One is that it appears to have been quite a do, with even the assistant principal from South Africa, the Rt Rev Michael Gill, on the scene. The other is that Bishop Hiles, seated at the center among the smarmy smiles around him, appears to be quite elderly. Checking, I found that he was ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1958. If we make the optimistic assumption that he was 25 at the time of his ordination, this would give a birth year of 1933, and that would make him 80 in 2013. If his ordination was later -- as it frequently is for Episcopal priests -- this would of course make him older.
The mandatory retirement age for an Episcopal bishop is 72. A Roman Catholic bishop must submit his resignation at age 75, although the Pope may delay mandatory retirement in individual cases. Hiles's age suggests several things. First, Presiding Bishop Marsh, a dilettante part-timer, does not want threats to his position, so he allows only bishops who can't credibly challenge him, something we'll eventually get to in the case of John Vaughan. An octogenarian can hardly aspire to higher office. Second, Hiles's rise to the episcopacy, especially in light of his age, is largely honorary, although I suspect it's also a quid pro quo.
There's the question of Hiles's sudden arrival in the Anglican Church in America at all. Yesterday I noted a Virtue Online story that had him and his breakaway parish in the Anglican Mission in America as of 2007. In the years after 2007, the AMIA grew steadily more erratic in its affiliations, essentially disintegrating by 2011. ACA Diocese of the Northeast newsletters place Hiles as a "special guest" at the 2011 diocesan synod; by March 2012, St Paul's Anglican Brockton was listed as an “associated Anglican parish”. In other words, Hiles had left a sinking ship and hopped jurisdictions -- no doubt, I would guess, shopping around among more than one; the ACA finally offered him the best deal. St Paul's Brockton sorta-kinda joins the ACA in 2012; a year later, Hiles, in an unrelated move, becomes a bishop.
But wait a moment. Isn't Hiles some kind of a hero to the "continuing Anglican" movement? Isn't it some kind of feather in the ACA's cap to have the guy at all? All those other smarmy bishops in the picture certainly suggest that's the case. I mean, Pope Emeritus Benedict might be an octogenarian as well, but wouldn't it be a feather in the ACA's cap to make him a suffragan, too?
Let's look at Hiles's case. As of 1995, Hiles, an Episcopal priest, had two posts: one was Rector of St Paul's Episcopal Church, a full-fledged parish in Brockton, MA, and one as Vicar of the Church of Our Saviour, a mission church in Milton, MA. A parish has a vestry that calls a rector with the assent of a bishop; a parish is financially self-supporting. A mission runs a deficit, receives financial support from the diocese, and has a vicar who is appointed directly by the bishop -- the bishop directly controls the mission's finances as well.
According to the court case I cited yesterday, Hiles's problem arose when, in 1990, a parishioner bequeathed approximately $2 million to the Church of Our Saviour. The Episcopal diocese and Hiles disagreed as to which entity was entitled to the bequest -- the church or the diocese. From the facts as outlined in the case, since the bequest was to the mission, the bishop had a definite case for a claim on that money, since he controlled the mission's finances. Hiles somehow thought the money should go to St Paul's Episcopal Brockton, a different entity.
One thing that strikes me is that this dispute had nothing to do with any developments in The Episcopal Church regarding prayer books or women priests. It was an argument over money, and it could as easily have happened over exactly the same issues in 1795 or 1895. The bishop had a strong argument, and beyond that, the bishop was the boss, especially over Hiles in his capacity as vicar. The record shows the bishop was angry indeed with Hiles (as quite possibly I would have been in the same circumstances), to the extent that he came as close as a bishop might to cussing Hiles out, and threw a pen at him in the bargain.
At no point in this dispute did Hiles ever say, "Well, Bishop, not only are you trying to steal our rightful bequest, but you're using the 1979 Book of Common Prayer! And not only that, but you are tolerating a suffragan of the female persuasion!!" Indeed, since this dispute took place in 1995, we may assume that Fr Hiles had been saying mass from the 1979 BCP without complaint for over 15 years. Hiles's dispute had nothing visibly connected with any liberal-conservative church divide -- unlike, for instance, the dispute between David Moyer and his bishop, Charles Bennison Jr. Moyer had a credible reason to join a "continuing Anglican" denomination; Hiles did not, except as a way to avoid disgrace and keep getting a paycheck.
Next, let's look at the charges on which Hiles was then inhibited and deposed, an alleged adulterous relationship with a parishioner. It's sad on one hand that The Episcopal Church does not appear to be consistent in how it enforces ethical standards in matters like these. On the other hand, the Massachusetts Supreme Court eventually ruled in 2002 that The Episcopal Church was entirely within its rights to enforce the standards it did enforce in Hiles's case -- Hiles was inhibited and deposed following an ecclesiastical trial, for an adulterous affair with a parishioner. In the court's view, that trial and any subsequent canonical appeals were all Hiles was entitled to. Hiles knew this when he became a priest.
Hiles's legal and public position at the time and since has been that the allegations of the affair, while untrue to start with, were the result of the dispute over money. At no point did the 1979 BCP or women priests and bishops enter into this dispute -- the whole discussion was over (a) money, and (b) sex -- and beyond that, one gets the sense that if The Episcopal Church had worked out a settlement that allowed Hiles to keep his well-paid, prestigious job as a rector in that denomination, he would have been perfectly happy.
How on earth does any of this make him some kind of hero to "continuing Anglicanism"? When you think about it, David Moyer had a dispute with Episcopal Bishop Bennison involving Bennison's broken promise to allow conservative parishes to be supervised by a sympathetic bishop. Bennison was much more clearly in the wrong. Moyer's dispute had no side issues involving money or sex. Yet Moyer is more or less in disgrace in the "continuing Anglican" movement, even though he actually did good work as a bishop once he went to the ACA, yet the ACA simply purged him as a bishop in 2012. In 2013, though, it made Hiles a bishop at age 80, with duties that strongly reek of sinecure.
Why are all those bishops smiling?
