tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67424758172374112422024-03-18T19:54:20.830-07:00The Crisis And The Cold Case File"On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. . . . It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews." -- Annie DillardJohn Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.comBlogger2022125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-80095427901930516572023-12-06T09:14:00.000-08:002023-12-06T11:03:57.773-08:00Another Squabble On The Catholic Far Right; Vaughn Treco Resurfaces Yet Again
Just days after the Church Militant board was forced to demand Michael Voris's resignation, the news broke that <a href="https://returntotradition.org/the-coalition-for-canceled-priest-cancels-its-founder-francis-old-adversary-speaks-in-defense-of-canceled-priests/" target="_blank">another organizationon on the Catholic fringe had fired its founder</a>:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">All, it with a heavy heart that I share this press release. Thank you, for my brother priests for their support. For now, please discontinue your support of the Coalition until the current board resigns. This is a Hostile take over by the board for their own secular purposes. <a href="https://t.co/fLEoIVHhqp">pic.twitter.com/fLEoIVHhqp</a></p>— Fr. John Lovell (@Fr_Lovell) <a href="https://twitter.com/Fr_Lovell/status/1730761861191049369?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 2, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<a href="https://www.drchristinebacon.com/radio/fr-john-lovell-and-the-coalition-for-canceled-priests" target="_blank">According to this post from 2022</a>,
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
Fr. John Lovell is known as a “Canceled Priest.” Sadly, he is not alone. Fr. Lovell, who co-founded the Coalition for Canceled Priests in 2021, first ran into problems with his own bishop, the late Thomas Doran, in 2009 after reporting allegations of sexual misconduct by a teacher in the diocese. Fr. Lovell was immediately
reassigned from his parish and sent for a psychological evaluation. Later, he was told to enroll at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. And in 2012, he was removed/canceled by the new bishop of Rockford, David J. Malloy. Ever since, Fr. Lovell has fought for his good name and helps other priests in the same or similar situations.
</p>
I simply can't comment on the circumstances of Lovell's removal, except to note that in 2009, only two years after his ordination in 2007, he'd gotten crosswise with one bishop, and by 2012, following apparent attempts to get him back with the program, he was "removed/canceled" by another. Whether this was a legitimate case of <i>Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders</i>, we'll likely never know, except that now, Lovell has been removed/canceled by the board of the organization he founded. All we know is that the board is saying nothing, and this isn't unusual in many cases of termination, as organizations want to avoid being sued for defamation, while the legal issue is often that employees can be fired for any reason anyhow.
<p><p>Four "canceled priests" have signed the appeal on Lovell's behalf. They all style themselves "Fr", although I don't know how many have been laicized -- I do know that one of the signatories, Vaughn Treco, was undergoing laicization when I covered his situation here in 2019-20, so if this has been concluded, he isn't entitled to call himself "Fr". I'll get to Treco in more detail farther down, but let's look briefly at the other three signatories.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/tx-priest-under-fire-for-orthodoxy" target="_blank">Henry Clay Hunt III</a> was removed from his parish, St. Joseph in Del Rio, TX, by Abp Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio in 2018 and made the chaplain for the criminal justice ministry. This followed a meeting at the Del Rio city hall in which Hunt objected to the election of the openly gay mayor, Bruno "Ralphy" Lozano, from which Lozano had Hunt forcibly ejected. Two years later, in 2020, the archbishop removed Hunt's faculties to celebrate mass in public and began the process of laicization. As is normal in such cases, the archdiocese did not provide other details.
<li><a href="https://observer.rockforddiocese.org/article?id=2282" target="_blank">Joseph Nicolisi</a> had his ministry restricted by the Diocese of Rockford, IL, in 2011 for the delict of living in concubinage with an adult woman. He appealed the penalty to the Roman rota, where it was upheld. According to the link, Fr Nicolisi continues to be forbidden from exercising the power of orders except for celebrating mass without anyone else present.
<li><a href="https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2020/11/24/detroit-catholic-archdiocese-removes-priest-plymouth-church/6390230002/" target="_blank">Michael Suhy</a> was removed from his parish in Plymouth, MI by Archbishop of Detroit Allen Vigneron following multiple meetings "in the hopes of assisting him to become better equipped to handle such a large parish with a school". He was removed, according to the archdiocese, because "Ultimately and unfortunately, his intransigence triggered a canonical process for his removal." Suhy claims that instead, the reason for his removal was his repeated attempts to report an archdiocesan employee for sexually harassing a man. Although Suhy was removed as pastor, his clerical functions were not restricted.
</ul>
These are three widely diverse cases, and in at least one of them, there was a clear violation of canon law leading to the priest's restriction. The cases are so diverse that it's misleading to characterize them under an umbrella of "removed/canceled". In the case of Suhy, I think it's reasonable to trust the judgment of the archdiocese that the man was overwhelmed by the job of running a large parish. This can happen. I suspect as well that if that large parish had been up to date with the Bishop's Appeal, the pastor would have had wider latitude over any private cantankerousness about gays.
<p><p>But this brings us to the case of Vaughn Treco, with which I'm much more familiar, since I covered it here. Vaughn Treco was <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2019/01/fr-vaughn-treco-removed.html" target="_blank">removed as administrator of a tiny ordinariate group in Minnesota</a> in late January 2019 due to the contents of a sermon he delivered the prior November, which in the view of Bp Steven Lopes of the North American ordinariate were heretical. Treco was offered the opportunity to recant his position and submit to further education, but he refused.
<p><p>This had nothing to do, at least directly, with any views Treco might have held on same-sex attraction, but it was due to Treco's expressed view that Vatican II was illegitimate. We may argue about this in general terms, but to a Catholic priest, Vatican II is authoritative, and if a priest says it isn't, the bishop is fully within his rights to remove him. Case closed.
<p><p>Treco was ordained a priest in the ordinariate in 2014, and I was expressing full-fledged reservations about him here <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-puzzle-of-fr-vaughn-treco.html" target="_blank">as early as August 2015</a>. He had been angling for ordination as a Roman Catholic priest for over a decade before that, despite the fact that he was married. On the establishment of the US ordinariate in 2012, which provided for the ordination of married former Anglican priests, this was a new potential route for him, but another difficulty was that he was a citizen of the Bahamas, and he'd been ordained there in a fringe Anglican denomination, when the ordinariate was intended for former US and Canadian Anglicans.
<p><p>The best I could conclude as of the 2015 post, based on input from knowledgeable parties, was that there was some back-channel deal between the Archdiocese of Nassau in the Bahamas and the Archdiocese of St Paul-Minneapolis to ordain Treco via the ordinariate, when every indication was that Treco was never a serious candidate for the Roman Catholic priesthood, in particular because he was married. However this was arranged, it wasn't a problem for the Archdiocese of St Paul-Minneapolis, because Treco would be under the ordinariate.
<p><p>In addition to his minimal duties with the tiny Minnesota ordinariate group, he was also a hospital chaplain in the archdiocese there, which is where his problems began -- apparently his preference for celebrating daily mass at the chapel <i>ad orientem</i> rubbed the hospital sisters the wrong way, and for all I know, he might have been preaching heresies in his homilies there as well. Eventually pressure appears to have built from the archdiocese -- which had facilitated Treco's ordination in the first place -- for Bp Lopes to remove him. I never thought Treco was ever anything but an utter misfit who never should remotely have been considered for the priesthood, and his career was brief as a result. As far as I'm aware, he was undergoing laicization as of the time of his removal.
<p><p>That Treco should be a signatory in this latest fringe squabble and feel entitled to style himself "Fr" says a great deal about the Priests for the Coalition. These little tempests in teapots also say way too much about the current Catholic fringe.
testhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04188906404517247583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-36330009285897719832023-12-03T08:48:00.000-08:002023-12-03T11:10:02.833-08:00Yet More On Michael Voris And Church Militant<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNQxM4TvtDLE0X0gKZMdhv3QTYveaT_7Ica-A4WVt3ZUiZ6Zn7WdoaSs9bfLK5ZECtoHFEpf6Nh6ZZ2kJmT-5dJmPN0MijXte4aOx-dSVCmhl_nUXTJ1K5iJrnNNR9Hl3lfCpynWyzPfcV22UiFw3jCRKqqpuoVQaq__Q9zYb6u0_twhcyZazsRNl_Ws/s900/michael%20voris%202.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdNQxM4TvtDLE0X0gKZMdhv3QTYveaT_7Ica-A4WVt3ZUiZ6Zn7WdoaSs9bfLK5ZECtoHFEpf6Nh6ZZ2kJmT-5dJmPN0MijXte4aOx-dSVCmhl_nUXTJ1K5iJrnNNR9Hl3lfCpynWyzPfcV22UiFw3jCRKqqpuoVQaq__Q9zYb6u0_twhcyZazsRNl_Ws/s400/michael%20voris%202.jpg"/></a></div>
There have been coninuing accounts on YouTube and elsewhere from former Church Militant employees, both those who had left before Micael Voris's forced resignation and others, like Christine Niles and David Gordon, who've left amid the recent controversy. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNfQyhd5XQo">Ms Niles's YouTube statement is here.</a> As a quick recap, I've already linked to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Q3YQo3-S6I" target="_blank">Christine Harrington's first YouTube here</a>; she's put up a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBa5Ds0z7LU&t=454s" target="_blank">second one that includes an interview with another former employee, Kristine Christlieb, here</a> This in turn links to Ms Christlieb's Substack account, <a href="https://trustbutverifyreport.substack.com/p/the-entire-board-should-resign" target="_blank">The Entire Board Should Resign</a>.
<p><p>All of the versions above, however, have been remarkably coy about identifying the effective cause of Voris's departure, speaking in more general terms about the inability of Church Militant's board to control Voris, since the members all had conflicts of interest, especially those who were also Church Militant employees. Ms Harrington in fact deferred to another former employee, David Gordon, expecting him to provide the lurid details; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGicT7XbpDI" target="_blank">his account has now been posted here</a>. At 4:37, he says,
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</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
As you can imagine, it's that Michael Voris was living, up til, up to recently, I don't know if it's ceased yet, I don't know if his behaviors have ceased yet, but living a life that involved active homosexuality. . . . The board itself, when this came to light, were scrambling to do damage control, [were] floating lying to everybody, lying to donors, lying to people and saying you know, Michael Voris, he stepped down for health reasons.
</p>
Gordon claims that the board mentioned the morality clause in its statement due to his insistence that some mention of the issue be included. However, in searching for more background on <i>l'affaire</i> Voris, I dscovered a 2016 book by E Michael Jones, <a href="https://ia802208.us.archive.org/14/items/e.-michael-jones-book-collection/E.%20Michael%20Jones%20-%20The%20Man%20Behind%20the%20Curtain%2C%20Voris%20and%20the%20Homosexual%20Vortex.pdf" target="_blank">The Man Behind the Curtain: Michael Voris and the Homosexual Vortex</a>, which puts the current crisis for Church Militant in the context of an ongoing series of barely averted disasters since the group's founding. The PDF is available at the link. David Gordon says he was concerned that the board would find a way to put Voris on some type of temporary leave that would allow him to return after a decent interval, and in light of Jones's book, this isn't far from what's happened at least twice in the past.
<p><p>I would say that none of the former employees who've made various statements on Voris's departure is on any sort of media A-team, nor indeed on anything much more than junior varsity, and this applies to E Michael Jones's book as well. Nevertheless, it provides necessary additional information on the organization in light of two earlier crises:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
On January 23, 2016, Michael Voris, the Internet TV personality who was the face of
Church Militant TV, placed an emergency call to his spiritual advisor, who was in Mexico
at the time, asking for prayers. A homosexual had gone on Facebook claiming that he
knew the man who had given Michael Voris AIDS. He was now claiming that Michael
Voris was “as gay as they come” and that he was going to reveal what he knew about
Voris’s homosexual past. The announcement precipitated a crisis at the Church Militant
studio in Ferndale, Michigan.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
. . . The January 2016 posting on Facebook was not the first time that someone from the
homosexual scene had come forward and accused Michael Voris of being gay. In each
instance he denied the allegations.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
. . . In spite of the denials emanating from Church Militant, the blogosphere kept
insisting that Michael was gay. Before long the staff realized that “the clock was ticking.”
This was not going to be another tempest in a teapot like the SSPX affair. By the time
the new allegations began to arise during early 2016, Voris’s spiritual advisor had seen
pictures of Michael in his gay lifestyle period. Now he was hearing from good priests
who were telling him that Voris was harming the Church by accusing priests and bashing
bishops.
</p>
Buit this waan't the first such crisis:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
In February 2012, Voris’s spiritual director discovered that Voris had had a past
that included sexual activity with both men and women and that he was HIV positive.
The fact that Voris had been a homosexual and was now engaged in public denunciation
of clergy and bishops for the very sins he himself had committed turned Real Catholic
TV into a bombshell that could go off at any moment. Voris remained oblivious to the
danger, saying in typically narcissistic fashion that God would never let this come about.
He continued in the same vein by claiming that he, as the prodigal son, had a right to talk
about sodomy. If anyone had that right, it was Voris. Pressure was building both inside
and outside RCTV. By the end of 2012 Voris was in a precarious situation because a gay
priest he had targeted was demanding financial statements.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
. . . [Later that year,] Marc Brammer got a call from Mark DeYoung, a
seminarian at Dunwoodie, the same seminary which Voris had attended for two years
during the ’80s. The current crop of seminarians at Dunwoodie were avid Voris fans, but
they were being told that Voris had been dismissed for good reason and didn’t know who
to believe. DeYoung had told Brammer during one of his trips to New York that the
seminary officials were willing to release Voris’s dossier to the public if Voris felt the
rumors were false. Voris had always maintained that he had not been dismissed because
of homosexual activity but because of his spiritual immaturity, failing to understand that
spiritual immaturity had become a code word for homosexuality. Unaware of that point,
Voris has made some effort to prove that he was not kicked out because of a gay
lifestyle.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
On April 10,. . . Brammer met with Voris’s spiritual director, who then told him what he knew
about Voris’s homosexual past. At this point, “the dam broke.” Both men now felt that
Church Militant TV could not go forward with Voris as its director, and the two decided
to join with a number of stakeholders at CMTV and come up with a plan that would
allow Voris to go quietly to avoid scandal.
</p>
In each of these previous crises, Voris was able to hang on, in 20l6 because he was able to convince his audience that this was all in the past, while in 2012 he appears to have been able to use the intricacies of Church Militant's legal position to avoid termination.
<p><p>The bottom line here is that Church Militant and some of the key figures behind the scene have known about both Voris's history and his ongoing conduct throughout the life of the organization, and up to now, Voris had been able to remain in his position there, due in some measaure to nonfeasance by the board and knowledgeble backers. Let's hope that the current publicity can drive a final stake through the heart of his career.
testhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04188906404517247583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-47935258744444331412023-11-29T08:53:00.000-08:002023-11-29T09:08:30.095-08:00More On Michael Voris And Church Militant<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="9Q3YQo3-S6I" width="400" height="322" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Q3YQo3-S6I"></iframe></div>
I ran into this intriguing video by someone named Christine Harrington, whom I hadn't previously encountered. She says she was briefly an employee of Churdh Militant, and it isn't hard to see that the experience left her disgruntled, but just comparing her account to my own experience in various workplaces, I'd have to say her version has the ring of truth. Some excerpts, at 4:05:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
There wasn't much Catholic going on inside of Church Militant, other than the chapel. Now, there were a few people that were very courteous, very accommodating, very nice to work with, but for the most part, everyone was vying to be a little Michael and to eventually take Michael's place, so they all emulated Michael and Michael's behavior.
</p>
At 7:05
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
There are some things that I'm not going to be able to talk about, but I will talk about what Christine Niles put in her statement after Voris released his, and in that statement, she said that Voris often did not attend chapel. Now, I can substantiate that that is true. I can also substantiate that we were all required and mandated to attend chapel. But Voris wasn't the only one that wasn't attending chapel.
There were managers and board members that didn't attend chapel as well. Now, I don't know why they were given a special privilege not to attend, because my understanding and what I was told was that <i>everyone</i> was mandatory to chapel.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
But let me give you my story about chapel. So my first week there at Church Militant -- you know, chapel is from 8:00 AM until 8:45, we do the noon Angelus, and then 5:00 evening vespers until 5:30 or 5:45, it depends -- so, 8:00 rolls around, everybody, you know, shuffling in the chapel, and I'm new, so I sit in the back. And they let it go the first day, but then the second day, they told me I had to sit either up front or in the middle, and I'm thinking, "Well, why is that? Why do I have to do that?" I went ahead and sat up front, and then I was told the third day, when I went and sat in the back again, that I had to sit in the middle or up front.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
And I said, "Why, what difference does it make?" and they said, "Because you're not on camera when you're sitting in the back." Oh -- so we're in chapel for the audience? We're in chapel to show that we're praying? I thought we were in chapel to show reverence for Jesus and to God and to increase our spiritual life, and to pray for the day that we may honor God in our work. . . . But no, I had to sit where I could be seen.
</p>
Confer Matthew 6:5:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret.
</p>
At 9:46:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
On day one working there, I was told that I was not to speak to Michael; I was only to speak to Michael if Michael spoke to me; I was to not try to catch his eye; . . . I'm to be seen and not heard, and not to ask him any questions, because he was a <i>very important man</i>.
</p>
At 13:05:
</p><p>
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
Back to Christine Niles's statement about the chapel. Christine had different hours than everybody else in the studio. She usually came in about late morning or early afternoon. Sometimes she was there for the Angelus, sometimes she wasn't, but she was always in chapel for evening prayers.
</p><p style="margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;">
. . . As far as working in the studio, there was constant crisis going on all the time, constant drama all the time, and since I was writing scripts for Evening News, during that five months, the set for Evening News changed five or six different times during that five month period I was there.
</p>
Her overall point is that the Church Militant morality clause is so vague and broad that there's no clear way to identify what Michael may have done to violate it and force his resignation. On the other hand, she points out the the Church Militant board is made up of Michael's friends, as well as Church Militant employees who had a vested interest in letting Michael do as he pleased, so whatever forced his resignation must have been such a major issue that the board had no choice but to force him out.
<p><p>She notes that Church Militant has been in financial crisis at least since mid-2022, so what the future holds with or without Voris is uncertain. Ever since I'd learned of Church Militant, I've seen occasional accunts from disgruntled former employees who left in frustration or were fired, so this version from Ms Harrington is nothing new. The lesson to be taken here, I think, is that it never hurts to be skeptical of people who insist that the Roman Catholic Church has gotten things all wrong, and the true pathway to heaven lies with the likes of Michael Voris. This is and always has been a con.
<p><p>I'm a little amused to see so many YouTube commentators so disillusioned at Voris's sudden downfall, but then they conclude it's somehow un-Catholic to criticize him too much, best just to pray for his healing and not ask too many other questions. It's true that focusing inordinate attention on Michael Voris's possible failings could be sinful curiosity or detraction, but learning his methods of deception can help us avoid being led into such errors as he led us into in the future. I <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2019/06/so-this-catholic-convert-walks-into-bar.html" target="_blank">made a similar point about Taylor Marshall</a> back in 2019.
<p><p>So far, it looks like there was quite a bit of deception behind Church Militant, and we shouldn't simply ignore what was done there.
testhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04188906404517247583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-56362908681231648002023-11-24T08:35:00.000-08:002023-11-24T08:35:17.076-08:00Thoughts On Michael Voris<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFj2XOcQUpyq-SGR4ob-cXPWpntpE1zk0j39RdlKXTQZttd5ZxXHxE4mh4drJAQbyWLf3h6WE1PfzIZFV2X5GKmrQezNIMWh0c8grbgo2u_K46K1plzBDVjcrGFExiLRb3SArfYtT1duIGt6QxSaAlRfLjNXQCHZhWGKvBJYphluMAJQKk8qsJCvFK9o/s514/michael%20voris.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="455" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwFj2XOcQUpyq-SGR4ob-cXPWpntpE1zk0j39RdlKXTQZttd5ZxXHxE4mh4drJAQbyWLf3h6WE1PfzIZFV2X5GKmrQezNIMWh0c8grbgo2u_K46K1plzBDVjcrGFExiLRb3SArfYtT1duIGt6QxSaAlRfLjNXQCHZhWGKvBJYphluMAJQKk8qsJCvFK9o/s600/michael%20voris.jpg"/></a></div>
Over the past two days, the level of YouTube commentary from conservative Catholics on Michael Voris's resignation from Church Militant has far exceeded the commentary on either the recent Synod on Synodality or Bp Strickland's removal by Pope Francis. Based only on that, an observer from Mars might conclude that this was a much more significant event in the life of the Church than either of the others, which has me puzzled.
<p>I started this blog in 2012 as I was in the process of converting to Catholicism, at that time trying to do it under the terms of <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, which didn't work out. After a year or so, my wife and I were able to come in via RCIA. At the time, influenced in part by the second sex abuse crisis in the US Church driven by the McCarrick-Wuerl scandal, I tended to follow more conservative influencers like Voris and Church Militant and Fr John Zuhlsdorf.
<p>In part, I was also driven by the conservative orientation of the former Anglicans hoping to form Roman Catholic ordinariate parishes under the terms of <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>. However, over the period of covering the formation and early administration of the US ordinariate, I became gradually disillusioned, in some measure due to the level of scandal associated with the former Anglican (and other Protestant) priests the ordinariate ordained. A remarkable number were laicized or otherwise removed from clerical roles during the ordinariate's first decade, which I covered here; others probably should have been but weren't.
<p>What changed my viewpoint even more was finding a vibrant diocesan parish that exposed us to a fully functioning <i>novus ordo</i> model. Among other things, I saw actual committed diocesan priests regularly rotating through the parish as pastors and associates who formed a remarkable contrast to the caricature of the diocesan priesthood offered by people like Michael Voris and, maybe more importantly, the sometimes pretty sketchy examples in the ordinariate.
<p>I occasionally posted about Michael Voris here. <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2016/11/benedict-skepticism.html" target="_blank">In this post from 2016</a>, I generally referenced remarks he'd made at the time about his former days as an active same-sex-atrracted person, but I tended to agree with his position that Pope Benedict was overrated. As I recall his various quasi-confessions around that time, he said he made them because, in the light of his criticisms of the Church over the McCarrick-Wuerl scandals, sources close to the US bishops might leak his background to discredit his own accusations, so he felt the need to air the information first -- but this was all in the past.
<p>Well, apparently not. I've been listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast -- I don't know what conservative inflencers think of it, but of course the John Paul II CCC is a thorough product of the Second Council -- but I note that CCC 1131 says the sacraments are efficacious. They aren't mere formalities. If you go to confession sincerely wanting not to do certain sins, you can make definite progress via God's grace. Somehow, this didn't happen with Michael Voris. People who've known him say he went to the gym a lot, which seems to be reflected in the photo above.
<p>Not always, of course, but the gym to some people can be a near occasion of sin. Maybe he needed to stay out of the gym and work out at home, just for starters. And if he was going to the gym all this time, I quetion whether he'd ever actually left his prior life behind. But for whatever reason, I gradually stopped following Michael Voris and Fr Zuhlsdorf, but I kept going to mass and confession. I've probably grown as a Catholic as a result.
<p>These days I follow Bp Barron and Fr Mike Schmitz. I find Michael Voris less of a disappointment than maybe an indication for me of how I've moved forward as a Catholic. I'm really sorry for people who depended on him. On the other hand, I'm wondering if the Church is moving toward a crisis bigger than the first two sex-abuse crises of the past decades, and we're going to need characters much more solid than Michael Voris or Fr Zuhlsdorf to bring us through it. In the meantime, the sacraments continue to be efficacious.testhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04188906404517247583noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-57123089950201279032022-09-12T08:40:00.000-07:002022-09-12T08:40:47.028-07:00Letter From India To The Traditional Anglican Church LeadershipFollowing my post here on the history and questionable status of the TAC-affiliated Anglican Church in India, the visitor sent this letter via e-mail to the leadership of the TAC.
<blockquote>
Dear Sir,
<p>
This is to bring to your attention that some people using the name of TAC and Church of England are involved in fraudulent activities in India. They are trying to sell off Church properties across India under false authority. These people claim themselves to be Secretary of the Church (Madhulika Joyce) Gurlal Singh Sahi, Hendrik James and others. Most of these people are non-christians and the Christian members which are shown by them are mere dummies.
<p>
They have already made a deal of a property belonging to the Church in Azadpur Fruit Market, New Delhi (This is the burial ground of the British Commandant - Sir Gordon Highlander) . Now they are trying to sell off properties in various districts like Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh. There is already a complaint registered against them in a police station in New Delhi for taking money for a piece of land but not delivering it to the buyer. The said matter is of the year 2010. This is only one part of their shoddy activities. Their website which claims for conducting so many christian activities in India is actually a scam since these pics are of actually from their school which they are running in Vikas Nagar Dehradun.
<p>
The main participants of the scam are Samuel Peter Prakash (Metropolitan), his Son John Ashish Prakash (Next projected Metropolitan) Daughter Madhulika Joyce Khanna (She has been married to a punjabi Hindu family and hence should not be a part of any Christian activity let alone heading the Church as Secretary). Sir, as far as I know there is no such post of Secretary in Anglican Church of India.
<p>
Sir, on their website they have shown John Ashish Prakash as the Bishop of Nagpur Diocese. The real fact is that they have no missionary work in that area. Not a single Church is being run by them. All claims are false and bogus.
<p>
Sir I am writing to all of you so that you may kindly remove them from your list of affiliated Churches since they are also tarnishing your name by showing them as being associated with you and people in India are being duped because of this affiliation.
<p>
Sir, with most respect I beg to say that if your organization is not taking any action upon these people we would be left with no other choice but to take the matter to the legal authorities and your connections to them will also be questioned.
<p>
Your Brother in Christ
<br>
An Anglican
</blockquote>
I think the basic issue is that the TAC has been a futile effort from the start, with leadership tainted by scandal and its most visible project, the effort to enter the Roman Catholic Church via <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, collapsed in bad faith and years of litigation. The situation in India has been little other than a confirmation that you don't get figs from thistles or grapes from thornbushes -- and unfortunately, this applies as well to the current generation of TAC leadership.
<p>These men are false prophets, no better than their colleagues in India, and it's unrealistic to expect them to change. The most anyone can do is convince their followers, especially anyone who thinks remonstrance will have any effect with these men, to put their faith elsewhere.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-43946780416943612702022-09-06T06:50:00.003-07:002022-09-06T07:11:58.807-07:00 "We Mustbe Careful From These Persons Who Are Claiming To Be Anglican Leaders" Over the past week or so, I've had a series of e-mails from a visitor in India who's brought my attention to what amounts to a continuing con operation by the so-called Anglican Church of India. It's worth noting that in the runup to <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, the late John Hepworth, then Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, was for a time the most vocal advocate for a Roman Catholic personal prelature for disaffected Anglicans, and in support of his petition, he cited a worldwide membership in the TAC of 450,000, of which 400,000 were assumed to be in India, since verifiable membership in the other TAC components, UK, US, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, was barely into the low five figures.
<p>Nevertheless, it's hard for me not to think this number was in Pope Benedict's mind when he referred to "groups of Anglicans" who petitioned "repeatedly and insistently" to be received into the Catholic Church. But people who investigated the actual state of affairs in the Anglican Church of India came away with a very different impression. <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2012/12/more-on-empty-shell.html" target="_blank">Early in the history of this blog,</a> I posted the contents of an e-mail from a retired priest of the TAC-affiliated Anglican Church in America who moved to India and hoped to continue a ministry there in his retirement. His experience is worth reprinting here:
<blockquote>
[E]very "number" I have ever seen published by the TAC or any member church has been greatly inflated or totally falsified from the beginning ... I have actually never seen any "church" here whatsoever - it's like a ghost.
<p>
The reason I decided to transfer my canonical residency to the TAC Church of India was because I fully expected to find an organized, thriving church here under Archbishop Samuel Prakash. A [thriving] group of TEC'ers poised and ready to enter the Ordinariate. +Hepworth was going to make a trip here (to Delhi, where +Prakash is located) in November of 2010. I was invited to go. I was told so by none-other-than +Hepworth during several Skype conversations. That meeting never took place.
<p>
When I arrived .... I found out from +Prakash that I would be living in the "Diocese of Nandyal" - - unfortunately, there is only one "parish" here... and "here" is the village of Nandyal - around 300 km. due-south of Hyderabad - and the Bishop is the Rector..."parish" is his family, meeting in his [house]...and no English is spoken - only Telugu.
</blockquote>
Later in the post, I quoted Abp Prakash himself on the Anglican Church of India's website, who uttered the words that appear in the title of this post, "We mustbe [sic] careful from these persons who are claiming to be Anglican leaders". However, not much has been reported outside India on the subsequent history of this TAC-affiliated church and its activities. My correspondence with this visitor from India has brought things somewhat more up to date, but there's clearly been no change:
<blockquote>
I was actually associated with Samuel Prakash, who claims to be the Metropolitan of India ACI, he has appointed many Non-Christian people as Secretary, Principal Officer, Property Officer etc. who are involved only in selling of the Anglican properties.
</blockquote>
This is an accusation I sometimes saw about the ACI when I first looked at the whole question of the Traditional Anglican Communion. The visitor gives some historical background, which I have slightly edited to US from South Asian English:
<blockquote>
The Anglican Church in India was formed in 1927 through the Indian Church Act, and the Church was governed by the Government itself, the Crown being the Supreme Governor of the Church. After the Independence of India in 1947, The British handed over the Church and its properties to the Anglican Church of India through a gazette notification. Since all aid stopped from the Government [i.e., the ACI as Church of England surrogate was no longer established in India] the Church started to suffer. In 1970 six Churches which included the Anglican Church of India came into a union through which Church of North India & Church of South India was formed. This is duly functioning up to now, although they are also involved into so many fraudulent activities for which I am contacting the International Anglican Communion, but have not got any positive response.
<p>John Asa Prakash (Father of Samuel Prakash) was a priest of the Anglican Church of India during that time. It was he that resisted this union and declared himself the Bishop of the Anglican Church of India.
</blockquote>
The visitor at this point brings Louis Falk into the story, and I'll supplement his account with what I've learned about Falk in the course of research for this blog. I gave a <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2013/02/who-is-louis-falk-v.html" target="_blank">thumbnail of Falk's career in this 2013 post here</a>. A member of a prominent Wisconsin family (though a bit of a black sheep), Louis Falk (1935-) was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1963, but he was almost immediately involved in scandal, and he was defrocked or "deposed" from the Episcopal priesthood in 1965, moving as well from Wisconsin to Iowa, where he quietly went into business.
<p>However, the dissident movement in The Episcopal Church after its 1976 general convention rekindled his interest in the quasi-priesthood, and once the movement gained momentum in the late 1970s, he quickly rose in what became the first Anglican Church in North America, which then morphed into the Anglican Catholic Church, with Falk eventually replacing James Mote as its primate.
<p>Always a political schemer, Falk ran into opposition within the ACC, but in retaliation, in 1991 he founded a worldwide umbrella body, the Traditional Anglican Communion, of which he became the primate, and he created the Anglican Church in America as part of the TAC, a body in which he could also preside. (The ACC, which had expelled Falk, continued as a separate body unaffiliated with the TAC. All these organizations were small, poor, and shrinking.)
<p>The exact mechanism by which Samuel Prakash and the Anglican Church in India came into the Traditional Anglican Communion remains unclear. Although the TAC was founded in 1991, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Prakash" target="_blank">according to Wikipedia</a>, "Prakash was consecrated as a bishop of the Anglican Church of India on 6 October 1984 at the YMCA Hall in New Delhi by Louis Falk, assisted by James Orin Mote and John Asa Prakash." Falk was a defrocked priest of the US Episcopal Church and a self-designated priest and bishop of the ACC; James Mote was a dissident Episcopal priest who had left that body and become a self-designated bishop and at the time was the retired primate of the ACC. Neither had apostolic authority except in his own mind to consecrate anyone a bishop, much less in a defunct denomination halfway around the world.
(The Roman Catholic Church, which invented bishops, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolicae_curae" target="_blank">has held since 1896</a> that no Anglican of any sort has this authority.)
<p>The visitor from India has forwarded a few documents that strongly suggest Prakash's business practices have been deceptive. For instance, here is a 2017 communication from the ACI to Indian government offices that misrepresents the ACI on its letterhead as part of the "Worldwide Anglican Communion", which it is not:
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuE0U_DQVQvA3dfbGw5mLkHMcsRxyRE6Q10DrKEp2aNfsluuzP7UdUEdak8Q2atdlpd_2bTlF9nbWXMCrCdJzkRA-lLLKRtsms5IsUV2sanN8UdAinfYb4EpxfbSBpQUWqvZDnh4GhHlSzjGazEkQ5gautZ50IObCaz4pbEHDQl5GEVSg301EuHG1/s1280/prakash%20letter.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKuE0U_DQVQvA3dfbGw5mLkHMcsRxyRE6Q10DrKEp2aNfsluuzP7UdUEdak8Q2atdlpd_2bTlF9nbWXMCrCdJzkRA-lLLKRtsms5IsUV2sanN8UdAinfYb4EpxfbSBpQUWqvZDnh4GhHlSzjGazEkQ5gautZ50IObCaz4pbEHDQl5GEVSg301EuHG1/s600/prakash%20letter.jpg"/></a></div>
Another copy of a 2016 letter shows that the ACI letterhead as of then referred to the "Worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion", which was correct as of then. Nevertheless, it shows that the primary activity of the TAC-ACI was to acquire and sell off what properties of the defunct former Anglican Church of India that it could.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_d_BVIZEMocHfBTUdPl3xUJv9IR_g4bUs0_-VfcmjWxZrMNWuV6JPQCQKByznWfQudIbKJ4bRq6TN1JapvCo5soL3XZneJHGQjw1ZPbdC8yT857n5o-df2xG9SU5UeT3SgggrpvVRH-MiX3wVbOMIbuYwxrfNu2EylwB5pLf3DyKs0_p40ylEvq7Q/s742/prakash%20letter%202.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="742" data-original-width="561" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_d_BVIZEMocHfBTUdPl3xUJv9IR_g4bUs0_-VfcmjWxZrMNWuV6JPQCQKByznWfQudIbKJ4bRq6TN1JapvCo5soL3XZneJHGQjw1ZPbdC8yT857n5o-df2xG9SU5UeT3SgggrpvVRH-MiX3wVbOMIbuYwxrfNu2EylwB5pLf3DyKs0_p40ylEvq7Q/s600/prakash%20letter%202.jpg"/></a></div>
It's difficult to say how much Louis Falk or James Mote knew of Samuel Prakash's activities, which as far as I can determine have always been deliberately deceptive, since he seems to claim to be primate of a denomination on the Anglican model that actually has few or no actual parishes, few or no actual members, and indeed as we see employs many non-Christians in its holy work, which consists of acquiring and selling putative properties of a defunct denomination.
<p>While the Traditional Anglican Church, as of 2020 successor to the TAC, currently makes no claim of numbers on its <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Anglican_Church" target="_blank">Wikipedia page</a>, the TAC was <a href="http://anglicancontinuum.blogspot.com/2008/07/so-how-many-are-we-really.html" target="_blank">well known as of 2008 for claiming numbers</a> "like 400,000 and 700,000 for their worldwide membership". These would have come from Falk's successor as primate after 2002, the late John Hepworth. Hepworth's history is as sketchy as Falk's; he had been ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Australia but left the priesthood in uncertain circumstances and then married twice. After 1990, he became active in the TAC-affiliated Anglican Catholic Church of Australia, rose to be its primate, and succeeded Falk as TAC primate in 2002.
<p>In the runup to <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, he had hoped to be restored to the Catholic priesthood under its conditions, but as this prospect became unlikely, he alleged that he had been subject to abuse as a seminarian. I came to know him slightly after 2012, and from his accounts, I got the impression that Catholic authorities treated him politely but never took him seriously as an Anglican spokesman. In this, I suspect their assessments of his credibility were correct.
<p>It's hard for me to avoid thinking that at best, Hepworth found it advantageous to look the other way over Prakash's claims, and we know from the above account of the retired US ACA-TAC priest who went to India that these were the sorts of claims Prakash always made -- but minimal inquiry would have shown they were false. From the same account, we also saw that Hepworth himself made optimistic predictions about India that also never came true.
<p>The comic-opera TAC College of Bishops forced Hepworth out as primate in 2012, largely but not exclusively due to the debacle <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i> proved to be for both Hepworth and the TAC, but I think it's significant that the man whom the bishops voted in to replace Hepworth as "acting primate" was Samuel Prakash, whose "province" was made up entirely of smoke and mirrors. This was likely convenient, as Prakash would be unlikely to rock the boat by challenging any of the other bishops, but none of the TAC's provinces was consequential, and all were and still are shrinking by the year.
<p>Prakash was replaced as acting primate of the TAC when Canadian Bishop Shane Janzen of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada was elected primate, but the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Catholic_Church_of_Canada" target="_blank">Wikipedia entry for the ACCC</a> says that at the time of <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, it had 35 groups, while at the current time it says there are 14. None of these people, Prakash or his colleagues, fronts a serious enterprise.
<p>If the TAC-based Anglican Church of India is almost entirely a fictional church, we still have the question of how successful it's been as a fraud, and for that, we simply don't have a good answer. The visitor from India who brought this issue to my attention last week has been concerned that I help in making it public, but I can only surmise that the ACI is a tiny minority within a minority. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_India" target="_blank">Wikipedia says</a> there are about 27.8 million Christians of all denominations in India, making up 2.3 percent of the population. Of these, Protestants of all denominations including Anglican are 59%, but the ACI must be a near-invisible component of this group.
<p>For the ACI to attract the attention of Indian media, it seems as though it would need to be larger, and indeed more successful as a fraudulent enterprise, than it's been. And frauds of all shapes and sizes have been part of religious sects forever, the smaller and more credulous the groups the better.
<p>Still, it's worth pointing out that the Traditional Anglican Church, he TAC's successor, <a href="http://traditionalanglicanchurch.com/home/places-to-worship" target="_blank">continues to list the Anglican Church of India as a province on its website</a>. Though it makes no claim as to its membership (or the membership of any other province), that it should cite India as a province at all must be considered a matter of borrowed prestige that in fact is deceptive.
<p>But the "continuing Anglican" movement is tiny and shrinking no matter what. The actuarial tables have been driving this process from the start. It may be too much to expect the leadership of the Traditional Anglican Church to clean house at this late stage, although it ought -- if they did, it would be a sign that they take their roles as religious leaders seriously. At least they'd give the whole project a decent burial.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-43720587508867402292021-04-21T07:59:00.002-07:002021-04-21T08:02:09.559-07:00Concerns At Our Lady Of WalsinghamI simply haven't heard enough of events in the North American ordinariate to post more than occasionally about what's going on there, but I recently got an e-mail from "A Concerned Walsingham Parishioner" that revives suspicions I'd begun to have during Bp Lopes's extended indisposition last year, after falling from an attic ladder in his residence.
<p>My regular correspondent reminds me that I posted an e-mail from a Walsingham parishioner o<a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2020/06/another-ordinariate-personnel-move.html" target="_blank">n june 27, 2020</a> as well, regarding the promotion of Mr Josue Vásquez-Weber, who had previously been Bp Lopes's executive assistant, to the position of Chancellor. The post at that time said,
<blockquote>
The individual who reported J Henry's promotion gave this background:
<blockquote>
From being the Facilities Manager at St. Theresa's in Sugar Land, Texas, to becoming the personal assistant and now CHANCELLOR for Lopes, Josue's rise in the Ordinariate is truly astronomical in nature! Especially for someone that clearly doesn't know anything! Not only that, but he's also Bishop Lopes' "housemate".</blockquote>
My regular correspondent and I have noted the not entirely decorous tone with reference to the bishop in J Henry's letters to clergy that implies an absence of supervisor-subordinate boundaries, and the visitor's assertion here may reflect this as well.
<p>
Just last evening I was reflecting on how Our Lady of the Atonement has had a great deal of turmoil, but in contrast, Our Lady of Walsingham seems to have been quiet. The visitor here suggests this may not necessarily be the case.
</blockquote>
A new e-mail -- at this point, I can't verify that the two messages are from two different people, as they're both anonymous -- reads as follows:
<blockquote>
For about 5 months or so, Josue has taken it upon himself to not only completely and utterly destroy the mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Walsingham (even whispering into Lopes' ear and changing mass procedure DURING MASS), but also to terrorize the workers, staff, and other members of the parish with his own childish tantrums. Indeed, a seminary drop-out with absolutely no qualifications other than a suspicious proximity to the bishop has absolutely nothing to do other than establish his authority to be of far greater heights than his diminutive stature.
<p>
This man has made people who work at Walsingham - who have built this parish, by the way, with no need of Lopes' or Josue's help whatsoever - cry, consider quitting, and overall come close to having, if not outright actually having, suicidal thoughts.
<p>
The man has ruined a project for a high school that was not his whatsoever, destroying fundraising possibilities. He changed landscaping that a very generous parishioner had ultimately paid for. He has changed musical choices (where he feels like he has any knowledge of music is unbeknownst to me, I don't think this man can actually tell two notes from the sound of a jackhammer) from the very capable musicians there, even wanting to sing! </blockquote>
I ran some of the information in the e-mail past my regular correspondent, who replied
<blockquote>
As we have noted, Mr Vasquez-Weber and Bp Lopes seem inseparable; live-stream from the Cathedral and postings about visits from the bishop on community websites/FB pages from anywhere around the country invariably show J. Henry acting as SD when Bp Lopes celebrates. I am not surprised to hear that he feels entitled to speak on behalf of the bishop where liturgy and music are concerned, or that he sticks his oar in elsewhere in the administration of the parish, and probably in other areas of OCSP business. Of course he has no background either with the parish or the “Anglican Patrimony,” but his relationship with Bp Lopes makes that irrelevant.
<p>Not a recipe for popularity.
<p>As far as the high school is concerned, the latest on the OLW website is the <a href="https://d2y1pz2y630308.cloudfront.net/5119/documents/2020/1/OLW%20Executive%20Summary%201.pdf%20%20" target="_blank">report of the fundraising firm completed in December 2019</a>. It was very positive, but since that time, nothing seems to have been done, although obviously 2020 was not a great time for fundraising/building projects. It would be interesting to know exactly how J Henry is seen to have sabotaged the scheme.
<p>I have assumed that Fr Perkins’ elevation to Monsignor is a prelude to his retirement. Unfortunately for Bp Lopes experienced administrative talent is pretty thin on the ground in the OCSP. </blockquote>
I would be interested to hear any information that would either contradict or confirm the allegations from the Walsingham parishioner here. I publish them prompted, now at some distance and greater detachment from covering <i>Anglicanorum coetibus,</i> because I felt something was hinky about the Houston chancery all along, and this stirs my suspicions yet again.
<p>But also, it's worth pointing out that, almost ten years after the erection of the North American ordinariate, a lot of people have become disappointed in the project, and it's certainly had more than its share of scandals. I think what I may do is write a series of posts on the new blog exploring what I think is the clear failure of the <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i> project and the reasons for it.
<p>In the meantime, if anyone else can shed light on what's happening at Our Lady of Walsingham, I'll be happy to hear it.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-12993805909188927782021-03-23T11:58:00.003-07:002021-03-23T12:59:52.554-07:00How Is This Catholic?Let me preface this post by stressing, again, that in 2013, unable to enter the Church via <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>, I joined the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church via RCIA. Since then I've attended <i>novus ordo </i>masses. My view is that, as a convert, it would be absurd for me to say that the Church to which I converted somehow got it all, or even some of it, wrong in Vatican II. So I've been increasingly skeptical of the tendency of the North American ordinariate to ally itself, in however unspoken a way, with the pre-Conciliarist movement in the Church.
<p>
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A visitor sent me a copy of the announcement to the St Barnabas Omaha ordinariate parish of the appointment of a new pastor, Dcn Stephen Hilgendorf. The announcement was accompnied by what seems to have become the standard pastoral family portrait, the deacon himself with his wife and children. The wife and family are unusual in themselves for the diocesan priesthood, of course, but even more unusual is that his wife and daughter are wearing chapel veils. The Roman Catholic Church has no particular prescription regarding women's head covering, but the implication, in Omaha now as elsewhere, seems to be that if women in the ordinariate aren't wearing chapel veils, they aren't with the program.
<p>The puzzling thing here is that <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i> was, at least originally, intended to create an environment where Anglicans could feel comfortable coming to a Catholic mass, or something like that. But neither Episcopalians nor continuers had chapel veils as a practice. This is, for Catholics, an archaism maintained, as far as I can observe, either by elderly women or younger women from countries where this has been a more recent practice -- but there is no liturgical or doctrinal requirement for it, and the Church has no position. Ladies who are plenty devout come to mass in our parish without them.
<p>By the same token, the ordinariate, though this isn't universal, seems to have adopted a preference for receiving communion kneeling and on the tongue. In at least some cases, this is enforced by distributing the sacrament via intinction, leaving the communicant no option, though the Church allows either. I'm told, though, that intinction is from the Catholic perspective in fact a post-Conciliar innovation. Here it seems to be adopted as, like chapel veils, something of an affected archaism, though in the Church intinction isn't archaic at all.
<p>For that matter, I'm told that despite the stuffiness of the Divine Worship liturgy, the masses at the Our Lady of the Atonement ordinariate parish are very popular because they're the only place in town where people can get the sacrament on the tongue. The position of the USCCB, that is, the Roman Catholic Church, is that communion in the hand and on the tongue are equally valid. As I age and my hands shake, I prefer it on the tongue for convenience, but each winter, our parish suspends the practice during flu season and has naturally extended it during the current COVID situation.
<p>I deal with it. I certainly don't go hunting for some parish an hour's drive away where I can get the sacrament on the tongue no matter what. What is Dcn Hilgendorf's policy on administering on the tongue? What would happen if, like most Episcopalians, I came to his communion rail with my hands extended?
<p>The impression I have, just from the photo with the announcement of his appointment, is that Dcn Hilgendorf is With The Program, which is to say that he endorses neither Anglican nor typically Catholic practices like chapel veils and effectively compulsory communion on the tongue, and possibly post-Conciliar innovations like intinction -- a highly idiosyncratic and not even very Anglican combination that suggests there's quite a bit of private judgment being introduced to Catholicism in the ordinariate. And it looks like he's enthusiastic about it.
<p>It reminds me of recent remarks by Bp Barron to the effect that you don't get any higher authority in the Catholic Church than an ecumenical council. To pre-Conciliarists who say there are certain parts of Vatican II they don't accept, he asks what parts of Trent they don't accept. What parts of the Nicene Creed do they not accept? There's a word for people who think this way, and it's Protestants.
<p>I'm more and more convinced that the practical implementation of <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i> has been, rather than welcome Anglicans into the Catholic Church, instead to create something like a whole new Protestant denomination, Anglo-Liberal in its orientation though affecting eclectic conservative forms, with the not fully witting endorsement of Catholic authorities.
<p>I note that Dcn Hilgendorf's background includes a bachelor's from Hillsdale College. I've taken many of Hillsdale's on line courses, and I'm convinced it's possible to get a much better education there than I got in the Ivy League 50 years ago. I've also been highly impressed by the class participaion of students there in video classes -- but I'm sure Dr Arnn carefully picks them for such sessions, because I know from some I've met that it's very possible to go to Hillsdale College and still be silly.
<p>I'm not yet sure about Dcn Hilgendorf. I would, though, expect a Hillsdale alum to do better than get with the ordinariate program, especially if he's claiming to be, of all things, a Catholic priest. Dcn Hilgendorf, what parts of USCCB policy don't you accept? There must certainly be some.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-13473553154365954272021-02-15T07:58:00.001-08:002021-02-15T09:11:39.921-08:00Is Australia Unique?It seems to me that the problems the CDF has identified with the Australian ordinariate differ from those in the UK and US only in degree -- all suffer from stagnant growth and financially weak parishes that can't pay a priest's stipend. Most clergy require outside incomes, either from pensions or day jobs. All have aging clergy with little depth in the replacement pools. So why single out
Australia, except as the worst of an unpromising bunch? My regular correspondent comments,
<blockquote>
The Pastoral Provision was allowed to totter on for 22 years—-indeed technically the congregation of St Athanasius, Chestnut Hill is still a PP parish. Why is the CDF taking a hard line with the Australian ordinariate? Why not just allow it to die a natural death? Is the whole ordinariate project being seen, belatedly, as a bad look for the Church?
<p>
If the plan is to make the ordinariates justify their existence, the UK will be next in the crosshairs. It has one building to its name, no stipendiary clergy apart from those in local diocesan employ, and as we have often discussed is the least interested in maintaining Anglican liturgical patrimony, since most of its clergy used the OF even when in the CofE.
<p>Its financial resources are few and it has failed to grow; indeed the <a href="http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dgbpo.html" target="_blank">latest data at catholic-hierarchy.org</a> from the Annuario Pontificio shows that its membership has declined by about half since 2014-16 and it has lost five communities since its high point in 2014. For purposes of comparison, the Australian ordinariate had 1,200 members in 2019.
<p>With an official membership of 6,040 the US ordinariate is twice as big as the other two Ordinariates combined. It has some buildings and some money. But if the project is coming under scrutiny in Rome we know that there is plenty of cause for concern in Houston as well. </blockquote>
The passing of the project's most powerful patron, Cdl Law, and the retirement of Pope Benedict XVI mean that the opportunity for reassessment is growing. Insofar as the talent pool even in the US is mainly marginal ex-Protetant clergy, I think bishops would be correct in having a concern that people who walk into an ordinariate parish that calls itself a "Catholic church" don't get a consistent product.
<p>For now, thouigh, the bishops have other priorities -- a scandal couild change that. The situation at St Barnabas Omaha is an indication that parishes aren't well supervised, and serious problems aren't addressed before they're out of control.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-30409997144269521032021-02-14T07:45:00.001-08:002021-02-14T07:47:03.719-08:00Australian Ordinariate Threatened With ClosureAn Australian visitor sent me the following e-mail:
<blockquote>
[T]he Australian Ordinariate . . . has been given less than a year by the Vatican to become financially viable or their future will be decided by the Australian Bishops (who will wipe them out). There is no way they will meet these financial goals.
<p>
Below is the message the Australian Ordinary emailed out to selected Ordinariate members with the attached file in the attachment of this email- but they never intended for the information to go public as they are keeping the information from others parties who should know. I ask you to publish the information in its entirety to bring some transparency into the matter as the former Ordinary Harry Entwistle is an incompetent fraud . . . who doomed the Australian Ordinariate, and Reid is little better: both appointed TAC bishops by Hepworth himself, and the apples did not fall far from the tree.
<blockquote>
Dear Friends and Supporters of the Ordinariate,
<p>
By now you will be aware that we have been, for some years, attempting to encourage the clergy, faithful and supporters of the Ordinariate to use various evangelism talents and tools to build up the membership. And that’s important if we hope for there to be subsequent generations in our communities, with one of the most pressing related problems to small membership being the ability to support financially new priests when our current clergy must retire. Most of them are on pensions of some sort, and many also have their own accommodation, so the issues of stipend, housing etc. have not been at the forefront of our collective thinking. We’ve been trying to make it more pressing, and now our Rome “parent” has requested that there be some concrete benchmarks or milestones looking ahead.
<p>
The attached letter from our Episcopal Vicar lays this out, following on from a Governing Council meeting last week.
<p>
With my prayers that we can ensure that there will indeed be future generations who have a stable church home in the Ordinariate!
<p>
Monsignor Carl Reid, Ordinary
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
The letter itself, which was attached to the e-mail in a pdf, is reproduced below (click on the images for larger copies). The bottom line is pretty clear. Toward the bottom of the first page:
<blockquote>
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued a timeline, and that timeline is dependent
on us, the priests and laity of the Ordinariate.
<ul>
<li>
The major city parishes must be able to sustain financially a priest. These communities must
generate and have in hand $30,000 by the end of 2021, and have the same amount in pledged
donations for 2022, ending in 2023. The amount will be matched by the Ordinariate,
provided each major city parish achieves the target.
<li>If this benchmark above is not met, then letters will be sent to the ACBC by January of 2022
at the latest, asking counsel regarding the future of OLSC.
</ul>
</blockquote>
The Australian ordinariate has been the smallest and weakest of the three that were erected under <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>. What I find significant here is not that it's likely to be closed a year from now, but that the CDF appears to be monitoring all the ordinariates for signs of growth and financial health. It's simply not encouraging to say, "Well, at least it's not the North American or UK ordinariate that's threatened, huh?" That's not the good news. The bad news is that the CDF seems now to be interested in whether the whole project is worth the trouble.
<p>Ask not for whom the bell tolls.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB8nA4Nb_k9nj2IZ1nZeqBz2DMdr58vDsZ21ZR0wEDoII-aSbBoKVj92rZYrwaAEy0W9bgMtmXv1nrE82iipjmJFdtq0LJ7z2lg4mR6FhGqSv8MRdV9WtXcBKog83Zy9BfmxM1sQvt_d8/s896/australian+ordinariate+p1.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="896" data-original-width="618" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhB8nA4Nb_k9nj2IZ1nZeqBz2DMdr58vDsZ21ZR0wEDoII-aSbBoKVj92rZYrwaAEy0W9bgMtmXv1nrE82iipjmJFdtq0LJ7z2lg4mR6FhGqSv8MRdV9WtXcBKog83Zy9BfmxM1sQvt_d8/s600/australian+ordinariate+p1.png"/></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7rEo_CR470lR5K5z9LdHLVmZG-CHkn7vGmh7PLps2CkhL8p6gPRn0dJyXa4ChDrcRya3joVWc64SGde6u8qNX8otr3u15DbiuFqjTQyzeJcoEm6WntKt5TtbJUNjyagf5ernSXrk4rg/s864/australian+ordinariate+p2.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="600" data-original-height="864" data-original-width="605" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW7rEo_CR470lR5K5z9LdHLVmZG-CHkn7vGmh7PLps2CkhL8p6gPRn0dJyXa4ChDrcRya3joVWc64SGde6u8qNX8otr3u15DbiuFqjTQyzeJcoEm6WntKt5TtbJUNjyagf5ernSXrk4rg/s600/australian+ordinariate+p2.png"/></a></div>John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-59737630584202302802021-02-11T09:24:00.007-08:002021-02-11T10:32:11.326-08:00Out Of Court Settlement For Most Recent St Mary's Hollywood LawsuitsA knowledgeable party has told me that there's been an out of court settlement for the most recent set of St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, CA lawsuits. Over the past 45 years, that Anglican parish has been involved in litigation more often than not, with three major groups of lawsuits, the first over its leaving The Episcopal Church, the second over its leaving the Anglican Catholic Church, and the third over its leaving the Anglican Church in America in an attempt to enter the North American ordinariate of the Roman Catholic Church under the provisions of <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i>.
<p>The settlement comes for a subset of the most recent litigation. In it, over the course of nearly a decade, the courts seesawed in a series of opinions and appeals over which vestry, one backed by the ACA or one comprising a group intending to enter the ordinariate, controlled the parish property.
<p>The legal fees involved could be met only because the parish received substantial rental income from a commercial property it had developed in the 1980s. The successive vestries were able to use the income and the collateralized value of the commercial property to pay at least five teams of lawyers in successive lawsuits. But ten years of litigattion meant that this was more than even a multimillion-dollar commercial property could sustain.
<p>Most recently, the victorious vestry, faced with the need to keep payments up on a loan that had been secured by the losing vestry to pay their own lawyers, refused to pay that loan on the basis that the losing vestry had no authority to take it out, since they'd lost. The lender obviously disagreed and wanted the loan repaid. This cycle of litigation went on for several years, delayed in 2020 by COVID.
<p>The individual who contacted me said he'd known generally that talks were under way for an out-of-court settlement, but that the attorney for the lenders had contacted him just the other day to confirm that the settlement had taken place, saying only "St Mary bought out our liens (though at a steep discount) and sold one of the properties to fund it.”
<p>The knowledgeable party interpreted this to mean that the ACA vestry was forced finally to sell the income-producing commercial property, leaving only the parcel on which the church building itself is located. But since such an out of court settlement is likely to be confidential, it hasn't been covered in local media, and this must be considered speculation by a party who has been close to the situation, but not privy to the current settlement.
<p>However, legal actions over the past decade have resulted in the church parking lot being deemed part of the adjoining commercial property, so that the church no longer has any off-street parking available, in an area where any on-street parking is very difficult to find.
<p>But the weekly offerings to the parish have never met its expenses without the rental income from the commercial property. I served briefly as the parish treasurer during its initial attempt to join the ordinariate, and weekly offerings from the several dozen regular members were in the $1000 range. Periodic total closure of the parish, its uncertain disposition, and the general controversy have decimated even this group. As of 2011, the parish's general expenses were in the $250,000 per year range. Utilities, heating, insurance, and maintenance costs on an aging building will continue.
<p>A major part of the ACA's desire to keep the parish, we must assume, was the diocesan tithe from the annual rental income. It appears that the ACA has lost this (it probably never got much in any case), while the parish now continues as a potential major liability to the denomination. It can now only sustain very marginal, poorly supervised "continuinng Anglican" clergy who will inevitably be up to mischief.
<p>But in addition, the church building is designated Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument No. 136. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Historic-Cultural_Monument" target="_blank">According to Wikipedia</a>, this does not prevent demolition or alteration. However, the designation requires permits for demolition or substantial alteration to be presented to a historic monument commission. The commission has the power to delay the demolition of a designated property for up to one year.
<p>It's extremely doubtful that the parish can meet its continuing major expenses without the income from the commercial property, and its membership is probably minimal at this point. I would not expect it to survive as a corporate institution much longer.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-64049544345641185532021-02-06T08:48:00.006-08:002021-02-06T12:23:35.630-08:00More On The Spending At St Barnabas OmahaSince St Barnabas came into the North American ordinariate, there's been an enormous amount of construction activity and property acquisition that I hadn't really spent much time tracking down. In hindsight, it was far out of proportion to the size of the parish.
<p>Just as a start to getting an idea of what had been going on,
my regular correspondent sent me <a href="https://omaha.com/lifestyles/former-anglican-church-st-barnabas-ready-for-new-chapter-as-a-site-of-catholic-worship/article_70f05315-50b1-5bca-ab46-788d98517b83.html" target="_blank">this link to a 2017 story </a>(it may require you to answer a quiz question before you can see the text):
<blockquote>
In 2013, St. Barnabas made a cash payment to the Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska allowing the church to permanently occupy its historic building at 129 N. 40th St. The congregation and the diocese reached the out-of-court settlement after a Douglas County District Court judge ruled that church members must surrender the structure, the rectory and other property to the diocese.
<p>
Renovations on the building started in September 2016, with routine repairs to the plaster ceiling, Catania said. In the process, workers discovered more serious problems and opened up the ceiling to the peak of the roof.
<p>
“We thought ‘If we’re doing this, what else can we do?’ ” the priest said.
<p>
The church ended up with new paint and lights and refinished pews and floors. The sanctuary floor also was lowered nine inches to accommodate the three steps up to the altar that are common in older Catholic churches.
</blockquote>
My regular correspondent provided updates on post-2017 spending:
<blockquote>
Presumably purchasing its property from the local TEC diocese depleted any endowment the TEC parish had. The new legacy, however, made it possible for the parish to undertake the renovations described [above]. In addition, the rectory was demolished and a landmark house in the neighbourhood was purchased. It sold for $800,000 in 2013 and presumably for more than that when the parish bought it in 2019. Converting it from a nine-bedroom bnb to the uses described in the linked article must have also cost a fair bit.
<p>I believe the parish also purchased two apartment buildings next door to it which now house the St Barnabas Academy and possibly the music director. Fr Catania lived there before the Offutt-Yost mansion was purchased. In 2018 the church bell was refurbished and a new electrical ringing apparatus installed.
<p>You reported on the purchase of the apartment building(s) on June 23, 2017. I see that a new organ had also been installed. Presumably the demolition of the former rectory was related to the long-standing parking problem <a href="https://virtueonline.org/omaha-neb-st-barnabas-legal-status-still-question" target="_blank">described here</a>. The lot was poured and painted in April 2019.
<p>The church also purchased a bus to collect Sunday attendees in what I assume is an area poorly served by public transit. It is evident that the $150,000 +/- budgeted for annual givings would not sustain the parish without the addition of substantial income from other sources, and if the recent endowment has been used for these other projects there is no other income.
<p>A parish of this size (I counted about 50-60 people in the pews in a FB picture of Bp Lopes’ visit last Sunday) can’t afford this, certainly not in the space of three or four years.
</blockquote>
Whatever the specifics, it appears that the parish's current financial situation is dire. I still have a difficult time envisioning exactly what buildings are in the current complex, exactly how they're used, exactly what the parish's current programs are, and whether any bring in any significant income.
<p>I would be interested to hear any serious plans for how the parish intends to dig itself out of this situation -- the new priest will, it seems to me, have challenges that are greater than would normally be faced by ex-Protestant clergy with often marginal or part-time careers serving small and desultory groups. But if no new leadership of any sort will arrive until July, I wonder if the parish can even last until then, if that's when any serious work will even begin.
<p>UPDATE: A knowledgeable party adds:
<p>
Some clarifying info regarding your latest post:
<p>
<blockquote>1) The settlement with TEC for the building was paid for with an advance from the bequest before the parish received the full amount (after the parishioner died).
<p>
2) The Offutt House was acquired via a house-swap. After tearing down the original rectory, the parish, at the instigation of Bishop Lopes, purchased a house two blocks down the road for use as a rectory. In the meantime, the owner of the Offutt House had been trying, unsuccessfully, to sell it. She approached the parish to see if they were interested in buying it, since it was contiguous with the parish property. At the time, she wanted to sell it with an adjoining house that she also owned, and wanted $1,000,000 for the package. The parish had an independent appraisal done, which found that she was asking for far too much money, and offered her less. She balked and moved on. After several more months of being unable to sell the house, she contacted the parish again and proposed a house-swap. She would take the then-current rectory; St. Barnabas would take the Offutt House. When this was presented to the Parish Council, it was said that the parish would write her a “tax letter” for the $200,000 or so difference in additional worth of the Offutt House over the then-rectory, so she could write it off on her taxes. They were told no money would be exchanged. As it turns out, the parish ended up being on the hook to pay that $200,000, which they are still chipping away at.
<p>
3) The bus came with the Offutt House.</blockquote>John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-50880305144063843532021-02-06T07:30:00.001-08:002021-02-06T07:30:50.426-08:00US Supreme Court Partially Lifts California Ban On Indoor WorshipI have a post covering this <a href="https://mthollywood1.blogspot.com/2021/02/us-supreme-court-partially-lifts.html" target="_blank">at my new blog.</a>John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-83399577491198502462021-02-05T08:12:00.002-08:002021-02-06T06:52:56.290-08:00More On Fr Catania's Removal In OmahaMy regular correspondent discovered a video report from the St Barnabas finance committee that was put up on the parish website just before Christmas last year, outlining what was being done in what the committee (and presumably the parish laity) had come to recognize was a financial crisis. The video has since been removed from the parish website. UPDATE: <a href="https://www.saintbarnabas.net/news/178-a-stewardship-message-from-marijo-basiljevac" target="_blank">You can find it on this pag</a>e if you click on the small link below the title.
<p>The report strongly suggested that there'd been a pattern of unauthorized expenditures, which the committee had been moving to correct, although the implication seems to have been that whatever measures the committee had been taking hadn't been supported. (As someone who's served as a parish treasurer, it's hard for me not to conclude that there was an authorized signature for parish accounts who should not have been. The pastor, in any denomination, is not normally an authorized signature on business accounts.)
<p>The video concluded by saying the finance committee planned to "reach out to the chancery in January". It appears that they did this. I asked a knowledgeable visitor if the initiative for Fr Catania's removal came from the parish, not the chancery. He replied,
<blockquote> I’m told the Finance Committee was behind the ouster. They spent the better part of a year cutting spending, including on the priest, but didn’t receive much cooperation from Father Catania in terms of fundraising. The frustration with Catania’s inaction just kept growing as time went on. Once the Ordinariate business manager visited in January and saw how dire things were, the process moved pretty swiftly. Given his record in Baltimore, in Canada, and now in Omaha, Catania just doesn’t seem to be a gifted administrator. I have to wonder if it’s really his fault - was he trained to be one before being ordained a Catholic priest? Or are these guys just imported, scrubbed off, and set loose?</blockquote>
Via my regular correspondent, the business manager is Dcn Arthur Stockstill, an older man, formerly a financial analyst with Fidelity Investments and then a senior analyst with the Bank of America. He seems to be doing an effective job. A few weeks ago, a visitor forwarded this letter from Fr Lewis at Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio (Click on the image for a larger copy):
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcW6uXgA5dJw909Z_7Vyxb1sm8MJsr9QKU_2hUnEkFDdcItgWL89_9JKyxQ6IPmwnHWTqbD1R0IyoeXkPuhGLZ2smLwX2RjF-WJUB4qWDTX_hHLh8yMp6YzG0HYyEDr_VjVL0_uEZfQyU/s615/atonement+letter.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="558" data-original-width="615" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcW6uXgA5dJw909Z_7Vyxb1sm8MJsr9QKU_2hUnEkFDdcItgWL89_9JKyxQ6IPmwnHWTqbD1R0IyoeXkPuhGLZ2smLwX2RjF-WJUB4qWDTX_hHLh8yMp6YzG0HYyEDr_VjVL0_uEZfQyU/s600/atonement+letter.png"/></a></div>
His comment:
<blockquote>
Last week, Fr Lewis put out a release stating that the Bishop came to do a review of the office and as a result, several changes were made. The thing about these changes is that they are basically reversing organizational shifts made by Fr Lewis. Whereas Fr Lewis’ approach seemed to be to hire his way out of the mess, even turning down volunteers that wanted to help. Someone must have finally identified that approach as being unsustainable. Took 3 years to figure out.
</blockquote>
It appears that when prompted, the chancery can move effectively to resolve issues -- though these issues seem only to surface when they're out of control. Dcn Stockstill has my best wishes.
<p>Since becoming Catholic and seeing what deacons do, I have a great deal of respect for them.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-43753804237344569662021-02-03T08:03:00.002-08:002021-02-03T08:53:36.178-08:00Ordinariate News Update: Pastor Removed From St Barnabas OmahaI noted when I placed this blog in inactive status that I would update it as needed if important developments warrant it. Yesterday, I received the following e-mail:
<blockquote>Bishop Lopes held an emergency meeting at St. Barnabas on Sunday [January 31]. Father Catania is being removed as pastor, and transferred to St. Luke’s in Washington, D.C. as an associate, effective March 1st. This is a result of his having completely spent the endowment totaling several millions of dollars. The parish has been broke for several months.</blockquote>
Further information indicates that Deacon Patrick Simons has been appointed Parochial Administrator until then. A replacement pastor from the ordinariate will not arrive until July 1, and the visitor tells me that there will be supply priests from the Archdiocese of Omaha saying mass until then. The replacement priest from the ordinariate has not been named, but a rumor is that he'll be married with a family.
<p>The St Barnabas parish is one of very few that were dissident Episcopalian or Anglican Church of Canada and came into the North American ordinariate as a corporate body with property and endowments. (However, the expectation in promulgating <i>Anglicanorum coetibus</i> was that there could be scores or even hundreds of these. This has beern a significant, if unacknowledged, disappointment in Benedict XVI's papacy.)
<p>In additon to the property it brought over from The Episcopal Church, St Barnabas had received a multimillion-dollar bequest after becoming part of the Roman Catholic ordinariate. Over the past several years, I've heard variouis expressions of concern over the level of spending there. My regular correspondent sent me this screen shot of a 2017 Facebook post covering a dinner welcoming Bp Lopes on a visit (Click on the image for a larger copy):
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2bpxlNhI6cPtpF6wCvaWREwtG5GoNIdz1-1uCpF-L3hBgEvVFJ6TwJywLRAlIK369lC-3SF1woo6MFzmJsD4aP37_LoSXtyb-JTFciJ-GvGIlXZfcpVzV2SjpR6YzdUcV6wovkqSwCaI/s1464/St+Barnabas+dinner.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="797" data-original-width="1464" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2bpxlNhI6cPtpF6wCvaWREwtG5GoNIdz1-1uCpF-L3hBgEvVFJ6TwJywLRAlIK369lC-3SF1woo6MFzmJsD4aP37_LoSXtyb-JTFciJ-GvGIlXZfcpVzV2SjpR6YzdUcV6wovkqSwCaI/s600/St+Barnabas+dinner.png"/></a></div>
The comment:
<blockquote>
Beef tenderloin stuffed with truffles and foie gras for at least twenty-four. Wine, probably not from a box.
Hundreds of dollars worth of flowers. Upscale table settings, and those candelabra! Sometimes Bp Lopes is entertained with a potluck in the parish hall. Guess that’s not how things are or perhaps were done at St Barnabas, Omaha. </blockquote>
I've also heard in recent weeks as well that there has been a significant lay staff reorganization, with cuts, at Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, following an audit from Houston. This may provide a context for the Omaha action, and Bp Lopes may be under pressure to exercise greater supervision over parishes.
<p>One thing I've learned over doing this blog and after eight years as a Catholic is that the chancery plays an important role in finance, construction, and schooling and provides resources and supervision that generally don't exist in Protestant denominations. After all, Protestants focus much more exclusively at the parish level and doctrinally are much less inclined to recognize a higher church authority.
<p>Ex-Protestant priests who come into the ordnariate are probably much less used to having effective supervision from a body other than a parish vestry, session, or similar committee. Fr Perkins, as ordinariate vicar general, is probably much less used to exercising it, though I've always questioned his interest in his job or his ability to fulfill it.
<p>However, Bp Lopes was never a Protestant, and it seems to me that he has much less excuse for allowing this situation to develop. John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-43183636836443553362020-11-07T08:39:00.000-08:002020-11-07T08:39:29.932-08:00The New BlogThe first post on <a href="https://mthollywood1.blogspot.com/">my new blog, In the Shadow of Mt Hollywood,</a> is up. I probably won't be posting further on this blog, and if there are any important developments in the ordinariates, I'll likely post on them there. However, I won't be posting on routine ordinariate issues, personnel, or parish news.
<p>I'm allowing comments on the new blog. Normal rules of courtesy and decorum prevail. I didn't allow comments on this blog simply due to the level of anger connected with <i>Anglicanorum coetibu</i>s and the establishment of ordinariates. I recognizee that some angry people may wish to use comments on the new blog to extend controversies that I addressed here.
<p>I request that people not do this and restrict comments on the new blog to the issues addressed in posts there. I'll delete as a matter of policy any comments on the new blog addressed to matters that were covered exclusively here. Otherwise, my moderating policy there will be pretty liberal.
<p>Blogger recently made major changes to its format, and I'm still adjusting to them, as this blog was set up under old Blogger, and new blogs don't work the same way. As a result, the new blog will be "under construction" for some time.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-47324008376259241192020-11-06T07:24:00.000-08:002020-11-06T07:24:05.782-08:00It's Time To Wrap This Blog UpOver the past six months, the Almighty has been gently but steadily suggesting to me that<i> Anglicanorum coetibus </i>is no longer a good use of my time. Through the life of this project, my unavoidable conclusion has been that this was never an organic development in the Catholic Church. A week ago, a visitor said, "I also don’t see Rome investing new money or any effort into helping [Bp Lopes] out, either. Foot note in history, perhaps."
<p>It occurred to me then that not only was Rome not going to put new money into it, thry never put any money into it at all. Such money as was put into it was via private donations from within the US or via properties and endowments transferred from existing Anglican parishes that went into the ordinariate. That's got to say something about what potential Rome saw in the idea.
<p>Over the past several years, with a new bishop and a new liturgy, the North American ordinariate hasn't grown and appears in fact to be slowly shrinking. The specific instances and the reasons why have been thoroughly reported here, and I don't think there's much more to say.
<p>Oddly, one way the Almighty has spoken to me about this has been via Fr Bengry. Based on remarks on his varioius blogs and web sites, on one hand, it sounds like Fr Perkins has forbidden him to read any posts here, so I'm a little sorry he won't see this. On the other hand, some time ago, he located an archived version of my first blog, which I gave up and deleted about the time I thought the St Mary of the Angels Hollywood parish was going to go into a projected North American ordinariate. Looking for embarrassing material there, he seems to have come away with the impression that I'm a very good writer, and I should be exercising my talents more widely, and he said so on his blog.
<p>This was effective advice, and I thank him for it. I wish Fr Bengry no ill, he has his own row to hoe, and I assume Fr Perkns and Bp Lopes will help him with this, as I hope they will examine their own purposes in life.
<p>I'd like to thank the many visitors who've helped me with information and suggestions, especially my regular correspondent and a well-known academic. This has definitely been your effort as much as mine.
<p>I have a birthday coming up shortly, and that anniversary is a good time to rethink and recalibrate. I expect that what I will do is within the next few days stop posting here, but I'm in the process of setting up a new blog with a new focus, intending to write more fully on some of the issues I've addressed tangentially here. A big reason I'm moving to an entirely new blog is that I want to allow comments on it, and I find that for whatever reason, I can't reset this option on this blog. I decided from the start not to have comments on this one due simply to the likely angry tone they would encourage.
<p>I will leave this blog up as a reference indefinitely for as long as Blogger will allow it, but I won't update it after a last post here.
At that time, I'll post a link to the new blog for those who may wish to follow me over there.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-23805609559821692262020-11-05T06:55:00.004-08:002020-11-05T08:48:11.669-08:00Here's The Best Analysis I've FoundYesterday I complained that I couldn't find intelligent analysis of the current situation. However, later in the day, a commentator I've been following since 2016 on YouTube called the Hard Bastard didn't disappoint.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe class="BLOG_video_class" allowfullscreen="" youtube-src-id="NKYgBn2dhTQ" width="600" height="498" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NKYgBn2dhTQ"></iframe></div>
I don't believe the Hard Bastard's name has been disclosed. As far as I can determine from various remarks he's made, he is a non-college educated guy of Italian ancestry who lives in the Philadelphia area. (His Philadelphia accent is far better than mine, which was refined away in the Ivy League.) He is instinctively a secularist libertarian, resultimg from a past reaction to Jehovah's Witnesses. Nevertheless, his primary allegiance is to Reason, and I think he'll grow over time. I shoud warn sensitive readers that he sometimes uses very graphic language.
<p>I note that two prominent members of Trump's current legal team, Jenna Ellis and Harmeet Dhillon, have been active in free-exercise church cases up to now. (I would guess these cases will be off the front burner for some time.) However, the election issues are actually closely related to the free-exercise issues, which also involve civil officials exceeding legislative authority.
<p>Based on statements by Trump's legal team, which also includes Pam Bondi, Jay Sekulow, and Rudy Giuliani, they are in the process of developing a legal strategy to pull the election out for Trump. I would say that the Hard Bastard's understanding of the strategy, insofar as we can know it, is correct.
<p>I'll be posting primarily on the election and related issues for the foreseeable future and may have more to say later today.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-3011662979331496802020-11-04T07:45:00.001-08:002020-11-04T07:45:44.657-08:00Election AnalysisI continue to be frustrated at the lack of intelligent analysis of the election anywhere, corporate or independent media. Lots of hysteria, little sense.
<p>here's a good ongoing update at <a href="https://the-american-catholic.com/2020/11/04/post-election-chaos/" target="_blank">The American Catholic</a>.
<p>There's a basic summary of <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-trump-campaigns-legal-fight-key-battlegrounds-undeclared" target="_blank">legal and electoral issues at Fox.</a>John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-29142699147296668792020-11-03T08:03:00.001-08:002020-11-03T08:14:58.920-08:00And Yet Another California COVID Update
A Sutter County, CA superior court judge has <a href="https://www.kusi.com/judge-limits-governor-newsoms-powers-during-coronavirus-pandemic/" target="_blank">ruled againt Gov Newsom's ability to issue arbitrary executive orders </a>for COVID control:
<blockquote>
Sutter County Superior Court Judge Sarah Heckman tentatively ruled that one of the dozens of executive orders Newsom has issued overstepped his authority and impinged on the state Legislature.
<p>
She more broadly barred him “from exercising any power under the California Emergency Services Act which amends, alters, or changes existing statutory law or makes new statutory law or legislative policy.”
<p>. . . Heckman wrote in a nine-page decision that the California Emergency Services Act “does not permit the Governor to amend statutes or make new statutes. The Governor does not have the power or authority to assume the Legislature’s role of creating legislative policy and enactments.”</blockquote>
However, this is almost certainly going to be just the first chapter in another dog-bites-man story, in which a lower court judge issues an entirely justifiable ruling that executive orders that have the force of law must be enacted as laws by a legislature, but the injunctions are immediately stayed on appeal, and the proceedings are slow-walked thereafter. This has happened in numerous jurisdictions from Oregon to New York, most prominenly with federal Judge Stickman's Pennsylvania ruling.
<p>I would say stay tuned, but I think there's going to be another long wait. Sutter County is an agricultural and partly suburban area northeast of Sacramento.
<p>In La Habra Heights, a rural Los Angeles suburb southeast of the city, an Evangelical congregation, <a href="https://hillfaith.blog/2020/11/03/emerging-issues-on-the-hill-another-california-church-sues-to-protect-first-amendment-rights/" target="_blank">World Aflame, has sued city officials for harassment </a>of activities protected under the US First Amendment. The unique twist here is that the church has been abiding by all applicable masking, outdoor worship, and social distancing regulations from all applicable authorities, but the city alleges that its outdoor services now violate a noise ordinance.
<blockquote>
The harassment, according to Pastor Joe Garcia of World Aflame Ministries, is the work of La Habra Heights City Manager Fabiola Huerta and Juan Garcia, a private citizen who lives near the congregation’s rented meeting place.
<p>The suit cited inspections by the Los Angeles County Health Department and Sheriff’s Office that found the congregation in compliance with all existing orders.
<p>
“Defendants have repeatedly falsely accused Plaintiffs of violating health orders. Realizing that Plaintiffs were beyond reproach in complying with federal, state, county, and city laws and public health orders, Defendants decided to focus on local subjective noise ordinances to continue to harass and persecute Plaintiffs,” the Garcias contend in their lawsuit.
<p>. . . "In July 2020, after Plaintiffs moved their worship services outside to comply with COVID-19 health orders, Defendant Juan Garcia started yelling at church ushers and members and taking video and pictures of the church members on a weekly basis.
<p>
“Juan Garcia made complaints based on false allegations to the Los Angeles County Health Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, which visited the church numerous times during worship services and found no legal violations.
<p>"Juan Garcia also made and continues to make complaints based on false allegations to the City of La Habra Heights (the ‘City’). The City and Fabiola Huerta in her official capacity as city manager, erroneously gave credence to Garcia’s false accusations and unlawfully joined Juan Garcia in conspiring to harass, fine, and cite Plaintiffs, in spite of evidence that Plaintiffs are in full compliance with state and county health orders and with the La Habra Heights Municipal Code (‘LHHMC’).”</blockquote>
Reading between the lines and applying my own experience in outdoor church services, even if the congregation is abiding by all the rules and limiting attendance to 100, socially distanced, masked, and without singing, an audio system is ncessary to hear readings, prayers, and preaching. If the service were indoors, the noise wouldn't be noticeable to neighbors. But with an audio system outdoors, the neighbors hear it. (However, based on the suit, even this level is within the actual city noise ordinance.)
<p>It's hard to avoid thinking that the actual intent of COVID controls will be eventually to prohibit any form of congregational worship -- they're certainly working on ways to do it.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-86272400395325125962020-11-02T08:10:00.001-08:002020-11-02T08:14:42.221-08:00It's The ShutdownsI don't believe any media, certainly not corporate, but even most YouTube commentators, has had a good handle on the US elections this year. I've commented here now and then that the COVID lockdowns are underrated as a factor motivating voter preference. My wife and I see day-to-day events that are hardly noticed by paid observers of any political persuasion -- barbers, hairdressers, maid services, facialists, and cosmetologists losing their businesses, month in and month out, for instance. This has an impact not only on the business owners themselves, but on those who must find alternatives.
<p>Over the past weekend, some media outlets have begun to report on what they characterize as a "shift" toward Trump, or perhaps a final decision among "undecideds" for Trump. I'm skeptical that there was ever a "shift". Voters have had their minds made up since the lockdown goalposts began to be moved back in April -- remember when Dr Birx told us we'd be back to normal by Easter? Remember the rage in Los Angeles when the health director said we might need to lock down as long as Labor Day?
<p>The issue began to crystalize only during the final presidential debate, where Vice President Biden made it clear that if elected, he would impose a national mask mandate (with federal mask enforcers?) and reimpose a stay-aa-home lockdown. On the other hand, President Trump has maintained a secondary campaign against Governors Cuomo, Whitmer, Wolf, and Newsom in all his rallies, taking swipes at them for their lockdown policies. None of them is on the ballot this cycle (which is not a coincidence), but Trump is correct in his instinct that resentment against them will drive the presidential and congressional votes.
<p>A couple of pollsters have begun to take note. Yesterday on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures program, <a href="https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/trafalger-pollings-robert-cahaly-predicts-huge-trump-win-sunday-morning-futures/" target="_blank">Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar predicted a major Trump win</a>:
<blockquote>What we are seeing is a movement toward Trump with late breakers. [No, they've had their minds made up since May.] We are also seeing folks that had initially given every indication that they were going to support Biden or they were undecided moving toward Trump. And the issue we see moving on is the shutdowns. Even young people we’ve identified who don’t like the president. They like shutdowns even less. Even suburban women who said they have problems with the president, they like their children home and shutdowns even less.
</blockquote>
On Saturday, R<a href="https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/11/01/gop-rep-jordan-trump-winning-margin-is-going-to-be-so-strong-its-going-to-be-a-no-doubter/" target="_blank">epublican Rep Jim Jordan of Ohio told Jeanine Pirro</a> tha Trump's margin of victory would be much greater than predicted by most pundits:
<blockquote>
“I think the margin is going to be so strong — it’s going to be a no-doubter,” he said. “Remember, Americans understand this. They understand this election. In the end, it’s about freedom. Right? Look at what we’ve been through the last several months with Democrat governors and Democrat mayors telling Americans they couldn’t go to church, couldn’t go to work, couldn’t go to school, couldn’t go to a loved one’s funeral, but it was fine to protest, riot and loot.”
<p>
“Now, we’ve got Governor Newsom saying you can’t even have Thanksgiving the way you want to have Thanksgiving,” Jordan added. “And we’ve got Joe Biden talking about the Biden dark winter and locking down our economy. Americans appreciate the freedom we enjoy as American citizens. That’s what’s going to drive into the polls and why the President is going to win big.”</blockquote>
This brings me to the local puzzle in our own congressional district, California 28, which covers Glendale, Burbank, parts of Hollywood, and the eastern San Fernando Valley. It's quite heavily ethnic, with Latins, Filipinos, Armenians, Russians, and Jews, many of whom have lost their businesses in the lockdowns.
<p>One thing I've noticed is that the Armenians began to attach Armenian flags to their cars during the renewed ocnflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. But as that conflict has cooled, the flags have stayed out. I've begun to realize these are actually Trump flags without saying Trump, which protects the cars from vandalism.
The Armenians also bring Armenian flags to local Trump rallies, for what that's worth as well.
<p>The incumbent congessman from the 28th district is Adam Schiff, who distinguished himself in the utterly unproductive impeachment controversy early this year. It remains to be seen how much resentment of COVID restrictions will drive local political races in ways that coporate media has so far not acknowledged.
<p>I learn via Facebook that Beverly Hills police have already closed Rodeo Drive to traffic, and stores are boarding up in anticipation of riots Tuesday night. John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-47522815145233344482020-11-01T08:01:00.005-08:002020-11-02T07:12:01.363-08:00The Power Of Wishful ThinkingI've mentioned now and then that I'm a true crime fan. One of the shows I watch is <i>American Greed</i>, which had a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbUCY_mu6lA" target="_blank">recent episode on Troy Stratos</a>, who conned his marks out of millions by claiming to be a Hollywood producer. One reason I follow true crime is the insights it gives me into the more mundane motives behind the petty chicanery I see closer to home. While watching the MSNBC show on Stratos the other night, something kept bringing me back to Fr Scott Wooten and the mysterious million dollars that's going to build the church in Cleburne, TX.
<p>Although Stratos claimed to be a producer, he was also playing a con that for want of a better name I would call the Saudi Royal Family scam. In this scam, the perp claims to be a member of, or to have close connections with, the Saudi royal family. His collateral-- the trappings that give him credibility -- is driving Rolls-Royces and living in hotel penthouses, spending lavishly at nightclubs and resorts. All this is, of course, heavily leveraged and paid for by house-of-cards arrangements that inevitably collapse.
<p>But in the meantime, the heart of his operation is basically to say, "My share of the royal family's fortune is $2 billion. I'm impressed ty the brilliance of your _______ project, and I want to invest at least $42 million in it. However, I'm having some difficulty getting the transaction through your Treasury Department for final approval. I've been on the line to Secretary Mnuchin and even President Trump, of course, but this may still take a few more weeks. In the meantime, could you help me out with a mere $3.3 million to satisfy the requirements of _________ to secure final approval?"
<p>The basic incentive is that via flattery and the prospect of great wealth in a few weeks time, the con artist milks the mark for large incremental amounts, with the prospect of the ultimate boodle always remaining a short distance away -- until the perp disappears, adopts a new name, and continues his schemes, leaving multiple marks holding the bag. This was the essence of the Troy Stratos scam.
<p>I make no secret of my view that there's something hinky about Fr Wooten's mysterious million-dollar gift. I feel quite certain that if anyone prompted him to verify it in the most minimal way -- Father, could you show us just last month's bank statement? -- he'd give a folksy sorta-kinda rigamarole about how it's not that simple, you probably aren't all that familiar with how these things are done, the money is in a separate whoopdedoodle brokerage until it can be released, but it's the vice of curiosity to ask too many questions about this. Blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't put it past him to invite me into the confessional to confess my sin of curiosity, frankly.
<p>I think the million-dollar gift is always going to dangle just out of reach, but in the meantime, he's gotten Houston to waive its maximum age requirement for ordination, ordain him priest on the fast track, and heaven knows what else. I'm sure there's a what else. He didn't resign his Episcopal orders for nothing in my view. Did Houston even try to contact Bp Iker? The plus for Houston is that it gives a distant hope of looking successful in the Fort Worth area, which had once had prospects of being a hotbed for new ordinariate parishes. My regular correspndent remarks,
<blockquote>This part of Texas has been quite the merry-go-round. Fr Chuck Hough III we have discussed before. <a href="about:invalid#zSoyz" target="_blank">Fr Kennedy has been posted here and there</a>. Not much evidence of a coherent plan.</blockquote>
Anoher visitor comments on what this portends for Bp Lopes's future;
<blockquote>He can retire a Bishop if the Ordinariate lasts long enough and if it goes under, meh. Next stop, back to Rome or some other administrative job for a nuncio in DC or other such post. It’s all very rosy for Bishop Lopes and his live-in secretary/whatever–position-he-is, friend. There doesn’t seem to be a fire under him to produce results, but I also don’t see Rome investing new money or any effort into helping him out, either. Foot note in history, perhaps.
</blockquote>
That Houston is placing bets on Fr Wooten and his mysterious donor is not a good sign.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-17473667556868806472020-10-31T07:29:00.000-07:002020-10-31T07:29:49.705-07:00California COVID UpdatesAlthough North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara County was forced to end indoor services due to mounting fines,<a href="https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Santa-Clara-County-church-San-Jose-lawsuit-COVID-15688922.php" target="_blank"> a second Evangelical church in the area continued to hold them</a>.
<blockquote>The county District Attorney's Office and County Counsel filed a joint action in Superior Court this week targeting Calvary Chapel San Jose, an evangelical Christian church on Hillsdale Avenue. County attorneys allege the church has been hosting weekly indoor church services that draw 600 people without any use of masks or social distancing.
<p>. . . County attorneys say the church has racked up over $350,000 in unpaid fines for violating the public health order since May, and are seeking a court order that forces the church to comply with county rules.
</blockquote>
What's notable here is that the church's lawyers are beginning to use an argument that's only slowly begun to emerge in these cases: the evidence we have is that indoor church services, without social distancing or masks, and with singing, simply do not spread the disease. Pastor John MacArthur has made this plain in addresses to the public, but lawyers seem to have a harder time bringing it before a judge. But in this case, the church's atrorneys are doing it:
<blockquote>“No material change has suddenly precipitated the need for emergency relief to protect against alleged imminent irreparable harm,” the filing reads. “In fact, the evidence says otherwise. The virus, by all scientific measures, is no worse than the season flu, and Santa Clara County remains in one of the lowest tiers. Plaintiffs have also outwardly supported super spreader events like protests in the streets. Yet now, the defendants have the gall to claim somehow the defendants’ indoor services will present a grave threat to the community. This is pure fear mongering and inconsistent with the facts and plaintiffs own actions."
</blockquote>
In Los Angeles County, the health department is <a href="https://www.thomasmoresociety.org/los-angeles-county-sends-food-and-garbage-inspection-workers-to-harass-catholic-church/" target="_blank">sending in food inspectors to enforce social distancing</a> against an SSPX parish:
<blockquote>
Thomas More Society attorneys are preparing to challenge the actions of two county “Environmental Health Specialists” who surveilled Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church in Arcadia, California, and slapped the parish with citations on October 15, 2020, after observing women in prayer veils leaving the building. Five days later, on October 20, the same two workers returned to threaten church personnel with more citations – compelling staff to eject the two masked worshipers who prayed inside the 500-capacity sanctuary. The harassment comes on the heels of a lawsuit filed by Farther Trevor Burfitt, prior at Our Lady of Angels, charging California Governor Gavin Newsom and 19 other state, county, and municipal officials for violating his religious rights.
<p>. . . The county “Specialists” have job descriptions detailing health inspection, investigation, and enforcement duties that revolve primarily around food sanitation and proper rubbish disposal.
<p>
“The county has apparently decided that food and garbage inspectors are qualified to police worship activities,” stated Jonna.
</blockquote>
The legal issues continue to revolve around inconsistent enforcement -- church services vs mass protests -- enforceability -- health department orders are not normally law enforcement issues -- and, incrasingly, the assertion that large gatherings are "superspreader" events simply violates common sense.
<p>The aburdity now extends to <a href="https://lc.org/newsroom/details/20201030ca-govs-insane-thanksgiving-orders" target="_blank">orders from Gov Newsom on Thanksgiving celebrations</a> (Halloween observances are already strongly discouraged):
<blockquote> The mandatory restrictions for Thanksgiving gatherings include:
<ul>
<li>No more than three households, including hosts and guests.
<li>The names and contact information of guests must be recorded so they can be “contact traced.”
<li>Must be held outside.
<li>No more than two hours.
<li>Guests may use restrooms only if they are sanitized between use.
<li>Six-foot distancing in all directions.
<li>Everyone should frequently wash their hands with soap and water or use hand sanitizer which must, of course, be done outside.
<li>Food and drink must be in single-serve disposable containers.
<li>No food or drink on the table other than your plate and cup.
<li>Masks must be worn and removed only briefly to eat or drink.
<li>Masks can also be removed for urgent medical needs (an asthma inhaler, medication or light-headedness).
<li>Singing, chanting and shouting are strongly discouraged, but if they occur, a face covering must be worn. And the singing should be quiet.
<li>Instrumental music is allowed but no wind instruments.
</ul>
</blockquote>
One factor that few analyses of the upcomnig elections discuss is the impact of COVID restrictions. The position of Vice President Biden and most other Democrat candidates has been that Trump has failed to end the "pandemic", while they will solve the problem by reinstating stay-at-home lockdowns and a national mask mandate. Ordinary people by now are recognizing these measures violate ordinary common sense.
<p>There has been no serious analysis of California House races in any media. But a major lesson of the 25th District special election last May was twofold: first, that although Democrats thought mail-in ballots would benefit only Democrats, Republicans found them just as convenient, and they were motivated to vote in greater numbers. The second lesson has been widely ignored: the upset Republican victory in that election was due in some part to COVID fatigue and the context that unreasonable restrictions are imposed by corrupt politicians intent on self-aggrandizement.
<p>I think this will turn out to be a surprising factor in Tuesday's results.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-77260399896402291122020-10-30T08:04:00.005-07:002020-10-30T09:46:21.576-07:00Cleburne And The MillionaireI'm just old enough to have vague memories of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_%28TV_series%29" target="_blank"><i>The Millionaire</i></a>, a 1950s TV show that, according to Wikipedia,
<blockquote>explored the ways that sudden and unexpected wealth changed life, for better or for worse. It told the stories of people who were given one million dollars ($9.54 million in 2019 dollars) from a benefactor who insisted they must never know his identity, with one exception.</blockquote>
My memories are so vague that it's taken me a couple of months, now and then waking up suddenly in the early morning hours, to realize how much this hokey plot line resembles the bill of goods that's being sold in Cleburne. (The city of Cleburne, TX for that matter is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Cleburne" target="_blank">named after Patrick Cleburne</a>, a Confederate general who died a glorious but futile death in an ill-concevied charge at the Battle of Franklin, TN, just for some context here.)
<p>Around the time I was waking up with repressed memories of the TV show, I was also thinking about the corrupt bosses I'd had who maintained some semblance of control in their orgainizations by fostering the illusion that they were just one happy working family, like say on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mary_Tyler_Moore_Show" target="_blank">Mary Tyler Moore</a>, where everyone is flawed but lovable, which covers up for the reality that everyne is screwing everyone else's wives or husbands, and the whole department will be downsized next month due to ubiquitous nonfeasance.
<p>Thus did brain-dead TV pollute our culture. But this brings me back to the instant issue: I sat up in bed early this mornimg recognizing that John Beresford Tipton, the anonymous benefactor in <i>The Millionaire,</i> is still active, still handing out random million-dollar checks for each week's episode, this one featuing the lucky parish of St John Vianney Cleburne. And Fr Wooten cautions us that the donor must remain anonymous, true to the TV fantasies of 1957.
<p>But I keep taking this strange fantasy puzzle piece and trying to fit it into a hole in reality. For starters, there's no such thing as a random million-dollar grant. The version Fr Wooten gives in his YouTube presentation -- and there's no reference to it anywhere else insofar as I can find one -- is that some version of the John Beresford Tipton Foundationi -- presumably the Catholic Charities Departmet -- goes looking for worthy small Catholic parishes that it wants to turn into big ones, with million-dollar grants.
<p>Fr Wooten's version is that he sorta-kinda got a phone call, in response to which he sorta-kinda put together a "little proposal", and a few weeks later he sorta-kinda got another phone call telling him it was on. (I still want to see the wire transfer receipt or just the bank statement.)
<p>But let's take the real-world example I mentioned in yesterday'a post, St John the Baptist Bridgeport. It received a matching donatoin much smaller than a million dollars to complete just a portioni of the existing plan that had been developed by Cram & Ferguson, the church consulting firm. That seems like a much more credible story.
<p>A serious grant proposal would go to the John Beresford Tipton Foundaion with something that had already been developed by Cram & Ferguson or equivalent. What is the current size of the group? What is the potential? What is the potential use of the property? Where on the property should the initial church phase go? What are the potential later phases? More important, what's the fundrasing plan going forward? How does the group plan to grow and upport the new building?
<p>Every indication from Fr Wooten's YouTube presentations is that absolutely nothing like this has been prepared. If an actual million-dollar grant had been approved, we would see at least portions of the proposal on the parish website -- indeed, we'd have seen them well before the specific application was made. None of this would violate the Tipton Foundation's confidentiality.
<p>On one hand, the audience I'm addressing here, at least the formal one that I target rhetorically, is of lay interested parties who are, however, just distant observers. I suspect actual ordinariate members are not numerous among visitors here, nor I would expect many actual donors to ordinariate parishes or Houston itself.
<p>But I'm starting to have questions that need to be addressed more specifically. Why is Bp Lopes alllowing Fr Wooten to make these strange blue-sky YouTube presentations that have more in common with 60 year old TV shows than modern reality? Is he even aware of them?
<p>Second, if there's been a million-dollar grant to further the growth of the St John Vianney parish, even if the John Beresford Tipton Foundation wants to be anonymous, why isn't Houston publicizng it? Why hasn't it even reached the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog?
<p>Has Bp Lopes met with the movers and shakers at the John Beresford Tipton Foundation? Has he possibly tried to steer them toward sending the million where it might be more effectively used, for instance toward the existing serious plan at St John the Baptist Bridgeport?
<p>We already have a parallel case in Houston's history, where Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes were duped into buying the "Gilbertine" hoax in Calgary. I'm increasingly convinced the million-dollar grant in Cleburne is just another episode of this same TV show. But when adults begin to buy into brain-dead TV fantasies, reality does have a way of stepping in, sooner rather than later.John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6742475817237411242.post-70484414182089064962020-10-29T07:54:00.000-07:002020-10-29T07:54:12.514-07:00Why The Rush To Ordain Fr Wooten In Cleburne?My regular correspondent pointed out yesterday that Dcn Keyes was ordained transitional deacon in May with now-Fr Wooten. No date has been set for Dcn Keyes's priestly ordination, but Fr Wooten's took place just a week or so ago, after only five months as a transitional deacon, when the normal time for the ordinariate is more like a year.
<p>(This, of course, leaves aside the literally instant ordinations where ordinariate priests have been received into the Church, ordained deacon, and ordained priest over the course of a weekend. This is apparently to create a big surprise for the priest's former Anglican bishop, which doesn't sound like the best idea, but then, I'm not Bp Lopes.)
<p>Nevertheless, I've got to wonder what the rush was, that Fr Wooten should be treated so differently from Dcn Keyes. Could this be, for instance, to speed construction on rhw new St John Vianney Cleburne church building, for which a secret donor has gifted the parish a million dollars? Might we expect some announcement of progress in this area with such a major positive step in Fr Wooten's ordination?
<p>I went to the St John Vianney website and checked the <a href="https://stjohnvianneycleburne.com/land-and-building-news" target="_blank">Land and Building News</a> page, which has had no land or building news since 2017.
<blockquote>
October 1st [2017] was a very special and significant day for St. John Vianney Catholic Church. After enjoying a delicious potluck lunch and parish meeting/rally day, we traveled in a caravan up the street to our new property, and blessed our new land for all time (Traversing the15 acres necessitated using a parishioner's pick up rather than the traditional procession!)
</blockquote>
Well, maybe Fr Wooten has been so busy with ordination and all, he hasn't had time to update the page, huh? But he's on the Staff Page as Parochial Administrator/Pastor, so some updates have been done. Wouldn't a million-dollar gift be worth adding to the web site as well? May as well put up the optimistic message sonner as later. Well, maybe someday.
<p>My experience in my working career was when I took over something new, it would be important to show near-immediate progress, if not a finished project itself, at minimum a credible and professional project plan. And the project plan would need to be buttressed by a near-immediate completion of some milestone, however small, to establish a pattern of success..
<p>So far, we've still seen no new events other than the YouTube videos I linked here in early September,<a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-new-shooting-star.html" target="_blank"> this one</a> and <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-million-dollars-for-what.html" target="_blank">this one.</a>
<p>Even St John the Baptist Bridgeport, with a more modest anonymous gift, has announced it via the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, and it had previously engaged the church consulting firm Cram & Ferguson to develop a parish plan, <a href="https://stmarycoldcase.blogspot.com/2020/09/st-john-baptist-bridgeport-wants-new.html" target="_blank">as I've covered here</a>.
<p>It seems to me that a credible response to a million-dollar gift, one that would justify the apparent haste in ordaining Fr Wooten, would be some type of published project plan that would, at minimum, involve an announcement that Cram & Ferguson or some similar firm had been engaged to determine how best to move forward with this windfall. Instead, crickets.
<p>Well, we do have those two YouTubes from September. But again, what makes me uncomfortable about the YouTubes is that they talk down to the audience, and they have a sorta-kinda-maybe-someday tone, evn though they assert that a million dollars has suddenly materialized to more forward. There are simply no specifics at all.
<p>If Fr Wooten could make YouTubes to talk about the gift, is he not capable of a more formal and explicit written announcement? After all, my impression of Episcopal rectors is that, with elite educatoinal backgrounds, they're fully capable of effective written communication. (Well, that is, Episcopal rectors. Not so much the ex-Episcopal priests recruited into the ordinariate.)
<p>So what were Bp Lopes and Fr Perkins intending to accomplish by fast-tracking Fr Wooten's ordination? So far, I don't see any visible reason for it. And my curiosity is still piqued -- can someone show us the wire transfer receipt for the million bucks? You can blank out the account numbers and stuff. Just show us the money's there. Heck, even last month's account statement from the bank will do.'
<p>Otherwise, I still think there's a more than remote chance that someone's being conned.
John Brucehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04625895756906828468noreply@blogger.com0