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?
