Cardinal DiNardo has of course been closely connected with the North American ordinariate (OCSP) since before its official erection, as we read here. No doubt he worked with the Davises [see below] to have them fund Steenson's "visiting professorship" at St Mary's Seminary Houston ahead of his appointment as Ordinary, and the school at which DiNardo's brother-in-law, the husband of his twin sister, was president to create a chaplain's job for Fr Steve Sellers. Fr Sellers is now the President of St John XXIII Prep; his successors as chaplain have both been OCSP clergy otherwise unemployed. The school cafetorium is also the location of the St Margaret's, Katy OCSP community led by Fr Sellers.Carl and Lois Davis first appeared here in a 2016 post. Major philanthropists, they are former Episcopalians who became Catholic, and since 2001, they've been members of the Our Lady of Walsingham parish, which before the erection of the OCSP in 2012 was Anglican Use, which meant it was part of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, whose ordinary has been now-Cardinal DiNardo since 2004.
As I noted in the 2016 post, the Davises are behind a non-profit called the Walsingham Foundation that has apparently received multimillion-dollar grants from the Carl and Lois Davis Foundation. As I understand these things, the Catholic Church works something like the Mafia in one important respect, in that the Operation gets its cut from all such donations. DiNardo would have been in a position to pass on a portion of his cut to Rome as well, as far as I can see.
It's notable that DNardo seems to have been much more willing to give up the Our Lady of Walsingham parish in 2012 than Abp Garcia-Siller of San Antonio was to give up Our Lady of the Atonement in 2017, which suggests to me that some equitable arrangement must have been worked out among Steenson, DiNardo, and the Davises before the OCSP was erected. The Davises, as far as I can see, continue to donate to Catholic, and presumably archdiocesan, causes outside Our Lady of Walsingham.
That plum positions for otherwise not-as-employable OCSP clergy continue to be available in Galveston-Houston archdiocesan jobs also gives DiNardo a measure of influence over Bp Lopes. But beyond that, there'a another question: where does Bp Lopes live? I can't imagine that the tithe from the dozen or so productive parishes in the OCSP can maintain anyone in the style to which bishops are accustomed. This makes me wonder if Lopes is accommodated in an archdiocesan facility. Can anyone answer this?
But DiNardo's role in Anglicanorum coetibus is a reminder of where he stands in the order of things. The constitution was a project of Bernard Law, which he presumably was able to supervise much more actively when he went to Rome in 2003. Donald Wuerl became the delegate for implementing it in 2010-11. Our Lady of Walsingham was the principal Anglican Use parish and the location from which William Stetson, the secretary to the delegate, worked. There must have been considerable interaction between Wuerl and DiNardo in the runup.
DiNardo in any case, especially in light of my update to yesterday's post, had been a protégé of Wuerl at least from the days he served as spiritual director to the seminarians in the gay-friendly St Paul's seminary in Pittsburgh while Wuerl was rector. I suspect that nothing happened in the runup to the erection of the OCSP that was not to the explicit wishes of Wuerl and Law. DiNardo was with the program.
Is it any wonder that the two most public Catholics who are former Anglican priests are Fr Longenecker and Dr Marshall? Both operate completely outside either Anglican Use or the OCSP. Given DiNardo's less than reassuring background, I strongly suspect no action will be undertaken by the US bishops over homosexuality in the priesthood that rocks any boats.
