The Missed Opportunity -- VI

Let me get one of the bigger bees in my bonnet out of the way now. St Mary of the Angels Hollywood is an important parish. It's been important as a bellweather since the 1970s. Of the issues that observers were watching in the runup to the US Ordinariate, what would happen to St Mary's was one of the big ones. What's happened so far, in addition to how David Moyer and the Newman Fellowship were treated, has been one of the big indicators that have led observers to feel the Ordinariate has been a disappointment.

Hollywood is a sophisticated place, with capable, intelligent people, some of whom are Catholics, or want to be. If you try to play games with capable, intelligent people, you risk disaster, which is the big error the ACA made in trying to play games with the parish. St Mary of the Angels is not a Plumstead Episcopi, a place where Steenson and Hough can deposit some favored mediocrity. It is definitely not the place for them to try to park Andrew Bartus. I speak here only as an informed observer, but one who has a good sense of what will never play. Let's keep this in the background from here on out.

But why did Houston, figuratively speaking, stop answering the phone from St Mary's after January 2012? The answer was partly the letter (my wife calls it "the ka-ka letter", probably the best term for it), which as I understand it was about 40 pages of rambling, ungrammatical and misspelled allegations against Fr Kelley. No one connected with the elected vestry, and not Fr Kelley, has ever seen it, so I can only surmise its contents. Apparently the ka-ka letter was enough to stall the process of joining the Ordinariate for the parish.

My surmise is this: we already know the Bush group has difficulty with spelling, grammar, and other indications of ordinary adulthood. Until it was pointed out, they styled St Mary's an "Angelican" parish. Their calendar errors are legion. I assume the ka-ka letter included the allegations against Fr Kelley that were contained in the charges brought against him in the ACA's "court", as well as the allegations of "misconduct" made to the California unemployment board. We know that these allegations were impossible as described and counterfactual. LA Superior Court Judge Jones reviewed them and found them unsubstantiated. The California unemployment board reviewed them and said there was not "a shred" of evidence to support them.

Nevertheless, based on the explanation Msgr Stetson gave a parish meeting in January 2012, Louis Falk felt they were important enough to pass on to Cardinal Wuerl in late 2011, and Wuerl felt they were important enough to pass on to Steenson. I'm scratching my head. Fr Z's advice for those appealing to bishops is not to have s single exclamation point in one's correspondence. I would guess that, at minimum, the ka-ka letter had quite a few.

In the real world, where my wife dealt with things like sexual harassment complaints, adults have to conduct an investigation and determine the credibility of charges. The responsibility of the Ordinariate, if only the responsibility of a Christian to act justly, was to investigate these complaints, determine their credibility, and act accordingly. Those connected with the Bush group had been making similar complaints to David Moyer when he was ordinary to the parish. Moyer made at least two trips to Hollywood in 2011 to investigate them and appears to have come to the same conclusion that every other responsible party has come to since: they were at best too vague to act on, but also illogical and wildly counterfactual.

This was a pastoral issue. There was a hard core of nut-job troublemakers in the parish. My guess is that Steenson wanted a Plumstead Episcopi, not a pastoral problem, and he punted. The result was what we've seen. This project isn't going to succeed any better in 2015 or 2016 than it did in 2012 if all Steenson and Hough want from the parish is a Plumstead Episcopi.

The Missed Opportunity -- V

By now, I assume that someone from Houston, unable to restrain himself further, will burst out, "All right, Mr Bruce, you may have scored a point or two with your silly rant, and we'll take what you say under advisement. But you've clearly got a bee in your bonnet over something here. You're unhappy about the St Mary of the Angels situation, that's clear enough. But surely you understand that we can take no action until all the lawsuits are resolved. And maybe we didn't handle everything right in 2012, but we were all new to this then, and what's done is done. Anyway, every one of us has a full time job elsewhere in the Church. We aren't paid a penny for what we do in the Ordinariate. So what do you expect us to do now? Quit complaining and move on with your own Lenten observance."

My reaction to that hypothetical observation is twofold, pastoral responsibility and whether the Ordinariate can keep its word. It will take more than one post to address everything. Also, I'm not speaking for the parish, the elected vestry, or Fr Kelley, but only as an informed observer and a Catholic friend.

But let's start with basic pastoral responsibility, and this applies to every parishioner of the Ordinariate, current or potential, not just St Mary of the Angels. I wasn't aware that Msgr Steenson, Fr Hough, or anyone else from (figuratively) Houston had taken on the Ordinariate as a hobby. If they have, there's been a major misunderstanding, and I'll continue with the prayers and sacraments with real pastors at my local parish, wish the Houston guys luck with their hobby, and say good-bye. But if that's the case, Msgr Steenson may also wish to consider retirement if he's unable to exercise his responsibilities as current and potential members may expect him to.

The position -- which I've heard as recently as the day before yesterday -- that the Ordinariate can't do anything more until all the lawsuits are resolved strikes me, first, as a belated excuse for a situation that was badly bungled from the start. St Mary of the Angels was told in December 2011 that it would be received into the Ordinariate on the first Sunday in January 2012. The first lawsuit wasn't filed until mid-May 2012. The Ordinariate had over four months to resolve the situation -- the most generous explanation for how it used that time was to procrastinate and dither.

But it's starting to look like the lawsuits may actually be resolved in the foreseeable future. I can understand (partly) that the Ordinary was not designated until January 2012 (although it was known, probably by 2005, who he would be), so little planning could take place then. But there's no excuse for not planning now, and I'm not seeing it. One of my problems is that as I look to the rest of the Ordinariate, I'm not getting the impression that anything's changed since 2012.

The parish was told in December 2011 that it would enter the Ordinariate very early in 2012. The explanation was that a Catholic chaplain would serve as pastor until the parish's Anglican clergy could be ordained as Catholic priests. The ACA, by its own statement, had cut the parish loose as of January 1, 2012. Neither the Ordinariate nor the ACA kept its word, and here's the next issue. First the Ordinariate asked for a third (!) vote to enter. Done, it got the vote. But then it simply stopped answering the phone, figuratively speaking. The chaplain, presumably to be Msgr William Stetson, just never showed up to receive us or offer the sacraments.

In fact, the last responsible oversight the parish had was from David Moyer, who in mid-January was still keeping the wolf from the fold by shooing Stephen Strawn away from a meeting with the Bush group. The Ordinariate never stepped in to provide the equivalent protection the parish badly needed, and by April 2012, the ACA had gotten the message: the Ordinariate wasn't going to guard the flock that had been assured it had a shepherd. The wolf moved right in. That still makes me very anxious for my friends' safety.

So there's my first, very basic issue: does anyone from Houston understand what a pastor is? For now, you can replay the same excuses offered above. I'll have more to say tomorrow.

The Missed Opportunity -- IV

On Tuesday I pointed out that in the Ordinariate's own estimation, it has an evangelical mission. But as far as I can see, it's doing very little to carry it out -- it's built a chancery for its one paid employee to handle administrative tasks (minimal as those may be), and it's hard to see what else it's done.

But if Msgr Steenson were ever to take up his evangelical mission, what would he do? Whom would he address? What would he say? I think back to my days teaching rhetoric. The audience he should be spending time with is twofold, at least for a start: those actively seeking out the Ordinariate, which we've discussed, and those who might potentially be persuaded with a little work.

We would also define the second group a little more closely: those already in communities who may choose to come over in a group. That's the point of Anglicanorum coetibus. Of groups, these almost certainly won't be Episcopalians, since TEC will fight to keep parishes and property. Might conceivably happen, or a breakaway group from a TEC parish might want to come in, but still a longshot. Not a good place to spend time and effort right now.

So we're left with "continuing" parishes that might look favorably on the Ordinariate, but didn't come over in the first wave in 2012. What might Msgr Steenson say to them? Well, I think this would be an Aristotelian argument from circumstance, which "argues that what is to be done must be determined by the urgent and clear reality of the situation."

If I were Steenson, I would implicitly address parishes of the ACA, still the largest "continuing" denomination. I would politely suggest that the ACA is, or very soon will be, in crisis due to the consistent poor judgment of its leadership. (How to express this would have to be carefully considered, but there's the circumstance everyone has to address.) Individual parishes and clergy will have to make decisions on where they will go.

Here are the advantages the Ordinariate has to offer:

• Everyone is rightly concerned about a safe environment for worship.
• The Catholic Church has had to take the lead in recognizing problems and setting up policies to resolve them.
• "Continuers" need to be concerned that so many priests and bishops have not been to seminary, have left other denominations under a shadow, and have not had background checks.
• The process of entering the Ordinariate will assure groups that their priests are fully qualified and their backgrounds have been fully checked.
• The Catholic Church takes canon law seriously. It does not tolerate flagrant abuse of the sort that has led to problems in the ACA.
• The Ordinariate is a strong and reputable body.
• Clergy and parishes in the process of discerning what their next steps will be should seriously consider the Ordinariate among their options.
• Here's how. My people will get right on it and get back to you immediately.

If he's worried about poaching parishes, that's ridiculous. The ACA hasn't been especially scrupulous in the St Mary of the Angels situation. And the whole point of Anglicanorum coetibus is about poaching parishes, isn't it?

Naturally, the Ordinariate should also be preaching without words by setting an example of a thriving, growing, reponsive body that isn't corrupt, that makes itself available, easy to find, and easy to deal with, having procedures and policies that are public and consistently followed. So far, of course, this isn't what we're seeing. Steenson, frankly, needs to kick some butts before he could make this appeal credibly.

But Steenson and his people need to be be working to set up the conditions to credibly put this sort of address to the "continuers" into fora like Virtue Online.

Pre-Trial Conference February 25

Yesterday I attended the pre-trial conference in Department 86 of the Los Angeles Superior Court over the Bush group's appeal of the California unemployment board's ruling that Fr Kelley is entitled to unemployment compensation, since there was no evidence of misconduct on his part.

It was a quick conference. Neither side's attorney was present in court; Damon Anastasia called in via conference call. He moved for a continuance, and apparently the state's attorney had already agreed. The basis was that the trial of the other cases, scheduled for April 9 (what I picked up from the conversation), would determine who controls St Mary's, and if the outcome of the trial goes against the Bush group, the unemployment issue will be moot. The judge agreed. If necessary, a new pre-trial conference will be May 27.

Not much was going to be decided in this conference in any case. My biggest concern was that the state's attorney be aware of the other cases, and it's clear he is. My wife thinks the eagerness of Lancaster & Anastasia to punt, and the fact that Number Two was handling it, indicates that the case has fallen in priority as far as they're concerned -- "They've probably written it off," was how she put it.

So the next big event is April 9.

The Missed Opportunity -- III

Let's continue with the idea of making things easy for those who are trying to seek out the Ordinariate. As a result of my appeal the other day, I've received a number of e-mails -- many thanks to everyone. However, I got some priceless information from an anonymous individual who appears to be remarkably well-informed about the Ordinariate.

Regarding the Parish Finder page of the Ordinariate web site, he counts 38 parishes or groups-in-formation. Remarkably, the entries for 19 of them -- exactly half -- contain errors. Some are as major as providing wrong locations or mass times; others have broken links; others have smaller, but still important errors. These are listed below as of yesterday.

My informant appears to be remarkably knowledgeable about what's going on (or isn't) -- some of this information I can't verify, but insofar as I've been able to check it, it's accurate as listed. But even if there are one or two errors in this list, the fact that close to 50% of the entries are inaccurate should be cause for major concern.

• The Anglican Ordinariate Society of the Ozarks does have "a separate Anglican Use Mass", but only quarterly
• The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ottawa has different weekday mass times during Lent
• The Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Church http://www.jhnewman.org/ link broken; has additional mass times in Silverado
• Blessed John Henry Newman Catholic Community Strafford http://www.newmanfelloship.org/ link broken
• The Church of St Michael the Archangel Philadelphia weekday mass locations have changed
• The Church of the Incarnation Orlando 2 weekday mass times are incorrect
• Fellowship of St Alban Rochester NY wrong time and location
• Iglesia Catolica San Agustin Pinecrest FL no web site
• Mt Calvary Church Baltimore has discontinued 4 of the weekday services shown
• Our Lady of Good Counsel Jacksonville FL no web address; the priest was ordained last fall so they have probably moved beyond Morning Prayer on Sunday mornings
• Society of St. Bede the Venerable Collegeville MN Ordinariate site says check parish web site, but this does not exist
• Society of the Good Shepherd Oshawa time is wrong
• St Augustine of Canterbury Oceanside location is wrong
• St Columba's Church Victoria BC weekday information is wrong; there is now a daily mass
• St Gilbert Church Bourne TX no web site
• St John the Evangelist Calgary shows no mass times, only daily offices
• St Luke's Church Bladensburg MD http://stlukesparish-bladensburg.org/ broken link, wrong location on Ordinariate web site
• St Peter the Rock at St Mary the Virgin Arlington TX [UPDATE} An Ordinariate group-in-formation had this name at the Anglican Use parish St Mary the Virgin. However, St Mary the Virgin later entered the Ordinariate, and the St Peter name was dropped. This should have been updated on the Parish Finder page but was not.
• The Fellowship of Our Lady of Walsingham Maple Ridge BC link broken

This is incredibly sloppy work. The few communications I've had with Ordinariate functionaries tend to be interspersed with excuses -- "We're all volunteers", for instance -- but you're volunteers who don't appear to give a flip, frankly. There are volunteers who do things right, everywhere.

In fact, I assume nobody paid my knowledgeable informant who pointed me to this information. How come he got it right and you haven't? Msgr Steenson, Fr Hough, other Houston insiders: shouldn't you have this guy working for you instead of who you have?

Shouldn't you have me involved and on your side, instead of whatever phony is claiming to do your communications work? Oh, wait -- you aren't going to touch St Mary of the Angels. That's fine, there's lots for me to do in LA.

The Missed Opportunity -- II

According to the Ordinariate's Mission page, it has, in part, an evangelical mission:

Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have called the Catholic Church to renew her commitment to the evangelization of the peoples of the world. The Ordinariate will find its very life in this calling. Ordinariate congregations can only grow through the work of evangelization; the Ordinariate exists for those who are and will be coming to the fullness of the Catholic faith.

In a past life, I studied and taught rhetoric, "an art that aims to improve the capability of writers or speakers to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations". It's no coincidence that St Augustine of Hippo was a rhetoric teacher. It's an important evangelical skill. Unfortunately, I see little evidence that anyone connected with the Houston clique knows anything about it.

I think Our Saviour was saying something about audience in the Parable of the Sower (Mark IV: 3-9):

Hearken; Behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the birds of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, some an hundred. He said unto them, He that has ears to hear, let him hear.

When you start to speak or write, you have to have an idea of audience, or in more modern terms, market. Who's going to buy what you're selling? Does Msgr Steenson even have an idea of what his market is like? You can say "Anglicans", but that's a little like trying to sell cars to "drivers". Most Anglicans are happy as bugs where they are. What's probably the biggest and most successful Anglo-Catholic strain is urban, gay-accepting Episcopal parishes. I was a member of one for ten years or so. In my view, the Holy Spirit is present there, and they have their own destinies to work out, but by and large, they're on the same page with present TEC leadership. They aren't going to become Catholic anytime soon.

Then there's the broad spectrum across TEC, ACNA, and some "continuers" -- they may see value in being Protestant and find some aspects of Catholicism even somewhat unpretty or repellent. (There were things I had to get over in my own journey.) They're a hard sell at best. These people might be seen, from the Ordinariate's perspective, as various kinds of unsuitable ground for the sower.

Among other "continuers", there are people who are just plain angry, and their anger is as much anti-Catholic as anti-TEC. These include David Virtue and some "continuers" like Michael Gill. Thorny ground indeed.

There are sentimental Anglo-Catholics who like vestments and trips to Rome, but don't strike me as solid people who can build a community under stress. These include the madwomen who wear velvet hats to church and the guys who used to run Anglo-Catholic cheerleading blogs. I assume the pretty picture of St Peter's on the Ordinariate home page is aimed at this group, and frankly, it's an indication to me of how little the Houston clique understands the market. These people are stony ground without much earth.

On the other hand, I'm drawn to a view that Fr Z frequently puts forward on his blog, where he seems to be on the same page with many conservative US bishops: you won't get far by dumbing things down or preaching to an easy audience. If people are told that doctrine and faith aren't important, they take it to heart, and they quickly find other things to do on Sunday. You need to be sympathetic to the people who take religion seriously.

Indeed, if people are seriously seeking you out, you need to see them as a gift and bring them in. You need to make things easy for this group, because any effort you put in with the others isn't going to pay off. I think Our Lord understood this. Frankly, for now, Msgr Steenson, this is your market. I don't have the impression that you remotely understand this.

More rhetoric class tomorrow.

The Missed Opportunity -- I

Let's take a look at the US Ordinariate's web site. The first thing we see is a pretty picture of the St Peter's dome, with the Tiber in the foreground (but nobody's swimming it). Hey, book for our Mediterranean cruise! Oh, wait, this isn't a cruise line site? There's the first problem. The site's selling a cruise, not pointing the way for disaffected Anglicans. Someone needs to rethink this.

So OK, let's go to the News section and see what's cookin'. Boy, are they ever on top of things! The most recent item is The Ordinary's Easter Letter 2014. We're almost in St Mary of the Angels territory here -- no Advent letter, no Christmas letter from 2014; no Lent letter for this year. Maybe it takes him a whole year to write each Easter letter, huh?

The top photo album is of Fr Cantrell's ordination:

On behalf of the Ordinariate, Bishop Burbridge of the Diocese of Raleigh ordained Fr. William Cantrell on December 7, 2013 at the Cathedral in Raleigh.

And if you go to the Clergy Retreat album, you can see a distant picture of an alligator in a lake near Tampa! Well, what do you expect from the altar guild of the Reformed Province of Maybe Catholic Anglicans? Oh, wait -- this is the real thing? The Ordinariate? Sorry, somehow I didn't catch that. . .

If you overlook the fact that the newest news is nearly a year out of date, what still comes through is how inward-focused the whole site is, and not in a good, Lenten way. The photos are all of clergy or administrative events, like the groundbreaking of the chancery.

A more recent bit of news, probably the biggest in more than a year for those watching the Ordinariate, was the August 17, 2014 reception of the Philadelphia-area Newman Fellowship, including David Moyer, into the Ordinariate. I covered it here as soon as I heard about it, but this was via the grapevine, not via any official Ordinariate source, and certainly not its News page.

Apparently this wasn't important to Steenson, his vicar general, or his crack administrative team. If you want a picture of Steenson, though, you can get one right there!

Er, what message is this sending? As far as I can see, Steenson is the star of this little show, and nobody else is important -- certainly not groups that have struggled for years to form and come in. What's the takeaway for groups like St Mary of the Angels?

Something's got to change.

Whither The Parish? Whither Anglo-Catholicism?

It's Lent, of course, and Fr D stressed in his Ash Wednesday homily that it's a time for introspection and prayerful reflection. This past Advent, Fr M counseled me that I needed to stop feeling bad about sins I committed 50 years ago, a feckless task, and focus on what the Almighty wants me to do now. So I need to look at my strengths and weaknesses, the tools I have available, and how they may suitably be used toward His sometimes inscrutable purposes.

I think that in the fairly short term, St Mary of the Angels will get itself free from the ACA and from the hard-core angry dissidents. I need to think about what my goals will be when that happens. My wife and I became Catholic two years ago come Easter because we looked at our age and the likelihood that it would be a long time before St Mary's could enter the US Ordinariate, if it ever did. Since our chief goal was to become Catholic, having good music or a certain style of mass was secondary. We went in via RCIA.

I haven't spoken with Fr Kelley or the elected vestry about what their plans will be once the legal issues are resolved. I assume the parish's position hasn't changed since its letter to the Holy Father of January 2013. I have no idea what the Ordinariate's position is on this matter.

Since my wife and I became Catholic, we're no longer voting members of the parish in its present form, although we often visit the parish following its Sunday mass and attend many court sessions. I can't offer advice, although my personal view is that moving to any other "continuing Anglican" denomination would be no better than returning to the ACA.

If anyone ever did ask me for advice about going to a "continuing Anglican" church, my answer would be simple: you have no assurance that any priest or bishop has been to seminary. You have no assurance that they weren't thrown out of another denomination for something pretty awful. You have no assurance that they've had an adequate background check. In other words, based on what I've learned, it's reckless and dangerous even to go to a mass there. Period. But especially with children.

And of course, there's the old saying about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

So it would be a worthwhile thing if the parish renewed its effort to enter the Ordinariate, but this depends on the Ordinariate. And this leads me to what I think is a dilemma for Anglo-Catholics: since the hope of Anglicanorum coetibus and the reality of the Ordinariate of the Diocese of Ft Worth and Msgr Steenson, the air pretty quickly went hissing out of that balloon. Someone e-mailed me just the other day basically agreeing with what I've said here: the US Ordinariate is nothing but a clone of half a dozen "continuing" denominations, run by an inner clique, a few dozen widely scattered parishes and missions, not much enthusiasm, not much future.

Andrew Bartus went through a background check, so I'd trust kids with him, but I don't know if I'd stay awake for a homily. And frankly, he wouldn't care, and neither would Steenson, and that's what's important to Bartus. So there's the dilemma. And it's not just a dilemma here in Hollywood.

The Catholic blog I follow is Fr Z. More to focus my mind than expecting an answer (he doesn't seem to answer Ordinariate-related questions, probably for very good reasons), I left the following in the "Ask Father" form:

The Holy Father has asked us to create a stir. There are few places more needful of a prod, perhaps even as a Lenten project, than the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter. Lethargy, thy name is Steenson. How might one best direct efforts in this direction?

Maybe this is the direction I need to take now with this blog, but I don't kid myself it will be anything like easy. If anyone has insights into how one might proceed to "create a stir" or "make a mess" (depending on how you translate the Holy Father's words) as it relates to the US Ordinariate, my e-mail is on the right.

So What Do They Have In Mind?

Of course, Kremlinology is a waste of time with the ACA, although from everything I read, the factors that led to impaired judgment among senior Politburo cadres probably apply as well to the House of Bishops. But let's assume for a moment that all the updates to the web pages that say who's what are just random chatter -- somebody just felt like cleaning things up a couple weeks ago, but maybe that was a little much, so they're sorta-kinda putting things back, or maybe not.

That won't fly. This takes effort. Not everyone can update a web page, especially when they've had a few, which is my favored explanation for all the errors on the St Mary's page. They're doing this for a reason, however obscure it may be. My guess is they're rattled. Another court date looms in the coming week, and it's not likely to go well. St Mary's people will attend, and they'll have their eyes out for the state's attorney in the hall. If the state's attorney hasn't heard of the appeals court's opinion before then, he certainly will at the time.

In the real world, as opposed to the alternate universe of "continuing Anglicanism", the ACA's situation would be called a "crisis", which calls for crisis management. If I were the House of Bishops, I'd make a quick trip over to that Wikipedia entry. The fact is, Bishop Marsh, that people want to know what's going on in the ACA. You've asked your one potential information source, "Father" Stephen Smuts, not to post anything about the ACA. I have no idea why he's responded by basically posting zilch, but there you are. People, who naturally want information, are coming here, and they're getting it from friends and supporters of Fr Kelley and the St Mary's elected vestry.

I had over 3000 page views last month, about 100 per day. Lots of people visit here, clearly including Mrs Bush and some of your own stooges, because they correct errors on their web sites when they read about them here! Whatever the House of Bishops may think of this site, the fact is that opponents of the ACA are in full control of the information flow. The House of Bishops announced the passing of Tony Morello; it didn't say blip about Robin Connors. People came here for that information, and quite a few did.

This is yet another reason I don't expect the ACA to see 2016.

Bishop Grundorf, just bide your time. A substantial number of parishes will come over without the need for you to say another word to Marsh and Strawn.

Williams Back?

As of today, Owen Williams reappears on the ACA Diocese of the West Information Page as

The Episcopal Visitor

The Right Reverend Owen R. Williams, Bishop in Residence and Pastor of St. Mary's

However, Frederick Rivers's name and title appear above Williams's, so I assume he outranks Williams. On the other hand, neither the ACA nor the Diocese of the West constitution and canons mentions a "vicar general", so we don't know what Rivers's specific authority is in this matter. For that matter, neither the Diocese of the West canons nor the St Mary of the Angels bylaws mention a title of Bishop-in-Residence or Pastor. Does Rivers outrank Williams because the vicar general reports to the presiding bishop and not the visitor? Who knows?

And they haven't restored his biographical profile on the diocesan web site.

Williams hasn't yet returned to the Diocese of the Northeast as a suffragan, either. I'm wondering what sort of deliberation, frenzied or woozy, accompanied these corrections. This just reinforces the idea in my mind that everyone involved, from the Presiding Bishop to the Episcopal Visitor, is operating under impaired judgment.

The Portland Mysteries

Still on the subject of unanswered questions, the news of Robin Connors's passing and the intrigues surrounding Owen Rhys Williams brings me back to what we don't know about the two sometime-ACA parishes in Portland, OR, St Mark's and St Francis. They appear to be key way stations in the progress of two inner-clique members of the ACA, Connors and Williams, as well as a point-of-origin for another mysterious figure, Terrance Tutor.

St Mark's Portland earlier answered my e-mail request for Robin Connors's dates of employment, but never answered my request on Williams. St Francis has never replied to my requests for information on either Connors or Tutor. According to St Mark's, Connors was Rector from January 1998 to December 2001. The biographical profile on Williams that was briefly available on the ACA Diocese of the West web site says that he was a curate there (presumably under Connors) and then Priest-in-Charge. However, I don't get the impression that Williams was ever Rector. He then left for unspecified reasons and wound up on the other side of the country in New Hampshire.

I speculated the other day that Williams, whose background included lumber yard manager and ski instructor, may have run into Louis Falk in Colorado in the mid-1990s and been referred by Falk to Connors in Portland. However that happened, Connors at some point looked on Williams, thought him good, and ordained him, though he never had formal seminary training. I'm told that during Connors's St Mark's period, Terrance Tutor, having left the life of an ordinary religious at an Oregon Roman Catholic priory, was hanging around St Mark's, wearing a clerical collar, and calling himself Fr Tutor.

After 2001, Connors left St Mark's and founded his own parish, St Francis Portland, under the direct supervision of Louis Falk, while St Mark's was in the ACA Diocese of the West until about 2009, when it went into the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Terrance Tutor followed Connors over to St Francis, while Williams remained at St Mark's as Priest-in-Charge. At some point, however, I'm told that Tutor somehow lost favor with Connors and fled to New Hampshire; I assume that Williams, by several accounts a good friend of Tutor, recommended New Hampshire as the sort of place where one could escape whatever bad vibes might have accumulated in Oregon.

Tutor, in the informal account I've heard, expected to be ordained by Connors on the same basis (whatever it was) that Connors ordained Williams, but it didn't happen. However, once Tutor got to New Hampshire, Williams prevailed on then-Bishop Langberg to ordain him, and the deed was done.

So here are some unanswered questions:

• Under what circumstances did Owen Rhys Williams find his way to St Mark's Portland and become an aspirant-postulant-candidate for holy orders?
• Under what circumstances did Robin Connors leave St Mark's Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Robin Connors leave St Francis Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Owen Williams leave St Mark's Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Terrance Tutor leave St Francis Portland?

This, of course, is just the tip of an iceberg. Connors was, and Williams continues to be, at least until very recently, in sufficient favor in the ACA that the inner clique always seems to have found new places to park them as new sets of circumstances have arisen.

Here's My Working Hypothesis

of Louis Falk III's career. I've learned about as much as I can from public records, and without mad money to hire an investigator, I won't get much farther. (I'd love to see what kind of records may exist for a Louis Wahl Falk III at Kenyon College during 1953-4, though these, if they ever existed, have almost certainly been purged.) But even if I had mad money, Falk wouldn't be the first guy I'd hire Philip Marlowe to go after.

Nevertheless, let's go into the well-traveled sociological territory of college admissions. I went through the worst of that rat race in the 1960s, and my impression is borne out by the later opinions of writers like David Brooks. Falk, though, was in one of the earliest postwar cohorts to whom selective admissions applied, so my guess is that standards wouldn't even have been as stringent in his case as they were later.

First, there was, and continues to be, a rigid hierarchy of schools, with the Ivies and half a dozen others at the very top. Somewhat farther down were "safety schools", which appeared close to the bottom of each applicant's aspirational list -- if you couldn't get into Harvard, Stanford, or whatever, you also applied to schools that the counselors assured you would accept you without a doubt. (Mine was Gettysburg.) Kenyon College, based on my memories of the rat race, was widely felt at the time to be another on the safety list. Lawrence wasn't even on the screen, at least on the East Coast.

But the sociological studies also point out that the prestige schools have a separate set of admissions criteria for the children of potential major donors. The Falk family would almost certainly be in that league. If those applicants also prepared at private schools, they're even more advantaged. This fit Louis Falk as well. I went to an Ivy, and my sense was that there was a two-tier system throughout, not just in admissions. (I kept wondering why this or that guy had the same surname as _____ Hall, but never completely figured it out at the time.) However, the sociological studies also point out that even the Ivies have standards, and if John D Hackensacker V just can't make it no matter how far you bend the rules, some other tactful arrangement is made.

So I'm still left with the question of why Falk III didn't go to Yale. The possibility that he might have gone to Kenyon in fall 1953, frankly, looks more likely -- for whatever reason, possibly grades or test scores, Yale felt it had to forego even the potential of Falk money, and Louis was steered to a still-somewhat-prestigious safety school. But then, disaster of some sort strikes. Falk and his bride intend to return to Gambier, but things don't work out, and he finishes up at Lawrence College, a little down the scale from Kenyon, but summa cum laude. Of course.

My overriding impression is that Louis III's life, at least until he found the ACC, was marked by a series of disasters, mitigated by family money. Something happened to interrupt his college career, and it wasn't the draft. But somehow it's fixed. Then he gets an astonishing fast track in The Episcopal Church -- becoming a rector of a prestigious parish right out of seminary is highly unusual. Something, I've got to assume, facilitated that.

But then there's another disaster; Falk lasts only a little more than two years in that prestigious rectorship (and the problems presumably began to boil up well before he left). Unmitigated disaster, almost certainly not the first for the guy. I can only assume that Falk family resources were involved in setting up generous structured settlements and non-disclosure agreements that kept the business more or less quiet.

So he gets out of Wisconsin, where Falk is a very prominent name, perhaps at the urging of the family, and sets up in Iowa. I believe someone who fails as spectacularly at the priesthood on an initial try, as Falk appears to have done, would normally conclude that he simply didn't have an authentic vocation. Certainly the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac was of that persuasion. Indeed, if I discovered I had problems at the priesthood but did well in mall management, I'd take it as a message. But for whatever reason, Falk seems to have decided the Congress of St Louis was another good opening.

He'd gotten himself on an Episcopalian fast track, possibly using resources available to his very prominent family. Now he seems to have gotten on an even faster track with the Anglican Catholic Church. I would guess that family resources were available for that, as well.

What might have happened with "continuing Anglicanism" if Falk hadn't been involved? What if James Mote had made a serious background check when Falk turned up, figuratively speaking, at his doorstep? The answer is probably that "continuing Anglicanism" was always something of an alternate universe filled with wishful thinking from the start, and it was simply never the sort of place where anyone made serious background checks -- a place like Yale could think things over and turn down serious money if it absolutely had to. James Mote and the ACC were never in that league. The Episcopal Church could reconsider; the ACC could not.

The Gaps In The Story Revisited -- II

Falk's Wikipedia entry says only that after leaving The Episcopal Church, he "became a businessman". It then says that from 1976 to 1981,he was President of the General Growth Management Company in Des Moines, Iowa. Even here there are puzzles. General Growth Management, now General Growth Properties, was founded in 1954 by two brothers, Martin and Matthew Bucksbaum. However, the Wikipedia entry says that Martin Bucksbaum remained CEO until his death in 1995. In addition, the company is now headquartered in Chicago, not Des Moines, and it's not clear if its headquarters were ever in Des Moines. It did have retail mall properties in various Iowa locations. Falk may have been President of a Des Moines subsidiary. However, the gaps persist.

But now we come to an even more poorly documented interlude: Divided We Stand doesn't cover the four-year period between the 1977 Congress of St Louis and Falk's consecration as ACC Bishop of the Missouri Valley in 1981. I've heard at second hand a version that Falk appears to give informally -- the Wikipedia entry, almost certainly by Falk himself, doesn't cover the period, either. In the hearsay version passed to me, he attended the 1977 Congress of St. Louis as a layman, but that had not led him to do anything concrete about leaving The Episcopal Church. It was only a couple of years later that, while driving his family to Colorado for a skiing vacation, he decided to stay over in Denver one Saturday and attend services at St Mary's Anglican, James Mote's parish. He met Mote after the service, Mote persuaded Falk to re-involve himself in the priesthood, and things went on from there.

The actual chronology doesn't appear to sustain this version. A Texas paper carried a story in connection with Falk's final visit to St Stephen's Anglican,

In 1978, then Father Louis Wahl Falk, III helped to establish the first continuing Church in Iowa. He was the first Rector of St. Aidan's Parish in Des Moines, Iowa. At that time St. Aidan's was a part of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity (of the Anglican Catholic Church). He later was named Dean of that Diocese.

This site says that St Aidan's is "close by a substantial shopping area which houses one of Des Moines' largest shopping malls." The lot may well have been donated by General Growth Properties during Falk's years there. It appears that the wheels for establishing St Aidan's as a de novo "continuing" parish were in motion within a year of the Congress, much sooner than is implied in Falk's informal account, and Falk may have made direct contacts in the Congress itself.

Regarding the trip to Colorado in Falk's informal account, the Falks appear to own property in Nederland, CO, a winter sports area about an hour from Denver. This also makes a spur-of-the-moment visit to Mote's Denver parish less than fully credible. Falk's interest in Colorado skiing also raises the intriguing question of how Owen Rhys Williams, a Colorado ski instructor in the 1990s and apparently something of a drifter, may have been steered to Oregon to undertake clerical studies under Falk's protégé Robin Connors.

It's plain that Falk began steadily to ingratiate himself with Mote, starting either during the Congress of St Louis itself, or within months afterward. At some point not long after 1978, Falk was named Dean of the ACC Diocese of the Holy Trinity under Bishop Mote. In 1980 at the Provincial Synod, the ACC Diocese of the Missouri Valley was formed. On February 14, 1981, in Des Moines, Falk was consecrated ACC Bishop of the Missouri Valley.

In 1983, Falk succeeded Mote as Primate and "Archbishop" of the ACC. The circumstances here are not covered in Bess's Divided We Stand and remain unknown, and Mote appears to have effectively withdrawn from active participation in the ACC. At the same time, according to Douglas Bess and others, Falk surrounded himself with his own clique, which included Robin Connors and Andrew Stahl.

In August 1991, ACC bishops, responding to Falk's attempt to bypass the ACC via his new superdenominational Traditional Anglican Communion, brought formal charges against Falk. James Mote was still Rector of St Mary's ACC Denver, but his position on this development is not currently known. In September 1991, the ACC bishops attempted to try Falk on ecclesiastical charges, but couldn't achieve a quorum. A compromise was worked out that allowed Falk to take his diocese out of the ACC. In October 1991, some ACA dioceses and "peculier" parishes under Falk left the ACC and merged with the AEC to form the ACA, while the majority of ACC parishes stayed out.

In August 1994 James Mote retired from St Mary's ACC Church Denver. He appears to have stayed with the remnant ACC and, following his retirement to Florida, withdrawn from active involvement in the "continuing" movement. So far, my attempts to contact people who may have known Mote in his final years have been unsuccessful.

The Gaps In The Story Revisited -- I

Frankly, I'm not sure why I'm persisting in all this sleuthing -- I believe the St Mary of the Angels legal situation will be resolved in fairly short order, and whatever the future holds for the parish, it will not involve the ACA. The "Anglican continuum" has never been more than a strange footnote. I don't need to convince anyone of that.

The problem for me is that I still have questions about how things got to this pass. When I was finally able to contact Douglas Bess, the result was simply to confirm that the gaps and questions I've had are issues that so far, nobody else has the answers to. I mentioned two questions the other day: why did James Mote fade so quickly from the "continuing Anglican" picture, and the related issue, why did Louis Falk rise so quickly. Two years ago, I listed additional questions. They all keep coming back to things we don't know about Louis Falk and, often, his relationship with James Mote.

In fact, I think the conventional wisdom, reflected in Mote's obituaries, gets it wrong: Mote wasn't the key figure in the "continuum": Louis Falk was. Falk rose quickly to become Primate of the ACC, eclipsed Mote, and was directly responsible for the ACC's breakup into three of the larger "continuing" denominations.

Falk was born December 30, 1935 in Milwaukee, WI to a very prominent Wisconsin family. Falks are listed in Wisconsin's Industrial Hall of Fame, "men who established what became flourishing ventures in Wisconsin's history." These include Harold Sands Falk and Herman Wahl Falk of the Falk Corporation, and Otto H Falk, President and CEO of Allis-Chalmers. Louis Falk III's namesake, the first Louis Wahl Falk, became an executive and major shareholder of Pabst Brewing after Pabst acquired the Falk, Jung, and Borchert brewery.

In 1953, he graduated from Milwaukee University School, a private institution. He is not listed as a notable alumnus on the school's Wikipedia entry.

Here we find the start of our first puzzle in the public record. On September 3, 1955, he married Carol Alice Froemming, who was about 18 at the time, in a Lutheran ceremony. The wedding announcement, interestingly enough, said the newlyweds would live in Gambier, Ohio. However, in 1958, he graduated from Lawrence College in Appleton, WI. This puts a five-year period between graduation from secondary school and graduation from college. The wedding announcement made no reference to Lawrence College, and I can find no other reference to Gambier, Ohio in connection with Falk. Gambier, a small town, is the home of Kenyon College. We simply don't know what happened here, except that however his collegiate career may have been interrupted, he nonetheless made Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude.

Although he had been married in a Lutheran ceremony, and his family was of German heritage, we next see Falk in 1962 graduating from the Episcopal Nashotah House seminary, cum laude. I have the same puzzlement I had two years ago: I would expect someone of his background to go to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or, in extremis, Dartmouth. Instead, he went to Lawrence College and dawdled with some sort of false start in Ohio. And "as someone who would be expected to take a key role in shepherding the family's fortunes in his generation, he should have been going on to a prestigious law, medical, or business school. Instead, he went to seminary."

On January 23, 1962, he was ordained a deacon in The Episcopal Church. On August 6, 1962, he was ordained a priest in The Episcopal Church and began service as Rector of St Augustine, Rhinelander, WI. The normal career path for Episcopal clergy, even those with close relatives who are bishops looking after their advancement, is for newly minted deacons and priests to spend some time as associates. They very rarely become rectors almost immediately out of seminary, as Falk did. In addition, I'm told that the Rhinelander parish is prestigious, a place from which one might rise to become a bishop.

However, by early 1965, he had left that position. In April and May, 1965, he served as a supply priest at St. Barnabas, Tomahawk, WI. And on January 24, 1966 he was inhibited as a priest in The Episcopal Church; on September 24, 1966, he was deposed or "defrocked". A small number of people have indicated that they knew of these circumstances in later years. However, when I added this information to Falk's Wikipedia entry, it was quickly removed, presumably at Falk's instigation. Several former ACC and ACA priests have told me that neither they nor their colleagues were aware of it, and Douglas Bess has told me he did not know about it. One major question is whether James Mote knew about it, and we simply don't know. What I've heard of Falk's own accounts of his rise in the ACC suggests they are self-serving and incomplete.

In addition, the policy of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter is that it would not ordain former Anglican or Episcopal clergy who were under discipline in their former denominations. Falk was clearly under discipline in The Episcopal Church, having been deposed. If the Vatican was aware of the circumstances, it would not approve Falk's ordination as a Catholic priest, had his parish chosen to enter the Ordinariate. A comment in a blog reports at second hand that Falk was claiming in mid 2012 that his ordination as a Catholic had been approved, but frankly, this is hard to believe. On the other hand, if it was not approved, this could have been one more factor that kept St Aidan's Des Moines from going into the Ordinariate. This clearly came as a surprise to observers at the time -- the public issue of divorces and remarriages in the parish could well have been a convenient cover for Falk's own problem.

The Rt Rev Robin Bradley Connors 1940-2013

Prompted by an e-mail from a former ACC priest, I did a little more research on Robin Connors and discovered that he'd passed away in Charlotte, NC on August 28, 2013. As far as I'm aware, this was never memorialized by the ACA House of Bishops, so as a service to the ACA, I'm noting it here. Key details of his career in the ACC and ACA are covered in a series of posts beginning here.

A Few Answers And A Few Questions

Douglas Bess appears to have moved on to other things from Divided We Stand, which is a little sad, since he says he hasn't kept up with the continuing Anglican movement, and we'll never have a volume II of his history. Nevertheless, I got an answer to the key question I had after reading the book and doing my own investigation: Bess doesn't mention that Falk was deposed as an Episcopal priest in 1966 in his book -- was he ever aware of this? The answer is no. I recently had an e-mail exchange as well with a former ACC priest, who also says he was completely unaware of this. Both he and Bess, among others, say my blog was first to break the news.

That priest says there was an inner ACC clique in the late 1980s consisting of Louis Falk, Robin Connors, and Andrew Stahl. He believes this group was aware of Falk's history, but kept it well concealed. That Bess never heard of it is, I think, significant, since Bess's informants appear to include many anti-Falk people from the ACC and APA.

Next question, which I've mused about from time to time, but on which Bess can't shed light: James Mote, a prime mover in the St Louis movement, appears to have faded by the late 1980s. Before then, he appears to have deferred to Falk, who by the Deerfield Beach events of 1991 had gained a firm grip on things. Was Mote aware of Falk's history? Was he paying attention to Falk's moves? Why did he fade so quickly from the picture? I'm not sure what his involvement was in the Deerfield Beach controversies, and he appears to have stayed with the remnant of the ACC, not joining either the ACA or the APA. In fact, he seems basically to have retired around 1991 and moved to West Palm Beach. (He would have been close to 70.)

Can anyone shed light here?

I Think I've Found Douglas Bess,

author of Divided We Stand, an extremely valuable, if incomplete, history of "continuing Anglicanism". He now appears to be Fr Douglas Bess, a priest in something called the Liberal Catholic Church. I tried e-mailing Bess at his contact, but he hasn't replied. (I assume that if this were a different Fr Bess, he'd simply reply, "Mr Bruce, I'm sorry, but I'm not the author of Divided We Stand. Wish I could be of more help", or something like that.)

UPDATE: Yes, this is the same Douglas Bess.

One of the key questions I'd want to ask would be whether he knew of Louis Falk's deposition as an Episcopal priest in 1966 due to a scandal at the Rhinelander, WI parish where he was rector. It seems to me that this colors Falk's willingness to tolerate more-than-routine misconduct by bishops in the ACC, and following the split, the ACA as well. Bess outlines some of the allegations against ACC bishops, but I'd want to see how much he knew of other misconduct among Falk's other protégés before and after the ACC-ACA split.

I'd also be interested to know if Bess had been following further developments in the "continuum" after the period his book covers. Alas, this probably won't happen. However, I'll venture the guess that since it's likely the ACA won't outlast the St Mary of the Angels cases, the history of this strange aberration is drawing to a close overall.

If You Check Their Web Site,

Ash Wednesday is February 1. The hits just keep on coming!

UPDATE: John Bruce gets results! They fixed it!

Should I bill them for proofreading services? Or maybe just offer to become their Pastor, since (1) I'm no less qualified than Owen Williams, who is as innocent of a seminary degree as I am, and (2) I'm not sure if Williams is ever in much of a condition to perform pastoral functions anyhow. Hey, I can dress up and read from the prayer book as good as he can!

Something Just Reminded Me Of The Parable Of The Unjust Steward

Luke 16:1-13:

There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.

As I've been saying here in the past week, we really don't know what Owen Williams and the ACA House of Bishops are up to, except that insofar as Williams is no longer listed as either a suffragan in the Diocese of the Northeast or episcopal visitor to the Diocese of the West, we must assume something's up, and we can probably surmise that Williams has somehow gotten crosswise with Marsh and Strawn.

And my own view, judging from the ACA's non-response to potentially explosive allegations against a diocesan bishop, is that even if Williams were keeping a stable of six-year-old boy sex slaves, it wouldn't bother his brother bishops overmuch. To get crosswise with this bunch, it would have to be really bad. Really, really bad. But crosswise he appears to be.

Someone just this morning mentioned reports that a local parish in another "continuing" denomination is sending laypeople over to St Mary of the Angels to "help out". Hmm. Could Williams, apparently crosswise with the ACA, be putting out feelers to another denomination? Maybe making little suggestions he could come over and bring "his" parish with him? Jurisdiction-hopping isn't at all unusual in the "continuum".

And as far as Marsh and Strawn are concerned, that would be bad. Not saying that's what's happening, of course. But that would be really, really bad.

If I were Marsh, Strawn, Vaughan, and Hiles, I wouldn't trust Williams one inch. If I were Williams, I wouldn't trust Marsh, Strawn, Vaughan, and Hiles any farther.

Silence From The Bunker

I e-mailed the Canon to the Ordinary of the ACA Diocese of the Northeast, The Very Reverend Alexander Henderson "Hendy" Webb, with the following:

Fr Webb, can you confirm that Bishop Williams is no longer a suffragan in DONE, or clarify any other reason his name no longer appears on the diocesan roster?

Many thanks for any help you may be able to provide.

This is a perfectly reasonable request. The canon to the ordinary of a given diocese is the person who normally responds to any such request, and in my research on figures like Louis Falk and John Vaughan, I have typically received prompt and courteous replies from Episcopal canons to the ordinary regarding the status of those individuals. I've received equivalent replies from Roman Catholic authorities regarding the status of Terrance "Brother Christian" Tutor.

No reply as yet from Hendy. I might have added a query as to who is the episcopal visitor to the Diocese of the West if Williams is no longer the visitor, but since Hendy is only the canon to the ordinary of DONE, he probably wouldn't know, and he won't answer anyhow.

Let's see what we have. I assume Owen Williams continues as "Pastor" at the Bush St Mary's, although he is presumably no longer Pastor-Bishop, Bishop in Residence, or whatever else they called him. I would expect that for propriety's sake, the Bush parish would remove the photo of Williams in his purple shirt from the clergy page and remove the reference to Williams as episcopal visitor to DOW and suffragan at DONE. I suspect this will happen only when the elected vestry regains control of the property.

However, stripped of his episcopal titles, Williams is, strictly speaking, only a curate, since Frederick Rivers continues as putative rector. The important thing for the ACA, I would guess, is that Williams will continue to draw a salary, though this won't be for much longer, at which point the elected vestry will have a fiduciary responsibility to claw it back. If I were Williams, I'd be planning to leave the state. If I were Rivers, I'd stay in Arizona. If I were Marsh, I'd stay in Belchertown.

If I were Hendy, I'd be ashamed of myself.

So What's Going On Here?

Bishop Owen Williams, it seems to me, is almost certainly out of the picture, although there's been no official announcement, and so far no replies to my e-mail inquiries. Several pieces of this puzzle are unusual. The speed with which both the DOW and DONE websites were purged of his information is remarkable: after Robert Bowman's prior arrest on child pornography charges was brought to light here, it took All Saints Fountain Valley months to remove his bio from its clergy web page, and there was also considerable delay before Bowman finally announced the Almighty had prompted him to move his ministry to an undisclosed location.

But the departures of bishops under any circumstances are normally announced. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles was completely transparent about the premature retirement of Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala following the revelation that he'd fathered two children in the course of a long affair. The ACA itself announced the "sudden retirement" of Owen Williams's predecessor Daren Williams. ("I've come to like Daren Williams," says my wife. "He had more sense than I thought he did at the time when he inhibited Andrew Bartus.")

What prompted the quick evacuation in Owen's case? The other day I speculated that the Christmas message from APA Presiding Bishop Grundorf may have appeared on the DOW web site without Grundorf's knowledge or permission, and this may have been awkward for Brian Marsh -- but this is pure speculation, and it's hard to think that, considering the overall lethargy and detachment of the ACA House of Bishops on any matter not pertaining to Fr Kelley, this would cause Marsh any serious concern. Remember, they promoted Tony Morello.

Well, maybe one day in the hereafter I'll run into a knowledgeable ACA priest, maybe in the shower room in Purgatory, and he'll explain it. "Well, the Grundorf thing might have been part of it, but the real reason was. . ." And to get the guy out that fast, after what seems to have been a record of things going wonky throughout his career and not much being done about it, it would have to be remarkable indeed. But for now, your guess is as good as mine.

But there are still more stitches to try to read on this fastball. I noticed, when Grundorf's Christmas message appeared on an ACA web site, that Brian Marsh had given no equivalent Christmas message in 2014, when he'd given one in prior years. Is Marsh preoccupied? I noted last year that Stephen Smuts, the semi-official PR mouthpiece of the TAC, had been ordered not to post about or link to anything connected with the ACA. This almost certainly came from Marsh, and I thought at the time that Marsh's view was that any publicity at all about the ACA was bad publicity, so he'd rather there be no publicity.

And bad publicity for the ACA is inevitably bad publicity for Brian Marsh. Whatever happened with Owen Williams, bad as it was for Williams, it's probably just as bad for Marsh. We'll see how this plays out.

So Far, No Confirmation

of Owen Rhys Williams's status. I e-mailed the ACA Diocese of the Northeast's Information Officer as follows:

I note that as of January 31, Bishop Williams’s name no longer appears as episcopal visitor to the ACA DOW or as a suffragan in DONE. Can you confirm this?

But the Information Officer is apparently not in the business of providing even basic information, at least not to me. An e-mail to the St Mary's contact e-mail bounced, no such ID at the ISP. (One more indication that the Bush parish is a sham, they don't have a public inquiry e-mail, and they don't answer the phone.) An e-mail to a DOW priest who has sometimes been helpful has also gone unanswered.

Here's the story as best I can reconstruct it. Owen Rhys Williams apparently got religion in middle age after drifting from job to job. He gravitated to St Mark's Portland, OR, at the time an ACA parish under Louis Falk's protégé Robin Connors. In his younger days, Williams had gotten an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) degree, which is authoritatively characterized as "at base, a non-professional, largely-unmarketable art-school degree".

He never attended seminary, but he was apparently able to convince Connors in his fairly brief role as ACA Bishop of the West that he was worthy of ordination. The errors I've identified in his management of the St Mary's calendar strongly suggest that his knowledge of Anglo-Catholicism falls well short of what would be expected of an ordinary candidate for confirmation, much less a priest: he appears to be wobbly on Advent and Lent, as well as fuzzy on doctrines like the Immaculate Conception. I continue in the belief that I've expressed here before, that he can't name the seven sacraments without a crib sheet.

Nevertheless, Connors hired him as a curate, and he succeeded to the rectorship of St Mark's when Connors was forced out of that position. However, at some point, something went wrong. Not only did he leave St Mark's Portland, but he wound up all the way on the other coast, at Trinity Anglican, Rochester, NH. Praise to the bishop, who doth prosper thy way and defend thee! Williams was consecrated Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of the Northeast on April 25, 2013, in a do that outshone even that of The Rt Rev James Randall Hiles, two days later.

Williams da man! (Maybe this is a premonition, though -- that photo is tilted, and it makes me woozy.) on August 8, 2013, Williams was designated episcopal visitor to the ACA Diocese of the West as well. (However, any reference to this has already been scrubbed from the DOW web site.) But something went wrong. Again, this time at Trinity Anglican. By September 2014, he'd been shipped out to St Mary of the Angels, with no notice taken of the departure at Trinity Anglican. Wait -- ain't he da man? Why weren't they distraught to see him go?

Now, as of January 31, 2015, he's been scrubbed from the rosters of both the Diocese of the Northeast and the Diocese of the West. (He's still on the ACA home page as DOW episcopal visitor, but this is probably an oversight that will be corrected soon.) But no announcement has been made. Not a peep.

As far as I can tell, he lasted less than two years as a suffragan bishop. I would guess that if he was eased out quietly, there must have been factors that everyone understood could be problematic even before he was consecrated. This has got to be a profound embarrassment to everyone in that photo just above.

If he was eased out, was anything done to sweeten the deal? Like maybe a payment from the St Mary of the Angels treasury? Just wondering. We'll find out soon enough, I'll betcha.

Hey, What's Happened To The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams?

I was browsing the ACA Diocese of the West home page, and lo and behold, The Rt Rev Owen Rhys Williams is an unperson! The page was updated on January 31, 2015. Prior to that date, there was a photo of The Rt Rev prominently displayed on the home page, celebrating his arrival as episcopal visitor, with a pretty comprehensive bio. Now, he's nowhere to be found. Nor is he to be found on the Information page, wheron all other diocesan prebendaries and assorted ACA-TAC grand poobahs continue to be listed.

Only two weeks ago, of course, I noted here that the same ACA-DOW home page still contained a Christmas message very generously provided to the ACA DOW by Presiding Bishop Grundorf of the APA. However, this message has since been deleted, perhaps in the same January 31 update to the page, and part of an Epiphany message from Bl John Henry Newman has been substituted.

Perhaps Bishop Grundorf's Christmas message to the ACA DOW came as a surprise to Bishop Grundorf himself, and he read about it first here after someone sent him a heads-up. If I were Grundorf, I'd have been pretty ticked. Did he get on the horn to Brian Marsh, and did Marsh have to offer up a sacrifice to make amends? Cardinal Newman is in less of a position to complain.

The Rt Rev Owen is still listed on the St Mary of the Angels clergy page as that parish's Bishop-Pastor, though. Well, he disappeared from Trinity Anglican without ceremony. As I speculated in 2014, maybe they were happy to see him go. Is the same process under way in California?

UPDATE: Not only has Williams disappeared as episcopal visitor to the Diocese of the West, but he is no longer listed in the Diocese of the Northeast as a suffragan, which he had been since his 2013 consecration. Other than as "Pastor" of the illegal St Mary of the Angels group, he has completely disappeared from the ACA. (Since he is not the Rector, never hired by either the elected or appointed vestries, he serves at the pleasure of Frederick Rivers and Mrs Bush. How long until this shoe drops?)

Another Fun Visit

to the St Mary of the Angels web page, still under the control of the squatter group. The dates shown are now all over, from January 21, dual feasts of St Agnes and the Conversion of St Paul, to February 1, Candlemas, "A Special Service". These were put up soon after the first of the year. Er, isn't something supposed to happen in February? February 18, maybe? They've already mentioned it down the street at the Catholic parish. Mrs Bush, maybe you could have Bishop Williams look it up and put it on the calendar. But maybe he'll get around to it later, if he's indisposed.