My attitude once I was asked to take over the treasurer's job at St Mary of the Angels in late September 2011 and began to get an idea of what it involved was to think I had to make straight the way of the Lord, the way in this case being Anglicanorum coetibus and the parish's path into the prospective ordinariate. The enthusiasm about the prospect was visible on the various Anglo-Catholic blogs, and I certainly picked up on it.
By early December, I had begun to recognize that, while I'd been able to work through the backlog of unpaid bills, important files, as well as all tax records, had been removed from the treasurer's office, presumably by the former treasurer and dissidents on the vestry. This much is clear in the e-mail, but I was clearly still scratching my head about it. It wasn't until Easter week 2012 and the abortive attempt by the dissidents to seize the parish in the wake of the IRS notice of unpaid taxes that context became clearer.
The reason for my removal as treasurer at the insistence of dissident vestry members in December was that I was beginning to get to the bottom of the problem, and I would either find a way to pay any unresolved tax bills myself or engage a payroll service that would do it. For the dissidents' agenda, that couldn't happen. I was replaced as treasurer by Mr Cothran, a professional actor who, by his own admission, could not balance his own checkbook. It's telling that Mrs Bush has apparently relied on Mr Cothran for the dissident group's business dealings ever since, and his signature appears with hers on the apparently fraudulent 2014 mortgage.
Another thing that strikes me in re-reading the e-mail is the conscientious approach I was taking to getting the parish's affairs in order. The problem I have with this is that, as far as I can see, Fr Bartus was aligned with the dissident group in wanting to see financial scandal in the parish, which would result in knocking Fr Kelley out of the running as pastor and placing him in that position, only two years out of seminary. That's just ordinary ambition, though -- the bigger problem for me is the apparent cynicism among the Steenson-Hurd clique, which must have been generally aware of Bartus's agenda and at least tacitly supported it.
I wonder, in fact, whether this has some bearing on Msgr William Stetson's puzzling December 2011 remarks that, regarding who would be accepted in the parish following its admission to the OCSP, he didn't "check passports at the communion rail". Some of the dissidents had obstacles to receiving communion. Could this have been a tacit promise that if Msgr Stetson became interim chaplain and Bartus subsequently became pastor, they could continue in good standing? When I first reported Msgr Stetson's remarks here, they raised eyebrows. It's hard to avoid a feeling that there was a level of cynicism that prevailed in the hierarchy as a whole.
I would note that my remarks in the 2011 e-mail make it plain that I was tentatively budgeting for a substantial diocesan tithe to the prospective ordinariate. My estimate was 10%, or about $24,000 per year. This is a resource the OCSP denied itself in its subsequent bungling.
In light of the future prospects for the OCSP, I'm convinced the parish needs to find another path for itself, although I'm sure that, if Bp Lopes made a serious effort to retrieve the situation, some effort would be made to work through the issues.
