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.
