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.