Huh?

I'd neglected to check the St Mary of the Angels site for the past couple of weeks -- I can often expect to catch a blooper when I do. I went there this afternoon, and sure enough, I found these feasts:

• December 17 Ember Wednesday
• December 28 Ember Friday

Wait a moment. In 2014, December 28 is a Sunday (today, actually). But also, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia,

Ember days (corruption from Lat. Quatuor Tempora, four times) are the days at the beginning of the seasons ordered by the Church as days of fast and abstinence. They were definitely arranged and prescribed for the entire Church by Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) for the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after 13 December (S. Lucia). . .

So you would never have ember days during Christmas. The Advent ember days for December 2014 would be December 17 (Wednesday), December 19 (Friday), and December 20 (Saturday). Who put December 28 on the St Mary's calendar as "Ember Friday", when it isn't even a Friday this year?

Either some ignorant yahoo is updating the parish calendar as a volunteer, or "Bishop" Williams is doing it himself. This is the third blooper in the months since his arrival: the "Exultation" of the Holy Cross, the "Conception of the Blessed", and now December 28, "Ember" Friday of some other year. If you were to ask me, Williams either updates the calendar when he may not be in a fit condition to do so, or he is not supervising its update because he's distracted.

This confirms my earlier hunch that he wouldn't be able (or in a condition) to name the seven sacraments without a crib sheet. But my prediction is he'll be out of there pretty soon no matter what.

Year End Reflections

This has been a longer journey than I would have expected -- and in fact, longer than most others connected with the case would have expected. I started this blog mainly to bear witness to an injustice. It's worth noting that another, completely independent blog, the Freedom for St Mary site, got started for the same reason. With the disappearance of nearly all other Anglo-Catholic current-events blogs, these two seem to be the only ones covering one of the most interesting developments remaining in that field.

This blog has been running since November 2012, a little over two years. As of today, it will probably pass 60,000 page views, somewhat less than 100 per day. This is significant, since I've sometimes gone weeks at a time without posting anything new, yet the number of visitors stays constant at between 50 and 100 per day. Over the past year, I've had indications that not only do supporters of Fr Kelley, the elected vestry, and the faithful parishioners read this blog, but the opponents do as well. In fact, my understanding is that a complaint about it was lodged through Roman Catholic channels in an apparent effort to get it stopped. (The Roman Catholic channels, reading some posts, reacted with "Gee, that's not so bad", as I understand it. Oh, well.)

One regular visitor here noted a while ago that if you google any major figure in the ACA -- Brian Marsh, Stephen Strawn, or John Vaughan, for instance -- posts here pop up among the top three or four links on the page. Same applies to "William H Lancaster attorney". The links here to the numerous news articles covering his departure from Seyfarth Shaw probably keep those articles among the top hits for his name on Google as well. This case has not been good for Mr Lancaster's career.

One reason I started this blog is that, in the summer of 2012, a good friend mentioned to me that if you did some digging, you could come up with surprising information on people like Strawn and Anthony Morello, which should be better known. Once I started looking, I agreed. I tried first to get David Virtue to publish a piece I wrote on Morello's scandal in Modesto, CA. When he ignored it, I decided to start this blog. (Virtue, of course, has no problem publishing scandal pieces on gay Episcopalians.)

The bottom line for me, after two years of this kind of research, is a more lasting lesson about schism. The "continuing Anglican" movement pretended to be somehow purer, less gay, less chickified, than the mainstream Anglican Communion. Minimal investigation of public records shows it is nothing of the sort: its leading figures, from the top down, conceal potentially explosive secrets. Most have been eased out of Roman Catholic or Episcopalian bodies, deposed outright, or deemed not to have basic qualifications for ordination. Not for nothing are the more conservative Roman Catholic elements, distressed to some degree over developments in the Vatican, refusing to consider anything like the "continuing Anglican" route.

Earlier this year I noted that the Standing Committee of the APA Diocese of Mid-America, one of the most significant bodies in that denomination, had refused to proceed with merger talks because of "grave concerns" about the present leadership of the ACA, "given past actions." I would assume that this blog played a part in making available the public record of past actions by the ACA's leadership.

If I were to venture any sort of prediction for 2015, I would guess that St Mary of the Angels's legal situation will be favorably resolved. In the wake of that, it's very hard for me to imagine that the ACA, up to now characterized as the largest and most respectable of the "continuing Anglican" denominations, will survive the year. Sincere clergy, vestry, and laity in the ACA need to take note and begin making serious contingency plans.

For 2015, Fr Kelley, his family, the elected vestry of St Mary's, and the other loyal parishioners continue in my prayers. I also pray that the dissident group will soften their hearts.

Motive

Still fleshing out a theory of the case, I'm thinking about the question of motive. Why would people want to seize the parish? This goes to another question someone posed a while ago -- assuming Fr Kelley is not guilty of financial or other personal misconduct (and so far, nothing like this has ever come to light), why were some people so unhappy with him?

This in turn goes to a question that comes up frequently in various forms when you watch as many true crime shows on TV as I do. A husband kills his wife. Why? He didn't want to divorce her. This may satisfy a homicide detective or a jury, but we're still left with the question of why he went to so much trouble to kill his wife, cover up the crime, and then risk detection, prison, or even the needle -- wouldn't it simply have been easier and less expensive just to divorce her? We'll probably never get a good answer to that kind of question. It probably goes to the nature, and indeed the mystery, of evil.

I've mentioned in passing the 2006 resignation of Fr Kelley's predecessor as rector, Fr Greg Wilcox, because this was a highly divisive issue for the parish before the current troubles. This was before my time, but several longer-term parishioners filled me in on the circumstances. Fr Wilcox had what one such informant characterized to me as a "meltdown", in which he bought into a cult-like get-rich-quick scheme, one of the tinhorn movements derived from est. This was a sad situation, although to then-bishop Stewart, it wasn't that difficult: est wasn't Christian, and he ordered Wilcox to drop it. The parish had a harder time working this out, and there were apparently several highly contentious meetings, even though it appeared that Wilcox had essentially abandoned his duties.

I think this was hard because. as I've seen mentioned now and then, St Mary of the Angels was less an Anglican parish than an exclusive social club. The weaker Fr Wilcox was, the better for the in-group in the parish. Exactly who was on which side of the Wilcox controversy I can't say, but I would simply think that those whose interest was less in religion than in social standing would prefer a rector who was distracted.

In 2007, the vestry hired Fr Kelley as Wilcox's successor. From the standpoint of a conscientious vestry in an Anglo-Catholic parish, this was an excellent choice. Fr Kelley had been to a real seminary, had been ordained an Episcopal priest and had had a career in that denomination, and at the time he was hired, was teaching Christian history at the distinguished Hillsdale College. He had good continuing relations with several conservative Episcopal bishops. He was not, in other words, a Stephen Strawn or a Brian Marsh.

He also had a strong character and a strong sense of integrity. In my own experience, I've found that some people simply have a great deal of difficulty even being around people with a strong sense of integrity. I think this is one explanation for why some people in the traditional parish in-group (and others who were new but wannabes) found Kelley so upsetting. He intended to focus the parish on real Anglo-Catholicism, rather than what the Episcopal priest who conducted my confirmation class in that denomination characterized as the motive to say you're somehow catholic without paying the dues you need to pay actually to be Catholic. He didn't come to St Mary's intending to take it into the Ordinariate, which was just a glimmer in Pope Benedict's eye at the time, but when the opportunity arose, he felt it was the parish's best option. A minority in the parish strongly disagreed and appear to have enlisted the support of other parties in the ACA to stop the process.

This is my best guess as to motive. We're left with the true-crime question: if you don't like the rector, why not do what almost everyone else does, go to the church down the street, on the other side of town, in the other denomination? Why burn yourself out fighting this petty little battle? I can only say it goes to the mystery of evil.

Conscience Issues

In light of the new information on the in-group behind the hidden agenda to seize the parish, I went back to the timeline at the Freedom for St Mary blog. By February of 2011, the bishops of the ACA, relying on the opinion of their chancellors, had already determined that the ACA and the Patrimony of the Primate were two separate jurisdictions.

In addition, according to the timeline, Louis Falk testified in a deposition

At a subsequent meeting in Tucson, Arizona, held on April 26, 2011 each and every ACA Bishop both agreed to, and signed, a Solemn Agreement which established the guarantee of the jurisdictional independence and integrity of the Patrimony in the United States. This established an “amicable agreement” for the coming separation, whereby the Bishops choosing to remain in the ACA, who did not intend to accept Pope Benedict’s gracious offer, pledged not to interfere with those Bishops, Clergy and Parishes choosing to proceed to join the Roman Catholic Church, and vice versa.

We know that by late 2011, Stephen Strawn had had informal contacts with Patrick Omeirs, by Omeirs's own statements to me. In itself, this is a violation of the April pledge. Omeirs strongly implied that others among the dissident group were involved in those contacts. We simply don't know how far back in 2011 (or even into 2010) those contacts extended. However, it's hard not to think that Brian Marsh was also aware of those contacts.

The timeline reflects that as of January 2011, the then-parish treasurer had stopped making tax withholding payments to the IRS, and the then-clerk of the vestry had failed to file the parish's revised bylaws reflecting the vote to enter the Patrimony with the California Corporation Commission. Both the then-clerk and the then-treasurer were on the fringes of the hidden agenda and were probably being manipulated by the in-group. It's hard to think that Strawn was not at least being kept abreast of these steps, if he was in contact with the dissident group later in the year.

What we have here morally is several major issues: it appears that Strawn, at the very least, swore falsely in the April 2011 Tucson meeting and had no intent of leaving St Mary of the Angels alone. The then-treasurer was basically stealing from the IRS -- the Catholic Catechism makes it clear that non-payment of taxes is a sin. She was also bearing false witness, in the sense that she was setting up an appearance of financial impropriety on Fr Kelley's part. The then-clerk was leaving something undone, a clear sin covered in both Anglican and Catholic general confessions. If Strawn was aware of, encouraging, or endorsing these actions, his sin was basically using his prestige as a bishop to encourage others to sin-- as would be Marsh's.

It appears that both the then-treasurer and the then-clerk eventually found themselves unable to continue with this agenda, which is understandable and reflects well on them. If struggles with their conscience were involved, that would only be natural. However, Marsh and Strawn appear to have had no such difficulty with conscience.

This is troubling to see.

Here's The Frammis -- II

I was watching one of my favorite true-crime TV genres last night, a show where a detective solves an old, tough cold murder case. He gave some insights into how to do it: you develop a theory of the case, and you let new facts take you where they lead you. The new information on the lawsuit against Church Mutual Insurance by the Bush vestry and the et als has given me some additional leads to consider.

I said yesterday that this case is full of hidden agendas. Chatting with my wife last night, I revised this interpretation: these agendas are what I might call "group hidden agendas", which for the time being do not rise to the level of criminal conspiracies, and may never do so, although on the other hand, they might. It's plain that there are still many facts we don't have, which we may never get, or may not get for years. But I'm still looking, and so, it would seem, is the Armchair Detective.

As a shorthand for "group hidden agenda so far falling short of criminal conspiracy", I'm going to bring back the term "frammis" that I used in an earlier post on my theory of the case. This term was used by the US noir crime novelist Jim Thompson to mean an elaborate scheme of deception, or con, perpetrated by two or more people. That's the sense in which I use it here.

The extra information I've gained from the Bush vestry v Church Mutual Insurance lawsuit is that the et als among the parishioner plaintiffs, Patrick Omeirs, Langley Brandt, and Marilyn Bush, are the in-group, simply because they appear to have pledged personal assets toward the legal expenses involved in the April-May 2012 seizure of the parish. This, however, leads to a puzzling question: why is Mrs Bush in this group? Omeirs and Brandt are long-term parishioners, among the angriest of the angry "continuers". But Mrs Bush joined the parish only in early 2011 after, by her account, 40 years of not going to church. In other words, she would be something of an Anglican Rip Van Winkle, waking up to find she'd missed the controversies over prayer books, women's ordination, lady bishops, John Spong, Gene Robinson, Anglicanorum coetibus, the whole history. What would bring her to St Mary of the Angels, and why would she care? And why would she suddenly care enough to pledge money to lawyers over this stuff? Interesting question.

The knowledge of who the in-group is, though, clarifies some of the political dynamics in the parish from 2011-2012. I think I can now say there were three broad factions in the parish during that period. The largest, a majority (though probably not enough to constitute the supermajorities that did variously vote to join the Ordinariate and leave the ACA) simply thought Anglicanorum coetibus was a good deal and sincerely wanted to become a Catholic parish. This group, on balance, admired Fr Kelley's strength of character and erudition and saw no reason to replace him. A second group was basically a clique of younger parishioners surrounding Andrew Bartus, who had only graduated from Nashotah House in 2010 and had back channel connections with the group of former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clergy that had the inside track in the US Ordinariate. That clique supported his ambitions. The third group was the long-term angries led by Brandt and Omeirs, which Bush joined, unknown to the parish at large.

The two smaller factions had in part competing agendas. The long-term angries did not want to go into the Ordinariate, for whatever reason. Only Omeirs among this group had a divorce and remarriage that might have been an obstacle to becoming Catholic; the others in this group may simply have been anti-Catholic but sorta-kinda Anglo-Catholic; it's still hard to fathom their full motivation. The clique around Bartus wanted to become Catholic, and some did separately become Catholic with Bartus after he left the parish. However, Bartus's agenda was to bypass Fr Kelley, using his Diocese of Fort Worth connections in the US Ordinariate, knock Fr Kelley out of the running for Rector, and place himself in that position once the parish went into the Ordinariate. The Bartus clique and the long-term angries, though together never a parish majority, shared one short-term goal: get rid of Fr Kelley.

What of the odd man out among the et al group, non-parishioner but diocesan official Anthony Morello? I think Morello was the link to Stephen Strawn and the other ACA bishops. This in turn brings us to the question of how the frammis got its start. We know that a major subtask of the frammis was to create the impression of financial misconduct on Fr Kelley's part, in the beginning by stopping quarterly payments to the IRS for salary withholding from parish employees beginning with the January 2011 payment, although the money was in the bank to do this (this could, of course, rise to the level of criminal conduct if all the facts led in this direction once they came to light). I think it's important that the IRS payments stopped beginning with the payment for the final quarter of 2010, soon after the parish entered the Patrimony of the Primate.

The parish treasurer who apparently facilitated this subtask by not writing checks to the IRS was a member of the Bartus clique, but she was clearly furthering the ends both of Bartus and the hard-core angries. (She left the parish in the summer of 2011, separately became Catholic herself, and has since become an active, sincere, and devout member of a local parish. We will never know what she may have said to her confessor.)

Fr Kelley and the vestry briefly made me interim treasurer of the parish following her departure. It was plain that, by early summer 2011, almost no bills had been paid, and the parish van was close to being repossessed. It's difficult to know if the previous treasurer was facilitating a plan to create an impression of financial misconduct, or if struggles with her conscience had left her unable to function in that position. All I can say is that by September 2011, many bills were long overdue, while ample funds were available to cover them.

How much did Anthony Morello know about any of this? But that's a different way of asking how much Stephen Strawn knew, and when he knew it. "Before you do anything like this, you have to plan it," says my wife. We know that the ACA bishops were deeply concerned about Hepworth's formation of the Patrimony of the Primate at the end of 2010. This led to the ACA Chancellors' letter of February 5, 2011. While we know for certain that Stephen Strawn attempted a formal meeting with the core group of angries in January 2012, a discussion I had with Patrick Omeirs in December 2011 indicates that there had been informal contacts between that group and Strawn prior to that date. A key question would be how far back those contacts extended, and whether Strawn was in any way aware of plans to create the impression of financial irregularity by ceasing payment of IRS and other obligations beginning in early 2011.

Train Wreck

An online dictionary defines "train wreck" as

train wreck n. a disaster or failure, especially one that is unstoppable or unavoidable. . .

to which a commenter adds,

To “a disaster or failure” I would add, “especially one that, though foreseen, is difficult or impossible to avert.”

I believe this stems from the image of two trains on one track that are coming toward each other and inevitably will collide, and they can neither get out of each other's way nor stop in time to avoid a collision. I think that those observing the St Mary of the Angels legal developments are beginning to conclude that this is developing into a slow-motion catastrophe for the ACA and some individuals, and at this point, there's no way for the ACA to avoid it. Take a seat, we're about to see a train wreck.

In my chat with informed parties Sunday afternoon, I posed the inevitable question: is there any chance of raising with the ACA and the Bush group the possibility, even now, of coming to some sort of Christian reconciliation -- say, the ACA and the dissidents turn the property over to the elected vestry, and the elected vestry forgives some part of monetary damages in return? My interlocutors nodded sympathetically, appreciating my good feelings -- but they patiently explained that things have gone way past that, proposals to that effect had been made long ago, but had been angrily dismissed by Bush and the ACA.

My retired-attorney wife says that, in a traditional big law firm, things are at the point where a partner goes to a newly hired associate, straight out of Harvard Law, and says, "OK, Schmidlap, here's the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry case file. Give me a memo on what the damages are and how you think we should pursue them." The result is a 20-page report. (This would, of course, apply to deep-pocket plaintiffs and respondents and might not be done in this specific case by the elected vestry's attorneys.)

However, it appears from my chat Sunday that some thought is being given to this stage of the proceedings. While no specifics were mentioned, I am going to speculate on the direction that I think the question of damages might take. Again, I'm not an attorney, and beyond that, there is a great deal that we don't know, including the state of the parish building and what financial transactions have taken place. This case has been full of back channel dealing, hidden agendas, secrets, and prevarications, and a knowledgeable attorney with a more complete understanding of the circumstances might pursue a different strategy. That said, damages might result because

• Every action taken by Anthony Morello and the Bush vestry, as well as inhibition and deposition of Fr Kelley, was ordered, supervised, or endorsed by bishops of the ACA, often in the written record by unanimous votes of the ACA House of Bishops.
• By closing the parish, excommunicating numerous members, and threatening to call police if numerous parishioners even entered the property, the ACA essentially stopped the functioning of the parish, causing it to forego pledge, gift, and bequest income, as well as income from hall rental.
• The ACA and the Bush faction maliciously interfered with numerous employment contracts, as well as contracts for hall rental.
• The ACA and the Bush faction will be responsible for damage or missing property from the parish building.
• The elected vestry might also pursue the Bush vestry and the ACA for its own attorneys' fees, if these aren't awarded to it by the judge in the case.
• In addition to damage to the parish's property, finances, and ability to conduct business, the ACA also defamed Fr Kelley by deposing him when, by its own admission, it did not have jurisdiction to do so. Information has now also emerged that Anthony Morello, who conducted Fr Kelley's trial, appears to have had a financial interest in its outcome, since he had pledged personal assets to pay the attorneys advising the ACA in seizing the parish.

Without a full knowledge of all actions and consequent damages, it's not possible to come up with any sort of final measurement. I do know that the elected vestry will have a fiduciary duty to pursue all appropriate damages. A preliminary quantified estimate might be along these lines:

• Annual pledge and offering income for two years: $156,000
• Employee salary and expense payments under contract for two years: $250,000
• Hall rental income under contract for two years: $10,000
• Unspecified damages to building and missing assets.
• Unknown financial issues.
• Costs of evicting ACA and Bush occupants, possible forensic audit, and engaging private security subsequent to eviction.

Because the ACA and the Bush vestry interfered with contracts and the written record gives clear suggestion of malice, punitive damages would apply. The estimate above leaves aside any action Fr Kelley might take for defamation, although quantifiable damages to him might include the amount of income he will have foregone between 2012 and a reasonable retirement date, since he is probably no longer employable as a priest due to the ACA's action -- plus the cost of medical care and counseling for him and his family as a result of the ACA's campaign of character assassination and harassment.

This is a complex case, and the strategies for collecting damages would be extensive and diverse. Some pockets would be deeper than others, but it would probably be necessary to pursue all the individuals and entities here:

• The estate of Anthony Morello
• The ACA Diocese of the West as a corporation
• Other officers of the ACA Diocese of the West as individuals
• Brian Marsh, Stephen Strawn and Owen Williams individually as episcopal visitors to the ACA-DOW
• Owen Williams individually as "pastor" of the parish while under ACA control
• Frederick Rivers individually as "Rector" of the parish while under ACA control, as well as in his role as Vicar General DOW
• The Anglican Church in America as a corporation
• Each member of the ACA House of Bishops as individuals
• The members of the Bush vestry as individuals

Some people and entities might be covered by insurance, although others probably would not be, the specific coverages will vary with each policy, and the amounts might well be subject to caps. The ACA's insurers might fight any claim by the ACA bishops on the basis that they were acting outside the scope of their authority -- all of this will depend on the individual policies. There are probably few individuals outside the insurers who could come anywhere close to paying the damages in question. Nevertheless, all would need to defend themselves and hire attorneys, and they would be subject to the anxieties and emotional effects resulting from long-term litigation. The consequences for most of the people involved here are potentially catastrophic.

A no-brainer consequence for the ACA and the Diocese of the West would be the seizure of pretty much every tangible asset, minimal as these might be -- but they would include all bank accounts and income streams. The ACA and several of its dioceses would probably just cease operation. If I were the APA, I would figure this into any consideration of merger.

And it's probably too late to avert these consequences. That's why it's called a train wreck. This will be disturbing to watch.

The Standing Issue

Based on what I've been told by informed individuals, the elected vestry's attorneys appear to have filed a motion for summary judgment in the retrial of the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry case on December 5. The motion is based on the question of the ACA's standing (as well as, possibly, the question of the Bush vestry's standing). In effect, the claim is that the ACA has no interest in the case, since St Mary of the Angels was not a part of the ACA in April 2012. The evidence for this would probably be along these lines:

• St Mary of the Angels parish voted, in a valid election, to enter the Patrimony of the Primate in January 2011. This election has never been challenged by any party.
• On February 5, 2011 the ACA Chancellors (that is, the lawyers for each ACA diocese) issued a letter stating

  According to our canons, those Bishops, clergy and parishes who leave for another jurisdiction, such as a Roman Catholic Ordinariate or the so-called Patrimony of the Primate, have, at this time abandoned the communion of this church and the ACA.

  With deep regret, the ACA declares that they are no longer a part of the ACA, nor do they have authority of jurisdiction in any ACA diocese or parish, and ordinations and other ecclesiastical actions performed by them are null and void effective as of January 1, 2011.

  It should be stated clearly that there is no provision in the Constitution and Canons of the Anglican Church in America for an entity such as the Patrimony of the Primate. The Patrimony of the Primate is not part of the ACA.

• The ACA canons allow parishes to leave the ACA with their property. "Abandoning communion" in the chancellors' letter is s fancy way of saying they've left the ACA.
• On January 10, 2012, the ACA House of Bishops issued a letter reiterating that parishes that had joined the Patrimony of the Primate had left the ACA, and required any parish not wishing to enter the US Ordinariate and wishing to rejoin the ACA to reapply.
• St Mary of the Angels, however, did not apply to rejoin the ACA, and subsequent to the January letter, voted an additional time to join the US Ordinariate by a required supermajority. This election was never challenged by any party.
• The ACA never acted to seize any other former parish that had joined the Patrimony, whether it had elected to join the Ordinariate or not.
• Nevertheless the ACA acted uniquely to seize St Mary of the Angels in April 2012, notwithstanding it had repeatedly claimed the parish was outside its jurisdiction.
• The ACA designated a new vestry in April 2012, removing members in violation of California corporation law and designating new members who were not eligible to serve on the vestry according to the parish bylaws. This ACA-designated vestry has no standing in the case.
• Once again, the parish voted by required supermajority in August 2012 to leave the ACA.

I've been told that the judge in the new trial has asked for written arguments on this motion by January 9, 2015 and will hear oral arguments on January 16. It seems to me that these facts are extremely persuasive, and in fact both Judge Jones in May-June 2012 and the California appeals court recognized that they were extremely persuasive as well. The ACA's position has consistently been only that a court can't consider them, a view that has been rejected at the appeals level twice. It appears that separately, the Church Mutual Insurance Company has also determined that the Bush vestry has no standing in its case.

It may be that this matter will be resolved more quickly than might be expected.

The Other Lawsuit Again

Last September, I discovered another lawsuit relating to St Mary's: the alternate-universe vestry of Mrs Bush and the squatters, with some significant et als, are suing the Church Mutual Insurance Company. At the time, I could only conclude that they want money. It turns out that yes, they do. Yesterday afternoon I had a very productive chat with individuals knowledgeable about the legal issues surrounding the parish.

I was especially puzzled that Carolyn Morello, Anthony Morello's widow, was among the et als suing Church Mutual. I wondered if there might be some death benefit they felt she was entitled to following Morello's sudden demise early in 2013, but that wouldn't explain the presence of Langley Brandt among the et als, since Mrs Brandt, while a prominent member of the dissident faction, is not on the squatter vestry.

My informants made things plain: the et als have pledged personal assets to pay their legal bills. However, they believe Church Mutual should pay those bills instead. It's that simple. Thus the lawsuit. The et als, Langley Brandt, Marilyn Bush, Patrick Omeirs, and Carolyn Morello, are an odd lot: Mmes Bush and Brandt are in fact well off (although their pledges to the parish did not reflect that when I was briefly treasurer), so the legal bills would probably not affect their lifeatyles directly, although they would certainly deplete their estates.

Patrick Omeirs, on the other hand, is a sometime actor who once appeared in an episode of Dynasty, and he is not in that league. Anthony Morello lived in a mobile home. That either would pledge personal assets to pay substantial legal bills is much more puzzling. My informants, however, say that Carolyn Morello appears among the plaintiffs because Morello's estate (consisting mainly of a mobile home), which passed to her, is encumbered by legal bills.

Church Mutual has presumably refused to pay these bills, thus the lawsuit. My informants, who are familiar with the insurance policy, say that in any case, the policy covers only legal expenses, such as filing fees or court reporters, and not lawyers' fees. In addition, there is a fairly low cap on this amount. (My wife, a retired attorney, has estimated that the squatters could have been responsible for half a million dollars or more in their own attorneys' fees, but this would not be covered under the Church Mutual policy.) My informants, shaking their heads, say that the cost of filing the suit against Church Mutual would exceed the amount the squatters could expect to gain if they won.

Church Mutual presumably refused to pay any amount in the first place based on a position that the Bush-ACA appointed vestry is neither the policyholder nor the insured, which is the elected vestry. They are now fighting the lawsuit on the basis that the Bush-ACA group does not have standing to sue. We will hear more about the standing issue in tomorrow's post. However, the fact that the Bush group filed suit at all suggests they are expecting to have their attorneys' bills reimbursed as well, however unrealistic this may be.

This information confirms my current theory of the case: Morello, Bush, Brandt, Omeirs, and the ACA expected a quick, trouble-free resolution and seizure of the parish beginning with the temporary restraining order in May 2012. My wife is of the opinion that Morello, Bush, Brandt, and Omeirs pledged personal assets to pay Lancaster and Anastasia because if they encumbered parish property, this would complicate a sale, which they expected to take place quickly following an easy seizure. Morello and Bush, however, later found that the elected vestry had itself pledged parish assets to pay their own attorneys (which they were entitled, and indeed obligated, to do) and went ballistic once they heard about it -- this was one more unexpected complication in their scheme.

Plainly by the summer of 2013, the ACA and the alternate-universe vestry had recognized that things weren't going as they'd expected and fell back on a clear Plan B, which was to try to get Church Mutual to clean up their mess. But even by late 2012, Strawn and Marsh were trying to distance themselves from the plan, putting Morello in full charge -- he had skin in the game, after all. Given his state of health, this probably killed him.

Further Paper Trail

Someone connected with the upcoming retrial of the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry case tells me

on Saturday, February 5, 2011, the ACA officially pronounced that the Patrimony of the Primate was OUTSIDE the ACA's Constitution. It is an Australian entity, not an American one.

As a result, the announcement from the ACA House of Bishops dated January 10, 2012 that the Patrimony of the Primate has "ceased its operations" is meaningless, since the ACA had already declared that it had nothing to do with the Patrimony. As an Australian entity, it was under either the TAC or the ACCA, not the ACA in any case. This is further support for the elected vestry's contention that, once the parish had voted to join the Patrimony in early 2011 and placed itself under the direct authority of John Hepworth, and later David Moyer, it had left the ACA, and that by its own repeated statements, the ACA recognized this.

The parish, in short, was not part of the ACA when the ACA tried to seize it in April and May 2012. In addition, the ACA had no jurisdiction to inhibit or depose Fr Kelley, and Marsh and Strawn knew this. This could have interesting implications should Fr Kelley pursue any question of defamation against them, although I simply don't know his intentions in this matter.

Lancaster and Anastasia were able to get around this and other problems in the first trial by arguing that these were ecclesiastical matters in which the court couldn't involve itself. (I don't believe the elected vestry's attorneys were aware of the February 5, 2011 action at that time, although they were aware of the January 10, 2012 announcement, as well as Strawn's e-mail to Morello acknowledging that the ACA did not have authority to remove or appoint vestry members. Judge Linfield felt he could not consider these items at the time.)

The appeals court's decision sending the matter back to trial based on neutral principles of law means that both the February 5, 2011 and January 10, 2012 declarations will become part of the evidence before the court.

Remittitur

On December 3, the California Court of Appeal issued a remittitur in the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry case, sending it back to the trial court for determination on neutral principles of law. (My creaky Latin says remittitur means "it is sent back". In California, this is the equivalent of a mandate in federal court.)

This is yet another piece of bad news for the dissidents and the ACA. It's fairly plain that Lancaster and Anastasia were never prepared to argue the case based on neutral principles of law, since the facts are all on the elected vestry's side. After January 2012, the ACA never had jurisdiction to inhibit or depose Fr Kelley, remove or appoint vestry members, or seize the parish building, since it had dissolved the Patrimony of the Primate, and the parish membership voted several times by required supermajorities to leave the ACA. (It never had legal or canonical authority to remove or appoint vestry at all.)

The problem for the ACA and the Bush "vestry" is that they have a tiger by the tail. I think it's a safe bet that whenever the elected vestry gains physical access to the building, it will immediately be plain that assets have been removed, and it will be a problematic issue ever to locate or recover them. Access to financial records will pose similar problems. The informed speculation by the Armchair Detective on the Freedom for St Mary site suggests a criminal conspiracy is not out of the question.

While it would normally be a prudent move for the dissidents and the ACA to begin looking toward a settlement, I don't think this can happen, because it's simply too late for them to put things back before anyone can ask the wrong sorts of questions. A settlement would be negotiated on the assumption that parish resources, less legal fees and ordinary expenses, have been conserved. I frankly don't think that's what's been done.

If I were Bishop Grundorf of the APA, I'd be slow-walking negotiations with the ACA over merger. Give it another year and Marsh and Strawn will be out of the picture, and a good many ACA parishes will simply go over to the APA of their own accord.

Here's How I Think The Calendar Got Updated

I can imagine a series of events roughly like the following;

• Someone notices that John Bruce mentions that the calendar hasn't been updated
• Either that person is Mrs Bush herself, or that person tells Mrs Bush about it
• The issue seems to be that there's some feast that's important to Catholics, but should also be important to Anglo-Catholics (whatever it is), and if John Bruce mentioned it, maybe they should look into it
• Mrs Bush gets on the horn to whomever updates the parish calendar, something about a conception or something needs to be on the calendar for December 8 because it's supposed to be important, and we don't have it
• Person Who Updates The Calendar (PWUTC) listens, decides Mrs Bush is ticked again, figures something needs to be done about December 8
• PWUTC's performance has been a disappointment up to now, job or volunteer position might be on the line, but PWUTC makes best effort, googles something like "Catholic December 8"
• Discovers something like "Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary" -- probably never heard of it
• Decides a good short version would be Conception of the Blessed, enters it into calendar app
• Mrs Bush happy
• PWUTC heaves sigh of relief.

I don't know if this is simple ignorance, or if it's possibly liquid-fueled. I would hate to think that PWUTC was an ordained priest in the Anglican Church in America.

John Bruce Gets Results!

Following my observation Monday that the St Mary's calendar hadn't been updated, someone has in fact updated it: December 8 is now The Conception of the Blessed [sic]! It must have been updated by the same guy who put in the Exultation of the Holy Cross a couple months ago. (Hint: if the app won't let you add all the words, why not just call it "Immaculate Conception"?)

Either this is Williams, who, if this is he, appears to be an ignorant yahoo, or a new volunteer yahoo -- the former ignorant yahoo who couldn't spell, as far as I know, left the parish in a huff last year. Someone should maybe clue in Mrs Bush, or Williams (if he's not the yahoo here), that some yahoo is updating the parish calendar.

John Bruce gets results!

Would A Merged ACA and APA Stay In The TAC?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood? This is a purely theoretical question, because I'm not sure how long any of those entities will last -- the TAC is probably now circling the drain, and my impression is that Brian Marsh has always operated independently of Prakash. Gill periodically comes to the US on junkets (so would I if I lived in a backwater), but I doubt if his counsel has much weight here. Without the ACA, the TAC is a dead letter.

Nevertheless, we get vague reports that some unspecified sort of progress is being made toward merging the ACA and the APA. Recall that the ACA and the APA originated as two sides of a schism within the Anglican Catholic Church, the principal "Continuing Anglican" entity that emerged from the 1977 Congress of St Louis. As I discussed in the posts linked yesterday, some members of the ACC became distressed at Louis Falk's willingness to work through bishops of questionable reputation. The proximate cause of the split was an attempt in 1991 to put Falk on trial and depose him. The trial didn't quite come off, and Falk with his faction withdrew from the ACC to form the ACA. The anti-Falk group in the ACC became the APA, although this group subsequently splintered as well.

I've already speculated that, since the cause of the ACA-APA split was basically Louis Falk, a merger won't take place until Falk is permanently out of the picture -- although "retired", he clearly has worked behind the scenes, and I suspect there's a story waiting to be told of what his role was in the reversal of the TAC over the Portsmouth Petition and Anglicanorum coetibus. (This is why they used to cut the heads off deposed monarchs, after all.)

So would the APA faction in a merged denomination countenance any participation in the TAC, also a creature of Falk? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

St Mary's Parish Calendar

I've already noted that the St Mary's web site had a brief flurry of activity around the time of Owen Williams's arrival as its pastor-bishop (but not rector). But the most recent calendar update continues to be the October 8 feast of St Bridget of Sweden. Hmm -- just yesterday, we had the first Sunday in Advent; a week from today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, to Catholics a holy day of obligation and the sort of thing a putatively Anglo-Catholic parish might wish to celebrate. But the parish calendar is silent.

What's with Williams? Is he turning out to be a disappointment?

Is Anything At All Happening In The "Worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion"?

The most recent event of any sort in the TAC was the purge of John Hepworth as its Primate in 2012. Since this took place in South Africa (without Hepworth's presence), we may assume that Bishop of Pretoria and Southern Africa Michael Gill was a major figure behind the move. That year, the College of Bishops designated Samuel Prakash, Metropolitan of the basically nonexistent Anglican Church of India, as the TAC's "Acting Primate". Michael Gill continues as Secretary of the College of Bishops. There appear to have been no changes in the TAC since 2012, and it's hard not to conclude that Gill is the actual man behind the curtain, at least as far as the TAC outside the US is concerned.

Not that there's a great deal to that. My estimate of the TAC's size outside the US, based on published sources, web research into parish and diocesan web sites, and firsthand reportage from occasional correspondents, is that total membership worldwide, in tiny franchises in Canada, South Africa, Australia, and the UK, decimated by departures to Roman Catholic Ordinariates, can't be much more than 1000. (I will welcome credible information to the contrary from Bishop Gill.)

In a series of posts beginning here, I reviewed the origin of the TAC in 1990-91, as basically a maneuver by Louis Falk to withdraw a faction favorable to him from the Anglican Catholic Church and form the Anglican Church in America under the "worldwide" TAC. As far as I can tell, the TAC has never been anything but an illusion of smoke and mirrors. Its Wikipedia entry still gives an estimate, "from the TAC itself", of 400,000, which in my view is beyond wild exaggeration.

I've heard from potentially biased sources on the APA side of Falk-related controversies that Falk was eventually eased out as Primate of the TAC for reasons that may have been connected with the circumstances surrounding his deposition as an Episcopal priest. Although Falk continued to meddle behind the scenes well after his "retirement", the public relations coup that brought the TAC its 15 minutes of fame came from Falk's successor, John Hepworth.

The 2007 Portsmouth Petition to the Vatican for incorporation of the ACA into the Catholic Church created a stir in the Anglo-Catholic community, and it was widely believed that this was the impetus for Anglicanorum coetibus in 2009. However, information that's gradually come to light makes it plain that the apostolic constitution was the result of an initiative from US Episcopalians, including Jeffrey Steenson, to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1993. The document that became Anglicanorum coetibus appears to have been drafted by Steenson during this period and essentially sat in Ratzinger's desk until he could issue it as pontiff -- the timing couldn't have been better for Hepworth and the TAC, but it was utterly misleading.

And in any case, Anglicanorum coetibus wasn't what the TAC bishops had in mind. As soon as they could, they purged the few who sincerely supported it, and then they purged Hepworth, whose own expectations of being re-ordained as a Catholic appear to have been utterly unrealistic.

The other thing that's notable, though, is the non-reaction of Anglo-Catholic bloggers to this story overall. The whole institution of the Anglo-Catholic blog appears to have receded into silence with the apparent decline of the TAC -- which was never anything but a PR ploy in any case.

Here's The Frammis -- I

This is what I think the dissidents and the ACA had in mind, pretty much from the start. My surmise is based on the numerous published and web-based sources I've used here, as well as the legal documents in the post-2012 cases, supplemented by what appears to be informed speculation from law enforcement sources on the Freedom for St Mary site. (My understanding is that site is run by an individual with no religious affiliation and no direct connection with the St Mary's elected vestry; I don't know who he is, although he appears to work in law enforcement himself.)

St Mary of the Angels has had a history of dissent, most recently before this crisis with the resignation of the previous rector, Fr Wilcox, whose involvement in a cult-like get-rich-quick scheme divided the parish in 2006. Some bad feeling over this episode probably remained and fueled disagreements over the parish's direction as it went through discernment over the Patrimony of the Primate and applying to join the US Ordinariate in 2010 and 2011. A number of long-term members had divorces and remarriages, which would have complicated their efforts to become Catholic; some had also been raised Catholic and did not wish to return. While these issues probably underlay their objections to the Ordinariate, they focused in public on presumptive irregularities by the new rector, Fr Kelley, in order to widen the base of dissent. (No court has subsequently found any financial irregularity on Fr Kelley's part.)

Bishop Stephen Strawn of the ACA Diocese of the Missouri Valley had a history of identifying potential parish disputes, intervening with dissident parties to stir them up further (the opposite of a bishop's actual responsibility), and then using such a dispute as an excuse to try to seize at least one parish in Texas. In this, he was unsuccessful, but the pattern he followed in Texas would be repeated at St Mary of the Angels. Although the bishop ordinary for St Mary's during 2011 was David Moyer, Strawn communicated with parish dissidents during this time and, based on a discussion I had with Patrick Omeirs in December 2011, developed a plan with them to seize the parish before it could be received into the Ordinariate. It appears, based on remarks from Omeirs and Msgr William Stetson, that Louis Falk was also aware of this plan, tacitly supported it, and passed a letter with 40 pages of ungrammatical and wild allegations about Fr Kelley to Cardinal Donald Wuerl on behalf of the dissidents. (Falk himself appears to have secretly reversed his own public stance in favor of joining the Ordinariate and would have had motive to try to derail it -- his role here has never been fully established.)

In January of 2012, the ACA House of Bishops dissolved the Patrimony of the Primate and, via a letter on its website, effectively told the former Patrimony parishes and clergy that they were no longer part of the ACA. Parishes and clergy who had changed their minds about the Ordinariate would need to reapply to rejoin the ACA. A number did apply to rejoin, such as St Columba Lanaster, CA; several others did not apply and did not rejoin, including Holy Cross Honolulu and Holy Nativity Payson, AZ. The ACA never made any attempt to assert any further authority over these or other former Patrimony parishes, some of which went to the Ordinariate, while others did not. St Mary of the Angels did not reapply at the time the Patrimony was dissolved, and did not reapply until the parish was seized in April and May of 2012.

Although Strawn now no longer had any remote authority over the parish -- he had never been its bishop ordinary, and as of January 2012, it wasn't even in his denomination -- he continued to meet with dissidents and appears to have been aware of a plan with a former parish treasurer connected with the dissidents to leave IRS withholding amounts unpaid, something the vestry and rector were completely unaware of. The notice of unpaid withholding from the IRS in April 2012 then became the proximate cause of the ACA seizing the parish, although the plan not to pay taxes owed had been in the works for some months previously. (The parish's accountant immediately contacted the IRS, and that matter was quickly resolved, but the ACA had already moved in.)

In May 2012, the ACA and the dissidents represented themselves as the true ecclesiastical authority over the parish to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge and received a temporary restraining order giving them control over the building. The judge, however, reversed herself almost immediately, deciding the First Amendment required that she not involve herself in ecclesiastical matters, and ordered the dissidents and the ACA to return control over the building to the elected vestry and rector. This they refused to do, but the judge apparently felt that, having created the problem with her self-described error, she couldn't do anything to fix it. The result was the current set of lawsuits and countersuits between the elected vestry and the ACA, which it appears are slowly being resolved in the elected vestry's favor.

I think the judge's reversal of the temporary restraining order is the key event in this whole story. I think Stephen Strawn felt he already had a foolproof plan for seizing any parish he wanted to seize -- he'd already tried the same thing in Texas. Never mind the result there was to drive that parish from the ACA; this time, it was going to work! I can only assume that both retired Presiding Bishop Louis Falk and current Presiding Bishop Brian Marsh were aware of this plan and gave it at least their tacit support. David Moyer was also aware that Strawn was meeting with dissidents under Moyer's nose and objected insofar as he could, but once the ACA dissolved the Patrimony, it purged Moyer, leaving Strawn an avenue to keep interfering.

But as I noted above, other parishes in the Patrimony left the ACA, some joined the Ordinariate while others didn't, and the ACA never made a move to assert its authority over any of these others. Why did the ACA seize St Mary of the Angels so uniquely? I think the answer is that none of the other parishes had multimillion-dollar properties, money in the bank, and a substantial income. It simply wasn't worth Strawn's while to seize Holy Cross Honolulu. The St Mary's dissidents may well have dangled the indirect opportunity for various payoffs and lagniappes to Strawn in the bargain. Strawn and his stooge Morello moved in.

The problem is that they were expecting a quick payout. I believe the scheme would have been to appoint a compliant vestry or hold a membership meeting along the lines of the one they eventually held -- Strawn inadvertently sent me an e-mail meant for Morello (which I promptly handed over to the elected vestry's attorneys) in which he explains to Morello that he knows they are acting outside the ACA canons, but they will soon call a "membership meeting" that will paper all this over with a vote to endorse their actions after the fact. I assume Strawn intended to work this way all along, and that fairly soon, a puppet vestry or restricted membership meeting would vote to dissolve the corporation, sell its assets, and pass them on to the ACA, less assorted payoffs, commissions, consulting fees, and lagniappes. The dissolution of the temporary restraining order and the subsequent legal actions prevented the quick payout, and the process has been stalled ever since.

What other circumstances support this view of the case?

• It appears that members of the dissident group began removing parish property from the premises almost immediately after the seizure
• The ACA did not hold services in the parish at all for months after the seizure -- the spiritual welfare of the parish was a very distant issue
• Stephen Strawn, thwarted in his intention and with potential embarrassment, not to mention exposure to criminal charges, quickly withdrew as bishop ordinary over the parish
• The ACA House of Bishops distanced itself from the failing scheme by putting Anthony Morello in full charge of it, an act which probably hastened Morello's death
• The ACA continues a scheme whereby an absentee rector is in charge, with a series of priests-not-in-charge saying mass, preventing the parish from functioning as an ongoing enterprise.

What Could Go Wrong? -- II

Yesterday, we made a rough estimate of the real estate assets of the St Mary of the Angels corporation. There are numerous other assets, such as altar furnishings, vestments, sculpture, art, religious artifacts, memorabilia, books, kitchen and office equipment, and so forth, some of which have been plundered in past years (such as documents containing the signatures of Hollywood figures), some of which have been plundered (or "taken for safekeeping") by the current group of squatters, and some of which may remain. As of 2012, there was also a safe deposit box containing jewelry that had been bequeathed to the parish. The value of these, while probably significant, is hard to estimate.

All of this material could be sold if the corporation elected to dissolve. The California Attorney General's guide to dissolving a non-profit specifies only that this may be done by a majority of the corporation's board of directors "or" a majority of its membership. The St Mary of the Angels bylaws do not cover how the corporation may be dissolved, only that this would presumably be done under the provisions of California corporation law. We know that the unelected "vestry" now pretending to be the corporation's board of directors would vote to do whatever the core group of dissidents wished -- if there were any disagreement, Frederick Rivers would remove any dissidents and replace them. The record shows this sort of thing has already been done. If anyone successfully argued that a general meeting of the membership would be needed, we've already seen how the ACA and Mrs Bush handle general meetings -- only supporters are allowed entry, whether they are qualified members-in-good-standing eligible to vote or not.

To some extent, I have to act like an amateur criminal profiler here to figure out what the dissident group's intentions are. I don't believe their dispute is doctrinal, other than some say they would prefer to be catholic rather than Catholic, but still use the capital-C but not quite -- I don't believe you could get much more than that out of, say, Mrs Bush or Mr Omeirs, and probably not even that much from the others. (For that matter, it would be an interesting exercise to try to get "Bishop" Williams to list, say, the seven sacraments without a crib sheet.) I simply assume that many of this group have in fact removed items from the parish, and whatever the stated intent, those items will not return. So petty personal aggrandizement is probably a motive among many in the group.

But the stakes are bigger than that. Even a parish tithe out of $20,000 monthly income is probably not what Brian Marsh wants to realize from the seizure when millions can be had with little more effort than has been expended so far. Marsh himself told a parishioner during his late-night visit in May 2012 that "it's about money". I've thought from the start that a very strong motive for the seizure could be to close the parish and sell the assets -- once the corporation is wound up, the proceeds would then go to a worthy non-profit that shares the goals of the former corporation -- to wit, the ACA. Less assorted payoffs, commissions, consulting fees, and lagniappes,of course. As I say, Marsh has likely been looking the other way as some of these have already been distributed.

The problem has been that the legalities haven't been a slam dunk. On balance, only two things went the ACA's way: the initial seizure via a temporary restraining order in May 2012, which was dissolved two weeks later, and Judge Linfield's ruling at the trial later that year, overturned on appeal. Everything else has gone against them, and a sale of the property would be very difficult given the ongoing litigation. Crooks don't think long term, and this group is having to think that way.

What are the likely outcomes, and what strategies might the elected vestry consider?

What Could Go Wrong?

I've been wondering just how much money is involved in the St Mary of the Angels dispute. I've mentioned the monthly income -- something over $20,000 -- in the past. Right now, I'm interested in the real estate assets, which are difficult to estimate. The assessed value of the property at 4510 Finley Avenue is $278.942, although this is based on a 1984 assessment. Since it is owned by a non-profit organization and is a historical landmark, there are restrictions on its use. However, the bank property at 1965 Hillhurst Avenue, which is owned by the parish, is valued at $2,852,851, again, based on a 1984 assessment. In California, properties are not reassessed until they are sold, so these values are based on the taxable assessment as of 1984, with limited adjustments for inflation. The actual value of the properties, especially if there were no restrictions on the church property's use, would be much higher.

A nearby commercial property on Hillhurst Avenue is listed for sale at $5,800,000. This might be a rough guide to the value of the parish's Hillhurst property separate from the parish lot. I've heard a knowledgeable individual connected with the St Mary's vestry estimate the value of the entire property at $8,000,000, which seems reasonable given the rough numbers above. This would probably be higher if the church building's lot could be sold for commercial purposes.

The next question is what a Realtor would earn as a commission for selling part or all of the property. This is also difficult to estimate, although one Realtor answered such a question as

As you know, commissions are negotiable and as Realtors we are somewhat constrained(legally) about naming the exact figure. I have heard everything from 12% (commercial deals) down to 2% (REO and Foreclosure)

So the gross value of a commission for a commercial sale of the full St Mary of the Angels property could be as much as 12% of $8,000,000, or $960,000. This could be split in various ways, but someone like Crosby Doe, a Realtor who owns his agency, could potentially net about $500,000 from a sale on commission alone. Mr Doe would, of course, have a massive conflict of interest in such a deal. It's worth raising the question of whether Doe, who specializes in selling historic buildings, would have a particular expertise in finding ways around historical landmark restrictions, so that the church parcel could also be converted to commercial use. This would potentially increase its value and increase any commission or even consulting fees (since Doe is an "expert") he could realize from such a deal. In fact, I would think that if any such deal went through with Doe on the "vestry" at all, it would raise red flags -- especially since Doe, under the parish bylaws, was not qualified to stand for election to the vestry in the first place and was placed there by the ACA in violation of canon and corporate law. Just sayin'.

There's more to think about here.

Lingering Questions

I've kept The Armchair Detective's ongoing ruminations at the Freedom for St Mary's site at the back of my mind throughout these events. He's kept noting odd threads that begged to be pulled -- and if I had mad money for that kind of thing, I would have hired a private investigator on a number of issues long ago. (The first mad money would go to some shamus in the Cape Canaveral area, if anyone wanted to know.)

One question the Armchair Detective raises won't go away: why aren't the ACA and the parish dissidents remotely interested in a negotiated settlement? The parish they have charge of is run in favor of a very small group of elderly people. There's been little activity on the official site after the initial fanfare this past summer of bringing in a bishop-pastor -- the parish calendar was updated for only a few weeks after that, and the most recent entry is for October 8, the feast of St Bridget of Sweden. Is Williams too busy with pastoral duties to update it? Fat chance. I certainly see no evidence of a revitalized parish moving forward under new leadership.

There's no evidence that much of a parish is actually operating there. The organization chart is strange: the "Pastor' (whose MFA degree qualifies him to teach basket weaving at a community college, not to serve as ordained clergy) is also a "Bishop", but since the web site designates an absentee "Rector" as well, it appears that the pastor-bishop isn't really in charge. What's going on?

It's hard to avoid wondering if the purpose behind the group now squatting on the premises isn't to run a Christian parish -- it may be to act as a shell to hold on to the property until it can be disposed of to the profit of other parties. The Armchair Detective notes that Crosby Doe, a real estate broker who specializes in historic properties, was brought onto the unelected vestry following the parish seizure. Doe had not been an active member of the parish for years prior to the seizure and was not qualified to stand for election under the parish bylaws, had any real election been held. What is Doe's function?

Is the Lancaster-Anastasia argument that the courts can't get involved in a religious dispute (which the courts have now rejected) essentially a way to get a pass for other irregularities? Without the putative First Amendment cover for the ACA and the squatter-vestry, what else might come to light?

My wife and I are very fond of true crime shows on TV. We can't help noting that people who cover up crimes and conspiracies, from what we see on such shows and from books like John Dean's The Nixon Defense, just keep on covering up and stonewalling until they've run out all possible options. Negotiation isn't an option for them, we have to surmise. Much as I want to have the most charitable possible interpretation of the squatters' motives, I just can't shake The Armchair Detective's suspicions.

Good News, Potentially, For The Elected Vestry And Fr Kelley

On November 12, the California Supreme Court declined to review the appeal of the Appeals Court's decision by the dissidents and the ACA. This sends what is essentially an eviction action back to the trial court, based on the question of who actually owns the property. Following the parish bylaws and California corporation law, there is a strong case that the elected vestry owns the property, and the dissident group, along with "Bishop" Williams, must vacate it.

The cardinal virtues include justice and fortitude. I have got to say that the elected vestry and Fr Kelley have been good examples of pursuing justice and displaying fortitude in this matter. My own view is that the dissidents at this point need to recognize that they have very little chance of prevailing, and continued litigation will simply deplete parish resources. Although a strategy of delay may have seemed appropriate, the fact is that the parish dissidents are all in their 70s and 80s, while the elected vestry and Fr Kelley are at least a decade younger. An actuarial strategy will not succeed in the long term, and frankly, Bush, Omeirs, et al need to be looking to other things now.

The best solution at this point should be a negotiated settlement. The outlines of what would probably succeed are fairly clear: the dissidents and "Bishop" Williams vacate the property and end any claim to ownership and control. The dissidents pay all monies owed to Fr Kelley for salary and benefits to date. In return, the elected vestry does not pursue the ACA and the dissidents personally for expenses and damages. I hope something along this line can be worked out.

I do note that a report from the joint national synod of the ACA and APA says that the groups are continuing to pursue merger. Frankly, if I were clergy or vestry in any APA parish, I would be very wary of giving the ACA bishops any opportunity to seize any APA parish in the way they tried to seize St Mary's. If I were Bishop Grundorf, I would make a settlement of the St Mary's case, based on the ACA withdrawing any claim to the parish, a precondition to any further talks over merger. (I would guess, though, that any merger would also need to wait for the passing of Louis Falk, the initial cause of the split, in any case.)

But the parish dissidents, as well as the ACA bishops, are neither competent nor rational.

Another St Mary's Lawsuit!

While poking around on Google, I stumbled across another lawsuit: The Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Mary of The Angels Parish et al v. Church Mutual Insurance Company et al, filed October 23, 2013 in California Central District Federal Court. The et als on the Rector Wardens and Vestry side (the plaintiffs) are none other than Langley Brandt, Patrick Omeirs, Marilyn Bush, and Carolyn Morello (I believe she is Anthony Morello's widow). In addition to the Church Mutual Insurance Company, there are also some John Does, which of course we've seen before.

I'm not ready to pay to get more info on this lawsuit, but it looks like the plaintiffs want money, which of course we've seen before.

My wife suggests that the amount in dispute must be significant to take the matter into federal court. The plaintiffs are represented by Lytton, Williams, Messina & Hankin LLP, which means they are also spending big bucks, presumably from parish resources.

Calendar Not Updated?

For a couple of weeks after "Bishop" (or "Pastor") Williams arrived, the calendar of masses was updated at the St Mary's web site. No longer. apparently: the blooper over the "Exultation" of the Holy Cross is still there. Could the interdict signs have discombobulated the occupiers?

If I were Mrs Bush, I'd be pretty upset if Marsh and Rivers hadn't given me a heads-up over whatever circumstances were involved in Williams's departure from Trinity.

So Here's What I Think Happened

I'd been wondering for weeks why there was no announcement on the Trinity Pro-Cathedral web site that "Bishop" Williams was going to St Mary of the Angels. Now it's clear: the Trinity vestry had fired the guy and was keeping it confidential. But this raises another set of questions: whose idea was it to send him to St Mary of the Angels? And was anyone, appointed "vestry" or not, ever made aware of the circumstances at Trinity?

We don't know anything of the "unresolved moral concerns" that may have been connected with Williams's departure from Trinity, although let's face it, responsible adults (if there in fact are any) among the Bush-ACA faction at St Mary's should have been fully apprised of them, and they should have been given a full opportunity to turn down the deal. (I will say that there are ladies of advancing years among that group who are quite capable of saying "Immorality? Sounds intriguing.")

But after all, this is the ACA. St Mary's has a "vestry" that hires a rector, but not really. It also has an absentee "rector", who theoretically is the one who hires other clergy. I would assume that if he's the "rector", it would have been his decision alone to hire Williams as "pastor", whatever that means. My guess is that Frederick Rivers, in his capacity as "rector", did what Brian Marsh told him to do and hired Williams, who had to get out of Dodge in a hurry, and St Mary's was a convenient place to park him.

The best thing that could have happened that might lead to a rector's dismissal on moral grounds would be an affair with an adult female parishioner. There's no guarantee that this is what happened, though. There's also the thing that used to be quaintly called a "morals offense", which might cause greater disquiet among conservative Anglicans. And then there's ACA Canon 46, "Of Offenses for which Bishops, Presbyters, or Deacons May Be Tried"

Section 46.1 A Bishop, Presbyter, or Deacon of this Church shall be liable to presentment and trial for the following offenses, viz:

1. Crime or immorality

That happened, after all, to Williams's colleague "Bishop" Hiles, and to the author of the whole freak show, "Archbishop" Falk, when both were Episcopal priests and had gotten a bit frisky with the pew. As these bishops see things, no big deal. We all have our secrets, after all, we'll just keep this little business among ourselves.

Interdict Signs

This appears at the Freedom for St Mary's site. I don't know what the "unresolved moral concerns" are, but from just poking around the fringes of this bunch, I feel certain there are plenty. If I had the mad money, I'd spend it on private investigators. On the other hand, the stuff I can find via the Internet just gets referred to ACA stooges with secrets of their own for "investigation".

Another Blooper!

I was checking the St Mary's web site, as I do every now and then, and I discovered that the Monday Mass for September 15 is the Exultation [sic] of the Holy Cross.

This isn't up there with the page that had Cannon Morello presiding over the Angelican parish, but it's close. And at least the guy who put the earlier blooper up had the excuse that he was a loser -- even Mrs Bush eventually got tired of him. But this one had to have come straight from the "Bishop" himself!

I've heard Episcopalians described as "Catholic lite". I think I would characterize "continuing Anglicans" as Catholic dumb.

A Couple Weeks Late,

Trinity Pro-Cathedral has quietly replaced The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams on its web page. All news has also been purged. The Rev Andrew S Faust appears as the presumptive adult in charge. And that's it -- do you get the impression that Trinity wasn't sorry to see Williams go? As opposed to the fanfare on the St Mary of the Angels web page, this was a remarkably quiet departure.

Faust appears to be retired from Episcopal rectorships at parishes in Florida and Texas. Public records give his age at 67 and his residence in Saco, ME, which leads me to believe he's a supply priest here, at least for the time being. An easy couple hundred a week, don't ask too many questions.

Still, I keep wondering, given typical memberships, how any ACA parish can even heat the place in the winter and keep the lights on, much less pay anyone. Fr Faust, you're best off collecting your supply honorarium while you can and moving on.

The ACA -- Who's Affected? -- II

Two things pop out when you start to look more closely at the ACA. One is how few parishes are in anything like metropolitan areas -- even in the densely populated Northeast, the largest parishes seem to be in also-ran cities like Portland, ME or Concord, NH, and these are by any normal standards very small. The Rector of St Paul's Anglican Portland noted in a recent newsletter,

Oh, did I mention that last Sunday, the 13th of February, we had 17 at the 8 o’clock Mass and 38 at the 10 o’clock Mass? It’s probably a record for any Sunday other than Easter-day. And in February, in the midst of all the cold and snow!

So a total Sunday attendance of 55 at one of the largest parishes in the Diocese of the Northeast is exceptional! (And that includes choir and altar party at the 10:00, which means the nave must have been pretty forlorn. Reminds me of a former Episcopal parish, where we had to lean across two rows of pews to exchange the peace.) The news item in the Concord, NH Monitor that discussed "Christian" Tutor's ordination said that parish had a membership of 45 and worshiped Sunday afternoons in a Lutheran church, itself a rather sad-looking A-Frame.

Very little in the Tri-State area around New York City -- the parish in Elizabeth, NJ comes up on Google Street View as a parking lot; maybe someone can clarify this. St Joseph's Brooklyn is the only substantial building, but not large, while the Queens parish appears to be in a storefront. So much for the biggest urban area in the US.

Pretty much every other parish in the Diocese of the Northeast is in exurban or downright rural areas. A puzzle is St Elizabeth's Chapel Tuxedo Park, which began as a family chapel of the J.P.Morgan banking family. The history here must be intriguing, since J.P.Morgan himself was an enthusiastic Episcopalian, and the chapel must have been a TEC institution until fairly recently. I also assume it has an endowment, which must be among the few actual sources of income for the ACA.

Pretty much the same goes for the Diocese of the Eastern US -- what of Atlanta, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Washington, Richmond, Pittsburgh, etc etc etc? Again, a scattering of little storefronts and prefabs in rural areas, the parish in Allentown, PA about the only exception.

Same for the Diocese of the Missouri Valley, roughly a dozen little prefabs or storefronts with just a few substantial buildings anywhere. And the Diocese of the West is simply moribund, a few converted residences, a couple of rentals in funeral parlors and whatnot, and two real buildings where they can't seem to hold onto supply priests.

In 2012, I estimated an average size of 60 for ACA parishes in good standing. Thirty is probably generous. To be nice, I estimated 19 as an average mission size. Ten may be closer to the truth.

Where is the membership? And following on that, where are the pledges? Where are the diocesan tithes? Where is the money? How would even seizing St Mary of the Angels, obtaining title outright, and selling the place, do anything at all for this sorry little denomination? What do Marsh and his cronies really have in mind?

The ACA -- Who's Affected? -- I

Over the past couple of years, I've come to the conclusion that the major figures in the ACA, especially the bishops, are reckless and dangerous incompetents. This has two implications. The first is that they are likely to hire priests and engage volunteers who have not had adequate background checks -- we've simply seen this over and over. The other implication is that the denomination is one major blunder away from bankruptcy and dissolution. One example is the ticking clock on the St Mary of the Angels lawsuits: the odds are better than even that the case will return to the trial court, the parish will be awarded to the elected vestry, and the clawback of plundered resources will begin.

The Armchair Detective at the Freedom for St Mary site keeps coming back to the question of criminal conspiracy. But civil penalties alone in the St Mary's legal proceedings would probably spell personal ruin for most of the ACA bishops -- and that leaves aside the potential for further personal indiscretions that would embroil the denomination in scandal.

So how many children are now at risk from priests who've been eased out of the Roman Catholic, Episcopal, ACNA, or other denominations and hired by the ACA without background checks? How many faithful parishioners will either need to find new spiritual homes when their parishes dissolve within the next few years, or how many parishes will remain viable enough to move to another pitiable "continuing Anglican" denomination? (My advice to all, frankly, would be not to wait, go into the ACNA now, and by the way, get that background check on Fr ____ when you do.)

The last time I looked at the ACA's numbers was in November 2012. I think my estimate of the time, a total membership of about 2300, was too generous -- it's probably more like half that.

Here's my count of parish building size, based on a recent tour of diocesan web sites and visits to all parish web sites. Not all have photos of their buildings; where they don't, I've tried to use Google Street View to get better information. But here's a rough tally by building type, based on personal appraisal of what I can see on the web, supplemented by specific information on parish web sites where it's available:

Inactive parishes, no building address, meets irregularly or not at all: 6

Home missions: 5

Worship in rented space (storefronts or other denomination churches during off hours): 14

Converted residences, larger than home missions: 7

Ugly prefab steel buildings: 18

Real stone or wood traditional church buildings: 13

So there's another indicator of what the denomination really is -- not much there, when you really start looking. We're back to asking where the money is, because a year or so from now, Marsh, Strawn, Williams, Rivers, and so forth are going to need to find some serious money, both to pay judgments and pay their own (if the Armchair Detective is to be believed) criminal attorneys.

Legal Update

On September 3, the last possible day, the attorneys for Mrs Bush and the ACA filed a petition for review of the appeals court's July 23 decision largely in favor of the St Mary's elected vestry. (I haven't discussed the specifics of the case or the elected vestry's legal strategy with anyone on the vestry or its legal team.) However, my wife and I think it's unlikely the supreme court will review the case.

For starters, the opinion is "unpublished", which means it can't be used as a precedent.

One of the most straightforward reasons for granting review is to secure "uniformity of decision" - to ensure that trial courts have a consistent body of law to follow. Because unpublished decisions are not considered precedent and therefore do not affect California law (Cal. R. Ct. 8.1115(a)), they are unlikely to be accepted for review under this criterion.

The appellate court also accepted the elected vestry's position that established principles of contract law and established precedent could allow a trial court to determine the facts of the case. This means that the supreme court is unlikely to decide that some new area of the law needs to be clarified as a result of the case -- California has had a fairly large number of cases stemming from ownership and control of church property in recent years, due to the large number of parish defections in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. The elected vestry's attorneys used these cases as precedent.

In addition, the appeals court took a "least drastic" approach in its decision, sending the case back for trial, rather than awarding the case to the elected vestry as it had requested. It appears to me that the appeals court was deliberately adopting a low profile in this case in order to avoid review by the supreme court, although nothing is certain in these situations.

A successful petition for review does not merely harp on errors in the lower courts. Instead, it demonstrates convincingly how the court of appeal's decision significantly affects a broad range of Californians; or presents a conflict between lower courts that must be settled; or both. At the state's high court, where only a small fraction of requests for review can be granted, nothing less will do.

The California Supreme Court will take at least 60 days to decide whether to review the case, although the likelihood is high that it will not. If it decides not to review, the case goes back for trial, which is the outcome Mrs Bush and the ACA have tried to avoid from the start.

"Bishop" (or is it "Pastor") Williams is apparently now saying mass at St Mary's. Like his colleagues, the man is reckless and a dangerous incompetent.

What About The ACA Bishops? -- III

I briefly considered -- very briefly, and not all that seriously -- forwarding to Brian Marsh the e-mail from the prior of Terrance Tutor's former Brigittine community making it plain that he is not entitled to style himself OSA, as well as mentioning that the Western Provincial of the OSA does not recognize him. It would read something like this:

Bishop Marsh, the Rev Christian Tutor, Rector of All Saints Anglican Concord under your supervision, styles himself "OSA" in e-mails and on his parish biography. This abbreviation is normally taken to mean that one is a member of the Roman Catholic Order of St Augustine, and public statements from the ACA have sometimes referred to Tutor as "Augustinian". The attached e-mail from Fr Tutor's former priory in Oregon makes it clear that Tutor has never been an Augustinian monk and is not entitled to style himself OSA. Nor is he now a Roman Catholic.

I hope you will consider that many people may find it misleading if Fr Tutor continues to style himself OSA. I hope you will discuss this with him and ask that he remove the references to OSA from the All Saints Anglican web site, stop using OSA in his e-mail signature, and not refer to himself as "Augustinian" or "OSA" in any other communication speaking as a priest in the ACA. While this is not a major issue, as a Roman Catholic who attends a parish run by authentic Augustinian priests, I find this not only potentially misleading but vaguely comical and even offensive, and it appears that Catholic religious familiar with his case see it as a matter of concern.

Many thanks for your attention to this matter.

After only the briefest reflection, I decided not to send this, or anything like it. For whatever reason, Marsh hasn't answered my previous e-mails, except for a reply early in the saga of the ACA's seizure of St Mary's suggesting that I'm the only one complaining here. And of course, he takes no action -- the individual who contacted me about bizarre allegations against an ACA diocesan said she would contact Marsh, but as far as I'm aware, no action was taken. He took no action when I notified him of Robert Bowman's arrest for child pornography. He took no action when I notified him that Anthony Morello had vested himself fully as if for mass in the St Mary's parish in the middle of the night before tacitly endorsing a physical assault by St Mary's dissidents against other parishioners. (If nothing else, isn't this sacrilege?) He didn't answer when I notified him that the dissidents, in control of the upper level of the parish, habitually dropped heavy objects on the floor and played loud recorded music when other parishioners held mass in the parish hall below. (If nothing else, isn't this sacrilege?)

The problem I see is that the stuff I've been complaining about isn't small. It involves violations of the ACA's own canon law, "conduct unbecoming", and failure to take minimal measures to protect children and other vulnerable people. And it hasn't been isolated incidents: as far as I can see, no effective background check was made before hiring Anthony Morello, Robert Bowman, or Terrance "Christian" Tutor, as well as an unnamed ACA diocesan bishop. Violations of canon law have been repeated.

Nor have these been individual inadvertent oversights by one or two bishops. Daren Williams hired Anthony Morello, apparently during a period when he was behaving erratically before he was forced into retirement -- but Stephen Strawn and then Brian Marsh separately endorsed Morello's conduct and promoted him, twice. The ACA House of Bishops commended him for all he'd done not long before his death. Brian Marsh presumably approved the hiring of Robert Bowman without a background check, but when Owen Williams replaced him as episcopal visitor, he took no action when Bowman's child pornography arrest was reported. George Langberg "accepted Christian Tutor's renewal of solemn vows" (whatever in the world that means) without a background check in 2006, but Brian Marsh ordained him a deacon in 2007. Owen Williams, now a bishop, somehow told both Langberg and Marsh that this was OK -- in fact, this may have been as close as the ACA came to making a background check.

Let's not forget that the elder statesman of both the ACA and the TAC is Louis Falk, who was deposed as an Episcopal priest in 1965 and has secrets of his own. His own history in the "continuing Anglican" movement has been one of jurisdiction-hopping, uncanonical actions, and promoting disreputable protégés. A fish rots from the head.

The ACA bishops are clearly a small clique that operates by exempting itself from normal expectations -- this is precisely the behavior C.S.Lewis describes in his essay The Inner Ring:

Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

There's no point in trying to tell people like that anything. They all have secrets. That's why they feel comfortable with each other and why they hire and promote other people with secrets. But at bottom, it's why I think there's no hope for the ACA.

What About The ACA Bishops? -- II

We've been looking at the puzzle of Terrance "Christian" Tutor's 2007 ordinations as deacon and priest in the ACA with what appears to have been an ineffective background check, if any took place at all. By the ACA's own standard, as we said yesterday, "all applicants for ecclesiastical studies for ordination as deacons and priests, as well as all current deacons, priests, and bishops are held to the highest standards and undergo the strictest scrutiny thorough background screening". Falsification of employment history (for instance, as a religious in the Augustinian order rather than in the Brigittine order), or misrepresentation of qualifications (for instance, as a current member of a religious community, rather than one who had left that community) ought to be grounds for disqualification.

It is difficult to know exactly how Tutor came to the ACA's attention in Oregon, except that the source we linked on Wednesday notes that Tutor was a "long time friend" of Owen Rhys Williams, who from 1998 to 2003 was Parochial Vicar and then Priest in Charge of then-ACA parish St Mark's Portland, OR. Public records also place Williams at two addresses in Salem, OR during the approximate times Tutor also lived there in the St Joseph's Catholic Church rectory. Tutor's incomplete and weasel-worded official bio on the All Saints Concord, NH web site says he

has served the Church as a Pastoral Care Provider in a variety of parishes and institutions in Oregon including St. Nicholas Ranch/ Holy Family Chapel in Scotts Mills, a residential institution for men in recovery, that was sponsored by the Diocese of the West, Anglican Church in America.

By "the Church" here, he presumably means not the ACA but the Church Universal, since as far as I can determine, the other institutions he was involved with in Oregon were the Brigittine priory and St Joseph's Salem, both Catholic. St. Nicholas Ranch/ Holy Family Chapel in Scotts Mills was associated with an ACA priest, Scott Troyer, who by Tutor's account in an e-mail to me was "terribly haunted by addiction". It closed in 2002 due to Troyer's "breakdown", according to Tutor, and Troyer passed away in 2004. (This would obviate any subsequent check of that reference, of course.) I'm told by another source connected with the ACA Diocese of the West that Tutor's connection with that organization was unclear, although he was around and calling himself "Brother Christian".

Following his exclaustration, according to the prior of his former Brigittine community, Tutor was no longer a member of that or any other community, released from monastic vows, and not entitled to call himself "Brother", at least as far as it implied membership in a monastic community. The other day we saw that in 2002, Tutor had also identified himself to a police officer as "Rev Terrance Tutor". In other words, during the period when it seems likely that Owen Rhys Williams knew Tutor in Oregon, Tutor was impersonating both a priest and a monk, although he hadn't been ordained in any denomination, and he'd been separated from his monastic community since 1997.

In his official parish bio, Tutor goes on to say,

In September of 2006, the Most Reverend George Langberg, Bishop of the Diocese of the Northeast, Anglican Church in America, received Father Christian’s renewal of Solemn Vows as a monk, and canonically established him into the Diocese of the Northeast as a Religious following the Rule of St. Augustine.

It's very difficult to determine what happened here. Tutor told me in an e-mail that

I have no other religious of my rule within our jurisdiction [i.e., he is not actually in a community], but I still follow the Rule of St. Augustine which I vowed to do in 1987, and have tried to lead the life of perfection in vows while here in the Northeast. The Bishop of the Diocese takes the position of superior--which is done in the same form in some RC dioceses that have hermits and consecrated virgins who live in the same positions as I do within the DNE.

The current Catholic status of hermits is in the Catholic Encyclopedia:

We see, therefore, that the Church has always been anxious to form the hermits into communities. Nevertheless, many preferred their independence and their solitude. They were numerous in Italy, Spain, France, and Flanders in the seventeenth century. Benedict XIII and Urban VIII took measures to prevent the abuses likely to arise from too great independence. Since then the eremitic life has been gradually abandoned, and the attempts made to revive it in the last century have had no success.

The whole entry is peppered with references to the possibility of abuse, and considering the apparent incompatibility Tutor had with an established community, the potential for abuse is hard to ignore in his case -- as the Virtus director said in yesterday's post, we live in nutty times. And Tutor is not in solitude -- he has trusted access as a priest to children and other vulnerable people. We also saw in the Bede Parry case that following his apparent exclaustration from the Benedictine community in 1990, he attempted to join a different order in 2000. However, this order required psychological testing and presumably other evaluations, and rejected his application. According to a Catholic source,

the decision of a full member, someone who has professed final vows, to leave her or his community and, in some cases, join another community is a serious situation. This process is not engaged in lightly and is a time of great discernment, prayer, and conversation for both the individual and the community. After all, final vows means for life, not “for as long as I feel like it” or “’till something better comes along.” That being said, serious reasons do arise when a person can legitimately no longer live as a member of a particular community. These reasons are for the person and the leadership of the community to discern and are later witnessed by Rome for the valid dispensation from vows or transfer of vows.

For a former Catholic religious to leave a community (and be dispensed from Catholic vows) to become sort of a freelance guy in a habit under an Anglican bishop, without membership in an established community, is a highly unusual and very serious situation rife with the potential for abuse. It's hard for me to think that Bishop Langberg had the remotest idea of what he was doing. (And there is no form for "renewal of solemn vows" in the 1928 BCP -- did they sit down over a beer to do this, or what?) Langberg probably never considered that he would be serving as an enabler for Tutor's puzzling need to impersonate a member of the Order of St Augustine.

And what actual supervision could Tutor receive under Langberg? They were three states and 260 miles apart. Certainly no witness by Rome to validate any "transfer" of vows could have taken place. I would suppose that the whole of the discernment, prayer, and conversation that might have taken place was Owen Rhys Williams telling Langberg that this would be a good idea-- possibly because nobody liked him in Oregon, and he needed a new start because the Catholics were blackballing him, which is certainly the story Tutor gave me.

What was Owen Williams's role in this process? What was the relationship between Williams and Tutor prior to Williams's 2003 arrival in New Hampshire? What was the nature of any possible relationship among Williams, Tutor, and then-Rector of St Mark's Portland Robin Connors, who by all accounts had his own serious struggles with dependency? For that matter, since Connors was a Louis Falk protege (and Falk was Presiding Bishop of the ACA until 2005, with a record of meddling even after retirement), what was Falk's role, if any? How might this have affected any decision not to check Tutor's references at the Brigittine priory where he'd spent ten years prior to exclaustration? Was Langberg ever aware that Tutor felt that somehow "renewing" vows to Langberg as an Anglican bishop entitled him to call himself an Augustinian monk, then an Augustinian priest, and use the title OSA? Is Brian Marsh aware of this?

The most generous explanation here is dangerous incompetence, although that's only the most generous.