The Charismatic Episcopal Church And The US-Canadian Ordinariate

Yesterday I briefly revisited the Charismatic Episcopal Church in relation to Houston's policy (or not) on whether it will ordain clergy from denominations other than Anglican -- given the right circumstances, it apparently will. My visitor referred to a quasi-Lutheran denomination as a "typical fringe body with a bishop (or archbishop) for every ten clergy and a clergyman for every ten laypeople." This, of course, can refer to many "continuing" groups, as well as others, and it's hard not to think the CEC fits just as well.

The Wikipedia entry for the CEC says,

The Charismatic Episcopal Church began when a variety of independent churches throughout the United States, as part of the Convergence Movement, began to blend evangelical teaching and charismatic worship with liturgies from the Book of Common Prayer[.]

The CEC was founded de novo in 1992 and was never a part of TEC or any other denomination in the Anglican Communion. Further, according to Wikipedia,

The ICCEC states that it is not a splinter group of any other denomination or communion, but is a convergence of the sacramental, evangelical, and charismatic traditions that it perceives in the church from the apostolic era until present times.

As we saw yesterday, there are various groups, like the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church, which are not Anglican but choose to use liturgy from the 1979 TEC BCP. This doesn't make them Anglican, and apparently there's no strict requirement that CEC parishes rely exclusively on the 1979 BCP. According to Wikipedia,

Many parishes follow the liturgy of the American version of the Book of Common Prayer (1979). A provisional sacramentary drafted by the Worship & Music Committee of the Northeast [US] Diocese, which includes Roman, Anglican and Eastern rites, is in wide trial use. Some parishes use other worship rites, such as the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, or other Anglican, Roman, or Eastern rites.

Like other fringe groups, not excluding "continuers", the CEC has suffered from frequent scandal and schism. Again, according to Wikipedia,

In 2006 the US church experienced a crisis resulting in the departure of approximately 30% of its clergy and congregations, including seven actively serving bishops and one retired bishop. Though from diocese to diocese a variety of reasons were given for these departures, the crisis stemmed from allegations against some ICCEC leadership in America. These allegations were heard and adjudicated in June and September 2006 by the Patriarch's Council. In September 2006, the council issued a statement of its findings, which was then followed by several more US departures. Some of the departing clergy and congregations found new homes within the Antiochian Orthodox Church as Western-Rite clergy and parishes, some became Roman Catholic, while some are now affiliated with various Anglican bodies.

Given the small number of OCSP clergy, the fairly large proportion of Ordinariate priests who have at least passed through the CEC is remarkable, especially given the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision's position specifically excluding the CEC from its definition of Anglican. A visitor reports,

I believe four current OCSP clergy were formerly CEC: Frs Ed Meeks, Randy Sly, Vaughn Treco, and John Worgul. Fr Meeks was originally a Catholic seminarian; at a later point his CEC parish (Christ the King, Towson, MD) joined the Anglican Church in America. Fr Worgul also left by 2007, possibly for the same denomination Fr Sly had been a Wesleyan Methodist minister before joining the CEC. So only Fr Treco relied entirely on his CEC credentials to be accepted for Catholic ordination as a married man. Fr Meeks was until recently the Vicar for Vocations, but as I recall Fr Treco's interview on some local Catholic media he credited his charm offensive on the Archbishop of Minneapolis and St Paul for his acceptance for ordination. Despite the fact that then-Mr Treco was living in the area, the Potomac Falls, VA group, St John Fisher, was allowed to fold when Fr Sly moved to Kansas City, MO for family reasons and Mr Treco moved to Minnesota where he took over the community of St Bede, which had been ministered to by a former Anglican, now Catholic monk. The Ordinariate group there meets twice monthly.

Staffing priorities are never transparent in the OCSP. After noting that the former administrator (Fr Jon Chalmers) of the group in Greenville, SC had left for a school position in Birmingham, AB and been replaced by the former administrator of St John Vianney, Cleburne, TX, (Fr Jonathan Duncan) who has been replaced by no one (clergy at St Timothy's Ft Worth doing double duty) I see that St Anselm's, Greenville celebrates a mass only on Wednesdays.

What Happened To The Anglo-Lutherans?

I noted the other day that The Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America have been "in communion" since 2001. Exactly what this means has never been completely clear. However, a visitor noted,

I have read your post today. It reminded me of one of the things that particularly perturbed me of the heady days when the American ordinariate was just getting started.

At that time, there was a group of high-church Lutheran priests with their congregations scattered about the Northeast. They worshipped using our Book of Common Prayer and aspired to be received into the ordinariate, along with the rest of us run-of-the-mill Anglican groups.

Notwithstanding, Jeff Steenson turned them down. He directed them to make their own petition directly to the Vatican, as they were not Anglican enough for Anglicanorum coetibus. What a narrow-minded bureaucrat!

Where these men and their people have gone since then, I do not know, but Steenson certainly missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity delivered to him on a silver platter. Fiddlesticks!

I remember this as well from mid-2011. The existence of Anglo-Lutheran groups was noted on various blogs covering the Anglicanorum coetibus process, though I think these have dropped off the radar since then.

However, the Steenson Ordinariate was never consistent in its policies -- as Ms Chalmers, the disappointing then-chancellor told me in 2012, "We're making things up as we go along." Another visitor pointed out,

Fr Gonzalez y Perez of the OCSP was an ELCA clergyman who was licensed to assist at an Episcopalian parish for about two years before he was ordained as a Catholic priest. He would not have been able to go from the the ELCA directly to the Ordinariate, I assume. I know of other circumstances where Lutheran clergy have received appointments in Anglican churches, and vice versa.

However, I don't believe Fr Gonzalez y Perez is currently connected with an Ordinariate group. The US-Canadian Ordinariate does plan to ordain Glenn Baaten, a former Presbyterian pastor whose Anglican ordination was only months long, without pastoral duties, and must be considered pro forma; Fr Vaughn Treco was a former Charismatic Episcopal Church pastor, from a denomination not recognized as Anglican under the Anglican Use Pastoral Provision.

Houston has a pretty clear record of doing, or not doing, precisely as it pleases. UPDATE: But now a visitor adds,

The "Anglo-Lutherans" of which you speak were not just "high church" Lutherans; they were members of a denomination called the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church which had no connection with the ELCA. They popped up on the Anglo-Catholic, as I recall As the comments make clear, this is a typical fringe body with a bishop (or archbishop) for every ten clergy and a clergyman for every ten laypeople. The American leader, Abp. Gladfelter's one academic qualification seemed to be in dentistry Whatever opportunities Houston may have missed I do not believe that closer association with this body was one of them.

OK on that one. But I still have concerns about how Houston states and implements policy. Is the Charismatic Episcopal Church all that different from the Anglo-Lutheran Catholic Church? Does the recognition by Houston (and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis) give them more prestige than they would otherwise have?

More Changes In The Works?

A visitor reports,

Bp Lopes has inherited some very damaged goods in the leadership department, IMHO, and it will be a test of his abilities in this area to discern who can be rehabilitated and who needs to be mercifully put down. I gather that the plug is being pulled on at least two micro-groups. The function of OCSP military chaplains is another issue: do these men ever encounter an Ordinariate member, or say a mass from Divine Worship? What about OCSP communities that use the Ordinary Form? Are they in step with the mission?

Going forward, I gather the policy under Steenson was to direct any men (not ex-Anglican clergy) considering attending seminary to their local diocese, on the grounds that the Ordinariate did not have funds to support their studies. This was clearly a form of slow suicide, and has to change.

Presumably one group on which the plug will not be pulled, based on yesterday's post, is the one in Springfield, MO.

One thing I'm beginning to learn as a new Catholic is that vocations are a sign of a parish's success. The modernist parish from which we escaped last year had only one vocation in its 90-year history. Our new one has a fair number, including one transitional deacon from the parish scheduled to be ordained a priest in June. It doesn't appear to be a coincidence that the archdiocese's associate director of vocations was taking masses at the parish during Holy Week.

If a parish or diocese has a shortage of vocations, it seems to me that one problem is there aren't inspiring examples for those considering vocations to follow. I don't see any of those in the current roster of prebendaries at Houston.

Ordinariate Assignment For Fr Chori Seraiah

A visitor reports,

After languishing in a diocesan parish in Atlantic, IA since his ordination in 2012, Fr Jonathin Seraiah will be taking over the newly-named OCSP community of St George in Springfield, MO in May. Up to this point the Springfield community has been lay-led; an OCSP military chaplain stationed about a hundred miles away has said mass for them four times a year for the last two years or so, so this is a big step forward. Fr Seraiah has already visited the community and according to the St George Facebook page (where he was pictured but not named) several baptisms and receptions took place at that time.

Yesterday I reflected on how well connected our diocesan parish is in the affairs of the archdiocese. A disadvantage, from my perspective, of potentially going into the Ordinariate is currently that so little seems to be happening there. But developments like this may reflect a change.

Continuers Moving Toward "Full Communion"

Several visitors have pointed me to recent announcements on various blogs covering a joint letter from four "continuing" primates announcing their intent to be in "full communion" by 2017. As far as I can see, this announcement is meaningless -- indeed even more meaningless than the 2001 announcement by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and The Episcopal Church that they had achieved "full communion". Just for starters, though, the definition of "full communion" is dodgy. The ELCA says,

Full communion is when two denominations develop a relationship based on a common confessing of the Christian faith and a mutual recognition of Baptism and sharing of the Lord’s Supper.

All Christian denominations, by definition, share the Creeds. However, specific interpretations of how both baptism and the eucharist are recognized do differ fairly widely among Christian denominations. It's worth noting that Lutherans are Lutherans, while Episcopalians are Anglican, which means Calvinist. Lutherans have two sacraments, Anglicans seven. Anglicans differ among themselves on the meaning of the eucharist, for that matter. But in general, while all Christian denominations recognize baptism by water in the name of the Trinity, Protestant denominations since the 1960s have also admitted all baptized Christians to communion, so by this definition, all main line Protestants are already "in communion".

A more precise definition of "in communion" I've seen is that each denomination recognizes the episcopal actions of the other. Those would be, at least from Anglican and Catholic perspectives, ordination and confirmation. TEC, for instance, did not recognize my Presbyterian confirmation. Rome did not recognize my TEC confirmation. I'm assuming that after 2001, TEC would recognize ELCA confirmations, if I have this right. TEC would presumably also recognize ELCA ordinations.

The best reaction I saw to the 2001 move was a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said in practice, this would allow the two declining denominations to merge marginal parishes -- Bethany Lutheran East Podunk could merge with St Athanasius Episcopal East Podunk and go off into the sunset together. As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen very often, and in fact, an Episcopal priest who sounded off on this in an adult forum I attended about 2005 said the whole thing is pretty much a dead letter.

He went on, though, to say a great many issues had never been resolved or clarified. Let's say the two parishes above do merge. Which diocese are they in, in which denomination? If the rector is TEC but the diocese is Lutheran, does he get letters dimissory? What does he teach in confirmation class, two sacraments or seven? The TEC priest who discussed this basically said nobody had asked these or other questions, and the whole thing was basically a PR gesture.

Moving to the continuers expressing their own direction to move into "full communion", it seems to me the same issues apply. By and large, the continuing groups already recognize confirmations and ordinations from themselves and pretty much any other Anglican denomination -- about the only exception might be women from TEC or the ACNA. Take my word for it, there are gay continuing priests and bishops. For that matter, qualifications for ordination among the continuers are typically minimal no matter what. The same would apply to confirmation and catechesis -- look at "Bishop" Owen Williams, who has basic problems with things like the church calendar and should never have been either confirmed or ordained.

The ACA recognized Anthony Morello's ordination in the Philippine Independent Church, simply because the PIC is in communion with TEC, and TEC recognized it. I assume it didn't even ask his TEC Bishop Schofield for letters dimissory (I would have enjoyed seeing Schofield's reply). The ACA recognized Robert W Bowman's REC ordination, though it didn't bother to do a simple web search to discover his child pornography arrest.

But the ACA and the APA are already in full communion. I e-mailed APA Presiding Bishop Grundorf and asked whether, if the ACA recognized Bowman's orders, did the APA? Grundorf dodged this and said the APA did its own background checks. Considering the general level of competence among all these little splinter groups, they can say they're in full communion, but it will have as much effect as me claiming to be Holy Roman Emperor.

But I strongly suspect that none of the others wants to let Marsh or Strawn get in any position where they could threaten their own parishes.

Radio Silence From The ACA

So far, there is no Easter Message from either the Presiding Bishop or the Episcopal Visitor to the Diocese of the West. As far as I can tell, there have been no public pronouncements since the ACA-sponsored squatters were evicted from St Mary of the Angels on February 16. I do note that the ACA Executive Council and House of Bishops will meet in Timonium, Maryland on April 13 and 14. I assume there will be some discussion of the St Mary of the Angels situation at that time. If I were them, I'd be planning for the Presiding Bishop's succession, but I'm not them.

Fr Catania Rehabilitated?

Mr Murphy carries a piece lifted directly from the National Catholic Register carrying a lengthy interview with Fr Jason Catania, oddly without giving direct credit or a link. A visitor noted in an e-mail to me,

Mr Murphy posted, then took down, a comment on Fr Catania's interview in the NCR, to the effect that the story ends with his bringing Mt Calvary into the Church and being ordained, but says nothing about his removal as rector and nine month wait for another appointment.

This puzzled me as well, but the thing I really noted was that, although Fr Catania had earlier been dispatched to Siberia Canada, all of a sudden, his picture, and the good parts of his story, are appearing with an interview in a major Catholic organ. Again, imputing my experience in another field to the working of God's Kingdom, I have got to assume this appearance in major media has the thoroughly vetted approval of those in authority.

My visitor went on, "Fr Catania accompanied Bp Lopes to Mt Calvary yesterday, as his chaplain, for his visitation[.]" At least in The Episcopal Church, a bishop's chaplain is just his or her driver, but normally, a former rector of a parish is not supposed to have any contact at all with that parish after leaving. Would it be responsible for Bp Lopes to give Mt Calvary a mistaken impression that some continued contact with Fr Catania could be in the works?

We had a series of puzzling events under Steenson's stewardship, ranging from the denial of votum to David Moyer, to the abandonment of St Mary of the Angels, to the reversal at Our Lady of the Atonement, to the removal and exile of Fr Catania, a couple of which may be on the way to correction under Bp Lopes.