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.
