Thursday, August 16, 2018

More On Mr Mayer's Background

My regular correspondent has done more digging and reports,
Mr Mayer led St Peter's, The Colony, TX. When he started there it had about 60 members and met in a hotel banquet room. It is later referred to as St-Peter's-by-the-Lake, 4809 S Colony Rd, The Colony. This address is currently a Lutheran Church, so,perhaps they shared space. In any event St Peter's, The Colony has now closed.

UPDATE: This video indicates that the St Peter's mission was earlier in the Lutheran parish, but left it for the Marriott location. You can get an idea of Mayer's style in the video. He has exciting news to share -- never a good sign.

Mr Mayer did his BA in Pastoral ministry at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL---an Assemblies of God institution. I assume this was his denominational background, but at some point he discovered Episcopalianism. Then TEC seminary and a brief stint in ordained ministry in TEC. Not entirely successful. This profile of an OCSP candidate is starting to look quite familiar.

My correspondent updated me yesterday and had discovered that Mayer's MDiv is from Nashotah House. This adds to the puzzle, because to attend a TEC seminary, one must be sponsored by a TEC parish and be approved by a TEC bishop. Yet by the time he'd left undergraduate studies, he was an evangelical. What led him then to consider TEC, whose publicly asserted values on issues like gay priests and bishops, as well as long-standing traditions on things like the sacraments, are diametrically opposed to evangelicals? Er, when did he see the light, and what light was it?

What parish did he attend in TEC, presumably for long enough to impress it with his sincerity in wishing to pursue holy orders? What did he tell the bishop? Has anyone seriously asked him about why he's so intent on becoming a Catholic priest when he's spent so much of his life on a denominational carousel? Is this an authentic vocation at all? Is this a question someone like Fr Perkins is now even qualified to address?

It's also hard to square the strange record we have from May-June of 2017, in which as best we can determine, Mayer was in the process of pursuing ordination in the OCSP and starting a Tampa Bay group without quite leaving his Pastoral Provision formation program, in which he seems not to have made the progress that would have been expected toward ordination there. Would this indicate a tendency to do things behind a bishop's back? Or is this simply attributable to incompetence in Houston in not communicating with Bp Parkes? We'll never know.

In any case, ordaining this guy is simply copacetic with Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes. Frankly, the more I learn, the more I'd drive 50 miles on a Sunday to avoid having to attend an OCSP parish mass. Yeah, the sacrament is valid, but so would be a mass celebrated by Fr Geoghan when he was in the Archdiocese of Boston. Best not to get too close if there are options. There is something seriously wrong here.