-Catholicism, that described to me in ECUSA confirmation class 30-plus years ago as the people who want to call themselves Catholic without paying the dues you actually have to pay to be Catholic. As an openly gay, Nashotah-house educated ECUSA priest explained to our parish several years ago, the Anglo-Catholic view of Confession continues to be "all may, none must, some should". The Roman Catholic view is that all Catholics must go to Confession at least once a year, in connection with receiving the Eucharist at least once a year, at Easter.

Beyond that (and this was a hard step for me to take), the Roman Catholic Catechism says that certain sins are mortal, which means that if you don't have them absolved via Confession, you'll go to hell. These include some sins that most Episcopal priests would call minor or not sins at all; I won't list them here. A good Catholic had better get to Confession in a hurry if he or she has committed a mortal sin, which of course goes well beyond grand larceny or embezzlement. (I chatted with a Catholic priest the other day who spoke of a child who confessed that he was angry with his parents, for reasons the priest thought were at least reasonable.) Episcopalian or "continuing Anglican" views on Confession are basically different from this.

But this goes to the heart of what I think is a dangerous confusion in Anglo-Catholicism. Style is one thing, substance is quite another. There is room for Anglo-Catholic style in The Episcopal Church, and that's enough for many people. To break away from The Episcopal Church into a "continuing Anglican" body that is not Roman Catholic, however, while calling yourself "Catholic", is a major mistake. You don't like TEC, you want to call yourself Catholic, then have some integrity and pay the dues you need to pay.

Yesterday Evening, My Wife And I Attended

our Rite of Calling the Candidates to Continuing Conversion at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles, with Archbishop Jose Gomez presiding, assisted by three auxiliary bishops. I found this deeply affecting, for two main reasons. First, it was a procession and ceremony with real bishops in a real Church, not a bunch of guys with mail-order degrees playing dressup.

Second, the number of adult candidates for confirmation in just part of the Archiocese of Los Angeles (with their sponsors) very nearly filled the cathedral, which is not a small place. As I've said here before, numbers are important. It appeared to me that the crowd was well over 1,000, which would put it by itself as comparable to, or indeed larger than, the whole ACA. It was one more thing that convinced me that I'm no longer an Anglo-Catholic, if indeed I ever was one; I'm a Catholo-Catholic.

Archbishop Gomez's homily -- delivered bilingually, a few sentences of English, then repeating himself in a few sentences of Spanish -- reminded me that I've been on a journey of continuing conversion, certainly from the time I returned to the Church Universal as an adult, but especially over the past few years. It has been particularly instructive to see the corruption and disintegration of the "continuing Anglican" movement close at hand; my own view is that the challenges in the Catholic Church seem eminently surmountable in contrast.

The Web References Have Disappeared,

and the Freedom for St Mary timelines don't mention them, but Cardinal Manning of Los Angeles and his successor, Cardinal Mahony, both rejected St Mary of the Angels's petition to become an Anglican Use parish. Based on my memory of the sources, Manning deferred to ecumenical considerations near the end of his tenure about 1985, unwilling to offend Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles Robert Rusack. Mahony then reiterated Manning's refusal about 1986, in a strongly-worded letter questioning whether the parish could live peaceably in the Catholic Church if it didn't get along with the Episcopal Church.

(If anyone has the specific dates and text of these letters, I'll be happy to reproduce them here, though they should really go into the Freedom for St Mary timeline.)

I keep returning to Cardinal Mahony's reasoning, because in light of all subsequent events, he was certainly correct: St Mary of the Angels at some point caught the "continuing Anglican" disease, with a hard core of very angry people. Given that, it wouldn't have been a good fit as a Catholic parish then, and it might well not have been a good fit for the Ordinariate, at least given the makeup of the parish as of early 2012. Now, of course, there's a serious question as to whether it can continue as any sort of parish at all.

Actually, I'm increasingly convinced the parish shouldn't have left The Episcopal Church, given the subsequent history of the "continuing" movement.

It's Been Pointed Out

that the history of James Dees, the American Episcopal Church, and the Anglican Orthodox Church is more complicated than I had it yesterday, so I will need to go back and re-do this. On the other hand, it's worth keeping in mind that these are all events and histories relating to very small groups of people, probably subject more than most to individual memories and interpretations. The bottom line from my viewpoint continues to be that pretty much any "continuing" group is faintly disreputable. On the whole, I would say it was a major error in judgment for St Mary of the Angels to have left The Episcopal Church, especially in light of its subsequent history.

I Can't Help But Compare

the positive reaction to the election and public announcement of the new Pope among centrist-to-conservative Protestant and Jewish commentators to the absolute disaster we're seeing with the ACA and its inability even to find someone to make sense out of its disintegrating Diocese of the West. Despite the very real challenges it faces from without and within, the Catholic Church gives the impression that it wants to keep its house in order. In contrast, major figures in the ACA, from Louis Falk through Brian Marsh through Anthony Morello to Mrs Bush seem almost to act from resentment of the Church Universal themselves, and certainly not from consideration of the interests of even the ACA. Might this suggest that God is not smiling on the Continuum?

The more I think about the history of the Continuum and the ACA, the more I'm seriously troubled by what's actually there. The Continuum would prefer to say it derives from the St Louis convention of 1977, in which a breakaway faction objected to The Episcopal Church's ordination of women (something nearly all Protestant denominations, as well as Reform Judaism, have proceeded to do) and its revised prayer book (done in the spirit of Vatican II). However, the Continuum is a much dirtier creature than that: the American Episcopal Church was founded by the segregationist James Dees in 1963, objecting to The Episcopal Church's (in the opinion of some, belated) integration of Southern parishes.

The AEC merged with Louis Falk's faction of the Anglican Catholic Church to form the Traditional Anglican Communion and the Anglican Church in America in 1991. Major figures from the AEC's segregationist, pre-St Louis past continue either in the ACA itself, like Robin Connors (a perennial Falk protege), or in the Anglican Province of America, which broke away from the Falk ACA following his purge of Anthony Clavier -- these include the current APA Presiding Bishop Walter Grundorf, as well as the APA's Bishop Shaver. The APA, with its segregationist history, is now mooting a re-merger with Falk's ACA.

If I had anything to do with the ACA, I'd want to have a very detailed discussion with Bishops Grundorf and Shaver, both of whom were consecrated in the segregationist AEC prior to St Louis, on the precise history and nature of their views on Civil Rights. Oh, by the way, I'd want to have someone ask Bishop Marsh what on earth he has in mind in treating with these Neanderthals at all.

But it also goes to the question of whether anyone in the ACA can be moved by conscience. That would go some distance in explaining what's happened over St Mary of the Angels.

But Bishop Shaver and Bishop Grundorf, how about a statement renouncing any connection between the APA and the AEC of James Dees, as well as an explanation of how you came to join the AEC and thrive in it, given its segregationist history? By the same token, Bishop Marsh, how about a statement of what you've done to satisfy yourself that neither Bishop Grundorf nor Bishop Shaver endorses now, nor ever did in the past, the segregationist views of the AEC's founder, James Dees?

So Let's Recap

Here's what we think we know:

St Mary of the Angels appears to be without a curate, and doesn't even appear to have a supply priest available for Holy Week. There's been no change in the parish home page, which still lists the departed Nicholas Taylor as "celebrant/preacher". A "parish rededication" is still announced for April, although this appears to have been indefinitely postponed following the death of Anthony Morello.

There hasn't been a diocesan bishop in the ACA Diocese of the West since 2010. Stephen Strawn, who had been episcopal visitor, apparently decided he didn't want the job any more and withdrew in late 2012, leaving Anthony Morello as vicar general. However, Morello died suddenly in early 2013, and all diocesan events are still canceled. The diocesan calendar on the web site says, "The office of Vicar General and Bishop Ordinary are currently vacant. The visitation schedule will be determined when oversight is established. Who will attend the House of Bishop meetings is to be determined."

The existence of the ACA Diocese of the West at all is an open question: two key parishes are without priests, St Mary of the Angels and All Saints Fountain Valley. An anomaly has been pointed out with reference to St Columba's Lancaster, whereby Fr William Bower, although apparently restored to the ACA priesthood following the parish's failed attempt to go into the Ordinariate, is still not listed as its rector on either the diocesan or the parish web sites. Fr Bower is probably not regarded as politically reliable within the ACA in any case, especially since he reportedly stopped returning calls from Morello as vicar general.

The bottom line here is that as long as Morello had convinced Bishops Strawn and Marsh that there was a putative adult in charge in the Diocese of the West, they seem to have felt they could safely ignore what was or wasn't going on there. The problem is that Morello was the whole show, and at this point, it appears that there's simply no adult in charge.

Taking the position that we'll figure things out down the road sometime isn't a recipe for success. My guess is that the standing committee doesn't want to face this any more than Marsh does. At some point, they're going to have to.

What We Have Here Is An Argument From Results

although I don't remember such a thing in my Aristotelian rhetoric texts. The last entry in The Armchair Detective section of the Freedom for St Mary blog makes it plain that, as elected vestrypeople who knew the St Mary's score predicted, the dissidents have begun turning against each other. I'm pretty sure I know who the "source" the detective is talking about is, and his family was among the most vocal -- and indeed, he was among the most physically violent -- of the anti-Kelley faction.

Perhaps because that's how the guy's mind works, he's now convinced that one clique of the angries, having killed off Anthony Morello, has singled him out to be next, and he's gone to the cops about it! But we have to take all this in context: remember that amid all this paranoia and conspiracy, they've got to hire and retain clergy in their spare time, and so far, they haven't been all that good in getting around to that.

I get an occasional e-mail that says, in effect, well, John, you're partly right, these people are all nut cases, this is a sad situation, but really, John, Fr Kelley is over the top, he's maybe even a crook, and maybe if there wasn't actually a naked black girl in the basement or anything like that, still, he deserved what he got, and it's sad sad sad, but Kelley's too much. The only answer I can give is to point to the results. From 2007 to 2012, he kept that parish together, fully recognizing what he had to work with in the 8-12 angries who kept wanting to control everything.

He made sure they had pastoral care, and he made sure they had the sacraments. They haven't been able to do anything like that for themselves -- nor has the ACA. And in fact, he's still making sure parishioners who've stuck things out in good faith continue to get pastoral care and the sacraments. Somebody needs to wake up over this.

So What's The Status?

The home page at St Mary of the Angels still lists The Rev Nicholas Taylor as the Curate, when every indication is that he left in February, and I've reported here that a potential candidate to replace him declined the job. I sent a message on the contact form at the Church of the Epiphany, the Arizona parish of the absentee "priest in charge", Frederick Rivers, asking about the status of clergy at St Mary's and any plans for masses during Holy Week, but so far, I haven't had a reply.

Naturally, this is when a parish would normally have its Holy Week schedule up on its web site. Not, so far, St Mary's.

In fact, Holy Week of 2012 was when the ACA began its takeover of St Mary of the Angels, so this has been dragging on for nearly a year. Once the ACA and the core angries were able to seize the physical building in May, their ability to retain clergy and hold mass there has been minimal. An Episcopal priest had been willing to say mass as long as the parish was (as the late Anthony Morello initially promised) still going into the Ordinariate; however, that changed, and that priest was dismissed.

Another ACA priest briefly supplied in June 2012, but was unwilling to continue on a long-term basis. The decision by Judge Jones in June 2012 dissolving the initial temporary restraining order in favor of the ACA led to the ACA locking the parish from then until December 2012. Nicholas Taylor was then a curate for barely two months, but now it looks as if, as a practical matter, they're back to effectively locking the place once again.

Fr Kelley continues to hold mass for faithful parishioners at a private residence.

If anyone has more information, I'll be most eager to hear it. However, the fact that the ACA appears to be at a loss to provide the sacraments to the remaining parishioners during Holy Week says several things:

• The parishioners simply aren't the ACA's priority
• The rump "vestry" and the core group of angries don't care that much about the sacraments anyhow
• The issues are power and money, not anything remotely related to the Christian faith.

This is the sort of thing that Fr Kelley prevented from happening from 2007 to 2012. I think it says a lot about him.

A Mild Coincidence

Yesterday's homily at the local Catholic parish covered the reading on the Prodigal Son. Like other homilies on the subject that I've heard from time to time, it focused on the older brother, the one who stuck around and, when the younger brother came back, resented the party the father threw on his behalf. Oddly, the priest related this to the sinfulness of seething anger -- the moving force, as far as I can see, behind the "Anglican continuum". It's what David Virtue keeps stirring up on his blog, and what people like Stephen Smuts and Ms Gyapong keep pretending isn't there.

Er, Do We Care?

Ms Gyapong asks, "Fr Smuts! Where are you?" and wonders if he's given up blogging for Lent. Um, do priests give up homilies for Lent?

What on earth is to miss? Stephen Smuts belongs to what I would call the pretty-picture school of blogging. Every post has a pretty picture. But other than that, there's no substance. (Compare that to the blog of a real priest in a real denomination, like Fr Z's blog. Night and day.)

As with David Virtue, Stephen Smuts is notable simply as a missed opportunity, or indeed, a duty neglected. The TAC, of which he proclaims himself a member, is a result of the "Continuers'" miscalculation that, on top of a groundswell of defections from The Episcopal Church over the ordination of women and the revision of the prayer book, which didn't happen, an equivalent groundswell would take place in the rest of the Anglican Communion once the Church of England began ordaining women. Hasn't happened. The TAC, the personal ego trip of the defrocked Episcopal priest Louis "Tod" Falk, is at best an empty shell.

The most constructive single step Stephen Smuts could take would be to acknowledge that, without an MDiv or equivalent, he is not eligible to be called a priest in any US main line denomination, and to that extent he's been blogging under false pretenses. Then he should acknowledge that the TAC, in which he is a "priest", is a corrupt sham.

Then, in the spirit of Lent, I would begin to get some respect for him once he announced that he was giving up his blog, giving up his phony career as an internet priest, and setting out to find something constructive to do with the rest of his life.

The Missed Opportunity That Is Virtue Online

Over the past several weeks, I've begun to note matters within the "Continuum" that are, for want of any other word, scandalous. It appears, for instance, to be an open secret that a retired "Archbishop" of a comic-opera denomination left The Episcopal Church under circumstances not much different from those that brought the attention of SNAP on Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania Charles Bennison Jr and his brother John.

The John Bennison affair was thought by bloggers like David Virtue to be yet another circumstance besmirching the hated Episcopal Church, yet equivalent scandals in the "Continuum" get no notice. One factor that brought me to start this blog was that I submitted an opinion piece to David Virtue fully documenting the circumstances under which the late Anthony Morello left The Episcopal Church, and while he thanked me for it, he never published it. Yet any mention of a gay skeleton in the Episcopalian closet is quickly picked up.

A visit to Virtue Online just this morning produces this list of headlines, which is as representative as any:

• Virginia Episcopal Bishop Ordained Lesbian at Former Orthodox Falls Church
• WHEATON, IL: Anglican Realignment Draws Hundreds. Hear Call to Plant 1000 churches
• ARCHBISHOP WELBY'S STEEP LEARNING CURVE
• GREENSBORO, NC: AMIA Leader Notes Losses, Sees Hope in Formation of New Society
• The Scandal of the Cardinals. The Disgrace of Episcopal Bishops
• Archbishop of Canterbury will attempt Anglican Reconciliation at Enthronement
• The Lies and Spin of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson

Regular visitors to VOL (I've given up) will no doubt recognize the sheer predictablility here: The Episcopal Church ordains a lesbian, is a disgrace, emanates lies and spin. The Archbishop of Canterbury is feckless. The Continuum is hopeful, wants to plant churches, do new stuff, grow.

The fact of the matter is that the Continuum is losing members (Virtue once sent me an e-mail privately acknowledging that it was steadily graying and didn't have a future), despite all of Virtue's parroting of their PR releases. I think one theme in this blog is that there are very good reasons it's not succeeding, and despite the regular hopeful pronouncements from dead letters like the AMIA, isn't growing.

The Continuum is angry. It attracts an active, hard core of angry people. It isn't a coincidence that one of the organizations that made up the ACA was the AEC, founded in 1963 by an outright segregationist in specific reaction to the integration of Episcopal parishes. If the folks who were angry early in the "Continuing" movement about Civil Rights and integration have died off or been diluted, their ranks have simply been replaced by people who are angry about something else. My e-mail chats with clergy familiar with the Continuum keep coming back to this subject; one priest commended my characterization of the dissident core at St Mary's Hollywood as "the angries".

The Continuum is corrupt. The constant elevation of unqualified, inexperienced individuals to bishop and lesser ranks is an ongoing problem. I heard the other day that, prior to Anthony Morello's death, a priest in the ACA Diocese of the West had simply stopped returning Morello's calls to him as Vicar General. If the leadership is compromised and not credible, how can the movement survive?

The Continuum is fractious. Its various tiny sub-denominations rise, split, re-combine, and eventually disappear largely due to the egoism of its bishops, who, as one priest put it to me, "use the laity as an excuse to dress up and play church".

Even during Lent, "Continuing" bloggers ignore these essentially fatal problems in the movement. It's entirely possible, though, that if David Virtue were suddenly to see the light and begin some sort of realistic reporting on what's causing the Continuum's continuing problems, he'd lose his committed, angry readership. They give him money, after all.

I do note that for whatever reason, Stephen Smuts has been posting much less frequently. Perhaps he's decided to give up playing church and look for a real job, I don't know. Maybe David Virtue should consider the same course.

Mergers And Bishops

The Rt Rev John Vaughan's election as ACA diocesan Bishop of the Eastern US (without fanfare), corresponding with APA Bishop Giffin's consecration as Suffragan Bishop of Mid-America last October, reminded me of another pair of elevations, both of these apparently kept very quiet. The ACA Diocese of the Northeast September, 2012 Newsletter reports,

Perhaps the most dramatic moments at synod came with the election of two new Bishops Suffragan. Fathers James R. Hiles and Owen R. Williams were each elected overwhelmingly to the office of Bishop Suffragan.

So OK, let me see if I've got this right. Since 2010, the ACA, rightly in my view, thinned its ranks of bishops. Bishop of the West Williams suddenly retired in 2010, to the apparent relief of his standing committee, and has not been replaced. Bishop of the Eastern US Campese was purged and resigned from the House of Bishops in 2011. Bishop Moyer was purged in 2012, leaving only Strawn and Marsh as diocesan bishops, with nominally retired Bishops Falk and Langberg meddling behind the scenes. OK: smaller organization, fewer bishops, makes lots of sense.

But then in April 2012, John Vaughan became a suffragan for the DEUS, with its nominal 15 parishes, of which some number are family missions, others inactive and paper-only. A step backward, it seems to me. But in May 2012, APA Presiding Bishop Grundorf and ACA Presiding Bishop Marsh took an "ecumenical" junket with their wives to the Greek Islands, wherein they discussed the proposed merger of their denominations. (The equivalent report from ACA Presiding Bishop Marsh, by the way, has for some reason been deleted from the DONE website.) As Grundorf put it,

While we were waiting to board the plane which would take us to Athens for the long flight home, a rainbow, the biblical token of God's promise, appeared directly over our plane. I took it as a sign that our work together had met with God's approval, and as His promise that He will help us recover "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace" (Eph 4:3) we seek between our churches.

In other words, translating from churchladyspeak, the APA and ACA are working toward merger. Except that since this holy, spiritual, ecumenical, and refreshing junket, we've had the following developments:

1. The ACA Diocese of the Northeast elected two new suffragan bishops, to the evident satsifaction of Brian Marsh
2. The APA consecrated Robert Giffin as Suffragan Bishop of Mid-America, with Brian Marsh as co-consecrator
3. The ACA Diocese of the Eastern US elected John Vaughan as diocesan bishop, promoting him from suffragan, with the at least tacit approval of Brian Marsh.

So this puts the potentially merging APA and ACA up three suffragans, with an additional suffragan converted to a diocesan: in the time since May 2012, with Marsh and Grundorf praying fervently for unity and presumably discussing it in some concrete way or other between visits to the buffet, their main subsequent step has been to create four new bishops.

In the real world, when companies merge, it's to eliminate duplicate facilities. In a profit-making company, it's to increase (or restore) profit. In a religious organization, it's at least theoretically to render more effective stewardship of limited resources. A big target of corporate mergers is duplicate ranks of managers and administrators; their equivalents in the church are bishops and prebendaries. The reduction between 2010 and 2012 of the number of bishops in the ACA was a prudent move, which Marsh is in the process of reversing, even as the size of the ACA continues to diminish.

We would expect, if we were following the normal model of mergers, a united APA-ACA to have one Presiding Bishop, with corresponding geographical dioceses combined much as two merging companies would combine duplicate regional territories under single vice presidents. And when companies contemplate doing this over a period of years, the potential duplicate staffs are allowed to diminish via attrition.

This is only logical, but it's also good stewardship. Even if, in small denominations like the ACA and the APA, bishops double as rectors and may not receive separate salaries, they nevertheless have individual travel and incidental expenses, individual support staff, individual offices and computers. Let's not even think about the travel junkets, of which these bishops seem fond. In such small denominations, even this duplication should be minimized -- it's simple stewardship.

Yet on the verge of merger, the APA and ACA are both inflating the number of their bishops. Given the essentially duplicate territories of the dioceses in each denomination, with the very small numbers of parishes in each, what will the expanded ranks of these bishops have to do when a merger takes place except charge expenses for their unnecessary presence at synods, travel for unnecessary parish visits, and create charges for phone and network connections, computers, and office rental? Oh, yes, in their copious spare time they'll be able to conspire against each other and create general mischief. Sounds like a formula for Christian unity, huh?

Where are the standing committees here? Where are the adults of any stripe?

Joyous Tidings, Huh? Why No Announcement?

Late last month, the Rt Rev John Vaughan was elected ACA diocesan Bishop of the Eastern US at its diocesan synod. He'd been suffragan bishop in the same diocese for about a year; I reviewed his bio in this post. His career in The Episcopal Church was undistinguished, guiding a failing mission in the Orlando area most of the way into its grave; he then moved to the ACA, where as priest-in-charge he's guided a couple of missions there on a course that appears to be at best uncertain.

The DEUS main web page hasn't been updated in more than a year -- wouldn't you expect the joyous news of Bp Vaughan's election as diocesan to be made known to the faithful? On the other hand, there are likely so few people in the diocese that a phone tree might have worked better, for all I know. The diocesan web site lists 15 parishes, although I strongly suspect that, like the Diocese of the West, this overstates the number. For instance, the note for St Peter's Anglican Mission in Waynesville, NC says, "As of January 1, 2011, Saint Peter's comes under the pastoral care of All Saints Anglican Church in Mills River." I simply don't know what that means; a hyperlink to the All Saints Anglican Church site comes up empty.

Might Bishop Vaughan in his time as suffragan perhaps have been moved to clean this stuff up? For that matter, his home parish (i.e., the "cathedral" of the whole blinkin' diocese) doesn't have a website. All this suggests that, whatever the possibilities of growing an Anglo-Catholic splinter group, they aren't being even minimally exploited. How hard would it be to write a press release about Vaughan's election and send it on to David Virtue? Hasn't happened. How hard would it be to clean up the list of parishes from 2011? Hasn't happened. Even if Vaughan could make the excuse that he doesn't have a staff, etc etc, wouldn't you expect someone who actually wanted to grow his diocese beyond a dozen sorry little missions to take a little bit of initiative and write the flippin' press release himself?

By the same token, wouldn't you expect The Most Rev Brian Marsh to note the joyous event of Bp Vaughan's election as diocesan on the ACA home page? I've got to say that this is telling me what these guys think is important, which is something other than running a church. You could argue that Marsh is so busy with St Mary of the Angels and the Diocese of the West, down two priests and Holy Week on the horizon, that he doesn't have time for Vaughan's election, except I see no sign that anything's being done about the DOW, either.

This raises another question: the ACA has expressed a desire to merge with the Anglican Province of America. The APA also has a Diocese of the Eastern United States, and its diocesan bishop is Walter Grundorf, assisted by a suffragan, Chandler H. Jones. This means that if-when the two merge, there will be two competing dioceses. (It goes farther than that; the APA DEUS also covers territory in the ACA Diocese of the Northeast, headed, of course, by Brian Marsh.)

How are all these bishops going to divide the spoils, especially considering how small the spoils are to divide? If the ACA is serious about merging with the APA, why go ahead and elect a diocesan bishop for the same measly territory already covered by an APA diocese?

This, by the way, is the kind of question that Anglo-Catholic or "Continuing" bloggers like David Virtue or Stephen Smuts ought to be asking. It's also the sort of question the APA should be asking. If the ACA is courting them to the degree that it is, why are they setting up circumstances that will be that much more difficult to resolve once a merger takes place? Isn't this one more instance of Lucy telling Charlie Brown she's going to hold the football properly this time?

Bishop Shaver, the APA, and the ACA in Context

I didn't intend to go after Bishop Shaver, but since I've had several e-mails from him, I decided it would be prudent to get a clearer idea, via ordinary web searches of public records, of who he is.

He was first consecrated on 8th July 1972 in San Jose, California, in the US branch of the Old Catholic Church-Philippine Independent Church (where, incidentally, Anthony Morello was first ordained). I can find no record of Bishop Shaver's priestly formation; he may wish to provide this. He was then received into the American Episcopal Church in March 1975. The AEC was the body originally founded by the segregationist James Dees in 1963, later headed by the disreputable Anthony Clavier until it merged into the defrocked Episcopal priest Louis Falk's Anglican Church in America in 1991.

However, about 1985, Bishop Shaver was received into the Philippine Independent Church's Anglican Rite Jurisdiction of the Americas. The ARJA "thought it wise to consecrate him again conditionally in order that he would possess orders not only from the line of succession in the Old Catholic Church but would also have the same Anglican succession as the Bishops of the Anglican Communion." According to Wikepedia, "At its height, ARJA consisted of approximately a dozen parishes in the United States." (Douglas Bess discusses the ARJA in some detail in Divided We Stand, but as elsewhere in that book, he puts insufficient stress on the truly tiny size of these "continuing" bodies.) Note that the ARJA, with at most a dozen parishes, seems to have had at least four bishops!

It appears that Bishop Shaver was with the ARJA during the 1991 merger of the AEC with the ACA, the subsequent purge of Clavier from the ACA, and the schism of the Anglican Province of America from the ACA. By 1999, I find him as Bishop of the Diocese of St Augustine in the Anglican Rite Synod in the Americas, a Western rite of the Russian Orthodox Church. However, in 2004, the non-geographical Diocese of St Augustine, still with Bishop Shaver at its head, had apparently left the Anglican Rite Synod and merged into the post-ACA APA.

According to the APA page linked above, the Diocese of St Augustine morphed into the geographical Diocese of Mid-America in 2008, still with Shaver as its bishop. Currently the APA Diocese of Mid-America lists nine parishes on its web site, of which most are missions, and of which only two have their own buildings. Yet, as we saw last week, it now has not only a diocesan bishop, but a suffragan, whose own parish is listed as a mission on the APA web site, with a membership estimated at 15. This tiny mission, through its various mutations, seems also to constitute the bulk of Bishop Giffin's pastoral experience prior to his consecration.

This puts the APA Diocese of Mid-America at roughly the same size and consequence as the ACA Dioceses of the Missouri Valley, the West, and the Eastern US, all numbering in the neighborhood of a dozen parishes (probably fewer in actuality). As we've seen, the APA and the ACA are mooting merger, pretty clearly out of desperation, and ACA Presiding Bishop Marsh co-consecrated at Suffragan Bishop Giffin's ceremony. What this may imply for Bishop Giffin's future in a merged ACA-APA is anyone's guess; I doubt that ACA Bishop of the Missouri Valley Strawn is anywhere near wanting to retire. Bishop Giffin, watch your back.

What we do see with Bishop Shaver is the standard "continuing Anglican" pattern: insecurity over succession of bishops; ambiguous priestly formation among key figures; jurisdiction hopping among comically tiny denominations; a clear indication that personal agendas take priority over pastoral care; organizations top-heavy with bishops and prebendaries. As far as this story applies to St Mary's Hollywood, it's another indication of the environment in which it finds itself, in spite of its repeatedly expressed intention to leave.

I will welcome any clarifications of this unfortunate record from Bishop Shaver.

While I Appreciate The Clarification

that I ran yesterday from APA Bishop Shaver, it's been pointed out to me that he said

Bishop Strawn released him [now-Bishop Giffin] as a priest in good standing to the APA, and any information to the contrary is simply not true.

when the chronology that I ran on February 27 indicates that Giffin and his parish went from the ACA to the Antiochian Church, not directly into the APA, and there were apparently several transformations over 2009 into 2010 before the parish finally wound up in the APA. An informant suggests to me that Bishop Shaver and I may both be right, and if Bishop Strawn, known here for a hair-trigger in disciplinary matters, caused some contention over Giffin's earlier departure to the Antiochan Church, this does not rule out a subsequent change of heart based on remonstrances from the likes of Marsh or Grundorf. Bishop Shaver's version of the transition may be a simple inadvertency, but when dealing with the "continuum", I think we all need to be aware of the very real potential for weasel-wording. If Bishop Shaver wants to clarify his statement further, one way or another, I'll publish that as well.

It's also been suggested that "the vestry made him do it" doesn't necessarily fly as an explanation, again especially in the context of the "continuum", which since even before St Louis has been characterized by jurisdiction hopping, sudden reversals, purges, ego-tripping, mergers-followed-by-further-schism, and so forth. Much of Bishop Shaver's explanation boils down to "hey, this is the Continuum, what'd ya expect, guy?" which it seems to me makes my point. If Joe Schmo rises to the rank of Grand Kleagle in the Exalted Society of Cutpurses, it avails little to point out that Joe is a cutpurse. By the same token if Bishop Giffin rises to that exalted rank from among the roiling population of vicars general, canons, archdeacons, and the like in the tiny, screwball "continuum", it makes just about as much sense to complain that, well, that's exactly what he's done.

UPDATE: Bishop Shaver replies:

Dear John,

Bishop Giffin (then Fr. Giffin) was never under discipline, suspension, inhibition, or any other term by the ACA at any time. Again, thank you for seeking clarification.
--

+Larry L. Shaver
Bishop Ordinary
Diocese of Mid-America, APA

He then replies further,

Dear John,

Given that allegations such as these are very serious because they have been published, and you have been duly notified that they are in no way true (twice), I must tell you that the person or persons making such allegations are opening themselves up to legal action.

--

+Larry L. Shaver
Bishop Ordinary
Diocese of Mid-America, APA

I'm not entirely sure which allegations Bishop Shaver means. I certainly repeat what I said above, that the so-called "Anglican continuum", of which the APA and the ACA are normally regarded as major denominations, has been characterized by jurisdiction hopping, sudden reversals, purges, ego-tripping, mergers-followed-by-further-schism, and so forth. I think I may have forgotten to mention litigiousness in that list. For the time being, I will accept the assertions of Bishop Shaver regarding any discipline on Bishop Giffin in the short time when he was a priest in the ACA.

Trouble In Paradise? -- II

St Mary of the Angels is now without a curate, and until they can find a supply priest someplace, there's no one to celebrate mass. As had been intimated to me in an e-mail from the absentee priest-in-charge Fr Rivers in January, Fr Nicholas Taylor, who had been installed as curate only last December, was on his way out, and has now returned to Colorado. A prospective new curate, a Fr Hart, declined the position. (There appear to be more than one Fr Hart; if anyone knows more about this, I'd appreciate any info.)

On the face of it, this is not good news for the ACA and what remains of its Diocese of the West, since two key parishes of the six or eight that credibly remain, the "cathedral" at All Saints Fountain Valley and St Mary of the Angels, are currently without priests. St Mary's, of course, was always a plum assignment, but now there are no takers.

My understanding is that Fr Taylor was packed off at the instigation of the "senior warden" appointed by the late Anthony Morello, Mrs Bush. Mrs Bush, let's recall, was a member of the parish for exactly one year, which was the minimum time to qualify her for election to the vestry in 2012. Prior to that time, she had not attended church in any denomination for 40 years, due to the anti-religious stance of her late husband. However, it appears that Mrs Bush's recently discovered religious fervor has drawn her in an increasingly low-church direction, to the point that, as I understand it, she is ordering the removal of icons and other religious imagery from the parish. The ACA, of course, had already excommunicated any parishioners who might have resisted this course.

Her leadership style, which might be characterized as "Off with their heads!", has become a sticking point for clergy, along with the prospect of life under conditions amounting to house arrest in the tiny rectory, with a salary of whatever Mrs Bush is willing to part with, being contributory factors.

However, I would guess there are problems beyond that. A curate, as the title is used in "continuing Anglicanism", is an associate, who normally reports to the rector, who is normally under the supervision of a bishop. In the case of St Mary's, the curate theoretically works for Fr Rivers, the 74-year-old absentee "priest-in-charge", who is in Arizona. The Diocese of the West has no diocesan bishop, with its episcopal visitor being Brian Marsh, who lives in the colorfully named village of Belchertown, MA, who has canceled all events scheduled for the coming year requiring his presence in the Diocese of the West, and who would probably prefer even a root canal to dealing with any issues relating to St Mary of the Angels, on the other side of the country. Mrs Bush is thus basically out of control.

My guess is that this places any clergy in a completely untenable position. But hey, Brian Marsh has got to be good for something, right? He can rent himself out as a co-consecrator! The APA loves him!

Clarification

I received the following e-mail, which I reproduce here in its entirety:

Dear John,

I wanted to write to you in order to clarify a few things that you had written on 27 February regarding one of the APA Bishops. First, Bishop (then Fr.) was never disciplined or inhibited by the ACA in any way. Bishop Strawn released him as a priest in good standing to the APA, and any information to the contrary is simply not true. Secondly, the various mutations in the name of the parish in question, while true, are quite more complex that it might seem. Having known more than a few of the parishioners of this parish before and after these events, I feel it prudent to say that Fr. Giffin had a vestry at the time that insisted upon these changes in an attempt to "grow" in a time of flux in North American Anglicanism if I may use that term. What this lay leadership and the wider parish soon realized is that these changes did none of that. I tell you this so that you may see a different side to this story. Surely, in your experience at St. Mary's, you realize how vestries can get cross ways with their rectors and insist upon things that may not be in the parishes best interest. Also, I think that you know of the confusion that many have had in trying to navigate not only the waters of the ACNA, the Continuum, but also Rome. Some people want change, others do not. It leaves bitterness on both sides that seems to go on and on without relief. That being said, as Rector, Fr. Giffin certainly bears that burden as well and is not without blame. He has certainly expressed this to me. I guess if people want to continue to rake him over the coals for some name changes and liturgy changes that were not under his control, that is their prerogative. Lastly, even though I know many of the ACA Bishops are not in your favor or esteem, the participation of Bishop Marsh in a consecration of an APA Bishop is not irregular as we are in full communion and he is President of the House of Bishops of the ACA. Bishop Giffin is a 2002 Master of Divinity graduate of Nashotah House. Thank you for welcoming these clarifications.

I do hope the situation at St. Mary's gets better in the coming days. It is a beautiful parish with a wonderful history and much to offer. May you have a blessed Lent.

+LLS

--

+Larry L. Shaver
Bishop Ordinary
Diocese of Mid-America, APA

A Couple Of Answers

In response to my post on unanswered questions in Louis Falk's career (I'm now told that he goes by the name "Tod", apparently when people aren't calling him "Your Grace"), an informant has filled in a couple of gaps.

Tod apparently came to James Mote's attention via the Nashotah House old-boy network. Mote (who passed away in 2006) was, according to my informant, an enthusiastic Nashotah House alumnus, and this was a blind spot for him. Nashotah House alumni, my informant points out, have a very high opinion of themselves and each other, although as an attorney, he has no dog in this fight. They refer to it, he says, as "The House" among themselves.

Now that he mentions it, yes, I've noticed that in the "continuum", alums of The House are as quick to mention this about themselves as, say, alums of Yale Law, although my informant points out that The House has been busily turning out lady rectors and openly gay deacons with the best of them -- it's an Episcopal seminary, after all; what's so good about it? In any case, he says that apparently Tod came to Mote's attention as a worthy product of The House, then at something of a loose end, and Mote snapped him up without much further question.

The ACC synod that elected him Bishop of the Missouri Valley in 1980 or 1981 did quiz him about the obvious question -- gee, how come you left The Episcopal Church back in, er, 1966 was it? My informant relates at second hand that Tod was not immediately forthcoming about the reasons but did finally stammer out an explanation that satisfied the synod. Since Tod was Mote's candidate and the only credible alternative, they voted him in.

My informant also says that General Growth Management Company in Des Moines, of which Falk was president from 1976 to 1981, was a Falk family enterprise, although I don't have independent confirmation of this. This was one possibility that I had always considered, since the Falk family was involved in the founding of Pabst Brewing as well as a large manufacturing company in Milwaukee called the Falk Company, so it appears that there may have been other family enterprises sufficiently removed from Wisconsin to occupy Tod once the scandal in Rhinelander died down.

Many thanks to those who have continued to provide information.

A Small Data Point

regarding the actual size of the "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion": I'm told that Samuel Prakash, the current "Acting Primate" of the TAC, is, with his father (who I believe is John Prakash) engaged primarily in a legal maneuver to seize properties of the former Church of India (i.e., the Church of England branch in colonial India) that went to newly constituted pan-Protestant denominations in the years following independence. Their intention, according to the account I've heard, is simply to acquire the constructive use of the properties and live off their income, not to minister to any appreciable laity.

This, from a different source, would be consistent with the firsthand account I've heard from India that there is no actual TAC presence on the ground. It's also one more data point in the picture that's beginning to emerge for me that the TAC and the ACA are essentially bogus denominations.

The Portsmouth Letter In Context

Given what we now know about the TAC and the ACA, let's take a quick look at the Portsmouth Letter, and indeed Anglicanorum coetibus, which will almost certainly be listed among the main accomplishments of now-retired Pope Benedict XVI.

First, of the Portsmouth signers who were bishops in the ACA, I'm aware of only one who even became a Catholic under the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus, Louis Campese. Campese was effectively purged from the House of Bishops at the time the Patrimony of the Primate was set up, resigning as an ACA bishop and taking the parishes associated with him into the Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family. He then became a lay Catholic in his former parish, the Church of the Incarnation. The general opinion, with which I have no reason to disagree, is that he chose not to become a Catholic priest due to his age.

David Moyer, a Portsmouth signer, had intended to become a priest in the US Ordinariate, but was turned down both by Archbishop Chaput and Msgr Steenson. So far, he has not become a Catholic layman. Whatever one may say of Moyer's specific position in relation to The Episcopal Church and Bishop Charles Bennison Jr, he appears to exhibit a general "continuing Anglican" pattern of jurisdiction-hopping, litigiousness, and controversialism, which would probably not have suited him well in the US Ordinariate.

Louis Falk, a Portsmouth signer and regarded by many as a prime mover in the process, remains outside the Catholic Church and the US Ordinariate. The received version is that he chose to remain in the ACA with his tiny parish of 25 members, St Aidan's Des Moines IA, when it became plain that so many of those 25 members had divorces and remarriages, or memberships in the Masons, that they could not consider becoming Catholic. Less noted up to now is the fact that Falk had left The Episcopal Church in 1966 under discipline (he was deposed as a priest in that denomination), and by the public policy statement of Msgr Steenson, he could therefore not be considered for ordination as a Catholic.

John Hepworth, the single most influential TAC figure behind the Portsmouth letter, was also not eligible to become a Catholic priest, since he had been laicized once already. It appears that Hepworth expected an exception to be made in his case, which is probably an indication of the general level of unreality that surrounded some of the key Portsmouth players.

Daren Williams, a signer, clearly opposed the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus once they were released and took adverse actions against clergy and parishes who intended to go into the Ordinariate. George Langberg, a signer as then-Bishop of the Northeast, has made no move to become Catholic or take his parish into the Ordinariate, and has consistently voted the anti-Ordinariate line in the House of Bishops with his successor Brian Marsh. Other ACA bishops or bishops-elect, including Brian Marsh, Stephen Strawn, and Robin Connors, were unavailable to sign the Portsmouth letter or, asked to endorse its contents prior to consecration, seem to have done so under false pretenses.

In hindsight, this raises for me the question of what the TAC's intentions were with the letter, and I can only look at this in the context of Falk's maneuvers in the 1980s and 1990s: from his standpoint, the Ordinariate would be a springboard for furthering his own ambitions. For instance, he absorbed Anthony Clavier's AEC, only to purge Clavier. I've got to wonder if he had a fantasy that he could get Pope Benedict to declare some sort of a "merger" between the Catholic Church and the TAC, so that he could purge the Pope!

Regarding the US Ordinariate in the same context: if it's controlled by a former Episcopal Diocese of Ft Worth in-group, that's likely preferable to control by any other in-group of "continuing Anglicans", certainly including Louis Falk and his collection of cronies and stooges. I'll have more thoughts on this.