This in turn goes to a question that comes up frequently in various forms when you watch as many true crime shows on TV as I do. A husband kills his wife. Why? He didn't want to divorce her. This may satisfy a homicide detective or a jury, but we're still left with the question of why he went to so much trouble to kill his wife, cover up the crime, and then risk detection, prison, or even the needle -- wouldn't it simply have been easier and less expensive just to divorce her? We'll probably never get a good answer to that kind of question. It probably goes to the nature, and indeed the mystery, of evil.
I've mentioned in passing the 2006 resignation of Fr Kelley's predecessor as rector, Fr Greg Wilcox, because this was a highly divisive issue for the parish before the current troubles. This was before my time, but several longer-term parishioners filled me in on the circumstances. Fr Wilcox had what one such informant characterized to me as a "meltdown", in which he bought into a cult-like get-rich-quick scheme, one of the tinhorn movements derived from est. This was a sad situation, although to then-bishop Stewart, it wasn't that difficult: est wasn't Christian, and he ordered Wilcox to drop it. The parish had a harder time working this out, and there were apparently several highly contentious meetings, even though it appeared that Wilcox had essentially abandoned his duties.
I think this was hard because. as I've seen mentioned now and then, St Mary of the Angels was less an Anglican parish than an exclusive social club. The weaker Fr Wilcox was, the better for the in-group in the parish. Exactly who was on which side of the Wilcox controversy I can't say, but I would simply think that those whose interest was less in religion than in social standing would prefer a rector who was distracted.
In 2007, the vestry hired Fr Kelley as Wilcox's successor. From the standpoint of a conscientious vestry in an Anglo-Catholic parish, this was an excellent choice. Fr Kelley had been to a real seminary, had been ordained an Episcopal priest and had had a career in that denomination, and at the time he was hired, was teaching Christian history at the distinguished Hillsdale College. He had good continuing relations with several conservative Episcopal bishops. He was not, in other words, a Stephen Strawn or a Brian Marsh.
He also had a strong character and a strong sense of integrity. In my own experience, I've found that some people simply have a great deal of difficulty even being around people with a strong sense of integrity. I think this is one explanation for why some people in the traditional parish in-group (and others who were new but wannabes) found Kelley so upsetting. He intended to focus the parish on real Anglo-Catholicism, rather than what the Episcopal priest who conducted my confirmation class in that denomination characterized as the motive to say you're somehow catholic without paying the dues you need to pay actually to be Catholic. He didn't come to St Mary's intending to take it into the Ordinariate, which was just a glimmer in Pope Benedict's eye at the time, but when the opportunity arose, he felt it was the parish's best option. A minority in the parish strongly disagreed and appear to have enlisted the support of other parties in the ACA to stop the process.
This is my best guess as to motive. We're left with the true-crime question: if you don't like the rector, why not do what almost everyone else does, go to the church down the street, on the other side of town, in the other denomination? Why burn yourself out fighting this petty little battle? I can only say it goes to the mystery of evil.
