Delict Of Schism

After I published yesterday's post, it occurred to me that I actually knew nothing about delict of schism. What did we do before Google? (Actually, when I began working as a writer, a co-worker told me that the reference desk at the local public library was a really good resource -- you called them up and asked them something like "what is delict of schism?" and actually you got a good answer pretty quickly. But no need for that now.)

On the other hand, I found very little about it on the web. The best source was this one:

"The Church's penal order does not refer primarily to the individual's relationship with the Lord in conscience. This is largely inaccessible to church authority and hence beyond its competence. Rather, what is principally envisioned is a public act or omission adversely affecting the community. However, ecclesiastical penal law also deals with certain occult, or non-public, delicts known only to a few individuals, e.g., solicitation in confession. This is because such acts may significantly harm the community and hence are deemed matters of penal discipline.

"Not every sin is an ecclesiastical delict warranting a penalty, yet every delict is a seriously sinful act or omission reflecting significant, if not full, freedom and knowledge. Certain factors notably impairing such freedom (e.g., fear) and knowledge (e.g., ignorance) may diminish or completely preclude imputability, or responsibility, for one's apparently criminal behavior.["]

So as far as I can see, the issue normally involves someone who was raised Catholic, presumably completed catechism and completed the sacraments of initiation, had a mature understanding of the faith, but then, by free will and fully understanding what he was doing, left the Church in some public way (e.g., by getting ordained in a Protestant denomination). This would not preclude that Catholic from going to Confession and returning to the Church, but it would raise entirely reasonable questions about whether he should become a Catholic priest.

So this would extend the restriction I previously understood, that a Catholic priest who leaves his orders is not re-ordained. Here, a serious Catholic who deliberately and publicly leaves the faith is probably not a good candidate for ordination once he claims to have returned to the faith. Seems pretty non-controversial to me. In this context, my regular correspondent commented on yesterday's post:

Until April of this year Fr Meeks was the OCSP Vicar for Vocations; supposedly he asked to be relieved of this position in order to devote his time to new construction projects at Christ the King, Towson, of which I see no evidence, but in any event we cannot feel that he was entirely successful in this role. Prior to Bp Lopes' arrival, the OCSP policy on celibate men who wished to attend seminary was to tell them to apply to their local diocese. This has clearly been reversed. How he got around his defection from the Church when others did not is a mystery; he was, of course, prepared to bring in 140 parishioners and a church building.

One issue that's bothered me about the OCSP ordinations is the sense of careerism and opportunism involved in nearly every case. If delict of schism has had any role in keeping this down to a dull roar, I'm all for it. I don't think Bp Herzog in yesterday's account was dealt with unjustly, but I don't see how Fr Meeks is any less a careerist and opportunist.

More On Arbitrariness

A visitor reports,

[Concerning arbitrariness and] the "delict of schism," what about Fr. Ed Meeks, who was raised a Catholic, went to Catholic seminary, left to marry not long before his scheduled diaconate ordination, became an Episcopalian, was ordained in the Episcopal Church, served there for well over a decade, then joined the "Charismatic Episcopal Church," and then the ACA, before returning to the Catholic Church (with most of his congregation) and was ordained [shortly thereafter] (by Cardinal Wuerl, of all people, who, for much of his episcopate, in Pittsburgh, then Washington, DC, would not ordain any married convert Protestant minister)?

By contrast, the former Episcopalian Bishop of Albany, NY, Daniel Herzog, was likewise originally a Catholic, then a seminarian, then left to marry, became an Episcopalian, was ordained in the Episcopal Church, and was Bishop of Albany from 1997 to 2007. He and his wife, likewise a former Catholic, returned to the Catholic Church in 2007, but when he was refused ordination in the Catholic Church, he and his wife went back to the Episcopal Church in 2010.

While this is pure speculation, then Bp Steenson was clearly on track to become Ordinary once the OCSP was erected. There would not have been room for a second former Episcopal bishop in the scheme of things.

"Appearance Of Arbitrariness"

My regular correspondent writes,

You have, I know, heard from or about men who were not successful in their attempt to be ordained for the OSCP. I know that the delict of schism was generally fatal; five candidates in Canada were rejected on that basis, and the man in Raymond, ME about whom Ms Hayhurst comments all over the blogosphere, and the man from Australia whose disappointment is also widely expressed. A number of ACCC clergy without M.Divs and without groups were turned down, which strikes me as understandable. But the fragmented Anglican scene in the US, Canada, and Australia has led to an appearance of arbitrariness in regard to ordinations which has been avoided in the UK.

The poster boy for arbitrariness, I would submit, is Fr Baaten, whose closest brush with Anglicanism was a few months at the "snake belly low" St James Newport Beach.

Discernment And The OCSP

My regular correspondent notes,

I note that a former candidate for ordination in the OCSP this year, a former TEC clergyman, has returned to the Episcopal church. After leaving his TEC parish he was attending seminary full-time and discerned that the Catholic priesthood was in fact not what he was being called to. I think this is a good news story insofar as it reflects the typical experience of a candidate for Holy Orders, ie an extended formation period in which many seminarians (about 25%) decide that the priesthood is not for them.

I hope that there were men in the two initial formation groups, whose ordination preparation consisted of a one-week trip to Houston and a few weekend webinars, who also discerned that the Catholic priesthood was not what they were called to, but I think there were a number of obvious factors working against that. And I think that the OCSP has paid a price for rushing these men into leadership positions. This Sunday the OCSP takes a second collection for its Seminary Fund and I think this is important, regardless of the amount actually collected, because it focusses on the fact that preparation for ministry in the Ordinariate is being brought in line with that in the Church as a whole.

Two things strike me. One is that the process of reviewing candidates in 2012 did result in some notable negative outcomes, starting with David Moyer, but certainly a number of other candidates were disappointed. Given subsequent developments, it was probably all for the best, although these fine men have had to find other vocations in life.

But it's also worth noting that the initial personnel selections for the OCSP weren't especially good, and it appears that since Bp Lopes's arrival, something of a do-over is in progress. But what can a promising celibate seminarian see in the OCSP as a career path? His best hope could well be to cultivate Bp Lopes as a mentor and move up and out -- but otherwise, won't the OCSP be just a backwater?

A Different Approach To Anglican Outreach

Neither the Pastoral Provision nor Anglicanorum coetibus has matched expectations, at least in terms of attracting significant groups of Anglican laity to Catholicism. (If the Pastoral Provision had been successful, there would have been no need for Anglicanorum coetibus.) On reflection, I think a big reason for this has been the idea that disaffected Anglicans would come in as quasi-parish groups, or indeed as full parishes.

I've never felt that it was a particular error for Cardinals Manning and Mahony to reject the St Mary of the Angels application to come in as Anglican Use in the mid 1980s. Every indication is that it would have been a headache and indeed a continuing source of bad press -- why borrow trouble? Nevertheless, St Mary's parishioners and clergy did in fact become Catholic during that period. Why lay so much stress on coming in as a parish?

In fact, the experience not just of St Mary's but of other groups has been that the process of parish discernment is unnecessarily divisive and often wastefully expensive. In addition to seriously damaging St Mary's parish, it's done some measure of harm to the Los Feliz community.

Nevertheless, there are common areas of belief and practice between Anglicanism and Catholicism that shouldn't be ignored. But RCIA, since it's mostly aimed at unbaptized catechumens coming from widely varying backgrounds, isn't the best route for Anglicans seeking to come into the Church. Beyond that, even the pastor at our former diocesan parish acknowledged that RCIA is too dumbed-down for many people.

I'm not sure how cost-effective a specialized approach to Anglicans would be in any diocese, but it does seem to me that if you apply the broad definition of Anglican used in the complementary norms (including those married to Anglicans broadly defined, or members of a family in which there was one such member), the numbers affected could be significant.

So how about a streamlined but enriched RCIA program? This might go along with a campaign of education that stressed that Catholic parishes vary in liturgical observance, and perhaps a bishop could extend a particular invitation to Anglicans to visit a variety of diocesan parishes to see if they might find certain ones appealing. Then announce the enhanced RCIA in particular parishes -- if there were just one or two catechists who might be best suited to this, fine -- offer the class at different times in different places.

I think a big miscalculation in Anglican outreach has been to gloss over the fact that it's always a personal decision to become Catholic. So far, the personal decision is unnecessarily tied up with parish factionalism, while the best alternative, RCIA, isn't well-suited to educated people who are already fairly well catechized.

A different approach might be worth some thought.

Other Vulnerable OCSP Groups

My regular correspondent points out,

There are easily another ten OCSP groups which would appear to have no ability to replace and/or support a priest when the current (elderly) parochial administrator retires again. Local diocesan clergy may step in in a few instances but I doubt that this is a recipe for long-term survival. The home page of the Our Lady of Hope, Kansas City website, with the Holy Week service times still posted, is my Exhibit A for the case that a priest who has significant diocesan responsibilities will have little time or energy to devote to the small group of OCSP members he is responsible for. And Fr Sly is OCSP, after all. What will be the time commitment of someone with no prior Ordinariate connection? Better to direct the members of these groups to diocesan parishes with greater opportunities for fellowship, involvement, and growth in the faith, IMHO.

It seems to me that the story arc of the OCSP has been that it was founded by an in-group of former Episcopal priests, themselves approaching secular retirement age, who saw Anglican unity with Rome as not much more than a prestigious career capstone. Many of these have proved unsatisfactory even for the minimal duties to which they were assigned, and by Catholic standards, their retirements have been premature, if justifiable. But having failed at the purpose for which it was founded, what else is it supposed to accomplish?

A visitor very kindly sent me a set of lectures delivered in 1944 by an Oxford Anglo-Papalist. They are very worthwhile as scriptural exegesis as well as historical analysis of the papacy, but they run into the Anglo-Papalist dilemma: assuming Anglican unity with Rome is a good thing, how is it to be brought about? Do the Anglican bishops suddenly resign and defer to the Catholic ones? If not, how else do we proceed? This would be a special problem for England, where the Church of England is established, and there are legal issues.

But in the US, there are parallel problems. TEC is not legally privileged, but Episcopalians still think they're special, and the assumption seems to have been that they need a special liturgy with thees and thous. Apparently they also need to bond with each other in special prestigious parishes, or at least that's how the assumption went.

But our diocesan parish relies on many Anglican hymns in its missal book. Just this past Sunday, we sang the Joachim Neander Lobe den Herren, which should probably be designated "honorary Anglican" for the enthusiasm which which it has been translated in Anglican hymnals. Throughout my Episcopal period, every version I sang had all the thees, thous, and thys, as well as the eths. The Catholic translation did away with every one of them. It was a bit of a shock, but I suddenly realized it works, and it calls attention to the words.

I'm wondering if Bp Lopes should be thinking along the lines of sending all the OCSP laity to diocesan parishes.

More Context

My regular correspondent has added some context to the question of OCSP groups that lose their priests:

Fr Reid left Ottawa to return to Victoria, BC and take over the Fellowship of BlJHN there, as the Ottawa parish had two other clergy, and Fr Reid is originally from Victoria. Fr Ortiz-Guzman was able to hold off his retirement until a replacement at St Augustine, Carlsbad was found in now-Fr Baaten. Fr Catania will be taking over from Fr Scheiblhofer at St Barnabas, Omaha, while assisting at a diocesan parish.

Fr Venuti has had to give up the leadership of St Gregory, Mobile for health reasons, but a diocesan priest offers mass for them once or twice a month (conflicting info depending on where you look).

On the other hand, I would add St Gilbert, Boerne to your list of groups which have folded owing to the departure of their priest. Fr Cannaday, the original leader, has now fully retired and his replacement, Fr Wagner, has taken over a diocesan parish in another community. The group was supposed to relocate to the latter's vicinity but I find no evidence that this has happened.

I think this suggests that Houston can sometimes scramble when replacements are available, but it still looks like more often than not, if a priest is unable to continue, the group will fold. The best bet is to have an available celibate who can easily relocate, but not enough of these are in the pipeline to meet likely contingencies.

Is This Thing Sustainable At All?

By my possibly imperfect count, four OCSP groups have gone inactive at minimum after losing their priests: St Edmund Kitchener, St Alban Rochester, St John Fisher Virginia, and now St Gregory the Great Stoneham. The reasons in each case are slightly different, but the bottom line is that the OCSP is unable to replace a priest who retires, loses his visa, has to move for family issues, or can't get diocesan support. Surely additional circumstances will arise that bring the same result.

Add to that the implication in both comments I had yesterday on St Gregory the Great that congregations are aging along with their priests, which means they will inevitably lose mobility and be less able even to commute to a parish not especially distant. But beyond that, as the parishioners age, actuarial reality will catch up, but I don't see those who pass on being replaced.

Nor is this problem new: the loss of Fr Tea at the Anglican Use parish St Mary Las Vegas had exactly the same result. Within five years of its founding, the OCSP has lost roughly 10% of its parishes and groups and is clearly unable to sustain many of the others if any adverse situation comes up. I think a reasonable projection would be that within a fairly short time, it will revert to the roughly half-dozen prosperous parishes that came in as that sort of special case.

Cheer Up, Things Could Be Worse -- Except, Er. . .

I've had two comments on the challenge St Gregory The Great Stoneham faces with Fr Liias's retirement. From my regular correspondent,

Apropos of Fr Wolfe's age, if Fr Liias (his seminary classmate) was the minimum canonical age for Episcopalian ordination in 1974 (24) he will be 66 this year. The congregation of St Gregory the Great, Stoneham has been encouraged to begin attending St Athanasius, whose PP pastor was ordained in TEC in 1970, making him at least 70. Of course aging is not a consistent phenomenon, but until 2009 70 was the mandatory retirement age for clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston (now it is 75; whether this reflects better health care or a priest shortage I can only speculate). So St Athanasius, Brookline will be facing its own leadership issue soon enough.

However, a regular visitor points out,

With respect to your blog post yesterday regarding the imminent retirement of Fr. Jurgen Llias and the fact that the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter does not have an immediate replacement available, it would be highly impracticable for the members of the Church of St. Gregory the Great, currently worshipping at St. Patrick's Church in Stoneham, Massachusetts, a suburb to the north of Boston, to worship with the members of the St. Athanasius Community, which worships at St. Lawrence Church in Chestnut Hill, a neighborhood at the junction of the municipalities of Boston, Brookline, and Newton.

These communities are only about ten or fifteen miles apart as the crow flies, but the saying in local parlance is that "you can't get they-ah from hee-ah." The only major road into the Chestnut Hill area is Massachusetts Route 9, which is a secondary divided highway (limited access in some segments but a few signals in others) going due west and city streets to the east, so access to St. Lawrence Church is reasonably convenient only for those who live in the western neighborhoods of the city, in the nearby inner suburbs, and in the suburbs to the west.

From the suburbs to the north or to the south, one may either take the inner beltway around Boston, originally built as Route 128 and now designated as I-95 and the southernmost segment of I-93, around the city to Route 9 and then head eastward on Route 9 -- a route that is anything but direct -- or muddle through a labyrinth of congested city streets and winding secondary roads.

The highway route from St. Patrick's Church to St. Lawrence Church is over twenty-five (25) miles -- and St. Gregory the Great Church has already moved fifteen miles southward from its original location in Beverly, Massachusetts, to its present location, so the additional commute simply would not be viable for many of that congregation's parishioners.

And going the other way, many of the members of the St. Athanasius Community undoubtedly depend upon public transportation -- which does not provide convenient access to St. Patrick's Church, so a merger at St. Patrick's Church also would not be viable.

Retirement Of Fr Ken Wolfe

My regular correspondent brought me this piece of news. Fr Wolfe was one of numerous former Episcopal priests ordained in the OCSP without groups but apparently with connections.

Fr Wolfe was one of my least-favorite figures in the OCSP. I contacted him in his capacity as Director of Child and Youth Protection, wanting to bring to his attention that wine was regularly served after Sunday morning mass at the Newman group. I saw this myself when I visited the group at its Placentia location in late 2011. The group at the time met for fellowship after evensong in a children's classroom at the Blessed Sacrament parish. Even then I thought it was incongruous to see bottles of wine on a table amid the children-size furniture and crayon drawings on the wall.

Following repeated reports that wine was regularly served in an after-mass "coffee hour" environment where toddlers and children are present, I thought Fr Wolfe should at least investigate the potential problem. Initially, I thought he showed appropriate interest. However, apparently after consultations with Fr Hough III, he revised his opinion and essentially demanded the confirmation of three male eyewitnesses.

My regular correspondent provided this summary of his very brief career in the OCSP:

On his ordination to the priesthood In January 2015 Fr Wolfe was named as the Chancellor of the OCSP. Then in June 2015 he became Director of Child and Youth Protection, with a glowing write-up of his qualifications for this job appearing in the Ordinariate Observer. This is the issue in which Fr Benedict Soule's (illicit) appointment as Judicial Vicar was announced and he was described as consulting with Margaret Chalmers, the "first Chancellor," with no suggestion that there had been a second.

You discussed this on your blog on May 20 this year. Now Fr Wolfe has retired from his new position after fourteen months. During this time embarrassing misinformation about the Ordinariate's non-compliance with the implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People appeared in a USCCB audit.

Did Fr Wolfe fumble the ball? Was his term of office unexpectedly brief? The official announcement of his retirement was complimentary, however, unlike the cursory statements about the retirements of Msgr Gipson amd Fr Hough III. He was apparently a seminary classmate of Fr Liias, who is retiring next month. Fr Liias was ordained in TEC in 1974, I believe.

Although he did not have pastoral responsibilities in the OCSP and began his work as Director of Child and Youth Protection in June 2015, the OCSP was one of only two dioceses and four eparchies that did not participate in the USCCB's 2015 audit of compliance with the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

The USCCB is happy to report that the OCSP will participate in the 2016 audit. Fr Wolfe, meanwhile, has retired.

UPDATE: The USCCB issued a correction to the 2015 audit report, saying "the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was mistakenly named as an eparchy and as non-compliant." However, the OCSP after the designation of Bp Lopes is a diocese. The question of what the audit report said about the bodies that did not participate, though, is less clear. The report as linked said "due to a lack of information, [the bodies] cannot be found compliant or noncompliant by the auditors", not that the OCSP was noncompliant. In corporatespeak, though, it's still a black eye, and I'm not sure if the correction changes anything. (I'm told the OCSP complained about the report.)

Since Fr Wolfe was only appointed Director of Child and Youth Protection in June 2015, when the audit was almost over, it's hard to say what he might have done to change things -- it's possible he was quickly named to the position to avoid repercussions once the issue arose. And he had apparently been superseded as Chancellor by then, so they had to give him something.

Bottom line: he's retired, and the USCCB is happy. Not necessarily connected.

Another OCSP Group Loses Its Priest

My regular correspondent reports,

The problem of replacing retiring clergy becomes more acute. The parochial administrator of St Gregory the Great, Stoneham is retiring next month and Bp Lopes met with the congregation last Sunday to inform them that no replacement would be forthcoming for the foreseeable future. There is, of course, an Anglican Use congregation in the Greater Boston area with which this community can worship, so the situation is not completely bleak.

But in any event the bishop would seem to have few alternatives. It will take years to have a pool of celibate priests who can be deployed around the country. An affluent parish like St Mary the Virgin, Arlington can attract a Pastoral Provision priest by offering a salary, rectory, and benefits, but this is a distant dream for most groups.

Perhaps there are still married, Episcopalian/ Anglican clergy without groups waiting to be ordained for the OCSP and prepared to take on responsibility for a leaderless group while supporting themselves with diocesan work, chaplaincy, or teaching, but we haven't heard much about them recently. We certainly heard about Glenn Baaten for years before he was finally ordained. The fast track for those with connections may have slowed down, making the Pastoral Provision a more attractive option for the target group.

I think those on the fast track wanted things on their terms -- serving parishes they wanted, in locations that were convenient. I've got to say that in my working career I was no stranger to commutes between LA and Texas, Chicago, or even Connecticut. I don't see this attitude among Nashotah House alumni, even if the OCSP could pay the air fare. This is another factor that Anglicanorum coetibus didn't consider -- Episcopal clergy are not set up to emulate the likes of St Paul.

Takeaway From Dr Currie's Account

I want to stress how much I respect Dr Currie and how grateful I am that he allowed me to quote his e-mail yesterday. He subsequently followed up with this:

Jeanne and I were Anglican Use Catholics in L.A. without a parish. It was a disappointing position to be in. It was in L.A. that the Anglican Use had its origin -- and L.A. is one of the largest, if not the largest, populated Archdioceses in the USA [it is] -- so you might expect at least one teeny, tiny parish ... but no. Nothing.

We gravitated toward RC Latin Traditionalism, since that was the closest to our Catholic training and tastes. Jeanne and I moved to Bakersfield 10 years ago (2006). (Jeanne and I taught Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in L.A. for 21 years after we got back to L.A. from Marquette in Milwaukee. We taught at various places before and since. LMU has been steadily losing its Catholic identity since Vatican II. We definitely did our best to help it retain its proper Tradition.)

I would go beyond this to say that in reflecting on his account, I realized that the process of taking St Mary of the Angels into the Catholic Church began in the context of the 1977 Congress of St Louis, with discussions involving Cardinal Law through the early 1980s. By 1984 -- seven years later -- all of two St Mary's parishioners made it into Anglican Use, although by then a mildly successful Anglican Use parish had been established in Las Vegas.

My wife and I took eight months to become Catholic via RCIA.

Whether or not Cardinal Manning or Cardinal Mahony was opposed to Anglican Use, the problem I have is whether diocesan bishops were friendly or not, the overall numbers have never been enough to command any bishop's attention. I hear now that Bishop Vann has been ducking out of commitments to attend Newman-related events in Irvine. Perhaps even someone so friendly to Anglican Use as Bp Vann has begun to balance the demands on his time against the numbers coming into the Church via the Anglican path.

In fact, it would be interesting if a bishop ever were to ask how many ex Episcopalians were coming into his diocese in a given year via RCIA vs Anglicanorum coetibus.

More On St Mary's In The 1980s

Dr Chris Curry, a St Mary's parishioner in the early 1980s, sent me a long e-mail with very worthwhile information (he also attended mass at the parish this past September 3 and talked extensively with Fr Kelley and others):

You were trying to recapture some of the news from back in the early 1980's concerning Fr. Jack Barker and St. Mary of the Angels' trek toward Roman Catholicism via the Anglican Use Rite.

Well, perhaps I can help a bit. St. Mary's was undergoing a major Catechism course (from 1982 through 1984) on Sundays in the parish hall after Mass in order to prepare people for the trek. We were covering all of the early ecumenical Church Councils, so people could, hopefully, see the rationale for becoming Roman Catholic.

I taught a few of the classes. My wife, Dr. Jeanne Curry, taught some of the classes. Each class would cover a council and we would have questions and answers afterwards. The other priests who were working with Fr. Barker were Fr. Saintjohn Brown and Fr. McFarrin. Canon Albert DuBois had already passed away in 1980 -- he was highly revered and some even thought of him as a Saint due to his Apostolic zeal in the U.S. trying to make Anglo Catholicism a formidable presence within the Episcopal Church -- and later -- a formidable presence outside of the Episcopal Church.

Well, in July 1984, two of the parishioners -- namely my wife (Dr. Jeanne) and I -- were ready to be confirmed into the Roman Catholic Church via the Anglican Use Rite. We, in fact, were the very first from L.A. to be confirmed -- from St. Mary of the Angels (or St. Mathias). But -- we were not confirmed in Los Angeles. There was a different plan.

After discussing the matter at length with Fr. Barker, it was decided that we, who would be the FIRST, should be confirmed in Las Vegas, Nevada by Fr. Clark Tea, who was the pastor of the AUR church of St. Mary the Virgin's in Las Vegas -- under the permission of the Bishop of Las Vegas, of course. This way we could by-pass any potential problem that might arise from Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Manning in L.A. We carefully orchestrated all of the necessary arrangements.

The Bishop of Las Vegas fully approved. Our official sponsor for Confirmation was Fr. Bill King, a Roman Catholic priest who was the prior of the Claretian Order in Los Angeles. He was an old friend of Jeanne's and mine and he worked with the Anglo Catholic community in Los Angeles, so he was familiar with the situation.

Fr. King even worked with the Anglo Catholics within the Episcopal Church as well -- especially the group of Episcopalians who left St. Mary of the Angels around 1976 and who utilized little Episcopal chapels in L.A., which included, but were not limited to, first - St. Columba's Chapel which was located on the property of the Episcopal Cathedral in downtown L.A. -- both of which were bulldozed by 1981; then the little chapel inside the diocesan office in L.A. under Bishop Rusack and Archdeacon Donald Behm (who was an Anglo Catholic priest), then St. Francis Chapel in Atwater Village.

This group called themselves "St. Mary's in Exile," under Senior Warden Walter Kressel. (We were introduced to Anglo Catholicism through "St. Mary's in Exile," via their ads in the L.A. Times, but once we went to "the real St. Mary's," we never went back.) The "Exile" group was intimately involved in the law suit to get St. Mary's church property back into the hands of the Episcopal Church. They lost the case. Fr. Barker and his legal team prevailed (due to the way that Fr. Dodd, the founding priest, had written the legal papers regarding the property of St. Mary's).

To make a long story short: Our Confirmation took place on July 20, 1984 in Las Vegas as planned. This was the precedent. St. Mary of the Angels now had official members who were confirmed in the Roman Catholic Church via the Anglican Use Rite. It was a "done deal." It was all official. So, July 20, 1984 was a significant milestone for the St. Mary of the Angels in Los Angeles -- and for the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury.

Fr. Barker and St. Mary of the Angels could now move forward -- but cautiously, because they still had to clear the hurdle of Cardinal Manning. And about a year later, they had to clear an even bigger hurdle -- the new Archbishop, Roger Mahony. My wife and I could be Anglican Use Catholics in L.A., and not be under Manning or Mahoney, since our official diocese and bishop were in Las Vegas. It was like having immunity from prosecution. But there was no church in L.A. where the Anglican Use Rite existed or was permitted.

We wound up moving to Milwaukee where I received my Ph.D. at Marquette, one of the last bastions of Jesuit orthodoxy at the time. Jeanne already had her Ph.D. from Yale in 1976, with the highest honors. Our concern has always been that the Catholic Church should make available the most dignified and theologically accurate Mass possible -- with Latria for the Eucharistic Christ; and that the Church should encourage the greatest possible devotion to Christ the King and to the Immaculate Queen Mary.

We pray and work for these ends.

Some of the story does allude to the divisions in the parish, which is something Cardinal Mahony referred to in his own subsequent letter. It would be interesting to hear more about the factionalism in this period -- it can't be neglected in the context of continuing developments.

Playing The Numbers

My regular correspondent reports,

[T]he Evangelium course is being offered at [the Blessed John Henry Newman group in] Irvine starting this Sunday. According to the Facebook page set up for this event 17 [now 16] people are going (of the 1671 invited), which is a reasonable turnout, but after looking at the Facebook pages of the 17 [now 16] I can say confidently that all but one or two are currently practising Catholics. The others may also be, judging by their ethnic background. Of course Evangelium is also valuable for those who wish to explore their faith in greater depth and these people may already attend BlJHN, but the scope of the invitation list suggests that this event was "shared" with every Catholic in Orange County for whom a Facebook link could be found. It is difficult to see how this advances the mission of either the OCSP or the Church in general.

One thing I've noticed is that in publicity over all the Newman-related activities -- the group itself on its website, as well as in separate announcements covering the Silverado chapel and the Pasadena formation meeting -- Fr Bartus is unspecific as to what sort of "Catholic" is involved here. He often just refers to a "Catholic church", giving an impression that this is a diocesan parish, but now and then he makes a soft-pedaled reference to the OCSP, sorta-kinda implying that he reports to Bp Lopes. But he also refers to "Anglican Use", suggesting Bp Vann is involved, either as Bishop of Orange or the delegate for Anglican Use.

Does this bother anyone? Catholicism stresses authority and obedience, but these public statements tend to blur important distinctions. This may apply as well to whatever numbers he's sending to Houston -- diocesan Catholics who've completed the sacraments of initiation are welcome to go to mass at any Catholic parish, but those without a vague Anglican tie aren't "members" at BJHN. On the other hand, parish registration is an elusive concept as well, so maybe none of this means a whole lot.

Exploratory Meetings Don't Automatically Result In Groups

In the context of the exploratory meeting scheduled for October to discuss a possible OCSP group-in-formation in Pasadena, my regular correspondent sent me a copy of this Facebook page from July 2015:

Father Duncan is a graduate of the University of the South and Nashotah House. You don't get much more Episcopalian than that, huh? Seems like there weren't enough buyers nevertheless.

I hate to say this, but even in my Episcopalian years, I wouldn't have gone to something just because Fr Chichester went to Sewanee and Nashotah House.

How Does A Parish Decide To Go Into The OCSP?

Yesterday's post brought several reactions from visitors, both to the specific question of St James Newport Beach and the more general issue of what has led parishes to opt for the OCSP or not. A visitor noted,

A snake-belly low parish like St. James would not, for an instant, consider joining the Ordinariate. They seem to me to be, at heart, Evangelicals/Pentecostals who like a bit of very unadorned absolutely Protestant liturgy to class things up a la Newport Beach.

A more likely candidate would be (would have been?) Blessed Sacrament, Placentia. Their problem, though, is with a Pope, not with "popery".

Blessed Sacrament Placentia raises its own set of issues. It hosted the Newman group-in-formation before it was received into the OCSP, when it moved to a Catholic parish. At that time (2011-12), the Episcopal rector was on the verge of retirement and from what I was told, he was sympathetic to Anglicanorum coetibus and possibly even considering going into the OCSP after he retired. However, neither he nor the parish made any move in that direction. I believe that for a time, it hosted an ACNA parish that used its worship space, and it also was placed under a conservative bishop, rather than Bp Bruno.

This is clearly the sort of Episcopal parish that must have been in the minds of Bp Pope, Fr//Bp/Msgr Steenson, and Cardinal Ratzinger when they mooted an Anglican personal prelature, but as a practical matter, there was little actual demand.

My regular correspondent had several comments.

I would note that there was a wide discrepancy in the percentage of members of ACA/ACCC parishes who entered the OCSP. In some cases the uptake was 90%, in others the percentage was reversed. I do not think this was because of the inherent bias of the membership of any given parish; I think it was because of leadership. In many parishes significant numbers who had left the Catholic church for Anglicanism were reconciled. That's a sales job.

In other parishes, clergy could not seem to make a convincing case to those who had regarded themselves as Catholic their entire lives and only needed some clarification on the Petrine claims. Members of these "continuing" denominations had already left mainstream Anglicanism in protest over numerous issues. They could see that their microdenomination had failed to thrive and faced eventual extinction. If their pastor could not make the case that their values would be preserved and nourished in the Catholic church I think that's on him, not some inherent Anglican resistance.

Later,

I have probably made previous reference to the ACCC parish in Victoria, BC, whose rector was completely committed to taking the parish into the Ordinariate; indeed, he took the position that since the ACCC synod had voted nearly unanimously for this course of action it was unnecessary for the parish to vote on the subject. When one of the assistant clergy openly suggested that it was worth at least having a parish discussion he was pronounced "excommunicated." This was later rescinded but the clergyman in question left the parish, along with some of its members. But the larger part remained.

Then, after the OCSP was erected and the rector submitted his dossier, he was informed that he had been denied a nulla osta on the grounds of delict of schism. At this point he declared that he would be remaining in the ACCC, and while about a dozen laypeople (and five clergy) ultimately left and formed the BlJHN group in Victoria, a large majority of the congregation then decided to remain in the ACCC with him. Meanwhile on the BC mainland only ten people from the four parishes there followed their rector (he served all four parishes, with a total membership of about a hundred) into the Church. Again, this cannot be a story about Anglican predispositions.

Still later,

So I would estimate that the number of "walk-ins" to the OCSP in its four years of existence--those who have become Catholic, or been reconciled to the Church, other than as a member of a previously existing group led in by a former pastor--probably number fewer than a hundred. More than 1,200 adults were baptised and/or confirmed at the Easter Vigil in the Diocese of Brooklyn last year. By this standard the evangelisation effort of the OCSP has been an even more massive failure than its membership numbers suggest, and they are pretty low.

Saturday Work Session At St Mary's

From Fr Kelley:

This Saturday, we have our Fall Work Day, September 10, in preparation for the Feast of the Holy Wood of the Cross. (September 14th & 18th, Sunday observance). [We still pray that the Conscience of the Thief will be stricken, to return the Relic of the True Cross, & other items taken from the Parish.]

We will do the upstairs projects, & outside work, from 9 to 12, as the downstairs Hall will be occupied by the Girl Scouts, Brownies, and Daisies (10am-12n). When they have gone, we will break for lunch, and then attend to downstairs projects.

The Girl Scouts and Brownies are a new addition. It's good to see the parish continuing to be part of the community.

Anglicanorum Coetibus And Evangelizing The Culture

"Evangelizing the culture" was a favorite phrase of Pope St John Paul, which Bp Barron has taken over more recently, explaining that Cardinal George, his mentor, gave him this specific task after St John Paul inspired him with the objective. My own view is that as a theme, it's more than 30 years old, and more recently Catholic figures have suggested a newer priority of preparing the faithful for persecution and martyrdom.

However, "evangelizing the culture" was proposed as an objective for the Pasadena group-in-formation. I suspect it was inserted as something everyone could agree with (and almost certainly something that would ingratiate Fr Bartus with Bp Barron), but it's worth going a little farther to examine what it means.

This takes me back to another question I raised yesterday, why the deeply troubled St James Newport Beach Anglican/Episcopal parish doesn't seem to have considered the OCSP as an option for any significant group of its membership, which appears to have been quite large in earlier times. Remember that both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus were intended to reach a target audience of disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians -- if there's a culture to evangelize, this would seem to be the nearest opportunity for the OCSP.

I would say that St James Newport Beach, whose dissidents went to the ACNA, is an example of the Fort Worth dilemma writ small. Bishoip Iker, we've seen, appears to have considered an option of taking the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth into the Catholic Church as a body prior to Anglicanorum coetibus, but he doesn't seem to have taken it seriously for any length of time. The simplest explanation is probably the one Damian Thompson offered last week: you can dress things up, but a certain large contingent will reject anything they perceive as Catholic.

Add to that the number of Episcopalians who left the Catholic Church after a divorce and remarriage, as well as those who feel TEC's views on same-sex attraction are hospitable. Our Lord's remarks about the seeds that fall on rocky ground are probably appropriate, and the history of the Pastoral Provision should be illustrative: a major development within Anglicanism has been the steadily growing overhang of seminary graduates and unemployed priests, and the one successful aspect of Anglican evangelization since 1980 has been the number of these who have been recruited to Catholic diocesan work.

But consider the most specific example of Catholic evangelization I've seen close at hand: Patrick Madrid's morning radio show. He has degrees in philosophy and dogmatic theology that specifically qualify him for apologetics. From what I can gather as a frequent listener, he seems to pay most attention to Mormons, Pentecostals, and other evangelicals. This is probably because

• They pay attention to scripture
• They have strong family values
• They are alienated from secular culture.

I don't see the Blessed John Henry Newman formula, which seems to involve appealing to affluent millennials with lots of alcohol and a sense of belonging to a clique, as a recipe for equivalent success.

A Personal Prelature Looking For A Mission?

My regular correspondent sent me a copy of this Facebook announcement of a new Ordinariate group forming in Pasadena, CA;

What strikes me is the vaguely defined purpose of the "new Catholic parish". It is going to save souls, reach non-Catholics, the lapsed, and the wider culture. One thing that bothers me is that at least three bishops (Lopes, Vann, and Gomez, plus auxiliaries) presumably signed off on this, and the process must have included some assurance that a new Catholic church in Pasadena would not be poaching on any existing parish. Yet the announcement is nothing but sorta-kinda shilly-shally.

There's no direct mention of Anglicanorum coetibus or the complementary norms mentioning "lay faithful originally of the Anglican tradition" -- just a "unique tradition" that may refer to Anglicanism or "wider" Catholicism. Any specific discussion is reserved for links. I would say that no equivalent proposal written this poorly would reach approval in a real corporate environment, which has me wondering about the bishops or their staff.

In many ways, it seems to me that this is an acknowledgement that in the US, Anglicanorum coetibus has failed to achieve its goals, in part due to bungling and poor personnel choices. Recall that in January 2012, it was assumed that St Mary of the Angels, 13 minutes by car from Pasadena, would have served this area with an established building and an existing parish.

But it also occurred to me that a formerly thriving Episcopal and ACNA parish 15 minutes from the Irvine group, St James Newport Beach, triply lost its property, first as TEC, then as ACNA, and then again as TEC -- yet other than Fr Baaten, very briefly an ACNA pastor there, there doesn't seem to have been much interest in the nearby Ordinariate parish, when this might have been a reasonable choice for at least some.

And why the need to be so vague about what's really on offer? There's a problem here. If nobody's buying closer to home, throwing something vague against the wall in Pasadena and hoping it might stick is not a strategy.

Clarification

A regular visitor refers to remarks from my correspondent, who said,

". . .Luke Reese, a former ACA clergyman with no M.Div, was taking courses at St Meinrad seminary for three years before his ordination for the OCSP this spring."

In fact, I noticed in the list of this year's graduating class from St. Meinrad School of Theology which I receive as an alumnus (Master of Theological Studies in Pastoral Ministry, 1992) that (Fr.) Luke Reese was on the list of graduates -- but with a Master of Arts (MA) in Theology, which is normally a degree for lay ministry, rather than with a Master of Divinity (MDiv), which is the normal seminary degree -- probably because the MA in Theology was the better match for the coursework that he needed to prepare for Catholic ordination.

I also believe that (Fr.) Luke Reese had a significant head start on his preparation for Catholic ordination. In a reply on the blog "The Anglo-Catholic" (which is now essentially defunct) some time before the formal erection of the ordinariate, I recommended to him that [he] meet with Bishop Christopher Coyne, then Apostolic Administrator of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis (and now Bishop of Burlington, Vermont), to establish a working relationship. I believe that he did make contact, and thus began his studies before the formal erection of the ordinariate. In any case, the fact that he took over three years to complete an MA in Theology, which requires only 48 hours of coursework, strongly suggests that he was a part time student rather than a true seminarian.

Fundamental Differences?

My regular correspondent said this in response to yesterday's post:

I too wondered why Mr Simington had to do two further years of seminary training when Andrew Bartus, with identical academic qualifications and minimal pastoral experience, was ordained after a few webinars. But Mr Simington was also given major publicity as the "first seminarian" even though Luke Reese, a former ACA clergyman with no M.Div, was taking courses at St Meinrad seminary for three years before his ordination for the OCSP this spring.

Several older ACCC clergy with no divinity degrees were ordained in the "first wave;" Fr Carl Reid did not even have to do the distance education program. I feel the thinking was "Let's get something going for these retired clergy and their groups while they're still active; then we can begin to set up the ordination training we actually want, for the celibate candidates we will be seeking going forward." I think it is perhaps unfair to keep citing the Episcopalian clergyman who had no use for the Seven Deadlies as completely typical, but in any event that is not the sort of person who will be recruited in the future. Bp Lopes mentioned recently that there are 78 members of the OLW Servers'Guild, boys and youth who have never been anything other than Catholics. That is where the Ordinariate will be looking for future vocations. I personally feel that this will mean that the "Anglican Use" becomes to Anglicanism as General Tso's chicken is to Chinese food, but presumably no one will care.

I disagree over the importance of the heterodox, not to say heretical, Nashotah House alum. His example goes to the dilemma of the elite school, and make no mistake, its alumni regard Nashotah House, and by inference themselves, as the crème de la crème. I got into the college admissions rat race as a teen, and my parents and counselors represented to me that with a degree from _______, many doors would be opened that might otherwise remain closed.

Never mind the fact that all manner of claptrap was, and still is, taught in every department of every elite school, that students are coddled and flattered into thinking that if they're at _______, they must be learning stuff that's worthwhile and important, especially since they don't need to work very hard at it. This pervades the atmosphere on campus. It's drilled into them that a degree in art history from ________ is worth far more than a degree in engineering from Podunk State. After all, at _______ they learn to think!

The Great Gatsby is misunderstood in English departments I think primarily because a central theme is the criticism of elite school education (Fitzgerald attended Princeton but didn't graduate). The fact that Tom Buchanan, a Yale graduate, is a white supremacist who believes the eugenics conventional wisdom that was common in the 1920s is a statement about the education he got there. My father always thought it was significant that a neighbor, a Princeton grad, once told him, "I really like sales. It has so many faucets." (This didn't keep Dad from giving me what everyone else was about the need to get into ________.)

About 15 years ago, I naively got involved in a movement by ________ alumni to elect more representative members of the board of trustees, with an aim in part to enact curriculum reform. This movement failed spectacularly for a number of reasons, but in part it was because both alumni and parents of current students objected that any controversy there would reduce the value of a ________ degree vis-a-vis one from other elite schools, where there was no controversy.

So the status quo remained, and all elite-school alums continue to believe what they're told, although the value of any four-year degree is in gradual decline. I would say, though, that the value of any Episcopal seminary degree is plummeting much more quickly, due in large part to a decreased demand for what's taught there.

It seems to me that between 2012 and 2016, the OCSP has had plenty of experience with the value of a Nashotah House MDiv, such that it finds a need to reteach what was taught there in a fundamental way. Insofar as a Nashotah House alum learns to be the best possible Anglican, it's plain that this skill set is simply much less transferrable to the Catholic priesthood than had been thought. I suspect the signals the CDF received over this wouldn't have been much different than the signals my father's Princeton neighbor sent about faucets. You don't need too many anecdotal cases to pick up that signal loud and clear.

I think my correspondent raises an important point in suggesting that Anglicanorum coetibus is going to be faced, if it continues, with the need to develop a new form of Anglicanism that can exist within Catholicism, a little like General Tso's chicken. But isn't this multiplying entities without necessity?