Edward Feser On The Anglican Patrimony

Fun, check this out.

Big Fish -- Small Pond?

A viosior asks,

How much do you think that being a big fish in a small pond effect is part of the attraction of some of these members? In some sense, we all want to feel useful, and looking at mega churches like Joel Olsteen's, I imagine that having any real influence on such a large church must fall to a very small inner circle. But if you are a member of a group in formation, I could see how one could feel very important. Reality is a different thing, of course. As a reference, there are small Protestant nondenominational churches all over America, that meet in shopping lease space, and high school gyms. Something has caused these people to reject the steeple and choose the laundromat sign as a marker to find spiritual enrichment. I think it is because they are seeking something genuine, that they feel is not present in the traditional structures. I would imagine that a group in formation is somewhat similar, but with a goal of getting out of the strip mall.

This raises a host of issues. Pope Francis in Gaudete et Exsultate stresses the importance of a parish, the steeple in other words, over the laundromat. The storefront is a Protestant phenomenon, and I would guess that many of the small-group types would rather go their own way in figuring out what the "Anglican patrimony" is -- and let's keep in mind that a good many OCSP members, especially the most prominent (including some of the clergy) have been riding the denominational carousel, and this ain't their first storefront.

In fact, those who lived through 2010-12 at St Mary of the Angels know that the dissident leaders, Mrs Bush, the Kangs, and even Dcn-Fr Bartus, were quite new to the parish and the "continuing" movement, but this didn't keep them from the conviction that Fr Kelley and the vestry majority had it all wrong and needed to be purged. There seems to be an inherent drive toward cliquishness in this mindset, but at the same time, we're talking about some basically unpleasant people with poor interpersonal skills. They'll never be popular outside the small groups they can variously flatter or bully.

In fact, this may be a reason why these groups can't grow beyond the storefront or the basement chapel -- the big fish aren't the sorts who can share leadership or defer to people with real talent where it's needed. Let's recognize again that the former Houston regime is said to have acknowledged that the lay leadership and capabilities in TEC vestries and parish staff never came over to the OCSP, and this was a major reason for the failure of the ParishSoft implementation.

I would also say that poor leadership and personal qualities among the lay big fish in the small groups -- as well as what must be lack of such qualities among the clergy -- have probably kept OCSP groups from thriving. Try to imagine, for starters, how newcomers would react to seeing Mrs Gyapong or Mr Schaetzel running the show, and the clergy who let them do it.

I think Anglicanorum coetibus had a limited understanding of Anglicanism -- by and large, especially in North America, these are Protestants who look like Catholics in certain superficial ways, and indeed, it reflects a certain amount of wishful thinking about Protestants overall. The decision to become Catholic for a Protestant will always be intensely personal, and I think the process isn't that far from how the Holy Father sees the call to holiness among Catholics.

Just for starters, it needs a parish to thrive. A couple of dozen people in a storefront, or indeed, a couple of dozen people meeting for said mass at 5:30 Sunday evenings in a basement chapel, is not a parish. I think Houston needs to rethink this issue, and this would include serious evaluation of the clergy whose groups aren't thriving. "Up or out" isn't a bad philosophy.

"Fully Catholic" (Not)

I've been giving more thought to the bishops' use of the term "fully Catholic" in their recent letter to the Diocese of San Bernardino, especoially as it relates to Pope Francis's recent exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, the funhouse mirror portralyal of Catholicism we see on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, and Abp Garcia-Siller's remarks about not just unique but separate.

The Arlington Catholic Herald says of the Holy Father's exhortation,

The path to holiness, he wrote, is almost always gradual, made up of small steps in prayer, in sacrifice and in service to others.

Being part of a parish community and receiving the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and reconciliation, are essential supports for living a holy life, the pope wrote.

One problem that continues to bother me is that all but a few of the largest OCSP communities simply don't offer the resources and opportunities available in most diocesan parishes -- I outlined some of those yesterday. In fact, they probably serve to convince some members -- and it appears that the regular posters at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog attend some of the smallest OCSP groups -- that they're being "fully Catholic" when they aren't doing much at all.

But in addition, one thing I've noted in gaining experience as a diocesan Catholic is the importance of sacramentals, yet how little stress is placed on them in catechesis, especially in the Evangelium program. This is especially problematic for ex-Protestants. We see here,

Sacramentals are often a stumbling block for non-Catholics who don’t understand their need or person. For instance, before his conversion to Catholicism, Dr. Scott Hahn was a staunch anti-Catholic Presbyterian minister. In his talks, Hahn often tells the story of how he discovered his grandmother’s rosary. His grandmother had just died and Hahn relates that he ripped the rosary beads to pieces pleading to God to set her free from the chains of Catholicism that had kept her bound.

Even high-church TEC parishes tend to minimize sacramentals -- at St Thomas Hollywood, for instance, there was a Sunday morning rosary group, but no adoration program and certainly no adoration chapel.

While they are similar in name, sacraments and sacramentals have a unique and distinct role in the life of the Catholic Church. Sacraments are outward signs that give grace to those who receive them in a worthy manner.

Sacramentals, on the other hand, “are sacred signs which bear a resemblance to the sacraments. They signify effects, particularly of a spiritual nature, which are obtained through the intercession of the Church. By them, men are disposed to receive the chief effect of the sacraments, and various occasions in life are rendered holy” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1667).

I heard a homily from a priest who appears, from the details he gave, to have suffered from PTSD after combat deployments as a chaplain and fallen into what appears to have been serious clinical depression. He said that what pulled him out of it was the ability to go to adoration. My wife and I have found, after roughly a year of regular adoration, that it's been extremely helpful in our spiritual lives.

I have a very hard time understanding how a priest who hasn't been formed in the context of sacramentals can offer counsel based on their efficacy -- especially when Reformed doctrine explicitly rejects them, and we see in Article XXII:

The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping and Adoration, as well of Images as of Relics, and also Invocation of Saints, is a fond thing, vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God.

Article XXV:

The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.

Article XXVIII

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was not by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, or worshipped.

I just don't see how a few make-up courses at a Catholic seminary, much less distance learning from Houston, can counteract this influence even in former TEC priests who've gone to Episcopal seminaries. Once again, I wouldn't go near one of these guys, especially for confession. And unless someone refers me to something particularly egregious there, I do not visit, and do not recommend, the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog.

Numbers Yet Again

In yesterday's post, I surmised that the numbers involved in the Murrieta group were one or two dozen. I wasn't far off. My regular correspondent reported,

Twenty-two people attended Wednesday's info meeting at the future site of HM, Temecula. If BJHN has not yet registered the minimum 30 families/100 people required for parish status it cannot really spare a dozen or two for this venture, I would have thought. Perhaps this is like the "groups of Anglicans" petitioning "repeatedly and insistently"---a narrative we have to accept on faith.

There are several implications here. One, from the evidence in the bishops' letter, is that a contingent from the Temecula Valley had been driving to Irvine for DW Sunday mass at BJHN. We've established that this is over an hour's drive each way, and if reasonable measures might be taken to make things more convenient for the Temecula folks, this might be good -- except that no matter how you slice it, this takes two dozen out of the BJHN total, and two dozen looks like the typical number that's put together in Podunk to ordain some ex Reformed guy trying to jump-start a career in the OCSP -- eventually, he's either going to get moved to a bigger parish, he'll age out or retire on disability, or he'll beat his wife. In any of those cases, the group disappears.

But let's say Bp Lopes appears at a question session someplace, and someone in the audience asks, "Bishop, why is there no group for Anglicans in West Virginia?" Bp Lopes will improvise some answer along the line that he'd love to have a group in West Virginia, and it might be a great opportunity for someone to try to put something together -- except that the bishop, if nobody else, knows deep down that there's not enough interest in West Virginia, and even if a family in Wheeling thought this was a good idea, and they might get together with another family in Charleston, the distance involved simply makes this impractical, unless some ex Reformed guy is able to get -- and let's be realistic, not two dozen, not three, but closer to 100 -- people together and establish a practical plan that can be realized in clear steps.

So even if the OCSP hears from 100 people in North Dakota who express interest in forming a group, population density will make this impractical unless all are pretty close to Fargo. I'm not sure why nobody in Houston is applying this fairly simple rule to Southern California, which seems to be sprouting a series -- now up to something like four -- of groups, mostly numbering a couple of dozen, that based on six years' experience are never going to grow, and in fact, based on the same experience, will likely disappear if either the priest or key families relocate.

There's a more serious issue, which my regular correspondent recently raised. These groups of two dozen, especially if they meet in a law firm's chapel or a storefront, aren't going to be exposed to anything like real Catholic parish life. They won't meet Hispanic, Filipino, Italian, Irish, or Polish Catholics. They won't have access to daily mass, adoration, or serious Bible study, such as a parish-sponsored Jeff Cavins course, which would be beyond the audio-visual capabilities of an OCSP group, if not the finances. They won't have access to Lenten mission speakers like Fr Longenecker or any of a wide range of others. The adolescents won't have access to LifeTeen or Steubenville.

And this has bearing on the spiritual lives of these people. Over time, I listen to homilies from our diocesan priests, who sometimes talk about guiding parishioners through very serious crises like clinical depression or unemployment. What the Church has to offer them is in fact remedies like daily mass and adoration in addition to prayer, and of course the counsel of good priests with long experience. How is some jerk who sells insurance part time after training in a Reformed seminary (supplemented to be sure with a couple of night school catchup sessions) going to be able to help some Anglican going through clinical depression? I don't even want to think about this.

The bishops in yesterday's letter spoke of Anglicans being "fully Catholic", but if they don't have access -- which the poor folks hearng said mass from a part-time insurance agent in a storefront will not -- to the range of resources available in Catholic parishes, they aren't going to be "fully Catholic". But that's OK, Mr Schaetzel, Mrs Gyapong, Mr Coulombe, and others will explain the Anglican patrimony to them on a blog, and that'll fix it.

Right. Bp Lopes, you will be held accountable.

San Bernardino Concordat

We've been following developments over a group-in-formation in the Murrieta, CA area since late last year, when my regular correspondent surmised that Bishop of San Bernardino Gerald Barnes had pushed back, leading to a postponenent. My regular correspondent sent me a link to a letter dated April 5, 2018 signed by both Bp Barnes and Bp Lopes and bearing the arms of both bishops. This strongly suggests that discussions had been under way, and the letter indicates the terms under which the group will be permitted to form.

There isn't a whole lot new, and that makes me think the CDF got involved and applied some pressure to Bp Barnes to get with the program.

The purpose of our joint letter is to clarify a new example of this diversity of Roman Catholic faith traditions that is now present in the Temecula Valley.

You can't get more awkward than this, huh? It rivals TEC at its most mealy-mouthed! It goes on with the expected stuff about spiritual traditions and Anglican patrimony while being fully Catholic, blah blah, although as a layman, I continue to be concerned that OCSP leadership remains silent in the face of semi-official statements from OCSP members that the Anglican patrimony exempts Catholics from the need to avoid near occasions of sin. (For the usual Catholic understanding, check this very recent YouTube.) There's something Bergoglian about this, the sense that statements can be made that different factions will interpret to suit their own agendas.

A full page later, the letter reiterates the criteria in the complementary norms for OCSP membership, although it now adds "a fully initiated Catholic who no longer practices their faith". But "membership" doesn't get you what membership in an Anglican parish gets you (the right to vote at parish meetings), while "canonical membership" doesn't have the same implications that canonical membership in Eastern Rite jurisdictions carries. In effect, it's meaningless.

Again, though, we have prominent cases like Mr Coulombe, a regular poster at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog, who as a cradle Catholic of French Canadian background, not married to an Anglican and apparently with no other Anglican family connection, becomes not only a de facto OCSP member but a semi-official spokesman for what constitutes Anglican patrimony. If "membership" was presented to Bp Barnes to reassure him, I don't see how it limits much of anything.

Interestingly, the letter approaches its conclusion in asserting "there is no need for division or suspicion of any kind", although this suggests that up to April 5, there had in fact been division and suspicion of some kind, possibly on Bp Barnes's behalf. If that's the case, I don't blame him. The only good part of this is how few people are involved.

This brings me to another part of the letter, the background of the Holy Martyrs group.

Several families from southwest Riverside County who come from this tradition were traveling to Irvine each week to attend Mass at Blessed John Henry Newman. Based on this observed interest, Holy Martyrs of England and Wales was established as a mission of Blessed John Henry Newman in the greater Murrieta area.

All I can rely on here is the wording on the page, but from that, I've got to conclude that "several families" means a dozen or two people, and those dozen or two will no longer attend mass at BJHN Irvine. There's no net gain, at least at the start. On the other hand, if there's been money to rent a storefront and install a reredos and communion rail, someone at least is supporting this effort -- although again, this is money that would otherwise potentially go to BJHN, which leads to the question of whether effort is being diluted.

We'll have to see what develops, but as my regular correspondent frequently points out, Fr Bartus has an extensive track record of proposing plans that never reach fruition. The reasaurance I would offer Bp Barnes is that these aren't laity he's going to miss, if they've in fact been poached.

Whither The OCSP?

Prompted by the link in yesterday's post in my correspondent's comments, my wife and I both looked at the photos of the Houston chancery on the architect's site. Here's a sample:

I've worked for national US corporations whose headquarters are pusillanimous in comparison. But the OCSP's laity numbers only in four figures by any credible estimate. And how many movers and shakers will actually ever sit in that meeting/board room? The only conclusion I can draw is that this was built on speculation, with the representation to the donors that the OCSP would be much larger than it has actually emerged.

I shudder at the air conditioning bill alone in comparison to the OCSP's income. On the other hand, this is clearly the kind of place you want to show visiting TEC bishops, who'll approvingly note that it's almost as good as what TEC has.

This brings me to my regular correspondent's most recent comments:

In answer to your question "where is the OCSP's bishop here?" I would say that the answer is "in an awkward position." It is one thing to allow small and apparently unsustainable communities, almost all inherited from the ACA, to quietly wither away. Where there is robust lay leadership they may survive without much intervention from Houston, but in the case of those entirely dependant on the leadership of their clergyman they will simply disappear when he leaves, as St Gilbert's, Boerne has done, or St Anselm's, Corpus Christi.

But tying the ordination of married candidates to the formation of new communities simply ensures the formation of more small groups with no long-term prospects. A man who has ties to Podunk is told that if he can gather together one or two dozen local worshippers he could be a candidate for ordination. As we have discussed before, the clergyman who can build up this handful of worshippers into a large congregation supporting a building and a school is the rare exception, not the norm on which one can build a business plan.

In any event a sizeable percentage of his congregation, be it large or small, will be people who previously attended another local Catholic church. And if he does show potential to grow the congregation, there is a strong possibility that he will be moved on to a larger group which has become leaderless, as happened to Fr Stainbrook and Fr Lewis. If the group they have left has not achieved sustainability, it will probably fold

The Darwinian struggle is good for the biosphere but it is not a particularly edifying spectacle in the Catholic church. I read the FB pages and similar sources week after week and wonder why these people want, as you say, to forego all semblance of parish life for the opportunity to attend said DW in some cubbyhole. Noted, as a sidebar, that the St Timothy's, Ft Worth website, long-neglected, shows as the Clerk of the Parish Council a woman who died last year and whose funeral was held at a local TEC church.

I would say that a good part of the "continuing" impetus came from murmerers within Anglican Communion denominations. You can't build anything solid from murmerers, who'll simply continue to murmer wherever they are -- this is one key lesson we should take from St Mary of the Angels. The little OCSP groups seem to be attracting diocesan murmerers, who, because existing Catholic schools aren't good enough, will build castles in the air over wonderful home school co-ops that never emerge.

I think that among other things, Bp Lopes and the OCSP need to develop a contingency plan for how to dispose of that chancery building. But I don't see an up-and-coming insurance agency having much interest.

Yet Again, Why Are We Doing This?

In the context of my recent musings on Cram, Goodhue, and Anglo-Medievalism (or perhaps simply Anglophilia affected in late middle age), my regular correspondent comments,

A recent post on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog featured a picture of a woman wearing a brightly-patterned chasuble with the caption "Come back to the Episcopal Church!" The Church of Bad Taste, apparently, and yet this flies in the face of the more frequently iterated message, that the Episcopal Church/Church of England is the repository of taste and tone: architecturally worthy buildings, sacral language, music of artistic quality performed by well-trained choirs and organists.

The Ordinariates are there to shelter Catholics from the polyester vestments, servers in running shoes and "Here I Am, Lord" with guitar accompaniment they would encounter in a typical OF parish. Come experience the Anglican Patrimony of crustless sandwiches and Enid Chadwick. It's really all about money and class.

Here is the architects' description of the OCSP Chancery building. Not sure how the Italian palazzo ties into the gothic revival cathedral, which apparently started out as a "pseudo-Wrightian" style hall, but the point is that no expense has been spared.

I continue to wonder what's going on with the overall pattern in the OCSP. As I've observed, there's the "company China" side of things, the TEC bishop invited to Our Lady of Walsingham to note the liturgy, the music, and the young pastor from Nashotah House -- but then there's the everyday silverware situation, the little groups of a dozen or two meeting in basement chapels for evening prayer, led by a Reformed candidate whose career never quite got going as whatever.

Yet it's the basement chapel types -- an example might well be Mr Coulombe, associsted most closely with the Pasadena group -- who seem to be some of the snobbiest. When I first seriously encountered TEC at St Thomas Fifth Avenue, I thought it was something impressive, and I still think there's something impressive about it. But they did in fact have, and indeed still do have, something to be snobby about, or at least proud of. Not only could they raise the money to build it, they can still raise the money and marshal the talent to maintain and restore it.

But isn't there a sleight-of-hand going on here, especially with the chapel groups and the small quasi-parishes? These folks don't seem to be able to bring together the resources to pay their marginal clergy, or make any serious start at acquiring property, much less build anything in Gothic Revival. It reminds me a little of the petty nobility in 19th-century Naples, who had carriage doors with their coats of arms on them, which they substituted for the plain doors on the carriages they hired like taxis.

My correspondent noted just today,

I did not comment on this aspect of of the picture previously mentioned, of the woman in the chasuble. But now Mr Coulombe has a post on the AC blog where he muses about Queen Elizabeth's views on the ordination of women---not my idea of a burning issue but then I'm not an American member of the Monarchist League or whatever it's called.

In any event, the post is sprinkled with references to "Bishopesses" and "Deanettes." Since from Mr Coulombe's perspective as a lifelong Catholic, Richard Chartres, or indeed the "sainted Graham Leonard," is/was no more a bishop than Sarah Mullally, why waste time with terms that are clearly meant to demean and ridicule?

Anglican orders were no more valid before 1976, or 1982, or 1994, or whatever other day that shall live in infamy is selected, than they have been since. The ordination of women may have been a wake-up call to many, at least in North America, to depart for another denomination but it wasn't the Catholic church. Mixing up discernment of the claims of the Church with misogynistic dog-whistles is depressing to me.

Yeah, I don't understand. Why are these semi-official spokespeople for the OCSP spending all this time and effort spitballing TEC, when the operant Church doctrine stems from Apostolicae Curae of 1896? Wouldn't effort be better directed at soliciting donations for a building fund at some deserving group, for instance? But a key difference between TEC and the OCSP is that TEC is not cheap. Er, how much of this home school co-op fantasy, for instance, comes from a desire not to pay Catholic school tuition?

By the way, where is the OCSP's bishop here? The most I see is a tacit endorsement for a continued strategy of poaching disgruntled cradle Catholics (like Mr Coulombe) from diocesan parishes on some sort of pretext that they'll have real liturgy and a reverent environment -- with no apparent need to give sacrificially to reach this goal, and with leadership from guys who'd been unable to build Potestant careers.

Here's anolther question. Polyester vestments, flip-flops, and halter-tops are a atraw man. Catholic parishes very widely in atmosphere and observance. So St Ipsydipsy down the street is all guitars and tambourines -- has anyone gone to the diocesan website and looked for a parish 15 minutes farther that isn't that way? How much farther do these folks drive to reach their sad little OCSP group in the basement chapel, said DW mass at 5:30?

Florida Ordinations

My regular correspondent reports,

Near the end of this article is a link to three Facebook pages for "Anglican Patrimony Groups." One of them, the Tampa Bay Group, was familiar to us as the one that the local bishop asked to have shut down, at which point the former Anglican clergyman involved, Philip Mayer, became a diocesan seminarian under the Pastoral Provision. But apparently the group lives on, now assisted by Mr David Hodil, a transitional deacon due to be ordained priest for the OCSP this year.

Mr Hodil sells insurance but he has a degree from the Reformed Theological Seminary and more recently has taken courses at St Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach, FL He is a separated (or perhaps now divorced) man, with children. He is connected to Incarnation, Orlando, which I suppose will be looking for a new pastor down the road as Fr Holiday is of secular retirement age.

Although a former curate there, Jason McCrimmon, will be ordained priest at the same time as Mr Hodil. He is currently attached to St John Fisher, Orlando, a small group meeting for a Sunday evening mass in a hospital chapel whose main purpose seems to be to be part of Mr McCrimmon's "ministry plan." So, an embarrassment of riches in Florida.

This brings me to the very odd two-tier focus in the OCSP. We have the "showcase" parishes, like Our Lady of Walsingham, that are good enough to make a TEC bishop like Bp Martins observe that it's doing a very good job of looking Anglican. There are a few of these, although in the context of St Thomas Fifth Avenue (or St Thomas Hollywood), there are many more TEC parishes that do a competent job of looking Catholic. (But isn't there a game of let's pretend going on in both cases? Why in particular should Catholics need to do this for anyone?)

The great majority of OCSP communities simply aren't at this level. These seem to hold spoken masses (if that), and squint to imagine the Men's and Boys' Choir, the carved reredos, the statuary facade, the expensive vestments. It appears that this appeals to only small numbers, and likely will never appeal to more than that.

I don't see any of the current crop of candidates for ordination providing anything like the leadership that would put their little groups past the squinting stage. This brings me back once again to St Thomas Fifth Avenue, which recently received an award for restoring its stained glass windows and facade:

In the words of Peg Breen, President of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, “These awards are the Oscars of the preservation world” and another honoree said “I’d rather receive a Lucy than an Oscar”. Accepting the award on behalf of Saint Thomas was Barbara Pettus who, in a brief speech , closed with the following:

“So many people helped make this possible. Julie Sloan oversaw the work done by twelve studios from California to New Mexico and from Virginia to Boston. Walter Melvin Architects advised us on major stone restoration work which was required once the windows were removed and on the best way to clean the stone traceries of all the windows and, later, on cleaning the façade. Eagle Scaffolding designed a cantilevered scaffolding system that made the project all but invisible to worshippers and visitors. And our general contractor, Westerman Construction, along with our Facilities Manager, Angel Estrada, coordinated schedules, budgets and vendors so that we finished the project on time, under budget and accident-free. Many thanks to all of you!“

In the wake of the ParishSoft disaster, the former regime in Houston is said to have acknowledged that the OCSP lacked the depth in lay leadership and parish staff and volunteers to accomplish even a fairly simple task like implementing a parish accounting system, something routine for Catholic dioceses and parishes in the US, and which indeed continues to be eminently possible in TEC at parishes like St Thomas Fifth Avenue. (The best that can be said of OLW is that there ain't much to restore.)

This reminds me too of Woodrow Wilson, when he was president of Princeton, acknowleding at the dedication of some Ralph Adams Cram commissions at his campus, that Cram had added 500 years to Princeton's history. (Woodrow Wilson made a joke??) Isn't the intent of Anglicanorum coetibus in some key way to add 500 years to the Catholic Church's history?

What are the CDF and Bp Lopes trying to accomplish here other than a few "showcase" parishes and a larger collection of Potemkin villages?

Ralph Adams Cram And Bertram Goodhue

I did quite a bit of research over the weekend on Ralph Adams Cram and his colleague Bertram Goodhue. The two worked in various architectural partnerships between 1892 and 1913; Goodhue, after leaving the Cram partnership, did his best work in the following decade. Both were major exponents of Gothic Revival. Looking at their work, I've done more thinking about Anglo-Medievalism, Anglo-Catholicism, and their relation to Anglicanorum coetibus.

I've mentioned St Thomas Episcopal Church Manhattan already. This, opened in 1913, was their last collaboration and is described in Wikipedia as "the most integrated and strongest example of their work together". Here's a photo of the Fifth Avenue facade:

Apparently the overall design came from Cram, while the decoration and figures came from Goodhue and another collaborator, Lee Lawrie. There are numerous photos of the statues and other decorations at the parish website here. The statuary includes representations of major saints and other figures in the Old and New Testaments. Their range is difficult to imagine outside a Catholic context, and in fact, the interpretation of Biblical history the statuary implies would go to the issue that the Catholic Church is fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

According to Wikipedia,

The style of worship at Saint Thomas Church has varied greatly over the history of the parish. Beginning with the rectorship of John Andrew in 1972, however, it has followed the Anglo-Catholic or High Church tradition within the Episcopal Church that developed out of the Oxford Movement. This was further developed under the rectorship of Andrew Mead. Sunday services include Low Mass, High Mass, and Evensong, and Solemn Mass on Christmas, Easter and major feast days. Special liturgies and processions are held for Advent, Epiphany, Candlemas and Holy Week. The Litany is sung in procession in Advent and Lent. The choir of men and boys sing most Sundays in term time and, if there are no visiting choirs during the school vacation, the gentlemen of the choir sing the services.

The problem I have is that the Gothic Revival movement is a deliberate revival, in effect an affectation. If it's adopted outside a Catholic context, it seems to me that it's a stylistic feature that doesn't necessarily reflect what's actually going on in the building -- an extreme example would be the Hearst San Simeon mansion, which uses the outward design of a church to enclose what is in effect a series of residential apartments.

Goodhue did design at least one Catholic church building, St Vincent Ferrer (1918), also in New York:

The use of statuary is very similar.

Goodhue eventually departed from Gothic Revival to establish Spanish Colonial Revival as an important California theme, but his 1924 Los Angeles Central Library, completed after his death, was clearly inspired by the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb.

Unlike Cram, who worked in Gothic Revival throughout his life, Goodhue seems to have regarded it as a style to use, rather than a central principle. This may contribute to my sense that the statues -- whether at St Thomas, St Vincent, or the LA Public Library -- aren't quite serious. There's an eye-rolling, campy quality to them.

This goes to the almost routine observation that same-sex attraction has always been a feature of Anglo-Catholicism. From my resarch, it appears that Cram and Goodhue were part of an important group of Boston esthetes at the turn of the 20th century, and their relationship may not have been solely professional. This in turn takes me back to Fr Longenecker's observation that Anglicanism is something that "looks like" Roman Catholicism.

J.P.Morgan, The Establishment, And The Episcopal Church -- II

My experience at St Thomas Episcopal Manhattan, though, came before my decision to go through TEC confirmation. This gave me a different perspective, which is only to be understood, of course. What I did find was that the star students in confirmation class at the TEC parish in what's probably the stuffiest of Los Angeles's affluent neighborhoods were a couple who seemed mostly to quiz the newly-minted priest on what Episcopalians should wear and how they should decorate their homes.

In contrast, the comments I made were gauche. I spoke of JP Morgan, who I acknowledged sinned boldly (like the Catholic Kennedys and Hearsts, for that matter), who nevertheless arrived at his vacation home in Maine, stepping down from his private railroad car bearing major donations to the Episcopal parish there. I said I admired the families who'd built something solid. I might as well have said I preferred to wear stripes with my plaid.

After my 30 years in TEC, I'll agree that many Episcopalians aren't that way, and in fact some of the "affirming" Anglo-Catholic parishes are the least snobbish. But as Bp Martins put it, the Anglo-Catholics are a fringe. There's probably little doubt, though, that if I'd gone to confirmation class at St Thomas Manhattan, I'd have found the same attitude. If I'd been the rentier heir of Morgans and Harrimans, I'd have been at the top of the heap, provided I didn't soil my hands with trade, and provided I said the right things.

If I'd been a doctor or lawyer, I'd have gotten a pass. If I did need a paycheck every two weeks, though, I'd better work for a non-profit. Planned Parenthood would in fact be a plus. As it was, I worked for a bank, and I worked with computers.

"Boy, I don't know what I'd do if I ever worked for a bank," said the retired rector to me one day. "I'd just give all the money away! That's what I'd do!" At the time, I didn't have the moral theology wherewithal to suggest to him that I can give a man my cloak, but I can't give him another man's cloak, but the situation wasn't one in which I was entitled to answer anyhow.

Morgan's son, Jack Morgan, was the guy who set up the retirement fund for Episcopal priests. I don't know what the guy would have done if Jack had given all the money away before it got to him.

I moved on from that parish soon enough.

J.P.Morgan, The Establishment, And The Episcopal Church

I've long been interested in the American "robber barons" of the 19th and early 20th centuries. At various times, I've read biographies of J Pierpont Morgan, Edward H Harriman, John D Rockefeller and his associates, Jay Gould, and others. Part of my interest has been in the development of what's now called the "deep state", rather clearly controlled by unelected interest centers that at least in part are dominated by wealthy coroprate aggregations, many originally assembled by these figures.

I've also been interested in what's often called the "Establishment", which has tradtionally been represented by elite universities (their administrations and trustees more than their faculties), corporate boards (which often reflect the interests of the financial power brokers), and at least in the past, The Episcopal Church. The Morgan and Harriman families have been closely associated with TEC, for instance, although other robber barons were members of other main line denominations. Although the Roosevelt family had a Reforned background, both Theodore and Franklin attended Episcopal parishes. The Bushes were an Episcopalian family, although Bush fils became a Methodist as an adult.

An author on the Establishment that I found inluential in my early thinking on the subject -- in my late 20s -- is Ferdinand Lundberg. The Wikipedia piece summarizes his views accurately in saying that he describes the US as an oligarchy run by prominent families, inclding Rockefellers and Hearsts, although the influence of such families (as in the case of the Hearsts, who appeared almost comically feckless by the 1970s kidnapping of Patricia) waxes and wanes, and his 1937 America's 60 Families never listed precisely which those 60 families were.

My experience at an elite university, though (not Harvard), turned my thinking to examine influences reflected by another conspiracy theorist, Theodore Kaczynski, who many commentators have suggested was influenced by his experience at Harvard:

During Kaczynski’s sophomore year at Harvard, in 1959, he was recruited for a psychological experiment that, unbeknownst to him, would last three years. . . . The Harvard study aimed at psychic deconstruction by humiliating undergraduates and thereby causing them to experience severe stress. Kaczynski’s anti-technological fixation and his critique itself had some roots in the Harvard curriculum, which emphasized the supposed objectivity of science compared with the subjectivity of ethics.

The fact was that by the time I left formal academic training, I had definitely been psychically deconstructed, and it took me several years to get my bearings. I remember at some point in the process realizing that, no matter what one might say about conventional religious belief, things seemed to go better in my life when I went to church on Sundays. So that was something I gradually resumed. Although my parents had sent me to Presbyterian Sunday school, by the time I left for college, they'd become Episcopalians, and having studied Trollope in English class, I decided TEC might be the best choise.

I was also trying to make another run at stability, the elite-school deconstruction I'd undergone not having provided this the first time around. Beyond that, in the process of resuming church attendance, I found myself going to mass at St Thomas Episcopal New York while on a work assignment there, a Ralph Adams Cram commission, the site of many Harriman family funerals, and no doubt financed by both the Morgan and Harriman families. So once I retuned to LA, I began to get involved at an equivalent TEC parish here.

Reactions To Bp Martins's Essay

I've had several reactions to yesterday's post linking to Bp Martins's essay on his visit to Our Lady of Walsingham. They're intriguing, and they've helped me to crystallize my thinking about my own journey through TEC, along with recent reflections on J.P.Morgan and Ralph Adams Cram. The reactions to the essay center on two questions:

1. Why did he accept Bp Lopes's invitation to visit?
2. Why did Bp Lopes invite him in the first place?

On the first, a visitor asks:

The bishop’s article was interesting, but really why did he go? Why go somewhere to get yourself annoyed? Odd that he didn’t sit in choir.

I don’t understand why he made a fuss about the so-called lack of Eucharistic hospitality. He knows the rules. Many of the more conservative Orthodox would have made him sit in the narthex, to say nothing of receiving holy communion. A Western heretic, no less. Try that at S. Anthony in the desert, Florence, AZ, or on Athos!

Every church has the right to determine who may receive or not.

My regular correspondent added the comment:

I think the point was that at a more obviously "Roman" mass he would have been quite aware that they didn't want his kind in the communion line-up. [Fr ____ would put this more pastorally, of course.] At something that seemed so "Anglican" it was harder to remember that the familiar liturgy was just window-dressing and he was still persona non grata. Why did he go? Why did Bp Lopes ask him? He had a lot of TEC bishops to choose from. Springfield is not exactly next door.

Another visitor put this more in the context of question 2 above:

I wonder why [Lopes] invited Bp. Martins, since Martins is an unapologetic practitioner of women's ordination, even if he is "orthodox" on other matters (I don't know for sure that he is; in any event, he once was). Moreover, Mme Jefferts-Schori was the chief consecrator at his episcopal consecration on March 19, 2011.

I don't think that there are, in fact, any diocesan bishops in TEC that don't ordain women (not counting the bishops of the "seceded dioceses" of Fort Worth, Quincy, and San Joaquin; the TEC bishops of the "unionist" dioceses of Fort Worth and San Joaquin do, while Quincy has been "junctioned" into the Diocese of Chicago).

Bishop William Love of the Diocese of Albany, NY holds much the same views as Martins on these subjects (he ordains women, but is otherwise "orthodox"); he was, however, consecrated in January 2006 when Frank Griswold was still PB.

Bishop George Sumner of Dallas (from 2015) probably holds similar views as well, but since he was previously Principal of Wycliffe College, Toronto I imagine he would be on the Protestant/Evangelical side of the Anglican spectrum.

My first reaction is to theorize that pretty much any TEC bishop is broad-church, especially if we revisit the Australian controversy several years ago, in which retired Bishop of Newark, USA John Shelby Spong visitied Australia at the invitation of Australia’s Anglican Primate Phillip Aspinall of Brisbane. When Archbishop of Sydney Jensen denied Bishop Spong access to the pulpits of Sydney, Archbishop Aspinall extended an invitation for Spong to preach in Brisbane’s St. John’s Cathedral.

The political impulse of any Anglican bishop is going to be to avoid controversy; the best answer for Abp Aspinall is to say that both Spong and Jensen are good Anglicans. (This may even have been pre-scripted Kabuki -- Jensen makes a move to satisfy the right; Aspinall smoothes it over to satisfy the left.) If the winds blow for women's ordination, a TEC bishop will set his or her sails. Even Jeffrey Steenson, as TEC Bishop of the Rio Grande, simply delegated the job of ordaining women to a suffragan, and he concelebrated masses with women without a problem.

So my guess is that Bp Martins's remarks on not receiving the sacrament were calculated, although they certainly came off as churlish. If I'm invited to a dinner party and know the host serves kosher, for instance, I'm not sure how I'm entitled to complain that there wasn't bacon with the hors d'oeuvres. But such complaints presumably aren't directed at an audience that would find them ignorant or churlish.

I think the key can be found in the question Martins asks toward the end of the piece:

Do the ordinariates in fact undermine unity by bleeding off the motivation for the hard ecumenical conversations that are necessary?

I'm not sure how realistically Bp Martins envisions any ecumenical discussion that addressed the sort of "hard" questions he might pose. It sounds as though his side in imaginary negotiations would demand some form of women's ordination from Rome, but he'd allow Rome not to have same-sex unions, or maybe let Rome put them up to the local bishop. He's in never-never land.

But maybe, as might have been the case in Australia, this is all a calculated move by Martins, and the churlishness in his essay is meant to reassure his lower-church constituency back in Illinois, or among the House of Bishops generally -- and perhaps Martins said different things to Bp Lopes in private. But I doubt it.

Bp Martins, though, strikes me as a gamesman with sound perceptions of the world as it exists, and I find no reason to disagree with his assessment that Anglicanorum coetibus appeals only to the Anglo-Catholic fringe, and it fundamentally misunderstands Anglicanism. On that, I think Martins has much the clearer vision. Perhaps I'll explain how this relates to J.P.Morgan and Ralph Adams Cram tomorrow.

A TEC Bishop Visits Our Lady Of Walsingham

My regular correspondent sent me a link to this April 6 essay at Covenant that I think speaks volumes, both in intentional subtext and unintentional context, about the uncomfortable position in which the OCSP finds itself. Just for starters, the photo of the Our Lady of Walsingham building that leads the piece says it's -- well, it's not a Ralph Adams Cram. That's unintentional, but it's just a start. Multimillions from a single donor doesn't buy what it used to.

Last September, Bp Lopes invited Bishop Daniel Martins, the 11th Bishop of the Diocese of Springfield in the Episcopal Church, to serve as the guest preacher at an ecumenical choral Evensong at OLW during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity on Sunday, January 23 of this year. We must assume that Bp Martins received an honorarium consistent with his station and expenses to allow him and his wife to travel in comfort. This in turn suggests that Bp Lopes had expectations of some sort for this visit.

Bp Martins's report of the visit, though, must be a disappointment to Bp Lopes on several grounds. The chief impression I get from Martins's account is how uncomfortable he felt.

To be sure, in the midst of this familiarity, there is a baseline level of anxiety, since I know I am not welcome to receive Holy Communion when the time comes. I do not fully agree with the reasons behind this lack of eucharistic hospitality, but I understand and respect it. My anxiety is ameliorated because the mainstream Roman rite as it is practiced in the United States, especially in the 2011 translation, is different enough from my regular liturgical experience that it doesn’t feel like I’m being denied a meal in my home. It feels like I’m a guest.

But oddly, the DW missal, borrowing so heavily from the BCP, makes things worse, not better:

Apart from knowing precisely where I was, there was nothing to distinguish what I heard and saw from what I have experienced in a number of Anglo-Catholic parishes, both in the United States and in England. In that context, then, having to step out from my pew to allow others to go to the Communion rail, but not walk forward myself, was profoundly unsettling. It felt like it might if I were to travel in time to my boyhood home and see my parents and siblings and all the same bric-a-brac on shelves and paintings on walls, only to find my room had been let out and I couldn’t spend the night there.

Then he almost makes a very peculiar observation, when he doesn't quite follow up to these remarks:

The Evensong was almost an anti-climax, but gorgeous. I told a friend that it sounded like Westminster Abbey and looked like All Saints Margaret Street (an Anglo-Catholic shrine church in London). The Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis were from the Anglican Charles V. Stanford’s scrumptious setting in the key of C. The organ and choir were magnificent. The whole thing felt utterly and familiarly Anglican.

Isn't he basically asking why go to all this trouble, to go through RCIA or Evangelium, and for priests, to submit dossiers and have the old boys put in the right words for you, when you've already got what you need at Westminster Abbey and All Saints Margaret Street? What he's saying, in fact, is that the OCSP is doing a great job at trying to be Anglo-Catholic! He pats them on the back and goes home, er, not quite comfortable, since he couldn't go up for the sacrament!

This turns things upside down. He's come to Houston to check on how well the never-Anglican Bp Lopes is doing at trying to look Anglican! Do I hear syncretism? He continues a few paragraphs down almost as if he'd made the point I've often made:

Moreover, do the ordinariates really manifest the genuine Anglican patrimony? Or are they just a hothouse version of one style of the Anglo-Catholic fringe, a convenient way for clergy and laity who already feel fundamentally compromised as Anglicans to just continue doing what they’re doing, only with a different structure of accountability (no more vestries and standing committees and synods, but a clear hierarchical authority)? Do the ordinariates in fact undermine unity by bleeding off the motivation for the hard ecumenical conversations that are necessary? These are significant questions around which there is not yet abundant clarity.

This is a variation on what I've been saying -- in fact, Bp Lopes has farmed out the job of determining what "genuine Anglican patrimony" really is to a semi-official group of poseurs whose actual experience in Anglican denominations has been brief or none. Indeed, Bp Lopes is presenting the OLW version of high-church to Bp Martins, who presumably having survived the Jefferts Schori era still wearing a mitre, must have a much more concrete idea of what "genuine Anglican patrimony" consists of. He's being polite, but he's shaking his head as he walks away.

Is there a future for the ordinariates? Sooner or later they will run out of disaffected Anglicans. Will they be able to do first-level evangelization? Are there very many Catholics who will find that liturgical ambience compelling? There are already more Anglican clergy who wish to row that particular boat across the Tiber than there are congregations that they can lead. In North America, there are 53 parishes in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Some, like Our Lady of Walsingham, are booming. Others are marginal. All live in relative isolation, spread across the vast expanse of the United States and Canada.

Ralph Adams Cram And Anglo-Medievalism

Intrigued by the mention of Ralph Adams Cram in yesterday's post, I did some more searching. He's primarily noted as a church and university architect, although after more investigation, I discovered that he wrote some gothic-horror short stories that can be found on the web. I couldn't get through them; as Henry James put it, the strings on the marionette were too visible. But something struck me about Cram's style and what originally drew me to Episcopalianism -- Cram has an entry, for instance, in the Episcopal Dictionary of the Church. His birthday, December 16, is honored as a feast day in The Episcopal Church.

So let's take a closer look. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica,

Cram attempted to create buildings that would convey spiritual values as a corrective to technological civilization. He insisted that educational buildings be Gothic and designed the graduate college (1913) and chapel (1929) at Princeton University in this style. His influence helped establish Gothic as the standard style for the American college and university buildings of the period.

Let's grant that in his church and university commissions, he'd gained some of the most prestigious work in the country, and this put him on the cover of Time. He was a member of the Establishment, educated at Exeter and Yale. But who was behind these prestigious commissions? He did St Thomas Episcopal and St John's Episcopal Cathedral in New York, and I've got to assume the J.P.Morgan family was on board with these. He had Baptist commissions, with which I assume the Rockefellers may have had some connection, and Presbyterian, which could have come from Carnegie.

Why would post-medieval Protestant denominations choose to associate themselves with medievalism and the errors of the Catholic Church, though? Beyond that, the Establishment donors who financed these commissions, Morgans, Rockefellers, Carnegies, and others, made their money from technology, railroads, electricity, telecommunications, copper, and steel. But here we have establishmentarian Ralph Adams Cram designing churches and universities as correctives to technological civilization. What's up with that?

I've noted here before the view that the Oxford movement was part of a mid-19th century medieval revival that had its impetus in fear of railways, an early instance of technology (the laws of thermodynamics, for instance, were discovered in response to scientific research on how steam locomotives could be made more efficient).

The problem I see with the medieval revival, visible primarily between the 1840s and 1920s, is that as a deliberate revival, it's an affectation and inauthentic -- but beyond that, it seems to me that it's a sleight-of-hand. It's meant to distract from the source of the wealth that's funded the church buildings and universities, and in part to assuage the guilt subsequent generations seem to have felt for the robber barons who founded their fortunes.

Oddly, though, Rockefeller Sr never seems to have felt much guilt for cheaply producing and distributing products that raised living standards worldwide -- it was Rockefeller Jr, who never involved himself in the oil business, who felt the need to atone for things (or more accurately, create a public image of atoning.)

I would say that Anglo-Medievalism, which had wide appeal beyond high-church Anglicanism, was nevertheless an inauthentic development, and I think that in part is a reason for the disappointment behind Anglicanorum coetibus.

An Artifact Of Recent History

My regular correspondent sent me a link to this 2500-word piece by the pseudonymous Mary Ann Mueller from last January at Virtue Online. It's ostensibly about the return of the remaining Poor Clare Sisters from the OLA parish property to their home house in Alabama, but it manages to reprise all the grievances of the Phillips faction at OLA against Abp Garcia-Siller.

There's not much purpose in revisiting the specifics -- throughout the story, my interest has been in focusing on other opinions from within the OLA parish, the Archdiocese of San Antonio, and other sources that cast the Phillips narrative in a different light. Briefly, Fr Phillips and the OLA parish consistently refused to follow archdiocesan financial policies in key matters, and this had fostered enmity within the chancery, irrespective of the attitudes of particular archbishops. Fr Phillips indulged conduct by his deacon and school administrator, James Orr, that clearly conflicted with established child protection guidelines, and which led to at least one credible allegation of abuse.

Reports from different sources also indicate that Phillips would have had conflicts with Msgr Steenson, the OCSP's first ordinary, that would not have been much different from his conflicts with Abp Garcia-Siller, and which led directly to OLA's remaining out of the OCSP until 2017, when Phillips may have hoped he could get a better deal with Bp Lopes. At best, though, Bp Lopes replaced him as pastor before he reached retirement age and gave him a "Pastor Emeritus" title as a face-saving move.

But from several months perspective, I think a pattern is emerging that perhaps says more about Anglicanorum coetibus, the OCSP, and its future under Bp Lopes. The first point of reference is, yet again, the tendency of a faction sympathetic to Fr Phillips in both the OLA parish and the OCSP, to take their story outside of accepted channels, in particular Church Militant and Virtue Online. VOL is particularly low-church Anglican and at best suspicious of Rome, and the January piece would have an implication there that those Anglicans who trust Rome's offer will be betrayed. This won't sit well in the Church generally, or it wouldn't if anyone paid attention, which isn't likely.

Church Militant tends to divide bishops into good-guys vs bad-guys and is likely to make centrist bishops suspicious at best. It's worth pointing again to Article 3 of the Complementary Norms:

The Ordinary, in the exercise of this office, must maintain close ties of communion with the Bishop of the Diocese in which the Ordinariate is present in order to coordinate its pastoral activity with the pastoral program of the Diocese.

That Bp Lopes seems unable to control the press activities of the Phillips faction at Our Lady of the Atonement does not reflect well. In addition, the blog of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, which seems to regard itself as a semi-official arm of the OCSP that is entitled to make definitive statements on what the Anglican Patrimony consists of, probably represents additional problems for Bp Lopes.

For instance, buried in the January VOL story, we find this:

OLA is the mother church of the Pastoral Provision and Anglican Use in the United States which has eventually lead [sic] to the erection of the Anglican ordinariate by the Vatican offering a gracious way to provide disenfranchised Anglicans and Episcopalians a path to enter into the fullness of the Catholic Church yet retain beloved elements of their unique Anglican patrimony and liturgy.

But at the Angicanorum Coetibus Society blog, we saw not long ago these remarks from Charles Coulombe referring to "that line of story-tellers which includes C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, M. R. James, Ralph Adams Cram, and Arthur Machen? Certainly this is a precious part of the Patrimony that the Ordinariates bring to the Catholic Church". Mr Coulombe, a cradle Catholic of French Canadian background, has for some reason become a regular contributor there and, as we can see, has joined Mrs Gyapong as a member of that august group that can explain the Anglican Patrimony to us benighted ex-Episcopolians.

Of the list he gives above, M.R.James was raised a low-church Anglican and does not appear ever to have become Catholic or anything like it. Charles Williams was an American pulp detective writer of no discernible religious affiliation. (So why didn't Mr Coulombe claim Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hamett, Jim Thompson, or James M Cain as part of the Anglican Patrimony?)

UPDATE: My regular correspondent thinks the Charles Williams to whom Mr Coulombe refers is Charles W.S. Williams, a mamber of the Inklings and an associate of T.S. Eliot and C.S.Lewis. Williams, never Catholic, seems to have identified as Anglican but espoused his own foggy-mystical version of Christianity which would be a good match for the "Anglican Patrimony" we see espoused here. But come to think of it, why did Mr Coulombe leave T.S.Eliot off his list, if he included so many other vaguely Anglican types?

Ralph Adams Cram was a US Episcopalian architect whose commissions were primarily for Episcopalian and other Protestant churches -- but he wasn't a "storyteller".

Arthur Machen, an Anglican clergyman's son, eventually became a high-church Anglican of the occultist variety, a strain that continues in "affirming" Anglo-Catholic TEC parishes and which also manifested itself in Bp Pike's demise. Er, do we want to bring this into the Catholic Church? Dorothy Sayers, raised Anglican, endorsed Christianity in her later writings but doesn't seem ever to have taken Christian teachings much to heart. What kind of a patrimony is this? C.S.Lewis was an effective Christian apologist, with the reservation that as an Anglican, he promoted a sort of indifferentism -- but his literary work strikes me as cloying.

The only Catholic convert in the group is Chesterton, but it seems as though his presence on the list is diluted by all the others. (Why leave out Graham Greene, Ronald Knox, or Evelyn Waugh, all better examples than the others he cites?) And the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society is clearly presenting this rag-tag assemblage of stuff as part of the "Anglican Patrimony". It's impossibly vague and subject to infinite substitution of individual judgment -- if Charles Williams is part of the Patrimony, then so is Raymond Chandler (who grew up in England, after all), and why can't I be a good Anglican and an alcoholic as well?

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments, "I think the reason why Mr Coulombe chooses to leave out Greene, Waugh, and other writers who actually LEFT the Church of England rather than thought nice Catholic thoughts within it is because they never had a subsequent good word to say about Anglicanism and wouldn't have wiped their shoes on the BCP."

On one hand, it's good for the Church that the appeal of this sort of thing is minimal. On the other, Bp Lopes's colleagues in the US and Canadian councils must certainly be getting an overall impression of what the OCSP is really about, with rather silly pronouncements emanating from self-appointed semi-official spokespeople -- and with the sketchy ordinations still taking place in the OCSP that represent real risks to the territorial bishops who will need to clean up the mess.

This is not going to end well.

Murrieta -- The Phillips Model?

Regarding the very iffy homeschool "support" project mooted on the Holy Martyrs website, my regular correspondent comments,

This is a description of the projected parish school which has remained on the STM, Scranton website for several years, despite the fact that the plan was mothballed after the bookstore/coffee shop plan fell through. The school plan was developed with the help of Fe Phillips, who came to Scranton to look at the existing school property and advise Fr Bergman on the way forward. Granted it did take OLA seven years to open the Academy after acquiring property and building a church.

My correspondent also gave a more detailed history of the various school efforts in the OCSP:

This is an apparently successful Catholic part-time school that began at SJE, Calgary but then moved elsewhere. It is not clear whether the move was related to lack of support from the parish leadership or the need for better facilities, but the fact that SJE is trying again with something apparently quite similar suggests that SJE parents and children did not remain involved with the St John Choir Schola.

Here is the announcement of the start-up of the Maria Kaupas Academy at STM, Scranton and this year's registration form. The fundraising campaign does not seem to have been a success.

Here is the announcement of Toronto's Baldwin Academy, now defunct. Fr Ousley also floated the idea of a homeschool support group at St Michael's, the predecessor of SJB, Bridgeport. Once again, OLA has been an inspiration to other OCSP clergy but they have discovered that it is not an easy model to imitate.

Without detailed knowledge of these efforts, I would have to say that two possible reasons suggest themselves for their failure. One is simply that they weren't adequately planned and funded -- and funding for such tentative efforts could not have been a major undertaking. This could relate to the idea that by and large, they were Potemkin villages, intended primarily to make the OCSP priests involved, or the ordinary himself, look good, at least until everyone forgot about them. The Murrieta website gives this impression, certainly.

If they were sincere, however feckless, a possibility for their failure would be that the sort of people who make up -- or at least, made up in earlier times -- the vestries and standing committees of TEC parishes and dioceses didn't move to the OCSP, as they didn't move to the "continuing" denominations. These would include major donors and those who can volunteer legal and organizational talent to such efforts. Another very simple explanation could be lack of threshold demand from the tiny groups that make up the OCSP communities.

Whatever one says about Fr Phillips, it appears that he was able to attract a solid group of laity in the early days of developing the Our Lady of the Atonement project, and he attracted enough people to support the school. But it's becoming plainer that he was a huckster as well. What he's tried to pass on in the OCSP seems to be more of the huckster side, but as my regular correspondent points out, it took seven years to get the Atonement Academy started.

What this suggests is that long-term focus and behind-the-scenes effectiveness haven't been favored in the OCSP, and what it's gotten instead has been self-promotion and short-term opportunism from the marginally qualified clergy who seem to be most visible. This is simply not a recipe for success.

More Murrieta Questions

One of the key selling points on the new website of the Holy Martyrs OCSP group is a "home school program", about which little information is provided other than "We will begin by offering daily Masses, weekly Confession, Adoration & Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as space for students to work." It adds, "We will grow into a full home school program in time."

The first question I have is one Fr ____ sometimes raises in homilies: "If you're a parent, don't you want the best for your children?" He asks this in the context of coming to mass with the family and involving them in parish activities, though certainly not excluding sending them to a parish school.

So one issue is the OCSP's overall track record with "home school programs". My regular correspondent notes,

There was formerly a plan in Irvine to have a homeschool support group, preliminary to or part of the K-12 Newman Academy they were looking to establish. That came to naught, as this may. STM,Toronto had a homeschool support group, for about a year, as did SJE, Calgary (they are trying again). STM, Scranton established one this school year, after abandoning its plans to renovate and reopen the school on its property. Homeschooling families tend to be the sort of traditionalists drawn to the Ordinariate.

I'm not an expert in homeschooling by any means. Certainly I've heard of children who were homeschooled and gained admission to the most elite colleges and universities, so clearly it works for many families. But I would have to ask whether it's the right solution for everyone, since it must certainly require dedication in the whole family and basic qualifications, both academic and personal, from at least one parent.

One question I would have is why parents with the mindset needed to homeschool children successfully would take the very minimal prospectus on the Holy Martyrs website, combined with Fr Bartus's already sketchy track record in starting something like this, as any serious ingredient in a specific plan for, say, a specific time like August-September 2018. If they already want the best for their children, why bother with this sort of pie-in-the-sky fantasy?

People who don't live in the western US don't necessarily understand relative distances there. Both Irvine and Murrieta are in "southern California", but they are along very different travel corridors, and they're over an hour's drive apart. It is very unlikely that potential homeschoolers in Irvine and Murrieta could merge resources and efforts to create a single successful program. As a rough indicator, although both groujps draw from wider areas, the population of Irvine is over 200,000, while the population or Murrieta is over 100,000. If a program couldn't succeed in Irvine, why would it do better in Murrieta?

Another question is why parents would consider homeschooling when there are Catholic schools nearby. The Murrieta-Temecula area is located in back country along the I-15 route from San Diego to Las Vegas, and it has only begun rapid growth in the last few decades. While Catholic school resources are limited as a result, they do exist. Saint Jeanne de Lestonnac School is a K-8 coeducational private school in Temecula-Murrieta. St James the Less is a K-8 school in Perris, less than 20 miles from Murrieta.

Unless there are very specific circumstances that would lead a family to homeschool, I would think that ordinary prudence should lead parents to undertake a careful evaluation of Catholic -- and possibly other private school -- options. When I was an Episcopalian, I knew many families who sent their children to Catholic schools. (Indeed, a local rabbi went to Catholic school as a child. Clearly many people who aren't even Catholic see merit in Catholic schools.)

In fact, when I was an Episcopalian, I sometimes heard remarks like, "He drives a new Mercedes, but he sends his kids to public school." I've got to question what mindset is operating in the very sketchy appeal we see to homeschoolers on the Holy Martyrs webpage. If I were a parent who had serious reasons to homeschool -- for instance, a child with particular talents that I felt, after serious reflection, only I could properly foster -- I can't imagine bothering to waste my time asking Fr Bartus for what he really had in mind with the blue-sky pitch on the Holy Martyrs website.

Murrieta Mystery

Last December I linked to an announcement of a new OCSP group-in-formation in Temecula/Murrieta, CA. At the time, the group was to start on January 7 of this year in a wedding-and-banquet venue, but for whatever reason, this was put on hold. A new website for the group now puts the startup at Pentecost, May 20 of this year. It gives a new address, 39022 Sky Canyon Dr. Murrieta, CA 92563, which according to Google Street View is apparently a mall storefront. A new Facebook page shows a reredos and altar rail being installed. The web page refers to ambitious plans, including

a home school program to serve our many families who desire a traditional Catholic education. We will begin by offering daily Masses, weekly Confession, Adoration & Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as space for students to work. We will grow into a full home school program in time.

All, apparently, in the storefront. My regular correspondent observes,

A number of FB pages have posted three pictures of altar rails and a reredos being installed in the future Holy Martyrs. I assume it is a storefront at a mall, but the preparation implies a location expected to be in use for some time. One assumes it will take a while for the new community to build up membership, and presumably they will have to pay rent, and finance these renovations.

We have seen some grandiose plans in the past---the school, the Walsingham Chapel at the Santiago Retreat Center---that were quietly deleted from the BJHN website. I wonder if the Gianna Club/KofC meetings after a monthly parish dinner have proved a satisfactory replacement for the beer breakfasts and whiskey and cigar bonfires of BJHN's early days. It's difficult, I'm sure, when you have to reinvent the wheel.

Fr Bartus probably had less experience as a clergyman prior to his Catholic ordination than virtually any OCSP priest other than Fr Simington, the only celibate seminarian ordained to date. And he is working under supervision as parochial vicar at a diocesan parish while also priest at St Alban's, Rochester. Fr Bartus seems totally fine with creating a jackdaw's nest of attractive shiny fragments and calling it "patrimonial." And, as you have pointed out, the California groups may be gathering communities in which vulnerable misfits are over-represented.

There's a bigger mystery here: who is going to lead this group? As my regular correspondent pointed out, "Our Lady of Grace, Pasadena had no Holy Week or Easter services, but an ambitious program of Sunday and weekday masses, Sunday school, home school support, even KofC is planned for the Murrieta community." Fr Bartus can't celebrate masses at both BJHN and Murrieta; they're over an hour apart, and both have Sunday masses scheduled for 11:00 AM. Fr Jack Barker, retired from the Diocese of San Bernardino, is a possibility, although his association with the BJHN group has been unclear for some time, and as of a couple of years ago, he was reported to have had health issues.

The air of secrecy surrounding recent plans for ordination adds to the questions one might reasonably have about this, and the existing track record of grandiose plans not being carried out in California should be a matter of concern.

Bp Barron On Catechesis

I was watching some YouTube videos from Bp Barron and came across this one, covering the case for canonization of Nicholas Black Elk, a "Lakota Indian medicine man who converted to Catholicism and eagerly took up the task of catechesis within his community". Bp Barron speaks of his nephew's experience in having a good catechist in the sixth grade who made intellectual demands on him.

Catholic catechesis wasn't my issue. Looking back, I think the secular educational structure was by and large disgraceful, making exceptions for Mrs Wirsz and Messrs Foley and Doyle in the ninth and tenth grades, who I believe were all Catholic, probably not a coincidence. Mrs Wirsz taught Latin, Mr Foley taught English and was probably the only teacher who thought I was good enough at it to try to make a career as a writer (he called me in and gave me a serious talk). Mr Doyle taught geometry and introduced me to proofs.

But I never had good or bad Catholic catechesis as an adolescent, since I was raised Presbyterian, and Presbyterian confirmaton class stressed how we aren't saved by works, and the Church made horrible misunderstandings and errors until Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, and Calvin fixed things. Something besides just catechesis is needed to overcome that, as well as the great numbers who get no religious instruction at all.

This brought me back to the early 2000s, when I got involved in the elected alumni trustee movement at one of the elite schools. I now agree with Fr ____, who says there are lots of ways to waste your time, but I learned a few things from it. At the time, I had an idea that curriculum reform might involve something that looked a lot like Hillsdale College, but more recently I realize that Hillsdale, in concentrating on the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, is essentially promoting a Freemason agenda, which misses the mark at best, however effective the founding principles may be in executing secular government.

Instead, I pose a question I asked a while ago here: when I went to college, Emerson and William James, lightweights, were required reading. Aquinas, one of the smartest people ever, was not. I took Greek, and like all beginning Greek students, I read Plato's Apology of Socrates. One of the great philosophical works, to be sure -- but I also took Latin, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't study Summa Contra Gentiles in any department, Latin, Philosophy, or Religion. I did get a certain amount of Madame Blavatsky dressed in academic robes, though, from a Chicago PhD.

Even a "great books"program from this perspective isn't much help, and pushing it is a waste of time. A better question might be how concerned members of the Catholic hierarchy might develop a curriculum that is a genuine intellectual challenge. We have laws of physics, geometry, logic, harmony, and arithmetic, just for a start. Where did they come from? I got in a lot of trouble in the comment section of a curriculum-reform blog back when I was wasting time on that. The blogger, an economics prof, was giving some example of mathematical proof. I asked, quite innocently, how mathematical proofs evolved from pond scum. (I was still an Episcopalian at the time.)

Interestingly, the prof's attitude was that he could get away with proposing this or that "reform" to the university system, but if I was going to raise questions about Darwinian theory, that would utterly destroy his professional reputation and could not be addressed on a blog like his.

I hope Bp Barron will give issues like these some thought.