Thus we come to the peculiar case of Fr Chori Seraiah, who "came out" as an Anglo-Catholic only in June 2010, when he was welcomed as a contributor to the old Anglo-Catholic blog. At the time, he represented himself as "a non-parochial priest of the Diocese of the Eastern United States in the Anglican Church in America". However, other sources seem to place him as pastor of a small REC parish in Abingdon, VA, which appears to have been the position he left to become rector of St Aidan Des Moines in 2011 as it prepared to enter the US-Canadian Ordinariate.
In a rambling and incoherent July 2010 post at The Anglo-Catholic, he said,
When I got to my teens and started thinking about my faith, I would say to people that I "used to be Catholic" and they would usually try to get me to accept their faith. Eventually, I accepted an invitation to a Protestant congregation and spent the next twenty-five years trying to find my way back to Mother Church.Elsewhere, he characterizes his path as "labyrinthine". One source whom I quoted earlier puts him as the pastor of a Reformed Bible church in Arkansas before his time in the REC, which may or may not have been before or after or at the same time as his non-parochial service in the ACA-DEUS. The hints at chronology above suggest that as of 2010, he was at least 40 but still dithering about how to return to Mother Church, which seems to be maybe Catholic or maybe Anglo-Catholic, he's not sure.
A good first step for a returning Catholic, as I have come to understand these things, would be to find a priest and complete the sacraments of initiation. There are Catholic churches all over the place. I assume a call to any would get him an appointment with a priest to discuss his specific situation. In 25 years, this doesn't seem to have occurred to him. Instead, he's chattering logorrheically about how to bring 87% of all Christians, or something like that, back to Mother Church, whichever that one is.
But he's an Anglo-Catholic! He's told us so! Indeed, he was kidnapped from Mother Church as a child! He's suffered! Of course we believe him! Er, within two years, he became a Catholic priest. Given the circumstances, there seems to have been a certain amount of pressure and manipulation involved -- while, let's continue to keep in mind, candidates with far better credentials in Anglican priestly formation have frequently been bypassed by Houston.
The idea that latter-day Anglo-Catholics have somehow "suffered" is nothing new. Late last year, I referred to Mr Murphy's especially credulous post on a Hollywood-wannabe's crowdfunding project depicting, among other things, the "sufferings" of Andy Bartus as he uses beer breakfasts and whiskey-and-cigar get-togethers to bring suburban twentysomethings back to Mother Church. Indeed, Bartus has recounted his sufferings before. But an online claim to "suffering" is worth about as much as an online claim to be "Anglo-Catholic" (a term essentially meaningless in any case) -- and that's about as reliable as the 55-year-old Al's claim to be Ingrid.
A fairly small number of Anglo-Catholic clergy in the Church of England did in fact suffer in the mid-19th century, although this was primarily in matters of preferment, very occasionally through ecclesiastical discipline. Chori Seraiah and Andy Bartus somehow want to cloak themselves with this prestige, when in fact they seem to have used it to curry favor and enhance employment prospects. On one hand, no Anglo-Catholic in recent years has had suffering comparable to other Christians in places like Nigeria, Egypt, or Syria.
On the other hand, if you're looking for an Anglo-Catholic priest who's actually suffered, you might reflect on Fr Kelley.
