Fr Christopher Phillips And The St Mary Of The Angels Parish

I've been reflecting on recent posts here that mentioned Msgr William Stetson and Fr Christopher Phillips. While I've thought all along that back-channel communication had a lot to do with what went wrong for the St Mary's parish in 2012, I'm beginning to realize that that among the back-channel talk must have been some between Fr Phillips, the most prominent Pastoral Provision priest, and Msgr Stetson, for many years the secretary to the Pastoral Provision delegate.

In addition, the other day I called Msgr Stetson's role in mentoring the transition of the St Mary's parish into the OCSP "feckless". Let's look at the timeline once again. In December 2011, Stetson told the parish that it would be received on the first Sunday of 2012, but there was an immediate backtrack, and Houston requested another parish vote on entering the OCSP in late January. With a vote showing an even more favorable majority for the move, Houston proceeded to dither.

By Easter Monday 2012, the Bush group and the ACA made their first attempt to seize the property and by all indications install Andrew Bartus as rector, called by an insurgent Bush "vestry". At that time, when it became plain that Bartus was working closely with Mrs Bush, the real rector dismissed him from the parish. However, although the first takeover attempt should have been a clear warning to Stetson and Houston that the parish's entry to the OCSP could be derailed, no attempt was made to secure the parish legally, or informally, by reminding Anthony Morello and Bps Strawn and Marsh of the OCSP's intent. (Instead, the ACA may have convinced Houston that they could get rid of Fr Kelley without leaving Houston's fingerprints on the deed.)

By May 2012, the ACA made its second attempt to seize the property by obtaining a temporary restraining order, which was almost immediately revoked by the judge. In a parish meeting, Strawn and Morello announced that they were taking over the parish to correct unspecified irregularities and then turn it over to the OCSP. The "irregularities", of course were non-existent. The odd thing was that by this point, Msgr Stetson had withdrawn from active "mentoring" of the parish and was instead busily facilitating Bartus's reception, with some members of his clique, as Catholics via the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. (Shouldn't his clear willingness to undermine authority have been a bigger issue?) But the bottom line is that Stetson and Steenson between them failed to secure a multimillion-dollar property and a five-figure cathedraticum.

This is the overall background from the parish's perspective -- but the more I learn, the more Fr Phillips appears at key points in this story. Both Phillips and Stetson were involved well before 2012 in the original plans to bring St Mary of the Angels into the OCSP-in-formation. I keep coming back to a meeting at the St Mary's parish in December 2010, which was reported extensively by most of the dilettantes in the then Anglo-Catholic blogosphere. Most of these posts have disappeared with the blogs that carried them, but a typical one still exists here. (This report was from Bartus, who at the time had been ordained an ACA deacon for less than six months, but he had already clashed with his then-bishop, who had inhibited him and was refusing to ordain him a priest. This was fine with Houston, though.)

Fr Phillips, a "showboat" in the view of this blog, was clearly publicizing his role in the meeting on many venues. A video of his talk at the parish can be found here, apparently courtesy of him. Bartus clearly had been ingratiating himself with Phillips by this time -- it's not clear how much of the December 2010 meeting, with Phillips in attendance, was at Bartus's instigation. One thing I note about all the blog coverage of the meeting is that, while Fr William Bower of the ACA Lancaster, CA parish is mentioned, there is absolutely no mention of the meeting's host at St Mary of the Angels, Fr Kelley. This is discourteous to say the least, but it also shows Phillips's and Bartus's priorities.

In 2011, Fr Phillips flew out to Hollywood from Texas in the middle of the week to baptize Bartus's first child, another indication of what had apparently become a close mentor-protégé relationship. Bartus had also been feathering his nest in other ways, relying on his schoolmate at both Texas A&M and Nashotah House, Charles Hough IV, to enhance his standing with the Fort Worth clique in Houston. Among those who knew him at the time, he boasted extensively about his influential connections -- he told me at one point that he'd been tasked with writing the new liturgy. It's hard to avoid thinking that his agenda was to become rector of St Mary of the Angels, certainly at the time one of very few prosperous posts among the groups seeking to enter the OCSP, despite his youth, inexperience, and enormous ego.

By May 2012, the ACA was occupying the St Mary's property without legal authority as squatters, and that same month, the Our Lady of the Atonement parish withdrew its request to join the OCSP. It's hard to avoid thinking that Fr Phillips had intended to use the OCSP as a venue for continued showboating, and whatever the specifics of his clash with Msgr Steenson, this wasn't going to happen. By the same token, Bartus, who seems to have had the favor of just about everyone who counted in the runup to the OCSP, was relegated to putting together a gathered group in the 'burbs, with uninspiring results to this day, and teaching school as a day job.

What strikes me here is that the St Mary of the Angels parish, with its loyal friends, parishioners, and vestry under Fr Kelley, is the entity that's survived and seems to be prevailing over just about every disadvantage put in its path over this period. Msgr Steenson and Fr Phillips are emeriti, a face-saving designation for both. Msgr Stetson is, as far as I'm aware, nowhere to be found in connection with the parish or the OCSP, whatever his continued role in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The ACA Diocese of the West is increasingly moribund, and even the survival of the ACA is not assured. My own view is that the OCSP will shrink to a small number of viable parishes, mostly in Texas, and these will eventually be given over to dioceses, where they'll be small potatoes.

"Feckless" is one of my favorite words. I do not use it in connection with Fr Kelley or his vestry.

Another View On OLA Numbers

Another visitor comments on Saturday's post:

I think you're misinterpreting the numbers. OLA's goal fell just short of 1% of the Archdiocese total, but I think a good financial manager would think 1% was too important to lose. And the actual total was almost $86,000, which put OLA at the top of the small-parish "overachievers," and is more like 2% of the total. Who among us would like to lose 2% of our income. [We don't like it, but, er, these days it happens.]

In fact OLA's total as a "small parish" puts them not too far below the no. 10 spot in the "large parish" category, which I think is impressive.

As far as participation goes, I'm shocked that the top large parish had only a 33% participation rate! Stupid me: I always thought you HAD to give to the Bishop's appeal, or risk getting a phone call asking you what your problem was. I always figured that my lack of participation would be a personal embarrassment to my pastor, and gave accordingly. Doesn't seem like this is the prevailing sentiment in San Antonio.

I think there are two important points here. One: perhaps the low participation at OLA reflects general disenchantment with the Archdiocese and an expectation of aligning with the OCSP. Two: the healthy response by those who did participate reflects a desire among a strong minority of parishioners to stay with the status quo. Perhaps the Archbishop felt it was his obligation to continue to shepherd this portion of the flock and not let them go with just a wink and a wave.

I think OLA's almost perfect fulfillment rate demonstrates that there was a very important minority of the congregation who may love the mass there, and might have been perfectly content with Fr. Phillips, but also was content with being part of the Archdiocese and didn't see a need to depart for the uncertainty of the OCSP.

Bottom line: I think reasons of financial support of the Archdiocese could very well be part of the Archbishop's objection to letting them go, and I also believe he felt an obligation to the minority who did not want to go.

I certainly agree that heads would roll in a corporation that lost a customer who accounted for 1% of sales. On the other hand, I don't think we know much about what was going on in 2016 regarding the parish and Fr Phillips, except that it was something, it was going on for much of the year behind closed doors, and nothing was public until the "save Atonement" ruckus started early this year. As best we know, things had been before the CDF for months at that time.

Certainly one explanation for the overage in the 2016 archbishop's appeal donation could have been Fr Phillips approaching certain of his loyalists -- everyone seems to acknowledge that this was a small number -- to send a message to the archdiocese with a substantial contribution. The issues may have been complex, and the effort to go to the OCSP could have been just one wing of a save-Phillips effort. Another wing could have been to try to convince the archbishop that Fr Phillips was too valuable to lose.

My visitor is correct to point out that there are many loose ends here, and no single theory is going to tie them all together. My own view continues to be that it's a good thing Fr Phillips has been sidelined, as I believe he had more influence, via Msgr Stetson and otherwise, on the St Mary of the Angels debacle of 2011-12 than I had previously thought.

Next Question?

My regular correspondent notes regarding yesterday's post,

You made a very cogent point in your comparison of the transparency of the financial statistics of the Archdiocese of San Antonio with the complete blackout which covers most aspects of OCSP activity and governance. The lack of public accountability is even more worrying than the quality of the decision-making. My only quibble with your analysis of the relatively low performance of OLA is that if its financial contribution was not important enough to be an incentive to hold on to the parish, why did Abp G-S bother? All the evidence that it had deep leadership problems simply adds to the conclusion that he had every motive to say "Yes, by all means go, and let someone else try to sort out this snake pit. Nobody here has been up to the job."

The question of the reportedly long-unresolved personnel issues with Fr Phillips was also at the back of my mind as I reflected on those latest e-mails. My current hypothesis involves Msgr William Stetson, who previously figured in this story as the feckless "mentor" who was assigned to oversee the St Mary's parish transition to the OCSP in 2012. Stetson, a Harvard schoolmate of Cardinal Bernard Law, was closely associated with Law throughout his career. (Abp Hepworth, I believe, sees Law as a baleful figure in this and other sagas.)

According to Wikipedia,

Since 1983 Monsignor Stetson has also served as consultant and later secretary to the Ecclesiastical Delegate of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for the Pastoral Provision for former Episcopal priests [viz, Cardinal Law], by means of which over a hundred men have been ordained for priestly service in the Roman Catholic Church. He maintained the Pastoral Provision Office at Our Lady of Walsingham parish, an Anglican Use congregation in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston from 2007-2010.

Pastoral Provision priests have a direct report to their diocesan bishop, but they also have a dotted line to the Delegate, who was Bernard Law for much of this period. I assume Fr Phillips, by far the most prominent Pastoral Provision priest, was able to call on Msgr Stetson and Cardinal Law for protection whenever necessary for much of his time at Our Lady of the Atonement. Stetson was also a confidant to Abp José Gómez, who was Archbishop of San Antonio from 2004-2011, which meant that Fr Phillips was blessed with additional friends in high places during this period. However, Cardinal Law had retired to Rome in disgrace by this time.

With the erection of the OCSP, though, he lost that protection, or at least, he would have lost it if OLA had gone in as of 2012. I've heard different stories on what happened between Phillips and Msgr Steenson, but all suggest that Steenson was aware of personnel issues relating to Phillips and intended to act on them in some way, most likely by forcing Phillips into retirement, the action that eventually occurred under Bp Lopes and would de facto have taken place if Phillips had stayed in the archdiocese.

When I researched excardination during the OLA controversies earlier this year, I learned that while requests are routinely granted, if in fact there are outstanding personnel issues, the two bishops meet to discuss them. I'm told there is no reason to believe such a meeting did not take place between Bp Lopes and Abp Garcia-Siller, and I suspect that Msgr Steenson had also become aware of such issues. I think it's reasonable to speculate that the personnel issues relating to Fr Phillips were serious and long-standing, but that Phillips had had friends in high places who protected him until they moved on and aged out. Phillips was also able to manipulate dilettante Anglo-Catholic bloggers to maintain a good public reputation until these also lost interest.

So my current theory is that Abp Garcia-Siller, while he no doubt had other priorities, eventually moved forward to resolve long-standing questions relating to Fr Phillips. (Yesterday's e-mails suggest OLA wasn't all that important as a parish.) Certainly these actions had been under way as of mid-2016. The apparent subsequent move by OLA and Fr Phillips to transfer to the OCSP may well have been driven by the personnel actions taking place within the archdiocese, which of course were and always will be confidential. It appears that Abp Garcia-Siller was moving deliberately and responsibly here, though also with what no doubt was a clear understanding of political sensitivities.

But the issue of the post-2012 construction at OLA and its funding by the archdiocese would also have warranted a thorough review and adjudication by the CDF. Again, though, the exact nature of the deliberations was and always will be confidential.

It's always interested me that the practical result for Fr Phillips, retirement before the canonical age with a face-saving gesture or two, would have been the same no matter who was his ordinary.

Different Animals

A visitor who is clearly well-informed about the Archdiocese of San Antonio sent me two e-mails yesterday expressing concern that by trying to draw an equivalence between St Mary of the Angels and Our Lady of the Atonement, I may be misstating the relative size and importance of the OLA parish.

I have been following your blog and it seems to me that you are conflating the financial issues of St. Mary of the Angels and Our Lady of Atonement. To me, the situations are not at all similar. Here’s why:

OLA had already been given permission to join the OCSP before they began construction on the new high school building. In fact, this is part of the reason they delayed the start of construction for several years (they were to have originally to have completed the high school building so that the class of 2015 would graduate in the new building), so that they would not be encumbered or possibly have to pay back debt to the archdiocese or forfeit any of their buildings/property. It was Fr. Phillips who withdrew the OLA petition to the OCSP the first time for whatever his reasons were.

The second time around, when Fr. Phillips decided to pull the trigger, OLA had already begun construction on the high school (as of today, the building is not yet completed but is substantially underway). As you are probably aware, Catholic dioceses are self-insured and self-funded. OLA, as a pastoral provision parish, had to apply for a loan/building plan to be approved by the archdiocese which required at least 50% of the funding for the project before construction can begin. When the high school construction began, OLA did not have 100% of the funds to complete the high school so it had to have received a loan or at least some kind of financing arrangement with the archdiocese. That makes OLA simply walking away from the archdiocese in the middle of a construction project a little trickier than simply forfeiting a continued cathedraticum which seems to be the case with St. Mary of the Angels.

I do not know what kind of financial arrangements were made by OLA nor how they were resolved by the pontifical declaration to dissolve the Pastoral Provision, but I do know that overall, the OLA parish is pretty small potatoes in the archdiocese of San Antonio. As a comparison, Our Lady of Guadalupe in Helotes has over 8,000 families. I would be surprised if OLA has 800 families. Perhaps I’m wrong, but then again…

So, not to be overly picky, but I don’t see the two situations as similar at all.

One detail stood out: OLA "had to apply for a loan/building plan to be approved by the archdiocese which required at least 50% of the funding for the project before construction can begin." Clearly the property improvements in San Antonio were subjected to more detailed and stringent requirements than anything that seems to have been done in Calgary. I'm increasingly concerned that Bp Lopes seems to be encouraging rather small communities to overextend themselves in acquiring property without having the sort of diocesan resources that could effectively fund, control, or supervise this.

The visitor continued in a second e-mail:

I was later considering the financial situation of OLA and I wondered exactly how did OLA stack up against other parishes in the San Antonio archdiocese. So I looked. I have attached a link for you to a web page for statistics of the 2016 Archbishop’s Appeal.

As you look at some of the other parishes’ numbers and Atonement’s numbers, please know that the amount each parish is assigned as a goal is directly related to the cathedraticum each parish pays to the archdiocese annually.

Looking at OLA, you can determine that their original goal was $37,137.00 but that they had a few hefty donors to bump them up to the $85,791.49 that they actually collected. By reviewing the list of parishes that had the highest participation rates, Atonement is not listed so they had to have a participation rate less than 40%.

The goal of the appeal was 4.5 million dollars so Our Lady of Atonement’s expected share = $37,137.00 / $4,500,000 or 0.825% of the total appeal meaning OLA’s expected tithe on an annual basis is less than one percent of cathedraticum income for the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

Is it alarming to lose a guaranteed source of income by losing a parish to the OCSP? Sure, but with numbers less than 1%, I’m pretty sure the Archdiocese can make that up or give that up with very little heartburn. So it seems to me that the pushback from the archdiocese was something more than financial. Just sayin’…

Another detail that stands out here is that the archbishop's appeal statistics for the Archdiocese of San Antonio are public, while as far as I'm aware, those for the OCSP are not. One one hand, this makes it possible to evaluate the financial standing of parishes in the archdiocese, but the same information for the OCSP is secret -- from my point of view, not a good sign.

I would point out once again that Abp Hepworth, Fr Kelley, and the vestry are reaching a point where they will need to determine the best use for some very significant resources. I'm beginning to question whether the OCSP is in a position to make responsible use of them.

Isn't This Why I Started This Blog?

My regular correspondent replies to my puzzlement over whether any adults are in charge at St John the Evangelist Calgary:

A typical Catholic or official Anglican diocese has resources---contingency funds, endowments, etc---to assist a parish in the short term if pastoral necessity dictates. If prudent analysis by the advisors you refer to dictates otherwise, the message goes out that the Big Plans must be nixed, because debt cannot be assumed without diocesan permission. A deficit budget is not an option. As you note, "continuing" parishes had complete latitude; I am familiar with a case in the ACCC where the parish paid the rector's wife rather than the rector so that he could continue to collect payments from the "Cost of Conscience" fund for unemployed former clergy who left the CofE over the ordination of women issue. Many former TAC clergy seem to remain in this world, but we cannot put SJE in this category as it was an ACC parish which seems to have parted company with the Anglican diocese on mutually respectful terms. But Houston seems to be more than usually hands off where Canada is concerned. No idea, really.

The only conclusion I can come to from the string of reasoning I've been doing over the past week or so is that the SJE parish never really had the resources to purchase its building, and the 2014 warning from Fr Kenyon in yesterday's link goes some way to confirm this. Here's a question: why did the Anglican Diocese of Calgary not resist the parish's leaving? I've got to conclude, irrespective of any other reason, it was (a) because it was no great loss to the diocese, and (b) these doofuses were going to pay rent for the building and then buy it, which probably compensated for loss of diocesan tithe, which probably wasn't that great.

Hmm. The Episcopal diocese had no problem with St Luke's leaving to join the OCSP, either -- in fact, they let that parish go even before the OCSP was erected! Contrast this with the scorched-earth policy TEC has had over ACNA-wannabe parishes that attempt the same thing. Of those in the TEC Diocese of Los Angeles who tried this, all were clawed back, and three of the four have lost their buildings and pretty much folded. You can argue that the St Luke's case was a result of a sympathetic TEC bishop on the verge of retirement, but again, if this had been a more prosperous parish (it had apparently been neglecting its building, after all), things might not have been as easy.

Here's another question: what parish, leaving its denomination to try to join the OCSP, was in fact sued for doing this? Answer: St Mary of the Angels. As far as I can see, of the very small number of communities that actually tried to leave their former Anglican denomination as a full parish to enter the OCSP as the same legal entity, only St Mary of the Angels encountered this resistance. I think we can reasonably conclude that it was the only one whose value made it worth the lawsuit. Period. The only remotely comparable case is Our Lady of the Atonement, which was also valuable enough that the archdiocese resisted its transfer to the OCSP. Those have been the only two parishes worth fighting over. The others, with only a few exceptions, have no business even thinking about owning property.

The next question is why Houston has been allowing these small groups to think about this -- before he left St Luke's for San Antonio, Fr Lewis reported in the parish bulletin that Bp Lopes was encouraging that parish to buy property, even though it had already found maintaining a building unsatisfactory. My guess is that the parishes comparable to St Luke's or St John the Evangelist in size and income have no business at all trying to do such a thing. That the TEC and ACC dioceses would let them go to try this is indication enough.

And this goes to whether there are adults in charge in Houston. I began Bp Lopes's tenure as ordinary with the idea that Msgr Steenson was a bungler, and the record at St Mary of the Angels shows this -- there was no serious effort to move expeditiously to secure the multimillion-dollar property, with a five-figure cathedraticum, in the long months before the opportunists allied with the ACA saw their chance to seize the place. But as I look at how things seem to be playing out in Calgary, I'm not sure what, if anything, has changed.

If I were Abp Hepworth, Fr Kelley, and the parish vestry, I would be considering carefully and prayerfully what the best options are with this very valuable resource, as I'm less and less certain that Houston under Bp Lopes can handle it any better than it did under Msgr Steenson.

More On The Calgary Mortgage

I keep thinking there's more to the Calgary story, and my regular correspondent so far hasn't been disappointing:

Deal with Anglican diocese was that parish could rent the church for 5 years and then at the end of that time buy it for $1.65 million or depart. They started a fund-raising campaign for the down payment---for a commercial mortgage probably at least 20% of the purchase price---originally with a six-year time frame which didn't make a whole lot of sense. It was rather desultory at first. Eventually they tightened up the time frame and got serious. Things were nip and tuck until a single donor pledged $300,000.

But of course, having a down payment is only the first step: your income has to sustain the monthly payments as well. It looks as if St John the Evangelist was almost immediately aware that it couldn't continue with full-time clergy and meet its payments too.

The issue to my mind is whether the parish ever had adequate resources to continue as a stable group -- coetus fidelium stabiliter existens is the term used in Summorum Pontificum, and it seems as if it should apply just as much to Anglicanorum coetibus. "We'll pretend we have a building until our lease runs out, and then we'll come up with a new plan or something" isn't really a strategy. The bottom line is that after five years, the parish could afford to buy its building, or it could afford to pay clergy, but it couldn't do both.

We're in "continuing Anglican" territory here, with unrealistic planning and slapdash attempts to cover up a declining enterprise. I've got to think there was expertise in nearly any US or Canadian diocese that could provide financial guidance that could allow SJE or any other parish to plan its future more realistically. The question for me is why Houston seems not to have provided better supervision to the parish throughout its history and instead seems to have enabled what's taking place now.

In addition, my correspondent referred me to this 2014 post at the Anglican Expats blog, incongruously entitled "some encouraging news":

Recently, there has also been a problem with meeting the operating budget of $5000 weekly. In the same issue of‘ ‘Notices’, Fr Lee Kenyon stated that “the [accumulated operating] bleed is now at over $12,000 (…) We need to stop the bleed, and keep it stopped, sooner, rather than later.”

As far as I can see, the parish had been aware for some years that it wouldn't be able to meet a higher mortgage payment if it was struggling to meet the lower rent payment it had. But let's also recognize that Houston has been remarkably indulgent over similar situations in Scranton and Bridgeport -- none of this reflects well on Bp Lopes, frankly.

St Mary's Legal Update

I'm told that the Bush group's appeal of Judge Strobel's 2015 decision evicting the squatters from the property is proceeding and has been briefed to the court. However, Mr Lancaster has withdrawn as the attorney representing this group, although they've obtained other counsel (more here). Mr Lancaster continues as Mrs Bush's counsel for the damages trial, set to take place just before Thanksgiving this year.

This is clearly the tip of an iceberg, the great mass of which is invisible, especially to me. Among other things, an attorney who withdraws as counsel to a client is ethically required to give reasons that do not disclose anything that would damage the client's case -- non-payment, a reason we've seen given in a couple of recent instances, may not be the actual reason in such cases.

While my wife and I think Mr Lancaster has been struggling with difficult clients and a bad case, we've grown increasingly sympathetic to him over these five years as we've learned of episodes where Mrs Bush and others have verbally abused him in the courthouse hallway and elsewhere.

One reason an attorney can withdraw from representing a client is if the client refuses to cooperate in preparing the case or refuses to take the attorney's advice. Something like this may be operating here.

As a lay observer, it's hard for me to avoid thinking that the legal situation of the Bush group is deteriorating quickly, and their most prudent step would probably be to find a way to settle the case and minimize costs. Even if Mrs Bush is determined to fight collection efforts to the bitter end, this will still cost her and her estate considerably more in shielding assets and additional legal fees, as well as damaging her health and peace of mind.

As of right now, I've got to think that a credible settlement offer from Mrs Bush would involve, at least among other things, dropping the appeal of the Strobel decision and assuming the $600,000 mortgage Mrs Bush took out against the parish property without having title. However, with the appeal proceeding and having not much prospect of success, the window of opportunity here is rapidly closing, and with the damage suit trial looming in November, the vestry has less and less incentive to negotiate.

My surmise, and I repeat this is surmise, is that Mr Lancaster recognized that the strategy of delay he pursued for much of the cases' history is running out, the appeal in his judgment is not going to succeed, and he advised Mrs Bush to pursue a settlement while she still has the appeal as a bargaining chip. My impression of Mrs Bush is that, in a psychic Führerbunker, she's never going to surrender. Thus Mr Lancaster withdraws from a hopeless situation in which Mrs Bush is unlikely to extricate herself.

A continuing question is whether, with Mr Lancaster already having withdrawn as counsel to the ACA, the Diocese of the West, Frederick Rivers, and the Kangs, those defendants will secure counsel. If they have, their counsel will need to appear at the August 10 pre-trial conference; if not, they will need to appear in person. But now without counsel who can present a unified negotiating position, they're in a situation where they can each be individually liable for multimillion-dollar damages, but the deep pocket, Mrs Bush, won't make the sort of concessions that might get them out of very serious legal difficulties.

They all may well be in denial, of course.