In The Real World,

organizations control their message. On Saturday, I posted excerpts from an e-mail I received from a knowledgeable party. My policy over confidentiality is in my sidebar; if you send me an e-mail and don't tell me it's confidential, you're under notice that I may publish it here. My correspondent made no claim of confidentiality in that e-mail, and in fact he prefaced what he wrote by saying, "I made a mistake yesterday and sent you an earlier version of my reply. Let me clarify my position, lest I give anybody false impressions[.]" Now, I misspent some years of my youth studying English, and I take that preface to be a strong implication that, first, this is a redrafted position that's been carefully considered, and second, it's been redrafted so it won't give "anybody" any false impressions. Sorry, not only was this e-mail not made confidential, but it carried the clear implication that the writer understood it could become public.

Further information suggests that, although the e-mail made the clear implication that it was stating Ordinariate policy -- for instance,

A new Ordinariate group in Los Angeles will not be a continuation of St. Mary's any more than it will be a continuation of [redacted]. It will be a wholly new Catholic community that will, God willing, leave behind the conflicts and bitterness of our Anglican past. The symbols of that past would not be celebrated in a new fellowship/congregation.

-- nobody in authority at the Ordinariate (i.e., the Ordinary or the Vicar General) had reviewed it. I was puzzled about this when I made the post, since the statements in the e-mail, although they weren't even coming from a priest, appeared to be taking a pastoral-authoritative tone, and I thought it might well have been more appropriate for the statements to be made by the Ordinary himself (though if that were the case, they would have needed quite a bit of editing). I pointed this out in a subsequent post here.

In the real world, to be involved in something like this can be a terminable offense. Claiming to speak for a government agency, university, or corporation without authorization is, in the secular world, a mortal sin. If Msgr Steenson is aware of this -- and I suspect he is, due to the traffic this site has received in the past couple of days -- he ought to be on the phone to Fr Hurd, and Hurd should be having some folks on the hot seat. Organizations control their message, period. Those who don't play by those rules don't last in an organization.

My guess is that this won't happen. It's one more suggestion I've had that Msgr Steenson is disengaged to the point of being AWOL.