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.