Let's Look At Dcn Wooten's Career

The most complete public record we have of of Dcn Scott Wooten's work history is his Linkedin profile. This says he graduated from Nashotah House, the snobby Anglo-Catholic seminary that, while putatively conservative, trains plenty of openly gay and female seminarians.

He lists two assignments in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth. He was rector of Church of the Good Shepherd in Wichita Falls, TX from July 2004 to July 2015. during that time, he was a Very Rev and ran for the diocesan standing committee.

Fr. Wooten currently serves on the Commission on Ministry for the Priesthood, the Board of Managers of Camp Crucis and is the Dean of the Northern Deanery. He is the clergy representative to the Youth Commission of the Diocese.

But he left Good Shepherd in July 2015, for whatever reason, and he went to become rector of St. Peter and St. Paul Anglican Church in Arlington, TX. He was no longer a Very Rev, just The Rev, and there's no indication of other committee assignments during this period. Interestingly, he lists his rectorship at Good Shepherd Wichita Falls on his Facebook page, but not the time at St Peter and Paul.

The public record we have shows that his career with the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth came to an abrupt end in November 2017. A letter to the parish from its newly designated priest in charge, Fr Richard Moseley, reads

Dearest members of St. Peter and St. Paul Anglican Church,

It is with great sadness that I pass on to you the news that was delivered by our Rector, Fr. Scott Wooten last weekend at each of the services. He has decided to resign from his position here at STP2 effective this weekend and will be seeking secular employment. Please pray for guidance and peace for the Wooten Family.

. . . If you have any questions about Fr. Scott’s resignation, my serving as Priest in Charge, or our future, please plan to come to an ALL PARISH MEETING with Bishop Iker on Monday, November 27th at 7:00 pm here at the church.

I ran this by a former TEC priest who does not know Wooten but does know a number of other Fort Worth clergy, including Bp Iker. He says it's impossible to read any clear indication of what happened, but from his remarks, he clearly felt Wooten had been removed as rector by Bp Iker on very short notice. I would add that it looks like in response to whatever issue Iker addressed with Wooten, Wooten also resigned his Anglican orders.

I would not completely ignore Fr Moseley's remarks that Wooten "will be seeking secular employment. Please pray for guidance and peace for the Wooten Family."

My regular correspondent notes, "Sometime in 2019 both Mr Wooten and his wife changed the 'relationship status' to “nothing to show” on their respective Facebook pages."

The TEC priest I consulted suggests Bp Iker could have removed Wooten as a rector and encouraged his resignation from the priesthood if Iker had discovered an intent by Wooten to become Catholic or go into the ordinariate as a candidate. My regular correspondent suggests,

When, say, Frs Erdman and Michoacan, to cite two recent examples, left TEC to become Catholic their stories were told various places: local Catholic media, newsletters of the Ordinariate parishes where they were received, Ordinariate-themed blogs. Mr Wooten’s ordination to the diaconate seemed to come out of nowhere, and I can still find no specifics of his reception into the Church. Only thing I can find, as forwarded to you, is notice of his induction into the Knights of Columbus chapter at St Stephen, Weatherford, TX in March 2018. On January 1, 2019 he posted info on FB about mass at St Timothy (now St Thomas Becket) Ft Worth, the local Ordinariate group, and Fr Bolin referred to him as a parishioner in announcing his ordination to the diaconate.

Given Dcn Wooten's brand new YouTube persona, I would have expected more folksy-but-weepy public announcement of "my journey home to Holy Mother Church" than we saw. Instead, he quietly worked as a roofing estimator for three years until, with little fanfare, he segued back into the priesthood. The Catholic priesthood, of all things.

I recollected yesterday another of those sometime "policies" Houston enforces as it chooses: it does not ordain men who are under discipline in their former denominations. This was exercised in the case of an ACA priest who had briefly been Orthodox decades before he was in the ACA, and was deposed by his Orthodox denomination for leaving. However, in other cases, such as Fr Andrew Bartus, inhibited by his ACA bishop much more recently, it was disregarded.

In any case, it seems as though something hinky happened at St Peter and Paul Arlington that brought Wooten under the disciplinary scrutiny of Bp Iker, and it's hard to avoid speculating that Wooten resigned from the Anglican priesthood, possibly to avoid formal discipline, for whatever reason, abandonment of communion or something else.

We must assume Fr Perkins, whose assessment of priestly character has not had a good record, decided whatever it was, it's been fixed.

Right. I'd still like to know when the million-dollar wire transfer is going to arrive.