A Bit More About Moving Forward

A visitor reports on another topic discussed by Bp Lopes at the March 21 OLA parish meeting: One of the subjects had to do with parishioner involvement. Bishop Lopes stated that there will be several groups and committees in the parish, and they would address several new areas. This, per my visitor, could bring a breath of fresh air. Up until now, there has only been a parish council and a school council. The members of these were, at least in recent times, always appointed. The few apostolates in the parish were looked at with suspicion by Dcn Orr.

Another visitor notes that Joanne Phillips has said in the past she will never move from her home. In Texas, a man can't sell his home, without his wife's consent. Besides that, Dcn Orr owns the home next door to Fr. Phillips. Their backyards connect with a gate.

The Poor Clare sisters have plans to build their own place. Perhaps that would rectify the situation, but the question would be how far the plans are moving toward fruition. But in addition, any new pastor will be placed in an awkward situation with a Pastor Emeritus living next to the property and his right-hand deacon on site as well.

Dcn Orr's take appears to be that with Fr Phillips back officially as Pastor Emeritus, he's now returning and calling himself Deacon Emeritus -- whether this is with official sanction, we don't know. (As I understand it, a university professor can retire, but to be called emeritus requires a vote of the faculty.) But if Bp Lopes has plans to put in a new pastor next year and send the parish in a new direction, this could be a bigger problem than he may have thought.

I would give a great deal of prayer and thought to the matter if I were offered the post of pastor at OLA starting next year.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent notes,

I have seen no indication that Mr Orr has been incardinated into the OCSP, which would presumably be the necessary first step in becoming Deacon Emeritus. If your version of the negotiations leading up to the current arrangements at OLA is remotely accurate he will not be assuming any role there, ever.

The issue, though, is not what Bp Lopes calls him, but what he calls himself with an influential parish faction in agreement. I think there will be major challenges to any new pastor if Phillips and Orr remain on site.

But What Happens Next Year?

It's been established that Fr Phillips is Pastor Emeritus of OLA. Emeritus usually means retired, so he's formally already that, and while he retains his faculties as a priest, he's no longer in control of the parish, its employees, or its finances. And it's been announced that he will be replaced completely in 2018. For the pro-Phillips faction around the world, this is a very brief and conditional respite. (Heck, there's a retired priest in residence at our parish rectory; he takes masses on the usual schedule -- I assume he has about the same status there as Fr Phillips at OLA.)

So the following are interesting questions:

• Who will replace Fr Phillips? The OCSP has a limited pool of priests young enough credibly to replace Fr Phillips who could easily be relocated. The stock of Fr Phillips's chief protégé, Fr Bartus, has probably gone down, unless Bp Lopes wants to continue a regime of playing favorites and encouraging cliques. Parties familiar with the situation are suggesting candidates from outside the OCSP, or in the OCSP but currently without parishes, could be in the running.
• What will happen to the Phillips rectory? A former OLA rectory is currently leased to the Poor Clare sisters, and while the arrangements aren't precisely known, it may not be possible to move them out for the new pastor. This suggests that, in order to bring in a replacement for Fr Phillips some time next year (indeed, an announcement of the replacement could occur as early as the start of Advent), it will probably be necessary to purchase the Phillips home from Fr Phillips fairly soon, or an awkward situation could develop.

Seems like it's a bit early for celebration.

Here's One Thing That Puzzles Me

I started to become Catholic via RCIA at Easter 2013. I'm still at a very low end of the learning curve on becoming Catholic. The last thing I would do is presume to tell the Church what it's doing wrong. Yet an impression I've gained of Our Lady of the Atonement is that it's been set up, at least in the sense of an official mission for a Pastoral Provision (and now OCSP) parish, to minister to new Catholics, indeed former Anglicans like me. But a major subtext of the OLA story is that they're conducting a "better" liturgy than the rest of their former archdiocese.

As a new Catholic, I've come to recognize that there is a traditionalist movement that in its more extreme form led to the SSPX, but in general looks back to pre-Conciliar times. Again, I'm too new to pass judgment on this, but I've got to say that at least in theory, it should apply mostly to cradle Catholics -- as a converso, I've got plenty on my plate just to study the catechism and scripture, the huge volume of other philosophical material, and to keep up with the prayers and sacraments. I'll never have enough time to become more Catholic than anyone else, much less the pope.

I can see, though, how bishops might see the traditionalist movement as a source of trouble, in particular an influence that encourages people to substitute private judgment. Why should I examine my conscience when I can go looking for liturgical abuse across town? At a distance, I've got to wonder if people with this mindset have created this sort of atmosphere at OLA. Certainly this is the impression I've received from what seems to be a clear-headed minority there. Former Anglicans, which the parish maintains make up a majority, really ought to be concerned with more basic problems. Nobody, including Fr Phillips, does them a favor by telling them they're somehow better than other Catholics.

A visitor raised a similar issue, bringing up

Reform of the Reform, conservative Orthodox type movement leaders that helped the parish in their relative success. I'm not sure you've been Catholic long enough to recognize many of the names, but among the most prominent were:

Fr. John Corapi, Fr. Frank Pavone, Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, Fr. Thomas Williams, Fr. Peter Stravinskas, Msgr. Eugene Clark, Fr. Michael Manning, Fr. Kenneth Roberts, Fr. Francis Mary Stone, Fr. John Bertolucci and Fr. Alberto Cutie. These were all at one time featured on EWTN, and yet were all removed due to various indiscretions that required them to live some type of double life. I might throw in Legionnaires of Christ founder Fr. Marciel Maciel as well.

Looking orthodox to the followers isn't necessarily a sign that the priest is acting like a saint.

Well, at least I recognize Corapi and Cutie. Doesn't sound like a good group if these are representative. Corapi in particular seems to have had a Phillips-like claque.

Text Of The Papal Decree?

A visitor noted,

When Father Phillips received a couple of requests for the papal decree on his Facebook page, his response was, "The decree was communicated to Bishop Lopes. We have not received a copy."

I think I've made it clear here that I'm on the side of the Church and its bishops, including both the bishops in question in the OLA fracas. I see no reason to question that Bp Lopes received the decree as he's represented it.

But as I reported from the alternate universe in my last post, if things had been just a little bit different, the OLA parishioners -- or at least, the angry mainstream -- would have been blaming Bp Lopes for what they might well have seen as an unsatisfactory outcome for their Fr Phillips. This could well have included demands to see the actual text of the decree. Instead, they're fawning over their Fr Phillips on his Facebook page and giving copious thanks to the Almighty.

The very, very worst that could have happened to Fr Phillips as of January 2017 would be that he'd have been shunted into some inconsequential post or forced into retirement as a priest in the archdiocese. Instead, in a face-saving move, he's being eased into inconsequential duties, followed by early retirement, at an expedited pace as a priest in the OCSP. The difference is a matter of months and a transitional title.

Nobody among OLA's angry mainstream seems to have figured this one out. This goes to what I'm beginning to recognize is the strong rational appeal of Catholicism, which seems largely to have been missed in the culture at large. As Aquinas puts it, sin, including pride and anger, dulls the intellect. These folks have been had, and it's amusing!

UPDATE: From a visitor:

In essence, the outcome to all of this seems the same as the intentions Fr. Steenson was reportedly overheard to have uttered while in the airport pickup ride in 2012: remove Fr. Phillips in 1 year. What do all the Bishops know that the cool-aid drinkers don't?

Travel With Me To The Alternate Universe

For Fringe fans, this is the one where Dr Walter Bishop is Secretary of Defense. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's an alternate universe where just a few things have changed. The US has a similar history, for example, but it uses the Nixon dollar in its currency.

In this case, rather than the Abp Garcia-Siller we have on our side, the other side has Abp Siller-Garcia, a holy man indeed. When approached by Fr Phillips about moving his OLA parish to the OCSP (Anglicanorum coetibus was promulgated by Bl Leo XIV, but everything else was the same), the good archbishop replied, "Ah, Fr Phillips, I've prayed fervently for the day when all the Anglo-Catholics, all 3500 of them with their 60 priests, can be one! Yes, take the parish, its property, and the school with my blessings! I've already spoken to Bp Lopes, and your transfer is already in motion! Vaya con Dios, my son!"

But what happened in that other universe was deeply troubling and led many in the thriving Anglicanorum Coetibus Society to a crisis of faith. The same afternoon, Fr Perkins, Bp Lopes's vicar general, gave Fr Philips a call. "Er, Welcome, Fr Phillips! Yes, er, welcome indeed! We just need to take care of a few details. You know, of course, that the retirement age in the archdiocese is 75, but retirement in the OCSP is 70. You're not that far away from 70, come to think of it, so we're going to streamline things here a little bit and bring you in as Pastor Emeritus.

"Since that makes you technically retired already, you won't mind if the bishop sends me out once every two weeks or so just to make sure the administrative tasks are in order. You can still celebrate mass, of course, but the staff reports to me as administrator.

"Oh, yes, I almost forgot. We'll be putting in a full replacement for you next year. Well, have a great day, and again, welcome to the OCSP!"

Indeed, in the first parish newsletter after the transfer, a message from Fr Phillips appeared. Many thought it had been drafted by Fr Perkins and published without Phillips's knowledge; others thought Fr Phillips had drafted something else, but Fr Perkins had edited it heavily and forced Fr Phillips's signature:

Last Tuesday, March 21st, our parish was transferred from the Archdiocese of San Antonio to the jurisdiction of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Our bishop is His Excellency, the Most Reverend Steven J. Lopes. We now go into the future with the Faithful of several other parishes and communities with a common liturgical and spiritual heritage. I return in a new capacity, that of Pastor Emeritus. Bishop Lopes has asked me to continue my priestly ministry here, and I am grateful to him. After more than thirty-three years as your pastor, I am ready to welcome a successor and to serve under him as a simple parish priest. So, while I am no longer the pastor, Fr. Moore and I serve as your priests, and there is no greater privilege than that!

Until a new pastor is found, the interim administrator is Fr. Timothy Perkins, Vicar General of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Although most of his time will be spent in Houston, he will be at the parish from time to time as he works closely with the archdiocese in the legal transfer of our property into the Ordinariate, and in getting our parish – both church and school – settled into our new situation. Always grateful for our time as a parish of the archdiocese, we now look forward to taking our place as the newest parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

This threw the great majority of OLA parishioners into dire confusion. The purpose of the move, as far as they could see, was to protect and promote Fr Phillips, but somehow the opposite had happened. They immediately formed a group, Save Atonement!, under longtime parishioner Charles Wilson. They contacted the thriving and influential Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, which, although massively in Fr Phillips's court, elected to avoid public controversy, as Bp Lopes advised them to do. He instructed his priests to do the same. Privately they began saying novenas, but those prayers apparently were superseded in the Almighty's inscrutable purpose. Fr Phillips, in spite of the deepest wishes of so many, was quickly marginalized and soon replaced.

Bp Lopes acquired the reputation of a ruthless gamesman, a terrifying example of everything bad in the Vatican. Like President Trump, he was quickly regarded as a master of four-dimensional chess. The bishop's residence, as one had once been named under Cardinal Spellman, began to be called the Power House.

Spin

From what I'm told, the meeting at OLA Tuesday night was so packed that what you heard depended on where you stood. Most heard that Fr Phillips was now Pastor Emeritus, though not everyone heard that a new pastor would be designated sometime in 2018. Whether Fr Phillips was now incardinated in the OCSP was not made entirely clear. The following has emerged:

• Nobody has specifically stated this, but various commentary strongly implies that both Fr Phillips and his parochial vicar have in fact been incardinated in the OCSP. My own view is that if Phillips were under the archbishop's authority, he would still have been forbidden to return to the property, so the clear implication is there.
• One effect of the incardination is that Fr Phillips, born in 1949, will be subject to retirement at age 70, rather than age 75. This adds weight to his designation as "Pastor Emeritus".
• Exactly what his current duties consist of is an interesting question. According to the link above,

  As pastor emeritus, Fr. Phillips will re-assume the exact same pastoral roles he previously had over the parish and the school, minus administrative roles. This is for very practical reasons. The process of transferring OLA from an Archdiocesan to an Ordinariate parish will be long and tedious. Financially untangling OLA from the Archdiocese will be no easy task. It's one of the Archdiocese' largest parishes, one of its more substantial financial contributors, and is undergoing a major construction project with loans currently guaranteed by the Archdiocese. So untangling OLA from the Archdiocese of San Antonio is going to be a full-time job in itself, for people with expert financial wisdom, who are used to handling this sort of thing. Responsibility for this has been given to Ordinariate priest Fr. Timothy Perkins, who will act as the parish administrator from afar -- at the Ordinariate chancery in Houston. For all practical purposes, on a pastoral level, Fr. Phillips is still the man in charge at OLA.

  However, Mr Schaetzel refers to Fr Perkins as an "Ordinariate priest" and leaves out his title, Vicar General. Fr Perkins is simply the bishop's enforcer, a non-trivial position. In addition, there is no disputing that Fr Perkins is the parish administrator, which is the same title given to Msgr Kurzaj. Canonically, Msgr Kurzaj's responsibility was to investigate the issues that led to Fr Phillips's removal by Abp Garcia-Siller. I can't imagine that the transfer of the parish to the OCSP will make those issues go away. Untangling fishhooks could well include untangling the legal liability that could stem from at least one potential lawsuit over Dcn Orr's conduct.
• Oddly, Mr Schaetzel expatiates on the idea that Abp Garcia-Siller has made a mistake and "has lost this battle". I'm not exactly sure how. He's lost the property and a potential income source to be sure, although the evidence we've seen is that Fr Phillips had set up the Our Lady's Dowry foundation, in his own reported words, to conceal or shield parish income from the archdiocese in any case and was using it to pay Dcn Orr's salary as some type of exception to policy. Solving this problem would be a continued headache and distraction, which is now up to Bp Lopes. (Putting Fr Perkins in as administrator, among other things, prevents Fr Phillips from shielding parish income from Bp Lopes as well.)
• Speculation I've heard is that Dcn Orr's retirement may have been forced by Bp Lopes as part of ongoing discussions with Fr Phillips, which seem to have dated from mid-2016, the same time as Orr's retirement. This all suggests to me that Bp Lopes and Abp Garcia-Siller may have been working not so much in competition over the property as to find a mutually satisfactory way to resolve an ongoing problem at the OLA parish.
• Fr Perkins's role as the new administrator involves, I believe Mr Schaetzel would acknowledge, financial issues. These could well involve unwinding Our Lady's Dowry or placing it on a different basis. Dcn Orr's 2016 retirement and his replacement by a business manager on the parish payroll may suggest that this was also an issue with which Bp Lopes was already familiar.

The bottom line continues to be for me that Fr Phillips, while returned to the parish in a titular role, is being eased on toward retirement at an accelerated rate. Discussion among non-Kool-Aid drinkers at OLA has suggested that Fr Phillips's replacement, if it's meant to take place in 2018, could be as soon as nine months away. His successor could be designated sooner yet. Not everyone heard the provision in the decree that Fr Phillips would be replaced in 2018 -- Mr Schaetzel rambled on for thousands of words but didn't mention it in his post.

Given Fr Phillips's past pattern of resisting authority by stirring up the parish, blogosphere, and media against his superiors, I still think this is a very skillful resolution of a difficult problem that had already given rise to scandal. I strongly suspect that, although Fr Phillips and his allies clearly meant to portray the issue as a conflict between OLA, the OCSP, and all right-thinking Catholics on one side and a near-heretical bishop on the other, this was a problem resolved by all parties with considerable finesse -- and a big part of the resolution was easing Fr Phillips out of the picture with minimum scandal.

Fr Phillips is out, completely, in less than a year most likely. Speculation is that part of the package will be sale of the Phillips rectory to the parish for the use of his successor. I'm betting that Msgr Kurzaj and Fr Perkins have each others' numbers on speed dial already.

Bigger Than The Diocese Of Juneau?

A visitor takes exception to my characterizations of the OCSP, saying it's already bigger than the Diocese of Juneau. I'm not sure about this -- just for starters, the diocese says it has 10,600 Catholics. In my view, even with the addition of OLA, any estimate of five-figure membership in the OCSP is still a stretch, and the diocese has roughly a dozen full parishes that own their buildings. I don't see it.

But beyond that, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Diocese of Juneau is territorial, with a sparse population, many of whom are native Alaskans or other off-gridders. This is a true mission situation. The Catholics in the diocese must in many cases make great efforts to get to any mass at all, much less find one that has intinction served in a way that suits their tastes. The only comparable situation in the OCSP, as far as I can see, is the group that meets on an Ontario native reserve, and this is among the smallest and probably the least representative.

Compare that to the OCSP, which is attracting some portion of its membership by poaching cradle Catholics from diocesan parishes. In the case of OLA, it is poaching them by propaganda that tells them the nearby diocesan parishes are liturgically inferior, when the BDW mass is in fact an ugly innovation, and features like compulsory intinction, by violating USCCB policy, constitute liturgical abuse.

I may never get back to the Diocese of Juneau, which I visited twice in my Episcopalian days, but I would much prefer to go to mass with Catholics there than go in, say, Irvine, with people who'd probably never want to set foot in Sacred Heart, Haines.

I would say that not only is the OCSP still smaller than the Diocese of Juneau, but finding a mass in the OCSP is proportionally a much, much harder proposition, and once you get there, it may be quite a bit less pleasant.

It Was As I Assumed

The upshot of last evening's parish meeting at Our Lady of the Atonement was what I assumed it was going to be, a set of face-saving gestures, but no win for Fr Phillips. He returned to the parish but was immediately designated Pastor Emeritus, doing "the things he likes", whatever those are, but not involved with finance and not in control of the parish. Deacon Emeritus Orr, I'm told, was not present.

It was announced that a new pastor will be selected sometime in 2018. This provision was in the decree from Pope Francis. There will be an external audit of the parish. (This is what would happen in a corporation.) According to Fr Phillips's Facebook post, Fr Perkins, the Vicar General, has been appointed parish administrator. All of this was presented as positives; however, I would say that canonically not much has changed. Fr Phillips has been removed but can now at least putter about the place. But there's an administrator, just not Msgr Kurzaj -- and the administrator is the vicar general himself. Not a trivial matter.

I'm told that the question came up in the meeting as to why there had to be a new pastor. The reply from Bp Lopes was that it was in the decree. (We may assume Bp Lopes was involved with drafting said decree.) No mention was made of Dcn Emeritus Orr's status; the other deacon has the option of joining the OCSP or remaining with the archdiocese.

My regular correspondent gave this opinion: "Fr Phillips is returning to OLA as a winner, having outsmarted Steenson and outsmarted Garcia-Siller and his predecessors."

I don't see it this way. I would compare it to a deposed third-world dictator, having humanely been spared execution but sentenced to prison, being released to live out his remaining years under house arrest. Phillips is toothless and on a short leash, with the vicar general looking into everything and watching Phillips's every move.

The best outcome for him, as interpreted by some observers, would have been for him to be fully restored as Pastor (he's still three years short of canonical retirement), and after a decent interval Dcn Orr returning to active ministry. This plan clearly failed, and failed big time. But the minimal face-saving moves probably thwart the strategy Phillips previously employed against his superiors, agitating the parish with petitions and demonstrations and stirring up his allies in the blogosphere and media.

My regular correspondent observed, "[W]hatever hanky-panky Fr Phillips was up to, the diocese was prepared to put up with it for decades, until it foresaw no longer being in a position to benefit from it. Then, a last-ditch and failed attempt to exercise some discipline. A sorry spectacle, IMHO." But it doesn't look like Bp Lopes will make equivalent mistakes. My regular correspondent notes,

I agree that things are not as they were for Fr Phillips. But neither is he rusticating at a fringe parish, which was the best that was predicted for him if Abp G-S had his way. The idea of a Pastor Emeritus is not found in either the Anglican or Catholic traditions. [Nor is Pope Emeritus!] Former clergy are usually expected to give the place a wide berth. This is a special deal just for him.

Another factor could well have been Cardinal Law's advancing age and his replacement as delegate for the Pastoral Provision -- and the decline of the Anglo-Catholic blogosphere. Between them, this probably made the moves Bp Lopes made possible.

Intinction In The Episcopal Church

Looking for other information on the 1979 BCP, I ran across this well-constructed catechesis on the website of St Paul's Episcopal Parish in Riverside, IL. In the context of earlier discussion of intinction here, I found its outline of Episcopalian views on the practice especially pertinent:

Intinction (i.e. receiving the Body and Blood of Christ together by dipping the Host in the Chalice) has a history of controversy in the Episcopal Church. Many Bishops and Priests strongly oppose it, and the Prayer Book rubrics specifically designate the Ordinary (diocesan bishop) of each diocese as the final authority in this matter and, under him, the Rector of each parish.

In the Diocese of Chicago intinction was absolutely forbidden in 1941 by Bishop Conkling. In 1954 Bishop Burrill restated that total prohibition. In 1971 Bishop Montgomery forbade intinction except on single occasions in extraordinary situations but never as a normal or on-going practice. The most recent and thus the now-binding directive from the Bishop requires the clergy of this diocese “to do everything possible to discourage it.” (Under no circumstances whatsoever is a communicant ever permitted to dip a Host in the Chalice him/herself.)

Theologically and liturgically intinction makes no sense. The reason for receiving Holy Communion under both Species is to drink from the Chalice. As the eminent liturgical scholar, theologian, and C.T.U. professor Father Edward Foley, OFM.Cap. has said,“Christ commanded that we ‘drink this’ not dip it. ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I drink’ is the commitment Jesus asks of us. That is why we receive the Chalice: to drink from it. You don’t get any more Jesus by receiving the Precious Blood!” No one must receive the Chalice except the celebrating Priest or Bishop. If a communicant does not wish to receive the Chalice, Holy Communion may always be received under one Species, and when one receives the sacred Host one receives full Holy Communion: the full Body and Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ (Doctrine of Concomitance).

Intinction is fully permitted in the Catholic Church, but it seems to me that, as the discussion above makes clear, it isn't really part of the "Anglican patrimony". Indeed, since it seems at least to require special liturgical vessels, I haven't seen it so far in any Catholic mass I've attended. Yet I'm told that compulsory intinction is the norm at both OLW and OLA, both now key parishes in the OCSP.

The rationale, as best I can make out, is that it's intended to force communicants to take the host on the tongue, not in the hand. This is also not the usual Anglican or Episcopalian practice -- only in the highest Episcopalian parishes have I seen the host administered on the tongue, and this would almost certainly be a post-Oxford Movement affectation -- and in any case voluntary. Normally Episcopalians of any persuasion receive the host in the hand.

According to the USCCB,

The General Instruction asks each country's Conference of Bishops to determine the posture to be used for the reception of Communion and the act of reverence to be made by each person as he or she receives Communion. In the United States, the body of Bishops determined that Communion should be received standing, and that a bow is the act of reverence made by those receiving. These norms may require some adjustment on the part of those who have been used to other practices, however the significance of unity in posture and gesture as a symbol of our unity as members of the one body of Christ should be the governing factor in our own actions.

Those who receive Communion may receive either in the hand or on the tongue, and the decision should be that of the individual receiving, not of the person distributing Communion.

So, as far as I can see, intinction is not part of the precious Anglican spiritual patrimony that the ordinariates push. In the US, communion kneeling and on the tongue is not the posture endorsed by the USCCB. Use of intinction to compel communicants to receive the host on the tongue is in direct violation of USCCB policy. Anglican tradition doesn't justify the practice, either. Is the OCSP itself separate and not just unique?

What About Dcn Orr?

In light of the recent announcement, several visitors have asked me not to drop coverage of the "civil demand" made concerning potential abuse by Dcn Orr and other potential issues. This did go to the archdiocese, which continues to have legal liability and canonical responsibility for victim support, at least for instances that took place prior to the transfer. However, with the transfer of Fr Philips (and I assume, as a parishioner, Mr/Dcn Orr) to the OCSP, I'm not sure what this does to further investigation. It appears that the transfer has fully restored Fr Phillips as pastor of OLA, considering that the announcement of the parish meeting comes from him.

Several visitors have told me they're aware of situations in their families of actual abuse, as well as apparent evidence that might confirm why Mr/Dcn Orr might have had undue influence over Fr Phillips. With nothing in the public record, there's little more I can do. I'm told that some families have been deterred from reporting actual abuse in the past due to fear of reprisal. I can't minimize this fear, although if the fear is primarily one of being "de-fellowshipped" or "shunned" by the OLA parish, I would suggest being at OLA is spiritually dangerous irrespective of who groped whom.

I have certainly heard first-hand accounts from people who reported unwanted advances by former Dcn Orr against their children to Fr Phillips, which he discounted and minimized. If these instances were not reported to the archdiocese, I would strongly urge those families to report them now to the OCSP's safe environment coordinator. I believe the OCSP should be aware of a pattern of such conduct. The same applies to actual instances of abuse, which at least one correspondent has reported have taken place in addition to the one noted by the archdiocese. (If the legal and canonical responsibility remains with the archdiocese, I would still suggest the instances be reported to both authorities and then follow the advice they give.)

Basically, while telling me about it can provide some background to what seems to have been a nightmarish atmosphere at OLA, I'm not the place to report this. To ensure accountability on Fr Phillips's part and protect children in the future, this needs to be investigated by appropriate authorities (and in accordance with Church policy reported to law enforcement). Anyone who's aware of instances of abuse and doesn't report it is responsible for the situation not getting better. There's not much I can do to help here, though I continue to pray for those involved.

Decree From The Holy Father

A visitor yesterday gave me the heads-up that this was on the way, but several people have forwarded this to me since:

Dear Friends,

Bishop Lopes of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter has asked that we have a general parish meeting tomorrow evening (Tuesday, March 21) at 7:30 p.m. We will be meeting in the St. Anthony Hall. You may enter through the main doors of the church and go down the hallway past the courtyard, or you may enter the exterior door where the portable classrooms are. Bishop Lopes has receive [sic] the Decrees from the Holy Father which were issued in reponse [sic] to our petition, asking that the parish be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ordinariate. Bishop Lopes will be here to explain what it means for us, and he will also answer any questions you might have.

If you would, please spread the word about the parish meeting. There are parishioners who are not on the email list I am using, and I want to be sure everyone possible knows about it.

It appears that our difficult situation has been resolved, and I look forward to us being together as one parish family.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Christopher G. Phillips

My view all along has been that this was a foregone conclusion, with some media accounts making the point that Bp Lopes is well-connected with the CDF. However, I've also said that if this goes through, it makes no real difference. I've heard widely varying versions of OLA's membership. Coupled with widely varying versions of the OCSP's membership, at best, OLA's admission will double the size of the OCSP, which means the entire OCSP will still not be larger than a single medium-large diocesan parish.

Except that the diocesan parish might have three priests. The OCSP has a bishop, a vicar general, several other paid staff, and 60-odd priests, for most of whom it can find no assignment, and nearly all of whom it can't support. This goes to my view that the OCSP is actually a clone of several "continuing Anglican" denominations, and given the attitude and formation one sees among some OCSP clergy, it may be a risky business for communicants to rely on cathechesis from them or on counsel they receive, in the confessional or elsewhere. I would avoid Fr Phillips as I'm sure he would avoid me.

I would also say that from what I've heard, the Archdiocese of San Antonio still has several parishes that offer good music and a reverent OF mass. My wife and I went through a period of trying to find a parish that offered a middle-of-the-road atmosphere of reverence, and we found one without too much difficulty that didn't involve much driving. It appears to me that some families have already been chased away from OLA, while others may find themselves having to make a new choice.

All I can say is pray and take heart. My correspondents are in my prayers.

What Do They Bring To The Party?

A visitor has very cogently reminded me of a point I need to make before I say anything else about syncretism:

When you take up what the movement brings to the Church other than alternative lifestyles for the clergy, I do hope that you will consider the numbers of both lay and ordained former Anglicans now laboring diligently and quietly in the mission and ministry of the Catholic Church.

There are many former Anglican Catholics among my correspondents, and they're surely among the group to which my visitor refers. There are also many who've come in via the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus -- I would point to David Moyer as one who seems to have been called to subordinate strong personal preferences to a much larger purpose, but he's by no means the only one, and I certainly don't mean to imply that all OCSP clergy are in the Phillips mold, or the mold of those who seek to emulate him. But some are. The numbers of former Anglicans who do labor diligently, I'm sure, far outnumber those in the OCSP of any persuasion no matter what. Many thanks to my visitor for urging me to point this out.

I didn't realize this at the time, of course, but this blog got its start about 1980 when, late in the evening at an Episcopalian confirmation class, I suddenly thought to ask the priest about something I'd been seeing on the local news: another Episcopalian parish nearby, St Mary of the Angels, had been making a big point that it was "Anglo-Catholic". What, I asked, did "Anglo-Catholic" mean?

His answer: "These are people who want the prestige of calling themselves Catholic without paying the dues you have to pay actually to be Catholic."

It's occurred to me all along that the whole Anglo-Catholic project represents a series of exceptions -- or, expressed differently, exemption from dues, or, expressed differently, substitution of private judgment, or, expressed differently, resistance to authority. Since I've been writing about OLA and Fr Phillips, my traffic has roughly quadrupled. Not everyone is pleased with what I've reported here, I think because Fr Phillips is thought of as the major figure in the Anglican ecumenism movement. But Fr Phillips himself is a bundle of exceptions. He's a married priest with a family. He owns a house next to the parish property. He doesn't bother to attend diocesan conferences and retreats. A visitor points out that, appointed pastor of OLA prior to the last revision of canon law, he is probably there permanently, but, as he himself expressed it, as a practical matter, he can't be relocated no matter what.

My regular correspondent notes,

I would imagine that virtually none of the former "continuing" Anglican parishes which make up the majority of OCSP groups were able to provide their priest with a rectory. I would imagine that most of the clergy who came into the Church by this route own a house. In the absence of a pension plan this would have seemed a prudent option.

But this underscores the huge exception that has to be carved out for all these former Anglicans -- the OCSP is unable to support the vast majority in any case, house or not. What are the unpaid priests assuming they can get in exchange for no money? But as children can be mere facts on the ground for women who use them to manipulate men, domestic circumstances make it impossible to relocate any of these married priests. Irrespective of canon law, they're de facto all in permanent appointments.

The liturgy is a big exception. Ugly and unsatisfying, the puzzling thing about it is that the uniate mass was never authorized by any body, Anglican or Catholic, before 1983. It is simply not Anglican patrimony. It was used in some Anglo-Catholic parishes without any sanction in the 20th century -- but in that, it represented resistance to authority! Some patrimony.

The idea of parishes voting themselves into or out of their diocese or the OCSP is congregationalism, and it's on display in the OLA case. It's significant that my regular correspondent cited "continuing" parishes as a justification for Fr Phillips's situation -- and if the CDF rules in favor of OLA, it will simply be acknowledging the enormous exception involved in Anglicanorum coetibus. In effect, the Church looked the other way when the "continuing" parishes voted themselves out of their former jurisdictions, but it welcomed them into the Church once this was done. But OLA shows that if one of these broadly speaking "continuing" parishes "wants" to change jurisdictions, the principle is still there.

I've made no secret that I think Cardinals Manning and Mahony were correct in refusing to accept St Mary of the Angels as an Anglican Use parish. Cardinal Mahony's point was on target: if the parish couldn't accept TEC's authority, what made them think they'd accept Rome? OLA's history strongly suggests the parish and Fr Phillips have been a headache for the successive Archbishops of San Antonio. I'm not sure why Bp Lopes wants this headache.

The only good thing about the "continuing" movement in the Church is its small size, its limited appeal, and its likely short life span. But as my visitor points out, the vast majority of former Anglicans haven't come to the Church with a "continuing" mentality.

What Happened In 2012? -- II

This post will cover versions of personal conversations with Fr Phillips regarding the reasons for OLA's sudden reversal over joining the OCSP in May 2012. I believe that, in opposition to inevitably politic public statements, the reasons he gave in private reflect an exclusive preoccupation with his career and personal circumstances. I repeat what I said yesterday, I've come to recognize that both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus are simply the syncretistic wing of the unproductive and moribund "continuing Anglican" movement.

A visitor reports,

I need to begin this by saying the Fr. Philips NEVER had a kind thing to say about Archbishop Flores, Archbishop Gomez OR Archbishop Garcia-Siller. Even though he feigns attention on wealthy Hispanic benefactors, in private he speaks very disrespectfully of "Meskins" as he calls them. He also looks down on any other parish in the city. He never attended, (nor did Orr), any Archdiocesan mandated retreats, conferences, or activities. They would laugh when parishioners bragged about going to mass at another parish earlier in the day but then coming to the Atonement for a "real mass", later in the same day. [Er, if mass is so important, why waste the time going to the "fake" one when you could go to two masses at OLA?]

It's important to remember that once Anglicanorium coetibus was published there was immediate anticipation and speculation about who the Ordinary would be. Because of its size and stature, much of this speculation centered around the Atonement. There was a conference held at the parish to answer questions about the impending ordinariate. This conference was attended by people from all over the country. The "Buzz" on the street was that Fr. Phillips was the odds on favorite to be the Ordinary. He did everything he could to present himself as the leading contender. He relayed stories to me about how people told him "they don't care what Rome says he (Fr. Phillips) was OUR Ordinary..." Deacon Orr spoke openly about his own impending role as the "Archdeacon" of the Ordinariate. He would travel the country showing the other parishes how the mass was to be said, in the light of Fr. Phillips's creation. [I've heard in e-mails that Fr Phillips has apparently told people that he wrote the BDW mass.]

Fr Phillips attended a meeting on Anglicanorum coetibus at St Mary of the Angels in December 2010, just before my time there, and pretty clearly represented himself as a major figure in the movement, if not ordinary-in-waiting. I mentioned a blog post from him made from this meeting in a previous post here, where a question arose about his report that he had just celebrated mass there. (Huh? said mass for a bunch of Anglicans?) According to Fr Kelley, whom I asked about it when the issue came up, this didn't happen. I was also somewhat irked that in the post, Fr Phillips pumped his protégé Andrew Bartus but never mentioned his host, Fr Kelley. I've always thought of Fr Phillips as something of a blowhard and grandstander.

The visitor continues,

After some time the Ordinariate was announced with Msgr Steenson as the Ordinary. I remember asking Fr. Phillips about him. Fr. Phillips told me he considered Steenson to be a nice enough fellow but rather "limp-wristed". I don't think he meant to imply that Steenson was gay, just weak and ill equipped for the position. I got the feeling Fr. Phillips figured he could manipulate the weak-minded Ordinary so the parish moved in that direction.

At this point, after a few days, Fr. Phillips made it known that the Parish was going to move to the Ordinariate. Soon, the Archdiocese got involved, inquiries were made and the parish was polled for demographic data. I remember Fr. Phillips meeting with the Archbishop and it was obvious the situation was being pondered by the Chancery. During this time the Atonement bulletin, written and published by Jim Orr himself began scurrilous attacks on the Archbishop, still relatively new to the Chair. This went on for several Sundays. I always wished I had hung on to one of those bulletins but sadly, I did not. It was the same clap-trap; "The Archdiocese is only interested in the money and property of the parish and will 'steal' the property from the parish, if given the opportunity" - It was all portrayed as a "land-grab". Orr even had printed and distributed new missalettes stating that the parish was part of the Ordinariate.

Then, out of the blue, Msgr. Steenson meets with Fr. Phillips and the very next day EVERYTHING changed. It was such an abrupt change of direction and focus, I asked Fr. Phillips what was going on. He was shaken. He said Steenson had made it clear that it was arrogant for Fr. Phillips to have purchased a home next door to the parish because he could be transferred to anther parish within the Ordinariate at any time. Joanne had previously made it clear she was NOT moving so Fr. Phillips was completely vulnerable to Msgr. Steenson. He told me, "for the good of the parish" he decided it would be best to remain within the Archdiocese. There was no other reason, the good of the parish was not involved, other than Fr. Phillips view that the parish could not exist without him. There was really no other reason - Fr. Phillips told me these things himself. All other explanations, intimations and justifications were concocted after the fact, "spin" to pacify the minions, who had been publicly fed with the hatred of the Archbishop (their now Father-In-God).

I say this because almost immediately Fr. Phillips published a blog post, explaining, in loving, glowing sentimentality how much we loved being a part of the Archdiocese as a Pastoral Provision parish and so on. He referred to Archbishop Gustavo as our "Father-In-God". It was enough to make your stomach turn, if you knew the whole story.

Some time ago I posted about another version of the dealings between Fr Phillips and Msgr Steenson:

A reliable source has provided an account of what appears to have been the real story on Our Lady of the Atonement. As it happens, during the first part of 2012 as Steenson was traveling to receive a parish into the Ordinariate, a group from that parish had picked him up at the airport and was driving him to town. Several people were in the car. Remarkably, Steenson got involved in a cell phone conversation while in the car with several witnesses in earshot and began explaining to whomever was on the other end that he intended to force the retirement of Fr. Phillips after a year and replace him with one of his younger priests, presumably a member of the Nashotah House clique with whom he surrounded himself. One of those in the car conveyed this information to Fr Phillips.

My source continues:

This came shortly after OLA's parish council had voted to enter the Ordinariate even at the price of relinquishing the title to their church and school property to the Archdiocese of San Antonio (with the Ordinariate congregation to have the indefinite use of the property), and just after they learned that this "compromise," which they thought had been a "hard bargain" originating with the San Antonio archdiocesan authorities, had actually been suggested to the archdiocese by Steenson himself. The parish council reversed itself immediately, and decided to remain within the SA archdiocese[.]

From this account, it appears that the parish did accept the conditions that Fr Phillips found objectionable in the e-mail I quoted yesterday -- but I can't rule out that any account from Fr Phillips may be embroidered to suit his own purposes.

I do find both versions of Msgr Steenson's role credible. I don't, based on this, think Steenson had any reservations about how Phillips ran the parish, Dcn Orr, or anything else that might have been a justifiable concern -- this was simply Steenson, an insecure careerist, meeting Phillips, an ego-driven opportunist. The OCSP wasn't going to be big enough for the two of them. Given the character of "continuing" Anglicanism as a pretty homogeneous movement, this isn't much different from the conflicts and intrigues surrounding the likes of Falk, Grundorf, Seeland, Hepworth, Gill, Marsh, and the rest.

But the problem of Fr Phillips's residence represents something I believe nobody thought through in drafting the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus. Celibate Catholic priests normally live in rectories, owned by the diocese. They may or may not own homes elsewhere, but typically not near the parish property, and often for vacation or retirement. In earlier years, celibate Catholic priests might expect stability in assignments, at least after age 50 or so, but the shortage of priests in recent decades has limited this, and the USCCB recognizes rotation of priests on 6- or 12-year cycles as a normal practice.

In this as apparently many other areas (like attending otherwise mandated meetings and retreats), Fr Phillips feels he's a special case. He owns a house right next to the property, gol dang it, and he's entitled to conduct himself as a proper Episcopal priest and stay as long as he likes. Msgr Steenson may have had his own motives for questioning Fr Phillips here, but he had a real point.

What else is the movement bringing into the Church besides alternate lifestyles for clergy? I'll have more to say on this.

What Happened In 2012? -- I

One of the biggest questions that's come up in the whole "continuing Anglican" history -- for reasons I've explained, I now think both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus are part of this unhappy saga -- is the reason behind Our Lady of the Atonement's sudden reversal on joining the OCSP in April-May 2012. There are conflicting public versions of what happened from Fr Phillips, as well as at least two versions he's given to individuals. This post will cover the public versions.

Fr Phillips sent an e-mail to the OLA parish on April 12, 2012 (many thanks to a visitor for this copy):

An Important Request ftom the Pastor

Dear Friends,

This might be the most important letter I have ever sent to you, so I ask that you read it carefully.

Earlier this week, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson (the Ordinary of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter) visited our parish. During that visit he expressed his strong desire for Our Lady of the Atonement Church to take its place in the Ordinariate, especially given the fact that ours is the founding parish for the Pastoral Provision, which has been preserving the Anglican Patrimony within the Catholic Church. As you know, Pope Benedict XVI has expanded the work we began some thirty years ago by establishing Ordinariates as separate jurisdictions for this very purpose.

After our time together, Msgr. Steenson then visited Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller to discuss the place of our parish in the newly-erected Ordinariate. Our two “sister parishes” in Texas – Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston and St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington – have already received the permission of their respective bishops to make the move into the Ordinariate. After Msgr Steenson’s conversation with our Archbishop, it has become evident that he is not willing to give our parish this same permission. In fact, he stated to Msgr. Steenson that he is not willing to transfer the parish property into the new Ordinariate, nor is he interested in having our parishioners become part of it. In fact, his suggestion was that Msgr. Steenson could establish a new Ordinariate parish which would be allowed to meet here, alongside our present parish (which would remain an archdiocesan parish). This would, of course, drastically alter the parish of Our Lady of the Atonement – and, in fact, the archbishop said that he wanted to see the Novus Ordo Mass in English celebrated here, as it is in other archdiocesan parishes.

Another statement made by the archbishop was that he was perfectly willing for me, as a priest, to go into the Ordinariate, but without the parish, and that he would allow me (as a priest from outside) to take care of the parish, at the pleasure and discretion of the archdiocese. I find the very idea of that shocking – as though I would abandon my place as your pastor! My position is this: it’s all of us, or it’s none of us. We are, after all, a parish family.

Why would Archbishop Garcia-Siller say these things? For the simple reason that he has heard that our parish is made up primarily of disgruntled Catholics who have left other archdiocesan parishes to come here, and apparently he has received statements from some of his advisors who hold a negative view of our parish. In fact, he has been told that there are very few actual converts in our parish, and in his opinion the vast majority of those who are coming here probably should be in their territorial parishes.

So that we can present accurate information to the archbishop, I am requesting that you complete a very simple parish census form. Please go to this link: [details of the survey follow and aren't reprinted here]

The visitor adds, "See how the good Pastor says we are a 'parish family' that must 'stay together'. No mention is made of his thoughts on those which Dcn Orr chooses to run off or cause internal family divisions."

It's worth noting that Fr Phillips, like any Catholic or Anglican priest, took a vow of obedience at his ordination. He doesn't seem to feel comfortable with this vow -- consider that the OF mass is now simply viewed as the equivalent of BCP Rite Two in Ordinariate parishes, but he doesn't want to use it at OLA.

Plainly the discussions with the archdiocese (as well as discussions with Msgr Steenson) weren't going well. On May 5, 2012, Fr Phillips posted the text of two e-mails to the parish at Atonement Online:

Here are two letters I sent to parishioners and friends, discussing the decision to withdraw our request for transfer into the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. The first one:

Dear Friends,

Fr. Jeffery Moore (our parochial vicar) and I had a good meeting with Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Bishop Oscar Cantu to discuss issues surrounding the Ordinariate and what that might mean for the parish. All of us desired to do what is best for the people of Our Lady of the Atonement Church, and it was in a spirit of cooperation that it became evident to me that for the sake of the continued stability and unity of our parish community, the best course of action at this time is to withdraw our request to enter the Ordinariate and to remain in our present status as a Personal Parish of the Anglican Common Identity, as is stated clearly in the Decree of Erection by which we were founded in 1983.

The archbishop recalled his recent visit to the parish, commenting on how impressed he was with the Academy students, with our facility, and with the sense of the sacred found here. He expressed his respect for the fruitful and particular ministry of our parish, and he looks forward to strengthening our bond of communion, as do we.

What does this mean in practical terms? Our liturgical and devotional life does not change, our patrimony remains intact, and our clergy and people remain together as one parish family.

I’m grateful for the archbishop’s warmth and for the respect he has for our heritage, and we look forward to deepening our relationship with him.

From the time of our founding we have been under the maternal care of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Atonement. She has never failed us, and she did not fail us today. We continue under Our Lady’s patronage, and that of her Divine Son, in union with the Holy Father and with the bishops in communion with him.

Thank you to all who prayed for this important meeting. All of us there felt the presence and power of the Holy Ghost.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Christopher G. Phillips

And the second:

Dear Friends,

It’s difficult to communicate important information by way of email – there’s an understandable tendency for recipients to forward them all over the place, and there is always the strong possibility of someone misinterpreting them. However, I do want to reiterate some of the points I made in yesterday’s email about my meeting with Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller and Bishop Oscar Cantu.

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.

2. It is important to all of us that we preserve the integrity and unity of our parish – church and school, clergy and people, buildings and patrimony – and at the present time the only way we can insure this is by remaining as we are; namely, a Personal Parish of the Pastoral Provision, rather than a parish of the Ordinariate. We all want the parish to be able to continue as it is, with our clergy and people intact, and with our church and school serving those who want to be here. At some point we may be able to have that in the Ordinariate -- but this is not the time.

3. Our way of worship – our liturgy, our devotional life, our music…everything we treasure and maintain – will be able to continue uninterrupted, and the archbishop and his auxiliary bishop have stated their support and admiration for what is done here.

I know the decision to withdraw our parish request to enter the Ordinariate is unexpected, and some of you might be perplexed. As you know, I have been very excited about the prospect of being in the Ordinariate, but I had to weigh every aspect of this, and decide what would be truly best for us. The stability of our parish is something I know you would not want to discard lightly, and this decision provides us with the best and safest way to continue to “preserve, nurture and share” our Anglican patrimony, as we have done for the past twenty-nine years.

As we have opportunities to deepen our communion with our Father-in-God, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller, let’s make the most of them. He was genuinely moved to learn that we will be remaining in his jurisdiction for now, and he looks forward (as do we) to strengthening our ties with the archdiocese which has been our home for so long.

The time may come when we are prepared to enter the Ordinariate, and when the Ordinariate will be in a better position to receive us as we are. We can be grateful that God has used our parish, in some small way, to prepare the ground for the establishment of the Ordinariate in this country. As strange as it seems for us not to be part of it from the very beginning, the time is not yet right.

Let’s all pray for the success of the Ordinariate, and especially for the men who are preparing for ordination over the next few months. No matter what jurisdiction we’re in, we’re all working for the same end – the building up of God’s Kingdom!

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Christopher G. Phillips

Accounts Fr Phillips has given to individuals flesh out, and are partly at variance, with the accounts here, especially as relate to Msgr Steenson. However, based on comments from OLA parishioners in various forums, it appears that Abp Garcia-Siller's position on letting the parish go into the Ordinariate hasn't changed between 2012 and 2016 -- his offer actually appears to be the same, he'll happily excardinate Fr Phillips to the OCSP, but he wants to hold onto the property. As of 2012, an OCSP parish would be free to meet on the OLA property. This contradicts any view that he didn't oppose the parish's seeking entry to the OCSP in 2012, but now opposes it.

It's worth pointing out that in the case of Our Lady of Walsingham, much of the money for building this parish, and later the chancery, came from the Carl and Lois Davis Foundation. The Davises have been major donors to Catholic causes in Houston, including the archdiocese, and I assume the bishop there received donations that he could feel compensated for the departure of the OLW parish to the OCSP.

Why The Teaching Sisters Left The School

I've already posted here about an episode in which Sr Clare, OSF, the Atonement school principal, suddenly vacated her post at 11:00 PM January 15, 1996. This is all that's mentioned in official parish communications. A former parishioner and school parent provides additional background on what apparently happened earlier on January 15:

It was reported that the straw that broke the camel's back that night was that as the sisters were returning to their convent, across the street from the school, in the original rectory, people hiding in the bushes began throwing rocks at them. They felt threatened and left. It can not be proved but the legend around the parish is that Jim Orr and Father's son Nathan were among the handful of minions throwing the rocks, but that is just speculation. It was the first of many bizarre circumstances I witnessed at the Atonement.

The circumstances that provoked this appear to be, according to the parishioner,

In August of 1994, the school opened for business with the School Sisters of St. Francis as the educators. They were very solid sisters, they wore habits, they were the kind of sisters any devout Catholic would love to have teaching their children. After a few years (I'm sorry I don't remember exact dates [but if the school opened in August 1994 and the sisters left in January 1996, it must have been pretty quick]) the relationship between the Order and Fr. Phillips began to deteriorate. I was told it began because the sisters wanted to use a guitar in the student mass and it escalated from there. I believe it also centered on the Sisters wanting to run the school, as subsidiarity would dictate (Think Bells of St. Mary's).

Another visitor offers a different perspective:

The Sisters were hired to work at the school, I'm not sure why subsidiarity would dictate that they make decisions in running the school if those contradicted the pastor who had hired them. . . . Whatever other disagreements they might have had over how to run the school that might have run contrary to the vision that had brought it about, I suspect there were also disagreements over their living facilities. Father and his family had lived in the house while his new residence was built. He owns the current "rectory" and might have still owned the "convent", though I believe that ownership has changed. The sisters might have been unhappy over the configuration of the "convent", the provision of which likely meant they were paid less in salaries. Father generally relied upon a volunteer to do such things as repairs, so probably wasn't an ideal landlord.

The first visitor continues,

The next anyone knew the sisters left town, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the school year. This caused an enormous disruption of course. Lay women were brought in to "teach" and in very short order the Archdiocese got involved, the Catholic Schools office came in direct confrontation with Fr. Phillips, the school was actually removed from the parish and became a private school of the Archdiocese.

A visitor, seeing the above, says, "I expect it would be more accurate to say that the school simply became a private school under Father Phillips's direction, not connected to the Archdiocese. It would seem that the school was trying to get back in to the Archdiocese for the 1997-98 school year when the Archdiocese applied new standards adopted in Feb. 1997 due to them being a 'new school'. This caused Father Phillips to hire a different principal from the one he had been using until the original replacement for Sister Clare had a chance to meet the new standards."

The media got involved, petitions were circulated to the parishioners, the Archbishop (Flores) was vilified. I believe this was when Archbishop Flores reportedly attempted to remove Fr. Phillips but was unsuccessful and lacked the wherewithal to persevere, Chuck Wilson was squarely involved. [Another parishioner reported that Mr Wilson told the recent Save Atonement meeting that Cardinal Law saved Fr Phillips in this case.]

From this point forward, subsidiarity was never again present at the parish. Not only the school but every tiny facet of parish life, from the color of paint to the tint of light tubes, to the height of art in the halls to EVERYTHING would be dictated by Deacon Orr primarily, and sometimes Fr. Phillips. It's why the revolving door of headmasters and teachers and facilities managers and so on. Jim Orr, with the full support of Fr. Phillips, did not just micromanage, he micromanaged and if anyone blinked an eye, their loyalty would be questioned and they would be on their way out.

Eventually, the parish hired a school principal who knew how to work with the Archdiocese and the relationship was eventually restored. At some point, everything returned to the status quo, the sisters had been removed and Fr. Phillips and Jim learned they could overcome ANY obstacle ANY Archbishop set before them. I did not work at the Parish at the time so I had no first hand knowledge of the events. But one of the sisters was convinced to leave her order and remain behind (though in a different order, she is still at the Atonement). Her staying gave the parish elites some sense of justification. It's not terribly "traditional" for a sister to leave her order, but it's "Atonementesque".

We're looking at a picture that's becoming more and more clear: a Catholic convert from Anglicanism, a married Catholic priest with five children ordained under a special dispensation, appears to feel entitled to flout Catholic authority, order, and tradition, in this case quite possibly countenancing violence against religious sisters. He's then able to pull strings to avoid consequences for this action. And he's been able to sell himself as some sort of archetype of how Catholics should be -- the Anglicans are gonna show 'em all how!

This makes me sick to my stomach.

Request For Information

The farther this story goes, the deeper it gets, and my sympathies for Msgr Kurzaj grow daily. He's in my prayers. A visitor has raised worthwhile questions about how the Our Lady's Dowry charity funded construction of the various OLA expansions. This brings up the question of how Catholic construction projects -- let's say, the construction of any parish or school buildings -- are funded and managed. If you think about it, the money that goes into Catholic construction probably far outstrips the Trump organization, and I assume there are policies and best practices in place, almost certainly published. If anyone can point me to something like this, I will greatly appreciate it.

From the start of this blog, I've scrupulously observed requests for confidentiality and any other conditions placed by visitors on use of material.

More On Our Lady's Dowry

It's worth noting that Dcn Orr has retired, and while there's smoke in the matter of his conduct with boys, so far, there's no fire. The "civil demand" mentioned in the letter from the archdiocese would refer to a stage in litigation that leaves the door open for negotiation. It's entirely possible that, especially with Dcn Orr retired, the archdiocese will settle for an undisclosed amount and keep the matter quiet. (Part of the mischief with these cases is that less substantiated "me too" claims can then arise, leading to further settlements. This is partly why there's a Virtus program; "innocent" pats, rubs, and smooches can be misconstrued. More than Dcn Orr, Fr Phillips is culpable for doing nothing about reports that were clearly made to him over the years.)

But whether there's a there there or not for Dcn Orr, Our Lady's Dowry, as far as I can gather from accounts by parishioners and public records, would have been a terminable offense for any corporate officer who did the same thing. And an officer who did such a thing wouldn't just be walked out the door, there'd be a team of auditors and attorneys on the case like white on rice. I'm not sure if the amounts involved here are enough to be worth a US attorney's time, but we're certainly looking at the possibility of fraud in misusing a tax-exempt organization.

What Fr Phillips and Dcn Orr seem to have connived in doing was to set up a separate entity to pay Dcn Orr off the parish books. A question I still can't answer is whether Dcn Orr was receiving a salary from the school in addition to the nearly $70,000 he netted from Our Lady's Dowry. Another question would be how Mr Ott, Dcn Orr's successor, is paid. The third, much bigger question is why this was done.

UPDATE: I'm told that Orr's salary was entirely paid by Our Lady's Dowry, and Mr Ott's salary comes from the parish, although both had effectively the same job but at different times. This strongly suggests the purpose of Our Lady's Dowry was to conceal something from the archdiocese.

A visitor refers me to the archdiocese's policy on employment of deacons:

Here is a link to the Archdiocese of San Antonio's "Policy Handbook for the Permanent Diaconate." Under the employment section it reads:

3.3.1. Permanent deacons who are employed by the diocese, by a parish, or by an agency may only be employed to do work that is not specific to their diaconate ministry. Deacons may not be employed by the parish or agency to which they have been assigned to minister as deacon Any past practices to the contrary are specifically prohibited and must be resolved in communication with the Director of Diaconate Ministry and Formation on or before the date that these norms take effect.

3.3.2. Permanent deacons employed by the diocese, by a parish, or by an agency are to receive remuneration commensurate with the salaries and benefits provided to the lay men and women on staff for that particular occupation.

There shouldn't have been a problem for Deacon Orr to receive a paycheck for his work as business manager, teacher and school administrator/headmaster under the Policy. Of course, it might be that the Archdiocese had asked that Deacon Orr specifically not be employed.

That's one possibility. Another could be that Fr Phillips meant to pay Dcn Orr more than "remuneration commensurate with the salaries and benefits provided to the lay men and women on staff for that particular occupation," and the Our Lady's Dowry salary was a pretty good one for San Antonio.

The same visitor sent me a pdf of Our Lady's Dowry's IRS Form 990 from 2014. I can't find a way to link it, and it's far too big to give screen prints, but if anyone would like a copy, send me an e-mail and I'll be happy to forward it. The visitor says of it,

Page 1 shows over $98K in donations, with $1,700 of program service revenue from book sales and "other revenue" of $650 being rents.

Move to page 7 and see James P. Orr received a salary of over $68K. Page 10 shows that and the related payroll taxes as the total salaries paid out, there are not other employees Also on page 10, line 24B is a $3,000 expense for "columbarian".

The balance sheet on page 11 shows the ownership of real estate at $80K, which is broken down on page 2 of Schedule D between $65K for land and $15K for "other" than buildings. Also on the balance sheet on page 11 is a total liabilities of $13,729 (which has been consistent for the previous 2 returns), with the breakdown on Schedule D showing all but a $500 loan being owed to a "pilgrimage fund".

Schedule A is interesting in claiming to be publicly supported, receiving broad public support. Line 5 shows that no person gave more than 2% of the total contributions. For that to be true (and they may have just reported wrong) they'd be receiving donations from at least 50 different people or a significant amount from another public charity such as the parish or school.

I wouldn't expect there to be 50 different people aware of "Our Lady's Dowry" being there to receive contributions. One possibility is that who ever purchases a niche in the Columbarium might be asked to make out their check to "Our Lady's Dowry", and that is then recorded as a donation. Another possibility is that checks related to pilgrimages (one at least every couple of years) are made out to Our Lady's Dowry, though that doesn't make much sense since they're not reporting any costs. Perhaps an initial nonrefundable deposit made out to the Dowry, with further checks made out to the tour company? Any of those possibilities would seem to require more variance from year to year, whereas donations have come in at a fairly regular pace.

Another visitor notes,

Interesting that on corporation wiki, Our Lady's Dowry has a warning message on top that states "warning: contains records that have been removed from public view per our opt-out policy" Reading about the policy on the corporationwiki website, this indicates that an individual has requested that their name be removed from the profile.

While the organization had other small-scale activities, its main purpose was clearly to pay Dcn Orr a generous salary, apparently to keep it off the parish books.

Why? I outlined the circumstances to my wife, a retired attorney. While realistic about what people do -- in her corporate career, she had experience with sexual harassment cases -- she's not predisposed to think badly of clergy. Her reaction to Our Lady's Dowry:

"Sounds like Orr had something on Fr Phillips."

Are there things about Fr Phillips we don't know? If I were a detective, that's one avenue I'd pursue.

UPDATE: A visitor replies:

Gosh, every time I think I'm going to tell you something new, you figure it out already (in this case, your wife!).

"Deacon Orr has something on Fr P", this is what has been mentioned many times over the years. So many families have left OLA because of Deacon Orr, people ask themselves, why doesn't Father just get rid of him? They concluded that he must have something on him. And there's probably more than one thing.

Was Dcn Orr Thrown Under The Bus?

Over the past several weeks, I've received a record number of e-mails on any subject other than St Mary's Hollywood, these from OLA parishioners. Most appear to be in the minority that's been opposed to Fr Phillips for years. My judgment is that these people have been well-informed. In addition, they aren't unanimous on many points -- some clearly feel Dcn Orr actively molested boys; others feel this is just an unfortunate interpretation. This tends to reinforce my view that these e-mails are credible. It's been my practice to post all these remarks anonymously, and in addition, in some cases to post only paraphrases based on requests from the senders. I assume those familiar with the parish can infer the identities of most informants.

An informant tells me that when Dcn Orr retired, his mother stopped attending mass at OLA, apparently blaming Fr Phillips. This suggests that removing Orr from direct association with the parish might have been a condition imposed by Bp Lopes. However, another visitor provides additional context to Orr's retirement:

[It] is against Archdiocesan rules for any permanent deacon to be an employee of a parish. Yet Dcn Orr effectively ran the Atonement for years. Especially once Ralph Johnston died, all employees reported up through Jim Orr. Jim even became the Headmaster for a year - he was the only direct report Fr. Phillips had. They were able to do this because Jim Orr did not receive a paycheck from the parish, he received his paycheck from the slush fund "Our Lady's Dowry". [Link here.] This is not hearsay - Jim Orr told me this himself. He is still listed as the Secretary of the 501c3 slush fund which was a way Fr. Phillips was able to get wealthy benefactors to give money to the parish while bypassing the Archdiocese and what Fr. Phillips called the Archbishops "tax" on contributions. This was the kind of thing Fr. Phililips would pride himself on doing. He used to brag that "he didn't kiss anyone's ass, especially a Mexican archbishop". BTW, on this link, you will note that Orr is also in a partnership with a venture called ZOAR Farms. He has a partner named [redacted]. [Redacted] is one of the young men Jim befriended and attempted to groom since he was 12 years old. Thankfully, [he] was married to a nice young lady last year and she has effectively convinced [him] to sever all ties with Orr.

One question would be whether Orr, "retiring" as a deacon and administrator, may still be drawing a paycheck from Our Lady's Dowry. I've heard from others that Our Lady's Dowry has been a bone of contention with the archdiocese. The version I've heard is that it was used only to purchase the new BDW missals, but it sounds as though its revenues and activities went far beyond this. In addition, one might view the cathedraticum as a "tax", but evading payment, a secular crime, is stealing, as far as I can see.

Has Bp Lopes discussed Our Lady's Dowry with Fr Phillips?

There are visitors better able to search non-profit data than I am. I would be most grateful for any information they might be able to provide over this charity.

UPDATE: This link gives financial information for Our Lady's Dowry. The 2014 year seems to be the most recently available. It had one employee. He was paid $70,875 in salary and benefits, with revenue of $98,773. This, it seems to me, would go to confirm that its main function was to pay Dcn Orr in contravention of archdiocesan policy.

What Was Actually Behind OLA's Relative Success?

As I've said here several times, while OLA was very successful as an Anglican Use parish -- it outlasted most and outgrew all -- its results haven't been reproducible, despite the specific attempts by Frs Bergman and Bartus to emulate Fr Phillips's methods. The Bing Crosby formula, while we might think well of it, doesn't seem to be quite enough, at least to attract disaffected Anglicans. But if investors can't quite see how Steve Slick makes his millions, there's got to be another explanation for why he has three yachts and seven Maseratis.

Irrespective of allegations about Dcn Orr's conduct with boys, which are plenty troubling, my understanding is that there have been lower-level conflicts with all the Archbishops of San Antonio over the school -- in which Orr was business manager and administrator. I had an e-mail last week from a parent who withdrew a student from Atonement Academy, regretting she hadn't done so earlier:

From the very first day to our last at that school, there was always a very scary/strange “Stepford Wives” sort of vibe. My husband and I and like-minded parents at the school used to joke about “not drinking the Kool-Ade” but it was no joke. Anybody, faculty or family that got sideways with Fr. Phillips or Dn. Orr disappeared in the middle of the night, never to return. The remaining Kool-Ade faculty and parishioners would then begin a systematic campaign to destroy the reputations of the departed persons. It was an alarming and very un-Catholic thing to witness. My husband and I learned very early on it was best to give Fr. Phillips, Dn. Orr and their acolytes a wide berth. In all the years I spent at the school, I only spoke to Fr. Phillips one time in a one-on-one meeting setting. My husband never did. That is why we lasted as long as we did, we avoided Fr. Phillips and Dn. Orr like the plague. As you are aware, about 40% of the students at The Atonement Academy were not parishioners and were treated as persona non grata. Non-parishioner parents were not allowed to be officers of the PTA, nor could they serve on the school board. Fr. Phillips ran the school and the parish with an iron fist and Dn. Orr was his hammer. The staff turnover as a result of Fr. Phillips policies and capriciousness was horrendous.

As an example, from the time my eldest son was in the first grade in 2003 until now, there have been SEVEN Headmasters of the school. (The following people have been Headmaster of the school: Dr. Henry Hollingshead (left in middle of the week in March) , Mr. Richard Arndt who took over as an interim placeholder for about a year and a half, Mr. Ralph Johnson had the position the longest but who passed way unexpectedly in the middle of the year, Mr. Andrew Shivone assumed the job until Mr. Walter Spencer who stepped down in the middle of his second year and was replaced by interim placeholder Catherine Protchko. She has since been replaced by Mr. John Markevitz.)

Everything I've heard -- admittedly from disaffected parishioners and school parents -- has been that there's something of a cult-like atmosphere at OLA, with Dcn Orr, at least up to his retirement, a key fixer and enforcer. (This is certainly at variance with our own parish, whose three deacons have subordinate and circumscribed roles). The school parent continues,

The turnover among the teaching staff was just as egregious, maybe worse. Fr. Phillips liked to hire only people who would follow his word blindly and that had bought into the idea that the rest of the Catholic parishes in the San Antonio Archdiocese were mired in liturgical abuses and were not as Catholic as the people at OLA. Fr. Phillips roundly ignored Archdiocesan guidelines requiring teachers be certified to teach in Texas and if not, be on a three year plan to obtain their certification. I did not know that Archbishop Flores tried to remove Fr. Phillips after the teaching Sisters left the Atonement Academy but I do know there were a series of meetings discussing how the Archdiocese was trying to strong-arm OLA into adopting diocesan accounting standards before the school could be expanded and the end result was the parish paid lip service to the diocese but did what it wanted when the bishop wasn‘t looking. When Archbishop Flores retired and Archbishop Jose Gomez was appointed, he took an interest in the situation and things started getting better at the school. This coincided with Mr. Johnson’s tenure as Headmaster. Mr. Johnson began to try to comply with and join into the diocesan community. Unfortunately, after he passed away, Archbishop Gomez was moved to Los Angeles and the compliance of the school in hiring certified teachers went away. Archbishop Siller-Garcia in the last three years has begun to focus on his Catholic schools and had been putting pressure on the school and parish to comply with the same diocesan procedures and guidelines as the other Catholic parishes. But Fr. Phillips has resisted this, with, in my opinion, a great deal of arrogance.

The impression that Fr Phillips fostered "the idea that the rest of the Catholic parishes in the San Antonio Archdiocese were mired in liturgical abuses and were not as Catholic as the people at OLA" is consistent with other e-mails I've had -- but wait a moment. Fr Phillips is a convert! The liturgy he pushes was only approved when he came into the Church, but at best, it dates from 1905 and has a whiff of syncretism! But the man claims to be more Catholic than any archbishop!

So, based on suggestions from this and other visitors, it seems that the school had issues over accounting and accreditation that seem to have been the cause of low-level conflicts with the archdiocese throughout its history. It's not hard to conclude that the principals and headmasters reported de facto to Dcn Orr, who used the technique of constant churning to keep them from accomplishing too much. I suspect that with the appointment of an archdiocesan investigator in Msgr Kurzaj, more will come to light here.

So I would attribute OLA's relative success to two factors:

• Fr Phillips's ability to convince a core that the entire archdiocese was out of step but OLA. Inevitably, he had to play a cult-like role in doing this, with greater-than-usual "thought control" of parishioners. The school became a draw, with few other options for Catholic parents in the area, as well as an enforcement tool.
• Dcn Orr apparently proved of great use to Fr Phillips as an enforcer in both the parish and the school. In return, he appears to have allowed Dcn Orr to operate without effective supervision, although I assume he knew what was going on.

By this interpretation, Fr Phillips, by strongarming the parish and adamant denial of any problems, kept the thing going for 35 years, probably by keeping just enough of a lid on it that no bishop -- or indeed, prospective ordinary -- saw sufficient cause to push just a little harder. The prospect of an imminent lawsuit in January-February of this year changed circumstances radically, though one suspects that if Abps Flores, Gomez, or Garcia-Siller had had just a slightly different matter brought to their attention at any time, this could have happened much earlier.

Whatever forced Dcn Orr's retirement was probably the beginning of the end for Fr Phillips -- although my guess is that both the parish's moves to join the OCSP were jurisdiction-hopping on Fr Phillips's part, in an effort to escape from continuing pressure in the archdiocese. It would not surprise me, though, if both Msgr Steenson and Bp Lopes applied conditions to their acceptance of OLA that also would have been unacceptable to Fr Phillips, and Dcn Orr's retirement might have been a desperate last measure on Fr Phillips's part.

I don't think the situation that led to Fr Phillips's suspension was new or arbitrary.

Another Take On Dcn Orr And OLA

From traffic to my blog, I found this link from March 8 on A Blog For Dallas-Area Catholics.

As I posted in January, popular pastor Fr. Christopher Phillips was removed by Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller rather suddenly and to the great shock and dismay of the people of the Anglican use Atonement Parish in San Antonio. Many could not fathom why the Archdiocese would take this action. There has been some speculation that it could have been due to Atonement seeking to join the Ordinariate and therefore a turf war over ownership of the really fabulous physical plant of the parish began. Having said that, and having heard very impassioned (and detailed) complaints against a certain Deacon James Orr from current and former parishioners of Atonement going back some time, I have wondered, largely to myself, whether or not an abuse allegation was not somehow involved.

Now, something has emerged regarding retired Deacon James Orr that could have been the instigation behind the San Antonio Archdiocese’s intervention at Atonement Parish. I have heard very troubling reports from family and others who have been a part of Atonement in the past regarding this deacon’s behavior around pre-teen and teenage boys. When I queried someone involved in the parish back in January, who seemed to have some first hand knowledge of the removal of Fr. Phillips, whether this matter of Deacon Orr could have played a part in the situation, this individual rather bluntly derided the idea.

A copy of the archdiocese's letter to the parish regarding the allegation is provided on the blog. Several sources tell me that a faction of the parish, apparently apprised of the letter's contents, walked out before it could be read. I've got to say I've received several e-mails in recent days on both sides of the issue. I would say that at best, Dcn Orr was Fr Phillips's SOB, and whatever the truth behind the recent allegation, he appears not to have been a universally popular figure in the parish. The blogger continues,

I have strong indications from a confidential source who works in the Archdiocese that this may not be the only abuse complaint made against Deacon Orr. Others, of a more recent nature, may be forthcoming.

This puts a very different spin on the dismissal of Fr. Phillips. I feel more confident in coming forward with what I have heard for years, from people I know extremely well and explicitly trust, which is that Deacon Orr routinely had inappropriate relationships with young boys at the parish, involving, at the least, what some parents viewed as encouragement of alienation from their family and subsequent provision of financial support on the part of the Deacon when these boys had a final falling out with their parents and moved out of the family home. Some of these relationships were short, others have persisted for years. Some very pointed complaints regarding Deacon Orr’s activities have been made to Father Phillips , again, going back years. I was certainly not a party to any of those conversations, but I know at least some people associated with Atonement felt that Phillips failed to adequately address these concerns and may have even given the impression of dismissing them. Through it all, Phillips steadfastly defended this deacon.

This is the situation as I understand it, as has been related to me numerous times from multiple, independent sources.

Regarding the possible damage to families, I've had at least one equivalent report via e-mail.

The blogger speculates that the February letter from the archdiocese resulted from earlier intimations that the allegation would surface, and this may well have been the cause of Fr Phillips's January suspension. A question that's been at the back of my mind has been how much of this was known much earlier. I've heard the suggestion from e-mail that rumors concerning Dcn Orr may have been the cause of his 2016 retirement, independent of the allegation reported in February 2017 -- but in addition, Orr's 2016 retirement may have been a condition imposed by Bp Lopes for OLA's entry to the OCSP, since discussions with Lopes were apparently under way at the time.

But this in turn brings me to whether the reason for OLA's sudden reversal on joining the OCSP in 2012 may also have been related to concerns about Dcn Orr. The concern over what "some parents viewed as encouragement of alienation from their family and subsequent provision of financial support on the part of the Deacon when these boys had a final falling out with their parents and moved out of the family home" dates from at least the 1990s, for instance, and would potentially be serious indeed. I've heard via e-mail that at least one pre-teen boy alienated from his family moved into Orr's house, which was next door to the OLA rectory.

As I've said, and as some regular visitors here have also suggested, we may be seeing just the tip of the iceberg. How much of this had come to Msgr Steenson in 2012?

OCSP Stats

My regular correspondent reports,

Of the 46 groups on the OCSP website,

• 3 groups are not holding services at the moment,
• 3 groups meet once or twice a month,
• 4 groups have a parochial administrator/celebrant who is a diocesan priest,
• 2 groups have a lay parochial administrator (OCSP clergy celebrate mass but do not lead community),
• 17 groups have a parochial administrator/pastor who is over secular retirement age,
• 20 groups have fewer than 20 members (of the group, including those not eligible for OCSP membership).

The Pasadena Ordinariate Group has not made it onto the website, although it is apparently holding a weekly Sunday mass now, celebrated by Fr Bartus and others. Fr Bergman also celebrates DW twice a month at Sacred Heart of Jesus, Bath PA.

This tends to support my correspondent's long-held view that within a fairly short time, the OCSP will shrink to roughly 10 parishes that are sustainable. Whether one of these is OLA doesn't make much difference; that parish also has a suspended pastor over secular retirement age and is divided by controversy. I question whether any fresh-faced, or maybe not so fresh-faced, OCSP priest could provide effective leadership to that parish.

More On OF In Latin

My regular correspondent notes,

Since the Latin OF is the basic text of the current Latin Rite liturgy, the politics of celebrating it are much less fraught than those of the EF. It doesn't imply the same rejection of Vatican II. It has been offered at the Oratory in Toronto for decades, and draws many ex-members of local Anglo-Catholic parishes.

Another visitor wrote,

To answer your question on the Latin OF, there are very few places in the world where it is offered outside of the Vatican. It is, quite simply, the OF that we attend week in and week out, but in Latin, like you stated "the master version." It can be offered ad orientem or versus populum, whichever is preferred, just like a vernacular OF. St. Michael's Norbertine Abbey in Silverado, CA offers it versus populum while St. John Cantius in Chicago, IL offers it ad orientem. Here is a listing of Latin OF's in the USA, but I'm not entirely sure that it is up to date. The Latin text of the OF has not changed since its inception on the first Sunday of Advent 1969.

Communion standing and in the hand is always accepted at the OF. Regarding extraordinary minsters of Holy Communion, they were never really intended for the roles in which they serve most parishes in dioceses throughout the USA. They were intended to be truly extraordinary and certainly not used solely for the purpose of distrubiting the Precious Blood. In fact the USCCB states:

In practice, the need to avoid obscuring the role of the Priest and the Deacon as the ordinary ministers of Holy Communion by an excessive use of extraordinary minister might in some circumstances constitute a reason either for limiting the distribution of Holy Communion under both species or for using intinction instead of distributing the Precious Blood from the chalice.

Their use has become quite perverted throughout the USA.

He later added,

Another thought that just came to mind, I attended the 8:00 AM sung Mass at OLW on the 4th Sunday of Advent last year. It was at least 50% in Latin. All of the Propers for the day, the Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus, Our Father, and Agnus Dei were all in Latin. Due to his cradle Catholic upbringing and strong ties to Rome, I'm not so sure that Bishop Lopes is as diametrically opposed to Latin as Msgr. Steenson was.

As I've noted, our diocesan parish, which I would characterize as middle-of-the-road liturgically and quite successful (building projects are ongoing), the Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, memorial acclamation, and Agnus Dei are in Greek/Latin during Advent and Lent, and on other special feasts. But of course, it is aimed at cradle Catholics.

A regular visitor with an interest in canon law notes,

When Pope Paul VI first promulgated the revised order of mass in two volumes (“Sacramentary” and “Lectionary”) and authorized celebration in the vernacular, taking effect on the First Sunday of Advent, 1969, the Latin text remained the official (“typical”) edition, authorized for use everywhere throughout the world. Contrary to popular misconception, Pope Paul VI never forbade the celebration of the mass in Latin. Rather, he only required that celebration of mass use the revised missal rather than the Tridentine missal, regardless of whether it was in Latin or in the vernacular.

* * *

The celebration of the Tridentine form of the mass remained forbidden until the schism of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX). . . on 30 June 1988. Pope John Paul II responded to this schism by promulgating the motu proprio Ecclesia dei on the next day. Ecclesia dei dealt primarily with the nature of the schism, but also sought to provide an alternative for those who had been adhering to the SSPX. Thus, the pope authorized bishops to permit celebration of mass according to the Tridentine missal, as most recently revised by Pope John XXIII in 1962 (“the 1962 missal”) for faithful who requested it and, soon afterward, recognized the canonical erection of the Fraternal Society of St. Peter (FSSP) for former members of the SSPX who wished to remain in full communion with the Catholic Church. The same document also created a pontifical commission by the same title tasked with facilitating the return to full ecclesial communion for those connected with the schism.

* * *

I think that Msgr. Steenson’s policy was basically correct. The Tridentine form of the liturgy, celebrated in Latin, most assuredly is NOT the patrimony of the majority of those who qualify for membership in the personal ordinariates erected under the apostolic constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. Thus, it simply is not appropriate for the ordinariates to celebrate the liturgy according to the Tridentine form. Rather, this is properly left to the administration of the local diocesan bishop. However, there’s nothing wrong with ordinariate clergy learning to celebrate the liturgy according to the Tridentine form so they can assist the local diocese in this way. And, for that matter, an ordinariate parish that has its own church most assuredly could host such celebrations by agreement between the diocesan bishop and the ordinary. Nevertheless, such celebrations should fall under the jurisdiction of the diocesan bishop rather than the ordinary.

* * *

As to distribution of communion, one follows the norms of the liturgical rite and the place where the celebration takes place. The choice of language has no bearing whatsoever on the manner of distribution of communion in a mass celebrated according to the ordinary form. The norms for distribution of communion under both elements, for communion in the hand, and use of extraordinary ministers of communion to facilitate distribution of communion during mass, adopted by the former National Conference of Catholic Bishops (subsequently reconstituted as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) for the dioceses of the United States and ratified by the Vatican, theoretically have the same canonical force in masses celebrated according to the Tridentine missal, though my guess is that most celebrations according to the Tridentine form probably follow the practice the time of the Second Vatican Council, whereby only the clergy distributed communion and communicants knelt and received only the host, with or without intinction, on the tongue.