If Someone Steals $1000 From Me,

it isn't helpful if someone comes along and says, "You need to be reconciled with your neighbor and forgive him. So you should split the difference and see if he'll be nice and give you back $500." I had a most peculiar e-mail exchange with an Anglican cleric over the weekend that I'm increasingly convinced was conducted on his side under false pretenses -- based on some of the things he said in the more than 20 messages he sent me over a 3-day period, I believe he's conducting some sort of discussion with the unelected St Mary's vestry and the ACA over the vacant position there.

One good sign, at least for the unelected vestry and the ACA, is that by his account, he's been something of an ally of the late Anthony Morello throughout their clerical careers. By his account, he recently called the Fountain Valley parish, and the secretary there told him that the late lamented Fr Tony had had him in mind for the rectorship of St Mary's all along. Certainly the best -- indeed, the only thing -- the likes of Brian Marsh can hope for is a Morello clone who'll do what's needed at and to St Mary's while giving Marsh deniability. You heard it here first!

This also suggests to me that I need to continue this blog for the time being, since he seemed to feel 20-plus e-mails were worth the effort if I could be bamboozled. Late in our correspondence, he asked me about reconciliation and forgiveness, and I replied,

It’s a very complex situation, because it’s not as though two dissenting groups of the same denomination can just bury the hatchet and go on. The 80% majority of the parish voted several times to leave the ACA and go into the Ordinariate. The ACA first said it would not oppose this, then changed its mind and seized the parish, using as its excuse the 20% of dissidents who claimed irregularities in the votes. As part of the process, the ACA deposed the rector on the basis of false witness from the 20%. It then initiated legal action accusing him of crimes like forgery, for “forging” the signatures on legitimate checks by authorized signers. Morello and Strawn then excommunicated via letter the members of the elected vestry, as well as other members of the parish who had voted for the Ordinariate.

It seems to me that if the ACA were to want to clear things up, in the spirit of the Catholic sacrament of Reconciliation, it would need to confess to the various sins involved and then, as part of penance, make things right, especially with Fr Kelley. Every homily I’ve heard about forgiveness has said it’s not a matter of just pretending the things that need to be forgiven didn’t happen. Certainly if someone goes to Confession and says he’s stolen something, the priest is going to tell him to find a way to give it back or otherwise make things right.

It seems to me that the process of making things right would involve restoring the good standing, pay, and benefits the ACA took from the rector, dropping all legal action, and restoring the parish to its path of entering the Ordinariate. Strawn and Marsh on behalf of Morello and themselves would need to apologize to the members of the parish they had excommunicated and otherwise offended. This would not be easy, but it would need to be done. It would not be a matter of sitting in a circle and singing kumbaya!

On top of that, several of the dissident party were, in my wife’s and my opinion, unbalanced, unpredictable, and demonstrably capable of violence. For our own safety, we felt it worthwhile to maintain a distance. Morello in particular encouraged these people. The ACA would need to work out a way of assuring the parish that it could come back together safely. This is part of the problem we’re dealing with.

Remember that the reading from Matthew [18:17] involving resolving disputes recognizes that they may not be resolved in this world, at which point the Christian needs to treat the unrepentant person as a heathen.

My clerical correspondent suddenly became exercised at this: he seemed to feel that since nobody's ever 100% right, that means they're never more than 50% right, and oh by the way, those who were excommunicated, although he's not familiar with the reasons, probably deserved it, and anyhow, if they want to become Catholic, they should just march down the street the way you did and stay out of the parish's business, blah blah blah. Internal evidence from his angry reply suggested that he'd had an earful from Mrs Bush et al and, since Mrs Bush held the checkbook, she who had the gold was going to make the rules.

Here's a Catholic perspective on forgiveness, which doesn't appear to deviate from several homilies on the same subject I've heard as an Episcopalian. Some excerpts:

Forgiveness is not a denial that you have been hurt or harmed. It does not mean that it's OK what the offender did to you. If there had been no harm done, there would be nothing to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean tolerating wrongdoing or allowing an injustice to continue.

Forgiveness does not necessarily mean that you will totally forget the hurtful event, nor does it mean that you must continue to be the offender's friend. You might need to keep a safe distance.

* * *

Recognize that you have been harmed.

Acknowledge and accept your feelings about what happened.

Think clearly about who in the situation bears responsibility for what. In fairness, you should not take the blame for someone else's wrongdoing.

I'm afraid that my correspondent seems to have initiated our discussion based on false pretenses -- pretending to be a neutral party, but apparently in some type of serious talks with the unelected vestry and/or the ACA on the basis that he would become rector or a long-term interim of the parish, remaining in the ACA. In effect, he would be the agent of continued injustice, since the parish always regarded the Continuum as a poor second choice, and always wanted to become Catholic if it could. To fully make things right, the ACA would need to recognize it had wronged the parish majority and restore the parish to its path toward the Ordinariate.

This man is a quack and a fraud.

The Rededication of St Mary of the Angels Church

is still scheduled for April:

We will have a Solemn High Mass with the Bishops of the Diocese and a setting aside of Mr. Andrew Bailey to the office of the Subdeaconate. Following the celebration, dinner will follow in the undercroft. Please sign up in the Narthex if you are planning to attend or call 323.660.2700 as soon as possible.

Well, since there are only two days left in the month, I guess they'd better get on it -- and come to think of it, don't they need a bishop? Indeed, from the text of the announcement, they would appear to need more than one.

Which brings up another interesting question: Since September of last year, Brian Marsh has had two suffragan bishops in the ACA Diocese of the Northeast:

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. A Suffragan Bishop is an assistant bishop, one who serves at the request of the Bishop Ordinary. The Bishop Suffragan is a man in episcopal orders, though he does not have the right of succession. Both Bishops-elect, upon their consecration, will assume responsibilities within the diocese and, when necessary, the national church. We pray that their service to God's holy church will be rewarding and productive.

Shouldn't this free Bishop Marsh to perform the duties he took upon himself as episcopal visitor to the Diocese of the West? Indeed, the writeup just above suggests that the two new suffragans could perform duties on behalf of the national church themselves. However, as of today, all events relating to the Diocese of the West continue to be canceled. Frederick Rivers is still listed as absentee "priest in charge" on the St Mary of the Angels web site, with Michael Eldred, by all accounts a marginal wannabe, saying mass.

Every opinion I've heard from priests, both inside and outside the Continuum, is that an absentee priest in charge is no way to rebuild a parish or foster reconciliation. Marsh's total inaction is revealing, and I can see only two possible explanations: he's at a loss over what to do over St Mary of the Angels (and for that matter, the entire Diocese of the West), or his conscience is troubled. I suspect it's some combination. It's hard to avoid the impression that both Marsh and Stephen Strawn relied on the utterly unscrupulous Anthony Morello to do all the necessary dirty work, and once Morello departed this life for his ultimate reward, Marsh is incapable of continuing that, or indeed any other, style of leadership.

So where is the standing committee? Does anyone know? It seems to me that as it applies to St Mary of the Angels and the Diocese of the West, Marsh is guilty of dereliction of duty.

I'd Like To Get In Touch With Douglas Bess One Day

(can anyone help?), because I keep coming up with enlightening snippets of information on the various corners of the post-1977 Continuum. A source provides this on the Anglican Rite Jurisdiction in the Americas of the Philippine Independent Church:

The [Philippine Independent Church] in the US, like the PIC in the Philippines, was actually split between two groups each claiming to have the legitimate Obispo Maximo (or Supreme Bishop)...a pro-American Anglo-Catholic group led by Macario V. Ga and the larger nationalista liberation theology group led by Bp. Ramento. They reunited the following year but in the meantime the Ga group (ARJA) had not four but actually ten or eleven bishops and a smattering of tiny parishes. Archbishop Ga was under the misconception that he had a thriving thing going in the States, a kind of continuum movement still in communion with Canterbury (he had been at Lambeth X in '68) so I had to write him and give a full report about what it really was: ten bishops eight of whom were out and out vigantes and at most three or four legitimate parishes.

Seems like the more I hear about the Continuum, the smaller it gets.

A Commenter Posts A Worthwhile Question

in this thread at Virtue Online. Gerry Shields remarks,

The question I would ask is if absent TEC's acceptance of gay relationships as normal would there be any reason for the departures of churches and dioceses from TEC? I think the answer has to be a negative.

I think the numbers I've been looking at say that Shields is correct -- Douglas Bess's assessment would also agree. The post-1977 Continuers don't remotely match the departures post-2003. Yet someone calling himself "Sin Nomine" replies,

Mr. Shields, I believe the answer to your questions is: yes. What has happened in TEC has been a gradual erosion of belief in scripture, the creeds, and the articles of faith through false teachers. This has led us to the false notion that regeneration through Jesus is not the way, the truth, and the life. Our false teachers have rejected the atonement, the existence of sin, and the bodily resurrection of Our Lord. If you have read Spong, he would be exhibit A in this debate followed by Gomes, Robinson, and a long list of others including the current Presiding Bishop. I would never sit under this false teaching. The issue of homosexuality is an indicator, or symptom of the false teaching, but it is not the sole cause. It is far deeper and more complex.

Except that the ACNA uses the 1979 prayer book and has women priests. Sin Nomine's answer is in a way Anglican, in that it imputes a great deal to the ACNA's split from TEC that's not actually in the record. The problem I have with the ACNA is just that: the reasons for the split are vague. It's not as though you can walk into the average Episcopal parish and find a priest rejecting the atonement, the existence of sin, and the bodily resurrection: the same creeds are in the 1979 rites as in those for 1928. As an Episcopalian for 30 post-1977 years who's been to high-church parishes and low, traveling and at home, I've never heard a homily going against the readings or against the creeds.

It's worth pointing out one more time that, while I'm not sure I agree with every point Gerry Shields makes, he's identifying himself as a real person, and his opinions are basically sane. The much larger number of angries opposing him are posting under pseudonyms. Par for the course at VOL. I wonder, though, if most of them attend any parish in any denomination at all, and the anger at Katharine Jefferts Schori is an excuse for something else.

Who Is David Virtue? -- IV

There's another question nobody's asked since about 2005: how does the guy get to call himself "D.D"? There's an instructive comment thread (scroll way down) on the issue here. Some worthwhile excerpts:

I've noticed that Virtue sometimes signs his name "D.D." or "D.D. (Alexandria)." Knowing that the Doctor of Divinity is almost never an earned degree these days (it's generally the honorary degree awarded to bishops by their alma maters, among other things; the post-M.Div. doctorate is now the D.Min.), I was curious as to who had awarded Virtue an honorary doctorate, and/or where he had found one of the very few remaining earned D.D. programs in existence.

According to a buddy of mine, Virtue's bio used to say that the D.D. is from one Palm Harbor University. The only Palm Harbor University I'm familiar with is Palm Harbor University High School in Florida, which obviously isn't in the business of awarding degrees. So I'm curious: Where did Virtue get the thing? (Anyone can buy one from the Universal Life Church for five bucks, but I'm assuming that's not where he got his.)

* * *

I co-wrote heaps of books on education, but I can't name a single accredited school, off the top of my head, that offers the Doctor of Divinity as an earned degree. It has been replaced by the Th.D., S.T.D., and D.Min., and is now known pretty much exclusively as an honorary degree. So the four options that come to mind are:

(a) He earned the D.D. from a legitimate school (probably one in eastern Europe, where there are still a few seminaries that offer it), through a program I've never heard of.

(b) The degree was awarded on an honorary basis by a legitimate school, which most likely would have asked him to deliver a commencement address to graduating students.

(c) He bought one. This is a pretty serious accusation, and I don't feel comfortable making it until I know the name of the school.

In addition, while there's no listing of his educational credentials in his bio at Virtue Online, they're listed at this site:

David Virtue, M.C.S., DD., was educated at Scots College [a private secondary school] in Wellington, New Zealand. He studied English Literature and Philosophy at Victoria University in Wellington before going on to London Bible College, London, England where he completed his Diploma in Theology. He continued his theological studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. and completed his Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies at Regent College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada with a dissertation on the Idea of Man in the writings of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, Victoria University may not be that big a deal:

For New Zealand residents entry to most courses is open, with a few exceptions. Performance Music requires an audition. There is selection for entry into the second year in degrees such as the LLB, BArch and BDes. BA in criminology and creative writing is also based on selection.

In other words, unlike Harvard in the US, say, Victoria University will take you as a first-year student irrespective of your grades and SATs, but it looks like you've got to measure up to move on there, and perhaps to get a degree. So Virtue went to London Bible College to finish his studies. Web references suggest this place specializes in "distance learning", which is another way of saying you can get a mail-order degree there.

According to Wikipedia, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a large evangelical seminary, issues the MDiv as its most popular degree, but Virtue says only that he continued his studies there, not that he received a degree -- but then he went on to get a Master's in an unrelated field. I got a Master's in English myself (a real department, not "interdisciplinary studies"), but I call myself neither an ordained minister nor a DD. A DD, honorary or not, ought to be the culmination of the man's academic achievement, wouldn't you think, and shouldn't the source be listed? Nope. Beyond that, he gives himself an "M.C.S." along with his "D.D.", but the only degree I can find corresponding to "M.C.S." is Master of Computer Science -- which you presumably don't get by writing dissertations on the Idea of Man in Solzhenitsyn. So things here are very puzzling indeed.

UPDATE: According to Wikipedia, Regent College at the University of British Columbia, founded in 1968, began offering a Master of Christian Studies degree in 1970. However, the school was not accredited until 1985, and the MCS degree is intended for the laity, separate from an MDiv degree intended for ordained clergy.

Like so many "orthodox" Anglicans, there are lots of questions about the guy, starting with whether he's actually an Anglican, but proceeding to his educational qualifications. The guy's a phony, as far as I can see. Shouldn't more people be calling him on this? As usual, I will greatly appreciate any supplementary information, sources held in complete confidence.

Who Is David Virtue? -- III

Let's take a look at a recent piece on Virtue's site: "RC Archbishop Resigns before Deposition of Former Pedophile Priest later admitted into The Episcopal Church". The subtitle continues, "Archbishop Jerome Hanus of Dubuque, Iowa cites 'health reasons'. He was scheduled to be deposed in Bede Parry scandal".

It's hard to know where to begin, but one thing's been at the back of my mind since I first saw it -- Virtue doesn't know what "deposition" means in this context. Virtue saw the word "deposition" someplace, pretty clearly in its legal sense. According to Wikipedia, "a deposition is the out-of-court oral testimony of a witness that is reduced to writing for later use in court or for discovery purposes." From the story and the links provided, it's pretty clear that a John Doe is suing various deep pockets over decades-old allegations against Bede Parry.

(I don't mean to minimize Parry's conduct as a Benedictine monk in the 1970s and 1980s or its impact on the victim. The legal process, however, is currently dealing with a particular allegation, and it's worth stressing, as Virtue does not, that the Catholic Church has been in the process of addressing Parry's and the many other abuses for decades as well.)

My point here is that it's plain from Virtue's headlines that he's not completely clear on the difference between a legal deposition and a deposition in The Episcopal Church, which is the ecclesiastical term for laicization or "defrocking" in that denomination, or if he does understand the difference, his writing is creating confusion about it. Looking closely at the version on Virtue Online, Roman Catholic Archbishop Jerome Hanus of Dubuque, Iowa, was scheduled to be deposed (i.e., interviewed out of court) in connection with a lawsuit over the Bede Parry case; Parry had been gradually eased out of Catholic pastoral roles between 1987 and 2000 after his continued abuse of minors became known.

Virtue's headline that reads in part, "Deposition of Former Pedophile Priest later admitted into The Episcopal Church" is factually incorrect and completely misleading. Archbishop Hanus is the one being deposed, in the legal sense of the word. Bede Parry, as far as we know, has not been "deposed" in the Episcopal sense, and has no disciplinary hearing scheduled that we know of. Virtue's own story indicates that Parry continues to be a priest in good standing in the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada. "Deposition" is not a term used in the Catholic Church; Parry has apparently been "laicized" there, but this story is not about that.

David Virtue represents himself as a "theologically trained journalist". But as we see here, at minimum he has real difficulty with ecclesiastical terminology: he's either revealing a basic confusion over the meaning of a word that I certainly learned in Episcopal confirmation class, or he's being deliberately confusing and misleading -- in other words, he's either a ditz or a knave. Neither is appropriate for someone claiming to be a "journalist".

Who Is David Virtue? -- II

One of the first things that's struck me about David Virtue's site is that the comments work much the same way as the comments on Stephen Smuts's blog. They're basically nutjob central, a bizarre collection of posters who ascribe to some obscure corner of Anglicanism, or just as commonly, no version of Anglicanism at all -- indeed, I wonder whether some pledge anywhere, or attend any parish of any denomination. But they're angry -- The Pope Is The Antichrist angry in many cases.

They attack the occasional sane poster with impunity, so that there's an ongoing angry paranoid-fringe atmosphere, much like the one Stephen Smuts maintains. I think the strategies of Virtue and Smuts are similar: both tacitly encourage the nutjobs in their comment sections, while maintaining a distance at the same time. Smuts, though, has openly opposed my own comments, while again tacitly endorsing the comments of the usual suspects there. David Virtue doesn't really need to say anything at all, because he knows the lunatics are running the asylum at Virtue Online. But make no mistake, the crazies are on both sites because Smuts and Virtue want them there. They fully understand the intent of the posts, and they enforce that intent in the comments like a cyber goon squad, while Virtue and Smuts can pretend they're not a part of it.

Why does anyone need this sort of cheering section? That's a puzzle. Virtue's thumbnail bio here indicates that, while he claims to attend an Episcopal church in Paoli, PA, his background also includes two years as a Baptist minister. But if his site isn't just critical of The Episcopal Church, but is actively angry at it, why go to church where you're clearly not comfortable? Why punish yourself? Maybe you'd be happier at a Baptist church, huh? I simply can't see going to church every Sunday and finding reasons to rub particular sores, when just down the street, you won't rub them.

Indeed, isn't Matthew 5:23-24 a basic part of Christianity? If you have a conflict with someone, leave your gift at the altar and be reconciled. Matthew 18:15 suggests that if you can't work it out, in the end, you've got to drop it and leave the person alone -- in effect, it seems to me, the verse says get a life, move on. Don't (unlike David) build a 20-year career on a grievance, especially one that doesn't apply directly to you. (I certainly don't intend to maintain this blog for 20 years, and by becoming a Catholic by an alternate route, I'm in the process of moving on, as are many others who were driven out of St Mary of the Angels Hollywood.)

So what's going on here? Based on the internal logic in a great many posts, I'm not sure if David Virtue is all there. We'll be looking at this.

Who Is David Virtue? -- I

The biggest source of good press for "continuing Anglicans" on the web is the Virtue Online site, named for David Virtue, "D.D.". Although Virtue has been active on behalf of fractious Anglicanism (which he mischaracterizes as "orthodox" Anglicanism; since Anglicanism has traditionally represented a broad spectrum of beliefs, I don't think there is a particular "orthodox" strain). There have been remarkably few questions about who David Virtue himself is, none recent. You can find a review of earlier issues about his qualifications, dated 2007, here.

The first question raised in that document relates to his objections to the election of openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire Eugene Robinson in 2003 -- I've referred to Robinson so much that perhaps I should just call him OGBONHER. The piece cited there refers to him as "The notorious online source of an aggressive anti-women, anti-homosexual agenda", and from visiting his site now and then over the past two years in an attempt to understand "continuing Anglicanism", I would judge that is an accurate characterization.

This means that I should establish where I stand on the matter of same-sex attraction. Fresh from Catholic confirmation class, I believe I have the Church's teaching on this matter right: same-sex attraction is not in itself a sin. Prejudice or discrimination against those attracted to the same sex, on the other hand, is wrong. Same-sex sexual activity is a sin. None of us, gay or straight, is without sin. The Church deals with sin via the sacraments. What people confess to, and how they deal with sin moving forward, is confidential.

I live in a part of the country that's tolerant of gays, and in a city that's especially tolerant of gays. The late Fr Carroll Barbour, the openly gay former Rector of St Thomas Episcopal Church Hollywood, had a profound spiritual effect on a generation of parishioners there. He converted to Catholicism after retiring as Rector. As far as I can see, there is nothing in Catholicism that is specifically anti-gay, and the teaching of the Church, as well as of mainstream Christianity, is that all our sins can be forgiven. So, lest there be any misunderstanding, I believe my position on same-sex attraction is the same as (and I mean it to be the same as) the position of the Catholic Church.

I think David Virtue, on the other hand, is deeply confused over the Christian position in this and many other areas -- in fact, looking at his posts, I think he's often simply confused. If anyone has links or other solid information that might be useful in this discussion, I'll be most happy to get them.

The Numbers For The ACNA In Texas

are just one more confirmation of Douglas Bess's assessment that the Continuers, in believing that great masses of Episcopalians would leave TEC when it changed the prayer book and ordained women, greatly miscalculated. The ACNA is a very slightly more conservative main line Protestant denomination than The Episcopal Church, pretty much the only difference being that it finesses the problem of same-sex attraction among bishops and priests somewhat more than TEC does -- and that's it; the ACNA has women priests and uses the 1979 TEC Book of Common Prayer.

The great majority of Episcopalians and ex-Episcopalians simply don't fetishize the 1928 prayer book, and for them, the ordination of women isn't controversial. So what do the Continuing losers do? They have another feckless conference, and

Four continuing bishops recently sent an appeal to ACNA's College of Bishops, asking to have only men in Holy Orders and to use an historic Anglican liturgy. Archbishop Mark Haverland (ACC), Peter Robinson (UEC), Bishop Brian Marsh (ACA), Bishop Walter Grundorf (APA), and Bishop Paul Hewett (DHC) all signed the appeal.

UPDATE:I'm increasingly wondering about David Virtue: I count five, not four, "continuing bishops" in the list above.

In other words, these losers appeal to the ACNA to turn itself into another like-minded bunch of losers! I think you have to give people credit for having some basic common sense: the ordination of women is an issue that's tied up with a much bigger theological approach, which includes the authority of the Pope. The idea of being sorta-kinda Catholic (including the absurdity, cited farther down the Virtue link, that you can be Catholic and also ascribe to the virulently Protestant 39 Articles) isn't selling, has never sold, and will never sell. The ACNA appears to understand this. The Continuing losers don't.

Where Do The Continuers Stand In Texas?

After yesterday's post, I became more curious about the state of "continuing Anglicanism" in New Braunfels, TX, a city of about 60,000. In addition to the APA parish and the new ACNA parish there, there's also St John's Episcopal New Braunfels. Much larger cities must certainly weep that they have fewer choices for Anglicans of a Sunday! On the other hand, St Joseph's New Braunfels, the APA parish, is actually the only APA parish in the entire state of Texas. (The ACA also has only one Texas parish, two others having been specifically chased out of the ACA due to the ineptitude of Stephen Strawn.)

The APA Diocese of Mid-America, which includes Texas, has a total of nine parishes and missions, with two bishops available for pastoral care. The ACA lists 18 parishes and missions in the equivalent Diocese of the Missouri Valley. Experience with such lists on the ACA web sites suggests that not all may be active. If or when the APA and the ACA merge, there will be three bishops for a maximum of 27 parishes in a Midwestern diocese, though I'd hate to be in a single room with all three of those bishops.

In comparison, the ACNA "Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth" has six deaneries covering much of the state, although the New Braunfels parish is part of the ACNA International Diocese, which has four additional Texas parishes. There's no comparison.

Even in the Bible Belt, newly disaffected Episcopalians are not turning to the "continuing" denominations, and in fact the ACA is in decline in Texas. Certainly the personality of Stephen Strawn has had something to do with this, although I think the reasons go well beyond particular individuals, however unqualified and corrupt they may be.

So What Happens

when the ACA and the APA merge, assuming that ever really takes place? (Among other things, they'll have to decide which bishop gets which territory, and I'll bet that one will be fun to watch.) But there are other questions. Fr Greg Wilcox, the former Rector of St Mary's, who withdrew from the ACA in 2006 likely under threat of discipline, went to an APA parish, St Joseph's New Braunfels, TX. Interestingly, there's now also an ACNA parish in New Braunfels, which goes to my growing impression that Episcopalians newly disaffected with TEC aren't turning to the Continuers.

However, if Wilcox left the ACA under threat of discipline, but the ACA and the APA are now in communion and on a path to merger, is there any reason Mrs Bush and the rest of the unelected vestry couldn't bring Fr Wilcox back to St Mary's? For that matter, now that Fr William Martin, formerly of St John's Chapel Monterey, is now an APA priest, is there any reason Mrs Bush couldn't bring him to St Mary's? After all, there's a vacancy!

What The Continuers Want More Than Anything Else

is prestige. Reflecting on the David Virtue story from Monday, I think this is clear. Note:

ACA Presiding Bishop Brian Marsh said at that time that the last two years had signaled a shift toward maturity. He described the present state of the Continuum as moving into a "mature stage of our development" with an opportunity to use the gifts that God has given to create a new beginning for His holy church.

Whew! Translated from churchladyspeak, I believe he's saying that the ACA has come close to hitting bottom, as have the other "Continuing" denominations, and in the spirit of the kid who gets horse manure in his Christmas stocking, he's delighted that it means Santa has brought him a pony! Realistically speaking, the ACA Diocese of the West is in a state of collapse, with all episcopal visits and its diocesan synod canceled; the Diocese of the Eastern US hasn't recovered from the loss of parishes to the Ordinariate, and the Diocese of the Missouri Valley is saddled with an utterly unqualified bishop and stuck at about a dozen parishes, most declining. There's nowhere for these guys to go but up!

As I said the other day, I simply can't imagine a parish (and certainly not a diocese) newly disaffected from The Episcopal Church electing to join the ACA. It's an eyeopener to me that Bishop Lawrence of South Carolina would speak at the convention Virtue covered -- I think Marsh, Grundorf, et al expected Lawrence to add his prestige to the occasion, but unfortunately, for me at least, his presence has besmirched -- I would go so far as to say beschmutzen -- his own reputation.

And note this:

Four continuing bishops recently sent an appeal to ACNA's College of Bishops, asking to have only men in Holy Orders and to use an historic Anglican liturgy. Archbishop Mark Haverland (ACC), Peter Robinson (UEC), Bishop Brian Marsh (ACA), Bishop Walter Grundorf (APA), and Bishop Paul Hewett (DHC) all signed the appeal.

In other words, ACNA, please change your [main line Protestant] theological stance, so that we tiny, quasi-Catholic fringe groups can feed on your prestige! It's the Portsmouth Letter writ small!

David Virtue Is Making Optimistic Noises Again

about the Continuum. I posted the following comment:

The number of parishes in any post-Affirmation of St Louis denomination, such as the ACA, the APA, and the ACC, is extremely small. The ACA lists about 70 nationally on its web site, but many of these are inactive or family missions. I've discussed the size of the ACA with knowledgeable parties, and I don't believe it numbers more than 1500 members in the US. It's worth pointing out that of its bishops, PB Brian Marsh went to General Theological Seminary, the school that turned out Gene Robinson and many of that wing at TEC, but for whatever reason, he was not ordained in TEC, although his ecclesiastical views would have been consistent with it (poor grades in seminary could be one explanation, as would objections from the diocesan committee that sponsored him). Stephen Strawn, Bishop of the Missouri Valley and successor to the defrocked Episcopal priest (scandal at Rhinelander, WI in 1965) Louis Falk, has only a mail-order MDiv from a defunct, unaccredited seminary. John Vaughan, Bishop of the Eastern US, is a former Catholic priest who left that Church in 1990, sold insurance for 6 years, became an Episcopal priest and served marginally at a mission until 2006 or so, when he went to the ACA at a very small parish and became a bishop when most of that denomination went to the Ordinariate (Vaughan, of course, would not be eligible for Catholic re-ordination). The APA, which is smaller still, broke from the ACA in the 1990s due to disputes with Louis Falk, but is now considering re-merger with the ACA, although Falk is still pulling the strings behind the scenes. It's worth noting that both the ACA and the APA have been electing more bishops (four between them in the past year), even though this will give them a very large number for the proposed merged denomination. The UEC and the ACC are smaller than the ACA-APA, and in fact their numbers, in parishes and members, are probably so small that any realistic estimate is impossible. The post-St Louis "Continuum" is notable for taking clergy who haven't worked out in TEC due to scandals and other personal issues, such as the late Anthony Morello, who had a scandal as an Episcopal priest in Modesto, CA, but became a vicar general in the ACA; Louis Falk, who became Presiding Bishop of the ACA despite the business in Rhinelander; and William Martin, now an APA priest who got himself, his Episcopal parish and his TEC diocese sued in Monterey, CA, for falsely claiming a parishioner was a transgendered male with fake breasts who was stalking him. TEC disciplined him and eased him out in 2008; the same year, the APA was apparently happy to have him, and he became a Rector of an APA parish in North Carolina. There's more almost every day at http://stmarycoldcase.blogspot...

The Reformed Episcopal Church is not the same thing, by the way, and I agree with those who urge them not to mess with the "Continuers". For that matter, the ACNA should be very careful of these people.

At $1.99, Ms Random's Book Was Worth The Gamble

from Sony's e-book store. I was mostly curious to see what happened to William Martin, though the rest of the book is highly instructive. Following the outcome of the slander trial in June 2007, in which Martin and his parish (though not the diocese) were found liable, Martin's case was referred back to the new Episcopal Bishop of El Camino Real, who in effect suspended Martin for two months in mid-2008 for Conduct Unbecoming a Clergy Person. (This may seem like a slap on the wrist, but I'm told that Episcopal penalties are typically mild, and the bottom line is that at the end of the day, TEC seems to have been able to ease Martin out.)

Although Martin returned to the parish in July 2008, by November of that year, he had accepted the position of Rector of the APA parish All Saints Mills River, NC. Ms Random indicates in her book that in Mills River, Martin had changed his name to make it harder to search on the web, and his official bio made no specific mention of St John's Chapel Monterey. In February 2012, Ms Random published her book; a year later, Martin had resigned from All Saints Mills River, although APA Presiding Bishop Grundorf indicates he is now starting an APA mission.

I think there are many threads in Ms Random's book that cast light on what happened at St Mary of the Angels. She asks in her conclusion why Martin would do what he did to her, and she says that she hasn't been able to figure it out. I think there are a couple of possible reasons in Ms Random's account.

One is something I've sometimes seen in work environments, which is one reason I'm delighted to be retired and have absolutely no intention of ever working again: bosses will sometimes make one subordinate a "problem" in order to distract attention from their own shortcomings. Ms Random says in her account that she feels Martin was able to gain sympathy and attention by claiming she, as a (falsely asserted) transgendered male with fake breasts, was stalking him. Not only would this get him sympathy and attention, but by presenting Ms Random as an ongoing issue at vestry meetings, it would focus the vestry's attention away from any performance shortcomings Martin himself may have had.

Although I feel fairly confident that there must have been performance issues that led Martin to create that distraction, and which would probably have led to his eventual ouster, I would guess that there were personal issues there as well. Ms Random, 71 years old when the story begins, says that a precipitating factor appears to have been that one day, she turned up for a work session with the altar guild dressed in jeans and a sweater. Now, I had a normal (i.e., basically out of control) adolescence, and probably as a result, for me as an adult to see a well-endowed lady dressed in jeans and a sweater does not cause me any great discomfiture.

It appears this was not the case with Martin, who was single and in his late 30s at the time. I can only assume that the experience provoked some sort of crisis over his own sexuality, and fantasies of being stalked by a transgendered male with fake breasts had a real attraction for him. It's worth pointing out that Ms Random made a preliminary effort to stop Martin's slander by forcing him to sign a settlement agreement, in which he promised to stop telling the stories he was telling.

This leads to a parallel instance at St Mary's, wherein several times, members of the dissident minority promised to stop their irrational resistance to the parish's direction and either tolerate it or leave. Instead, something in their resistance turned their cranks, and they simply couldn't stop. By the same token, something in the stories Martin was telling turned his crank -- it went beyond simple perception of self-interest, it was more basic than that.

Another parallel to the St Mary's situation is that the case took place with incompetent or nonexistent bishops in charge. Martin, claiming Ms Random was stalking him, denied her communion at St John's Chapel; she appealed to then-Bishop Richard Schimpfky, who accepted Martin's story and backed him up only days before he resigned under pressure. With no bishop and the diocesan standing committee in charge, the case then drifted without resolution. Only when Ms Random sued Martin, the parish, and the diocese and won the suit did she get the attention of the new bishop, who finally acted properly.

Yet another parallel to the St Mary's situation is simply the power of character assassination. "That lady may just look like a sweet old woman, but she's actually a man with fake breasts, she's come on to me, and she's stalking me" has a powerful and deep-seated appeal. Equivalent stories about Fr Christopher Kelley and his family have clearly had a similar effect.

The late Fr Carroll Barbour, former Rector of St Thomas Episcopal Church Hollywood, who converted to Catholicism after retiring, was fond of saying that the Devil sits in the front pew of every parish. My wife and I have recalled those remarks many times over the situation at St Mary's, and Ms Random's story is another reason to recall them. The parallel themes in both stories are worthy of serious reflection.

Curious About The William Martin Case,

I discovered that the jury found him liable for $148,000 damages for slandering Ms Random. This, it turns out, was the second instance of Martin's being sued for slander. That link also mentions that Ms Random hired a private investigator to track down controversies relating to Martin at a previous cure in the Bahamas, but I don't have anything else on this, and I don't know what The Episcopal Church did to Martin, except that he wound up in North Carolina in an APA parish, which of course is a denomination in communion with the ACA.

David Virtue is currently in a snit over the Bede Parry case, where Katharine Jefferts Schori is said to have ignored background reports on a former Catholic pedophile priest who became an Episcopal priest while she was Bishop of Nevada -- but these sorts of cases are all over the Continuum. At least The Episcopal Church weeds such people out.

UPDATE: It turns out that Rayn Random has written a book about her experience.

Vignettes Of The Continuum

A regular visitor sent me the following, with permission to print the text but not the visitor's name -- I'm very, very grateful for this kind of information, so people know exactly what they're dealing with:

I'd just like to add my own brief experience with the Continuum. I visited St. Marks in Portland [then an ACA parish] in the late 90s, and met Robin Connors while he was rector there. The guy positively reeked of alcohol, and this was right before a noon mass. Also, the current rector, Mark Lillegard, was training under him at the time (Lillegard doesn't have a seminary education, in the fine tradition of continuing Anglican priests who lack the basic credentials). I also remember Connors showing me around the church, and remember that the parish smelled strongly of cigarette smoke-a strange sensation for a church in the late 90s, in Oregon.

Also, William Martin, at one time a conservative priest in the Diocese of El Camino Real, was rector of a small 1928 BCP parish in Monterey. I briefly visited there a few times, and stopped going for other reasons. A few months later, I found out online he as involved in a bizarre scandal with a parishioner-look it up, its totally bizarre. Anyways, at about that time, he called me up late at night obviously drunk, wondering why I hadn't been going to church. I believe he turns up now in the Anglican Province of America, as a priest in North Carolina.

Yes, the Continuum attracts very sketchy individuals who should never be priests.

I've discussed Robin Connors's career with the AEC, ACC, ACA, and TAC here. The account my visitor gives is just a snapshot of what he must have been like in its noonday, a favorite and protégé of the deposed Episcopal priest "Archbishop" Louis Falk, on his orders voted in by the Diocese of the West as bishop, a few years later reeking of alcohol before noon mass. (St Mark's Portland has since left the ACA for the Anglican Province of Christ the King; Lillegard is still Rector.)

At my visitor's suggestion, I looked up William Martin. He turns out to be the subject of a post at Virtue Online, "Episcopal priest on trial for slander".

Attorneys will present opening statements in the trial of the Rev. William Martin, pastor of St. John's Chapel Episcopal Church in Monterey, who is accused of defaming former parishioner Rayn Random.

Random, 72, sued Martin in 2006 for allegedly telling other church members that she sexually pursued him, then began a campaign of harassment and stalking when he tried to distance himself from her.

According to her lawsuit, Martin told others that Random tried to lure him into a hot tub, that she was a man with fake breasts and that he had to obtain a restraining order to prevent her from approaching him.

Insofar as this is salacious material about an Episcopal priest, I can certainly see its appeal for David Virtue. I don't know how the court case came out, but I do know that my correspondent is correct, Martin next appears no longer as an Episcopal priest, but as Rector of All Saints APA parish in Mills River, NC, from which, however, according to the February newsletter of the APA Presiding Bishop, he recently resigned. From the sketchy information we have, it appears that Martin's story isn't new to students of the Continuum: a marginal Episcopal priest leaves that denomination after one or another scandal and resurfaces in the Continuum, where in this case it appears he didn't do much better.

This is the part of the story David Virtue will never tell: all denominations have problem priests -- priests are human. The worst cases are eased out. The Episcopal Church, in the examples we've seen, seems to have eased out (or treated more harshly) Martin, as well as Anthony Morello, John Vaughan, and Louis Falk. The record of the Continuum isn't as good. The APA, of course, is seeking to merge with the ACA, so perhaps there's still a chance for William Martin to make bishop there.

Just For Fun,

I posted the following comment at Virtue Online in response to an article entitled "The State of Anglicanism in North America".

The article here is unbelievably slipshod. "Continuing Anglicanism" in the US dates from the late 1950s, and it has embraced dozens of splinter denominations besides the ACNA. It is amateurishly careless, if not deliberately misleading, to represent the ACNA, founded in 2009, as "Anglicanism in North America" . It leaves out the denominations founded in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the segregationist James Dees, and furthered by the highly disreputable Anthony Clavier. It leaves out the denominations led or founded by the defrocked Episcopal priest Louis W Falk III, who was deposed by the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac for a scandal utterly unrelated to theology; the ACC, the ACA, and the TAC accepted his leadership apparently without question in spite of this sorry record. There are several qualities that "continuing Anglican" denominations share, and which a responsible article should be pointing out: first, a tendency toward extreme exaggeration of numbers. Commenters here rightly question the ACNA's assertion of a membership over 100,000 -- Virtue should, if he pretends to any journalistic integrity, be investigating these numbers more thoroughly. Second, a tendency toward further schism, which Virtue acknowledges only in passing. Third, a tendency, as we see with Louis Falk and many others in the "continuing" movement, to accept clergy and bishops who have been marginal within the TEC, or who are under discipline there. I don't know if there's a way to get David Virtue to wake up and hew to the straight and narrow in his coverage, but commenters should be more demanding than they are here.

This blog typically gets over 100 visitors a day, and every now and then someone e-mails me worried that I might be winding down or losing enthusiasm. My reply is uniformly that I can't do this by myself. If people don't hold leaders like Brian Marsh accountable, or hold "journalists" like David Virtue accountable for not holding leaders like Brian Marsh accountable, my own efforts will be of little avail.

I've Been Pondering A Little More

the question of why "continuing Anglicanism" seems to have made so little effort to attract the next generation of those disaffected with The Episcopal Church. If David Virtue were a real journalist, here's the sort of question that I think he should be posing to the likes of Brian Marsh or John Vaughan:

Bishop, as I'm sure you know, there's been a second wave of dissatisfaction with The Episcopal Church following the election of openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire Gene Robinson in 2003. In fact, judging by numbers, that wave has been considerably larger than the wave that left following the 1977 Affirmation of St Louis. Now, there seems to be yet another 2012-13 wave, with TEC purging Bishop of South Carolina Mark Lawrence for too-conservative views. Has the ACA seen any of these developments as opportunities to replenish its own ranks, and if it has, how do you think it's been doing? Shouldn't South Carolina in particular be attractive territory for the ACA Diocese of the Eastern US, which has lost many parishes in recent years?

I've cogitated e-mailing Marsh or Vaughan with these questions, but I don't think they'd answer me in particular, though I don't believe they see themselves as accountable to anyone (and certainly not the Almighty). However, if they were inclined to answer someone like David Virtue, here's what I think we'd see:

David, as a Continuing denomination, the Anglican Church in America relies on two basic principles, the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the refusal to ordain women. In fact, we Continuing denominations refuse to be in communion with any denomination that ordains women, and in fact we will not be in communion with any denomination that is in communion with any such denomination. As you know, the denominations and other groups, like the ACNA, that left The Episcopal Church after 2003 follow the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and they either tolerate the ordination of women, or they are in communion with denominations that do. As a result, we feel we have little in common with the ACNA or any other group that comes from The Episcopal Church after the 1970s, since of course they are perfectly happy with women's ordination and the 1979 BCP, and we don't feel we would get very far with them if we were to approach them. Instead, as I'm sure you know, we're pursuing merger with the Anglican Province in America, a group with which we feel we're much more compatible.

Maybe I should apply for the job of press rep for the ACA, huh? You can make up your own mind about what this likely means, though I'll probably have more to say as well. (But what is David Virtue good for, other than to breathe out CO-2 to keep the trees green?)

On Good Friday, I'm Told,

Allan Trimpi, the Senior Warden of the St Mary's elected vestry, stopped by the parish just before 7:00 PM to see what was going on. (Attendance there was about a third of the attendance with Fr Kelley at a private residence.) When he was seen at the stairs, two elderly members of the unelected vestry (i.e., those designated by the ACA) rushed out of the parish office. One of them, a septuagenarian, rushed at Allan, wagging his finger, saying, "One foot on the property and we can have you arrested! The papers are already drawn up!"

(What the septuagenarian apparently meant was that someone may have drafted a motion for a restraining order, but it had not yet been filed, and no notice had been served on Dr Trimpi. I assume the usual call to LAPD would have been the usual waste of the LAPD's time.) The septuagenarian continued pacing after Allan, who was backing up, in front of witnesses. Allan warned him that what he was doing fell under the definition of assault, though I wonder how the LAPD or the DA would actually handle an old guy making threats.

He then called after Allan, "Don't forget -- As you reap, you will sow!" [sic]

I'm not sure how much commentary is needed here. What is the reason for the out-of-control anger and bitterness among this tiny group, more than a year after they seized the parish? Where are the adults in the ACA, which seems to be tacitly allowing this sort of conduct, if it isn't encouraging it outright?

Here's Another Question

Since the more recent "last straw" episode in The Episcopal Church, the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire Eugene Robinson, which drove four dioceses and numerous other parishes out of TEC and into the arms of what eventually became the ACNA, how many Episcopal parishes have joined the Anglican Church in America? I think the number may be close to zero, and it certainly doesn't offset the number of parishes that have left.

Second, since Episcopal Bishop of South Carolina Mark Lawrence issued quitclaims for the property of all the parishes in his diocese, how many of those parishes have elected to take their property and join the ACA Diocese of the Eastern US? Has even one of those parishes even seen the ACA as an option? What does this say about the ACA, Presiding Bishop Marsh, and Bishop Vaughan?

Douglas Bess ends his history of "continuing Anglicanism" before l'affaire Robinson, but it would be a worthwhile commentary to add for any subsequent revision. On the other hand, has any "continuing" blogger, such as David Virtue or Stephen Smuts, remotely considered investigating this topic?

So What About The ACNA?

When I noted in passing the Anglican Church in North America, founded in 2009 due largely to objections to the 2003 election of openly gay Bishop of New Hampshire Eugene Robinson, it started a new train of thought. The ACNA, as I mentioned, has not completely decided on whether to ordain women, and my guess is that it will either never quite make the decision or defer it as long as possible, both traditional Anglican responses. (Since it already has women priests grandmothered in, as it were, a traditional Anglican response is all the more necessary!) In addition, it uses the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which of course is anathema to "continuing Anglicans".

However, the ACNA has clearly seized the market for the next generation of dissident Episcopalians. It's very difficult for me to imagine a parish (much less a diocese) newly dissatisfied with The Episcopal Church on whatever grounds deciding to go into the ACA or any of the dozen or so other "continuing" groups from 1977. Consider the options of the traditionalist former Episcopalians in the Diocese of South Carolina, with their bishop. On one hand, as I understand it, the obstacle to their entering the ACNA as a body is that the ACNA already has a Diocese of South Carolina. On the other hand, consider whether Bishop Lawrence would remotely contemplate joining the ACA, where wannabes like Brian Marsh and Stephen Strawn would treat him like a second-class citizen!

I think this actually says a great deal about the future of the ACA, which is bleak indeed. The issues over which the "continuers" left The Episcopal Church are 40 years old, and, except among those same "continuers", now of advancing years, no longer controversial. The 1928 Book of Common Prayer is a fossil, like it or not, and the ACNA does not seem to see it as a serious option for general use. My own view is that the election of Eugene Robinson is too vague an issue on which to build a denomination, but that's my view -- and Episcopal priests whom I respect have said that, just as the issues that led to the Affirmation of St Louis in 1977 are no longer controversial in The Episcopal Church, the Robinson problem, even more vague, will fade as well.

Sincere people in the ACA (that is to say, not the bishops) will reply that of course this stuff isn't controversial in TEC, all the people who didn't like TEC have already been forced out. The problem there is simply that the "continuum" has been a miscalculation from the start: as Douglas Bess put it, the people who left post 1977 were few enough that TEC didn't notice, and certainly didn't change its course. I just don't see a future in Episcopal schism, even if Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori seems to be little interested in avoiding it. It hasn't been a recipe for success among the "continuers". It speaks volumes that they seem to be in complete denial about this.

The Other Little Thing

about calling yourself Catholic is simply the authority of the Pope, and this is critical. I've been through two sit-downs with priests to determine if my catechism took before I could be received. One was in January 2012, after the ACA stirred up all the trouble with St Mary's entering the Ordinariate, and Msgr Stetson came to a meeting of the parish to assess how well we'd been catechized. I was wondering if it would be something like PhD orals, but no, there was just one question -- how did we feel about the authority of the Pope? Transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, mortal sin, all those things, it seems, were less important.

Same thing, the week before my wife and I were finally received at Easter, we met with Fr Mott at Our Mother of Good Counsel, and we chatted about various things, but the one issue he finally steered us to was the authority of the Pope. I don't know if priests do this with catechumens who haven't been baptized, but my guess is that it's a good thing to probe with "continuing Anglicans" -- look at the little dance all the TAC bishops did over signing the Catholic Catechism at the Portsmouth meeting. "Well, all we meant was that the Catechism is the most complete expression of Christianity. Didn't have anything to do with the authority of the Pope, after all. We're just gonna keep on keepin' on here, thanks very much!"

It seems pretty clear that in the view of actual Catholics, one of the key identifiers is to accept the authority of the Pope. This, again, is part of the general unreality among the "continuing Anglicans" who want to confuse small-c catholic with capital-C Catholic. You can say you believe all sorts of things: transubstantiation, the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, mortal sin, the importance of Confession, the need to attend mass, no ordination of women, but none of those makes you Catholic without accepting the authority of the Pope.

Or, for that matter, Fr Mott in a different context recounted the story of a professor he had in seminary, a Jew, who nevertheless taught New Testament and apparently understood St Paul as well as anyone Fr Mott had ever known. The problem was, Fr Mott said, that the guy didn't believe a word of it. This accounts for some part of the distaste I feel for "continuing Anglicans" and all their works. They'll sign the Catechism, but when push comes to shove, they don't believe a word of it.

The Chronology For Main Line Protestant Ordination of Women Priests

puts into perspective what Douglas Bess called the miscalculation by "continuing Anglicans" that great numbers of Episcopalians would defect and join their dissident denominations when The Episcopal Church began ordaining women in the 1970s. Other Protestant denominations had been ordaining women since the 1930s, and it's worth pointing out that these other Protestants were friends, neighbors, co-workers, schoolmates, clients, colleagues, and fellow alumni of Episcopalians.

On top of that, I lived through the national debate on whether women should be admitted to a wide range of jobs in the early 1970s; the subject of women police officers was particularly contentious in Los Angeles. The upshot, of course, was that women police officers worked out just fine. IBM, an archetype of the corporate mentality, sponsored a scientific study on whether women could program computers as effectively as men, and the conclusion was that they could.

So as a personal matter, I've got no problem with women in nearly any profession, and I had no problem with The Episcopal Church's decision to ordain women, which was still fresh when I returned to it in 1980. Beyond that, the country as a whole had no problem with it, and this was at the root of the "continuing Anglican" miscalculation. Pastor Susan showed up at St Edward's, everyone greeted her at coffee hour, and life went on.

"But Mr Bruce," people may say, "you're neglecting the question of sacramental validity," and insofar as I speak as a recovering Protestant, indeed I am. Protestants don't see the sacraments the same way Catholics do. I feel fairly confident that if we were to receive an audience with the recently installed Pontiff and posed the following questions to him, we would almost certainly have something like the following dialogue:

Your Holiness, are Episcopalians Catholic?

No.

So they're Protestant?

Yes.

But there are former Episcopalians who've left that denomination and have formed their own little denominations that don't ordain women, and they say that makes them Catholic. Are they actually Catholic?

No, although my predecessor set up an Apostolic Constitution whereby they could become Catholic. . .

But if they haven't availed themselves of the Apostolic Constitution you mentioned, are they somehow still Catholic?

No.

And there you have it, from the horse's mouth, as it were. Anglicans of the unreconstructed sort outside of the Ordinariates are not Catholics, whatever they may claim themselves to be. Small-c catholic is not capital-C Catholic, as Catholics and Protestants will both tell you. This is the snake oil that "continuing Anglicans" have been peddling with little success since 1977, and nobody's buying, not even, significantly, the ACNA.

A refusal to ordain women doesn't make you Catholic. Use of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which contains the specifically Protestant Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, makes you definitively not Catholic. Oddly, the 1979 BCP, which distances itself from the Articles by placing them in a "Historical Documents" category, is regarded as heretical, although in this matter it ought to make Anglo-Catholics more, rather than less, comfortable.

Protestants simply don't see the Sacraments the way Catholics do; that's reflected in the Articles. Consequently, Protestants have no problem, and basically ought to have no problem, ordaining women. If you want to question the validity of Sacraments conducted by women, you should probably find an option not involving being a Protestant.

The vast majority of main line Protestants seem to have recognized this at some level, including Episcopalians in the 1970s. This is at the root of the "continuing Anglican" miscalculation, which it seems to me derives from either sincere confusion, not so sincere self-deception, or outright mendacity. Of the "continuing Anglican" leadership, my personal assessment leans toward the latter.

I Did A Quick Search

to see what the overall status of women's ordination is in main line Protestant denominations, and whether there have been significant breakaway groups (e.g., "continuing Lutherans") as a result. I'm more convinced than ever that "continuing Anglicanism", defined as denominations formed as a result of the Congress of St Louis in 1977, denominations that are in communion with them, or denominations derived from them, is a unique phenomenon. "Continuing Anglicanism" sees itself as opposing the ordination of women and the 1976-79 revision of the Episcopal Church's Book of Common Prayer. (The ACNA is uncertain on the question of women's ordination, currently has women priests, and uses the 1979 BCP.)

The Wikipedia entry on Ordination_of_women_in_Protestant_churches contains repeated statements to the effect that "The ordination of women is now non-controversial within [insert name of denomination]", which includes Lutherans (ELCA) and the United Church of Christ. In addition, "The Presbyterian Church (USA) began ordaining women as elders in 1930, and as ministers of Word and sacrament in 1956. By 2001, the numbers of men and women holding office were almost equal." Also, "In 1956, the Methodist Church in America granted ordination and full clergy rights to women."

It is correct to say that most Protestant denominations have splinter groups that may or may not ordain women, although such splinter groups were often formed during the Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century, and their reasons for either leaving or not merging into main line denominations are diverse and not specifically related to the question of women's ordination. As far as I can determine, there is no movement corresponding to "continuing Anglicanism" in any other main line denomination. Wikipedia has an entry for the Continuing Anglican movement, but as far as I'm aware, no equivalent entry covering such a movement for any other main line denomination.

It is also true that dissident groups broke away from The Episcopal Church in the 1960s mainly due to the denomination's stance on Civil Rights, but elements of these groups later allied themselves with the more prominent post-St Louis factions.

I'm still pondering what this means. As I've said, I don't believe that more conservative strains of Protestantism dating from the Second Great Awakening are comparable to "continuing Anglicanism". However, I'd be interested to hear of any main line Protestant groups that are not ex-Episcopalian and broke away from their denominations since, say, the 1950s specifically over the following:

• Ordination of women as priests and bishops
• Modernization of liturgy, insisting on retaining some earlier version of a book of common worship.

A Noted Academic Observer Of The Continuum

sent me an e-mail in response to the question I posed on Monday. He didn't specifically request that it be kept confidential, though in other e-mails, he's expressed discomfort with the idea that people may think he visits this blog, so I'll leave his name out of it and paraphrase his e-mail.

He suggests that the other main line denominations differ from The Episcopal Church in that they have a more extensive history of breaking away and merging, and the idea that the Presbyterian Church USA (itself the result of merger by the Northern and Southern Presbyterians in 1983) is somehow a dog that didn't bark is misguided -- the Presbyterians, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, etc, are in constant flux. The Episcopal Church, on the other hand, except for the departure of the Reformed Episcopal Church in 1873, remained much more stable, and in fact as I've mentioned here, it managed not to split over slavery in the mid-19th century as many other Protestant denominations did.

Since I grew up in both the PCUSA (Northern) and PCUS (Southern) denominations, yes, I'm aware of that merger, though as the sources my correspondent cites indicate, the PCUS and PCUSA had been growing doctrinally closer for decades, and they both accepted the liberal National Council of Churches orientation of the main line denominations.

Still, the point I was making was that the "continuing Anglican" split is conventionally dated to the 1977 Affirmation of St Louis, which was specifically a result of TEC's ordination of women and the 1976 tentative revision of the Book of Common Prayer. There were earlier departures from TEC due primarily to its stand on Civil Rights, although my correspondent has been correct in emphasizing that those groups from the 1960s that later aligned themselves with the "continuum" were anxious to separate themselves from James Dees.

In fact, the earmarks of "continuum" doctrine from the Affirmation of St Louis to the founding of the ACNA in 2009 were specifically twofold: objections to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer and the ordination of women. My point about the Presbyterians -- and in fact, I think that can extend to all or most other main line denominations -- was that we had no equivalent movement there based on the ordination of women or liturgical modernization. There were certainly (and earlier) defections based on the general main line adoption of National Council of Churches liberalism, but that is not the same movement.

The breakaway Presbyterian groups my correspondent cites left that denomination either in the 19th century or earlier in the 20th century over different issues. (Princeton University, by the way, certainly up to its secularization the most prestigious Presbyterian school, did not admit African-Americans until the 1940s, an example of the social conservatism that motivated some Presbyterians earlier and not related to the issues that led to "continuing Anglicanism".)

It's also worth pointing out that among the dozen or more "continuing Anglican" groups that unanimously affirm the authority of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer and abjure the ordination of women, they seem remarkably fractious and disagreeable over many other, smaller issues of personality or liturgy. I would still say that the schism in The Episcopal Church is unique -- I'll certainly grant that TEC was in large measure cohesive until St Louis, although the actual relative numbers of "continuers" 1977-2009 also suggest that the movement has always been overrated (leaving the ACNA, which left over different, though perhaps even more vague reasons, aside).

The "continuers" are both a break from Episcopal and Anglican tradition, at least from the Restoration onward, and are also doctrinally unrepresentative of main line Protestantism from the 1950s onward.

Well, As I Thought,

Someone corroborated my suspicions about prayer book revisions:

Back when I was still a Deacon (c. 1996), I went to a birthday party for a very elderly lady who was a long-time Continuer who was a parishioner at All Saints (FV). . . I'll never forget these words of "wisdom" she shared with me. . .

We were talking about Episcopal Church history. . . and she said "You know, it all started going downhill when they revised the Prayer Book. . ."

I agreed: "I know what you mean. . . there are so many problems with the 1979 Book. Sacramental. Language. I don't know how anybody could use it!"

She looked puzzled and said: "No. I meant when they changed to the 1928 Book!!"

Here's A Question

My wife and I were chatting with our sponsors following our reception into the Catholic Church yesterday. I was reflecting on my upbringing as a Presbyterian and mentioned that in 2008, I returned to visit the Presbyterian parish I'd attended as a child. They'd since hired a lady associate, and during the communion service that Sunday, she brandished a baguette, although as usual, the actual bread consumed was little cubes of bakery slices.

Then it dawned on me that the Presbyterian Church USA, a denomination numbering over 2,000,000 as of last year and thus roughly twice the size of The Episcopal Church, not only began ordaining women in the late 20th century, but revised its book of common worship five times (!) in the 20th century, without provoking the schisms and general craziness that afflicted the Episcopalians. I note that a new Presbyterian breakaway body corresponding to the ACNA has recently emerged, but that's a response to the ordination of explicitly gay clergy, not the ordination of women or revisions of the prayer book, which was what is most commonly credited with causing the "continuum".

Now, that's peculiar. There's apparently something unique about Episcopalians here. But come to think of it, why wasn't there an Episcopalian revolt over the 1892 Book of Common Prayer, or indeed, why wasn't there a revolt when the 1928 BCP superseded the 1892 BCP?

Inquiring minds want to know!