Blast From The Past

A visitor sent me a link to this entry at the Anglo-Catholic blog from December 2010, almost exactly six years ago. There are two very interesting posts from Fr Phillips, who was then and is now a Pastoral Provision Catholic priest. First:

I'm at St. Mary's now — just finished offering a Low Mass (Deacon Bartus kindly served), and the intention was for the success of the day's activities.

Er, how did that work, exactly? Did Fr Phillips check passports at the communion rail? It seems, after all, that nearly everyone at the St Mary's event was an Anglican, including Dcn Bartus, but Fr Phillips is Catholic. Did they all just ask for a blessing, or what?

Second question: Dcn Bartus, barely six months out of seminary, is specifically noted, and of course, both comments feature Fr Phillips, who at the time was prominently mentioned as in the running for US Ordinary, along with David Moyer. The one individual not credited at all was their host, Fr Kelley, the St Mary's rector, without whom the whole meeting could not have taken place. Seems like even Fr Phillips was playing politics.

The parish at the time was in the process of going into the Patrimony of the Primate. Then-ACA Bishop Daren Williams had reversed himself on Anglicanorum coetibus, had inhibited Dcn Bartus, and had refused to ordain him a priest for reasons that aren't clear, although Bartus went on to have a troubled relationship with his next bishop, David Moyer.

On the other hand, at least in terms of what became the OCSP, Bartus came out better than Frs Kelley, Phillips, and Moyer, and was probably the only one who knew the score about Steenson.

But it's also worth noting that in December 2010, this was clearly seen as a significant event: a large number of Anglicans gathering at St Mary of the Angels during Advent in anticipation of the Ordinariate. You really can't airbrush out the significance of the parish, and Bp Lopes will not succeed in any significant way until he can bring the parish in.

The OCSP, Syncretism, And The Press

My regular correpondent comments,

As you will see at the Ordinariate Expats site Mr Murphy is gradually transforming his blog into a quasi-official news and comment forum. In its day the Anglican Use of the Roman Rite blog maintained by Steve Cavanaugh covered the news fairly thoroughly and the Anglican Use Society site was a comprehensive source of information and more substantive writing on the subject. Whether the achievement of enthusiastic pioneers can be matched by a second wave dealing with the reality that theirs is destined to be a fringe movement remains to be seen.

The line is of course that AC has a significance far beyond its minuscule uptake because it demonstrates the Church's ability to appropriate the spiritual gifts of other Christian traditions, which may be a tool to draw Protestants into the Church or may just be a Good Thing in itself (a safer thesis, given experience to date). Considerable effort is also taken to demonstrate that many aspects of Anglican liturgy and spirituality actually belonged to the Church all along, despite the fact that this raises some issues around the first point.

I'm wondering if Bp Lopes is drinking some of this Kool-Aid. In his interview with the Register. he remarked, "[The Anglican prayer] I find myself using often in various situations, everything from the beginning of meetings to personal prayer, is the 'Collect of Purity.'" This, I discovered, is a sign that I've been Catholic long enough to have forgotten what he meant: the Collect of Purity is the prayer at the start of the Anglican rite that begins,"ALMIGHTY God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts. . ."

It seems to me that the Anglican usage of Purity isn't the same as the Catholic: if I go into confession and mention impurity, the confessor will know exactly what I mean, and purity in the Anglican rite is something else. I've got to take seriously what was explained to me in Episcopalian confirmation class: the Anglican collect is basically saying let's calm down, get centered, and concentrate here.

St Thomas Aquinas had something else in mind:

I know that every perfect gift, and especially that of chastity, depends on the power of Your providence. Without You a mere creature can do nothing. Therefore, I beg You to defend by Your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I have ever sensed or imagined anything that could stain my chastity and purity, blot it out. . .

If Mr Jesserer Smith caught this in his interview, he didn't bring it up. I can't imagine Bp Lopes means to start staff meetings with a prayer for radical chastity. The longer I'm a Catholic, the more I recognize the important differences between Anglicanism (and for that matter other flavors of Protestantism) and Catholicism. Going too far in trying to gloss over the differences brings us, it seems to me, to syncretism.

This may start to explain why Anglicanorum coetibus is developing into a fringe phenomenon. But this goes to another problem, the OCSP's clumsiness in dealing with 21st century media. Bp Lopes is relying on stenographers -- I think this accurately characterizes both Mr Jesserer Smith and Mr Murphy. They see their roles as gushy cheerleaders who report what they're told without question.

The recent electoral results in both the US and UK should indicate this is an outdated media strategy.

Appraisal Time?

On November 24, 2015, the announcement was made that Msgr Steenson was retiring effective from the date of the announcement, and Msgr Lopes of the CDF would be replacing him as bishop. On February 2, 2016, he was consecrated bishop, although he had been making the decisions since his designation on November 24. Since Msgr Steenson's "retirement" at age 63 was most unusual for a Catholic prelate, we must assume that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had expectations for the OCSP that Msgr Steenson wasn't meeting.

This implies as well that whatever expectations are in the air from the CDF must still be active, and after a year, it's likely that Bp Lopes will be given some sort of formal review. This explains, it seems to me, the remarkable recent activity of Mr Jesserer Smith, staff writer for the NCR, on Bp Lopes's behalf. Not only did we get the interview I linked yesterday, but he drafted two press releases, almost certainly composed at Houston's behest but sent out on Rochester's account. The fact that I went so far as to speculate about one of these (rather than, apparently, just reprint it without comment) clearly got someone in Houston upset. Pressure?

So what has Bp Lopes accomplished? He began a Bishop's Appeal, and he seems to have put the cathedraticum on a sounder footing. He's made it a priority to visit the groups and parishes, but as my regular correspondent puts it,

His assertion that he has made 37 episcopal visits this year is I'm sure accurate but also somewhat misleading. Many of the full parishes and conveniently placed quasi-parishes have been visited more than once but a significant number of the 40+ groups have not yet been visited at all, including most of the marginal ones.

And a more troublesome issue is that many of the marginal groups are marginal indeed. I raised the question of just how many groups have closed or gone dormant in the past year, and my correspondent replied,

St Gilbert's, formerly in Boerne TX was supposed to follow Fr Wagner, now pastor of a diocesan parish in Kerrville, and begin worshipping at St Peter upon the Water Retreat Center in Ingram. However, I check the SPutW site frequently and while mass times are posted regularly there is never any mention of Fr Wagner or St Gilbert's. Nothing in the Notre Dame, Kerrville bulletin either. So I would regard it as defunct. The former parochial administrator of St Gregory the Great, Mobile has had to retire completely from active ministry owing to ill health. Mass is now offered by a local priest; I am unclear as to whether this takes place once or twice a month. Conflicting information on websites of host parish, Ordinariate group, and Facebook page. St Margaret's, Katy has [disappeared from the web and reappeared] but hasn't been upgraded or updated, although Fr Sellers is still President of the school which hosts it. Perhaps just an internet reboot. Fr Sellers' Facebook page also off.

It's worth pointing out that even if these groups are celebrating BDW mass without advertising it, no potential new members would be able to find them. So this makes a practical three, to which we add St Gregory Stoneham, MA, for four. But then we have St Alban's Rochester, which at best will resume activity sometime next year, although this could possibly be just Mr Jesserer Smith's somewhat gushy reading of the situation and not necessarily Bp Matano's. But then we have St Edmund's, Kitchener. My correspondent says, "I think they went out of business at the end of November 2015, so contemporaneous with Bp Lopes. He was certainly part of the decision to pull the plug, i.e. tell them that Fr Catania would not be replaced."

So this makes, as best my correspondent and I can put things together, six quasi-parishes or groups in formation that have at best gone dormant or ceased activity in the year since Bp Lopes's designation. If we say there are roughly 40 OCSP entities, this is 15% disappearing in a year.

One issue I've been working on as well is trying to get a picture of how many OCSP priests are actually available to replace those who retire or can't continue with their groups for other reasons -- again, looking only at 2016, this has become a serious problem. My correspondent says,

I note that the NCR article mentioned "10 or 11" married former Anglican clergy now in formation. There was a week-long gathering of them in Houston last month, although it was not publicised, for some reason. It will be interesting to see if these men are attached to groups (Jonathan Erdman in Louisville is at least one in this situation) or if they are free to relocate to look after currently leaderless OCSP communities. I hope there will be no further ordinations of men who then become Ordinariate clergy in name only, unconnected to any OCSP community. This simply bolsters the idea that the Ordinariate has "more priests than people."

Will 10 priests be ordained next year but so committed to their present locations that they can't move to bolster additional failing groups?

But so far, this neglects the big issue that discouraged the friends of Anglican ecumenism since mid-2012: St Mary of the Angels and Our Lady of the Atonement. I've got to think that the bungling of these key admissions at the start of the OCSP has been a sore point with the CDF ever since. Whatever may be going on behind the scenes, there's been no visible result.

Perhaps we'll yet see some gushy piece from Mr Jesserer Smith about how maybe someday something will happen!

WTH?

This is an acronym for "what the heck", if anyone is interested. Last week there was a kerfuffle after Prof Jordan of the dormant Rochester group sent out an e-mail that had been written by one Peter Jesserer Smith. I wasn't familiar with the name, and I simply assumed Mr Smith was a lay member of the Rochester group who'd written the piece. But today someone sent me a link to an interview at the National Catholic Register with Bp Lopes that was conducted by none other than Peter Jesserer Smith, who is identified as a Register staff reporter.

On November 28, Prof Jordan sent me the following e-mail:

Hello Mr. Bruce,

My attention was drawn to your blog posts about our group's email update. Generally, these news items are meant to inform the group and our friends and supporters of our progress. They are not meant to be for public debate or speculation. It could be possible that your posts may further hinder our progress.

I would appreciate it if you would remove the posts.

thanks,
Andrew Jordan

Excuse me? A professional writer for the NCR drafts your press release (which is what it could only have been), and you claim it's "not meant to be for public debate or speculation"? I don't get it. Mr Jesserer Smith, as I understand these things, is not defining a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church. Even the most devout Catholics, it seems to me, are entitled to debate and speculate over his utterances. And maybe, as a full professor, Prof Jordan has mistaken me for a cringing graduate assistant. I fear at age 69 I don't need his influence to get me any new academic job.

I assume Prof Jordan was told to send this e-mail by Houston -- though if I were Houston, I'd be on Jesserer Smith's case, as well as Jordan's, for not running things by Bp Matano. Otherwise, if Matano in fact approved it, I'm not sure what the problem is.

Smith's interview with Bp Lopes, by the way, is nothing special.

Strong Leadership?

I attended an advent festival of lessons and carols, a uniquely Anglican event, at St Mary of the Angels yesterday afternoon. I made a rough count of about 35 people there including choir and altar party, which isn't too bad, since it wasn't Sunday mass. I noted a number of new faces and a good mix of ages. Fr Kelley and the parish are clearly making every effort to rebuild, and it was plain that friends of the parish were there as well, keeping it in their prayers and good wishes.

In fact, revisiting the truly beautiful nave, I got a sense of potential, if not optimism, equivalent to what I felt with others across North America in 2011 as we awaited the erection of the Ordinariate. The bungling of the St Mary's attempt to enter -- which had originally been intended as a hallmark event -- was, with the reversal at Our Lady of the Atonement, a major factor in the discouragement that overtook the Anglican ecumenical movement by mid-2012.

In the US, it's plain that the country is beginning to see a restoration of optimism following the presidential election -- if nothing else, the stock market's gains should be concrete evidence of this. It stems, it seems to me, from strong leadership. The US-Canadian Ordinariate could benefit from a dose of strong leadership as well, and if it gets it, it could produce renewed optimism like what we felt in 2011.

But happy-talk about maybe starting things up again in Rochester, or declaring that a marginal startup is really a parish, isn't that kind of leadership. One thing that would actually reflect strong leadership would be a genuine effort by Bp Lopes to bring the St Mary of the Angels parish into the OCSP.

A regular visitor cautioned me that a group intending to enter must not have ongoing litigation. The problem, though, is that the litigation for all intents and purposes is resolved. The strategy of the Bush group and the ACA has been simply delay -- Mr Lancaster told the judge almost a year ago that the outcome of the Bush appeal of the 2015 finding would be dispositive, and that they had requested it be expedited. By July, it had become plain that they hadn't requested this (in fact, they'd lied to the judge). At this point, they're simply trying to prolong the agony, and it's hard to see any motive for this other than simple spite.

I can only think that some involvement by Bp Lopes could facilitate resolving the issue. A simple request for a phone chat with Bp Marsh, in which Bp Lopes asks Marsh to outline what he means to accomplish by prolonging the legal action and what Lopes might do to resolve outstanding issues, might well move things forward. An informal visit to the St Mary's parish by Bp Lopes could also be a worthwhile gesture, and it might help him to get a better picture of the contribution the parish could make.

I have a feeling that up to now, Houston has been unwilling to open the can of worms that the events of 2012 represent. Not least of these would be a serious investigation of Fr Bartus's involvement in the division of the parish and the campaign of character assassination against Fr Kelley. The problem for Bp Lopes is that maybe putting someone new in Rochester or declaring that Bridgeport is a parish whether or not it can pay pastors' or sextons' salaries is small potatoes. Accomplishing what the OCSP actually set out to do in early 2012 is something else.

The OCSP doesn't have a chance of success unless its leadership is strong enough to undertake this task.

Court Hearing December 12, 2016

There will be a court hearing on December 12, 2016 at 8:30 am in Dept. 32 at the Stanley Mosk courthouse in downtown Los Angeles. It will be on the combined issues of the motion for summary judgment against the Bush group for lack of standing, as they are not the parish vestry, never have been, and have no standing to bring suit. There will also be a motion to dismiss the "related cases" against Fr Kelley. Mr Lancaster's position has been that the court should wait for the appeals court to rule on the Bush group's appeal of Judge Strobel's 2015 finding, but it appears that this will take a great deal longer than Mr Lancaster's original prediction.

This is an area where I continue to be skeptical of Bp Lopes's intent regarding the Ordinariate -- as I've said before, where there's a will, there's a way. Frankly, I think if he were to raise the issue with Bp Marsh of withdrawing the ACA's participation in the legal action, it would move the matter forward. The ACA's participation has certainly damaged its credibility -- it must certainly be a factor in making the ACA's projected merger with the APA "elusive", in Bp Marsh's own words. In the interests of its survival, the ACA needs to move on and focus on the future.

The St Mary of the Angels issue has also been a major problem for the OCSP's public image -- this blog is read by influential parties. Bp Lopes, as I've said before, you want me on your side.

More On The Bridgeport Parish

Regarding my skepticism over whether the Bridgeport parish fully qualified for its canonical erection, my regular correspondent adds,

I would say that there is no doubt that Fr Ousley is not being paid the designated OCSP stipend, because this does not exist. I assume it is one of the financial details that the OCSP administration is trying to work out. However, Fr Ousley was the full-time parochial administrator of St Michael and All Angels, Philadelphia when it had twenty-five members. Clearly they could not have been providing him significant financial support. Likewise, St Gregory, Stoneham could exist as an independent congregation while Fr Liias, the retired TEC clergyman, was their leader but since he retired it has had to merge with the local diocesan PP parish, St Athanasius.

The purchase of an old building, especially one whose maintenance was probably skimped on in the past as closure loomed, is a risk. The November newsletter hints at some potential structural problems. Caretaking duties are being undertaken by volunteers which may be a false economy. So I agree that things are not rock solid at St John the Baptist.

Perhaps you are right that this step reflects a desire to suggest that there is momentum in the OCSP despite appearances to the contrary. Regarding the demographics, there are children in some of the pictures of the post-service reception at St John Baptist. Furthermore, I recall a line of the art critic Robert Hughes', apropos of the fact that we were told for decades during the Cold War that the Orthodox Church was being stamped out in Russia and no one attended but little old ladies, "Little old ladies are a renewable resource."

Well, little old ladies may be a renewable resource, but disaffected Episcopalians and "continuers", their numbers always exaggerated, are not. TEC membership is steadily declining, and not because they're moving to the OCSP. The hard core TEC Anglo-Catholics, significantly in Philadelphia but elsewhere too, are in "affirming" parishes who disagree with the Church's teaching on marriage and sexuality. The "continuers" are disappearing even faster. If they were thought to be a market in 1993 or even 2010, this is no longer the case.

If the current pastor in Bridgeport isn't being paid an amount consistent with normal standards for diocesan secular priests (I occasionally see numbers in the range of $30,000 per year, though this includes paid housing at minimum), this isn't being factored into "stability" as a criterion. Should Fr Ousley retire at age 70 and the parish be unable to pay his successor, this would probably result in the parish's closure, since the diocese had presumably already determined that it wouldn't be sustainable with a diocesan priest, even part time.

The same would apply to parish volunteers serving as housekeepers and gardeners. At some point, this is going to get old. And when the pastor of our previous diocesan parish had to lay off the school custodian, yes, a volunteer took up the slack, but this was one more sign for us that the parish was failing, and it was time to move on.

My regular correspondent followed up,

Starting a new venture is challenging. Some people have special skills in this regard, naturally or as the result of practice. Someone at the beginning of a managerial career who is launching a new initiative will be motivated to acquire expertise on this subject in a hurry and thus demonstrate readiness for greater responsibility.

Msgr Steenson fell into none of these categories. In addition he had one paid employee, his personal assistant, about whose skills I will say nothing except to note that she is no longer with the organisation, and was carrying a significant teaching load at St Mary's Seminary.

He clearly had no ability to identify talent, surrounding himself with incompetent volunteers whose bad decisions, like acquiring the ParishSoft system, are still causing problems for the Ordinariate. I see that his "Letters to the Faithful" have been deleted from the OCSP website, although the heading still remains, which is too bad, because these randomly appearing missives, personally revealing but generally lacking a sense of message, audience, and purpose, offered a lot of insight into the start-up problems of the OCSP.

Now a fresh start has been made. Financial and HR functions are in professional hands. Consistent adherence to canonical requirements is being expected. Common goals are being articulated. Addressing the Ordinariate's fundamental branding problem is a more fundamental problem, of course, and that is the key to its survival.

It's significant that my correspondent is using a corporate-managerial metaphor here. The problem is that there are ways to advance in corporations that don't involve competence, and being a member-in-good-standing of the club is only one of them. Another is to make cosmetic changes in one assignment and, as a rising star, quickly move on, leaving the less visible problems for someone else to clean up. "Pump and dump" could be another way of putting things.

It's getting harder for me to avoid thinking that it's in Bp Lopes's interest to create an appearance of success by glossing over more fundamental issues in places like Scranton and Bridgeport, leaving the inevitable need to address those to a successor.