I'm sure Fr Sellers sermon (at the school mass, not that of the OCSP group, I assume, since DW was not used), was excellent. And I am sure he is not responsible for setting up or maintaining the school website, which is also quite professsional-looking. But have you looked at the St Margaret, Katy website (which he did create)?I'm grateful to both visitors for clarifying the TEC backgrounds of both these men, but this raises an important question: both were rectors of major TEC parishes. There were no similar parishes for them to take over in the OCSP -- as of 2012, the only equivalent was Our Lady of Walsingham, still small by TEC standards, on which Fr Hough IV presumably had a lock. So basically, Msgr Steenson had to find make-work jobs for both that were probably not consistent with their actual skills.To call it amateurish is insulting to amateurs. Any 16 year old could produce something more polished. It is also never updated with current announcements, just the odd group picture. Which group seems to be shrinking rather than growing. There used to be a FB page, but Fr Sellers seems to have abandoned FB, both personally and professionally. A choice other educators might agree with, of course. He described himself to David Murphy as a "fifth-generation journalist" as I recall, and no doubt he is a good writer. But he is not technically proficient; the Ordinariate Observer under his editorship was very much "All the news that fits" and he even got the edition number wrong at one point.
The one edition that has appeared since he left was visually in a completely different league, although similarly filled with out of date puff pieces. When he gave interviews about the OCSP he spoke in general superlatives, with little content. I believe that Fr Chalmers was the one who was in charge of getting the web site set up, originally; I saw his endorsement on the website of the provider. Although it is not great---at one point the OCSP website had two different addresses, for example, and the parish map, with its mysterious third parish in Northern California, has always puzzled me---it looks acceptable. But it has never been well-maintained, and there has never been a news-gathering function.
As for Msgr Gipson, as rector of the largest TEC parish in the country am sure he had a significant number of accounting and investment professionals handling all the financial business of the parish. He didn't have to get hands-on any more than he had to know how to fix the air-conditioning. Latterly he was moved to "Advancement" with Msgr Steenson's former PA reporting to him; she is now gone as well.
Granted, there weren't many resources available to these men. Fr Sellers was supply teaching to support himself. Steenson was splitting his time among the Chancery office, travelling, and his seminary teaching, so I imagine that any "management structure" was pretty minimal.
Once again -- could this have been foreseen between 2005 and 2009? Even Msgr Steenson's tiptoe-on-eggshells departure from TEC might have given an indication that major TEC parishes of the sort Sellers and Gipson led weren't going to get an easy out, and thus it might be prudent to rethink the opportunities for all clergy that would be available once the OCSP was erected. For that matter, could Sellers and Gipson have foreseen developments themselves? Certainly there have been, and presumably continue to be, TEC rectors who have full pastoral careers in TEC and become Catholic only on retirement. We don't think less of Fr Carroll Barbour of St Thomas the Apostle Hollywood for that, as an example.
Instead, the only indication we have about either Anglican or Catholic thinking on the actual potential of a personal prelature is TEC Bp Pope's 1993 estimate to Cardinal Ratzinger that 250,000 US Episcopalians would come in. If the CDF, Steenson, Sellers, Gipson, and so forth were buying into this, they might have assumed a series of Plumstead Episcopi preferments would simply fall into the laps of the old boys and their favorites. It seems to me that the major task facing the CDF and Bp Lopes is making a realistic assessment of how wildly incorrect this estimate was and developing a realistic course forward.
UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds,
I believe that Msgr Gipson, now 75, had already retired from St Martin's Episcopal in 2008 before becoming a Catholic in 2012. So he did not need a job. Ordaining him seemed a bit of a vanity project on Steenson's part, to me. Headlines like this were typical. Giving him a management post seems superfluous. I will note that he has been assisting at St Gregory, Mobile, since the OCSP priest there, Fr Venuti, had to fully retire at 34 for health reasons.This just raises again the question of what they all had in mind. But whatever it was, what they wound up doing for the OCSP was inconsistent with whatever they may previously have been good at.Fr Sellers, on the other hand, was Dean of the Episcopalian cathedral in Fargo, ND---pretty small potatoes but, as I have remarked before, attractive enough to him at one point to get him to up stakes and move a long way from Texas. Hard to believe he returned there without some expectation of a job. Possibly OLA, as I have suggested before. Director of Communications was a volunteer position for him; initially no one was paid at the Chancery office except Barbara Jonte, Msgr Sttenson's PA. You get what you pay for.
