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.
