Fr Jordan was one of Fr Dodd's last curates. Fr Dodd retired in [1951}. He was then "Rector Emeritus" and moved out to North Hollywood, but would return to St Mary's on occasion. Fr Beau Davis remembered meeting him one Sunday; Beau was then in his teens. [Beau] would come in from Ontario, the same home parish that Fr Jordan was from. Fr Dodd made some remark about that, with a twinkle in his eye. It was their only meeting. Davis looked upon Fr Jordan as a spiritual father from their first meeting, when Fr Jordan came to his home parish as a special speaker.I'm enormously grateful for this information. It makes me more hopeful that something can be done to continue this tradition of spiritual commitment at the parish.About 1960, aerial views of the neighborhood illustrate the acquisition & clearing of land for parking behind the church. Two houses (?) occupy the area of the present bank building. I have seen a record that parishioners purchased these homes, paid down the mortgages on them, at some point turned them over to, or donated them to the parish, leaving sums less than $10,000 to be paid off. (They might have been left as Bequests.)
Fr Jordan was in wide demand as a speaker in various Episcopal parishes, and at one time recorded a number of sermons or teachings on LP records. The remains of these were ill-treated by Fr Wilcox, warped beyond use, and discarded.
Fr James H. Jordan died suddenly of a heart attack early on February 17, 1971. His home at the time was a house (no longer extant) on Hillhurst. It may have been where the small shops are now, just south of the bank parking lot. He had lived there as Fr Dodd's Curate, & chose not to move when he was elected Rector. He did not appear for 7:30am Mass that day. Someone went to check on him & found him dead.
Fr Jordan's niece, Beth Cullom, of Georgia, on a visit to St Mary's one evening, gave the first large donation toward completion of the Tympanum, in his memory. It funded the gilding of the mandorla around the figure of our Lady, and the engagement of Enzo Selvaggi as designer of the mosaic.Fr John (Jack) Barker was already his Curate, living somewhat farther from the church. The Vestry did not trust the PECUSA Diocese of Los Angeles's program for selecting clergy, so they (after some time) chose to elevate the Curate they knew, rather than an unknown prospect offered by an increasingly squirrelly PECUSA. I seem to think they made this decision within a few months, certainly before the end of that year.
Fr Barker was aware of the intent of PECUSA to dissolve St Mary's because it was a "hotbed" of resistance to the rising secularism & "progressive" (heretical) agenda. Fr Barker knew the property, & the Della Robbia [altarpiece] were valuable items. He had the piece moved inside, as a Memorial to Fr Jordan, completed by St Peter's Day, 1973. He then moved to have the church building declared a "Cultural - Historical Monument" of the City of Los Angeles. This was achieved by December, 1973, by formal action, which was then publicly enacted early in 1974. This would block the Diocese from selling the church for demolition.
Amendments to the Corporate [bylaws] were also made, to update them to accord with then recent changes to CA Law. (Such that if the Corporation were dissolved, it could only be sold to a non-profit.. etc.) When PECUSA finally voted to accept priestesses, at Minneapolis, 1976, the Parish was among the first in the USA to formally separate from PECUSA. This was formalized at the Annual General Meeting of the parish, January, 1977. Lawsuits ensued. At one point, observing PECUSA behavior elsewhere, to sneak into churches by night & change all the locks, & seal out the resistant clergy & congregations, St Mary's installed chainlink fencing around the building, with guard dogs day & night. (You can still see the holes in various places for that fencing.)
Fr Barker & several like-minded clergy appealed to, and visited Rome, seeking some kind of accommodation. He has published some sort of history of all this, which you should be able to find on line. It may have all the detail & dates you need. [I haven't been able to locate this; if someone can point me to it, I'll appreciate it -- jb]
in 1978, a clergy meeting in the undercroft, attended by Fr Christopher Phillips, I believe, made a formal petition to the Vatican for an Anglican Use allowing married clergy who were former PECUSAns. An RC Bishop was in attendance, and celebrated a Mass -- for those in RC Communion, -- at a temporary altar in the undercroft. This was at a time that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was actually in (secret) residence in Los Angeles, we now know, secreted here to preserve his life from Polish or Soviet government assassins. He went from Los Angeles to the Conclave that elected him Pope! (Not public knowledge.) The result of the Petition was eventually Pope John Paul II's "Pastoral Provision" (1980). [One just has to wonder whether, while in LA, he heard anything about the clergy meeting & Petition?]
Fr Phillips was, I understand, the first priest ordained under that provision, in San Antonio, TX.
At about this time, I'm told, a Vatican flag was on a standard near the Crucifix [As I understand it, the crucifix has subsequently been removed by the dissidents -- jb]. (There had been a door there to the stairs, but it was closed off at this time, or perhaps when the sanctuary was remodeled, in 1973.) The Parish won the case against PECUSA in 1981, at the appellate level. In 1984, PECUSA was forced by the Court to issue a Quit-Claim Deed to St Mary's. (This cleared the way for the bank to be erected on church property.)
Fr Barker was unmarried; the Pastoral Provision was not extended to him. The parish was for a time in a "Pro-Diocese of St Augustine (of Canterbury)" as some of the old Prayer Books and Hymnals testify by stamps inside them. It was anticipated that the "Pro-Diocese" would become RC, en bloc.
Eventually, this came to be seen as a fruitless hope. It was at this point that Fr Barker was "discharged." For several months, the parish had visiting clergy from various Anglican alphabet-soup groups. Eventually, the ACC supplied Fr Greg Wilcox, from La Verne, on a "temporary" basis.
Then the Vestry officially called him, ca. 1985/6. He accepted somewhat reluctantly, I'm told. He then got the parish to accept the ACC. Later he led the parish to revolt from ACC, leading to the second lawsuit, settled ca. 1994. {Details of this period appear in this post and the two posts after it.]
My informant indicates that he's put this together from memory, but feels it's as reliable as he can make it. If anyone has clarifications, corrections, or additions to this material, I will be most happy to add them to the record.
Regarding the Pro-Diocese of St Augustine of Canterbury, I found the following:
There is no such thing as a pro-diocese in the Catholic Church.in the early 1980's, several congregations of former Episcopalians formed what was then called the pro-diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury. One of these congregations was here in San Antonio and some of its members were individually received into the Catholic Church on the Feast of the Assumption in 1983. At the same time, a parish was erected under the title of Our Lady of the Atonement under the terms of a Pastoral Provision granted by the Holy See. There are several other such parishes in the United States, but they are parishes of the dioceses in which they are located. The pro-diocese no longer exists.
