Second Try? Third Try?

Fr Barker's Early History of the Anglican Use makes it clear that the "corporate reunion" movement sprang from the same Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen - Congress of St Louis source as the "continuing Anglican" movement. It separated fairly quickly after St Louis, when the Anglican Catholic Church made it clear that it intended to remain Protestant. Slightly less clear from Fr Barker's account is the consistent involvement of Cardinal Bernard Law in the idea of "corporate reunion", something that now and then has had others scratching their heads.

According to Fr Barker, Law's canonists drew up the original proposal for the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision in a 1980 Chicago meeting. Under this scheme, US Episcopal parishes would be received in dioceses and under the supervision of diocesan bishops. However, most Anglican Use parishes eventually began de novo, and very few proved viable, though most of the few that survived became quite successful.

But then we find Cardinal Law facilitating the 1993 meeting between Clarence Pope, Jeffrey Steenson, and Cardinal Ratzinger, into which Steenson appears to have carried an already-drafted proposal for an Anglican "personal prelature" along the lines of the Bishop of the Armed Forces. According to Fr Barker, this idea had already been mooted by Law's canonists in 1980 but dropped when the US Catholic bishops opposed the idea. The problem was that the original Anglican Use Pastoral Provision foundered spectacularly with the opposition of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. I think we must assume that other bishops were quietly applauding the resistance of Cardinals Manning and Mahony, who had the prestige to take the heat. (Mahony, a liberal, was very popular with the press, and the press generally took his side of the issue.)

I've got to conclude from the record we have that, with the "corporate reunion" movement a damp squib by the late 1980s, Law used an existing set of contacts with Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth clergy to revive the earlier idea of taking Anglicans in as a "personal prelature", which would have the advantage of bypassing recalcitrant diocesan bishops. I would guess that he dusted off his canonists' mooted 1980 proposal and passed it on to Bp Pope and Fr Steenson, with the idea of raising it again with Ratzinger, where it might get a more favorable response.

The problem was that St John Paul had already issued his Pastoral Provision, already knew where Bernard Law stood, and likely had a good sense of how things eventually went over. When Ratzinger brought him the renewed "personal prelature" idea in 1993-4, he punted and told Ratzinger to go through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where everyone involved appears to have understood it would be voted down. So, rather than have it die on a vote, Ratzinger dropped it.

It's worth noting that not only did Cardinal Law receive Jeffrey Steenson as a Catholic in 2007, but he ordained him a transitional deacon in 2008. This was almost certainly because Law understood that, with Ratzinger succeeding to the Pontificate, Anglicanorum coetibus would in fact finally emerge whatever the CDF or the diocesan bishops thought, and Steenson would be Law's protégé for US-Canadian Ordinary once it was established that Clarence Pope was unstable and in poor health.

But the result of the "corporate reunion" movement, under whatever jurisdiction, has proved to be no better than that of the cognate "continuing Anglicanism". For that matter, a good many Ordinariate priests are not associated with Ordinariate groups and are, as a practical matter, doing diocesan work as school and hospital chaplains or fill-ins for diocesan masses and are de facto Anglican Use, not Ordinariate, priests. By 2014, with the designation of Bp Vann as Delegate for the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision, the cycle appears to be repeating itself.

Fr Barker's History -- III

Fr Barker's account hints that even as the basic form of Anglican Use was being worked out, the US Catholic bishops weren't completely on board with the idea. He notes their objection to a "personal prelature", which is easy to understand: it means priests and parishes in their territory that aren't under their control. It was a departure from the diocesan system that had been developed in the wake of the Council of Trent. What could possibly go wrong? There's also the basic problem, still noted on the Anglican Use website, that it can be seen as a potential back door to a general married priesthood.

The real problems began to manifest themselves as St Mary of the Angels applied to become an Anglican Use parish in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. There used to be several detailed accounts of what happened on the web, written by both Fr Barker and Charles Coulombe, but they have since been deleted. If anyone has kept copies or knows where they might still be found on the web, I would very much appreciate the information.

In general, based on my recollection of the on line accounts, there were two stages of failure in the process. The first stage was under Cardinal Timothy Manning:

It is well to note that the ecumenical relations committee [of the LA Archdiocese] was adamantly opposed to the erection of a pastoral provision parish. It has been subsequently demonstrated that this policy has perdured in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for no parish of the pastoral provision has ever been erected for that area despite the fact that the group of laity there was the largest of any of those in the nation which had been received in other dioceses. It was in October 1984 that Bishop Ward, in behalf of cardinal Manning, reported to PDSAC clergy in Los Angeles that no parish of the pastoral provision would be allowed in the archdiocese and that both clergy and laity would have to be received into the Catholic Church on a strictly individual basis through their local latin rite parish.

Fr Barker continues in a footnote:

No reason was given by the Archdiocese for its negative decision after such a long period of time, but it has been suggested that ecumenical relations must figure prominently; in addition, the press had branded the clergy leaders as rebels, and the parishes had been involved in civil litigation with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles over real property, a lawsuit which the diocese ultimately lost and which may have been an embarrassment to Catholic officials.

Following Cardinal Manning's retirement in 1985, the negative decision was reiterated by his successor, Roger Mahony. Mahony based his rejection, as I recall accounts, more specifically on the characterization of the parish as rebellious. A former pariahioner e-mailed me:

I was there when Bishop Law attended St. Mary's [July 14—16, 1981] and believe that he was political along with several others, implying St. Mary's and St. Matthias would be part of the Pastoral Provision. . . . I also know that a TEC priest. . . and a Catholic priest, who I knew who were the ecumenical committee between the two had much to do to ruin St. Mary's chance to become Catholic. The TEC priest could not stand Fr. Barker.

However, the former parishioner notes another issue that hasn't been adequately taken into consideration elsewhere:

The parish split three ways, those in my opinion who loved the building wouldn't leave, some followed Fr. Trigg to the Orthodox and those who followed Fr. Barker to the Catholic Church.

The parish was apparently never unanimous in its desire to become Anglican Use, as it was not unanimous in its desire to join the US-Canadian Ordinariate. The problem was addressed during 2010-11 by none other than Anthony Morello, who asked at a synod what provision would be made for pastoral care of those who did not wish to become Catholic. This question has never been adequately addressed during any proposals for corporate reunion.

Fr Barker's History -- II

Fr Barker covers a great deal of additional territory subsequent to the 1977 Congress of St Louis in his Early History of the Anglican Use. In 1980, there was preliminary discussion of what form the provision for Anglicans would take:

Bishop Bernard Law invited Frs. Barker and Brown to meet with a canonist in Chicago to explore together the form of an Anglican "common identity" in the Catholic Church. In addition to the above, representatives of SSC and the Evangelical Catholic Mission (ECM) were also invited by Bishop Law. The three groups met with Bishop Law’s Canonist at the Hilton Hotel at O’Hare Airport. The Anglicans present favored the proposal on structure modeled on the Military Ordinariate, but the small number of parochial communities, the death of Cardinal Seper who had taken a personal interest in this cause, together with the reluctance on the part of the American Catholic hierarchy mitigated against such a possibility.

It's worth pointing out that the "structure modeled on the Military Ordinariate" was on the table from the start, and this was the option later discussed in the 1993 meeting, facilitated by now-Cardinal Law, of Episcopal Bishop Clarence Pope, then-Fr Jeffrey Steenson, and Cardinal Ratzinger that resulted in Anglicanorum coetibus. In this context, it seems reasonable to conclude that Cardinal Law felt a second try at Anglican corporate reunion might be warranted, if the earlier Pastoral Provision had proved a disappointment.

There's another problem:

The conversations in Rome also made it clear that those seeking reunion needed to be clear about their legitimate patrimony; therefore a symposium of Anglican and Roman scholars was held at the University of Dallas in June of the same year. The features of an Anglican patrimony were the subject of that symposium.

It would be interesting to see the proceedings of the University of Dallas symposium; if anyone can make a copy available or point me to them on line, I would greatly appreciate it. Exactly what comprises an "Anglican patrimony" is a question I've addressed here, and frankly, the answers I've received are tentative and unsatisfactory. The question mainly comes down to liturgy (except that the actual purpose of the Anglican liturgy was to finesse differences via calculated ambiguity, as well as to allow for broad winks when inconvenient aspects were deliberately ignored!).

Regarding liturgy, Fr Barker says,

The delegates at [an October 1981 Dallas, Texas] conference agreed on the pastoral necessity of maintaining a pastoral provision liturgy which allowed for traditional as well as [modern] English. . . . Eventually the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship authorized the Book of Divine Worship (BDW) for interim usage in 1984, with final approval on 20 February 1987. This document allowed elements of the older Prayer Book of 1928, but the Eucharistic liturgy was taken only from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer with the use of the Roman Eucharistic Canons and the ancient Sarum Canon (with the modern English "Words of Institution" from the Novus Ordo Missae inserted).

Clearly the Pastoral Provision liturgy was aimed at a US audience, based on the Episcopal prayer books. It's puzzling that the Ordinariate liturgy has so far rejected the idea of contemporary English and relied primarily on ersatz archaisms in a "uniate" liturgy promoted by elements in the Church of England. However, this liturgy does not appear to be popular in either the UK or the US, and particularly in the UK appears to be a cause of the underperformance of the Ordinariate there.

Fr Barker's History -- I

As I'd requested, a visitor pointed me (many thanks!) to Fr Jack Barker's Early History of the Anglican Use. This turns out to be a very useful complement to Douglas Bess's Divided We Stand, since it gives a different perspective on the events surrounding the 1977 Congress of St Louis and in fact fills in several gaps. On the other hand, I think the history also provides an insight into what I think is the miscalculation that has led to the disappointing underperformance of both the Pastoral Provision and the Anglican Ordinariates.

Fr Barker introduces the issue by saying,

[I]t should be noted that Anglicanism has varieties of theological persuasions from liberal to conservative generally tolerated so long as unity of worship is maintained. The Elizabethan settlement had resulted in a Church that very much lived lex orandi lex credendi. Without the teaching magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church the commonality of worship through the use of various Books of Common Prayer became the earmark of unity in the various Anglican Churches throughout the world, in the face of what would otherwise have been certain disunity.

However, Catholic commentators from Frederick Kinsman to Richard John Neuhaus have pointed out that the prayer books provide only an appearance of unity, not just from calculated ambiguity in wording, but their effect is vitiated by a deliberate policy of looking the other way at heterodox practices. In fact, the heterodoxy that had been tolerated for about a century before 1977 included Tridentine vestments and Latin liturgy in Anglican services. As Kinsman has pointed out, Anglicanism has calculatedly allowed a faction to fancy itself Catholic.

Fr Barker continues,

It had always been the hope of catholic minded Anglicans that a full scale corporate reunion or intercommunion could ultimately take place between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

But many of those "catholic minded Anglicans" were the same ones that Kinsman recognized were allowed to fancy themselves "Catholic" as they were. This leads to the first major problem that Fr Barker describes. There was never unity of purpose among the High Church Episcopal dissidents.

Many other groups who had varying degrees of dissatisfaction with the Episcopal Church were active at the same time. The umbrella organization for them was the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (FCC). The Diocese of the Holy Trinity joined the FCC and attended its September 1977 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. This meeting in St. Louis produced a loose amalgamation of several groups into the Anglican Catholic Church in North America (ACNA), and this was destined to become a new "Anglican" church in the United States and Canada Some of the members of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity identified with the aims of the FCC as it moved toward founding the ACNA. Canon DuBois and the Anglicans United (successor to Episcopalians United) did not. Those in the Diocese of the Holy Trinity who agreed with the aims of ACNA kept the name Diocese of the Holy Trinity and remained with them Those who desired reunion with Rome then formed the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury (PDSAC) to act as the "corpus" for transitional jurisdiction to full unity with the Roman Catholic Church.

Note history repeating itself in the Patrimony of the Primate, with about the same result. In 1977, two delegates from the PDSAC, one of whom was Fr Barker, traveled to Rome to present

a proposal for consideration of what later became the Pastoral Provision, i.e. the possibility of Episcopalians returning to the Catholic Church while retaining something of their Anglican heritage.

The proposal was very favorably received by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. However,

Before leaving Rome, confidential letters from the delegation were mailed to Bishop Albert Chambers, the retired Episcopal bishop of Springfield, Illinois, and Fr. James Mote, bishop-elect for the Diocese of the Holy Trinity. Bishop Chambers was scheduled to be the chief consecrator at the ordination to the episcopate of four Episcopalian priests, including Father Mote, which would inaugurate the new Anglican Catholic Church in America as planned by the FCC. In those letters both were advised of the results of the Rome meetings and that Rome would see those planned ordinations as a serious obstacle to reunion.

Two weeks after returning from Rome, the delegates spoke at a joint synod of the priests of the Anglican Dioceses of the Holy Trinity and Christ the King, on December 15, 1977. Bishop Chambers presided at this meeting and allowed less than ten minutes for the report on the meetings held in England and Rome. It seemed apparent to all present that the bishop was not interested. For example he said: "Your people don’t want to be Roman Catholics." This sentiment was echoed by bishops-elect Mote (of Denver) and Morse (of Oakland). Bishop Chambers continued to plan for the consecrations to take place in January 1978.

The problems that have dogged St Mary of the Angels and the "continuing Anglican" movement were present from the start. My understanding, by the way, is that Louis Falk did not attend the 1977 Congress of St Louis, was not involved in the consecrations of Mote and the other bishops, and did not make any move to join the ACC until the following year. Yet the pattern of willful duplicity that we saw in later events like the 1991 Deerfield Beach consecrations and the formation of the Traditional Anglican Communion had already been established at the start. But all things considered, Bishop Chambers was right: there never has been a significant movement, even among disaffected Anglicans, to become Catholic in a body.

The Puzzle Of Fr Vaughn Treco

As I've posted here before, one of my favorite scenes in all cinema (you can find it here) is in Double Indemnity, where Keyes, the claims manager played by Edward G Robinson, talks about his "little man" who pesters him about phonies. Although "phony" is too strong a word for this particular situation, it's nevertheless a puzzle. I would post this puzzlement as a comment to this post at Ordinariate News, but I find that Mr Murphy becomes increasingly testy at comments from visitors whose views don't conform to his happy-face interpretation of Ordinariate events, so I'll post it here.

Fr Treco was ordained in May to considerable fanfare as a priest in the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, and by the timeline given, this was on a definite fast track. According to that timeline, the process began only in June 2014, when Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis discussed ordaining Fr Treco with Msgr Steenson. However, in Fr Treco's autobiographical thumbnail, he says, "[F]rom September 2005 to May 2008, I did further graduate theological study in preparation for ordination as a Catholic priest." In his LinkedIn profile, he says it was "[a}t the direction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith", in the Archdiocese of Nassau, Bahamas.

This statement and other biographical information indicate that he was received into the Catholic Church in 2000 and worked in various lay ministries in Catholic parishes after that time. However, his LinkedIn profile and remarks elsewhere suggest that throughout this time, up to now, he has had a day job as a field technician for various high-tech companies.

Since Fr Treco was, and continues to be, married, the only available route for Catholic ordination of married men in the US prior to the erection of the US-Canadian Ordinariate in 2012 was the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision of Pope St John Paul II, which provides a process for married former Episcopal clergymen in the United States to petition for ordination as diocesan Catholic priests. However, although the Pastoral Provision was expanded to priests in "continuing" denominations in 2007, the Charismatic Episcopal Church, in which Fr Treco had previously been ordained, was specifically excluded. In addition, the Archdiocese of Nassau is not in the US, and the Pastoral Provision applies only to US priests. (Exactly under what auspices Fr Treco conducted the seminary studies he references is not clear, since I'm told that the Archdiocese of Nassau does not have a seminary.)

From 2006 to 2010, he maintained a blog called Priest-2-Be whose title clearly indicates that he expected to be ordained a Catholic priest, although this was in part before Anglicanorum coetibus and entirely before 2012. Since he wasn't eligible for the Pastoral Provision, it's not clear how he expected to be ordained as a married man during this period -- although he appears to have undertaken seminary studies with some type of assurance that this would happen. It's a puzzle.

There is a long-standing relationship between the Archdiocese of Nassau and the Benedictine Monks of St. John’s Abbey, Minnesota, in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Br John-Bede Pauley, a Benedictine monk at St John's Abbey, Collegeville, MN, has been the administrator of the Society of St Bede the Venerable Ordinariate group in St Louis Park, MN. All I can conclude is that Bishop Cozzens initiated the process of Fr Treco's fast-track ordination based on this relationship.

In addition, the timeline suggests that Fr Treco has numerous diocesan duties, while as chaplain of the Society of St Bede the Venerable, he says the Ordinariate mass only on one Sunday a month. In other words, his ordination as an Ordinariate priest appears to have been part of a back-channel deal that allowed the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to get around the restrictions of the Pastoral Provision and use Fr Treco primarily as a diocesan priest. I'm told that the Society of St Bede the Venerable has about five members.

Overall, the process of ordination for candidates in the Ordinariates seems to be much slower, and many larger groups continue without priests. It's a puzzle.

Further Parish History

A source has provided much greater detail on the Jordan-Barker era at St Mary of the Angels, which I am providing as a narrative slightly edited from two e-mails:

Fr Jordan was one of Fr Dodd's last curates. Fr Dodd retired in [1951}. He was then "Rector Emeritus" and moved out to North Hollywood, but would return to St Mary's on occasion. Fr Beau Davis remembered meeting him one Sunday; Beau was then in his teens. [Beau] would come in from Ontario, the same home parish that Fr Jordan was from. Fr Dodd made some remark about that, with a twinkle in his eye. It was their only meeting. Davis looked upon Fr Jordan as a spiritual father from their first meeting, when Fr Jordan came to his home parish as a special speaker.

About 1960, aerial views of the neighborhood illustrate the acquisition & clearing of land for parking behind the church. Two houses (?) occupy the area of the present bank building. I have seen a record that parishioners purchased these homes, paid down the mortgages on them, at some point turned them over to, or donated them to the parish, leaving sums less than $10,000 to be paid off. (They might have been left as Bequests.)

Fr Jordan was in wide demand as a speaker in various Episcopal parishes, and at one time recorded a number of sermons or teachings on LP records. The remains of these were ill-treated by Fr Wilcox, warped beyond use, and discarded.

Fr James H. Jordan died suddenly of a heart attack early on February 17, 1971. His home at the time was a house (no longer extant) on Hillhurst. It may have been where the small shops are now, just south of the bank parking lot. He had lived there as Fr Dodd's Curate, & chose not to move when he was elected Rector. He did not appear for 7:30am Mass that day. Someone went to check on him & found him dead.

Fr Jordan's niece, Beth Cullom, of Georgia, on a visit to St Mary's one evening, gave the first large donation toward completion of the Tympanum, in his memory. It funded the gilding of the mandorla around the figure of our Lady, and the engagement of Enzo Selvaggi as designer of the mosaic.

Fr John (Jack) Barker was already his Curate, living somewhat farther from the church. The Vestry did not trust the PECUSA Diocese of Los Angeles's program for selecting clergy, so they (after some time) chose to elevate the Curate they knew, rather than an unknown prospect offered by an increasingly squirrelly PECUSA. I seem to think they made this decision within a few months, certainly before the end of that year.

Fr Barker was aware of the intent of PECUSA to dissolve St Mary's because it was a "hotbed" of resistance to the rising secularism & "progressive" (heretical) agenda. Fr Barker knew the property, & the Della Robbia [altarpiece] were valuable items. He had the piece moved inside, as a Memorial to Fr Jordan, completed by St Peter's Day, 1973. He then moved to have the church building declared a "Cultural - Historical Monument" of the City of Los Angeles. This was achieved by December, 1973, by formal action, which was then publicly enacted early in 1974. This would block the Diocese from selling the church for demolition.

Amendments to the Corporate [bylaws] were also made, to update them to accord with then recent changes to CA Law. (Such that if the Corporation were dissolved, it could only be sold to a non-profit.. etc.) When PECUSA finally voted to accept priestesses, at Minneapolis, 1976, the Parish was among the first in the USA to formally separate from PECUSA. This was formalized at the Annual General Meeting of the parish, January, 1977. Lawsuits ensued. At one point, observing PECUSA behavior elsewhere, to sneak into churches by night & change all the locks, & seal out the resistant clergy & congregations, St Mary's installed chainlink fencing around the building, with guard dogs day & night. (You can still see the holes in various places for that fencing.)

Fr Barker & several like-minded clergy appealed to, and visited Rome, seeking some kind of accommodation. He has published some sort of history of all this, which you should be able to find on line. It may have all the detail & dates you need. [I haven't been able to locate this; if someone can point me to it, I'll appreciate it -- jb]

in 1978, a clergy meeting in the undercroft, attended by Fr Christopher Phillips, I believe, made a formal petition to the Vatican for an Anglican Use allowing married clergy who were former PECUSAns. An RC Bishop was in attendance, and celebrated a Mass -- for those in RC Communion, -- at a temporary altar in the undercroft. This was at a time that Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was actually in (secret) residence in Los Angeles, we now know, secreted here to preserve his life from Polish or Soviet government assassins. He went from Los Angeles to the Conclave that elected him Pope! (Not public knowledge.) The result of the Petition was eventually Pope John Paul II's "Pastoral Provision" (1980). [One just has to wonder whether, while in LA, he heard anything about the clergy meeting & Petition?]

Fr Phillips was, I understand, the first priest ordained under that provision, in San Antonio, TX.

At about this time, I'm told, a Vatican flag was on a standard near the Crucifix [As I understand it, the crucifix has subsequently been removed by the dissidents -- jb]. (There had been a door there to the stairs, but it was closed off at this time, or perhaps when the sanctuary was remodeled, in 1973.) The Parish won the case against PECUSA in 1981, at the appellate level. In 1984, PECUSA was forced by the Court to issue a Quit-Claim Deed to St Mary's. (This cleared the way for the bank to be erected on church property.)

Fr Barker was unmarried; the Pastoral Provision was not extended to him. The parish was for a time in a "Pro-Diocese of St Augustine (of Canterbury)" as some of the old Prayer Books and Hymnals testify by stamps inside them. It was anticipated that the "Pro-Diocese" would become RC, en bloc.

Eventually, this came to be seen as a fruitless hope. It was at this point that Fr Barker was "discharged." For several months, the parish had visiting clergy from various Anglican alphabet-soup groups. Eventually, the ACC supplied Fr Greg Wilcox, from La Verne, on a "temporary" basis.

Then the Vestry officially called him, ca. 1985/6. He accepted somewhat reluctantly, I'm told. He then got the parish to accept the ACC. Later he led the parish to revolt from ACC, leading to the second lawsuit, settled ca. 1994. {Details of this period appear in this post and the two posts after it.]

I'm enormously grateful for this information. It makes me more hopeful that something can be done to continue this tradition of spiritual commitment at the parish.

My informant indicates that he's put this together from memory, but feels it's as reliable as he can make it. If anyone has clarifications, corrections, or additions to this material, I will be most happy to add them to the record.

Regarding the Pro-Diocese of St Augustine of Canterbury, I found the following:

There is no such thing as a pro-diocese in the Catholic Church.

in the early 1980's, several congregations of former Episcopalians formed what was then called the pro-diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury. One of these congregations was here in San Antonio and some of its members were individually received into the Catholic Church on the Feast of the Assumption in 1983. At the same time, a parish was erected under the title of Our Lady of the Atonement under the terms of a Pastoral Provision granted by the Holy See. There are several other such parishes in the United States, but they are parishes of the dioceses in which they are located. The pro-diocese no longer exists.

Condolences From A Former Parishioner

A former parishioner at St Mary of the Angels who sometimes sends his reflections writes:

Just read your last two posts, John. the parish has declined greatly from the plummy days of Fr. Jordan when I was a member. Remember, I was baptized and confirmed there as a teenager in the 50s. There was a thriving Sunday School, [and] adult school of religion on Sunday afternoons, before Evensong and Benediction in the evening. Daily Mass, Confessions on demand and scheduled on Saturday evenings. After Fr. Jordan's untimely death [update: in 1971], Fr. Barker took over and things started going south, from my recollection. I left the parish soon after and never looked back. I still think that Fr. Jordan might have taken the parish into a western rite Orthodox jurisdiction, [if] there had been one then. I never in all my years there heard him say anything favorable to the RCC as it existed then.

I checked the timeline on the Freedom for St Mary's site, but unfortunately, it gives no dates for Fr James Jordan's tenure. (The timeline on the Facebook page linked above says it was 1952-1971.) I asked my correspondent what was on the corner property before the bank building (which acquired its tenant in 1984), and he replied,

As I recall, two small apartment houses, I believe two story duplexes. At one time, Fr. Jordan moved out of the little house behind the church, which became class rooms, and moved into the apartment house facing Hillhurst. it was there he died from a heart attack.

It's worth noting that both Frs Jordan and Barker were Episcopal priests. My correspondent has said in the past that Fr Jordan seems to have flirted with becoming Orthodox and possibly taking the parish with him; he notes that Jordan would take groups to Orthodox services. This would have been well before the Affirmation of St Louis. Fr Barker, of course, eventually did more than flirt with Catholicism, but in consequence of his various moves was inhibited by The Episcopal Church on January 28, 1977, which was also before the Congress of St Louis, which took place on September 14-16 of that year.

My correspondent does not venerate Fr Barker as others seem to do; I take no position, since I don't know the man. I do note that other priests who have left The Episcopal Church out of dissatisfaction have resigned, rather than wait to be deposed, and under its current policies (which, however, it adjusts or not depending on what suits its purpose), the US-Canadian Ordinariate does not ordain priests who are under discipline in other jurisdictions.

This short trip down memory lane has brought me back to the time around 1977 when I first became aware of the St Mary of the Angels controversy on the five o'clock news. I believe Mrs Brandt was the spokesperson for the parish at the time, and when asked by the reporter what the parish's objections were to the Episcopal Church's ordination of women, she vehemently insisted that it destroyed "our catholicity". (She was speaking, so I don't know if the "c" was capital, but considering her subsequent positions, I'm assuming it's lower-case.)

The problems facing the parish are generational. Clearly they go back before 1977, and they probably started with Fr Dodd. I will be most eager to hear any other accounts of circumstances under Frs Jordan and Barker, as well as more specific dates for the rectorship of Fr Jordan.