I Still Wonder If Benedict Knew What He Was Getting Into

Regarding yesterday's post, a regular visitor notes

In a report to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) before the canonical erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, Cardinal Wuerl stated that the dossiers from prospective ordinariate clergy had been divided into three categories: (1) those who had completed a full program of Anglican seminary formation, who therefore would require a minimal program of formation focused primarily on the differences, (2) those whose formation for ministry was so deficient as to require essentially a full program of Catholic seminary formation, and (3) those who did not fit neatly into either of the first two categories, who would require programs of varying duration tailored to their individual circumstances. Those ordained in the first couple years after the canonical erection of the ordinariate were clearly in the first category. The most recent ordinations clearly are of those in one or both of the latter two categories.

But my concern yesterday was that the powers that be clearly regarded an MDiv from Nashotah House as "a full program of Anglican seminary formation, who therefore would require a minimal program of formation focused primarily on the differences[.]" It seems to me that there's a non sequitur in this statement. If a fully fledged Nashotah House alumnus preaches that the seven deadly sins are neither here nor there, sets a priestly example of an actively gay lifestyle, and sets the additional priestly example of necromancy, then there is probably excellent reason for someone to wonder if the program of formation for Nashotah House alumni needs to be more than minimal.

Let's get real, it isn't enough just to abjure the ordination of women or favor the old BCP -- the problems go much farther. In addition, my understanding is that a recent Nashotah House graduate, who in 2012 would presumably have been waved through (at least if he had good contacts in Fort Worth) has in fact been referred for two years of additional Catholic seminary formation.

"Anglo Catholicism" is an amorphous and elusive concept, but historically it has certainly included elements like resistance to authority, same-sex attraction, substitution of private judgment, and attraction to the occult. I think an assumption that someone who calls himself Anglo Catholic has minimal differences with the Roman Catechism is deeply mistaken.

Poof! You're Catholic!

I've been rereading Edward Feser's introduction to Aquinas as a way of working through some of Fr Chad Ripperger's writings. This has brought me up against a problem. Councils and popes have continually reaffirmed that Thomism is at the base of Catholic thought. Clearly seminarians who undergo any pretense of mainstream formation must study Aquinas -- as I understand it, this must at least come in one or more courses in dogmatic and moral theology. (I'll appreciate it if anyone can clarify how this part of seminarians' formation takes place.)

Contrast this with the Episcopal priest, a Nashotah House alumnus, who explained to an Episcopal adult forum that the seven deadly sins are neither here nor there. The priest's same-sex partner passed away suddenly, and grieving, he contacted his late partner on the other side with the help of a reputable medium. It's worth pointing out that there is nothing heterodox about the occult in traditional Anglo-Catholicism, and Bp James Pike was assisted in hooking up with his own reputable mediums by perfectly respectable Anglo-Catholic clergy in the UK and the US. We know how that turned out.

I assume Fr Ripperger, himself a professor of dogmatic and moral theology, would have patient but definite things to say about all this. In what continues to be a mainstream Catholic position, the seven deadly sins are very important, same-sex attraction, if acted on, is a sin, and necromancy is a mortal sin. But an Episcopal priest from the most prestigious Anglo-Catholic seminary instructs his Anglican parishioners that these are all OK -- indeed, more than OK. Does Nashotah House have a position on any of this?

I think maybe one explanation might be that Nashotah House has a rigorous course in moral theology, but it isn't required for a degree. But this of course doesn't solve my problem. Beyond that, Jeffrey Steenson served as a trustee of that seminary until he resigned as an Episcopal bishop. And he clearly favored Nashotah House alumni in the first tranches of priests ordained for the OCSP, many of whom continue in parish work. To be sure, there was some type of on line course given to prospective OCSP clergy in the first part of 2012, but some sort of distance class seems inadequate to remedy what seem to be serious deficiencies in the Nashotah House curriculum.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent points me to the Nashotah House site, which lists the following required courses for the residential MDiv program:

Systematic and Moral Theology (12 credits)

• ST 501 - Systematic Theology 1
• ST 502 - Systematic Theology 2
• MT 501 - Ethics and Fundamental Moral Theology
• MT 601 - Moral Theology and Contemporary Issues

I simply don't know what to say here, except that MT 601 may cancel out ST 501-2 and MT 501. From a Thomistic point of view, 601, as a higher number than the others, is probably more perfect.

Fr Ripperger cautions us against being excessively critical (or indeed, very critical at all) of priests -- any of them can absolve us of our sins. On the other hand, I see from time to time in Catholic forums threads about someone who went to confession and got a comment along the line of, "Pornography is actually OK. It isn't a sin just to be curious." The advice the people who raise this get is to go find a different confessor. That guy can absolve me of my sins, and if the big asteroid was about to hit the planet and I had no other choice, I'd have to go to that guy for confession. But I'd have to look for a different confessor otherwise.

Frankly, I would be very dubious about going to any OCSP priest for confession -- again, unless I were on a sinking ship surrounded by sharks. I note that the latest tranche of OCSP priests has been redirected to Catholic seminary.

Archetypes Of Wishful Thinking

Damian Thomson is a journalist. Journalism has to sell by making a quick impression that doesn't discomfit the target market, which is a long way of saying journalists by their nature rely on comfortable stereotypes. His Catholic Herald piece, as I reflect on it, has called attention to itself with a man-bites-dog take on Anglicanorum coetibus -- it says the OOLW is "in peril" -- but in fact it quickly reverts to comfortable assertions. To be sure, it's an improvement on the usual cutsey-pie treatment of Fr _____ and his six kids, but his prescriptions are nothing special. He did his job and got his clicks, but he really hasn't helped anything.

Let's think about the sort of unhelpful stereotypes we see in mainstream media -- one comes to mind because I was sorry to see it emerge in a TV program I normally like -- the Heroic Single Mom. The HSM explains, sometimes tearfully, that she does everything for her kids, works two jobs, drives as a long distance trucker, whatever, to make ends meet and give the kids a life. This keeps the audience from focusing on whatever circumstances caused her to be raising three kids without a dad, nor how when boyfriend Steve comes around, he's lusting after the older son. All good reason for Fr Ripperger to advise parents to lose the TV as long as there are kids in the house.

It seems to me that when you pull the fluff away, Thompson is engaging in similar dishonesty. He leads by saying the OOLW is in peril, but he quickly segues to the sitcom slapstick Private Frazer and "We're doomed!" In other words, he doesn't really mean it. And other than the one realistic assessment -- the idea of group conversions is a fantasy -- his prescriptions are bromides. In fact, I would call them archetypes of wishful thinking, and I think there are two of them.

The first is the Heroic Young Parish-Planting Priest. There are a couple of OCSP priests playing to this stereotype, the dedicated Anglican version of Bing Crosby in Going My Way, but with the accessories of wife and many kids to go with the straw hat. He is building a parish where diocesan fuddy-duddies have tried and failed, and it's going from strength to strength. But like the stereotype of the HSM, the HYPPP is atypical at minimum and deflects attention from legitimate questions: are these new people part of the target group? How many are actually coming to mass and confession? Are they sustaining the church with real donations? How realistic are the blue-sky proposals?

The HYPPP also deflects attention from the reality that, as a commenter pointed out on Fr Hunwicke's post, most ordinariate priests are retirees, and in the OCSP they've wangled their way into established parishes or sinecures. They're long past planting parishes -- their careers were always oriented toward prestigious established parishes (i.e., the Steenson model) in any case. But beyond that, their formation was anything but Catholic. Thery went to prestige Anglican seminaries where they learned to tolerate diversity and that the seven deadly sins are neither here nor there. They're in favor of birettas, copes, patens, and subdeacons, but little else.

The second is the myth of the sudden donor who will make everything all right. This is the bright note on which Thompson ends his piece. The problem is that what we see in places like Scranton is something more like a Ponzi scheme, grandiose proposals demanding money far in excess of what's available, leading to unpaid bills and emergency campaigns. We can say this comes from faith, but in Catholic moral theology as I understand it, temperance must normally balance such aspirations with prudence.

Thompson pretty much confirms my developing view that Anglicanorum coetibus contains fatal contradictions based on a misunderstanding of Anglicanism.

Fr Hunwicke Comments On The Catholic Herald Piece

Fr Hunwicke posts what I think is a pretty weak answer to Thompson at Liturgical Notes. His point appears to be that the OOLW is indeed short on laity, and it is indeed short on money, but joie de vivre makes up for it. Well, I'm thousands of miles away, maybe he has a point.

But the comments on his post are telling. For instance,

The main issue is the very disappointing response (an understatement) from Anglican Catholic-minded laity. Pope Benedict thought he was offering the best of all possible worlds: solid doctrine, (assuredly) valid orders, excellent inculturated liturgy and above all Englishness (never Fr. -- or indeed Bishop -- Fintan O'Shaughnessy's strong point).

Enough Anglican clergy came across to the UK Ordinariate to man an entire English Catholic diocese. But if attachment to church buildings is such a deal-breaker for lay Anglicans, aren't some English Catholic bishops right to be privately sceptical about the Ordinariate and its chances?

or,

However, as regards Anglican clergy who prefer to remain Anglican until they qualify for a pension, then expect to be welcomed with open arms when they profess a fully Catholic faith after they reach age 65, I think a skeptical attitude on the part of Catholic bishops is at least understandable. These bishops would regard such clergy in a different light than Anglican laity, and might question their convictions and devotion to the Church.

I realize, of course, that the situation is complicated, both personally and historically, and I don't doubt that some Catholic bishops discourage such Anglican clergy out of unworthy motives. A generous attitude is surely best. Still, some of them may well be acquainted with Anglican clergy who made the leap before age 65 at considerable personal sacrifice.

It seems to me that the points in both comments hit home in North America as well: the OCSP is top-heavy with clergy and prebends, and notwithstanding the Lopes housecleaning, it continues to be dominated by TEC pensioners, some apparently well off. But more to the point, it appears that both ordinariates are clergy-centered and apparently focus on overspecialized cliques -- except, in the OCSP, for a second wave of marginal candidates from marginally Anglican denominations who apparently knew the right people in the first wave.

Per Fr Hunwicke, lots of joie de vivre when they all get together. The Father is apparently incapable of irony.

No Happy Face At The Catholic Herald

My regular correspondent sent me a link to an article at the Catholic Herald that begins, "Britain's Ordinariate is in peril." This is a refreshing change from the usual happy-face (and increasingly unrealistic) coverage of Anglicanorum coetibus we see in nearly all the Catholic or mainstream media or in places like Ordinariate Expats.

Damian Thompson, the author, says he had previously been an enthusiastic supporter, but he concedes, ". . . I’m now convinced that the Ordinariate in its present form will wither away." He is talking about the specific form the Ordinariate has taken in the UK, and to be fair, he seems to think that some measures could be taken to save it, although I'm not sure if his proposals would be remotely effective.

He also says, without citing anything to support it, that the US-Canadian Ordinariate is "now flourishing under its own 41-year-old bishop, Steven Lopes." I would say that the most optimistic reading of what's happening over here is that the OCSP has failed to thrive, though the problems in North America aren't the same as those in the UK.

I do fully agree, though, with one of his prescriptions, "the fantasy of group conversions needs to be ditched."

First, there has never been an appetite among lay members of the C of E for coming over en masse. You can disguise a new body as much as you like, but if it reports to the Pope then it is “Roman Catholic” and that’s not something most Anglicans want to be.

Second, those Anglo-Catholic clergy most likely to convert tend to be the sort who spent their careers in the C of E playing at being “Roman”, using our Missal where they could get away with it.

This applies to the US as well, though there is also a substantial faction of US Anglo-Catholic clergy who play at being Roman but are openly gay. Another observation may apply more specifically to the UK: "Also, Ordinariate priests and laity who never liked their unique Missal, Divine Worship, should slip quietly into the Catholic mainstream."

In the UK, Anglo-Catholics had been using the Ordinary Form since Vatican II and were unfamiliar with the made-up uniate liturgy dating from 1905, which is ugly no matter what English you speak. In the US, it may be more familiar to those who favor the 1928 BCP. However, his prescription that those in the UK who don't like the BDW should just become diocesan Catholics would probably cause a majority of the 1000 or so members of the OOLW to leave.

I do disagree with Thompson here:

The third obstacle for the Ordinariate was the worst: the aforementioned wily obstructiveness of the Bishops of England and Wales. A single statistic speaks volumes. Pope Benedict urged them to be generous. How many disused or near-empty churches did the bishops give the Ordinariate? None.

“The bishops pretend they’re being generous, but in reality we’re under siege,” says one Ordinariate priest. “We can’t support ourselves, so we have to take diocesan jobs in parishes, schools or prisons that might be 45 miles away from the nearest Ordinariate Mass centre.”

In other words, the bishops haven't given the OOLW more free stuff. But in the US, bishops have largely been generous -- in Scranton and Philadelphia, disused and near-empty churches have been given to Ordinariate parishes on favorable terms, but whether these parishes can survive is nevertheless an open question. Otherwise, Thompson thinks that if money magically appeared, everything would brighten:

In July, Fr Tomlinson took his family on a camping trip to France, wondering how he was going to find £9,000 to complete the beautification of the sanctuary.

“I got back to find a message from a disabled man who was fed up with the boring worship in his own parish and had decided to give us 10,000 quid,” Fr Tomlinson says. “Now tell me that’s not God at work.”

I don't deny that naive people with $10-15,000 to throw away exist, although we must also allow that people who accumulate that kind of money have often done it through the exercise of prudence -- and this suggests they want to make effective use of the money they consecrate for God's purpose. The appeals we see for funds, at least in the US, don't so far come with an impression the money will be prudently spent.

My wife and I give to our diocesan parish and other reputable Catholic appeals, but we will never send money to Fr Bergman, who seems not much more than a con artist who is damaging the OCSP's reputation. Indeed, given the failure so far of the OCSP to thrive, I've got to think the angels who donated the seed money for the Houston facilities made a bad choice.

I don't see evidence that the new OCSP leadership understands much of the problem to which Thompson partly refers.

What Problem Is Anglicanorum Coetibus Trying To Solve?

The answer here is clear: in 1993, Clarence Pope told Cardinal Ratzinger that 250,000 disaffected Episcopalians (of a denomination numbering a million) were poised to become Catholic, if only Mother Church would give them a bishop. The actual number as of 2016 in the US and Canada is probably fewer than 2500, although significantly, Houston seems to keep this figure a secret.

The first attempt at outreach to disaffected Episcopalians came in the context of the 1977 Congress of St Louis. Cardinal Law was directly involved in the breakaway movement, to the degree that those planning the 1978 Anglican Catholic Church consecrations of "continuing" bishops were advised against it if they wished unity with Rome. Whatever the outcome, Douglas Bess, the one serious chronicler of the "continuing" movement, made the point that the actual numbers of "continuers" were never enough to make TEC take notice.

The problem, as it has been presented to policymakers in Rome, has clearly been misstated and misrepresented. What are the actual problems facing the Church? Msgr Charles Pope suggests,

There is a growing consternation among some Catholics that the Church, at least in her leadership, is living in the past. It seems there is no awareness that we are at war and that Catholics need to be summoned to sobriety, increasing separation from the wider culture, courageous witness and increasing martyrdom.

It is long past dark in our culture, but in most parishes and dioceses it is business as usual and there is anything but the sober alarm that is really necessary in times like these.

The problem for Houston -- or at least, the problem that I see most closely to hand -- is apparently this:

Let me see. The Santiago Retreat Center currently has at least two chapels (a Marywood Chapel and a Rosary Chapel, as far as I can tell from its web sites). Additional chapels are planned. The two existing chapels serve 2-300 people per weekend, generally a lot fewer than go to mass at a typical diocesan parish. However, Fr Bartus, with Houston's approval, is seeking donors of $100,000 per year for what seems to me an ill-conceived project to renovate a cheap temporary building to make the interior look more like a medieval English country church, or something like that (actually, a mid-19th century fantasy of a medieval English country church).

This renovation will apparently serve two tiny groups: one, in Carlsbad, numbering perhaps 20; the other, in Irvine, numbering optimistically 100. The only situation I can imagine that parallels an effort like this would be a folly funded by an eccentric member of the lesser nobility (or an underperforming scion of a robber baron), a local curiosity in a rural neighborhood. It's hard not to think that this reflects at best an astonishing sense of entitlement among the priests and parishioners, as well as what seems to be an utterly misguided understanding of the issues facing Christians.

Is there no better purpose for which these fundraising appeals can be used? However, my regular correspondent has suggested that the proposals and appeals regarding the Walsingham renovation and related projects are "smoke and mirrors", largely a self-promoting enterprise by one of the priests involved. In my view, it reflects poorly on OCSP leadership that this sort of thing is permitted.

I've Got To Say I'm Stumped

at the sheer incongruity, if nothing else, of the planned renovation of a Walsingham chapel at the Santiago Retreat Center.

Let's just start with the biggest issue: the retreat center is in a mountainous chapparal ecozone, which is ordered to burn every 20 to 50 years (the vegetation would not survive if it did not periodically burn). The California wildfires that make the news every year are simply the natural effect of this condition. Last week's Blue Cut fire, which took place in neighboring mountains visible from the Santiago center, burned hundreds of structures. Barring some combination of luck and heroic effort, this is what happens to structures that are built in this ecozone.

The structures at the Santiago center appear to be built with this in mind -- in other words, they're cheap and temporary, and this is what you see anywhere in areas like this.

Notice too, though, that the trees surrounding the building in the photo touch the building. It doesn't look as though the site has been planned or maintained with the potential for fire in prudent view.

But why undertake a clearly expensive interior renovation of buildings like these when there's a good chance the wood paneling and so forth won't last through the next fire? If I were a donor approached for a project like this, it's the first question I'd have in mind.

But leaving the question of fire aside, why are we doing this? The total assets of the center are listed as $128,644, which simply matches what we see in photos. Yet a proposal appears to want to spend considerably more than this simply to renovate the interior of one very cheap temporary building on the site.

The goal is to comfortably seat people whilst [note the preciousness here] having the ability to hold a solemn high mass, for the Annual Pilgrimages, and to orient the chapel in a neo-gothic interior that blends with a Spanish mission exterior, as a nod to the Spanish Franciscans who named Santiago Canyon on July 25, 1769, during the Portola Expedition. The exterior grounds around the chapel will contain a prayer garden surrounding the building itself, in the design of the Rosary so that pilgrims may pray whilst enjoying the beautiful surroundings of natural Southern California.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars in a multiphase renovation, to be used on special occasions or annual pilgrimages -- by a group that doesn't have its own facility at its normal location? I can imagine some lesser members of the Huntington, Crocker, or Stanford families endowing such a thing in the late 19th century, with the resource being passed down for occasional use now, but why are we doing this in 2016? Elsewhere I see mentions of a daily mass, but the Santiago property is not normally open to the public -- you have to call to make a reservation. Might there be a better use for someone's time here?

If Fr Baaten wants to e-mail me and set up a time for me to visit so he can make a case for what's going on here, I'll be delighted to bring my camera and take a detailed look. Short of that, I've got to call into question the judgment of anyone who is indulging this misbegotten proposal. (However, while it's apparently OK for Fr Baaten to call Patrick Madrid, it definitely isn't OK for anyone in the OCSP to e-mail me. Bp Lopes, you could potentially get me more on your side with a little more PR savvy.)

But I'm willing to listen.

Crowdfunding

My regular correspondent has pointed out that two OCSP or OCSP-related organizations are resorting to crowdfunding to attract donations. For instance, the Santiago Retreat Center, whose strange proposal for a pedantically detailed Anglo-Catholic chapel in the hardscrabble chapparal I mentioned last week, is out to raise $50,000. (It is not clear how the projects proposed in the appeal relate, or don't relate, to the OCSP proposal, nor how OCSP Fr Baaten's position as facilities director there relates to this proposal.)

Crowdfunding is defined (for instance) on this Wikipedia page. It is most commonly used for entertainment media projects, although philanthropic ventures also sometimes use it. Strictly speaking, it also uses crowdfunding platforms like gofundme or the clickandplege site used by the Santiago center. Random begging over the web, or Facebook, which is what BJHN and STM appear to be doing, seems to be a little farther from the definition. However, it seems to me that some of the disadvantages of this method still apply, taken in part from the Wikipedia entry:

[F]failure to meet campaign goals or to generate interest results in a public failure. Reaching financial goals and successfully gathering substantial public support but being unable to deliver on a project for some reason can severely negatively impact one's reputation.

Clearly, some of the appeals and proposals we've seen in Scranton have potentially had this effect. Also,

• Donor exhaustion – there is a risk that if the same network of supporters is reached out to multiple times, that network will eventually cease to supply necessary support.
• Public fear of abuse – concern among supporters that without a regulatory framework, the likelihood of a scam or an abuse of funds is high. The concern may become a barrier to public engagement.

. . . . By using crowdfunding, creators also forgo potential support and value that a single angel investor or venture capitalist might offer.

One question I have is why there sems to be no support from a prominent Orange County donor to Catholic projects, Tim Busch. BJHN cannot have escaped Busch's notice, since the group meets in the chapel at his offices and has even used his wine cellar. But apparently for fundraising, BJHN is on its own. Is there some reason why Mr Busch is less hospitable to proposals from BJHN?

I think Houston needs to take a much closer look at fundraising practices in Scranton and Irvine.

More Thoughts On The Interests Of The Parties

I'm a little puzzled that the ACA continues to be a party to the legal actions regarding the St Mary's parish. In November 2012, looking at what the ACA may have wanted in this whole matter, I counted 68 parishes and missions in the four US dioceses. As of this morning, I went back and counted 26 in the DONE, 8 in DEUS, 8 in DOW, and 12 in DMV for a total of 54.

In both 2012 and today, I gave the ACA the benefit of the doubt and counted everything each diocese listed on its website. This means that some number of the 68 in 2012 were inactive or paper parishes; it looks like there are similar questions about the current 54. For instance, although the Diocese of the West currently lists eight, three of these (the one in Montana and one each in Arizona and California) are probably inactive. In fact, two of the other California parishes are moribund without rectors.

My speculation in the November 2012 post was that in undertaking the May 2012 cruise to the Greek islands with Bp Grundorf to negotiate merger with the APA, Brian Marsh anticipated a multimillion-dollar infusion to the ACA from the recently seized St Mary's property. Since then, the ACA's prospects in this attempt have receded at best to stalemate. Prospects for merger with the APA have faded apace, and I don't believe this is a coincidence.

One thing that's stuck with me was Mr Lancaster's cringe in the courtroom Friday when Judge Murphy mentioned the word "receiver". The implications of the St Mary's vestry declaring bankruptcy are complex -- or indeed, a mortgage holder forcing appointment of a receiver -- and I'm nowhere near understanding them at this point. However, I think the bottom line for Mrs Bush and the ACA would be even more loss of control and less ability to delay proceedings.

A bankruptcy trustee would presumably have greater power to pursue the assets Mrs Bush removed from the parish bank accounts early this year. This would be a big problem for her. A good question would also be whether the money went from the non-profit parish accounts to accounts belonging to an organization that may not have formally been a non-profit. This could interest the IRS, and any irregularities could potentially threaten the ACA's tax exempt status.

Another issue could involve a receiver appointed to deal with any foreclosure action connected with the apparently fraudulent mortgage Mrs Bush took out on the property in 2014. A close look at this matter from an independent third party could cause other problems for Mrs Bush and the ACA.

In either case, this would probably allow a trustee or receiver to rent the commercial property. It would probably allow the Kelleys to continue to live on the property, and it would probably allow the vestry to continue to hold services. The rental income would be collected for the benefit of the creditors, and this would probably result in loss of effective ability by Bush and the ACA to delay proceedings via litigation.

it appears to me that Mrs Bush and the ACA would have more to lose than the vestry in any move like this. In addition, a lingering question has always been whether Mrs Bush's interests and those of the ACA are the same, especially in light of any potential irregularities over Mrs Bush's draining the bank accounts or obtaining the 2014 mortgage.

I've got to assume the attorneys for both sides are well aware of the issues involved.

What Problem Are Mrs Bush And The Creels Trying To Solve?

A regular visitor raises a very worthwhile question:

Some time ago, you reported that a [gentleman shouted in the courtroom to] the legitimate vestry that they ultimately would not get the property. I'm guessing that he foresaw that extended legal proceedings would render the parish's property essentially unrentable and that the parish would have difficulty paying its bills without the rental income. The obvious strategy was to force the parish into either bankruptcy or forfeiture of the property for non-payment of taxes, either of which would allow the other group to buy it cheaply.

My own view, as evidence has surfaced over time, continues to be that the Bush-ACA group never had a coherent plan and were never unanimous over it. (For instance, Bartus wanted to go into the OCSP with himself as pastor, while the ACA wanted to keep the parish and allowed Bartus to make the OCSP think the parish would come in under his leadership. That plan was overtaken by events and simply replaced.)

But during Friday's hearing, Judge Murphy made a remark in passing that "maybe a receiver would be the best way to resolve this situation." Mr Lancaster visibly shuddered at this and muttered something along the line of, "no, no, that won't be necessary." I suspect Mr Lengyel-Leahu simply recognized that this was something that could happen and had no apparent reaction.

The problem with bankruptcy is that a receiver looks at all the claims against the property and puts them in order. In addition to creditor claims, there will be liens by attorneys, as well as the apparently fraudulent mortgage Mrs Bush took out in 2014. Add to that the fees the receiver will collect. The result would be that the Bush group and the ACA DOW would realize very little, if anything -- but the process would drag on for several more years at least. Mrs Bush is 86 and the Creels are both 78. Anthony Morello is already in the next world.

This simply isn't the result of any clever master plan.

A big question is whether Mr Lancaster is advising his clients of their realistic prospects in this matter. But whatever he may tell them, the question is whether they will listen. I believe it's a common Catholic moral position that the tendency toward lust in youth matures into greed and an impulse toward power in old age, and this may be what's operating here. Whatever the logic of their position, Mrs Bush and the Creels wield power, at least for now, and at least until they wind up in assisted care.

Consider that, of the three ACA parishes remaining in California (a fourth is a mission and essentially inactive), two have been without rectors for an extended period -- this includes the Creels' Fountain Valley parish. My surmise is that neither of the two can attract a rector, as they can no longer pay a salary. I've got to wonder what kind of fantasy world the tiny clique that runs the ACA DOW is living in.

"Bishop" Williams continues as episcopal visitor, although he can apparently no longer be located, simply because if the ACA made a move to dissolve the DOW and merge it with the Diocese of the Missouri Valley, additional parishes, dismayed at the prospect of Strawn, would opt to leave the ACA. Since most of the equivalent APA diocese went into the REC/ACNA, an APA merger would not help this situation -- but now any merger with the APA is on hold anyhow.

There is no question that Mr Lancaster intends to drag out the legal proceedings indefinitely -- but he somehow thinks he can do this without putting the property permanently out of his clients' reach. One question would be how hospitable actuarial reality is to this plan and whether the ACA will eventually wake up to the way in which these proceedings are hastening its demise.

Looking At The State Of The St Mary's Parish

First, a couple of observations from yesterday: Mrs Bush and the Creels from Fountain Valley attended the hearing. Mrs Bush has generally not come to courtroom proceedings, and neither have the Creeps Creels (who I assume represented the moribund ACA Diocese of the West -- the three at this point are probably a non-trivial percentage of the whole diocesan membership). However, other stalwarts from last year's trial, including Messrs Cothran and Meyers AKA Omeirs, were absent.

Further on the ACA DOW, it is reported that the Episcopal Visitor, the "Rt Rev" Owen Rhys Williams, who had been living in an apartment around the corner from St Mary's, has not been seen since mid-July, nor his car nor his wife. He has presumably departed the area, though no one knows his current location. However, he had been irrelevant to the workings of the diocese ever since his designation, with the real power resting with Frederick Rivers and the tiny Fountain Valley clique. I can't imagine there will be many confirmations that will require his presence in the future, if any at all.

I was invited to a discussion in the courthouse cafeteria following the hearing, involving a dozen or so counsel, clergy, staff/volunteers, vestry, and other interested parties. I don't believe anything that was discussed was confidential, so I will provide an overall summary of what was said, leaving out a few specifics of legal strategy.

Mr Lengyel-Leahu stressed that it is in the parish's interest to get the litigation behind it, and it's also in the parish's interest to get the commercial space rented. The obstacle to renting the space is the clouded title stemming from the appeal of Judge Strobel's decision. It appears that an interim step will be to obtain a title insurance policy on the property, but even this is uncertain. He urged the parish to pursue smaller or shorter-term potential tenants who could make use of the space even with the longer-term legal issues unresolved.

Short of that, the parish doesn't currently have the income to meet even a bare-bones budget (roughly $150,000 a year was mentioned, which seems reasonable to me). Mr Lengyel-Leahu put it in terms of "you could lose everything."

The outcome of the hearing doesn't really change anything legally, which is also what Judge Murphy said yesterday. Although Mr Lancaster told Judge Murphy on January 8 that the appeal of Judge Strobel's decision had been "expedited", there have been repeated delays in getting parts of the trial record to the appeals court. Yesterday Judge Murphy pointed out that in fact there had been no request for expediting the appeal (i.e., Mr Lancaster lied to him), and he said it could easily be a year and a half before the case is argued.

While it's in the interest of the parish to get the litigation resolved, it seems fairly plain that it's in the interest of the ACA and the Bush group to drag things out. I suggested to Mr Lengyel-Leahu, in fact, that Mr Lancaster's strategy was to drag things out until everyone was dead -- he laughed, but I'm not sure he really disagreed. However, Mrs Bush was born in 1930. It's a puzzle to me that she would want to be preoccupied with litigation at this stage of her life -- not to mention that the editor of the local paper thinks she's destroyed her previously high reputation in the community. By the same token, the St Mary of the Angels situation has probably assured that no new parish will ever come into the ACA DOW as actuarial realities quickly catch up with it. I have the impression that Brian Marsh is pretending this isn't happening.

Mr Lengyel-Leahu suggested that an equitable solution to the litigation would be for Mrs Bush and the ACA to drop their claims on the property, their appeal, and their suit against Fr Kelley in return for the vestry dropping potential damage claims and civil fraud charges against Mrs Bush and the ACA. The vestry and Fr Kelley have always favored this approach, but it has never been accepted on the other side. Mr Lengyel-Leahu thinks that Mr Lancaster would probably insist on things his clients weren't entitled to in any negotiation, so prospects at this point seem remote.

In Court, Things Drag On

I attended the hearing this morning on the motion by the vestry to dismiss the civil theft case against Fr Kelley based on lack of standing by the Bush group to bring the suit. Judge Murphy's tentative opinion denied the motion:

A motion for judgment on the pleadings may be made on the same grounds as those supporting a general demurrer, i.e., that the complaint fails to state facts sufficient to constitute a legally cognizable claim. (Stoops v. Abbassi (2002) 100 Cal. App. 4th 644, 650.) Defendant Christopher P. Kelley (“Defendant”) moves for a judgment on the pleadings on the grounds that neither Plaintiffs Anglican Church in America (“ACA”) nor Diocese of the West (“DOW”) are real parties in interest as they do not hold title to the property at dispute in this action, and that Plaintiff Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Mary of the Angels’ Parish in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California (“Rector”) does not have standing to bring this lawsuit as it is an illegitimate “appointed vestry.” However, Defendant’s motion relies entirely on facts from outside of the pleadings, specifically, an opinion from the Court of Appeal in a related case. While an opinion from the Court of Appeal is judicially noticeable, the Court is not required to judicially notice the truth of the matters stated therein. Furthermore, even if the Court were to judicially notice the Court of appeal opinion, Defendant fails to show how that opinion would have a res judicata or collateral estoppel effect on the case at bar.

The motion is DENIED.

However, Judge Murphy said he would hear a motion for summary judgment based on lack of standing on December 5. I'll have more to say in a subsequent post.

What Problem Are We Trying To Solve

in the Blessed John Henry Newman expansion? A couple of visitors have raised this question with me via e-mail. One asks,

I was wondering what you are thinking about the fact that Andy is starting or becoming a sponsor for so many different groups, yet as of yet he can't seem to get enough money to purchase or even rent a decent place for a church building.

Good question; I just don't have an answer. Regarding the various expansion plans at the Santiago Retreat Center, I got interested in this when I started looking into where Fr Baaten was calling from. The photos of the facilities here suggest that, rather than "rustic", a better description might be "hardscrabble", and the market appears to be lower-income and at least partly Hispanic -- the staff includes a Director of Hispanic Programming & Events.

Yet they're aiming at putting a rood screen in the chapel, with a BDW daily mass. With all the other plans, do they intend to raise the income level of the clientele -- bring in all the Anglo-Catholic yuppies, maybe make the Hispanic Catholics uncomfortable so they'll leave? Who knows? Is anyone asking these questions?

The other question that comes up is how many of the people being recruited for the new groups are in the Anglicanorum coetibus target market -- disaffected former Anglicans or Catholics who haven't completed the sacraments of initiation. A name that's been pointed out to me on the various Facebook pages is Charles Coulombe, who is prominent in Traditionalist circles and a Latin Mass enthusiast. Msgr Steenson's original intent appears to have been to separate the OCSP from Traditionalist tendencies, which even conservative mainstream Catholics like Fr Ripperger characterize as "angry" and "perfectionist".

The best we can tell from the Facebook pages is that many potential members appear to be current Catholics, yuppies to be sure, but not in the target group originally envisioned for the OCSP. Comments at Ordinariate Expats suggest that we're seeing mission creep:

But actually, the most significant item here is the congregation’s programs to reach out to young adults — a demographic that far too many Roman Catholic parishes and even dioceses have long neglected, with the tragic consequence that young adults in need of pastoral services find their way to other denominations that willingly provide them. Outreach to this group is crucial to secure the future of every ordinariate community!

Observers on the ground in Irvine suggest that "young adults" actually means something more like "a clique of heavy-drinking yuppies". But I'm puzzled -- there's no shortage, from what I can see, of Catholic resources dedicated to young adults, including regular Youtube presentations by Fr Mike Schmitz, Los Angeles Bishop Barron, whose Youtube presentations often cover popular culture topics appealing to young adults, and many others. Our own parish often focuses on youth activities, it's had numerous vocations, and it has a girls' high school.

I'd want to be careful that the Bartus groups aren't either providing a haven for angry and perfectionist factions that may see less opportunity elsewhere, or are simply poaching people (especially by offering activities that feature alcohol) who might be better off in diocesan parishes. (Or the impression of activity we see may be something stirred up for effect.)

Fr Glenn Calls In From Silverado, CA

I was in my car listening to the excellent Patrick Madrid morning talk show on Immaculate Heart Radio, and a bit to my surprise, a priest calling himself Fr Glenn called in from Silverado, CA. (You can hear the call starting at about 7:00 here.) The subject Mr Madrid brought up was the forthcoming synod on married priests (he's less than lukewarm, as am I), and it took me a little while to realize who this was calling in: the OCSP's own new Fr Glenn Baaten, former Presbyterian, very briefly Anglican, tending to a group of 20 or so in Carlsbad, CA with a day job as facilities director at the Santiago Retreat Center, a trailer park and campsite.

I start out a little puzzled that Fr Baaten made this call at all, as I don't know where it fits in the OCSP's policy on contacting the media. Certainly in the real world, if I call in to (say) Rush Limbaugh and identify myself as "John from Los Angeles" and don't indicate who my employer is or that I'm speaking on his behalf, I'm fine, unless some colleague hears it, tells everyone in the office I'm in favor of some Republican, and screws me that way. But it's not a policy violation. On the other hand, if I call in and say I'm John, I'm security manager for Sasquatch Bank, and I'm in favor of some Republican, I'm out the door. In fact, I'm pretty much out the door if I say I'm John, I'm security manager, and I think butterflies are pretty. It's simply not done to contact media and identify yourself as an employee without the approval of public affairs.

I knew a guy whose judgment was so poor that, when he got assigned to a new project, he was so proud of himself that he called the local ABC outlet to announce the new project they had going. ABC called public affairs. Bang. Out the door the same day. So I just don't know if Houston was on board with Fr Glenn's call. If it was, I assume Mr Murphy would have a link (although I'm not sure how he got the piece that's up there now on Bl John's and Bartus's new plans). If I were Houston, I'd be up at night worrying about this stuff, especially in Southern Cal. And not just calls to Patrick Madrid.

I would say, though, that there wasn't much point to Fr Glenn's call. What problem was he trying to solve? Mr Madrid asked for comments on whether the duties of a Catholic priest might be much more demanding than those of a Protestant, and thus much less compatible with family responsibilities. Fr Glenn, a Catholic priest for all of two months, serving a group of 20 and running a trailer park, kids out of the house, has pretty much nothing to say on the subject.

Mostly it seems like he wanted to talk about himself, and I think Mr Madrid wound up politely getting him off the line.

Faces On Top Of Lenin's Tomb

The changes in the inner circle of the OCSP have a certain Kremlinological fascination. My regular correspondent sent me a link to North Texas Catholic for March 2012. By this point, only Msgr Steenson had been ordained, but a first tranche of former Anglican priests was in the process of coming in. A contingent of former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth priests -- certainly the local inner clique as of March 2012 -- appeared with Steenson and Bp Vann in a photo in the newsletter. Hurd and Bartus were out of town.

As with any photo taken on top of Lenin's Tomb, there are puzzles. Joshua Whitfield was apparently a candidate to go in via the OCSP, but instead he became Anglican Use the same year. UPDATE: Whitfield was ordained with several of the others in the photo by Bp Vann in June 2012, but he has served de facto as a Pastoral Provision priest, and the St Rita's bio linked says that's what he is. Is there a story here? Fr Tobola was a member of the 2008 Fort Worth Four, and his case appears to have been proceeding smoothly even as of March 2012. Indeed, he's standing right next to Msgr Steenson, who goes so far as to have an arm around his shoulder (this may have been a bad sign). Fr Crary, however, already had apparently not made the cut.

I'm wondering if Hough IV was deliberately stooping in order not to look taller than Msgr Steenson. It wouldn't surprise me at all.

Clearly Msgr Steenson was fond of old boys' reunions. If anyone was skeptical of the August 2012 allegation of an Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clique, photos like this ought to dispel doubts.

The Way Things Were

My regular correspondent referred me to this news release from 2013 on the Ordinariate web site.

Nashotah House Theological Seminary honored the Very Reverend Charles Hough, III, Vicar for Clergy in the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, with the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Fr. Hough is the first Roman Catholic priest to be so honored.

Distinguished alumnus awards are typically given in response to a substantial contribution. I don't know if this was the case here, but if it was, Fr Hough III was presumably doing quite well.

Fr. Hough said, "Nashotah House is very gracious to give this honor. I was indeed humbled to receive the award, and it was also a joy to be a part of the group from the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter who were in attendance on Alumni Day at Nashotah House."

Msgr. Steenson, himself a former Board member of Nashotah House, joined with Fr. Hough's family and friends at the presentation.

From a Catholic point of view, Nashotah House is no less compromised than any other Episcopal seminary, since it follows the TEC line on nearly every issue. This also fuels the view I've heard that Jeffrey Steenson was deeply compromised, by his membership on the Nashotah House board as well as by advancing in TEC while finessing any disagreements he may have had with its policy developments in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Might it be time to delete this three-year-old entry from the site?

The Other Side Of The Coin

My regular correspondent has been eager to point out recently that one Anglicanorum coetibus selling point was that groups of Anglicans would be able to come in with their priests, and ideally (as the case of St Luke's formerly of Bladensburg was supposed to indicate), even with their beloved parish buildings. In practice, there has been Clausewitzian friction. Under Steenson, a good proportion of priests came in without any group, while his intent appears to have been to force the priests of the most prominent parishes out and replace them with his protégés.

There also has been considerable movement among groups-in-formation, with the result that several have been closed or rendered inactive after losing their priests. But there's been an interesting counter-development: certain OCSP priests have attracted the attention of diocesan bishops. My regular correspondent reports,

Fr Seraiah['s] diocesan responsibilities have suddenly gone from assisting at two local parishes to being the administrator of those parishes, necessitating a change in service times for the Ordinariate group[. T]he diocese may expect significant work from the Ordinariate priest in return for his housing etc, which reduces his focus on the group.

Elsewhere, my correspondent notes,

The OCSP is moving on to a model where a priest is in charge of a small group of Ordinariate faithful with whom he had no prior connection and in addition a diocesan parish or a chaplaincy. Fr Sly, for example, is the pastor of Our Lady of Sorrows, Kansas City, the Associate Pastor of St Therese, KC, and the administrator of Our Lady of Hope Ordinariate group, which he took over from Fr Davis. Where does this last rank on his list of priorities? The division between those who are hustling (in the good sense) in the OCSP and those who are coasting is all too clear.

If a diocesan bishop sees an OCSP priest saying BDW mass for 12 or 20, whereas hundreds nearby may need a pastor, the bishop is going to try to make good use of available resources. This is particularly true if the bishop gets the impression that the OCSP priest is an effective administrator. I would note that neither Fr Seraiah nor Fr Sly is a Nashotah House alum. These appear to be in less demand.

I think in practice we're starting to see a demonstration that the ordinariate model is not a good use of resources, and that the resources it does provide in some cases are not useful.

Personal Prelature vs Ordinariate

I was working under the impression that a "personal prelature" was the same thing as an "ordinariate" -- and the conventional discussions have said that Cardinal Law proposed a "personal prelature" that resulted in "ordinariates". However, a visitor points out:

The decision to erect these particular churches as "ordinariates" rather than as "prelatures" is more nuanced. A "prelature" typically is self-sufficient, whereas an "ordinariate" typically depends to some extent on the resources and support functions of the diocese where its congregations are located. The former Anglican clergy who were to form the initial clergy of the ordinariates clearly did not have pontifical degrees in the various disciplines that are necessary to fulfill the full range of curial functions. The most obvious example is the lack of clergy with doctorates, or at least licentiates, in canon law (JCD or LCD) that are required to serve as judges, advocates, defenders of the bond, and promoters of justice on marriage tribunals, but this reality extends to other realities as well. Thus, it was obvious that the various congregations of the new jurisdictions would have to turn to their local dioceses for such matters. A married presbyter also could serve as the prelate of a personal prelature, so the fact that all three of the founding ordinaries were married had no bearing on this designation.

It's worth pointing out that there is now discussion of a personal prelature for SSPX, but in this light, it may not be the same thing as an Anglican ordinariate. My visitor notes,

The experience of the past has indicated that congregations that come intact into the Catholic Church from another denomination typically lose a significant number of parishioners somewhere en route in one way or another. This may happen soon after the congregation votes to make the move, or it may happen when the proverbial rubber meets the road right before the move actually occurs, or at some critical juncture of the process of preparation in between, or it may occur as a dribble along this path. The magisterium of the Catholic Church is well aware of this experience, and undoubtedly now plans under the assumption that about half of a congregation probably will fall away.

However, the numbers we've seen in most OCSP groups or parishes -- the largest have simply shifted from Catholic Anglican Use to Catholic OCSP, so this formula wouldn't apply -- have meant that dividing by two will render the group unsustainable. It remains to be seen whether even medium-size groups like those in Philadelphia and Scranton can sustain themselves financially in their plants -- but the loss of a pastor can simply put a smaller group out of business.

In effect, such communities -- parishes or a whole ordinariate -- must operate at a loss for some period in my visitor's view but will eventually justify themselves. It's worth pointing out that ordinariate groups also impose a cost on host dioceses, via host parish facilities, living quarters in rectories, the use of marriage tribunals, and so forth. They also impose a risk, in that an ordinariate priest is not effectively supervised, but if he causes a scandal, it will reflect on the diocese. A diocesan bishop, as we've seen, may resist paying this cost or taking this risk, and we need to reserve this decision to the bishop. My visitor concludes,

Rome was not built in a day, and neither are the Vatican's undertakings. Rather, the Roman Curia operates on a timeline of decades or even centuries. The ordinariates are very much in their infancy.

But in any case, bishops routinely ask themselves if any diocesan program is justifiable, and they routinely close and merge parishes. The Church simply can't support ordinariates on the basis that things may turn around 30 or 300 years from now! Or let's say a future young cardinal decides to emulate Cardinal Law and propose ordinariates for some other separated group: Seventh Day Adventists, for instance.

Prudence should require a careful review of how compatible the group would be coming into the Church as a group, rather than via individual decisions and RCIA. And in effect, someone would need to ask what problem we're trying to solve. This is no different from asking what problem we're trying to solve in keeping St Ipsydipsy open.

A personal prelature for SSPX sounds like a potentially better bet than, say, a personal prelature for Catholic-leaning Baptists. The question for me is whether the decision to issue Anglicnorum coetibus was prudently made.

Why An Anglican Personal Prelature May Have Been A Bad Idea

Those who've been following this story know that Cardinal Bernard Law, who observed the 1970s developments that led to "continuing Anglicanism" with interest, proposed a personal prelature that would include disaffected Episcopalians as early as meetings between his staff and Fr Jack Barker in 1980. The result, however, was Pope St John Paul II's Pastoral Provision, which put former Anglican priests, as well as a limited number of parishes, under diocesan bishops, not a separate personal prelature.

Law tried again in 1993, but Pope St John Paul was again less than enthusiastic. The idea behind the second proposal seems to have been to circumvent diocesan bishops who. like Cardinal Mahony, resisted establishing Anglican Use parishes. In hindsight, though, it's hard to second-guess Mahony's judgment: he was aware that the St Mary's parish was bitterly divided even in the 1980s.

The Pastoral Provision has been successful in bringing former Anglican priests into various kinds of service in the US Catholic Church. The number of remaining Pastoral Provision parishes is only two, with a small number having gone into the OCSP. On balance, experience with former Anglican parishes coming into the Catholic Church as groups, either via the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus, has been disappointing.

I note, via occasional e-mail messages commenting on posts here, that there are Catholics who are former Episcopalians but did not come in either via the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus who think that the idea of a personal prelature was a bad one. I'm a member of that club, of course, but a more recent initiate.

My own view is that leaving the specific question of governance aside, the decision to become Catholic is always individual. The likely need to leave a parish building, a respected priest, or a group of friends behind is the sort of reasonable sacrifice that God might expect under such circumstances. On the other hand, the process of discernment among a whole parish is inevitably going to lead to bitter division, hardly good for anyone's spiritual welfare.

Here are some reasons experience has shown us that a personal prelature is a bad idea:

1. An ordinary can't practically supervise clergy hundreds or thousands of miles distant. I've seen equivalent problems in corporations: those in authority can too easily be misled even if they're interested in what's happening, but they may not be interested anyhow. It appears that the ingredients for a financial scandal are present in Scranton, but the pastor there seems to be minimizing them with glib promises. The resources don't seem to be available to put experienced people on site to determine exactly what's going on.
2. The dotted-line relations between OCSP priests, host parishes, diocesan bishops, schools, religious orders, and other interested parties are an invitation to play them off against the OCSP ordinary. I strongly suspect this is what is happening in Irvine: the pastor appears to be cultivating alliances, for instance, with Extraordinary Form groups when the policy we have from the OCSP is that the OCSP is not to get involved with the Latin mass. Distance also affects this.
3. Bp Lopes has commented that, while Rome admires the Anglican spiritual patrimony, it does not necessarily endorse Anglican structures of governance. Clearly there was confusion in this area under Msgr Steenson. I believe it was Diarmaid MacCulloch who pointed out that the Church of England emerged as a Reformed, congregational denomination that retained bishops and cathedral chapters because they provided opportunities for political patronage. The Fort Worth group eagerly brought careerism into the OCSP, but this is common throughout TEC, the "continuing" denominations, and their successors. It is baked into Anglicanism. One hopes the CDF has learned this lesson.

The idea of bringing in whole Anglican parishes with their priests hasn't turned out well, but on balance, having a diocesan bishop in charge seems like a much better idea. But perhaps an effort to correct some of the abuses to be found in RCIA would provide much better return.

Handsome Is As Handsome Does

There is such a thing as a sin against prudence. The whiskey evenings and beer breakfasts are not mentioned. If Houston has brought these to a halt, I'll note it here.

The Fort Worth Frammis -- II

Andrew Bartus's version of his 2010 post-seminary job search (the original document is no longer on the web) is, "Right before graduation, I learned I couldn’t return to the Diocese of Fort Worth, as it was already full of incumbents and curates[.]" We don't know exactly how this may have been expressed, but another version I've been given is that Iker didn't want him.

In light of the 2008 Fort Worth Four fiasco, in which the Four acknowledged that their approach to Bp Vann was ill-advised and should not have occurred, I've come to think that the Catholic faction of Fort Worth clergy had become a headache to Bp Iker. I've got to think they were put on a short leash after 2008 and tolerated on the assurance that they were on their way out, but to have any more of the clique come in was not an option. And in light of the St Mary of the Angels experience, if Bartus was at all representative, there was a strong sense of spoiled-brat entitlement among the whole group -- I'm still shaking my head that the Four would publicly embarrass their bishop yet suffer so few consequences.

Handsome is as handsome does. Once the Fort Worth clique made it to the OCSP, there was a series of fiascos and embarrassments: the reversals by Our Lady of the Atonement and St Aidan's Des Moines; the protracted disaster in Hollywood; the public allegations of favoritism; the failed implementation of the ParishSoft system; and likely others that haven't come to light but influenced Steenson's and Hough III's removal. I can only think Bp Iker was happy to be rid of them all.

Let's look at what I've called the St Mary of the Angels frammis not, as I'd mostly seen it, as a hidden agenda involving primarily the Bush group and the ACA, but one in which the Fort Worth group was much more actively involved. From the Fort Worth perspective, their goal was essentially to rebuild a Catholic Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth in their image, when they'd been unable to prevail in the real Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.

This involved finding preferments and sinecures for members of the clique, and it seems increasingly plain that Bartus, who shared both Texas A&M and Nashotah House with Hough IV, was a well-connected member -- I was told by a former St Mary's associate that Bartus would boast about how well-connected he was, but I used to discount this as just boasting. Now I think there may have been some substance to his assertions.

So I think the Fort Worth intent was to remove Fr Kelley and install a member of the clique, Andy Bartus, in his place. We now know that Steenson intended to make a similar move at Our Lady of the Atonement, so it looks like there was a pattern in operation. It appears that there was a great deal of back-channel character assassination against Fr Kelley, directed toward Fr Hurd, the vicar general, and probably Hough IV, who would have had Hough III's ear, and Steenson through both.

This included utterly spurious allegations of financial impropriety. With no actual evidence to bear them out, it was necessary to stage a scandal. This was done with the help of the parish treasurer, an essentially uncatechized and deeply troubled woman, who as far as we can tell agreed not to forward quarterly payments for employee tax withholding to the IRS. It appears that Bartus was fully aware of this scheme and may have been complicit to the extent of removing the IRS notices of overdue payments from incoming mail in the parish office.

Let's enumerate what this involved. Not paying taxes and tampering with mail are crimes, potentially felonies. Because the tax payments are deductions from workers' wages and are credited to the workers' accounts with the IRS, not paying the tax amounts to denying workers their wages, a sin that cries out to heaven. Trying to attribute this to Fr Kelley is false witness. Hurd and the Houghs, if they had any knowledge that any of this was in train and allowed it to continue, were complicit.

Let's go a little farther. Bartus had well-documented personality clashes with both his ACA bishop, Daren Williams, and his Patrimony bishop, David Moyer. He no doubt was complaining loudly about this to Hurd and the Houghs at every opportunity. Indeed, I've come to wonder how much Bartus's complaints about Moyer contributed to what appears to have been Steenson's request to Abp Chaput to deny Moyer his votum. But despite what to a normal person might have seemed a level of immaturity that required some type of probatory delay, the Fort Worth group seems to have been intent on putting Bartus, barely two years out of seminary and unstable, in charge of what would have been a major OCSP parish.

This is a sin against prudence. The frammis Bartus, Bush, Morello, and the others cooked up was too complicated, and it required too many things to fall exactly into place. It began to collapse over Easter 2012. That the Fort Worth group would think this would succeed is another sin against prudence, but it's increasingly plain that prudence was never their strong suit.

Yet it appears that Hurd and Steenson believed Strawn and Morello in May 2012 when the ACA pair assured them that they'd just get rid of Fr Kelley and straighten the parish out, turning it over to the OCSP when they were done, saving Steenson the effort. I'm still shaking my head.

I'm also still convinced that this fiasco probably can't be retrieved by Houston, no matter who tries.

The Fort Worth Frammis -- I

I continue to admire the work Douglas Bess did in Divided We Stand, and I'm truly sorry that he's told me he's no longer interested in "continuing Anglicanism" or related topics like US Episcopal affiliations with conservative provinces, the formation of the ACNA, the Pastoral Provision, or Anglicanorum coetibus. There must inevitably be similar stories to be told, and only from what I've seen as an observer in Hollywood, they must be interesting to say the least.

For instance, we know Bp Iker made an approach to Cardinal Law in 2006, but by 2008, he and his diocese had decided to affiliate with the Southern Cone. That says to me that there must have been additional approaches to other jurisdictions as well as to conservative TEC bishops like Schofield and Duncan before Iker settled on a final course that definitely did not involve Rome. (It's hard to avoid the conclusion, though, that Rome never took the 2006 Iker approach seriously, having already placed its bets on Steenson.)

However, we also know that there was a Catholic faction among Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clergy that went so far as to approach Bp Vann in 2008, and although they must have been fully aware of their bishop's and the diocese's direction, they nevertheless told Vann that the diocese was overwhelmingly in favor of becoming Catholic. The reaction from the diocese on receiving this news should not have come as a surprise. The surprise to me is that Hough III kept his job as canon to the ordinary.

This makes me wonder if the Catholic faction, the Fort Worth Four and the others who went into the Ordinariate in 2012, had enough power in the diocese to counterbalance Iker -- he apparently couldn't get rid of them, but he was happy to see them go. Indeed, he may have permitted the 2008 approach to Vann in hopes that this group would discredit themselves, but he couldn't dislodge them even then, and he even had to keep Hough III. Still, the Vann approach had been a Hail Mary play that didn't work, and it offers an insight into the general capabilities of Hough III and the rest of the clique.

I would assume that after the Fort Worth Four affair blew over by early 2009, Steenson was back in the US, and it was possible to make the outlines of Anglicanorum coetibus and his planned role known to a select group of Fort Worth misfits, who now probably included Steenson among them. The group drew in others like Fr Scott Hurd, a former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth priest and Nashotah House alumnus, now a Pastoral Provision priest working for Cardinal Wuerl in Washington, who would become the delegate for implementing Anglicanorum coetibus. Andrew Bartus, a couple of years younger than Charles Hough IV, seems to have overlapped Hough IV at both Texas A&M and Nashotah House and seems to have become a serious member of the clique as well.

The impression I get, though, is that all the members of this clique, from Steenson on down, were bumblers. They had a minimal instinct for self-promotion, which brought them to levels of incompetence at which they didn't last. Steenson lasted two years as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande, and I have a nagging feeling that even had he not resigned to go to Rome, he'd have been out soon enough. He lasted four years as ordinary of the OCSP, "retiring" at 63 and eased out of Houston. I suspect he wouldn't have lasted any longer if he'd stayed in New Mexico. Hough III, somehow able to hang on under Iker, was out within months of losing Steenson's protection.

Their legacy is a sad one.

Thinking Small

Reviewing the back story of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth's approaches to Cardinal Law and Bishop Vann from 2006 and 2008, it's hard not to think that it adds credibility to the August 2012 allegation that former Fort Worth Episcopalians were firmly in charge of the OCSP:

One clergyman, who asked not to be named as he had applied for reception, told Anglican Ink he had been discouraged the “Pastoral Provision was so un-pastoral”. A “Fort Worth mafia” was dominating the U.S. Ordinariate – Msg. Steenson is a former Fort Worth rector, while the vicar for clergy, the Rev. Charles Hough III is the former canon to the ordinary of the Diocese of Fort Worth.

In addition to Fr Hough III, of course, other Fort Worth figures, such as Fr Sellers, were apparently brought in with sinecures in Houston, while Fr Hough IV continues as pastor of the cathedral church. Fr Perkins, Fr Hough III's replacement, is another member of the original Fort Worth group.

It's also worth noting that, although Msgr Steenson had been both canon to the ordinary and bishop in New Mexico from 2000 to 2007, he seems not to have brought anyone from that diocese with him into the Ordinariate. No Ordinariate-bound groups or parishes ever emerged in New Mexico. For that matter, the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande does not seem to have grieved his departure for any great length of time.

Each time I revisit the 2012 allegations, I'm also drawn to these observations:

A second aspirant said he had been pressed to explain why he had not come to Rome when he left the Episcopal Church some twenty five years ago. If he accepted papal supremacy and the dogmas of the Catholic Church, why had he delayed a quarter century in making his submission, he was asked, the clergyman told AI.

The question is not an unfair one, however, as the Catholic Church’s self-understanding of its role in the economy of salvation is found in the statements of the Second Vatican Council.

Lumen Gentium14 states: “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved”, which on its face, would appear to render suspect in Roman eyes those who have held long standing doubts as to the veracity of Anglican truth claims and delayed going over to Rome.

The problem is that all the Fort Worth group delayed their submissions. Iker and the six who went to Rome with him in 2006 made no submissions, even though the Pastoral Provision was available to them. In 2008, the Fort Worth Four made elaborate statements to Bp Vann accepting papal authority but again made no actual move to become Catholic -- two did not resign their diocesan positions until April 2011, and then only when their acceptance into the Ordinariate had presumably been assured via back channels. These doubts would apply as justly to former Fort Worth figures, like Frs Perkins and Hough IV, who are still in favor.

Jeffrey Steenson himself was deeply compromised in both Episcopal and Catholic opinion, as he had a very good career in TEC without offering serious objection to the ordination of women, the revised prayer book, women bishops, or Jack Spong. In 2005, he went so far as to call opponents of Gene Robinson's consecration Donatists. Yet in 1993, he'd met with Cardinal Ratzinger to propose a personal prelature for Anglicans, but he delayed becoming Catholic for a decade and a half.

Looking at the peculiar game of musical chairs that took place among the Fort Worth Four between 2008 and 2012, in which Frs Crary and Tobola were somehow voted off the island while others like Frs Perkins and Hough IV somehow made it in, it's hard not to think a certain amount of backstabbing took place even among the core group and the wannabes. Any objections from this group that less-favored candidates were somehow insincere strike me as pharisaical.

But the overwhelming impression I get is that all these people were thinking entirely in terms of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, and Anglicanorum coetibus was to be nothing but Fort Worth writ large. I hate to say it, but the Church, and the Church Universal, have much higher priorities than finding well-paid, prestigious, and undemanding TEC style jobs for these cronies -- yet that's what they seem to have wanted for themselves exclusively.

I'm increasingly of the view that Bp Lopes needs to shut this thing down and start over.

So What Did Iker Have In Mind?

It's plain that by the summer of 2008, if he hadn't figured it out earlier, Bp Iker had learned that the idea of taking the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth into the Catholic Church as a body was, to say the least, controversial. His retraction of the idea made it plain that pulling out of TEC and affiliating with the Southern Cone was already on the agenda for the diocesan convention and a likely sure thing.

So why he allowed the Fort Worth Four, including his canon to the ordinary and the dean of the cathedral, to meet in public and play kissy-kissy with the local Catholic bishop is a puzzle. Here's my surmise:

• Iker in 2006, when he and six Fort Worth clergy met with Cardinal Law in Rome, was unaware of the plan for a personal prelature that had been mooted by Pope and Steenson with Cardinal Ratzinger in 1993. The 2008 reaction to the Fort Worth Four approach to Vann should be an indication of what would happen to any Episcopal bishop, including Pope or Steenson, if such a thing had come to light. Iker knew as little as anyone.
• By the time of the 2006 approach, however, Ratzinger had become pontiff and did not need the CDF's approval to issue Anglicanorum coetibus. Planning would have been under way, and Steenson would already have been selected as ordinary, with his departure for Rome already choreographed for the following year.
• However, in light of how controversial it would be if the plan were prematurely revealed, Law said nothing about it to Iker and his group, instead making a request that they "make an offer", although in light of the progress on the existing plan, the offer wouldn't have been taken seriously if it had been made.
• In any case, Law at least must have understood what would happen to Iker if he ever seriously proposed taking his diocese into the Catholic Church. Beyond that, I would guess that neither he nor Benedict would have wanted Iker coming in: he would have outshone Steenson, he would have been discontented with Steenson in as ordinary, and he would have been too strong and independent a figure. If he'd sass TEC, he'd sass the USCCB.
• I've got to assume that Bp Iker is not a stupid man, and at some point after the 2006 meeting -- especially after Steenson's 2007 journey to Rome -- all of the above must have occurred to him, if he didn't hear much of it from well-placed sources.
• So he had every reason to put the approach to Law on the back burner, and it looks like that's where it was for two years.

It sees to me, though, that a core group -- the Fort Worth Four, plus the Fort Worth clergy who were received and ultimately ordained in June 2012, minus the ones like Crary and Tobola who didn't make the final cut -- were intent on making the move.

• Whatever Iker may have concluded about his own prospects, the Fort Worth Four may have retained fantasies of becoming prestigious Catholic prebendaries in some sort of adventitious Catholic Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
• Vann was too polite to tell them they were nuts.
• Iker had probably spoiled them and couldn't tell them no directly.
• So he let the standing committee and whatever spontaneous groups arose of peasants carrying torches do the job for him.

The Fort Worth Four

According to the information in this post, the four Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clergy who met with Bp Vann on June 16, 2008 were

The Very Reverend William A. Crary, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 32 years of experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC (Society of the Holy Cross), Dean of the Eastern Deanery, and is the senior rector in the Diocese, serving St. Laurence for 22 years.

The Reverend Canon Charles A. Hough, III, SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 30 years experience in the Diocese, Canon to Bishop Iker for 15 years, a member of the SSC, Chair of our Diocesan Deputation to the General Convention of The Episcopal Church for 23 years, has served parishes in Granbury and Grand Prairie.

The Reverend Louis L. Tobola, Jr., SSC, a founding priest of the Diocese with 31 years experience in the Diocese, a member of the SSC, a founding priest for a new congregation in the Diocese, St. Barnabas the Apostle, has served as Dean of the Cathedral and Dean of the Eastern Deanery.

The Very Reverend Christopher C. Stainbrook, SSC, came to Fort Worth from New York in 1990 by invitation of Bp. Pope, has been Vicar of St. Timothy’s since 1994, is Finance Committee Chair, Diocesan Historiographer, Dean of the Fort Worth East Deanery, and Special Liaison to the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.

On August 16, 2008, the four priests issued a statement backtracking from their meeting with Bp Vann, saying, "In retrospect, we regret our choice of timing for starting these conversations." On April 1, 2011, Bp Iker announced that Hough and Tobola had resigned their positions with the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, presumably in anticipation of going into the forthcoming ordinariate.

On December 19, 2011, North Texas Catholic reported on former Fort Worth Episcopal priests awaiting the pending erection of the OCSP, although of the original four, Crary had dropped out of the picture, while Fr Perkins was new:

Hough is one of three spiritual leaders for the community which had been meeting at the diocesan Catholic Center until recently. The community is divided into three fellowships: St. John Vianney in Cleburne, which Hough leads; St. Peter the Rock in Arlington, led by Timothy Perkins, another former Episcopalian priest; and Blessed John Henry Newman in Keller, led by Louis Tobola, also a former Episcopalian priest who is still in the process of coming into the Catholic Church with the members of his fellowship.

However, this is the last mention I find of Tobola or a Newman group in Keller, TX. Fr Crary does not appear in later references than 2008. Ultimately, six former Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth priests were ordained by Bp Vann on June 25, 2012, including Fr Timothy Perkins, Frs Hough III and IV, and Fr Stainbrook.

My regular correspondent provides this summation of Fr Hough's and Fr Stainbrook's later careers:

Fr Hough III has gone from key player in the OCSP to a man completely sidelined. Abruptly "retired" as Vicar-General after a year and a half at the job and replaced by a contemporary [Fr Perkins, who avoided the 2008 brouhaha], he is also one of a team of three: Fr Hough III, Fr Thomas Kennedy who was himself replaced after a short stint as pastor of St Mary the Virgin, Arlington, and Fr Cornelius, former administrator of St Alban's, Rochester who left for health reasons, who have taken charge of St Timothy's, Ft Worth.

However, notwithstanding three senior pastors, St Timothy's has never been large enough to have its own facility. My correspondent continues,

Fr Stainbrook, who brought this congregation into the Church, has been reassigned to St John Vianney, Cleburne. This latter congregation had been ministered to by Fr Hough III, initially, then he was moved to St Timothy's last year and Fr Jonathan Duncan was briefly in charge. When Fr Duncan moved to Greenville, Fr Stainbrook began saying mass in Cleburne while continuing as pastor at St Timothy's.

It seems clear to me that the current leadership in Houston see St John Vianney as the parish with a future; the competent leader is being deployed there while St Timothy's gets the punishment battalion. StJV is currently worshipping in a school auditorium so I would assume the plan is to find, or build, a church which can be used by both congregations. Whatever, the plan, Fr Hough III will not be playing an important role. Whatever Steenson [or Iker for that matter] saw in him, Bp Lopes does not.

I would greatly appreciate further information on what happened to Frs Crary and Tobola in subsequent years.

UPDATE: Fr Crary appears as a summer replacement priest at St Alban's Anglican Church, Arlington, TX in 2015.

Wha?

The points on yesterday's timeline are sketchy, and there's a great deal we don't know. How much, for example, did Jack Iker, Steenson's superior in Fort Worth from 1995 to 2000, know of his 1993 meeting with Ratzinger and the plan for a personal prelature? My surmise is that Pope and Steenson made great efforts to keep at least the substance of the meeting secret, and Steenson would probably not have made bishop if there had been rumors with any credibility about the meeting.

Next question: what was Cardinal Law doing to get involved with all this? Before I posted yesterday's timeline, a visitor noted,

Cardinal Law "resigned" the office of Archbishop of Boston in 2003 due to the scandal of sexual abuse that arose a year earlier. He subsequently went to a retreat center known for taking in disgraced clerics for six months before going to Rome to assume the largely symbolic position of Archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in 2003. This is one of several positions with a lot of prestige and not much real influence where the Vatican puts clerics who screwed up badly.

At the time of Cardinal Law's "resignation" from the office of Archbishop of Boston in 2003, the Vatican also appointed Most Rev. John J. Myers, Archbishop of Newark as the apostolic delegate for the so-called "pastoral provision." Archbishop Myers held this collateral position until 2011, when the Vatican appointed Most Rev. Kevin Vann, then Bishop of Fort Worth and now Bishop of Orange, to the post, so tenure clearly encompasses the entire period when the application from the former Episcopal bishop would have been under consideration.

The only answer I can give is that Abp Myers was left out of the loop. Law ordained Steenson a deacon, although he was ordained a priest in Santa Fe, which at least observed the Pastoral Provision niceties.

It's also worth pointing out that the Pastoral Provision was in effect and available to Fort Worth clergy in 2006 and 2008. They were probably well aware of this, but in spite of it, they chose to approach Cardinal Law, who apparently did not refer them to Abp Myers.

Whether Jeffrey Steenson was involved in these contacts is an open question as well. But Cardinal Law's request that the Fort Worth group "make an offer" is also puzzling, since Law at minimum was aware of the 1993 plan for a personal prelature that was sitting in Benedict's desk drawer. But Law seems to have made no effort to steer the Fort Worth group in such a direction -- he simply told them to make an offer.

I wonder, as a matter of fact, how seriously Law took the contacts, and through him, Bp Vann. Law tells the Fort Worth group to make an offer, and they dither over it for two years. I can't imagine that guys like that could have been all that solid. Well, Fr Hough III was involved.

I also wonder how seriously Bp Iker ever intended the contacts. At most, I've got to imagine that he woke up one morning and realized what would happen to him if he ever tried to announce that a whole Episcopal diocese -- in Texas -- was going into the Catholic Church. He may have tacitly endorsed the group's procrastination.

Everyone posed for pictures and went home, and later in the year, the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth went into the ACNA. Perhaps a visitor has additional insights. Law might have hoped to come up with a long-odds save to his reputation, but Iker had already settled on a different option.

A More Detailed Fort Worth Timeline

With the help of my regular correspondent, and following links on several blog posts from the period, I've been able to come up with a more detailed timeline covering the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth's involvement in the runup to Angicanorum coetibus, as well as Bishop Iker's varying pubic positions regarding unity with Rome.

• Late 1980s: Cardinal Law maintains informal contacts with Rome-leaning Episcopal clergy, particularly in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. At this point, little is known of the nature of these contacts, or precisely when they occurred.
• 1993: Cardinal Law arranges a meeting between Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Jeffrey Steenson, then a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, and his bishop, Clarence Pope. Steenson drafts and refines a proposal for an Anglican personal prelature, something Law had pushed for from at least 1980. However, Pope St John Paul says the proposal must be approved by the CDF, and recognizing that it would not pass, Ratzinger withdraws it to avoid a defeat.
• 1993-95: Clarence Pope continues efforts to establish his eligibility to become a married Catholic bishop, which are unsuccessful. He requests that all correspondence related to the Ratzinger meeting be sent to his home, not his office. Pope retires in 1994 and becomes Catholic. Jack Iker is named Bishop Coadjutor of Fort Worth; it is not known how much he knew of Pope's and Steenson's initiative. By 1995, unable to be ordained a married Catholic priest, Pope becomes Anglican again.
• 2002: Cardinal Law moves from Boston to Rome and apparently resumes activity related to Anglican ecumenism and conservative issues in the Vatican.
• 2003: Cardinal Law renews contact with Clarence Pope, suggesting personal prelature proposal may be renewed. However, he apparently determines Pope is not stable.
• April 24, 2005: Cardinal Ratzinger is inaugurated Pope Benedict XVI.
• August 1, 2005: Jeffrey Steenson becomes Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande.
• April 2006: Six priests of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, along with Bishop Iker, meet in Rome with Cardinal Law to discuss causes of Catholic-leaning Episcopal dissatisfaction. Law requests that the group make some type of proposal. The sketchy account of this meeting does not mention any specific discussion of the 1993 proposal, except that Law is quoted as saying,"What was not possible twenty years ago may be possible today."
• Summer 2007: Jeffrey Steenson carefully paves the way for an amicable resignation as bishop with Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori. He is assisted by Msgr William Stetson, a canon lawyer and close associate of Cardinal Law.
• December 1, 2007: Steenson's resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande becomes effective. He becomes Catholic the same day. Steenson moves to Rome under the auspices of Cardinal Law.
• June 16, 2008: Four priests of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth meet with Roman Catholic Bishop of Fort Worth Kevin Vann, with the knowledge and approval of Bishop Iker, to present a proposal for Catholic unity, which they say is the result of two years of discernment, presumably the outcome of Cardinal Law's 2006 request.

  The document states that the overwhelming majority of Episcopal clergy in the Fort Worth diocese favor pursuing an “active plan” to bring the diocese into full communion with the Catholic Church.

• August 12, 2008: Bishop Iker backs off the meeting, saying "in their written and verbal reports, [the four] have spoken only on their own behalf and out of their own concerns and perspective. They have not claimed to act or speak, nor have they been authorized to do so, either on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth or on my own behalf as their Bishop." He adds that the meeting with Vann will not affect the business of the upcoming diocesan convention.
• November 2008: Delegates at a Fort Worth diocesan convention vote to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone
• December 1, 2008: Steenson is ordained a transitional deacon by Cardinal Bernard Law, the archpriest of the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome.
• December 3, 2008: Conservative Episcopal bishops announce formation of ACNA. Fort Worth becomes a founding diocese.
• February 21, 2009: Jeffrey Steenson is ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe by Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan.
• November 4, 2009: Pope Benedict XVI issues Anglicanorum coetibus.
• 2009-2010: Jack Iker gives vague and not entirely plausible explanations for backing off the possibility of the ordinariate.
• January 1, 2012: Jeffrey Steenson is named Ordinary of the newly erected Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter.

The Episcopal Diocese Of Fort Worth's About-Face

Another historical curiosity in the runup to Anglicanorum coetibus is the tentative move that Bp Iker and the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth were thought to be mooting for a move as a body to become Roman Catholic. My regular correspondent sent me a link to a blog entry from 2008 covering a petition by Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth clergy to then-Roman Catholic Bishop of Fort Worth Kevin Vann.

While I've seen references to Bishop Iker's reversal on this matter, I'm not sure if there has ever been much detail given on exactly what happened. The timing of the Fort Worth petition suggests that things were going on behind the scenes: Jeffrey Steenson resigned as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande in 2007 and went to Rome under the sponsorship of Cardinal Law. In light of subsequent events, this was clearly a key development, and the 2007 TAC Portsmouth Petition was much less important. In 2008, we see the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth petition to Bishop Vann. In 2009, we see Anglicanorum coetibus.

At some point in this timeline, Bishop Iker reversed himself on any intent he may have had to lead his Episcopal diocese in a body to Rome. (I will be most grateful to anyone who can provide specific references and links covering what happened and when.)

Since Steenson was already in Rome by the time the Fort Worth Episcopal clergy made their petition, since Steenson was previously a priest in that diocese, and since Charles Hough III was a prominent member of the petitioning group, it's hard to avoid the surmise that Steenson was somehow involved in the petition, and extensive back-channel communications were taking place. How involved was Iker in the discussions? To what extent were the Fort Worth clergy being made aware of the forthcoming apostolic constitution?

If Iker had brought his diocese into a proposed ordinariate, what would his role have been relative to Steenson? Steenson, we can be pretty sure, had the inside track to become US Ordinary. But Iker would have been the more senior and more prominent US Episcopal bishop.

Could some disagreement on this issue have prompted Iker's reversal? Certainly if the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth had entered the Catholic Church in a body, which was clearly a move envisioned in 2008, it would have been a much more encouraging development than what actually took place.