Later in the year, the Canadian bishops pulled out without any public announcement that I'm aware of. I first learned of it while working with the St Mary of the Angels vestry trying to set up its entry to the OCSP, and Margaret Chalmers, the canon lawyer on the project on behalf of Msgrs Stetson and Steenson, told me there'd been a change of plans, and Houston would be in charge of Canada as well. Subsequently, Msgr Steenson established the Deanery of St John the Baptist in Canada and appointed Fr Kenyon as dean.
Fr Kenyon, however, left the St John the Evangelist parish in Calgary, as well as his position of Canadian dean, for unspecified reasons in mid-2017. This left Houston with the problem of naming a new dean, and Fr Reid, the priest at the Blessed John Henry Newman community in Victoria, BC, was the replacement. The Victoria community had to find a new venue last summer when its host parish added new OF masses to its schedule, which says something about the relative priorities of the group and the DW liturgy in Canada. As far as I'm aware, no replacement for Fr Reid at either the Newman group or as Canadian dean has been named.
I think we can reasonably draw several conclusions from this move. The first is that the Australian ordinariate is on life support, since it appears that none of the priests currently there was a credible home-grown candidate for ordinary. My regular correspondent points out, "The OOLSC has only about a dozen clergy (plus two in Japan) so presumably responsibilities are not a full-time job." However, Canada is not much better off. My regular correspondent pointed out that a 2017 meeting of the clergy in the Canadian deanery had an apparent attendance of four.
Fr Reid, born in 1950, will be 69 this year. Like most of the Canadian clergy in the deanery, he is from the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada, a "continuing" group founded by Louis Falk as part of his re-schism from TEC and then the US ACC. My regular correspondent points out, "I note that Fr Reid is identified as holding an M.Div from St Bede's Theological College. This is a distance education project of the ACCC without ATS accreditation." Photos suggest that he at least looks the part, which may be all that will ever be required of him.
I think it's reasonable to suggest that the personnel situation in both Canada and Australia is dire, as in both places, clergy are steadily aging, while no new serious candidates are emerging -- and who will replace Fr Reid in Canada -- Fr Shane, the condom educator? But the situation in the US isn't much better. There's a continuing two-tier formation process, with married candidates being receved, ordained as deacons, and ordained as priests in a single weekend, or at best a matter of months, with celibate candidates nevertheless going through three years of seminary.
The inevitable result is that phonies, grifters, and con artists are continuing to slip through the system, with Houston's scarce resources being diverted to removing and laicizing the bloopers, as well as minimizing the public impact of their scandals.
