Do The Anglicans Relieve A Shortage Of Priests?

Regarding the Anglicans potentially in the pipeline for ordination, a visitor comments,

There is a great shortage of priests in the church. Perhaps a "real" reason for the OCSP, in line with the general belief that God answers prayers, but not always in the way the petitioner expects, is to be a source, in the short-term, for priests. Not as the wired-in pastors of small, Anglican groups, but as priests in the church of God ministering to congregations that would otherwise face hardships due to the shortage. You've established that sustainability of the OCSP is unlikely. But the avenue of good men having been convicted that their ministry is best exercised in the Roman church, becoming available to fulfill the shortage crisis, seems to me to be a fragment of the OCSP, not to be wasted.

I know you believe that some of these former Anglican (or whichever) priests are inadequately prepared for the Catholic priesthood. No doubt more traditional entry men, having run the gauntlet of Catholic school, perhaps secular university training, then seminary, with each step submitting them to vocational discernment, would agree with you. But I have to think positively, that most vocations formed through an Anglican faith journey, are well-intentioned and are ultimately scrutinized by bishops with no need to grease the wheels to ordination. I would also hope that those new priests recognize the authority of the bishops and submit themselves willingly to the direction God sets for them. "Here I am, Lord." In this role as a supply of priests, I think the OCSP is a blessing.

As a practical matter, the ability of dioceses to make use of OCSP priests is going to be limited. Bishops will be likely to put them in non-parish roles like hospital and school chaplain, marriage tribunal, administration, and so forth. Some parishes will also object to married priests, as will some priests. Those few who get parishes will likely go to small and rural ones. An extra ten or a dozen won't make a whole lot of difference in any case.

Visitors have taken me to task for characterizing some of the Anglicans who've gone into the OCSP as opportunists. Sorry, looking at the career paths of some, I can't see a better explanation: these guys either performed marginally as Protestants and ran out of opportunities before retirement age, or they couldn't even be ordained in TEC and clearly needed a Plan B. In either case, I wouldn't go to any like that for confession unless the big asteroid were about to hit the planet and diocesan lines to get into confession were impossibly long.

Compare the very limited service these guys can perform as gap-filler priests to the service of Protestants who've given up their clerical careers to become lay Catholic apologists, like Jeff Cavins, Scott Hahn, and David Campbell. Clearly the option is there for married Protestant clergy who want to become Catholic to resign their orders and live Catholic lives in service as laity. This could even include working as lay employees of the Church.

Normally priests come from a process of discernment that, as my visitor suggests, starts with the family, proceeds through parish and school, and includes substantial theological study. When I reflect on my elite-school Protestant-heritage education, I realize more and more how much of a remedial effort is needed to acquire anything like a Catholic world view. A guy with a Protestant MDiv (or none at all) and a webinar makeup course can be authorized to say the words, wear the clothes, and make the moves, but that's not what the Church needs.

Remember that the biggest denomination in the US is lapsed Catholics. To address this problem, we need priests with a full understanding of the faith, not a rag-tag bunch of mediocrities who didn't work out as Protestants, however few they may be.

New Ordinations And Seminarians

On page 2 of the OCSP 2016 Year in Review it is noted that as of December 2016 there were 14 men in some formal stage of preparation for ordination in the OCSP. Therre were four celibate candidates in seminary. This leaves ten others. My regular correspondent tells me "Fr Perkins mentioned '10 or 11' former clergy in the pre-ordination program recently. Jonathan Erdman in Louisville has just been ordained deacon and will be ordained priest in June. Ed Wills will be ordained deacon in August. So there are another eight or nine."

Very little seems to be known about who these men are. There seems to be an assumption that most are married with families. It seems to me that we have the continued problem that Anglicanorum coetibus was originally intended to bring Anglicans into the Church as groups of both laity and clergy, but it appears that a new cohort of priests is in the pipeline without groups attached. But we're also talking about 10 or more priests who would have a hard time relocating, and if there are currently fewer than 10 parishes total that can pay a priest, potential openings for any of the new ones would seem to be problematic.

A month ago, my regular correspondent noted:

Bp Lopes will be ordaining three men to the priesthood this summer: Evan Simington, the "first seminarian" who was given major coverage in the now-defunct, apparently, Ordinariate Observer; Adrian Martens, who has been a parish deacon at St John the Evangelist, Calgary since 2014; and Jonathan Erdman, a former Episcopalian clergyman who entered the Church in December 2015 and who has gathered the small Community of Our Lady and St John in Louisville, KY. He [has just been] ordained to the diaconate. Only Mr Simington, the celibate candidate, would appear to have any potential to be moved to a community in need of a priest. The fact that Jonathan Erdman has been fast-tracked suggests that the others do not have even the nucleus of an OCSP community, nor are they potentially available to fill imminent vacancies in Toronto or Payson, AZ.

But add to this my correspondent's entirely reasonable projection that as many as half the OCSP groups will fold within five years. Unless Bp Lopes has ideas for radically renewing the OCSP and expanding it, it's difficult to see where this is headed.

More On Diocesan vs OCSP

Regarding yesterday's post, a visitor comments

After reading today's post, I come away with the understanding that there are too many priests in the Ordinariate, or, at least more than are required for the number of parishioners. At Atonement, there are two priests, and the Parochial Vicar, Fr. Moore, has never had much of a role. This was mostly due to Fr. Phillips's inability to share. But there are nearby parishes that are larger, and only have one priest. It would seem that a solution could be to foster strong ties with the Archdioceses that the Ordinariate parishes reside. There could be a sharing of priest and a give and take that would benefit all. This of course would be 180 degrees change from the attitude against the Archdiocese that was fostered by Atonement leadership. But, already, the severing of the Archdiocese ties is having a negative effect on Atonement. I have indicated before, only a very small minority of Atonement is from an Anglican heritage. As such, it seems that perhaps it is time to consider "Archdiocesan" Patrimony.

It's hard to avoid thinking that there will be continued exchange of priests incardinated via the OCSP and the Pastoral Provision. I suppose that OCSP priests, even if on loan to a diocese, would be subject to recall and thus less likely to be permanently diverted to diocesan tasks, but so far, this is just a theoretical point. The fact is that since Bp Lopes's arrival, diocesan PP priests have been assigned to OCSP parishes (and a plum one at that), while OCSP priests have gone the other way.

Another issue could simply be the sensitivity of the married priest issue. Certainly there are bishops who don't like the idea, and I've heard of diocesan parishes that have objected strongly to being assigned a married priest. At least until the married OCSP priests are eventually replaced by celibate seminarians, this will continue to be a potentially divisive problem.

A Couple More Puzzles

A visitor notes,

Regarding the youngest priests in the OCSP, Fr. Wagner, Kerrville, is about 58, and is on loan to the archdiocese as pastor of the mid-size Norte Dame parish. Fr. Joshua Whitfield, Dallas, is a young man who was ordained through the OCSP and serves as administrator of diocesan parish St. Rita, Dallas. I don't know what the "loan" arrangement there is. He is an occasional columnist for the Dallas Morning News and seems to be that paper's "go-to guy" on topics Catholic. I don't find his writing particularly enjoyable, it being overly pedantic and dense, but he gets a lot of inches with it. He was pastor of SMV briefly after retirement of Fr. Hawkins and apparently was not happy there.

So there you have two young OCSP priests with families serving not in the OCSP but in large diocesan parishes. How come, if a perceived issue is lack of dynamic pastoring?

The answer is simple: the two priests are expecting to be paid, but the OCSP can't offer them paid positions. I would say that even if they were willing to relocate with their families, they still couldn't be paid, at least not in OCSP parishes. This is a money problem, not a family relocation problem.

But this brings up another issue that Bp Lopes mentioned in his Vienna lecture: a disadvantage of the Pastoral Provision was that it was too easy for a diocesan bishop to redirect a PP priest to exclusively diocesan work. But here we have young and presumably dynamic OCSP priests being redirected to diocesan work, and I would say that this is due exclusively to a structural defect in the OCSP, viz, it can pay only a handful of priests.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds a slight correction:

Fr Whitfield was one of the "Fort Worth Six," along with Chuck Hough père et fils, ordained by Bp Vann in 2012 but he has always identified himself as PP. He is not on my list of active OCSP clergy, although some priests in military chaplaincy or diocesan ministry are (Frs Sherbourne and Rojas, for example) So I think he has been excardinated. Presumably the Anglican Patrimony doesn't interest him much. In Fr Wagner's case I think the diocesan assignment is more clearly one of financial necessity.

But this doesn't change my basic point, which is that there is little practical distinction between how married Anglican priests are used between the Pastoral Provision and the OCSP, especially if the canonical difference is externally indistinguishable. And this also reinforces my point that Anglicanorum coetibus did not resolve the problem, pace Bp Lopes.

My regular correspondent points again to the related actuarial and demographic issues:

Fragility seems to come in two forms in the OCSP. There are groups which have semi-respectable numbers and/or a building, but lack the resources to support a new priest when their current retiree retires again. St Anselm's, Rochester is currently in this situation. In a small town or city it may be difficult for a priest to find a second position which will provide him with a stipend but still leave him the time needed to minister to the OCSP group. Even where this arrangement is possible, of course, it does not seem conducive to growth. Corpus Christi, Charleston; St Anselm's Greenville; Our Lady of Hope, Kansas City are some examples of groups which share a pastor with a diocesan parish or school and seem to be merely staying afloat.

But even this may not be on in Payson, AZ. Then there are the truly tiny groups, barely in the double digits. Some of them, like St Augustine's, as you noted, and Our Lady of Walsingham, Maple Ridge, are in or near large population centres but just don't seem to have attracted any new members. It is easier for these groups to find someone---a sympathetic local diocesan priest, say---to officiate at a mass but this is not the kind of leadership which will build the community to the point where it can renew itself when key members disappear. I would estimate that half of the OCSP groups could close in the next five years because they are in one or other of these fragile groups.

So there is a confluence of related problems: younger married priests saw Anglicanorum coetibus as a way to bypass the hiring practices of TEC, where women and openly gay ordinands were competing in the applicant pool for steadily diminishing clerical slots. Effectively opportunists, they were ordained into a jurisdiction that almost immediately found itself in surplus and had to scramble to find them any opportunities at all -- but these were diocesan, in effect no different from the very situation Bp Lopes outlined that the CDF wanted to avoid. The problem wasn't solved!

But what's the problem? The problem is that even within five years of the OCSP's erection, there's not enough interest among former Anglicans even to maintain the 40-odd entities that were received in the first waves. It's not as though those OCSP priests in diocesan work can just wait a few years for new parishes to emerge in, say, Boise, Saskatoon, or Albuquerque (or Atlanta, Memphis, or Pittsburgh). The problem for Bp Lopes is going to be how to manage the situation when, as my regular correspondent points out, possibly half the remaining OCSP groups fade away in another five years.

I don't think this is an unreasonable projection. I would certainly be interested to hear realistic strategies for reversing the situation, but even Bp Lopes's Vienna lecture is explaining a problem the CDF saw in the 1980s and 90s, and it's not looking at the practical outcome in the 2010s. A visibly new strategy will be the only way to avoid this. I don't know what it might be, but then I'm not a bishop.

So, What Happened In San Diego?

Regarding the small attendance for the Triduum at St Augustine of Canterbury North County, my regular correspondent notes,

I cannot imagine anyone turning up at such a tiny gathering unless they were on the lam from a previous parish, or several, where they had made themselves unwelcome. On a more positive note, it might be a place to take a friend or spouse who was leery about the Catholic church. St Augustine's started in 2010 as a community of about fifty enquirers, of whom 34 were received into the Church in 2012. About a year later their ACA clergyman was ordained priest. It appears that the group has gradually withered away. San Diego is its fourth location, which probably hasn't helped. It has probably dropped below critical mass now.

Regarding another situation, my correspondent notes,

Fr Matthew Venuti is one of the youngest priests in the OCSP. He had a small group, St Gregory the Great, Mobile, and was made pastor of a diocesan parish there, St Joan of Arc. Shortly after his ordination Fr Venuti had a serious heart attack followed by cardiac surgery. His condition further deteriorated and he is now fully retired. The OCSP group can never have been large, as they held their Sunday mass in the tiny rectory chapel. But a faithful lay member, now the group's pastoral administrator and an acolyte, arranged for a PP diocesan priest to say mass once a month, and that has now returned to a weekly celebration. It is now held in the church; I don't know whether that is because attendance is higher or because the rectory chapel is no longer available. Msgr Laurence Gipson, now retired, helps out, as does Fr Venuti as able. It's obviously a fragile arrangement, but somebody cared enough to persist.

But how many such fragile arrangements are in the OCSP? San Diego County is the second largest in the state, with a population of 3.3 million. The OCSP group there attracts a dozen for the high holidays. I can see this in the Ozarks or Northern Ontario. I can't see it in a major metropolitan area -- but remember that most metropolitan areas have no OCSP presence.

Fix it or shut it down. These are new Catholics who aren't being properly formed or shepherded.

Then I Will Not Destroy It For The Sake Of The Ten

A visitor pointed me to Genesis 18:32:

Finally, Abraham said, "Lord, please don't be angry with me if I speak one more time. Suppose only ten are found there?" And the LORD replied, "Then I will not destroy it for the sake of the ten."

But I can't ignore Fr Kelley's remark on this passage, that although the Almighty said he wouldn’t destroy the city if there were ten righteous people there, he did in fact destroy it! But this raises an intriguing question. To what extent are the tiny groups in the OCSP cutting themselves off from nearby Catholic resources? Do they go to available Catholic masses at other times than the limited schedules of their groups allow? How about confession?

How about when they travel, since OCSP parishes don't exist in most places? If a group of a dozen or so can't support a music program, do they ever go to parishes that have a good one? Do the groups of a dozen or so have other educational opportunities like Bible study? If nearby Catholic parishes support Catholic speakers, do any group members attend these?

But if these groups would need only to attend mass at a different time at a host parish, or drive a few miles to find these things nearby, what on earth is the reason for camping out the way they are? It might be possible to argue that they're building for the future, but frankly, I don't get that impression about most of these groups.

Is the OCSP doing any of these people any favors if it allows them to think they can stay apart from the greater Church because they've somehow got things right? Apparently Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins do tell groups that are going inactive that they should take advantage of the diocesan resources available to them in those cases. But what damage are they doing to the laity entrusted to them if they delay unnecessarily in shutting other groups down?

On The Other Hand,

I think it's potentially misleading to be too optimistic about the handful of OCSP parishes that are genuinely successful. My regular correspondent noted yesterday,

looking over the very large number of Holy Week pictures posted on Facebook by St Augustine of Canterbury, San Diego I see that Palm Sunday attracted twelve people and Easter Day somewhat fewer. Their first Triduum (they formerly shared space in a parish church which could not offer it for these services) was slightly curtailed as the Easter Vigil was cancelled and Fr Baaten assisted at BJHN, Irvine. All very odd.

There are clearly more OCSP groups like this one that are neither thriving nor growing than those in the mold of SMV, OLA, or OLW.

Ordinariate And Diocesan Parishes Located Nearby And Coexisting

A visitor picks up on a half-formed thought I raised the other day:

Regarding appeal of mainstream diocesan vs. Ordinariate parishes, SMV Arlington is four minutes by car (and Uber) from the much larger (and older, as a Catholic parish, or younger, given SMV's previous history as an Episcopal parish), Most Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church. Both are thriving. I remember Fr. Hawkins of SMV being quoted in the newspaper one time as saying that they at SMV must have some unique appeal in the Diocese of Ft. Worth (when SMV was still a diocesan parish, having been erected corporately under the Pastoral Provision), because the nearest mainstream parish was only blocks away. Here are both parish's bulletins for Sunday, Apr 23:

Most Blessed Sacrament

St Mary The Virgin

I think a look at these bulletins gives a good impression of the different "feel" between the two. If you were a Catholic visiting in town, maybe to go to Six Flags or a Texas Rangers baseball game or a Dallas Cowboys game, and web-surfed to find a mass to fulfill your obligation, which would you choose? SMV historically has eschewed a Saturday vigil but always had a Sunday 6p mass. I imagine neighborhood Catholics who are running long from a busy weekend wind up at that SMV Sunday evening mass, which when I've been there was a nice experience, dispensing with incense and some other ceremonial but is a very solemn and worshipful mass. I realize that the attitudinal impacts of the bishops and pastors involved in the SMV saga were very important in this apparently happy co-existence, but it does show the two diocesan arrangements can function, regardless of distance.

The neighboring Catholic parish in Hollywood to St Mary of the Angels is, unfortunately, not as successful as Most Blessed Sacrament appears to be. The archdiocese seems to be aware of this, at least to the point of forcing budget cuts, but the Augustinians who run the parish probably need to wake up more than they have -- shortage of priests is an issue. My visitor is suggesting, though, that there can even be synergy between nearby successful Ordinariate and diocesan parishes.

The Appeal Of Catholicism vs Anglo-Catholicism

Regarding yesterday's post, a visitor comments

I think it is worth musing on whether all individuals and groups who have entered the Ordinariate are (or were) Anglo-Catholics in either the traditional or affirming categories. There is a broad church appeal to Catholicism that engages those whose liturgical or ecclesiological sensibilities don't run to the lace and incense.

Along that line, my regular correspondent notes,

OCSP clergy who led or gathered a group into the Church have had the opportunity to start from scratch in a way that is rarely offered to a clergyman in any denomination. With virtually no experience of a Catholic parish, and little interaction with the local hierarchy they are free to realise their fantasy, whether it is St Mary's Bourne St circa 1920, or some idealised 1950s-style community hub where families with ten children come for First Friday Benediction and Movie Night, with all the females wearing chapel veils. Whatever it is, the OCSP allows them to act it out with relatively little reference to the realities of contemporary Catholicism.

For many this is at one with their previous mode of operation in a tiny denomination which purported to "continue" what the parent denomination had decided to discontinue. "I, even I only, remain a prophet of the Lord" is the mentality. . . . Of course "We're the only ones who've got it right" is attractive to some, and one could argue that it is a core Catholic value. But without requisite humility it becomes profoundly unattractive to many more, not to mention deeply self-deceptive. The realities of typical parish and diocesan life generally preclude smug self-congratulation of this sort, but OCSP clergy, if they choose, can "live the dream."

We're back to the question of "what's the market?" For me, a closer question is what's the good to the Church of having St Mary of the Angels, a small worship space, just a few blocks from a Catholic parish that isn't filling its own worship space. The answer here isn't simple.

My wife and I go to Bible study Wednesday nights at our diocesan parish. We've had several chances to explain ourselves as recovering Episcopalians to our fellow parishioners. Last night, one asked, "I've never been to an Anglican service, but I hear it's a lot like a Catholic mass. Is that so?"

I answered that for high church parishes, it was maybe closer to being more Catholic than the Pope, with incense and taperers every Sunday. That's one side of the appeal. For St Mary of the Angels, another side is that since it's regained its property, it's become a very community-oriented place. It's in the middle of an upscale condo-apartment-commercial area with a lot of foot traffic, and local people do in fact drop in -- this appears to be a good part of the newly developing membership.

The Catholic parish a few blocks away is a cold place, with doors mostly closed and locked. It's really oriented more to the parking lot than the sidewalk. On this basis, our current diocesan parish is again much more of a community church like St Mary of the Angels is becoming, with activity from early in the morning to 9 PM when the parking lot is closed. So a lot depends on the individual parish.

But this in turn suggests the recipe for success is not simply trying to appeal to former or currently disgruntled Anglicans. Even at OLA, it appears that something like 40% of its membership was outside those categories. Diocesan parishes can be just as successful with a community-oriented formula, it seems to me. So, unless Bp Lopes can sell the Church at large, especially his fellow bishops, on how a particular approach leads to success, I'm not sure what the point of a personal prelature is.

The Psychology Of Anglo-Catholicism

A visitor comments,

Reading about all of the personalities involved with the Ordinariates, I don’t think you can dismiss the psychology of anglo-catholicism. Part and parcel of anglo-catholicism, going back to the ritualist controversy, through the Declaration of St Louis, through modern crises, is the fact that the laity (and especially the clergy) have been on a war-footing against their local bishop and the institutional church for many, many years. Authentic spirituality has been supplanted by a rear-guard fight over “issues.” When they leave Anglicanism for the Ordinariates, they bring that baggage with them. Now they are fighting a rear-guard action against the local bishop and local decadent American Catholicism which is seen as banal, heterodox and “not quite the real thing.” They are walking-wounded, and in need of healing. I wonder, are the Ordinariates conducive to that healing, or simply perpetual the problem?

One thing I began to realize when we got into the St Mary of the Angels litigation was that in our case, there was a hard core of free-floating anger among the dissidents. Mrs Bush, who hadn't been to church for 40 years, decided she had definite ideas about how things were to be done, and the rector, wardens, and vestry really didn't fit into what she had in mind. This mindset looks like it's going to continue to the bitter end.

Seeing the controversies at Our Lady of the Atonement from a distance, I can't help but think the mindset there was a close cousin to what we had at SMA. I've go to think some part of the parish's success was portraying itself as standing against "local decadent American Catholicism which is seen as banal, heterodox and 'not quite the real thing.'” Clearly this was of concern to Abp Garcia-Siller, and I would think Bp Lopes saw his role as somehow threading between the positions. I continue to think the angries at OLA got snookered -- the result of a rear-guard fight against two ordinaries was that Fr Phillips was forced into retirement by a third no matter what.

One thing I took away from my chat last week with Abp Hepworth is the insight he has into how people have been damaged throughout this process. If in fact he's working behind the scenes with individuals connected with the CDF on issues like the ordinariates and survivors of clergy abuse, it can only be to the good. On the other hand, if it's a good idea to preserve the "distinctiveness" of Anglo-Catholicism, the caution to be careful what you wish for certainly applies here.

A Hepworth Episode

My regular correspondent, who is not a Hepworth fan, sent me a link to an article in the UK Catholic Herald from May 2011, "Ordinariate talks stall in Canada".

But this morning we learned that the leader of the Traditional Anglican Communion has thrown his toys out of the pram and warned that the British structure may well be the first and last ordinariate, as negotiations in Canada have come to a standstill.

Archbishop John Hepworth – a flamboyant and outspoken former Catholic turned Anglican who leads the TAC – wrote a letter to Bishop Peter Elliot, a former Anglican who is the Vatican’s appointed delegate for the Australian ordinariate, in which he accused the Vatican’s Canadian point man for the ordinariate of derailing the process.

My evolving view is that stories about Russian election hacks are nothing compared to unpublished backstories about the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus. A matter that's had almost no mention from the start is why, in mid-2011, references were made in the Catholic press and by Cardinal Wuerl to a Canadian ordinariate-in-formation, but by roughly February 2012, this was off the table, with Canadians put under the OCSP. Hepworth himself suggested to me that this was part of more universal contentiousness and opposition to Anglicanorum coetibus among bishops' conferences. Well, this is the Vatican, and I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that there's more to this story than we know.

The particular story in this episode, at least the part we know, appears to be this:

[T]he Church has decided to adopt the process that was used for the ordinariate in Britain, namely requiring the clergy submit to its dossiers for approval and having the people begin a Eucharistic fast while receiving formation and asking them to worship alongside local Catholics. One difference between Britain and Canada (and the United States) is that many of the groups own their buildings, which understandably makes the idea of worshipping in the neighbouring Catholic parish less appealing.

Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto, who was appointed to be the Vatican’s delegate to the ordinariate[,] appointed mentor priests who were due to visit the parishes this month. Before Archbishop Hepworth’s letter was made public, the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, a member of the TAC, asked for these visits to be put on hold.

Hepworth's objections, expressed in the letter to Bp Elliott, were

These priests are to announce, on behalf of Archbishop Collins, that the parishes will close forthwith, that the laity and clergy will attend a Catholic parish for from four to six months, that they will not receive the sacraments during this time, that they will be catechised adequately during this time since any catechesis from the Catechism of the Catholic Church done by the Traditional Anglican Communion is inadequate because only Catholics understand the Catechism, that the dossiers submitted by Traditional Anglican Communion clergy show an inadequate training since they have not attended Anglican Communion Theological Colleges, and therefore those selected by the Ordinary and approved by the CDF will have to attend a Catholic Seminary for an as yet unspecified time, at the end of this process, new parishes for Anglicans along the lines of the Anglican Use in the United States may be established, but not necessarily in the former Traditional Anglican Communion churches, and that during this process the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) must cede its property to the Ordinariate.

I would say that Hepworth's concerns seem completely reasonable, especially in light of Bp Lopes's recent Vienna lecture, where Lopes made the point

a new approach [viz, Anglicanorum coetibus] might involve creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost to assimilation into the much larger sea of Catholic life.

The interpretation in Hepworth's letter strongly suggests an intent by Canadian bishops in effect to squash the ACCC parishes like bugs and then maybe let the few remaining members in, though quite possibly assimilated into local parishes. One may disagree with Lopes's approach -- certainly yesterday's visitor doesn't quite see the point of retaining distinctiveness -- but it's hard to disagree that Hepworth's position is more consonant with what appears to be the CDF's intent than Collins's.

My regular visitor comments,

In the event, only the ACCC parishes in Oshawa and Ottawa entered the Church with a majority of their members (and their buildings). Two clergy associated with those parishes were in the first group to be ordained, despite not having been former ACC clergy or possessing M.Divs or the equivalent. But the uptake from the ACCC was probably fewer than a hundred people.

Nevertheless, the overall numbers in Canada are too small to see a definitive trend. It does appear to me that something like the Hepworth position, whoever else may have held it, eventually prevailed vis-a-vis the OCSP, in that overall, no parish entering the OCSP was required to close and send its members to diocesan parishes for catechesis, and no former Anglican clergy in the first waves were required to spend extended periods in seminary. This would certainly be consonant with a common-sense interpretation of Anglicanorum coetibus.

I don't see a scandal on the part of Abp Hepworth here, and I don't see reason here to see him as a disreputable figure.

Ordinariates vs The Whole Nine Yards

Regarding yesterday's post, a visitor makes a worthwhile point:

St. Mary of the Angels, its pastor, and Abp. Hepworth are all participating in independent congregationalism, which is not what Roman Catholicism is about. Perhaps SMA has no other choice at this point but to try to seek entry into the OCSP. But there is nothing that prevents its parishioners, Fr. Kelley, and Abp. Hepworth from seeking reception in the Catholic church—in the case of the Abp. I think all it should require is a confession. This business of waiting to all go in together, or to come “with the building,” etc., might be a nice team-building exercise but it is wrong-minded from a Catholic point of view, if they really want to be Roman Catholics (imho, of course).

St. Mary the Virgin withdrew from the Diocese of Ft. Worth fully three years before their reception into the Catholic church, and I often wondered under whose authority Fr. Hawkins considered himself, as he celebrated mass for those three years. He did have a promise of pastoral care from his future Catholic bishop of Ft. Worth, however.

Still, states of limbo are to be avoided, and COULD be avoided, if people would abandon this white-knuckle grip on phony baloney Anglican “patrimony” and just join the one true universal church of God. I think that, like recovering alcoholics, they would then find that everything just falls into place.

I'm certainly among those who felt it would be more prudent to go in via RCIA than wait for the uncertainties of reception via Anglicanorum coetibus. One side-effect for me was to come more in contact with the full scope of Catholic tradition. As I said several years ago, Bl John Henry Newman is one thing, St Thomas Aquinas is another thing entirely.

On the other hand, the parish, Abp Hepworth, and Fr Kelley are doing nothing more than playing the hand they were dealt. From a pastoral perspective, I believe Fr Kelley felt he needed to take the parish into a better alternative than the ACA, though I believe from his account, he had been leaning toward Orthodox and only slowly began to favor Anglicanorum coetibus. As a shepherd of a flock, he was certainly obligated to think beyond what was good for his own salvation.

I don't disagree that Anglicanorum coetibus has definite syncretistic elements, including the fact that it encourages congregationalism. The idea has flaws, as did the Pastoral Provision, whose flaws Bp Lopes clearly acknowledges. I don't know if someone could get Bp Lopes into the sort of freewheeling exchange Abp Hepworth enjoys, but I suspect he would acknowledge this of ordinariates as well. My surmise is that he privately feels the CDF has also dealt him a particular hand, and he has to play it as well as he can.

At this point, I think it's important to recognize that the parish followed Abp Hepworth's leadership, as expressed in the 2007 Portsmouth letter, in expressing a desire for corporate union with Rome under the terms Rome gave it. The parish then entered the process of joining the OCSP in complete good faith. While one might find flaws in the terms given and in the process, the parish has been doing what it was told. A limbo period, long or short, was going to be inevitable given the way things were implemented.

Actually, I don't believe Abp Hepworth or Fr Kelley is doing anything at variance with a continued good-faith attempt at corporate union with Rome under the terms Rome gave it. Let's keep in mind that the Patrimony of the Primate was set up specifically as a "holding tank" for parishes wishing to proceed with Anglicanorum coetibus. As things fell out, all the other parishes in the Patrimony either entered the OCSP or withdrew, leaving SMA as the last one standing. But this doesn't change the parish's continuing canonical status that began in late 2010 and continues.

Visitors are reading various positive and negative implications here. I would say that as of mid-2012, Abp Hepworth had a series of health crises, from which he began to recover at roughly the same time, late 2015, that the parish began to dig itself out of its litigation problems. At that point, I think the best interpretation would be that he actively resumed the role in which he saw himself before 2012 -- but this role was not at variance, as far as I can see, with the role that he played in bringing a number of TAC bodies into the Church.

You can complain about the hand people have been dealt, but my view is the parish, its pastor, and Abp Hepworth are playing the hand in good faith. From a personal standpoint, I wouldn't have wanted that particular hand, but that's just how things are.

A Threat To The Conventional Narrative?

If Abp Throckmorton of the Universal Anglican Episcopal Church of the Earth, the Moon, and Mars were to pay a pastoral visit to the sole parish in his see, almost nobody would notice, and among those who did, nearly everyone would just give a sad shake of the head. But Abp Hepworth of the Patrimony of the Primate pays an episcopal visit to St Mary of the Angels, and people are ticked. I mean, some are really mad. Even regular correspondents seem to be getting worried about my own mental state.

Here's a representative e-mail, with my comments in bold:

I have to ask you, respectfully, to consider whether you are maintaining the same standards of scrutiny for SMA that you hold for other Continuing Anglican parishes and parishes of the Ordinariate. Consider:

1. Archbishop Hepworth is now acting as the parish's ordinary, despite the fact that he was dismissed from the TAC / ACA, under circumstances that you yourself describe as, um, "hinky". He is an Archbishop without an Archdiocese or even diocese. He is in communion with no other jurisdiction, Anglican or Catholic. Before he retired as Primate of the TAC, which is how he characterized his departure, he created a Patrimony of the Primate, an entity described by ACA Bp Marsh as a "holding tank" for parishes intending to enter the OCSP. Although the ACA House of Bishops announced they were dissolving the Patrimony in January 2012, they had no authority to do so, as the Patrimony is an Australian entity under Hepworth's continuing authority. The US courts have at least de facto recognized this and the parish's right to be in it. Nor did the TAC ever dissolve the Patrimony, which continues in existence under Hepworth's authority.
2. Likewise, SMA itself, having separated from ACA and not yet entered into the Ordinariate process, is in communion with no other jurisdiction, Anglican or Catholic. It, and its purported "ordinary," are both entirely vagantes. The ACA parishes that intended to enter the OCSP entered two possible jurisdictions, the Patrimony of the Primate and the Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family. There was always going to be a period of limbo, however short, for any parish that left one jurisdiction before being received into another. In the case of ACA parishes, this was sometimes many months. Canonically, there is nothing exceptional about St Mary of the Angels's status except for the time it's spent in limbo -- the circumstances have been unique and, at least in modern times, unprecedented for any parish intending to enter an ordinariate. How SMA's situation is eventually resolved remains to be seen, but in both Hepworth's and the parish's view, its status is temporary but licit, whatever jurisdiction it eventually joins. Nonetheless,
3. Mr Hepworth has now introduced the use of Divine Worship: The Missal at SMA, and did so, as you concede, "not in response to any initiative from Houston," which is to say without the blessing or permission of Bishop Lopes. Let me emphasize that a vagantes bishop has instructed a vagantes parish to use the official liturgical book of a jurisdiction to which it has not successfully applied, without the permission of its actual Ordinary. Let me see. Dozens of "continuing Anglican" denominations use the TEC 1928 BCP without anyone's permission. (Indeed, as a graduate student, I was urged to secure a copy for literary study, being told by the non-Anglican professor that "the Episcopalians will probably be happy that it's being put to a good use".) Both the ACNA and the CEC use the 1979 TEC BCP, presumably not having secured anyone's permission. Anglo-Papalist parishes in the UK used the Tridentine mass up to Vatican II, and subsequently the OF, without anyone's permission.

If the idea here is that the use of DW is a means to instantiate SMA's desire to become an Ordinariate mission I thought it was made clear that this is not its intent , it would seem, um, "hinky" for it to do that under the orders of a bishop who, far from simply being not recognized by Rome, was actually told in no uncertain terms that he could only re-enter Rome as a layman, given his history. (We will leave to one side as unsubstantiated rumor So why bring it up at all? the word that Fr. Kelley has also been advised that transfer of SMA into the Ordinariate and his own ordination as a Catholic priest are two entirely separate matters, and that the likelihood of the latter is very slim indeed.) This sounds awfully definite and authoritative for an "unsubstantiated rumor" -- where did you hear this? Surely you would admit that if one of the other Continuing parishes that you generally hold in contempt decided to use DW without any clear indication that it intended to enter the Ordinariate, you would let them have it on your blog. Actually, I wouldn't think it was important enough to note. Imagine if +Marsh did that, for instance, and justified it by saying "that the previous eucharistic liturgy had never been approved by any jurisdiction." Would you accept that at face value, and say, oh, the parishioners seem to really like it? But Marsh uses the 1928 BCP, which has been approved by TEC and would be about as likely to use DW as the Quran.

I appreciate the insights you offer even when I think you are off base in your speculation, but in this particular instance, I think you are giving your old friends an incredible amount of latitude.

What I find especially intriguing is that my visitor elects to wander off into character assassination of Fr Kelley, when Fr Kelley has nothing to do with the rest of his e-mail. While admitting he has no basis for doing so, he proceeds to cite authoritative-sounding words regarding Fr Kelley's status. Where did he get these words? Bp Lopes clearly takes the CDF's policies of confidentiality very seriously, and the CDF would have been involved in any such decision over Fr Kelley. Was any OCSP priest involved in revealing confidential information to all and sundry, which my visitor characterizes as "unsubstantiated rumor" just before repeating it?

Again, if this were Abp Throckmorton of the Universal Anglican Episcopal Church of the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, nobody would care. But this is Abp Hepworth of the Patrimony of the Primate, and people are upset. I sense a disturbance in the Force, or maybe just a threat to the conventional narrative. That someone should feel the need to dig up old character assassination, which did in fact benefit an OCSP priest to Fr Kelley's detriment, argues the more strongly for this view.

Hey, guy, you can still make it to confession this Lent. Last I checked, calumny is still a sin.

Abp Hepworth On The Portsmouth Letter And Anglicanorum coetibus

I had a number of questions for Abp Hepworth on the 2007 Portsmouth Petition and Anglicanorum coetibus. His replies were wide-ranging and compelling -- His Grace is friendly, charming, and straightforward, with a definite gift of blarney. Included in his answers was quite a bit of Vaticanology based on what appear to be extensive ongoing contacts in the CDF and elsewhere. Some of this I can't fully remember at this point, and most of it I'm not authorized to disclose in any case, but I'm certainly making note of his remarks in hopes of eventually determining how much is blarney and how much is accurate.

Regarding the Portsmouth Petition, he did authorize me to quote him thus:

Am I disappointed that some bishops went back on their vow? Yes. Am I surprised? No. I knew several of them were shaky, but I needed their signatures. I bullied them!

As I said in his presence in a different context, bishops aren't teddy bears. He did make the additional point that the petition did go to the Vatican, and whatever the subsequent behavior of individual signatories, the petition is still in effect, and the TAC never revoked or renounced it. He also made the point that he drafted the petition in consultation with Vatican contacts, and it wasn't made out of the blue. In particular, the provision that in addition to signing the letter, the bishops also sign the Catechism was a strong suggestion from the Vatican which was well received when it took place.

This goes to how much impact the Portsmouth Petition may have had on the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus. Bp Lopes mentioned it in passing in the lecture I discussed Sunday as one of several appeals to the Vatican for corporate reunion. It's worth pointing out that a visitor responded to my Sunday post on Bp Lopes's lecture by reporting at second hand a view from the CDF:

[some other] "petitions" seemed rather insistently demanding of concessions on the part of the Holy See, and others seemed to have some overtones along the lines of "if the Holy See concedes the requests we have made, some of us might consider taking up the offer;" which seemed to mean that some of these Anglicans were more interested in haggling with Rome, rather than submitting to it.

The Portsmouth Petition was not of this sort. Abp Hepworth said he was told Pope Benedict was moved on receiving it and instructed that it be placed in the Vatican archives as a historic document.

Regarding the role of Cardinal Law in setting up the 1993 meeting between Episcopalians Pope and Steenson and Cardinal Ratzinger, Hepworth said there had always been a "Law faction" in the process leading up to Anglicanorum coetibus, but it was not the only one, and the process was contentious start to finish. In particular, although Steenson drafted a proposal for a personal prelature that had some resemblance to what was in the final constitution, this leaves out an entirely separate liturgical effort, something Bp Lopes stressed as well in his Vienna lecture.

Hepworth repeated a view that I've heard now and then elsewhere, that the implementation of the OCSP was a creature of what he called a "Law-Wuerl faction" that was not entirely consistent with the intent of the CDF, and this appears to have had some connection with Steenson's removal. But there were other sources of resistance to Anglicanorum coetibus among other bishops' conferences and elsewhere, having to do with the geographical distribution of ordinariates, including the reversal of the original position that there would be a separate ordinariate in Canada.

Abp Hepworth is clearly supportive of Bp Lopes -- he enthusiastically cited a lecture Bp Lopes delivered in Australia a few months before the Vienna lecture, and he clearly feels Lopes's designation as ordinary has been a very positive step.

The Della Robbia Altarpiece

I had a wide-ranging chat with Abp Hepworth yesterday afternoon, and I think the best way to report it will be to break it down into different subjects. A big surprise was his concern over the Della Robbia altarpiece, shown at right in its current condition.

This was donated to the parish for $1 by a wealthy friend of the parish, apparently early in the Dodd rectorship. Perhaps because it was donated for a very nominal amount, it appears that for much of its history, the parish never fully appreciated its value, or indeed its significance. Typical of Della Robbia projects, three castings were made, of which two are still in existence (the third was destroyed in Italy during World War II).

The other extant copy was purchased by Lord Halifax, a major figure in UK Anglo-Catholicism in the early 20th century, and placed in the Walsingham Shrine. This makes it an object significant to Anglo-Catholicism.

An indication of how little the Della Robbia piece was understood by the parish is that for many years, it stood outside in the parish courtyard. Its significance as an altarpiece was only recognized in the 1960s, and it was brought inside and used in the renovation undertaken by Fr Jordan. Apparently Abp Hepworth was concerned enough for the security of the piece that he established that the structure beneath the altar had been reinforced with concrete at that time, and he says the fire department has assured him that few more secure places could be found for it.

Abp Hepworth says that this piece alone is worth considerably more than the entire real estate value of the parish property, itself several million dollars. He feels that the object of the Bush group in trying to seize the property must have been to demolish the building and sell the Della Robbia, with the real estate being little more than an afterthought. I hesitated to publish the information on the piece's value, except that at this point, it's about as secure as it can be, and it somehow never was stolen in all the years it stayed outside.

Perhaps this is because it was hidden in plain sight.

UPDATE: A visitor says that the third copy of Della Robbia's "Annunciation" is happily still in existence. He says, "It's at the Franciscan hermitage in La Verna, not too far from Florence (a very holy site where St. Francis received the stigmata), where it's been since about 1475. It was the first of five pieces Della Robbia created specifically for the complex. Here it is at the left, with the 'Nativity' at the right."

He adds,

Regarding the speculation on the Bush group's intentions for the building, I can shed some light on one area thing that would have been a hurdle for them--the property's local landmark status: Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #136 (designated in 1974). While local landmark status cannot prevent demolition outright in LA, it does offer a fair amount of protection--so much so that designated landmarks in LA are rarely demolished these days. Additionally, a state law known as the California Environmental Quality Act requires the city to carefully evaluate proposed projects that would result in adverse impacts, such as the loss of a historic resource. A proposal for demolition simply to clear the site would have raised eyebrows, prompted public outcry among local residents and preservation advocates, and likely engaged the Council District office--all unwanted attention for the group who would have had no compelling reasons to support such a plan.

I've often wondered about how practical the Bush group's plans were. My visitor has much more specific information about landmark status, but I always figured this would be some sort of a problem. But the Bush group, with Msgr Steenson, also had the wonderful idea of putting a newly-minted priest less than two years out of seminary in as pastor of St Mary's.

Thanks to my visitor for passing the image along.

St Mary Of The Angels Moves To Divine Worship Missal

As of yesterday's Palm Sunday liturgy, the St Mary of the Angels parish began using Divine Worship -- The Missal. While this is the missal approved for use with Anglicanorum coetibus, the St Mary of the Angels parish is not part of the OCSP. Anyone, of course, may purchase a copy and use it as they please. The copies in use at St Mary's were donated by Abp Hepworth, and their implementation coincides with his current episcopal visit during Holy Week.

Both Abp Hepworth and Fr Kelley made it clear to me that this was not in response to any initiative from Houston and was implemented by Abp Hepworth in his capacity as parish ordinary. Previously the parish had used a version of the uniate mass published in pew booklets, with the 1928 BCP used for all other offices. Both of these have apparently now been superseded. I believe the TEC 1940 hymnal is still in use there.

Several parishioners have told me they like the new liturgy and seem to be taking to it enthusiastically. Abp Hepworth made the point to me that the previous eucharistic liturgy had never been approved by any jurisdiction, and the parish appears to be delighted to be using a liturgy actually approved for use, in this case by the Pope.

Bp Lopes On Anglicanorum coetibus and the CDF

A visitor very kindly sent me a link to a lecture delivered By Bp Lopes to the students and professors of the Institut für Historische Theologie, Liturgiewissenschaft und Sakramententheologie at the University of Vienna on March 28, 2017. It's wide-ranging, and at least a third of it is a defense of the Inquisition, so some of the remarks need to be taken in context. In addition, Bp Lopes is speaking from the perspective of someone operating the Vatican machinery from the inside and looking out. The key passage, though, is this explanation for the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus:

From 1960 to 2005, there were no fewer than 7 serious attempts to effect a corporate reunion of an Anglican Ecclesial Community with the Catholic Church. All efforts ultimately failed, though it was extremely instructive to study the documentation and understand why these attempts failed. Ultimately, this understanding would shape the new approach represented by the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus. Here, please understand that I can only speak in generalities as the documentation in question remains in the CDF’s closed archives and therefore is under the pontifical secret. But let us say, for example, that if the Holy See worked with a group of Anglicans to elaborate a proposal, and if that proposal was then entrusted to an Episcopal Conference for implementation, and if that Episcopal Conference then simply killed the proposal in committee, then a new approach might involve consultation with local Episcopal Conferences but reserve the actual oversight and direction of the implementation to the Holy See itself. Or if a previous proposal for corporate reunion incardinated the converting clergy into local Dioceses, and if those priests were then reassigned or assimilated into the local Diocese so that they could not minister to their former communities and foster the particular identity of those communities, then a new approach might involve creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost to assimilation into the much larger sea of Catholic life.

This appears to be a fairly conventional outline of the reasons why the Pastoral Provision was eventually superseded by Anglicanorum coetibus. An observation that was forwarded to me was

How very interesting - especially the references to previous attempts at corporate reunion all ruined by local Catholic opposition, particularly that sort of philistinism and dog-in-the-manger attitude that forbade anything but Novus Ordo minimalism.

As an actual former Anglican who lived through a failed "serious attempt to effect a corporate reunion of an Anglican Ecclesial Community with the Catholic Church" (viz, the Second St Mary of the Angels Fiasco of 2011-20??), indeed under the new dispensation that Bp Lopes implies somehow fixed things, I've got to say I disagree with Bp Lopes's "Whig interpretation" of events here. I also have some concern that Bp Lopes is presenting Anglicanorum coetibus as something of a reification, an abstraction not much related to the ordinariates as they exist.

• He refers to seven failed attempts at corporate reunion from 1960 to 2005. I've got to assume one of the seven was the First St Mary of the Angels Fiasco of 1976-1986.
• But if we count each such failed attempt as an instance, what of the failed attempts of communities in the US to join the OCSP after 2012? These would include St Aidan's Des Moines, St Columba Lancaster, St Columba Fernley, and likely others.
• I've certainly heard the opinion that Msgr Steenson was poorly suited to his role and may have been behind these continuing failures, but Bp Lopes is implying that the implementation of Anglicanorum coetibus changed things, when as far as I can see, it didn't.
• Of the successful attempts by roughly 40 entities to join the OCSP after 2012, we're beginning to see a pattern of weaker groups already dying out, with a likely outcome of perhaps a dozen or fewer financially self-sustaining groups remaining. How is any of this a success?

Observers may feel that philistinism in the Church hurt the process, but Anglicans and Catholic wannabes among them have been their own worst enemies. Later I'll have a chance to examine these issues with Abp Hepworth, who almost certainly will have his own perspective to offer.

Court Session April 7 And Legal Update

I attended this session with Fr Kelley and his wardens, Dr Trimpi and Mr Hawkins, today. Abp Hepworth was along as well and seemed to be having a good time observing the quirks of American law. (He remarked that in Australia, there are only 25 million people in a vast country, and they instinctively see the need for mutual reliance. If you sue people, you lose too many friends.)

The issue before Judge Murphy was a motion by Church Mutual Insurance to dismiss the lawsuit brought by the Bush group on the basis of failure to bring the case within two years. There was no attorney representing the Bush group, as Judge Murphy had already granted Mr Williams's petition to withdraw from the case. An attorney familiar with the case said this was almost certainly because Mr Williams was not being paid. Judge Murphy quickly granted the Church Mutual motion.

The consensus among the St Mary's contingent seemed to be that the Bush side was basically losing interest in all the cases. The outstanding matters before the courts are now:

• The Bush group's appeal of Judge Strobel's December 2015 ruling restoring the parish to its property. This was stalled in the appeals process, but the activity on the Church Mutual case appears to have broken some sort of logjam. Briefs in this appeal are now due on Monday, April 10. I'm told that Mr Lancaster, Mrs Bush's attorney, actually asked Mr Lengyel-Leahu, the parish's attorney, for a copy of Judge Strobel's decision in recent days, which suggests to observers that Mr Lancaster is also losing interest in the case.
• Mrs Bush's appeal of the California unemployment board's award of benefits to Fr Kelley following his termination by the Bush vestry is due to be argued in mid-May. The feeling seems to be that the court decisions denying standing to the Bush group will probably apply to this appeal as well. I plan to attend this court session.
• Due to a legal Catch-22, it's impossible for the Bush group to appeal Judge Murphy's December 2016 decision dismissing the Bush group's lawsuit against Fr Kelley for lack of standing, because they now lack standing to appeal.

Since Abp Hepworth was attending the informal meeting after the session in part as the parish's ordinary, the discussion amounted to a semi-official report to him on the parish's legal situation. The consensus seems to be that things are winding down, and there's a good possibility that the final Bush appeal of Judge Strobel's 2015 ruling could be resolved in a matter of months.

Following that, it appears that the rector and wardens aren't ruling out either recovery of civil damages or pressing criminal charges.

Does St Mary's Still Want To Become Catholic?

A visitor e-mailed:

I've been following your blog with interest for some time, and am wondering if the St. Mary's people still want to be Catholic. The Catholic Church teaches that Anglican orders are "absolutely void and utterly null". So what is the point of gathering every week for the sake of a church building if they aren't receiving the true Bread from Heaven? Isn't this more important than the building, as beautiful as it is?

This is a question with a complicated answer. One answer is that in 2011 and early 2012, a supermajority of the parish, as required in its corporate documents, voted to join the OCSP. As late as August 2012, it was possible to contact the same membership (with designated exceptions) to poll them again, not on the question of joining the OCSP, but on the question of leaving the ACA. But by that time, the parish as legally defined had been turned out of its property and was not even open for Anglican services of any kind for many months. The legal parish could not return to its property for nearly four years. A small core group held mass in different locations but couldn't recruit new members, and it was potentially a risk to publicize their meeting places.

There was an inevitable diaspora. The 2016 general meeting recognized the problem and did not even attempt to hold elections based on whatever membership list could be assembled. I would say that, given the passage of time and the press of events, the "St Mary's people" are simply not the same group as voted to join the OCSP in 2011-12, and to try to say the parish has the same intent now as then, or has deviated from it, involves a reification of something that doesn't really exist in concrete form.

Beyond that, significant numbers in the 2011-12 parish were already Catholic, having completed the sacraments of initiation elsewhere but elected to attend mass at St Mary's. So some were already Catholic and in fact returned to Catholic parishes in the diaspora, presumably after a good confession. Some had become Anglican from non-Christian cults like Scientology (this is Hollywood). Some of these were lost again without the support of an active parish community -- I think some OCSP clergy will be held to account for this.

For those who've come to this blog more recently, I think it's worth giving the 10,000 foot version of early 2012: as of December 2011, the parish was told it would be received by the OCSP at an early Sunday in January 2012. This was felt to be significant, as St Mary's was an even earlier prospect for the Pastoral Provision than Our Lady of the Atonement, and receiving St Mary's would be an indication that the defects of the Pastoral Provision had been addressed.

Houston backtracked on this almost immediately and began imposing additional requirements on the parish that hadn't been outlined as of December, including an additional vote (the results were somewhat more favorable than the first one), an audit, and bylaw revisions. At some point, there appear to have been back-channel discussions with ACA bishops, who seem to have promised Houston that they would take over the parish, correct non-existent financial problems and in the process get rid of Fr Kelley, and turn the parish over to the OCSP when everything had been "fixed". The advantage to Houston appears to have been that Msgr Steenson's fingerprints would not be on any of this, but they would get the parish and put their candidate, Fr Bartus, into the very prestigious preferment. (The actual results would indicate that Steenson was fooled by the ACA.)

It would appear that Houston set up conditions for this to take place by simply ignoring the parish's efforts to meet Houston's new requirements, while by Easter 2012, a parish faction allied with the ACA began efforts physically to seize the parish. These culminated in a short-lived court order that allowed the ACA to move in as of May. Legal efforts to evict the ACA group took nearly four years.

In spite of that, I'm aware of at least five people from the summer 2012 membership, including my wife and me, who became or are becoming Catholic via other routes since then. Depending on developments, others may well take this route.

However, it's important to note that the parish vestry is not just acting "for the sake of a church building". The parish property is currently assessed at several million dollars, and it's located at an excellent spot in an upscale Hollywood neighborhood. The rector and vestry have a fiduciary duty to preserve this asset. Should it be necessary to dissolve the corporation and sell the property, they would have a legal responsibility, as well as a moral one and an obligation to the Almighty, to be sure that those millions would go to the best cause. As I told my visitor, I can give a man my cloak, but I can't give a man someone else's cloak.

From this we can see that "want to be Catholic" is not the same thing as "want to join the OCSP". Indeed, all Anglicans have the other option of simply becoming Catholic without bothering with the OCSP, and the vast majority have done this and do this now. I would guess that when all is said and done, some number, perhaps a dozen or more, of parishioners as of 2012 will have become Catholic via RCIA, which considering the OCSP's role in damaging the parish's ability to continue as a parish, plus the inevitable toll of relocations and deaths over this period, is not a bad total. Certainly Catholics to whom my wife and I have told our story are impressed with the extra trouble we've been to.

As far as I'm aware, Houston has done absolutely nothing to date to mend any bad feelings that may currently exist in the parish. Clearly many in the parish are sincere about wanting to be Catholic, but the OCSP is doing absolutely nothing in its side to make things right if it wants the parish to renew its intent.

More On Friday's Court Session

While this case, LA Superior Court BC522080, doesn't directly affect the St Mary's parish, it does serve as an example of the Bush group's growing legal dilemma. The case was originally filed in federal court but remanded to LA Superior Court in 2016. I reported on this most recently a little over a year ago, when it came to light that the Bush group had been paying Lytton, Williams, Messina & Hankin LLP for work on this case. (The Lytton Williams website is expired, by the way.)

Richard D Williams, apparently a name partner of the firm, is the attorney on the case. As I said last year, the case is entitled The Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen of St. Mary of The Angels' Parish et al v. Church Mutual Insurance Company et al. The "Rector, Wardens, and Vestrymen" in this case are not the actual rector, wardens, and vestry, but the Bush-ACA appointed squatters, whom the California appeals court ruled in 2014 were not the legal corporate board.

The reason the case was originally filed in federal court appears to be to force Church Mutual into a quick settlement. My wife, a retired attorney, thinks Mr Williams, a name partner of the firm, would not have wanted to spend much time on this case, since the amount involved, while significant to Bush and her group, would not have been worthwhile to a law firm. However, Church Mutual seems to have been able to get the case sent back to LA Superior Court, where Judge Murphy scheduled it for a five-day trial beginning October 31, 2017.

The idea of preparing for a five-day trial, when his plan had been to force a quick settlement in federal court, seems not to have appealed to Mr Williams from the start. However, during a court hearing on the case on January 9, 2017, which a contingent from the St Mary's parish attended, the St Mary's group approached Mr Williams and explained to him (I'm told "in no uncertain terms") that the Bush group, his clients, were in fact not the rector, wardens, and vestrymen of the St Mary's parish. For that matter, once the real parish treasurer found the billings from Lytton Williams in 2016, I assume payments from parish accounts had already stopped, so I'm not sure under what terms Mr Williams was still proceeding with the case.

My wife thinks Mr Williams simply never put much time in on the case -- a simple google on the string Marilyn Bush St Mary would have been instructive, but Mr Williams was probably too busy to tell his secretary to do this. As my wife puts it, "Marilyn comes off as a senior churchlady and community leader. Nine times out of ten, you can assume that's correct. It's the one time that gets you." Mr Williams may well never have been aware of the other Rector, Wardens and Vestry cases. It wouldn't surprise me if Mrs Bush simply never told him about the 2015 trial or its outcome and gave some other explanation for why payments stopped. (It's worth pointing out that Church Mutual's attorney kept himself much better informed and attended both the 2015 trial and other court sessions.)

But following the January 9 encounter, things changed. Apparently after taking a closer look at the circumstances, Mr Williams petitioned Judge Murphy on March 3 to be relieved of the case. Mrs Bush and the others were not the rector, wardens, and vestry of the St Mary's parish. Church Mutual would certainly move for summary judgment against them on the basis that they lacked standing. This thing looked like a loser. Judge Murphy, from what I can gather, granted Mr Williams's request and gave the Bush group until April 7 to find a new attorney.

The Bush group has a major problem.

• Cut off from parish income, and having paid most of what they had to Lancaster & Anastasia LLP, it's hard to imagine what they have to pay a new attorney
• There's not enough money in the case to make it worth an attorney's while otherwise
• The appeals court has ruled that the Bush group is not the rector, wardens, and vestry of the parish, making the case a likely loser.

The court calendar gives the subject of Friday's hearing as "Re: Dismissal". This should be fun.

"Give Them A [Bleep]ing Chance!"

A regular visitor with a close connection to St Mary of the Angels sent me an e-mail with that subject (slightly redacted). I'm sorry he's unhappy. He says,

I have removed your blogsite from my list of daily readings. Your constant drumbeat against anything and everything ordinariate is something that I can no longer tolerate. I myself, have decided to renounce my sacred vows as an Anglican priest and to request to be received into the Orthodox Church. So, I will not be a part of the revitalization of St. Mary’s, Hollywood for which your poisonous weblog was once named. That is just a bridge too far for me, but that is a personal issue that is an aside to the larger issue. I still support Fr. Kelley and St. Mary’s determination to join the ordinariate. You yourself, John, a few years ago darkened St. Mary’s doors to enter the Roman Church via the ordinariate. My question for you is this:

Do you still support their heartfelt determination, John?

Or, do you plan to do all within the power of your gossipy weblog to sabotage their bid to join up? After your all-negative, all-the-time yellow journalism against the ordinariate, especially as regards your recent commentary about Fr. Phillips and Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio, I am truly suspicious of your designs. The CDF saved them, no thanks to you.

We are coming up on Holy Week. Why don’t you just back off and give the ordinariate generally, and St. Mary’s specifically, a [bleep]ing chance? You won’t take some perverse pleasure in kicking a man while he is down, will you?

My first question is why Fr _______ wants me to continue to support St Mary's entry to the Ordinariate when he himself, after deliberation, is unwilling to become Catholic via any route. This simply seems to be a case of do as I say, not as I do.

Fr Kelley, Dcn Yeager, and other clergy who've been associated with the parish are in my nightly prayers, as are their families and the people of the parish. I do know that other longterm members have elected at this point to enter the RCIA program simply due to the continued uncertainty of the litigation. The Bush group seems intent on dragging things out as long as possible, and the litigation will almost certainly outlive Mrs Bush, who is 87.

I have several observations about what I'm beginning to see is the Catholic wing of the "continuing Anglican" movement. It reminds me increasingly of a phase in my working career, where due to a sudden demand for the specialty, I found myself working in computer security. It was a new field, and I discovered that most of my professional colleagues were ego-trippers, opportunists, and blowhards who could exploit the newness of the field to bypass ordinary screening for basic competence. They specialized in looking good while avoiding work. The usual abuses were consequent.

Maybe it was this life experience that primed me to approach "continuing Anglicanism" with skepticism. So far, in looking at cases like Tony Morello, Stephen Strawn, and others on the ACA side, as well as figures like Jeffrey Steenson and the Fort Worth clique on the OCSP side, I think my skepticism has been justified.

Anglicanorum coetibius showed up as a disappointment within months of the OCSP's erection, and the St Mary of the Angels fiasco was part of it. But that fiasco has roots at the very start of "continuing Anglicanism". Fr Barker as Rector of St Mary's as a TEC parish did the bidding of Bishop Law even before the Congress of St Louis, and he trusted Law that the parish could enter the Pastoral Provision. It was a monumental error in judgment that neither saw the need for a clear and enforceable path for the parish to do this.

Anglicanorum coetibius is generally recognized (in part I think due to this blog) as an effort, sponsored by Cardinal Law, to rectify the errors that led in part to the first St Mary's fiasco -- except that trying to correct these errors did nothing to prevent a second St Mary's fiasco. In effect, the Anglo-Catholics traded in their Gremlin for a Pacer. I can't support someone, other than a weird-car collector, now going on the market for a used Pacer.

I was back at the parish for a concert not long ago, and I'll be back during Holy Week for another visit. The clergy and people remain in my prayers and have my best wishes. Fr Kelley and the vestry have a fiduciary duty to continue with the litigation process for as long as they can do so. If they can clear title to the commercial space, they have a fighting chance to preserve the parish.

On the other hand, this is a small worship space only a few blocks from a Catholic parish that isn't filling its own space. There's a thriving Latin mass parish in West Hollywood that probably best serves the traditionalist movement in the area, and as my wife and I have found, there are Howard Johnson's style middle-of-the-road reverent masses to be found not far away as well.

The timetable suggests that the best Fr Kelley and the vestry can do is preserve the parish through litigation so that a future generation of leadership can take it over and determine its course. The parish is in my prayers and has my best wishes, as well as moral and some financial support, but I think it's important to be realistic about its prospects.

Money

My regular correspondent reports.

I note in the latest newsletter from St Luke's, Washington both another statement of their need to build or purchase their own church, and a note that they ran a $30,000 deficit last year, on pledges of $102,430. Math is not my strong suit but this does not look like the strongest position from which to enter the D.C. real estate market, which I assume is fairly pricey.

From this, it appears that they're renting their space, and they seem to have a total budget of something like $130,000 on an income of $100,000. This is an indication that once you leave the very top tier of OCSP parishes, you quickly wind up in problematic financial territory -- I have a feeling that neither Scranton nor Bridgeport is much better off. That said, without a breakdown of where St Luke's money is going, it's hard to say much more, except that clergy apparently is non-stipendiary at St Luke's. (My regular correspondent says, "St Luke's is a full parish, which usually involves a paid priest, although perhaps not at full diocesan scale. Fr Lewis is also the Eastern Dean of the OCSP. He was a TEC clergyman until 2011 so has perhaps some current or deferred pension income.") If anyone can clarify some of these issues, I'll greatly appreciate it.

I went back and checked the financial information I had from St Mary of the Angels in 2011. What they paid for cathedraticum, utilities, insurance, church supplies, trash collection, cleaning, and a range of expenses like printing the bulletin came to about $65,000 a year. This leaves out salaries and payroll taxes, and in a mild climate, it leaves out heavy heating and snow removal. If St Luke's moves to its own building, it will have something in the high five figures to pay even before it gets a mortgage. And this assumes clergy, organist/music director, choir, and the like work for free. And organs, sorry to say, break down frequently.

I don't know what anyone's sniffin' here besides incense -- we have a situation where there is no apparent interest in forming additional OCSP groups or parishes, while the financial situation of nearly all existing ones is precarious. The expenses of operating a church in an adult world are significant, and even the upper-middle tier entities like St Luke's seem not quite able to meet them -- and if they grow beyond that size and actually need to pay people, it'll never happen.

Court Session On The "Other Lawsuit" April 7

Via Fr Kelley, I learn that there will be a session before Judge Daniel Murphy in Department 32 of Los Angeles Superior Court on the case of the Bush Group vs. Church Mutual Insurance on Friday, April 7, at 8:30am. This doesn't directly affect the parish, but in the case, the Bush group has been claiming to be the "rector, wardens, and vestry" of St Mary of the Angels in attempting to recover legal cost reimbursement from Church Mutual Insurance.

On December 12 of last year, the same Judge Murphy granted Fr Kelley's motion for summary judgment and dismissed the Bush group's case against him on the basis that they were not in fact the rector, wardens, and vestry and had no standing to sue. This should be an interesting session. I plan to attend, as will a contingent from the parish.

Abp Hepworth At St Mary Of The Angels During Holy Week

Via Fr Kelley, I learn that Abp Hepworth will be flying in from Australia to spend Holy Week at St Mary of the Angels. He will be preaching on a theme, "Being Christians in Difficult Times", on Palm Sunday, 10:30am & 5pm; then Monday - Friday in Holy Week, at the 7pm liturgies, each day. The Paschal Vigil is set for 8:30pm, Holy Saturday. He will preside Easter Day, at 10:30, & preach; and preach lastly at Vespers & Benediction, 5pm, Easter Evening.

For Anglicans and Catholics local to the area, I can vouch that the archbishop's homiletic skills are worth the trip to hear him!

Joint "Continuing" Synod October 2017

I found this on the ACA Home page:

The leaders of four Continuing Anglican Churches have announced plans for Joint Synods to meet in Atlanta, Georgia, the week of October 2nd to 6th. At the conclusion of the week it is the intention of the Churches to sign an agreement establishing full communion (communio in sacris) among the four bodies as well as a pledge to pursue in a determined and deliberate fashion increasingly full unity. The Churches also will discuss common plans for mission and evangelism. Each Church will hold its own mandatory business meetings and Synods, but the four will join together throughout for common worship and social occasions.

The four Churches and their episcopal leaders are the Anglican Church in America (Brian Marsh), the Anglican Catholic Church (Mark Haverland), the Anglican Province of America (Walter Grundorf), and the Diocese of the Holy Cross (Paul Hewett). The Joint Synods will meet at the Crowne Plaza Atlanta Perimeter at Ravinia in north Atlanta.

The four Churches have grown increasingly close in recent years, and look to the Congress of Saint Louis (1977) and The Affirmation of St. Louis as common historical and theological touchstones. The Churches are united by commitments to credal orthodoxy; to traditional Anglican worship, rooted in the historic Books of Common Prayer; to the three-fold Apostolic ministry of male bishops, priests, and deacons; and to traditional morality in issues affecting the sanctity of life and human sexuality.

While all four Churches seek closer relations with other ecclesial bodies with Anglican backgrounds, they differ from most of them in a firm belief that innovations since the mid-1970s such as modernist liturgies and the purported ordination of women to Holy Orders constitute unacceptable developments that remove Anglicans from the central tradition of the Undivided Church of the first millennium.

The four Churches have about 300 congregations in the United States as well as larger memberships in Africa, South America, Oceania, Asia, and England. [These latter are laughable hype.]

The number cited of 300 "congregations", while subject to the usual exaggeration, does lend itself to comparison with the Anglican ordinariates. If we assume that the OCSP has about 40 groups and parishes, we can discount this number by recognizing that some of these are tiny, moribund, or completely inactive. Some number of the 300 "continuing" "congregations" must certainly be the same. The bottom line, though, is that the larger "continuing" denominations worldwide together represent some multiple -- let's say five times -- the total of equivalent ordinariate groups on three continents.

Another point that sticks out is the ages of the primates. Brian Marsh is about 67. Mark Haverland, the youngest, is about 61. Walter H Grundorf shows as 74 in web searches. Paul Hewett appears to be about 68. If the groups move toward unity, it's likely that the winner who becomes archbishop will be the one who simply outlives the others, but I strongly suspect there is little depth in the hierarchies. This is probably reflected in the ages of the laity as well.

The move toward unity among "continuing" groups is a reflection that the movement overall is shrinking and subject to the laws of actuarial science. This is also true of the ordinariates -- it appears that some number of OCSP parishes and groups will become inactive in coming months as their pastors retire and no replacements can be found. The number of OCSP seminarians, currently three as I understand it, will be sufficient only to replace retirements in the top tier of OCSP parishes.

This goes to my fairly recent conclusion that Anglicanorum coetibus, with its predecessor, the Pastoral Provision, is simply a part of the "continuing" movement as defined in the press release above. It suffers from exactly the same problems, especially aging clergy and an inability to attract replacements.