The said prelate acknowledges the strengths and excellences of the Atonement set-up, although the letter he sent to the parishioners deftly contrives to suggest that everything was built up by his own predecessor (who died recently) and makes no mention that Fr Phillips might have had anything whatsoever to do with it all. The Archbishop professes to intend to maintain the Parish's Anglican Patrimony for those who come from Anglicanism; suggesting by this sinister qualification that he does not think it right that the large numbers of cradle Catholics (including many Latinos) who worship there should be exposed to the perils of the Anglican Patrimony and the enormities of Anglican-style liturgy.I fear the suggestion that only Anglo-Saxons are "man enough" to release confidential personnel files doesn't play well. If there are allegations, the archbishop has a duty to investigate them and determine canonically their veracity, but releasing them without doing so exposes him to liability and the priest to damage beyond what has occurred. (But notice he feels it's up to the parishioners to render the verdict!)Why? Any Catholic of any Rite is entitled to worship in any Catholic Church and Rite he desires. Why is it necessary to discourage Latin Catholics of that diocese from attending Ukrainian Rite or Anglican Use or Melkite Rite or Extraordinary Form liturgy? Is the Archbishop afraid that they might discover something he would rather they did not know? Or a spirituality by which he would rather they were not fed? Or a culture which makes him feel threatened?
Otherwise, he makes vague and unspecific comments about the Parish being out of sync with the Diocese. If this man had an Anglo-Saxon sense of Natural Justice he would be man enough to let it be made public what his case against the Pastor is, so that the parishioners had the materials to form mature and adult judgements. All that stuff about Discernment and the Sacrosanctity of Conscience appears to have flown out of some window.
I have an instinctive sense that Fr Hunwicke is rallying to the cause of an old stalwart of Anglo-Catholicism without recognizing what a failure Anglo-Catholicism has turned out to be overall in recent decades, except among those "affirming" parishes remaining in The Episcopal Church and half a dozen parishes in the OCSP. But beyond that, his implicit suggestion that Abp Garcia-Siller is somehow catering to lesser breeds, who are free to go to lesser rites, is deeply disturbing. This isn't far from the parishioners who complain about Abp Garcia-Siller and "mariachi masses".
He's taking a view that some of my correspondents continue to have, that basically because the parish is made up of Anglo-Saxons (or wannabes), the archbishop should have the good grace and generosity to let it go off and join other, like-minded Anglo-Saxons in their own new jurisdiction. This idea is uncomfortably close to the "continuing" formula, which leads to continued schism and fairly rapid failure.
In that context, a visitor strongly objected when I quoted from Fr Phillips's 2012 letters but omitted his first point:
1. The archbishop is NOT preventing the parish from seeking entrance into the Ordinariate at this time, or at some future time. He was clear about that, and is very respectful of our right to make that request any time.Let's think this through. The best information we have is that Fr Phillips led the OLA parish to change its mind over the OCSP for reasons he doesn't reveal in his 2012 letter, to wit, that Msgr Steenson had apparently negotiated unfavorable terms for transfer of the property and planned to force Fr Phillips into retirement. In other words, a good part of his motivation was to continue his career, which he's done for another five years, and he's used personal loyalty toward him by the parish to accomplish this -- apparently there are people here who belong to Fr Phillips and have for some time.
I agree with the visitor I quoted yesterday who sees Episcopalian congregationalism alive and well in the OCSP: if the parish wants it, it should happen. This, beyond the idea that these parishioners are good solid Anglo-Saxons, seems to be at the basis of Fr Hunwicke's argument. But the situation in Fr Phillips's 2012 letters isn't quite this.
The parish needs a bishop. In the first wave of optimism about Anglicanorum coetibus, it wanted to jump right in -- except that the reality, even after just a few months, was turning out to be different. A clique of opportunists and careerists from the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth was running the show, and Fr Phillips, not a member of the clique and likely to be blackballed, backed out. His only option was to retreat behind the folds of the archbishop's cassock, which the archbishop generously allowed him to do.
He said in 2012 that the archbishop wouldn't stand in the way of the parish seeking to go into the OCSP at some future time -- although this was in 2012. Over the subsequent five years -- when the parish, by its request, continued under his supervision -- the archbishop noted expressions that suggested the parish was trying to be separate from, rather than unique within, the archdiocese. (Sounds credible to me; isn't it trying to formalize the arrangement now?) My visitor who provided the canonical background to the OLA case suggested a few days ago that the archbishop's concerns must have been formed over a fairly long period, and he probably had raised them with Fr Phillips more than once.
I would stress one more time that the parish has continued under the archbishop's jurisdiction at its specific request, when it considered the OCSP to be a worse alternative. This has lasted five years. Quite possibly the parish expected the archbishop would simply leave it alone until it decided to go its own way again. I would submit things don't work that way. The parish, whatever application it may have renewed, remains under the archbishop.
One analogy strikes me here that Fr Hunwicke's interpretation tends to support: I think of blended families where, as sometimes happens, the children of one spouse get significantly better treatment than the children of the other. Mom's kids get their own rooms; Dad's have to double up. When circumstances change and more rooms must be shared, the reaction is, "Share a room with Susie? Eeeew!" Some kids are more equal than others.
In Fr Hunwicke's view, this goes for some rites as well. Apropos of this, my regular correspondent comments,
Regarding Fr Featherstonehaugh, I would reiterate that if the diocese of San Antonio does indeed have "mariachi masses," they are probably not conducted by priests named Fr Doyle or Fr Nguyen. I don't see anything wrong with cultural expression per se.But the BDW is special. Latinos? Eeeeew!
