Friday, March 1, 2013

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.