Who Is Brian Marsh? -- III

A couple of e-mails yesterday brought me back to the ACA's "received version" of its reversal on the Portsmouth Petition, given to Anthony Chadwick in a post on his blog in December 2012. Although Brian Marsh says this is his "personal view", he's the head honcho, and no other "official" view exists. In it, Marsh said,

Although I was not present at the signing of the Portsmouth Petition, Bishops Langberg and Williams signed for the ACA [oddly, he leaves out Campese, Falk, Florenza, and Moyer]. The text of the petition was not publicized until months later. I did not know of the contents of that petition until it was delivered orally by Archbishop Falk at a meeting of several ACA bishops in 2008. . . . While there are many threads in this part of the story, it became clear to several of us that the Apostolic Constitution did not offer the kind of organic union we had hoped for.

The thrust of Marsh's argument was that he didn't sign the Portsmouth Petition, he didn't know what was in it, and once he and the other ACA/TAC bishops knew everything, they had every reason not to endorse what just a few people did in Portsmouth.

However, someone pointed me to a document that discredits this version. On March 3, 2010, Marsh did sign a petition to the Holy See requesting the erection of a personal ordinariate in the United States of America, which was adopted at the ACA House of Bishops Meeting in Orlando, FL that March.

This petition read in part, over the signatures of all the ACA bishops, including Brian Marsh,

We have all read and studied with care the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum cœtibus, with the Complementary Norms, and the accompanying commentary by the Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University.

In response to your invitation to contact your Dicastery to begin the process therein contemplated, we respectfully propose the following:

• That the Apostolic Constitution be implemented as soon as possible in the United States of America

. . .

This document was signed by +Louis W. Falk (Pres.), +John Hepworth, +Juan Garcia Germain, +George Langberg, +Brian R. Marsh, +Wellborn R. Hudson, III, +Stephen Strawn, +Louis Campese, +Daren K. Williams, and +David L. Moyer.

In other words, the record contradicts any assertion by Brian Marsh that he didn't know what was in the Portsmouth Petition or the Apostolic Constitution and in effect never had the chance to make up his mind about it. As of March 2010, Marsh and all the other ACA bishops couldn't have made it plainer that the Apostolic Constitution was in fact just "the kind of organic union we had hoped for", and they petitioned that it be implemented ASAP!

In addition, since John Hepworth appears to have been at the meeting, since he signed the petition, I would assume all the ACA bishops had ample opportunity to discuss the Apostolic Constitution with him, although in his reply to Chadwick, Marsh says Hepworth never gave them the chance.

However, by the summer of 2010 -- just a matter of months -- Daren Williams was taking episcopal actions against anyone in the Diocese of the West who agreed with the position he'd taken, with all his brother bishops, in March. But also, in March 2010, Prof Jordan was present at an address Brian Marsh gave to Jordan's then-ACA parish opposing Anglicanorum coetibus as well. Marsh signs a letter asking for it to be implemented ASAP one day, and the next he tells a parish he's against it?

We know nothing of precisely what happened here, except that the sketchy but persuasive evidence we have is that most of the ACA House of Bishops apparently reversed itself almost immediately after signing a petition unequivocally in favor of Anglicanorum coetibus. I will be most grateful for any further information anyone might be able to provide on what happened and why.