Today is "Bishop" (or is it "Pastor"?) Williams's First Mass

at St Mary of the Angels. On reflection, I think there may be less to this than meets the eye. As of today, there has been no change in the Trinity Pro-Cathedral web site, where Williams is still listed as Rector. The clergy page of the St Mary of the Angels web site lists Williams as "Pastor of the parish" (upper case P), while below Williams the absentee incompetent Frederick Rivers (should he be styled The Ab Inc?) is listed as "rector of the parish" (lower case r). Apparently in this particular alternate universe, a Pastor outranks a rector, though a parish has both. And the Pastor is bicoastal, with a parish (actually a pro-cathedral) across the country in Rochester, NH.

Someone might ask, "Well, Mr Bruce, all you have to do is ask them what's going on, and I'm sure they'll be happy to explain it to you, if it's all that hard for you to figure out." The Trinity Pro-Cathedral e-mail is out of order. There is no e-mail listed for "Bishop" (or is it "Pastor"?) Williams. St Mary of the Angels answers neither its phone nor its web contact. The press information officer of the ACA Diocese of the Northeast, a Ms Bonnie Turner, does not reply to requests for staple information, such as the ACA's policy on background checks for priests.

I doubt if there's actually much thought behind this. I can only assume the ACA recognizes at some level that neither Williams nor Rivers has been called by an elected vestry, so neither is correctly styled a Rector (upper case R). This is a tacit acknowledgement that there is in fact no elected vestry in charge of St Mary of the Angels, so they are sorta-kinda inventing a whole new hierarchy, but not exactly. By the same token, Williams is still a Rector (upper case R) back in New Hampshire, so he has something to fall back on when the ACA's legal case finally collapses, and it will make it more difficult to serve him with papers back there when the time comes.

I saw a true crime show on TV the other night where this bigamist had a wife in California and a wife in Florida and had to make up a convincing story that would keep both of them in the dark about what was going on. Seems like something a little like that is going on here.

As Best I Can See, There Are Two Possible Explanations

for the fact that the St Mary's web site says "Bishop" Williams starts August 31, while the Trinity Pro-Cathedral web site has no notice he's leaving there. (Trinity Anglican does have a Facebook page, but the only news there is for a memorial service in 2013.)

1. As I speculated in my last post, for whatever reason, although Williams is making the move, Trinity Anglican isn't announcing it. The departure of a rector is important news for any parish, so this is hard to imagine. Nevertheless, the possibilities could include:
   • The parish hasn't yet been told he's leaving (hard to believe)
   • The parish doesn't have anyone who is able to update the web page (also hard to believe; the web page does have updates from this summer)
   • The vestry sees no reason to announce it (verges on the credible for this bunch)
   • The parish is so broke it can't bring in a supply priest and is just going to stop holding services (slightly more credible, but only slightly)
   • Williams is persona non grata there, and the less said about his leaving, the better (but in that case, they'd be eager to announce any sort of replacement).
   None of these makes me go "Aaaahh, that's it!" except possibly that the vestry might not see any reason to let anyone know about anything important.
2. The alternative is that Williams isn't in fact making the move, or at least not permanently. He may or may not turn up at St Mary's on August 31 to celebrate his "first" mass as announced. However, he will be there only sorta-kinda, maybe just that once, with ongoing supply priests filling in for him, while he stays in Rochester.

I'm leaning toward explanation 2. A big factor that leads me there is timing: Williams had been episcopal visitor since August 2013, a year ago, but had made no move out here, even though St Mary of the Angels has got to be the pot of gold for the whole ACA -- a guaranteed income of $250,000 per year has got to be equal to the total for any number of other parishes in the ACA. It'll pay for lots of ecumenical cruises to the Mediterranean for Marsh and his cronies. So why the delay?

The California Court of Appeals ruled against Mrs Bush and the ACA in late July. I don't think this is what they were expecting -- on the contrary, they were expecting that the elected vestry would lose its case, and the control of the parish would be wrapped up so that Williams could come out in September and begin looting the place in earnest. Now his legal ability to do that is still in question -- the poster at the parish is completely correct, within some number of months, the parish could very likely change hands, and the elected vestry would be coming after him and Marsh for money they were never authorized to collect. This would also argue against Williams commuting between the two parishes, since he'd be liable for the huge unauthorized travel expenses as well.

My guess is they're still in denial about that, but hedging their bets, keeping things sorta-kinda, and keeping both Mrs Bush and Trinity Anglican in the dark. We'll have to see more clearly come August 31.

There's More And More That Doesn't Add Up

Here's another question: the St Mary of the Angels web site notes that "Bishop" Williams's first mass is August 31, roughly a week from now. But if you go to the web site of Trinity Pro-Cathedral, Rochester, NH, the parish of which Williams has been Rector, there's not a peep. Wouldn't you expect to see the normal announcement of the reception for Bishop Williams on his last Sunday with us, August 24? The announcement that our old friend Fr Schmidlap will be celebrating with us beginning August 31? Please welcome Fr Schmidlap and his wife next Sunday? Not a peep.

What's going on? This place is not acting like a normal parish. I noted a couple of weeks ago that the parish e-mail seems to be out of order.

Things aren't adding up. Is Trinity Rochester maybe on the verge of closing and can't afford even a supply priest? Who knows? But the more I look into things, the more questions I have, and the more I wonder not just about ordinary incompetence, but about something else.

Poster At St Mary's

A poster, according to the Freedom for St Mary's site, has mysteriously appeared at the parish. I would independently second the sentiments, especially as they relate to Williams's legal and financial liability. This applies equally to Brian Marsh.

As Fr Tom said at mass a few blocks away, better answer that, it might be God.

The Denomination of Last Resort

Let's look at Robert Bowman's biography and his activities since 2009. From the 1980s, he had made a career as a Reformed Episcopal Church priest and a headmaster at independent middle schools. He jumped around from state to state: central Florida; Alexandria, VA; Savannah, GA; someplace in Mississippi; Little Rock, AR; then Southern California. Whether he was moving on following some problem in each area we simply don't know. However, there's a credible strain of opinion that people who have disorders like pedophilia persist in behavior that will give them the satisfaction they're after.

"Pedophilia", of course, is preference, not a particular activity. A discussion thread that had posts from people claiming to be students at Trinity Christian School (one of those where Bowman was headmaster) offered the following observations:

Im late to this party but i went to trinity from kindergarden to 6th grade when he was at trinity and he always had something about him, some look in his eye that said the there was something more. Every morning he'd role up in his mid-1990's Jag wearing his cheap suit and red tie smiling but there was just something different.

or

I went to trinity too. when he was there, idk, we all knew something was different about him, don't get me wrong, he was nice guy, but we didn't expect this. so on one level it suprises me and on another level it doesn't.

or

We pulled our kids for CrossRoad two years agoe because my wife and I believed that Bowman was the wrong principal for the school. The prior principal wass equally un-qualified.

It sounds as though throughout his career, parents, students, and possibly colleagues thought something wasn't quite right about the guy. He doesn't appear to have been caught actually touching or molesting children, but pedophilia is a preference, not a particular activity -- and the fact that nothing was discovered doesn't mean nothing happened. Still, every few years, he'd pick up, move, and try the priest-and-middle-school-headmaster routine someplace else.

What do you suppose he did after he was arrested for child pornography in 2009? Look for a different profession? Bartending, computer programming, short order cook, fast food manager, cab driver, freelance writer/editor? Even with an arrest record, there are options, just nothing that involves children. Nope -- in 2013, he finds All Saints Fountain Valley and the ACA. How many places do you think he looked in the four-year period before he found that one?

I've found a number of discussions on the web about how to protect children in church. Many of them stress that the mere knowledge that references and arrest records will be checked is enough to deter the wrong people from applying for such jobs. Something about All Saints Fountain Valley must have told Bowman this place would be different -- and it was.

What's he going to do once he's eased out there? By his account, he's going to go after new church jobs in the ACNA.

Before I heard about Bowman at all, I asked a similar question about James Hiles:

In other words, Hiles had left a sinking ship and hopped jurisdictions -- no doubt, I would guess, shopping around among more than one; the ACA finally offered him the best deal.

Or maybe the only deal? If I were the ACA, I'd be wanting every cleric to re-qualify with a new set of background and reference checks.

I Mentioned David Moyer The Other Day

Because I became Catholic via RCIA, and because I'm pretty well engrossed with what I'm learning about the mainstream Catholic Christian tradition, with no special need for Anglican-style liturgy, I hadn't been following the usual Anglo-Catholic blogs, which frankly strike me as aimed at the madwomen who wear straw hats and velvet hats to church, rather than adults, like David Moyer, who recognize that the Church is a battleground. However, a visitor brought me up to date on Moyer's status: on August 17, Moyer and his Newman Fellowship group were received into the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.

He and his group have my heartfelt congratulations and very best wishes, and I particularly admire Moyer's integrity, humility, and fortitude in coming to accept laicization in order to go in with his group. But what changed?

In February 2012, after Moyer was denied Archbishop Chaput's votum to come into the Catholic Church as a priest, Steenson is reported to have said,

"I told the people on Sunday that they must follow their conscience on the question of coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. Lumen Gentium 14 (the Vatican II constitution on the Church) makes this a matter of salvation: 'Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved. So, even if the Fellowship was not ready to make this decision, if an individual was convinced about what the Catholic Church teaches about herself, he or she should not be afraid to move forward.

"Catechumens who, moved by the Holy Spirit, seek with explicit intention to be incorporated into the Church are by that very intention joined with her. With love and solicitude Mother Church already embraces them as her own.'" (LG 14)," Steenson told VOL.

(I was told during RCIA, by the way, that those of us who had already been baptized into the Christian faith were candidates, not catechumens. A double check confirms that catechumens are not yet baptized, and the act of baptism radically changes a Christian's status, whether Catholic or not. I'm puzzled that Steenson, a theologian, would miss this, as the members of the Newman Fellowship, active Anglicans and former Episcopalians, had all certainly been baptized.)

Steenson's remarks were generally interpreted in reports at the time as telling the people of the Newman Fellowship that their group would not be received into the Ordinariate, with or without Moyer, and the clear intent of the remarks above is that their only other option was to come into the Catholic Church as individuals. In other remarks, Steenson at the time was generally reported as offering the Newman group the opportunity to join the other Philadelphia-area Ordinariate group, St Michael Archangel, or nothing:

If the congregation, sans Moyer, truly believes in the faith as Rome sees it, they are jeopardizing their souls not to join St. Michael’s under the Rev. Dr. David Ousley who will be given the nod to enter Rome through the Ordinariate some time down the road.

Vested as they may have been in cloying churchladyspeak, Steenson's remarks above strike me as basically a snotty putdown of what was, by Ordinariate standards, a large, sincere, and prosperous group. Mischaracterizing them as catechumens was tactless and condescending at best. Moyer's laicization does not seem to have been the only issue: it doesn't appear that they were offered any other option but coming in individually or via St Michael Archangel. After all, any group wishing to come in at the start was going to have to have a Catholic priest who served as chaplain while the Anglican priest who served with the group awaited ordination. What was so different with Newman?

It's hard to avoid thinking that something changed. Did Steenson pick up the phone at some point in subsequent years to have someone, divine or mortal, explain to him that, indeed, the Newman Fellowship is a large, sincere, and prosperous group, and, er, Steenson perhaps needed to give a bit more thought to pledges, donations, and bequests? Is this a sign that the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter might have become a little less the Ordinariate of the Diocese of Ft Worth?

"You'd Better Answer That -- It Might Be God."

Despite the usual admonitions to turn off cell phones before mass, a doofus didn't bother, and a ring tone began to sound insistently during Fr Tom's homily on Sunday. Normally a doofus turns it off in short order, but apparently this particular doofus was frozen in panic and just let it keep ringing. Fr Tom finally interrupted his homily and said, "You'd better answer that -- it might be God." After a few moments of further reflection, the doofus finally complied. What God had to say we never learned.

That reminded me of an earlier dialogue with God, reported by none other than Robert William Bowman on the All Saints Fountain Valley Facebook page entry for June 16, 2014:

Beloved Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

Yesterday I informed the Vestry of All Saints Church that I would be concluding my service to the parish on the Lord's Day, August 31, 2014. Over the past several months I began to sense that the LORD was preparing me for a move, as I was contacted by 2 ACNA congregations and one diocese of the ACNA inquiring about my availability for service. One congregation is on the East Coast, one congregation is in a different part of the the state of CA, and the diocese contacting me is in Texas.

When I came to All Saints, I expected to stay for a few weeks until a new priest could be appointed to replace Dr. Morello. A few weeks has turned into 18 months, and by August 31, will be 20 months. It has been a distinct privilege and joy for me to serve this congregation over these many months. I have appreciated everything that everyone has done to serve the LORD here. You cannot possibly know what a tremendous blessing you have been in my life. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me this privilege. Just as the LORD sent me to be the "supply guy" (as I have styled myself) these many months, so He will again send His man to serve you in the future. Proverbs 3:5-6 reminds us to "trust in the LORD will all your heart and He will direct your paths."

I will continue to serve you until August 31, with the exception of the next 3 Lord's Days when I will be away on my trip to China. Next Lord's Day, June 22, the 10:00 AM service will be Morning Prayer. On the Lord's Day June 29 and July 6 The Reverend Bob Hammond will be the visiting priest. I will return to the pulpit July 13.

I ask your faithful prayer support as I travel to and from China. Please pray for travel mercies as we fly out Tuesday, June 17, and return Monday, July 7. Please pray for the man The LORD has already chosen to serve you. As the LORD supplied in the past, so He will do again in the future.

Kept with you in HIS love,
Robert Bowman
Romans 11:33-36

I didn't need to pick up the phone to figure out what my own response to God's call here would be -- I addressed the following to the public inquiry page on the ACNA main web site:

Robert William Bowman has been interim priest at All Saints Anglican Church in Fountain Valley, CA since 2013. He was formerly rector of St Luke’s REC parish in Santa Ana, CA, but was dismissed from that position following his arrest on child pornography charges in 2009. See http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bowman-168221-home-church.html

On the Facebook page of All Saints Anglican, he posted on June 16 of this year,

“Yesterday I informed the Vestry of All Saints Church that I would be concluding my service to the parish on the Lord's Day, August 31, 2014. Over the past several months I began to sense that the LORD was preparing me for a move, as I was contacted by 2 ACNA congregations and one diocese of the ACNA inquiring about my availability for service. One ...congregation is on the East Coast, one congregation is in a different part of the the state of CA, and the diocese contacting me is in Texas.”

I believe it would be an exceedingly unwise move for the ACNA to hire this man in any capacity. I hope you will warn the parishes and the diocese of this issue.

However, I believe the ACNA is an utterly different sort of organization from the ACA, and it would require written applications, criminal background checks, and full reference checks of all clergy. And since the REC is now part of the ACNA, the ACNA may well be already aware of Bowman.

For that matter, I would assume that Bowman is also fully aware of ACNA policy and understands fully that he will never be hired in the ACNA again. As a result, I can't help but wonder if the Facebook page is intended as a face-saving lie. But whose face is being saved here? I notified Brian Marsh of Bowman's arrest record in early April -- according to Bowman, he began to get calls from God several months before his June announcement, although I very much doubt they were eager inquiries from the ACNA.

I suspect instead that they were highly confidential chats with Frederick Rivers and "Bishop" Owen Williams. "We gotta ease you out," I assume was the basic subject. "Real slow and inconspicuous. Our jobs are on the line just as much as yours. Let's make this all just between us, and make it look like you're just movin' on here, huh?" As of today, Bowman is still on staff.

My only question is why Marsh, Williams, and Rivers thought it would be a good idea to keep the All Saints Fountain Valley parish exposed to a pedophile for almost five months so everyone could save face. I trust that responsible parties in the ACA will address this question, although if I were an ordinary parishioner, I'd be hopping mad and want some good answers myself.

Reference Check Oh-by-the-way

Robert William Bowman's arrest on child pornography charges distracted me in part from another discrepancy that came up when I did my own reference check. Bowman's profile on the clergy page of the All Saints Fountain Valley web site says

Rev. Dr. Bowman is a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi and of the Graduate School of Education at RTS. He has an extensive history as Rector, Associate Rector, and Church Planter for Anglican churches. In addition to his academic studies at RTS, he did summer post-graduate work at The University of Cambridge, England, and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

The profile strongly implies that Bowman received a "Dr" (either an EdD or PhD) from the Reformed Theological Seminary, although it's weasel-worded if you look carefully. However, when I checked with RTS, I received this reply:

This is to verify that Reformed Theological Seminary has awarded Robert Bowman the following degrees:

M.A. – Christian Education May 23, 1980

M.Ed – August 3, 1985

Please let me know if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Kiama J. Lee
Registrar and Assistant to the Academic Dean
Reformed Theological Seminary

A responsible reference check by Frederick Rivers or the All Saints Fountain Valley vestry should have revealed this and disqualified Bowman, irrespective of his arrest record. It appears that Bowman's "Dr" is as fraudulent as Anthony Morello's, one more reason to re-open an investigation into how Morello was hired at All Saints.

Here's What I Would Expect To See

in an investigation conducted by adults of the circumstances surrounding how All Saints Fountain Valley hired a priest with an arrest record for child pornography, as well as the bizarre sexual abuse alleged against an unidentified diocesan bishop. I don't know if this is what will be done, but I've been at the fringes of this kind of thing at various times in my career, and my wife was the sexual harassment coordinator for two corporations, so she has good knowledge of how equivalent investigations are handled. If I were investigating both cases, I would

• Want to know who was the safe environment coordinator for the dioceses involved. If there was none in either diocese, it would raise a red flag.
• Want to see the written safe environment policies for those dioceses. If there were none, it would raise a red flag.
• Want to see the standardized, written employment applications for both individuals. If there were none, it would raise a red flag.
• Want to see the records of the criminal background checks and employment reference checks for both individuals. If there were none, it would raise a red flag.
• Determine if either individual had any history of similar behavior that was known to colleagues or laity that had gone unreported, which might corroborate any allegations. Serious offenders don't do things just once.
• For that matter, determine whether any similar behavior had been reported but not investigated.
• Locate copies of the reports that generated the current investigation. If they are unavailable, that should raise a red flag.
• Locate and interview affected parties, recognizing that with the passage of time, they may have become reluctant to speak about the incidents or even have passed away.
• Contact former employers and determine the circumstances of their leaving prior employment.
• Interview the ACA diocesan officials and bishops who were contacted about the incidents and determine their response.
• Interview any clerical employees or parish volunteers who may have received the contacts and determine whether they passed them on.
• Identify the actions or inactions that would explain why, following the contacts, no formal investigation was begun, or if one was begun, determine its results.
• Determine why, if there was any validity to the allegations, parishioners were exposed to potential risks for months after the problems were reported.
• Identify those responsible in the incidents themselves and make appropriate recommendations for ecclesiastical discipline, including any necessary preparation for trial of a bishop.
• Identify those who might have covered up the incidents and make appropriate recommendations for ecclesiastical discipline, including any necessary preparation for trial of a bishop.
• Recommend other measures that would make it plain that clergy who do not follow their responsibility to maintain a safe environment are held accountable.
• Make other recommendations regarding how ACA policies and procedures may be improved to prevent such situations arising in the future.

It would be worth it to make a check of whether Anthony Morello had ever filled out a written employment application as well. I strongly suspect that, given the history I've seen, All Saints Fountain Valley has been a weak point where unscrupulous individuals can ingratiate themselves with superficial charm, bypass ordinary procedures, work their way into positions of trust, and even rise to high levels in the diocese. This should be a major embarrassment to the ACA. Had consistent policies regarding standard employment applications, reference checks, and criminal background checks been in force across the ACA, I don't believe any of the individuals involved would have become ACA clergy in the first place.

Who else might have been screened out, for that matter?

More Money Questions

Here's another issue that occurred to me just now as I gave more thought to the parish budget that I reviewed the other day: what is the parish paying the ACA Diocese of the West and the Presiding Bishop? I know that once the parish left the Diocese of the West and went into the Patrimony of the Primate, it was not paying any diocesan assessment to the Patrimony and had stopped paying anything to the DOW. (I know that because I never wrote any checks for those expenses.) I didn't have access to earlier records of what the diocesan assessment for the DOW had been, although Fr Kelley did mention that it was "favorable".

I would bet good money that that's changed, and once Mrs Bush and the vicars general took over, St Mary's, with regular rental income and low expenses, started paying money to the ACA in a hurry. And probably big time. And since the DOW had fairly low expenses -- maybe six parishes for a bishop to visit, after all, and only occasional synods -- a lot of that money went straight to the ACA. How much? We don't know, and oddly a web search turns up very little hard information. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Scranton, PA says of parish assessments,

Some dioceses assess parishes at a rate up to 25% of their total income. The rate of assessment for parishes within the Diocese of Scranton is 9.5%. This rate has not been altered since 2006. It is only because of the success of the Diocesan Annual Appeal that the rate has been able to remain constant. The Diocese in itself generates very little income. It is dependent upon the parishes to provide the financial support required to continue the mission of the Church.

In 2012, I took a careful look at the numbers of ACA parishes-in-good-standing and missions. The ACA doesn't have an official listing of which are which, but the best estimate I could make was that it had 25 parishes-in-good-standing and 43 missions. By the usual definition, a mission does not pay a diocesan assessment, and in more prosperous denominations even receives a subsidy -- that's probably not the case in the ACA. But what it means is that only 25 ACA parishes-in-good-standing, by the best estimate, pay any assessment at all to their dioceses, and of the dioceses, it's hard to know what sort of payments they make to the ACA.

But if the Diocese of Scranton is any indicator, 10% is a low estimate for how much St Mary's might be expected to pay. Based on a monthly rental income of $22,000, it would be paying about $2200 to the Diocese of the West, a substantial part of which would go to the ACA.

In fact, I would guess that St Mary of the Angels, at the time it went into the Patrimony of the Primate, must have been one of the very largest, and almost certainly the most prosperous. parish in the ACA. And that cash cow suddenly went away! Can there be any question why the ACA would try to seize the parish back?

And for that matter, can there be any question why the ACA will do everything it can to delay a final resolution at trial for the elected vestry's case against it? Every month of delay is $2200; every year of delay is $26,400. The longer my wife and I look at the record, the worse the ACA's case looks in Rector, Wardens, and Vestry v ACA -- I no longer put the vestry's chances at 50-50; I now think they're more like 70-30.

This means that at some point a year or two in the future, there's a good chance the ACA will not only lose its $2200 monthly income, which will create a big hole -- it will have to pay back $75,000 or more, plus interest. The ACA will have spent this money.

An Answer To The ACA's Dilemma?

Covering up for pedophiles and other sexual misconduct is, if we look at the examples of Cardinals Bernard Law and Roger Mahony, a serious matter and leads, or should lead, to retirement in some measure of disgrace. Whether Brian Marsh actually covered up remains to be seen, but if it turns out to be the case, I think he would pretty much have to go.

"If they get rid of Marsh, who else do they have?" asked my wife. Good question. The talent pool in the ACA is not wide. If Marsh "retires unexpectedly", it would be because another diocesan bishop had also quietly left the picture, which would leave only one mainland US diocesan standing, neither of whom strikes me as an attractive candidate -- one of them has a record of high-handed, uncanonical dealing, and he probably would not fly with many ACA clergy. And if the denomination is to survive, it would simply need to have someone not connected with the current clique. And farther down, frankly, there's a collection of useful idiots, dangerous incompetents, thieves, liars, and perverts.

"Maybe they could check to see if David Moyer is still available," I said, not joking. Think about it. Nobody, but nobody, is going to come in from outside unless he's too desperate to be a serious contender. Walter Grundorf strikes me as a Brian Marsh clone (a little like how Czar Nicholas II was a near-twin of King George V) and not what the ACA needs now. Moyer is a little wacky, but as far as I can see, he's the kind of wacky who'd wield a machete just where the machete needed to be wielded.

Not joking. To any responsible parties in the ACA who may be reading this, do you want the denomination to last longer than the two years it's now likely to?

UPDATE: I learn that Bishop Moyer is to be received, with his Newman Fellowship group, into the Catholic Church, although Moyer will not be ordained a Catholic priest. So he is no longer available to the ACA, the worse for them.

ACA Lawsuit Status

On August 7, the respondents in Rector, Wardens, and Vestry v ACA (i.e., the ACA) filed a petition for rehearing with the California appeals court. On August 15, the petition was denied. This strongly suggests that the ACA's next step will be to appeal this decision to the California Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has the option of simply refusing to hear the case. The ACA's strategy is to string out the process as long as possible, while keeping physical possession of the premises and hoping some other event will intervene, like the deaths of key parties, loss of interest, and so forth. (That, though, cuts both ways.) This will also result in continued expense to the ACA, which I think it is less and less able to handle. The ACA ain't The Episcopal Church.

Come to think of it, stringing the case out could also have the effect of putting the consequences of losing it out past Marsh's retirement, whenever that might be, and leaving all that for his successor to clean up. An excellent strategy for Marsh, not as good for the denomination. Maybe some responsible parties are figuring this out.

I'm Skeptical, But We'll See

My understanding is that the ACA is now investigating both the hiring of a priest with an arrest record for child pornography and the potentially explosive allegations against a diocesan bishop. It's worth pointing out that Presiding Bishop Marsh was, as far as I'm aware, notified of both these problems months ago and had taken no apparent action. I am assuming that any ACA investigation will also note the circumstances under which Marsh was notified, the actions he took or didn't take, and why he allowed ACA parishioners to be exposed to these risks for months, if he took no action.

I would expect changes in the ACA House of Bishops within a fairly short period of time, or a credible explanation of why no change is contemplated.

But I'm scratching my head. These scandals alone are enough to threaten the existence of the ACA. If parents have no assurance that ACA priests get any type of background check, they have every reason to pull out of the denomination and worship with their families elsewhere in a safe environment. Even adults without children are entitled to have a queasy feeling about any ACA priest or parish. I find it significant that even the Safe Environment Coordinator for the ACA Diocese of the Northeast feels able to speak only for his own diocese and disavow knowledge of policies in the other dioceses. Responsible parties in the ACA need to wake up and recognize that this problem is a major threat to the ACA's continuing existence.

But there's another threat, which is the real possibility that the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry v ACA case will be retried based on the facts, and the ACA will lose, returning control of St Mary of the Angels to its elected vestry. In that case, there will need to be an exhaustive examination of what property may have been looted from the parish, and individuals like Stephen Strawn, Frederick Rivers, Brian Marsh, Mrs Bush, and others could face criminal charges for any theft that may have occurred on their watch.

There's also potential civil liability -- for example, for defamation of Fr Christopher Kelley. The ACA has repeatedly asserted that Fr Kelley would be criminally prosecuted for undisclosed actions, which has not happened. Fr Kelley's alleged thefts, forgeries, and misappropriations have been reviewed by several courts, and the courts have repeatedly found that no such actions occurred. The ACA in authorized public statements destroyed Fr Kelley's career, after all. Any legal action stemming from this would bring catastrophically bad publicity for the denomination. Any criminal charges involving individuals acting on behalf of Bishops Strawn and Marsh would probably destroy the denomination.

So any responsible individuals within the ACA need to conduct a careful review of where the ACA stands regarding two major scandals and its deteriorating legal situation against the St Mary's elected vestry and Fr Kelley. It seems to me that there's still time to make things right, but frankly, not much.

Just sayin'.

The Numbers Don't Add Up

Something's been at the back of my mind since I began wondering how William Lancaster is being paid for his legal work on behalf of Mrs Bush and the ACA. Let's start with an estimate of what the case has cost each side to date. My wife, a retired corporate attorney with experience supervising lawsuits, estimates a cost anywhere between $250,000 and 750,000 for legal work on behalf of the ACA and Mrs Bush to date since mid-2012. This incudes the various legal actions consolidated into the single case that the California appeals court decided in July, as well as the civil action for "theft" against Fr Kelley. For now, we need only say that none of these is resolved, and a good deal of additional work is left to do, which the ACA will need to pay for.

Now let's look at the money available to the St Mary of the Angels parish. I have the numbers as of late 2011, since I was "probationary interim treasurer" at the time. Property rentals from the bank on the corner and after-hours rental of the parking lot amount to about $22,000 per month. Prior to seizure of the parish, the combination of cash offering, pledges, and hall rental for AA groups was about $6,500 per month. Since the ACA-Bush parish closed the premises to AA groups and attendance is presumably much lower, I am assuming that current income from these sources is negligible. So let's put annual income at $264,000.

In addition, as of late 2011, the parish had CDs worth about $225,000. It had a Dodge van, on which it still owed payments. I believe, although this wasn't included in treasurer's reports, that there was a safety deposit box that contained jewelry that had been bequeathed to the parish. I don't know its value. There were also numerous altarpieces, candlesticks, etc, of high value.

Now let's look at expenses exclusive of legal costs. I simply don't know what they're paying anyone now -- for instance, whether Frederick Rivers as "Rector" is being paid. I assume there is no longer a paid music director or choir. However, about $1200 per month was paid for gardening and cleaning, so I'll leave that as an expense, with the understanding that as of August 2014, there may be additional unknown payments to clergy (a supply priest goes for about $200 per Sunday, for instance).

Phone and utilities let's figure at $1600. Insurance let's figure at $2300. I don't know what the parish is paying the diocese and the ACA, but I assume it's something, or they wouldn't have seized the place. Let's figure $1500. Property and unemployment taxes, let's figure $500. Plumbing and electrical repair (it's an old building), $500, excluding emergencies, which, trust me, happen. Church supplies, termite inspection, copier lease, bottled water, organ maintenance, let's call it $700. The Dodge van has been missing for many moons, so leave out the payment, insurance, gas and expenses.

That brings us to $8300 to keep the empty building going. I don't know who's on the payroll as of August 2014, but as of September 1, they're bringing on a Pastor. So we've got a big uncertainty now, and a bigger one next month.

Subtract $8300 monthly expenses from $22,000 monthly income and you get $13,700 potentially available each month to pay legal bills for the period August 2012 to August 2014, assuming no plumbing emergencies, and assuming you aren't paying anyone else, including clergy. Multiply $13,700 by 24 months and you get $328,800. Match this against a middle-of-the-road estimate for legal work over the same period of $500,000. This leaves maybe $150,000 you've got to raise some other way, possibly by cashing CDs, selling the parish van (probably done), selling the jewelry, or selling the odd solid-gold monstrance.

But as of September 1, they're bringing in The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams, MFA to be their Pastor. He's moving from New Hampshire, so you've got his relo expenses to pay. I assume he isn't donating his services -- let's assume you're paying him $6000 per month -- but that leaves out his housing and car allowance. Non-trivial, but we can only guess at the amount. Plus, he's a bishop, so he's going to cost something for frequent travel, quite possibly borne by the parish, since half the diocese's parishes are missions.

It does seem though, that as of August 2014 the parish has probably run through any reserves it could have devoted to legal work to date -- but the legal work isn't done. In the short term, the parish either has to appeal the decision of the California appeals court sending the case back to trial, or it has to undertake the significant new expense of retrying the case. And it still has to go to court to recover the cost of the parish potluck leftovers that Fr Kelley and unnamed other John Does stole.

Where is this money going to come from? Let's say there's another year of legal work at least, or $250,000 -- but now there's only $5000 per month (if that) available to pay for it. We may assume that Mr Lancaster has his own monthly nut to make, so he's going to expect regular payments on his account -- or past a certain point, he won't be able to continue the work. Will Mrs Bush make up the difference? She's good for $30 a week, sorry.

Looking at the numbers, it's hard to avoid thinking the ACA and Mrs Bush were working a Plan B once they couldn't grab the parish in two weeks via the temporary restraining order in May 2012. So OK, they go to trial, they go to appeal, they'll win their appeal, of course, it'll all be wrapped up by August 2014, slam dunk, huh? So we can move Williams out there in September. But then also, the Kelley trial for the stolen potluck leftovers keeps getting moved back, so they've got to keep paying Lancaster on that one, too. I have a feeling they need a Plan C now, but I suspect they're in denial.

Should the ACA and Mrs Bush lose their cases, which is around a 50-50 probability, and if the Bush group sold valuable parish assets like jewelry or altar furnishings, Mrs Bush, an octogenarian, could wind up in a substantial legal tangle for theft, though she would not be the only party. Is the ACA seriously contemplating this outcome?

I have the impression that responsible parties at the ACA look in on this blog. Maybe they should take this post to heart. Someone -- Mr Lancaster or his legal factor -- may be coming after the ACA itself for serious money before long. And if the ACA loses its cases, that could be even more. A number of clerical observers have warned other ACA parishes that if the ACA could try to seize St Mary of the Angels, it could try to seize your parish, too -- and Fathers, wardens, vestrymen, if they need money, this means your parish.

So Did Anthony Morello Ever Get A Background Check?

The problem of Robert William Bowman's apparent lack of a background check leads me to the question of his predecessor at All Saints Fountain Valley. This is what we know about the late Anthony Morello:

• His ordination was recognized by The Episcopal Church because he had attended seminary in the Philippines and was ordained in the Philippine Independent Church, which is in communion with other churches in the Anglican Communion, including The Episcopal Church. However, Morello and an associate, James Barlow, were by Barlow's account the only non-Filipinos ever ordained in the PIC.
• He served for three or four years as Vicar of St Luke's Episcopal mission in Fontana, CA, but was removed for unknown reasons by Episcopal Bishop Borsch. He then went to the then-Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. I'm told that there were unusual restrictions in his letters dimissory.
• Morello became Vicar of St Dunstan's mission in Modesto, CA. While there, he divorced his wife and married another woman whose children he had been counseling, an ethical violation. He later divorced that wife and remarried his first wife. The scandal of his ethical violation caused dissent in the parish that, by his account, resulted in the closure of the mission.
• Morello was then, either informally or by revocation of his license to preach, told by then Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin John-David Schofield to leave the diocese. I've been told that the only reason Morello wasn't deposed as a priest was that his health was poor, and when he left San Joaquin, it was felt that he was near death. (Morello was morbidly obese and had to carry an oxygen tank with him in a cart. He was so fat, I'm told, that he could not fit in the St Mary of the Angels pulpit.)
• Morello claimed an apparently non-existent PhD.
• In spite of this record, Morello apparently ingratiated himself with Daren Williams, Rector at the time of All Saints Fountain Valley as well as Bishop of the ACA Diocese of the West, and was hired as an assistant about 2010, at a time when Williams's behavior had reportedly become erratic. On Williams's involuntary retirement, Morello become Rector of the parish.

The ethical violation, the disciplinary or personnel issues in two Episcopal dioceses, and claiming an academic degree that he did not earn would normally disqualify a candidate for nearly any job, and certainly a priest. A source in the ACA Diocese of the Northeast told me, "Within this Diocese of the Northeast, we have a comprehensive policy that mirrors that of the Roman Catholic Dioceses around the nation. Other ACA Dioceses, choose their own policy[.]"

As we've seen, the policy of many Catholic dioceses is to do a criminal background check and check all references. Apparently that is not the policy of the ACA Diocese of the West. What is the policy on references in the ACA Diocese of the West? Does anyone know how to contact Bishop Owen Williams to learn this policy?

Here's Another Potentially Explosive Issue In The ACA

I received an inquiry yesterday that reminded me of another potentially explosive case that the ACA, to my knowledge, has not responded to. I think it's time to raise this one in public. Last October I received an e-mail from someone in another part of the country who apparently found my contact on this blog by searching for any information she could find about the ACA and its bishops. I have redacted it and am not including any other references to place:

Dear Mr. Bruce

My assistant here in [redacted] is concerned, because her father, [redacted], was renting from [redacted, an ACA diocesan bishop], and said that He had been made to Sexually abuse [the bishop] at [the bishop's] specific request. Violent pornography against him, [the bishop], was filmed,

[details relating to the bishop's identify redacted]

The Rev. Begged [redacted] to "Chastise Me" if he drank or gambled. He bought paddles for that punishment himself, and asked [redacted] to chastise him.

Please contact me: [redacted]

I contacted the individual and provided the mailing address of The Rt Rev Brian Marsh, with the recommendation that she make the complaint in writing, certified mail, return receipt requested. I also recommended that she contact an attorney, and depending on the specific circumstances, law enforcement. I received a reply giving some additional details of the abuse, including filming certain actions, with a promise to contact Marsh. I've received no further updates. There has been no change in status among the ACA diocesan bishops since that time.

At the time, I felt it was the complainant's responsibility to contact Marsh, and I did not pursue this myself, because it involved an area outside my direct concern. However, given the ACA's lack of response to repeated notification that an ACA priest has had an arrest for child pornography, I decided it may be necessary to take my own action to be sure this report is appropriately investigated.

I have recently had an opportunity to forward this information to responsible parties in the ACA that can bypass Presiding Bishop Marsh.

The ACA Diocese of the West Used to do Background Checks

Here's what I think happened, based largely on comments by informed observers over a 3-year period. If anyone has corrections or clarifications to this record, I will greatly appreciate them.

Fr William Bower, the Rector of the ACA parish St Columba's Anglican Church, Lancaster, CA, operates several businesses, including W Bower & Associates and CIC, that specialize in tenant screening and background checks. I've been told that when Fr Kelley was hired as Rector of St Mary of the Angels in 2007, he had to provide his personal information to Fr Bower, who did a thorough check. Isn't this interesting? The ACA-DOW had a serious adult on the inside who ran real businesses and could do background checks -- just pick up the phone. But by 2013, it hired a priest with a child pornography arrest on his record, apparently with no check. Fr Bower was presumably still available.

What happened? It looks like this is tied up with the whole unhappy story of the ACA-TAC following Anglicanorum coetibus. By 2010, then-ACA Bishop of the West Daren Williams was expressing intractable opposition to the ACA's entry to the US Ordinariate, which the TAC bishops originally petitioned for in 2007 -- recall that the Portsmouth Letter requested union with Rome without reservation, on Rome's terms. But Williams and most other ACA bishops had changed their minds soon enough and were actively discouraging pro-Ordinariate sentiments among the ACA rank and file, to the point that Williams inhibited at least one deacon who had been ordained into the ACA with the specific intent of joining the Ordinariate when it was erected.

Faced with this opposition and the active retaliation against those in the ACA who had in good faith followed the original guidance of their bishops, John Hepworth set up the Patrimony of the Primate as a way to protect pro-Ordinariate parishes from the retaliation of the now anti-Ordinariate bishops. Among the parishes that joined the Patrimony in early 2011 were St Mary of the Angels and St Columba's Lancaster. Fr Bower of St Columba's participated in several meetings at St Mary of the Angels in 2010 to assist that parish in determining its direction, and many in the parish still have very good feelings toward him.

Rome and Msgr Steenson are partly to blame for what happened next. While Rome had made it plain that it had every intention of erecting a US Ordinariate, this was not done until January 1, 2012, and the specifics of how this would be implemented were largely unknown. Thus, the ACA parishes in the Patrimony had a year to hang in limbo, under a vague assumption that when the Ordinary was designated, things would work out all right -- but in the meantime, those on the inside were making things up as they went along. Up through Decemnber 2011, Fr Bower and many other Patrimony clergy were proceeding on the assumption that they would become Catholic priests in due course, based on the vague announcements that had been made to date.

Meanwhile, the ACA outside the Patrimony had essentially determined that those who went into the Patrimony had abandoned communion. The parishes had left their dioceses and gone into the Patrimony. Presumably this was when the ACA Diocese of the West decided not to use any longer Fr Bower's services in checking backgrounds, but Bishop Daren Williams had already retired under pressure a few months before the Patrimony was set up. Thus a policy vacuum arose, which was less important, since far fewer priests were coming into the diocese. Still, one wonders if a background check was ever done on Anthony Morello -- he had been removed from parish work by two Episcopal Church bishops, and he had an ethical-marital scandal in the public record from his time in Modesto.

By early 2012, the Ordinariate had begun to clarify its position on who would be ordained to the Catholic priesthood. Those who would not qualify now included anyone who had unresolved disciplinary issues in another denomination. The version I heard about Fr Bower was that he was originally ordained in an Anglican-rite Orthodox denomination, which, as Orthodox denominations apparently do, held him apostate for one or another reason. It refused to lift the disciplinary sanction, and thus Fr Bower and his parish were no longer deemed qualified for admission to the Ordinariate. Frankly, I have the impression that Fr Bower is a solid guy, which is also to say a devout and conscientious priest, and this was simply a great loss to the Ordinariate, although by no means the only one.

Fr Bower then applied, with his parish, for readmission to the ACA Diocese of the West. I think in hindsight it would have been wiser for them to pause and stay independent for some period of discernment, but this wasn't done for whatever reason. I'm told that Stephen Strawn, who had become episcopal visitor to the ACA-DOW following Daren Williams's sudden retirement, did not make readmission easy -- understandable, given the hostility of the ACA bishops to the Patrimony and anyone wishing to go into the Ordinariate. And let's face it, Strawn is made from different stuff than Bower, and Strawn knew it.

By this point, Anthony Morello had become Strawn's Canon to the Ordinary. I'm told that Bower responded to this by simply not returning Morello's calls. (Had Bower done his own background check?) It appears that the relationship between Bower and the new DOW hierarchy has been strained, to say the least. One result may be that Frederick Rivers, Vicar General since the passing of Morello, did not wish to deal with Bower either, although it would certainly have been in his interest, and that of the DOW rank and file, to do so. Thus Robert William Bowman, who likes kiddie porn, becomes an ACA priest with trusted access to children.

This is something I saw in corporate environments: the usual jerks take control in the division. Down in the cubes are a few people who still know what they're doing. The jerks think this way: if we let them in on the project, they'll take control, because they know what they're doing. We have to keep them out of the loop. Then we'll get the credit when our project comes in successfully! Result: nobody checks with the few competent people who could help, and everything goes crashing down.

Anyone else seen this before?

E-Mail to Fountain Valley Police

I sent the following e-mail to Chief Dan Llorens of the Fountain Valley Police:

Robert William Bowman is interim priest at All Saints Anglican Church at 18082 Bushard St, Fountain Valley, CA 92708 (714) 963-3801

Bowman was arrested by Los Angeles police in 2009 on child pornography charges. http://www.ocregister.com/articles/bowman-168221-home-church.html He was fired by another church in Santa Ana, as well as by a school where he was headmaster, at the time of the arrest. However, it appears that he is trying to get back into a position of trust and has been hired by another church.

I have repeatedly notified the church authorities ever since learning of the arrest in April 2014, without success. Bowman is still at the church. Any assistance you can provide will be most helpful.

Bowman’s supervisor is Rev Frederick Rivers, 8433 N 12th Steet Phoenix, AZ 85020 602-870-3638

I have repeatedly tried to contact Rivers over this matter without success.

Who Controls the ACA's Assets?

I mentioned a post yesterday on the Freedom for St Mary's site, where the Armchair Detective ruminates:

[T]he Los Angeles Superior Court was informed at the State Mandated Case Settlement Conference by Marilyn Bush (and Fred Rivers and Lancaster & Anastasia) that Marilyn Bush (and Fred Rivers) appear to now enjoy full decision making authority over ALL the assets and liabilities of both the Oregon Diocese of the West Corporation and the Florida Anglican Church in America Corporation. (This is as well as authority over all the liabilities claimed from the actions taken against the Saint Mary of the Angels California Corporation, as the projected deep pockets for the rump TAC.)

As always (except when I’m consulting in Paris) the ArmChair Detective often finds out the most by examining a money trail. Clearly, here is control of assets and money.

I checked with another party who was at the conference, and his assumption, apparently shared by others who were there (including, apparently, the judge) was simply that Mrs Bush and Frederick Rivers were swearing falsely -- they did not actually have any authority over ACA assets, because they had been instructed not to negotiate. Mrs Bush is a useful idiot here, while Frederick Rivers is a dangerous incompetent. Brian Marsh would have put a chimpanzee in that conference if it had been able to raise its right hand -- no settlement was intended, and neither had the authority to do anything but tell a few lies on Marsh's behalf.

But the Armchair Detective raises a worthwhile point: who controls the assets of the ACA and DOW, such as they are? The first question is what are the assets, and they aren't much. The Florida Anglican Church in America Corporation, insofar as I can see, owns no property, because, as the ACA is constituted, parishes own their individual properties through local corporations as the rector, wardens, and vestry of such-and-such. This was set up deliberately at the formation of the ACA to avoid the potential for situations like The Episcopal Church seizing the properties of breakaway parishes.

The ACA's predecessor Anglican Catholic Church, and the ACA itself, like The Episcopal Church before them, have nevertheless tried to seize St Mary's property. TEC and the ACC have already lost that one, and it isn't looking good for the ACA, which has learned that this is a long and expensive fight. The ACA would have just as hard a time trying to seize the assets of any other parish -- but as far as I can tell, St Mary of the Angels is by far the most valuable asset the ACA has ever had, even though legally it's never quite had it, as it doesn't quite have any other property. So basically, the assets that Bush and Rivers would control, even if they were not lying under oath, would be the corporate seals and some bank accounts for payroll and expenses. And that's about it.

Why does this matter? Remember that a very rough handicap puts the ACA's chances of keeping control of the St Mary's property at no better than 50-50. Throughout this fight, Mr Lancaster's strategy, in both the seizure of the parish and the civil action against Fr Kelley, has been to keep the facts of the case out of court. If a judge or jury rules on the facts, it's very bad for the ACA.

If the dice come up in the ACA's favor, well and good, the ACA plunders the parish, Marsh and the bishops go off on more "ecclesiastical" cruises to the Mediterranean, and life is good. If the dice go the other way and the St Mary's elected vestry prevails, you have a different situation. Either the elected vestry sues the ACA for assets that were plundered while the court cases were under way, including any legal fees paid to Lancaster, or Lancaster's legal factor goes after the ACA for the million dollars or more the ACA would now owe for the losing battle.

The ACA does not have a million dollars if it loses St Mary of the Angels as an ATM. As a last ditch effort, it may try to seize other parishes -- remember that the guy who originated this strategy is Stephen Strawn, and he tried it in Texas before he tried it at St Mary's. There is no reason to think he and the ACA would not try this again. Take a parish, foster dissent, gain control of a vestry, have the vestry declare itself a mission, and the parish's assets are controlled by the bishop. Bishop decides to close the mission and takes the remaining assets for the public good and the survival of the ACA. Real simple, but you'd have to do it a bunch of times to pay what you owe.

The ACA's parishes are set up, though, to allow them to leave the denomination. If you leave don't go to the APA, since that merger is under way.

Another question: how Lancaster is paid here is purely speculative. He may or may not have sold his ability to collect on legal fees to a legal factor, and we don't know the terms of any such agreement, if it exists. But let's wonder if Lancaster collateralized his future payments via an assurance that the ACA, if it lost, would have the deep pockets to pay the factor back. If that were the case, it would be fraud.

There is major, major downside for Lancaster, Marsh, and the rest of the ACA here.

A Few More Updates

In April, I posted some updates on the St Mary of the Angels legal and ecclesiastical situation. I can add some additional changes. The main one is that Fr Kelley's trial on civil theft charges, originally scheduled for this month, has been moved at least to October 2014, due to the California appeals court reversing Judge Linfield's trial court ruling that he couldn't interfere in the ACA's ecclesiastical isdsue regarding the control of the St Mary's parish. The reason for this is presumably so that, if that case goes back to trial, the control of the parish could return to the elected vestry and Fr Kelley, leaving Mrs Bush and the ACA without standing to sue Fr Kelley for "theft".

It's worth repeating that the only evidence that's come out so far in pre-trial proceedings that Fr Kelley has stolen anything was Mr Lancaster's motion for summary judgment against Fr Kelley based on the assertion that Fr Kelley had stolen leftovers from parish potlucks, thus reducing his grocery bill. Other courts, including the California appeals court, have noted that there is no evidence of any financial irregularity on Fr Kelley's part.

Another issue that's been at the back of my mind since I attended the oral arguments at the appeals court is how Mr Lancaster is being paid. When Anthony Morello and Stephen Strawn called a parish meeting (with less than a day's notice) on May 26, 2012, after seizing the parish, my wife asked during the meeting who was paying for the legal work. My wife reported that Morello was not pleased about the question and spoke vaguely that "private funding" was involved.

Possibly. But more than two years later, William H Lancaster and his partner, Damon Anastasia, are still on the case. Lancaster, let's recall, was fired as a partner from a prestige law firm in 2009 after a malpractice suit. If you google "William Lancaster attorney Los Angeles", the first three hits that come up are to his firm's web site, a news article about Lancaster's firing, and the link to my blog's discussion of Lancaster's history. (Hint to Mr Lancaster: there are people who can get rid of bad google hits like these, or at least bury them way down on the list, but they do charge to do this, and there may be situations they can't fix.) I went to the Lancaster & Anastasia web site, and although there is a page for "News", the only item on it is from 2011: they'd moved their office. (I haven't checked to see if this is just a mail drop.)

The problem I can see is that anyone who hires an attorney for the kind of case Lancaster handles is going to google the guy and check references. When two of the first three hits that come up on google are that bad, anyone with any sense is going to decide Lancaster isn't the only attorney in LA and go elsewhere. So, watching Lancaster wearing the same suit he wore at the 2012 trial in the 2014 oral arguments, I started wondering how many other clients Lancaster has. My wife, a retired attorney, thinks the St Mary of the Angels litigation is a full-time gig. In other words, Lancaster, as far as I can speculate, has no other clients, and he's billing full time to Mrs Bush and the ACA. Or maybe him and Lancaster both, huh?

In my wife's estimate, billing for two years of legal work, full time, on the St Mary of the Angels case has got to be into many hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly closing in on a million. With the St Mary's assets tied up in litigation, it's unlikely that the money is coming from the parish. But Lancaster has five kids to put through college and a lifestyle to support. How is he being paid? Mrs Bush lives in a fancy penthouse condo, but I guarantee you, I was the parish treasurer, and she ain't that keen on church work. Candles, yes, lawyers, no (sorry, Marilyn, you know what you did to earn this.) If she ever fronted Lancaster any money, it wasn't for long.

So how is Lancaster being paid? Here's one possibility:

Banks and credit unions will often refuse to advance funds to attorneys and law firms because attorneys frequently have very little physical collateral; legal funding is a viable alternative that exists specifically to advance capital to attorneys. Legal lenders will have comparatively higher interest rates than banks or credit unions, but this expense is usually offset by the application, which is fined-tuned specifically for attorneys, and a faster distribution rate. Legal funding has developed into a viable industry that advances capital to attorneys and law firms who would be denied by traditional lenders.

But here's the problem: the St Mary's case has dragged on for two years, with no end in sight. They're even having a hard time going after Fr Kelley for the potluck leftovers he "stole"! Remember that the ACA thought they were going to seize the parish in May 2012; the temporary restraining order was just a formality, and Judge Jones was going to award it to them permanently two weeks afterward. Right. If Lancaster is getting advances on this thing from a legal factor, the legal factor is almost certainly starting to see that the ACA, Mrs Bush, and Mr Lancaster have at best -- at best -- a 50-50 chance of winning their case. If they lose control of the parish, they won't have the parish property to plunder, and that possibility is long overdue anyhow.

What's going on? I think there may be an answer on the Freedom for St Mary's site, which I hadn't thought about until recently.

Inquiry

I placed the following inquiry on the St Mary of the Angels contact page, giving my e-mail and phone number for any reply:

Robert W Bowman is interim priest at St Mary's neighbor ACA parish, All Saints Fountain Valley. Bowman was arrested in 2009 on child pornography charges, something noted in several newspapers at the time. However, Bowman was hired as a priest by the ACA DOW in 2013, and he is still interim priest at All Saints Fountain Valley. I notified the ACA of Bowman's arrest in April 2014, but it has taken no apparent action over Bowman. Normal church practice in protecting children is to require background checks for all priests, employees, and volunteers. Clearly the ACA is not doing this. What is Bishop Williams's position on this? What actions will he take to assure prospective St Mary's parishioners that their children will be safe, if he hasn't taken any measures to do this up to now at All Saints Fountain Valley? Has Bishop Williams himself ever submitted to a background check?

Last week I was contacted by a newspaper reporter asking for information on St Mary's, who noted that although the parish has a phone number on its site, it doesn't pick up or return calls. I assume I will not receive a reply. If I do, I will post it here.

UPDATE: I sent a copy of this message to the e-mail address of Williams's current parish, Trinity Pro-Cathedral in Rochester, NH. I got the following failure notice:

Sorry, we were unable to deliver your message to the following address.

tac@metrocast.net:
Remote host said: 550 5.1.1 ... User Unknown [RCPT_TO]

Oh, right, the parish e-mail contact for the ACA-DONE Pro-Cathedral is out of order. These people are not adults.

What I Learned at Virtus Training -- II

Let's take a moment to review some of the main points covered in the Catholic Church's Virtus materials. I would call Virtus a very good standard for the 21st century for ordinary prudence in protecting children in a church environment. I would also stress that if ordinary prudence is not followed, there are clearly people everywhere who will do all they can to gain unsupervised access to children, and without ordinary care, they will gain it. Robert Bowman is one example.

Under "Tools for Controlling Access to Children", we find in part:

• Communicate the Church's commitment to keeping children safe.
• Use written, standard employment and volunteer applications.
• Require fingerprinting with subsequent arrest reports of all clergy and staff and those volunteers that supervise children.
• Complete face-to-face interviews.
• Check all references.

The ACA clearly does not follow anything like these guidelines. Parents need to be aware of this. ACA clergy, bishops, standing committee, and vestry members need to be aware of this and insist that all dioceses and parishes follow guidelines like these. Will this happen? I doubt it.

I sent the following e-mail to Presiding Bishop Grundorf of the APA:

Bishop Grundorf, I’m forwarding this to you [an e-mail to Marsh regarding Robert W Bowman] after prayerful reflection so that you might be aware of a problem in the ACA that could reflect on your intercommunion. It appears that the ACA either does not do the most basic background checks on its priests, or if it is aware of things like child pornography arrests, it ignores them. Naturally, if the APA recognizes the ordinations or licenses of ACA priests, it simply takes over this problem for itself. You have no assurance that any ACA priest has had an adequate background check.

I hope you will assist Presiding Bishop Marsh in recognizing the very serious nature of this problem. I would stress that I have contacted both Marsh and the Vicar General of the diocese to notify them of this issue several months ago and received no reply.

We Finally Have A Profile

for The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams, something I've been asking for ever since he was named diocesan visitor to the ACA Diocese of the West -- in other words, a year ago. To be noted: he has a BA and an MFA, but not an MDiv. In general, the details correspond to what I could surmise from the limited available information: having attended the spoiled-rich-kid Harvard School in the Valley, what you would expect from the son of an Episcopal rector, he then proceeded to underachieve through much of his adulthood, having apparently spent some time as a ski bum, something I also surmised due to his residence in Granby, Colorado in the 1990s.

Then, as he arrived in middle age, he turned up at St Mark's Portland, where he appears to have ingratiated himself with the abrasive "Bishop" Robin Connors, who by one account from that time reeked of alcohol before noon mass, by another from the same period spoke frequently of how fond he was of vodka-with-grapefruit-juice. That Connors, a Louis Falk protégé who was forced out amid controversy as ACA Bishop of the West soon after ordaining Williams a priest, was responsible for his priestly formation is not a recommendation. Why would anyone want to go near Robin Connors? Couldn't he have done anything better?

Perhaps we finally have a profile for the man -- something every diocese is entitled to, and which it's taken a year to obtain -- because I've been noting its absence. What I'd like to know now is when he learned of Robert W Bowman's arrest for child pornography, what he did when he learned of it, and why Bowman has continued as an "interim priest" under his supervision.

"Bishop" Williams?

J'accuse

Let's look at the facts we know here. The big one, the indisputable one, is that the ACA hired Robert William Bowman, a man with a 2009 arrest for child pornography on his record, as "interim priest" at All Saints Anglican Fountain Valley, CA. He has remained in that position for well over a year. In April 2014, I happened to google the name Robert W Bowman, and one of the top links that came up in the search was a newspaper article covering the child pornography arrest. I contacted several people familiar with Bowman and established that this is the same person. I promptly notified Brian Marsh, Presiding Bishop of the ACA, and Frederick Rivers, Vicar General of the ACA Diocese of the West and self-designated Rector of All Saints Anglican Fountain Valley, CA of the newspaper articles covering the arrest. They made no reply, and Bowman remained in his position as "interim priest", with trusted access to parishioners and their children. There can be no disputing any of these facts.

Now we can move to informed speculation. I have simply got to assume that no background or reference check of any sort was made on Bowman prior to the hiring decision, or at any other time between his hiring and when I notified the ACA of the arrest in April 2014. A reference check to his previous parish, St Luke's REC Santa Ana, CA, would presumably have brought out the fact that Bowman was immediately terminated there (per news reports) following his arrest. So nobody bothered to call St Luke's! (St Luke's did shut down in 2012, but someone should have insisted that Bowman provide contacts for former wardens, vestry, or other parishioners, and an unwillingness to do so should have stopped all negotiations. For that matter, minimal work with Google would have brought up some of those names without Bowman providing them, since I could easily find them myself.)

Where was Frederick Rivers, who as Rector of the parish would have made the hiring decision? Well, among other things, he was 76 years old and an absentee. In his own rambling account of his priesthood, he notes that he doesn't put much stock in seminaries, although he's the vocations director of his diocese. This would be comical, but fall-down drunks can be comical until they get into a car and start driving. This is something a little beyond dereliction of duty.

Where was the All Saints Fountain Valley vestry? Didn't any of them make the due diligence step of asking for a reference at St Luke's or googling the guy? I assume they allowed themselves to be charmed by a psychopath. All the more reason for churches to be very, very careful, and all the more reason to point out that the vestry also fell down, very seriously, in its responsibilities.

Where was The Rt Rev Brian Marsh, Presiding Bishop of the ACA and, at the time of Bowman's hire, episcopal visitor to the ACA Diocese of the West? He presumably knew, or should have known, that Rivers, his Vicar General as well as Rector of All Saints Fountain Valley, was 76 years old, unqualified to be a priest under normal criteria, almost certainly retired-on-the-job, and none too bright. Didn't he have a responsibility to supervise what was taking place on his watch?

Where was The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams, after August 2013 episcopal visitor to the ACA Diocese of the West? When I informed the ACA of Bowman's arrest in April 2014, this should have gone immediately to Williams. Oddly, there is no contact information for Williams anywhere on any ACA site, either for his current parish in New Hampshire, the Diocese of the Northeast, where he is suffragan, or the Diocese of the West, where he is episcopal visitor. Given the quality of the individuals involved here, I can't make any assumption that anyone passed my notification to the ACA on to Williams. But following my notification in April 2014, Williams made no reply. As of today, Bowman's profile remains as clergy on the All Saints Anglican Fountain Valley web site.

St Luke's REC terminated Bowman immediately after his arrest. This was an entirely appropriate action. The ACA should have taken the same action immediately on learning of the arrest -- but its hiring process had been so slipshod that minimal checks, not even a phone call, just a Google search, would have told them about the arrest even before they made any hiring decision.

This all goes a little beyond dereliction of duty. But it appears there's more.

What I Learned at Virtus Training -- I

My Catholic parish announced it was short of ushers and put out a call for volunteers. I'd been wondering how I might become more active anyhow, and I had experience ushering at various Episcopal parishes, so I signed up. I discovered the process was involved: I needed to be fingerprinted and have a background check, and I needed to attend Virtus training. While Episcopal and Anglican ushers, at least in my experience, don't get background checks, the logic is compelling. A child can wander out of mass unaccompanied by a parent (a dumb parent, as the trainer pointed out) in search of the rest room. The church needs to be sure an usher is the sort of person who on one hand won't use the opportunity to molest the child, and on the other, will recognize the need to keep the kid safe and under some sort of watch.

The training outlined the facts that many of us know if we've stayed informed: there are people who will go to great lengths to work themselves into positions of trust where they can have unsupervised access to children for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Once they develop a successful pattern, they will keep at it for decades, or until they're arrested. The occupations where this is a potential problem include priests, teachers, coaches, counselors, and babysitters, but relatives, neighbors, and friends can also molest children in home environments.

The Catholic Church began to experience this problem beginning at least in the 1950s, and after considerable struggle, began to address it systematically after 2000. One result is Virtus training for employees and volunteers. The class is very well-presented, with a competent trainer. I've got to say that I've come to expect this standard of excellence from every Catholic institution I've run into. Unfortunately, one effect of it was to turn my stomach at what happens in the real world (the trainer said this is deliberate, and recognized that some people may need to leave the room briefly to regain their composure).

The bottom line is that the class is about evil and the works of the Enemy. They don't say this directly, but clearly that's what the whole thing is about. The purpose of the class is to outline specific actions that parishes, parish employees, and volunteers must take to remove opportunities for this particular evil in their environments, as well as to stress constructive attitudes and the need for vigilance.

A slightly wider topic that came to my mind, since I'd recently learned of "Bishop" Martin Sigillito, is the duty of the Church, and the Christians in it, to protect other vulnerable groups in its care. Not for nothing is Christ the Good Shepherd. The elderly, those with special needs, and well-intentioned but naïve or lonely people are also vulnerable to sexual exploitation as well as more general con artists.

There was some opportunity for small-group discussion in the class. I was so disturbed by what I'd run into about Robert William Bowman, Interim Priest at ACA's All Saints Fountain Valley parish, with a 2009 arrest for child pornography on his record but still in a position of trust with access to children in 2014, that I brought it up. I'd e-mailed Frederick Rivers, the Vicar General of the ACA Diocese of the West, via his parish, and Brian Marsh, Presiding Bishop of the ACA via the ACA contact form, and had heard nothing back, with Bowman still at that parish.

I told the group it was my former denomination, I'd become Catholic via RCIA, but I was still very, very upset about the situation. Several of them turned to me and asked, pointedly, "And what are you going to do about it?" After all, we were in a class where this is important. When children are taught in Catholic education about the issue, they're told that if it happens to them, they must tell someone in authority. If they don't listen, tell someone else, until someone listens.

Another Footnote on the Real Dangers in "Continuing Anglicanism"

A visitor sent me a link to the story of yet another Anglican "bishop", Martin Sigillito, who passed himself off as "Presiding Bishop" of the "American Anglican Convocation". This is not the same as the more reputable Convocation of Anglicans in North America, and it does not appear on the list of churches "not in communion" with the See of Canterbury on the Anglicans Online web site.

In 2012,

A federal jury returned a guilty verdict for Sigillito on April 13 on 20 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering in his trial for a massive real estate Ponzi scheme that swindled investors out of more than $56 million.

Sigillito's story was recently covered in an episode of CNBC's American Greed. As far as I can tell from the various news sources, although Sigillito had a wealthy lifestyle, he presided only over a single mission parish with Sunday services at Ambruster-Donnelly Mortuary in Richmond Heights, Missouri. He apparently used this parish as one place to identify and recruit his marks. I am unable to determine where he attended seminary, what bishop ordained him in which denomination, or other details of his clerical career. A person interviewed in the link above said,

"He puts himself out there as this sort of trustworthy bishop figure," says Sebastian Rucci, the Ohio lawyer behind one of the civil suits. "I wouldn't trust a thing that guy says, even if his tongue were notarized."

Frankly, if I had anything to do with the ACA, I'd be asking many, many questions about the Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams -- and for that matter, I'd be running real fast in the opposite direction from anyone claiming to be a "continuing" Anglican bishop. The fact is that the very nature of the "continuum" -- scores of tiny splinter denominations, "bishops" and "priests" with nonexistent qualifications, tiny parishes meeting in funeral homes -- makes it prime territory for con artists. Which, of course, is another way of saying it's a target-rich environment for the Enemy.