The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society And Anglo-Catholicism

I've given more thought to yesterday's post and the one at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog that prompted it. I certainly go along with the sentiments here, which say

The administrator at the Catholic Answers Forums tells me that she sometimes fantasizes about banning the subject of women's clothing as a topic of conversation on the forums because there are few topics more likely to start flame wars.

It seems to me that the issue is not whether to breast feed during mass, but whether the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society is any sort of authority on the subject. Clearly Mrs Gyapong and Mr Schaetzel feel they are -- and I know from experience that the moderators at the Society's blogs allow only comments they approve of, so the one comment on the post, from Mr Schaetzel, is clearly endorsed by the powers that be.

Let's look at the Society's position on Catholics and sin:

There are some Catholics who take avoiding a “near occasion of sin” to such extremes that they create a whole new set of rules to put a hedge around such occasions, and then act as if violating one of the “preventive” rules is also somehow sinful.

Well, let's take a look at what "some Catholics" believe about near (or proximate) occasions of sin. Per the Catholic Encyclopedia,

Theologians distinguish between the proximate and the remote occasion. They are not altogether at one as to the precise value to be attributed to the terms. De Lugo defines proximate occasion (De poenit. disp. 14, n. 149) as one in which men of like calibre for the most part fall into mortal sin, or one in which experience points to the same result from the special weakness of a particular person. The remote occasion lacks these elements. All theologians are agreed that there is no obligation to avoid the remote occasions of sin both because this would, practically speaking, be impossible and because they do not involve serious danger of sin.

As to the proximate occasion, it may be of the sort that is described as necessary, that is, such as a person cannot abandon or get rid of. Whether this impossibility be physical or moral does not matter for the determination of the principles hereinafter to be laid down. Or it may be voluntary, that is within the competency of one to remove. Moralists distinguish between a proximate occasion which is continuous and one which, whilst it is unquestionably proximate, yet confronts a person only at intervals. It is certain that one who is in the presence of a proximate occasion at once voluntary and continuous is bound to remove it.

What we're seeing here is that, while circumstances and individual proclivities may differ, yeah, if you're drawn to sin by near occasions that you can avoid, then you're sinning, and if you keep doing it when you're able to avoid it, the confessor must deny absolution. Neither Mrs Gyapong nor Mr Schaetzel is especially precise here, but clearly Mrs Gyapong disdains the idea of putting "a hedge around" near occasions of sin, when it seems to me that a good confessor would urge just that. The typical example of avoiding near occasions of sin is for a person who has a problem with alcohol to avoid walking into a bar. Awfully good advice, as far as I can see, but Mrs Gyapong says, on behalf of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society,

I am going to pronounce right now that this kind of thing is not part of our English Catholic/Anglican Patrimony going forward.

This is a problem I've seen with Anglo-Catholicism from the time I first asked Fr David Miller about it in TEC confirmation class and got his reply: Anglo-Catholics want to have the prestige of calling themselves Catholic without paying the dues Catholics have to pay. Certainly we can dispute whether it's a good idea to breast feed during mass, though I would ask why we almost never see it, at least at the half dozen or so parishes where I've gone, and whether the same people who advocate it would also advocate changing diapers in the pew.

But the point here is that, notwithstanding specifics about modesty and decorum, Mrs Gyapong is making statements about faith and morals. As my regular correspondent puts it,

Leaving aside the fact that her experience of Anglicanism was confined to mid-life membership in a small "continuing" denomination for a decade or so, she displays an eclectic range of "pick and mix" liturgical enthusiasms, combined with a conservative political outlook, which are of course no crimes unless you are purporting to edit a blog which is a semi-official organ of a society dedicated to "promoting the Anglican Heritage and Common Identity within the Catholic Church" in which case the lack of rigour is rather unsettling.

On Mr Schaetzel, my correspondent earlier noted,

I personally don't regard Mr Schaetzel as having an Anglican bone in his body. He is a right-wing evangelical, now Catholic, a very common profile. Passing briefly through TEC, which gave him a taste for traditional liturgy. But he is far more animated about his family-values, "subsidiarity" agenda and similar concerns than he is about Anglican Patrimony, about which his ideas are entirely superficial and romantic.

Yet these folks, with fairly minimal exposure to Anglicanism and as far as I can tell, even less to Catholicism, presume to tell us what part of Catholicism we Anglo-Catholics can follow and what we shouldn't.

Fr Bergman, as I understand it, you're a member of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society. Do you feel you have any duty to correct any of this? Does Bp Lopes?

Nursing Mothers In Our Parishes: Not Just Unique?

My regular correspondent sent me a reference to a strange post by Ms Gyapong at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, which I normally avoid. In it, a correspondent rants that in the tiny OCSP chapel group she attended,

there were complaints about me breastfeeding my baby without covering her with a blanket in church. I was accused of being immodest.

She then offered several justifications for why she absolutely had to do this. The woman and Ms Gyapong then agree that breast feeding in public and without covering is part of the Anglican patrimony! Yes, I think that happened all the time in Jane Austen -- Sense and Sensibility, all those descriptions, right? And the great breastfeeding scene in Middlemarch! Shame on those philistines for not recognizing the great Anglican tradition, centuries long, which reached its peak in Victoria's reign, of boldly asserting female reproductive capacity!

Apparently it's those prudish ultramontanists who spoil the fun, according to Ms Gyapong and her visitor. Petty concerns about near occasions of sin, the sort of thing you only find in the act of contrition nowadays. You don't like it, then don't look!

I'm not sure where to start. Ms Gyapong and her visitor cite centuries of Catholic art depicting Christ's Mother breastfeeding. OK, centuries of other Catholic art depict Christ's Mother posing with the Holy Infant on her lap, with Mary discreetly pointing to the Child's penis. This is meant in both cases, as far as I can see, to make the theological point that Christ was fully human but did not sin. It does not imply that mothers should bring their infant boys to church to show off their private parts. Indeed, sometimes infants need a change of diapers while in church, but so far, I've never seen anyone make the change right in the pew.

For that matter, there are many depictions of the angel visiting Mary. But this appears to have been a very private event. This is art. Lots of rapes, massacres, battles, murders, and whatever else take place in art. Doesn't mean we're supposed to do them.

Actually, I've only occasionally seen anyone breastfeeding in church, and in my almost five years as a Catholic, I've never seen it, although Ms Gyapong's visitor says it happens at her new flip-flop and halter top parish, where they're cool with it. One thing that strikes me is that there are lots of infants and children at Catholic parishes -- of course. But in our area, many parishioners are from the Philippines and Latin countries. Frankly, I can't imagine any of them just pulling it out and giving suck.

I think there are two issues here, modesty and decorum. This site quotes Pius XII:

Decency involves the "proper consideration for the sensitivity of others to objects that are unsightly, or, above all, as a defense of moral honesty and a shield against disordered sensuality."

Both Ms Gyapong and her visitor take the position that if you have a problem with having to turn away from a bare breast, there's something wrong with you -- in fact, there's something wrong with you if you think it's something you're not supposed to look at! Where does consideration for the sensitivity of others figure in here?

Beyond that, there's the question of decorum. I think this goes to having a reverent atmosphere in church, among other things. For the same reason that loud social chit-chat in the nave is inappropriate, other things like public breastfeeding probably aren't appropriate, either. Think of why travel during the holidays can be difficult: the prevalence of infants and toddlers tends to make all public space a nursery. But ordinary standards of decorum mean that not everything infants and toddlers do is appropriate in public. Certainly the same kind of people who want everyone to eat crunchy granola also want everyone to accept that all public space should be a nursery, but I try to avoid that sort of situation.

So yeah, I can imagine, say, Gloucester in 1883, with ladies just swingin' down the street, a child at each breast, headin' to morning prayer or some such. It's the Anglican patrimony after all, one of its precious spiritual treasures, which those prudish continental Catholics just can't accept. It's that awful non-Anglican priest leading that little gathered group which just doesn't understand these things. Why, they drove her to a new flip-flop and halter-top parish with awful music and a priest who sounds like Kermit the Frog, but at least they've got no problem with her boobs.

I keep coming back to the insight of Abp Siller-Garcia: these people don't want to be unique, they want to be separate.

Christmas Masses And A Question

My regular correspondent e-mailed me a week ago wondering if the close proximity of Advent IV and Christmas could prove a problem for some OCSP communities, and this turned out to be prophetic:

Fr Kennedy was too ill last Sunday/Monday to offer mass at St Timothy, Ft Worth, so services for Advent IV and Christmas were cancelled. According to the bulletin of SMV, Arlington TX Fr Kennedy is the only priest on staff there besides the Pastor, so things must have been stretched at SMV too. St Timothy's has been without an ordained parish administrator since Fr Stainbrook was reassigned to St John Vianney, Cleburne in July, 2016. The major news items posted on the St Timothy's FB page are the final illnesses/funerals of long-time parishioners. The parish website has remained untouched since April 2017. Manpower is of course an issue, but Our Lady of Hope, Kansas City, where Ed Wills was ordained as a transitional deacon this summer to assist Fr Sly, did not even bother to post Christmas mass times this year. The FB page looks up to date only because the most recent post is pictures from Christmas 2016. There will apparently be many ordinations in the OCSP in 2018, but if we see that the new clergy are deployed as leaders of tiny communities-in-formation they have put together in random small towns, while the first generation of incoming parish groups quietly folds, I think the whole future of the enterprise will look very precarious. As you have commented before, clergy with the entrepreneurial/pastoral skills to build up a thriving parish from a handful of initial members---clergy like Fr Phillips---will always be few and far between. The core strength will always come from competent men who can maintain and build on established communities. If even these cannot be found, things do not look good.

Well, if it had been important to hold Advent IV and Christmas masses at St Timothy, couldn't available OCSP priests have been found in Texas? The four-hour drive from Houston would be tough but doable on all but minimal notice, and overnight stays with a parish family seem like a reasonable possibility. This raises serious questions, among those we've already seen, about the stability of the OCSP.

Here's a question I've been pondering. Ex-Anglican (and Anglican is very flexibly defined) priests who want to be ordained Catholic in the US have two options, the Pastoral Provision and the OCSP. The usual assignment process for the OCSP is for the candidate to take over tiny groups-in-formation without a stipend. In fact, some must take diocesan, though often non-pastoral, jobs to pay the bills. Why are we multiplying entities? Cut out the little Potemkin village groups, take the candidates in via the Pastoral Provision, and give them diocesan jobs, which they'd probably need anyhow?

If you think about it, the ex-Anglicans would probably wind up better occupied, with less time on their hands for mischief, more closely supervised, and have better formation while working closely with diocesan clergy.

A New Angle On The Oxford Movement

I got a very worthwhile book as a Christmas gift from our niece, Simon Jenkins, Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations. More than an enthusiast coffee-table book, Jenkins, a major figure in the historic preservation movement, has quite a bit to say about architecture and social context. He doesn't mention Tract 90, and Newman had almost nothing to say about railways, but Tract 90 appeared in 1841, just as the technological and commercial success of railways was initiating the Railway Mania.

Established historical analysis places the Oxford Movement in the context of the 1832 Reform Act, which granted civil rights to non-Anglicans. But the Reform Act itself occurred in a wider context, and the first successful English railway on the modern paradigm was the Liverpool and Manchester, which opened in 1830. More than expanded suffrage, railways in the first half of the century represented a much more direct threat to English cultural norms. Jenkins points out that the architecture of railway stations, the most direct interface people had with the new technology, had to represent something unthreatening and reassuring.

Thus railway station architecture tended to display historical eclecticism, deliberate archaism, and even escapism, for both commercial and political reasons. The Oxford Movement is a parallel tendency, a response to the industrial revolution, social upheaval, and the commercialization of society. Not only did stations have to draw in customers, but they had to be satisfactory to the local landowners, on whose lands they were often built, and whose properties the railways needed to cross.

Jenkins points out, in fact, that the unique style of 19th-century English railways, one of archaism and eclecticism, has proven exportable in the form of the enormously popular Thomas the Tank Engine and JK Rowling franchises. The Oxford movement has been similarly exportable -- but I think we need to recognize that it's a franchise, a stylistic product, in considerable measure an escapist fantasy.

Jenkins sees English railway stations certainly as an effective fantasy, one that can now contribute to renewed social cohesion -- but they're nonetheless a commercial product, and indeed a social construct, even a form of propaganda. (They're now owned by the government.) The UK railway system acted to reinforce social cohesion during two world wars. As did, of course, the Church of England, which found eclecticism and archaism suited its purpose for much of the same period.

One feature of Protestantism, at least the Lutheran-Reformed version, is that it proved from the start amenable to state control. Anglo-Catholicism is, let's face it, a version of state-controlled Protestantism that is not really compatible with Roman Catholicism. I don't think Cardinal Law recognized this, and I don't think Bp Lopes does, either.

In the end, though, it's a style, something that emulates the thing, not the thing itself. It's a means to an end, not the end itself.

Holy Martyrs Temecula?

My regular correspondent sent along this news:

Starting January 7, Fr Bartus will be celebrating an 8 am Sunday mass here. The venue looks less than ideal and the time will make for a long day for Fr B, who has two morning masses in Irvine and a 6 pm mass in Pasadena. For whom is he getting this group up and running, I wonder?

The site, Monteleone Meadows, is a wine country-style wedding and banquet venue, not a Catholic church. My correspondent continued,

On further inspection of the map I see that it would not be possible for the same person to celebrate the 8 am in Murrieta and the 9 am in Irvine. We await particulars. The fact that the first Sunday get-together is a mass tells us that the attendees are expected to already be practising Catholics, like the 349 members of the "Events" group are, judging by their names, jobs, etc. Another exercise in faux evangelism.

The group's Facebook page is here. Fr Jack Barker was Pastor of St Martha's Catholic Church in Murrieta until his retirement in 2013. However, the new gathered group in Murrieta so far doesn't have any visible connection with that parish and for whatever reason is not meeting there. Murietta is 58 miles from Irvine via a highly indirect route. It's possible that Fr Barker is taking the 9 AM Sunday mass in Irvine while Fr Bartus celebrates in Murietta, or Fr Barker may take the Murietta mass on a more permanent basis. On the other hand, it's hard to understand why the mass is at 8 AM at all, unless Monteleone Meadows has a conflict with any later time.

My regular correspondent observes,

Fr Bartus collects groups of Catholics who have never met an Anglican to celebrate DW. Not only do OCSP groups divert ordained men needed more urgently elsewhere, they divert cradle Catholics and those who entered the Church years ago. We are told that the Ordinariate is preserving the splendours of some ill-defined "patrimony" for the Catholic church, although when one seeks details it seems to consist of everything from Christmas crackers to pink chasubles. "Ordinariate" worship and parish culture runs the gamut from guitars and keyboards to Palestrina, OF to DW, cupcake rosaries to simnel cake. Even if we could define the project I am sure that it means nothing to the average Catholic bishop, and that goes for the current Bishop of Rome, in my observation. And why would a bishop wish to encourage parishioners who were supporting a parish in his diocese to start diverting their contributions to another Catholic jurisdiction, even if he cared that Thomas Cranmer was a great prose stylist? The formation issue is probably the least of his worries; he is already probably dealing with many clergy ordained in Third World countries who are struggling with English. But at least their parishes are supporting his diocese.

It's also troubling that the California efforts are spread so thin. There seem to be groups of a dozen or two now in Pasadena, Murrieta (in formation), and San Diego, with only the Irvine group showing any potential for growth. Are the efforts to gather little cliques of oddball Catholics diverting attention from the need to find a permanent home for the Irvine group?

Also troubling is a pattern that's starting to emerge, that small and distant groups suffer from lack of effective supervision, so that potential scandals can develop out of sight until they become unmanageable. Each of the four California groups is in a different diocese, which makes it likely that problems in any will escape the attention of diocesan authorities who might otherwise be in a position to notify Houston.

As we saw with the Athens, GA group, announcements are made before a permanent venue can be located. This seems like a slapdash way to set things up, perhaps playing to an audience in Houston, not to serious parishioners in the geographic location.

We're departing more and more from the original Anglicanorum coetibus model of established groups of Anglicans, originally meant to be whole parishes or rumps thereof, coming into the Church and catechized with their original clergy. That model didn't last much past 2012. Now we're starting to get cliques of cradle Catholics who for whatever reason can't find satisfactory parishes in their dioceses, notwithstanding the existing variety of Latin mass, music programs, devotional activities, social opportunities, and celebration styles available there.

And we'll be in a situation, if a scandal develops (it seems like we're getting close here and there), the diocesan bishop will have to do some sort of explanation for the 5 o'clock news about how yes, these are Catholics, but they aren't his Catholics.

Cardinal Law

Cardinal Bernard Law, as I'm sure most know, passed away yesterday. The obituaries all portray him as the face of the sex abuse scandal, but of course, this was endemic, and Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles was eventually barred by his successor from functioning in a public role due to equivalent complicity in the scandal. But Law was also a prime mover in the Anglican ecumenism project, which will almost certainly not be mentioned in the media.

This blog is about St Mary of the Angels, and Law was a key figure in initiating the bizarre recent history of that parish we've been following here. We know from Fr Barker's account that Law was familiar with the trends that led to the 1977 Congress of St Louis and the quixotic "continuing Anglican" movement. I don't believe Fr Barker has ever given a full account of when contacts between him and Law, or Law's surrogates, began, and as far as I know, it isn't completely clear what role Law may have played in encouraging Fr Barker to take the parish out of TEC.

Whether Law first whispered an idea in Fr Barker's ear, though, is less important than the practical result: the parish filed revised articles of incorporation in January 1977 to remove itself from TEC; TEC filed the first lawsuit the following month. Forty years and three lawsuits later, the fate of the parish is still unresolved.

Certainly by late 1977, according to Fr Barker, Law's people were actively discussing the idea of a personal prelature that would incorporate the St Mary of the Angels parish and the limited number of others that saw such a move as an option. But the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision was not authorized until 1980, while the St Mary's parish was badly divided and embroiled in an expensive lawsuit. Either Law didn't foresee such a result, or he didn't care; he certainly never provided, and likely never advised, a more prudent option for the parish.

Once the first lawsuit was resolved, Law was unable to secure a favorable reception of the parish into the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Neither Cardinal Manning nor his successor, Cardinal Mahony, accepted the parish's petition, Mahony in particular questioning whether the parish could accept Catholic authority if it couldn't accept TEC. In light of subsequent history, Mahony had a point.

But there's an additional question. The Anglican ecumenism project, irrespective of its practical lack of success, did represent a momentous shift in policy. Such policy changes need to be thoroughly prepared, and those affected need to be brought on board. It appears that Law never did this with Cardinals Manning and Mahony, who were key figures that clearly held a veto over the early test of the project that St Mary's represented. I've had the impression that, although St John Paul approved the Pastoral Provision, he always took an arm's-length position, and I would guess that his view would have been that if Law wanted it that badly, he could bring Manning and Mahony around himself.

Instead, I wonder if Manning and Mahony thought Law was trying to interfere with their archdiocese, telling them without saying so in words what priest and parish they needed to bring in. But I think there's a concern that mostly isn't addressed, why should a bishop bring in a former Protestant priest whom he hasn't fully vetted? Might this be behind the apparent resistance to bringing in OCSP priests in Rochester and St Petersburg? Note that Matano in Rochester seems to have changed his mind when offered the possibility of a celibate Catholic seminarian, while the Bishop of St Petersburg seems to have resisted an OCSP group but had no objection to the same candidate coming in under his own supervision.

Let's also keep in mind that Law, from accounts we've heard, maintained contacts with Jeffrey Steenson and other dissident TEC figures in the late 1980s. We don't know what was on his agenda (or for that matter Steenson's) at that time, but I think it's safe to say not much good came from it then. But the 1993 meeting between Ratzinger and TEC figures Pope and Steenson was facilitated by Law and meant to pursue the idea of a personal prelature, which St John Paul had rejected once already at the time of the Pastoral Provision.

We may assume that the personal prelature was intended to fix the original problem posed by the St Mary of the Angels fiasco, but clearly this didn't happen. St John Paul was still not well disposed, and even when Ratzinger as Benedict was able to establish it on his own, the project was too poorly resourced to succeed. No matter what's been tried so far, the parish still hasn't come in, and if it were up to me, I'd advise the parish and Abp Hepworth to hold out for a better deal, given the extremely valuable property they bring to the party.

My regular correspondent reflected the other day,

"450,000 Anglicans to join Catholic church." Right. How desperately do we think the Vatican wishes that Pope Benedict had never come up with Anglicanorum Coetibus? If you are correct in your surmise that Fr Kenyon left Calgary under a cloud---and the fact that he appears to be under a form of house arrest certainly supports this idea -- [complaints] regarding his would-be replacements must be the last thing they want to hear about.

Leaving the sex abuse crisis entirely aside, there are reasons not to eulogize Cardinal Law. He had direct responsibility for the 40-year St Mary of the Angels disaster, fostering the break from TEC but unable to secure its reception into the Catholic Church, but he also bears some behind-the-scenes responsibility for the whole "continuing Anglican" boondoggle.

Not a happy record.

Fr Kenyon's Current Status

My regular correspondent reports on what reference can be found to where Fr Kenyon is currently serving. A few weeks ago, a Stockport observer relayed news that he had been assigned to a "team ministry" in the Shrewsbury diocese, but his exact role there is still not completely clear:

As you will see on page 3 of the newsletter here, Fr Kenyon is putting in a full schedule of Ordinariate liturgies at St Aidan's Wythenshawe: daily Morning and Evening Prayer, Confession and Mass, plus a Vigil and a Sunday celebration. Given the number of OF Sunday masses offered in the St Bonaventure's Missionary Area, he may be saying one of them as well. He is living in a nearby suburb. But he is not listed as a member of the Wythenshawe Clergy Team, and only has a personal email address and phone number. The St Aidan's parish office is "closed until further notice." What gives? There is no local Ordinariate group listed on the OOLW website , other than the Manchester group led by Fr Starkie for which Fr Kenyon preached some months back. As I mentioned previously, most of the church of St Aidan, Northern Moor was converted into social and community space, leaving a relatively small worship space as a mass centre.

In a subsequent e-mail, my correspondent characterizes this as "a form of house arrest". It's hard to think other than that Fr Kenyon has a very low profile, with duties closely circumscribed even within a "team ministry". I would guess that most of the DWM liturgies he celebrates are for himself exclusively. It would seem that Fr Kenyon's return to the UK has primarily been a headache to his new bishop, adding to and not relieving his workload and that of his priests. This simply can't reflect well on Bp Lopes or the OCSP.

I've put out feelers to Stockport contacts, but so far have heard nothing back.

Diocesan Background Checks

My regular correspondent sent me a 2009 USCCB document, Background Evaluation Methodologies, which, although it focuses mainly on child and youth protection, gives an insight into background checks typically performed by US dioceses. Entries generally look like this:

The background check used by the Diocese is through HIRERITE, Inc. It consists of a seven year criminal record check in all states resided, a sex offender‘s registry search, and social security number verification.

This sounds roughly like what I went though as a lay volunteer who completed the Virtus program. I would assume that background checks for clergy might, formally or informally, need to be more comprehensive. In particular, a juvenile conviction, which could certainly indicate criminal tendencies, might not appear on such a search, either because juvenile records are sealed, or simply because it took place more than seven years earlier.

I also heard from a visitor who went through the background check and psychological evaluation for clergy in the OCSP during the Steenson era. He noted that he'd been in the military earlier in life, and in the course of that service, he'd had FBI-style background checks for security clearances. (I've had the same thing; they do in fact go through your friends, acquaintances, co-workers, neighbors, and ask detailed questions.) He said the background checks for OCSP clergy were, at least in his case, performed by the local diocese where he lives and were nowhere near as thorough as the FBI checks he'd had. The OCSP being what it is, we can't necessarily expect consistency, though.

It's worth noting that his experience with the psychological evaluation was not as good. He was coming from an Anglican denomination that was friendly to same-sex marriage, and he gave that to the psychologist conducting the interview as one reason that led him to consider the Catholic priesthood. In other words, he conformed to the teachings of the Catholic Church. However, the interviewer apparently then told my visitor that he was openly gay, and he accused my visitor of being a "homophobe" and a "hater".

I suppose we must recognize that even diocesan screening procedures can be flawed. (It wouldn't surprise me if seminarians in that diocese learned informally how to answer questions from psychologist x, information that might not have been available to my visitor, who effectively was a walk-on candidate.) Michael Voris ain't just blowin' smoke, it would appear.

Again, though, if seminarians normally come from diocesan parishes, where their progress toward formation can be fostered and observed through much of their youth, this would serve the purpose of a detailed FBI check. In addition, from what I've learned of the clergy sex abuse crisis, the conduct of the bad priests had often been generally known or suspected by fellow clergy. The problem was that the offenders were shunted around to get rid of the problem as quietly as possible, rather than facing the issue directly. Thus background checks per se weren't the issue; the backgrounds were in fact often known and understood -- the question was the remedy.

But this would be much less the case with candidates coming to the Church already ordained as Anglicans. They wouldn't have been known to the diocese (or the prelature) from their time in seminary or before. There's the additional problem of jurisdiction-hopping. If a priest is being carefully eased out of an Anglican denomination, especially in such a way as to avoid scandal there, the Anglican bishop has a motive to give the bad apple an enthusiastic recommendation, or at least not to mention the problem issues that could result in his staying right where they were trying to get rid of him.

So, whatever background check on an OCSP candidate a diocese might perform, it could be adequate as a way of vetting a lay volunteer or employee, but it might well not be due diligence for clergy, who see the most vulnerable in their weakest times. I seriously question whether this issue has been adequately addressed, simply in the basic architecture of Anglicanorum coetibus. It assumes that Protestants essentially do things the same way Catholics do, which is dangerous.

Hold On! Somebody Else Is The Last Of The Gilbertines!

A visitor e-mails:

As far as I know +William Paul Vincent Hains-Howard a Canadian Old Catholic bishop styled himself the last of the Gilbertines. So there is a Canadian connection.

One of the more Anglican bishops up there told me that he used to wear a huge pointy miter at various functions. LOL!

I think he’s been departed since the late eighties, early nineties.

In all this I don’t understand +Lopes. Lean and mean would be a better approach rather than replication of officialdom. Everyone forgets that Episcopalianism started out in a house church in Scotland.

Google isn't much help here. The only reference I can find is on the site of the Neo-Luciferian Church, which describes itself as Apostolic and Gnostic, and frankly, that's about as far as I prefer to go.

There are certain sections of the Anglican patrimony. . .

I've asked a few of my contacts if they have other info on Bp Hains-Howard, but so far, nothing's come up.

Back To The Matter Of Habits And Titles

A visitor with a background in canon law remarks,

I’m not aware of anything in the Codex Juris Canonici that stipulates who is or is not entitled to use the titles of “brother” and “sister” — but theologically, these titles actually are proper to every baptized Christian. With God as our adoptive father, we all are siblings in our Lord, which is why religious orders, in seeking to live the gospel more fully, started using them.

Naturally, a pastor may often address us as "my brothers and sisters" in a homily, and this would not be inaccurate or in any way reprehensible. Nor, as far as I'm aware, is there anything in the canons that prevents me from wearing a Franciscan habit if I choose, especially in the back yard. Nor, as far as I can see, especially if I can come to mass in shorts, flip-flops, and a torn t-shirt, is there anything that prevents me, canonically, from coming to mass in a Franciscan habit.

However, in the case I covered here of the ACA priest who styled himself OSA though he had never been an Augustinian, the regional superior of the Augustinians whom I consulted made it clear the guy was not entitled to say he’s OSA. And if I were indeed to go to mass dressed in a Franciscan habit and call myself “Brother John”, I believe Fr Bob would, er, take me aside, notwithstanding there’s no dress code and we’re all brothers and sisters.

Some things are misleading and could represent a danger to the flock even if the canons have no opinion.

The Church Of Torres Strait

In a recent e-mail entitled "A Microcosm of Anglicanorum coetibus", my regular correspondent reports,

In comments on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog Mr Guivens has twice called recent attention, (with no response) to an article in the latest issue of the Portal, the monthly magazine of the OOLW, on the Church of Torres Strait. This was a TAC member body composed of former members of the Anglican Church of Australia who left over some jurisdictional issue involving the appointment of an indigenous bishop. As first reported they wished to enter the Church via Anglicanorum coetibus as a distinct Ordinariate, with thousands of potential members on the islands and in the diaspora.

Eventually this was scaled down to potential membership in the Australian OOLSC, but apart from occasional announcements that negotiations were ongoing nothing more has been heard since the OOLSC was established five years ago. Occasionally they are in the news when Peter Slipper, Hepworth's protégé, pays a visit but otherwise few reports. Now it appears from the Portal article that they have "abandoned this ecumenical effort" and are being led "down a different path," with the exception of a single congregation, or part thereof, on the island of Duaun.

This group, however, does not have a clerical leader, so they have become members of the OOLSC parish in Cairns (which is led by the former Vicar-General of the Church if Torres Strait, ordained in the OOLSC in 2013). "The journey to Duaun from the Australian Mainland involves two or three flights and a short sea passage by inflatable dinghy" (you couldn't make this up) and costs approx AUS$2000. I am sure Fr Barnier has a faithful following at Holy Cross, Duaun, but this arrangement typifies the lack of resources at the disposal of the Ordinariates and the precariousness of their existence. And of course the discrepancy between the preliminary hype and the reality.

This brought to mind the Roman Catholic Diocese of Juneau, where priests must presumably rely on boat and plane to say mass, but the circumstances there must certainly be more routinized and cohesive. Instead, I think again of St John the Evangelist Calgary, 2116 miles and a four-hour flight from Houston. Observers on the ground in the Diocese of Shrewsbury are firm on the point that SJE's former pastor, Fr Kenyon, requires close supervision, but he clearly never had it in Calgary.

Again, we're dealing with something like Robert X Cringely's 30-day airplane, probably something that as a practical matter can't be done and shouldn't even be tried. My guess is that Calgary, with no effective supervision over some very sketchy clergy, will, within a fairly short period of time, erupt into a situation that will bring down the OCSP.

Court Session On Bush Group's Appeal of EDD Decision, Case BS152017

In May, I covered a court session regarding the Bush group's appeal of the California Employment Development Department's ruling that Fr Kelley was entitled to unemployment compensation for his "termination" by the group.

Fr Kelley made the claim based on his termination as rector of St Mary of the Angels by the Bush group after they seized the property. The Bush group alleged that Fr Kelley had stolen funds from the parish. Administrative judges repeatedly ruled that there was no evidence for this allegation, and Fr Kelley was finally awarded full benefits. Even after Fr Kelley was paid, the Bush group has continued its appeal.

In May, Mr Anastasia requested that the judge move the case forward another six months, to December 6. The EDD agreed. This was part of he Bush group's strategy to delay its appeal of the main case against Fr Kelley, which it had lost in 2015, and then ask that all related actions be postponed until the appeal was resolved. The session on December 6, this past Wednesday, was expected to be yet another request to delay the case again. As a result, Fr Kelley told me the session was likely to be just like the short May session, with attorneys calling in by phone, and the judge allowing another continuance. As a result, I decided not to attend.

However, Fr Kelley did attend, and there were a few surprises. Fr Kelley reports,

In the course of the mysteries in court, this came up:

09/01/2017 at 09:31 am in Department 86, Amy D. Hogue, Presiding
Motion to be Relieved as Counsel - Granted

Further,

Judge Amy Hogue began by making the point that under CA Law, a Corporation MUST be represented by an Attorney. She then revealed that Anastasia had abandoned the Plaintiffs. (I had not observed that on line previously...)

So Lancaster & Anastasia had quietly been relieved as counsel for the Bush group and others in all the related cases over the summer. The reason is presumably the same as the other requests to be relieved, non-payment.

The Judge replied that she couldn't act summarily, but had to give "them" another 90 days to appear -- March 7, 2018, at which time, if they did not, she could consider "abatement" or "dismissal" of the case. (She was wracking her brain for the former term, uncertain that she'd hit upon exactly the right term.)

She inferred that it might be possible to submit a Motion (for Summary Judgment??) by Pal, to clear it all up prior to March 7.

That's where proceedings ended.

It appears that the Bush group's agenda has slowly been coming apart, primarily in recent months for lack of money to pursue legal cases. We know that in August 2014, following the appeals court's ruling in the legal vestry's favor in the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry cases, the Bush group took out a $575,000 mortgage on the parish property, presumably to pay legal bills. But by October 2015, the previous tenant of the commercial property had moved out, and by early 2016, the Bush group had been evicted, leaving them unable to raise additional funds.

In their July petition to be relieved as counsel, Lancaster & Anastasia said they hadn't been paid since 2015. Whatever may have happened to the $575,000, it doesn't seem to be available to pay counsel now.

No Advent Lessons And Carols In Divine Worship Missal

My wife and I attended an Advent festival of lessons and carols at St Mary of the Angels this past Sunday. This was very well done and shows how well Dr Kathleen Moon, the music director, has held the program together though several years of extreme difficulty. Clearly the service was following a liturgy, and the liturgy was good enough that it was making me think better of the DWM, that is, if the DWM had a liturgy for an Advent festival of lessons and carols -- a uniquely Anglican Advent celebration. So I posed the question to Fr Kelley, who replied,

The format for the Lessons & Carols was created by Bishop Edward White Benson, when he was the brand new Bishop of Truro (a newly created diocese, ca. 1877). He wanted to establish some "traditions" for the new diocese. The original format had 9 lessons, but we've kept to seven here. King's College, Cambridge, still keeps to nine, as do most of the English cathedrals. King's is the one the BBC usually broadcasts live each year. The Bidding Prayer is basically that composed by Bp Benson. . . .

So, no, the Lessons & Carols isn't found in the Ordinariate sources; but there's no reason why it shouldn't be incorporated in some future edition. It is very flexible, in terms of what can be incorporated, both in the lesson selection, and in the musical opportunities. The Magnficat is not a "standard" part; but given the Visitation Gospel lesson, which is an alternative in the lists, it seemed perfectly appropriate to include a Magnificat said to be one of Pope Benedict's favorites, & to do it as a Solemn Magnificat, in the best St. Mary's tradition.

As far as I can tell, the dicasteries had something like a dozen people on this thing, and they managed not to think of the Advent festival of lessons and carols. Given the history Fr Kelley gives, this is an authentic treasure of the Anglican spiritual patrimony.

UPDATE: A visitor notes,

The service known as “Lessons and Carols” does not have a rite in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, either, and thus does not have status as liturgical prayer even within the Anglican tradition.

Since “Lessons and Carols” does not involve any sacrament, there is nothing that precludes any Catholic parish or other congregation from holding such a service. Canonically, “Lessons and Carols” is a pious devotion.

However, worthwhile as such a service can be, so far, I note that nothing is being said about it this year by the people at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog. A good question would be how many OCSP communities are holding this at all.

What's The Formula?

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent comments,

I have no magic secret for managing a diocese in such a way as to ensure that charismatic leaders are matched up with appropriate local resources. But the administrator of St Thomas More, Toronto announced his retirement last June. Toronto is the largest city in Canada, and the local Anglican diocese is one of the largest in North America. The Cardinal Archbishop of Toronto was the Episcopal Delegate from the Holy See in the formation of the Ordinariate in Canada. Why has no replacement been found to take over STM?

This raises at least two worthwhile questions. The first is, irrespective of whether there's a secret to linking leaders with resources, success seems to breed success. Our diocesan parish, over 100 years old, seems to have maintained this tradition -- the Los Angeles area began to expand beyond its core only after about 1900, and this community was one of the earliest. As far as I can tell, it's had a succession of strong pastors over that time, and I would assume that the archdiocese knows from long experience where to put good resources.

A factor that I've begun to glimpse is the ingredient of having a "good rectory", referring to the quality, interaction, and mutual support of the priests who live there. In this case, it appears that not only parish staff, but retired priests and those in diocesan staff positions also prefer to live there. These men take masses and contribute to the general atmosphere. Married priests, with the evidence of what happened in Stockport in mind, showing the need to empty a rectory to accommodate a family, could well eradicate the possibility of a "good rectory" helping a parish.

But second, you can't put good resources anywhere if they don't exist. The OCSP is incongruously in the position of having a surplus of priests but a dire shortage of deployable men. One issue is that the bishop must often move not just the priest but his family, including the need to find work for his wife. Add to that the fact that most OCSP communities can't support a priest and are unlikely to grow to the point where they might in the future. This in turn means that, after the initial optimism of 2010-11, few men have seen desirable career opportunities in the OCSP, and for the few good positions, there's clearly a waiting list where the good candidates have long since taken numbers. So what you get is the rag-tag second tier of latecomer opportunists and wannabes that we see, who are unlikely to grow a community.

So Bp Lopes can't move anyone to Toronto unless the diocese can offer him (and probably his wife) a day job. And let's keep in mind that Cardinal Collins's attitude toward Anglicanorum coetibus cooled distinctly in late 2011, to the point that he apparently vetoed the idea of a separate Canadian ordinariate. I'm not sure if the OCSP is in a position to ask him for any favors. But if the STM group showed actual promise, these obstacles could probably be surmounted. The problem is that, like the great majority of OCSP communities, it is unlikely to grow. But then, the Toronto area apparently hasn't been able to turn up even a Bayles or a Baaten.

You need resources even to build a Potemkin village, after all. If there's no budget for false-front buildings, and no ready-made ones on the distress market, you can't even have those.

Msgr Steenson's Status

My wish for a tell-all (or something similar) from Msgr Steenson yesterday prompted this update on his status from my regular correspondent:

The Ordinary Emeritus has been quite banished from the scene, moving from Houston to St Paul, MN where as "Priest Scholar in Residence at " he has a small teaching load at the St Paul Seminary and no connection with a local parish that I can ferret out. (He is leading an Advent meditation at the Cathedral today; bio omits any mention of OCSP). Nor with the small OCSP group in Minneapolis led by Fr Treco. Even if the long-term plan was always to have Steven Lopes take over as Bishop Ordinary I think that Steenson was expected to lay a far firmer foundation than he was able to do. The Davises, as we explored, were encouraged to pour considerable resources into his administration and got very little for their money, IMHO. Presumably it was difficult for those outside TEC/ACC/"Continuing" Anglican culture to assess what a motley collection they would be dealing with and how little relevance Steenson's experience would have to the challenges he faced. As a result I think his tenure was brought to a premature close and Lopes was forced to take over a struggling operation that has yet to achieve stability. . . . And while Bp Lopes seems to be slowly getting out to visit some of the smaller and more far-flung groups, he does not seem to be developing any vision for either growing them to sustainable size or rationalising his clergy deployment to create communities with potential to become sustainable.

As time has gone on, my sympathy for Msgr Steenson has increased, especially as what we see under Bp Lopes shows little change. I think this goes to the basic miscalculations behind Anglicanorum coetibus, and there's only so much Bp Lopes can do.

UPDATE: A visitor adds,

I’m not sure how much the leadership of the OCSP can do to whip things up, if your contentions that it was based on way overblown popularity estimates are correct. I’m saying this because it seems to me the most vibrant Catholic parishes achieve that due to a capable, charismatic pastor and a well-managed laity team, without much help from the diocese. It seems to me there are always “going places” parishes and less active ones in town.

As it is with the OCSP: you have a very few, active and probably growing parishes—OLA, OLW, SMV, couple others, arguably good leadership there, and then you have the rest. Hard to see how Bp. Lopes can do a lot to change that.

I think that Catholic parishes vary widely is something that certainly argues for this. But the impossibly small size of most OCSP groups pretty much keeps them from even making a credible start.

Take A Closer Look At The Chronology

One thing that's escaped me until I looked at the chronology behind the issuance of the DWM missal is how closely it corresponds to Bp Lopes's arrival as Bishop of the OCSP. Per Wednesday's post,

On 29 November 2015, Advent Sunday, the new missal went into use. The Book of Divine Worship was retired on 1 January 2016.

Per Bp Lopes's Wikipedia entry:

On November 24, 2015, the Holy See announced that Lopes would be the first bishop of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter for the Anglican Use. In assuming that responsibility, he succeeded Monsignor Jeffrey N. Steenson, a former Episcopal bishop appointed by Pope Benedict XVI to the position of "ordinary" in 2012.

A little higher up in the Wikipedia entry, we see

Starting in 2012, Lopes served as the secretary of the Vatican commission Anglicanae Traditiones, which was formed with the goal of developing a missal that would hybridize Anglican and Roman Rite liturgical elements for the use of the personal ordinariates.

I think this makes it a little plainer that Bp Lopes, clearly a protégé of Cardinal Levada, whom he "served as a personal aide. . . from 2005 to 2012", was on the fast track and had been in line for this appointment from the start, even before Steenson's 2007 move to Rome. There was nothing sudden about the appointment, and it probably had little to do specifically with Msgr Steenson's performance..

However, I've got to think that the CDF has expected more than it's seen so far. I'm also sorry that we'll almost certainly never get a tell-all from Msgr Steenson. I wish I could chat with him the way I've chatted with Abp Hepworth.