The Facebook Story Of The Hackensack Parish Is Old And Mostly Wishful Thinking

Several visitors have chimed in on the story of the St Anthony of Padua Episcopalian parish in Hackensack, NJ and Facebook posts purporting to give a story of an attempt to join the North American ordinariate that somehow broke down at the last minute. The version posted by Mr John O'Sullivan included an apparent factoid that the rector, Brian Laffler, was denied ordination after the parish expressed an interest in joining the ordinariate, and this changed its mind.

However, a story from 2009, "Thanks But No Thanks", dating from the promulgation of Anglicanorum coetibus, contradicts this version:

They oppose the liberal tendencies of the Newark diocese and their national church, which in 2003 seated an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire over conservative opposition. The following year, St. Anthony’s began periodically hosting Bishop William J. Skilton from Charleston, S.C.

The arrangement helps explain why parish members probably will not accept the Vatican’s special offer, made last month, to allow dissatisfied Episcopalians and Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, said the Rev. Brian Laffler, the pastor. The Episcopal Church USA, with 2.1 million members, is part of the 77 million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

“We have a satisfactory situation,” Laffler said. “We have the pastoral care of an authorized bishop who is sympathetic to our situation.”

This was echoed by a 2012 story in Virtue Online:

The conservative congregation of St. Anthony's of Padua in Hackensack, which has been critical of the positions of Episcopal leaders, resolved its differences while remaining in the church. The congregation opted to receive spiritual guidance and leadership from a conservative bishop in South Carolina rather than the local diocesan bishop, in an agreement reached with the Diocese of Newark.

"That's been an adequate arrangement so people here are pretty happy campers and aren't feeling the need to look elsewhere," said the Rev. Brian Laffler, the church pastor.

So the public version we've been told over a three-year period from 2009 to 2012 is that the ordinariate was never a serious option, and other references in the story suggest that the Episcopal Bishop of Newark has been busy with keeping his parishes in the fold. At minimum, the consensus in the Facebook discussion is misleading on two counts:

• It suggests the discernment process was recent, when it seems to have begun in 2009 and concluded not long afterward
• It suggests the process went much farther than it actually did, and that Bp Lopes was somehow involved.

Insofar as Fr Stainbrook was aware of the misinformation being conveyed, he is complicit and should be ashamed of himself. A visitor comments,

A well-informed friend writes :

"Old Italian neighborhood schism because the residents wanted a local church and the bishop at the time said no. After St. Anthony's started, he changed his mind and built St. Francis, which is still there, basic bad-taste Novus Ordo. Long story short, Brian Laffler was a Catholic layman who left so his ordination had to be approved by the CDF and it wasn't, plus the Italian old guard there didn't want to come back to the church."

So, Fr. Brian was "refused ordination" because he was originally a Catholic who left the Church to become an Episcopalian. Did that guy (John J. O'Sullivan) who posted that long account on Facebook which you reproduced know this, but not mention it - in which case his "explanation" is so severely deficient as to be worthless - or was he unaware of it - in which case his "explanation" could be regarded as an uninformed bloviation?

My regular correspondent notes,

I agree that Fr Stainbrook’s comment, although the OCSP party line, is easily contradicted. But I think it comforts people to think that dozens of groups they know nothing about are just waiting in the wings for their cue.