Like The Persistent Widow In The Parable,

People keep filing suits against California Gov Newsom. I missed one filed July 22 by San Francisco civil rights attorney Harmeet Dhillon to reopen California schools to in-person instruction. A more recent story gives very complete detail on the legal reasoning behind the suit:

[C]onservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who is spearheading the suit against Newsom in federal court claims not only will students' learning outcomes be harmed by remote learning, but that by preventing students from going to school, Newsom is violating their rights under both the Constitution and federal law.

"If you have a right under the law, a fundamental right, protected right, and your ability to enjoy that right varies according to some arbitrary criteria like where you live," that is unconstitutional, Dhillon told Fox News in an interview. "So you're living, for example, on the border of a county that is on the bad list. The county next to you, right across the border ... across the street even, is not on that list. The kid in the house across the street gets to have a quality education in-person and you don't."

Specifically, she said, the geographic distinctions made under California's system for opening schools run afoul of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

Dhillon also claims that California's order violates another concept stemming from the 14th Amendment -- substantive due process. Substantive due process is a complicated, controversial part of constitutional law, which Dhillon defines as the requirement that when the government deprives people of "a fundamental or what they call a quasi-fundamental right, such that, before the government takes away that right, they have to really have a good reason for doing that either subject to intermediate or strict scrutiny." Intermediate and strict scrutiny are two concepts that define under what circumstances and in what ways a government may restrict a person's rights.

The right to education is actually located in the California constitution, Dhillon says, and is also reinforced by previous rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court. And, Dhillon claims, the remote learning provided by school districts just isn't a good enough education to satisfy the rights of California's children.

"If you are a student, you are forced to undergo so-called, air quotes, 'distance learning,'" Dhillon said. "I don't know a single parent or kid ... who can tell me that how that went in the spring even remotely resembl[ed] what they are used to and what they frankly are entitled to under the law."

. . . Dhillon also said she believes Newsom's order violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects people from "discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin" in their ability to access educational opportunities. "What we have found with distance learning ... [is] that children from Latino or African-American or even probably some of the immigration Asian populations have much less access to digital learning," Dhillon said. "They also, because of the economic impacts in those communities, have much less ability of the mother or the father to stay home with a kid and help them with distance learning. And they have economic pressures that are sometimes forcing high school students to drop out of school to be able to support their families."

This story covers the legal reasoning behind the suit much more fully than anything else I've seen. Yet again, the prestigious constitutional law blogs have offered no equivalent analysis of any of these actions, which is a dereliction.

However, the Parable of the Persistent Widow (Luke 18:1-8) offers real-world insight into how such things proceed. Lawsuits have to be just one strategy for pursuing remedies.

Grace Community Church Is Not In The News

As I reported here, Evangelical Pastor John MacArthur announced on July 25 that he would continue to hold indoor services at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, without social distancing or masks, and with singing, in violation of several orders from civil authorities.

It's worth noting that Sun Valley is an area within both the City and County of Los Angeles, unlike other Evangelical and Pentecostal California churches that have defied civil orders. LA Mayor Garcetti has been particularly vocal with threats to crack down on violators, while other areas are much more sympathetic.

It's now been two Sundays and almost two weeks since MacArthur's announcement. The issue has gone to the back burner in the media, except for the Evangelical press. A piece in The Christian Post provides an update:

County officials have allegedly threatened Grace Community Church in California with fines and possible arrest for reopening his church in defiance of lockdown orders from Gov. Gavin Newsom during the pandemic. Still, Pastor John MacArthur has vowed to continue in-person services.

. . . We will not bow to Caesar,” he added. "The Lord Jesus Christ is our king."

Officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health have threatened MacArthur with “repercussions such as fines and even possible arrest” if his church doesn’t comply with state orders, the Rev. Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, wrote on Facebook.

The department’s Environmental Health division "is investigating and will be reaching out to the church leaders to let them know they need to comply with the Health Officer Order,” Religion News Service reported.

One question that arises is that, with a 14-day period following the July 26 reopening about to expire, there don't seem to have been any reported "cases", hospitalizations, or ICU visits among parishioners. MacArthur said as much in a statement this week. We may assume that if there were, there would be a media frenzy, which so far hasn't taken place. And we're talking about a megachurch, with thousands of members.

Instead, Mayor Garcetti is cracking down on wild parties in the Hollywood Hills. According to Variety, of all sources,

Following a deadly shooting at a mansion party, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is going after people throwing illegal large house parties during the COVID-19 crisis, vowing to have the water and power turned off.

“While we have already closed all bars and nightclubs, these large house parties have essentially become nightclubs in the hills,” said the mayor during a Wednesday afternoon news conference.

Garcetti said the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power will cut off service within 48 hours if the LAPD verifies that there have been violations at a home.

“We will not act lightly, but we will act,” he added.

This is actually a renewal of the same threat made during the March-May lockdown against businesses that didn't close.

However, this has a highly questionable legal basis. Even if a health department order is enforceable (not entirely clear for COVID), the city power department is not the enforcement authority, and in fact utilities, who send workers into all neighborhoods and often into homes, carefully avoid any imputation of law enforcement authority. Otherwise, utility workers run the risks law enforcement officers run, without the resources or training for the role.

Garcetti seems to have been careful to leave houses of worship out of his latest threat to cut off water and power to whomever. If he did, it's fairly plain that Franklin Graham stands behind the Grace Church action, and by taking any sort of enforcement, he'd get crosswise with a nationally prominent Christian figure. He does not want Franklin Graham standing against his water guys.

So Pastor MacArthur and the Grace Church are going to stay out of the news, first, because apparently nobody's gotten sick there, and second, there's only a publicity downside to enforcement. If there's a COVID outbreak among members, or if Garcetti shuts off the power or issues any other citations, we'll certainly hear about it. But so far, not a peep.

UPDATE: Yesterday, Garcetti did very quietly issue a cease and deist order against MacArthur.

Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur announced Wednesday that attorneys Jenna Ellis and Charles LiMandri will represent him and the church in their efforts to continue in-person religious services amid the state of California's and city of Los Angeles' efforts to stop them during the coronavirus.

The church is facing a cease-and-desist order issued by the city that carries a daily fine of $1,000 or arrest if it continues to hold such services.

. . . LiMandri said: "It is unconstitutional for Governor Newsom and the State of California to discriminate against churches by treating them less favorably than other organizations and activities that are not protected by the First Amendment."

LiMandri is a constitutional law attorney and a religious freedom expert. He holds a law degree from Georgetown University.

. . . Franklin Graham, the son of the renowned evangelist Billy Graham, has publicly expressed his support for MacArthur and the church in a Facebook post and encouraged people to attend the church services.

LiMandri previously represented South Bay United Pentecostal Church in a legal action that forced Gov Newsom to relax restrictions on church attendance. The relaxations forestalled any injunctive relief from the US Supreme Court in May.

What Is The Karen Bruce Society Telling Us?

My regular correspondent sent me this screenshot of a post at The Karen Bruce Society Facebook group (click on the image for a lager copy):

The comment:

I am sure Bp Lopes would like to know the source of various items of information leaked to you, not that my identity would get him any closer to that information. But I think he would find the post below quite offensive, and rightly so. Mr Campbell’s relationship with the OCSP is problematic and as I have mentioned he often posts snide comments about it on Catholic Ordinariate Anglican Facebook Forum and elsewhere. Although he remains on the Parish Council of Incarnation, Orlando (his wife is an “Event” co-ordinator and frequently uses the Incarnation parish hall as a venue) he regularly attends mass at the St Thomas More SSPX Priory in Sanford, FL and has done so for years. He effectively parted ways with Msgr Steenson over the question of whether the EF could be offered in OCSP parishes and I think the Ordinariate has failed to meet his expectations in a number of ways. At what point will TKBS members begin to question his agenda?

Referring to a bishop as "his lordship" and making references to indulgences, which have been an anti-Catholic meme since Luther, does not suggest Mr Columba Campbell is speaking as one of the loyal opposition. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the stalwarts in The Karen Bruce Society are as angry at the Catholic Church as they are at Karen. They actually remind me of the original dissident faction at the St Mary of the Angels Hollywood parish, whom for convenience I used to characterize as "the angries".

These folks aren't angry at Karen or my regular correspondent, they're just angry, and they've actually been angry for a long time, though they have more reason to be so now.

I think we're seeing a parallel to a larger trend in society, which has been a realignment of the center-left and center-right coalitions. The center-left coalition had been made up since the 1960s of labor, minorities, Catholics, and to a lesser extent sexual outliers and feminists. The center-right coalition had been made up of traditional conservatives from the early 20th century, quasi-aristocratic National Review types, and corporate country-club Republicans.

By the 2016 election, Democrat leadership had dropped blue-collar labor and Catholic support in favor of a new emphasis on radical feminism and sexual outliers. Open-borders policies placed labor and naturalized or native-born minorities at a disadvantage, and enough of those groups became Trump voters to swing the 2016 election.

At the same time, with no effective successor to William Buckley, the quasi-aristocratic Tories, along with the corporate Republicans who'd supported the Bush family, became never Trumpers. All the rump remnants of the old center-left and center-right coalitions, now without political leverage, are angry. The center-left remnants are really, really angry.

There's a much smaller trend taking place with the disgruntled-Anglican faction, which has been allied, at last in social media, with far-right traditionalist Catholics. COVID is putting pressure on all churches by damaging social networks and reducing income, but the pressure will be particularly severe among the small parishes of the angry fringe groups, of which people like Messrs Reed and Columba Campbell ae stalwarts. This blog has had some role in damaging their credibility -- we wouldn't see The Karen Bruce Society if it hasn't -- but I've been posting on the bigger reasons here in any case.

I think it's becoming plainer that the angries in the ordinariate have never been interested in being Catholic so much as they've just wanted a good place to be angry. The COVID crisis is just one factor that shows this isn't really working out for them, but COVID or not, appealing to fringe groups of angries isn't a winning strategy for the Church. I have a feeling there are wise heads here and in Rome who already understand this.

Heck, if I were in the hard core at the Karen Bruce Society, I'd be angry, too.

As Far As I Can Tell, Frs Phillips, Catania, And Stainbrook Endorse Calumny

I noticed a recent post from someone named Sean Reed on The Karen Bruce Society's Facebook page:

This just in from our regular correspondent:

It seems in the near future that Karen is likely to find it necessary to register in a certain type of local registry with local law enforcement.

An apparent case of those who were abused becoming abusers themselves later in life.

It’s no wonder how whacked out she is in her blog.

As I've noted here, "Karen Bruce" in the context of that group is a reference to me on this blog, and posts there show my photo from my Blogger profile to make it clear whom they're talking about.

The post from Mr Reed plays games, but it's basically implying that I'm about to become a registered sex offender. (My most recent brush with the law was a 1996 ticket for doing 25 in a 15 mph zone on an Air Force base.)

To claim that someone is, or is eligible to become, a registered sex offender, no matter how cutely you dance around it, is a false assertion intended to damage someone's reputation. "It's just a joke", considering the gravity of the implication, is not an out.

I don't know Mr Reed, so I can't judge his level of maturity, but I'm told that he's a member of the St Barnabas Omaha parish. I'm also told that Fr Catania, the pastor there, is a member of the Karen Bruce group.

I must assume he endorses Mr Reed's calumny. If he doesn't, may I suggest he have Mr Reed in for a chat?

I'm told that two other ordinariate priests, Frs Phillips and Stainbrook, are also members of the Karen Bruce group. I assume that if they continue as members, they endorse calumny, a mortal sin.

What puzzles me is that Fr Phillips in particular has built a public record of covering up for the offenses of James Orr, who, if diocesan policies had been followed, could well have had those offenses reported to the police and actually been required to register as a sex offender, no joke, no cute games involved. I have no idea what this says about Fr Phillips.

I intend no hyperbole in calling Mr Reed's conduct despicable, and insofar as the ordinariate priests endorse it, they're just as bad, and hypocrites.

Still Expecting Different Results

My regular correspondent reports,

As you know, there have been two previous attempts to create an Ordinariate community in Minnesota. The first, based in Collegeville, MN and led by lay brother John-Bede Pauley OSB was celebrating bi-weekly masses and Evensongs from at least 2013 on. In 2015 Vaughn Treco was ordained and became the PA of the group, by then worshipping at a parish church in St Louis Park, MN.

This article describes the ASA as “about ten.” In 2016 a chapter of Benedictine Oblates was formed, headquartered at the abbey in Collegeville. During this time Stephen Hilgendorf was received into the Church Another link here.

Early in 2019 Fr Treco was removed from leadership of the group and subsequently resigned his orders. Msgr Steenson took over leadership of the group but after several months recommended that the community be closed, and in May 2019 they celebrated their last Sunday mass. You reported on this in detail.

Now they are being resuscitated, with a diocesan priest celebrating mass once a month starting July 17 assisted by now-Deacon Hilgendorf. Presumably the plan is to put him in charge of a newly-named community once he is ordained priest. In the meantime he is Director of Faith Formation at a local diocesan parish.

Not sure what will be different this time. Facebook page pledges loyalty to Bp Lopes so presumably the Treco-era quasi-sedevacantists have been purged. Who else is out there? Website displays picture of Msgr Steenson celebrating somewhere in some Christmas season for perhaps twenty-five or thirty people, which is more than ten, admittedly. But this seems to have been shown to be stony ground.

Among the elements of insanity here is the idea that you can once again put a newly ordained man into a distant role with no effective supervision and not enough to keep him busy and expect a different result.

But yesterday's homily at mass made something else clearer for me. The celebrant spoke of Christ's grief over the death of John the Baptist in the gospel reading, and he spoke more generally about grief. He recognized that restrictions on mass attendance have probably, as a practical matter, ended many friendships in the parish, and he recognized that this leads to grief as well.

But this brought me to understand more about the full role of a parish, which is in fact to build networks among wide groups of people. But how can you do this with little groups of a few dozen who in fact regard themselves as separate even from the diocesan facility where they meet?

Well, if civil authorities limit attendance to 25 or 50, at least your whole ordinariate group can gather without restriction. But as a practical matter, this isn't a parish, and the members aren't getting that benefit of being Catholic.

Nor, based on how few such groups grow or even last all that long, will they ever, at least not in the ordinriate.

What problem is Houston trying to solve?

So, Again, What's The Appeal?

A recent post at the Anglicanroum Coetibus Socity blog includes a photo of the altar at the Holy Ghost parish in Bethlehem, PA, where the resuscitated, to-be-renamed, ordnariate group is to meet at 5:00 PM Sundays (the time slot otherwise used for the Lithuanian mass at other parishes). One might indeed call the altar "stunningly beautiful", but where is the Anglicanorum in the coetibus? Its style is clearly baroque, which according to Wikipedia

was encouraged by the Catholic Church as a means to counter the simplicity and austerity of Protestant architecture, art and music. . . . The classical repertoire is crowded, dense, overlapping, loaded, in order to provoke shock effects.

Well and good, but it isn't Anglican or Gothic. My regular correspondent notes of the parish,

The new host parish of the so-far unnamed Ordinariate group (originally dedicated to then-Bl John Henry Newman but now to be renamed, I gather) shares a pastor with another Catholic church in Bethlehem; both were former “ethnic” parishes, one German, one a merger (in 2008) of four or five other ethnic parishes. So there appears to be, if anything, an over-supply of churches for local Catholics to choose from. There are two TEC parishes in Bethlehem, plus the TEC diocesan cathedral, but the nearest “continuing” Anglican parish is in Allentown, so not a hotbed of Anglican disgruntlement, at least to the superficial eye.

Original notice of the group's first mass (January 19, 2014) on Facebook includes a comment from an attendee named Claudio Salvucci, not the most Episcopalian name one has ever heard. At one point there was a website but no trace remains. This post does suggest there was an initial group of new converts.

The whole thing seems to be a chowder of sorta-kinda Catholic stuff, but I don't have any sense of focus, and certainly nothing particularly Anglicanorum in the coetibus. In fact, I'll bet if Bp Lopes could get the name of the constitution changed to eliminate the "Anglican", he'd do it, but then, what would be the excuse for the boondoggle?

Holy Ghost's regular Sunday mass is at 10:00. Other than some thees and thous and the Cranmerian insertions, what's to keep the new group from that mass -- or indeed, any mass closer to home?

Maybe more to the basic point, what's the "Anglican patrimony" beyond wine hour after mass and a few campy priests? What we're actually seeing is some mediocre ex Lutheran or Methodist clergy ministering to a few dozen poorly catechized congregants in off hour time slots at whatever Catholic venue will take them in. Not very inspiring.

Wouldn't these people be better off integrating into the diocesan parish mainstream, meeting people and making friends at the 10:00 AM?

California COVID Church Restriction Followup

As I've said, I don't think it's realistic to expect any court decision to be a magic bullet that relieves restrictions on houses of worship. The restrictions vary greatly -- I was surprised to see Pennsylvania allowing 75% capacity, while Michigan in some areas limits attendance to 10, while most of California bans all indoor public masses. For that matter, LA County keeps threatening a red light-green light switch, depending apparently on what the health director had for breakfast.

To follow up on Grace Community Church's defiance of Gov Newsom's July 13 order,

Last week, John MacArthur and Grace Community Church, which is located in Sun Valley California, announced they would not be adhering to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s second round of closure orders. In his announcement, “Christ, not Caesar, Is Head of the Church”, MacArthur informed civic leaders that they had exceeded their legitimate jurisdiction, and that “faithfulness to Christ prohibits us from the restrictions they want to impose on our corporate worship services.”

On Sunday, July 26, 2020 Grace Community Church had its doors open for worship. The pews were filled with people, most of whom were not wearing masks. They sang songs (which is currently banned in indoor spaces in most of California) , and listened to their Pastor John MacArthur preach a sermon that reiterated statements he made previously that week in the announcement.

Photos on the web show a full house with no masks and no social distancing. So far, LA County is just making vague threats of enforcement:

Speaking to reporters in an online news briefing on Thursday, the county's public health officer stressed that large gatherings are generally barred under coronavirus health orders, but there are exceptions allowing outdoor church services and political protests -- as long as attendees wear face coverings and practice social distancing.

"Unfortunately we've heard reports of some faith organizations operating outside of those health and safety requirements,'' Dr. Muntu Davis said. "From a health and safety perspective this is of great concern given the large number of COVID-19 cases that continue to be diagnosed in Los Angeles County. I want to express my gratitude to those organizations that are adhering to the health officer order and who have found ways to worship that do not put the wider community and their congregation at risk."

The situation in San Francisco is worse. According to Abp Cordileone,

. . . I have spoken of how we want to be partners with the City in caring for our people – not just for their physical and financial health, but mental and spiritual health as well – emphasizing, too, the many different ways in which we have been supporting our local government in the effort to stem the spread of the virus and come to the aid of those in need. With regard to local health orders in San Francisco for reopening for public activities, I have pointed out the two separate considerations of indoor and outdoor services, comparing us to similar (or even identical) secular activities.

1. The City had been allowing indoor retail at 50% capacity, but not allowed any indoor religious services at all. The concern here from the perspective of health experts is that in a retail store, people enter to make a purchase and then leave, without spending much time indoors; it is much riskier for a group of people to spend an extended period of time inside the same space. However, at larger retail outlets it is quite possible for people to spend an hour or more in the store, while we can keep our services to under an hour; moreover, the employees in the store are indoors continuously for many hours at a time. In addition, a church can be a much safer place than a retail store, because it is a more controlled environment: the people are stationary; we can insure social distancing; we can insure that people are wearing face coverings; we can keep the doors open to allow air flow; we can sanitize high touch areas between services.
2. With regard to outdoor services, you are all well aware that pre-planned and scheduled street protests have been allowed to continue unhindered, while the limit of no more than 12 people still applies to everyone else, including us. Yet here again, an outdoor worship service is a much safer event than a protest, since the people are stationary, social distance is respected, and the participants are wearing masks.

Unfortunately, despite all of these efforts and explanations, and despite hearing words of approval for our Archdiocesan safety plan that was submitted to the City’s Recovery Task Force, there has been no change in the health order in San Francisco. Indeed, with counties now going on the state’s watch list and health orders changing rapidly, it is sometimes difficult to keep track of it all. This is what resulted in the confusion that led to the City Attorney sending inspectors to conduct surveillance in our churches.

There isn't going to be a single remedy that fixes any of this. I certainly agree with Catholic priests who see a social-engineering agenda behind all the "health" restrictions, but they limit natural rights beyond just freedom of worship. Strategies that may apply to independent Evangelical groups, even very large ones, won't work for Catholic dioceses, where, for instance, Abp Cordileone stresses a wish to cooperate with civil authorities.

One partial solution may come with the November elections. So far, there are absolutely no bumper stickers or lawn signs in LA, which is pretty unusual for this time in a presidential election year. On the other hand, my wife yesterday saw a hand-lettered sign in a car's rear window that said simply, ENOUGH.