What About The ACA Bishops? -- III

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

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

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

Many thanks for your attention to this matter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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