So let's say a rank newcomer to an old-line Anglican parish decides there might be boodle lying around for the taking. How to go about this? It will take cooperation -- influential laypepople among the old-line parishioners (especially vestry) need to be enlisted, clergy must be corrupted, and the more distant honchos in the diocese and elsewhere have to see benefit as well. Everyone has weaknesses. It's just a question of finding them and using them. Some people, of course, have agendas of their own that can be turned.
Mrs Bush arrived at the parish sometime in 2010, although she didn't complete her year of attendance to become a member of the parish in good standing until January 2012. Late 2010 and early 2011 would have been just as the controversy in the ACA over Anglicanorum coetibus reached its boil, and precisely when Abp Hepworth formed the Patrimony of the Primate. This was a convenient handle early in the process, but the parish's planned transition to the Ordinariate in early 2012 turned out to be a much greater opportunity -- and deceptive people of this sort are nothing if not opportunists.
For now, I don't want to discuss individual laity in detail, except to say it's remarkable how quickly Mrs Bush enlisted support. Key were several other recent arrivals in the parish, all poorly catechized, deeply troubled, and struggling with personal issues. She quickly got two of them onto the vestry and made alliances with others already on the vestry, so that they turned vestry meetings into contentious, four-hour rants, effectively stalling parish business. The upshot was the destructive, disputed vestry meeting of December 12, 2011, in which four of her stooges came very close to forcing Fr Kelley's resignation.
She was able as well to secure the close cooperation of two clergy, Andrew Bartus the then-curate, another newcomer to the parish and, at the time, less than a year out of seminary; and Anthony Morello, whose brief and marginal career as an Episcopal priest had ended in scandal and disgrace, but who, having insinuated himself into the neighboring ACA parish as curate, was in the process of undermining that parish's rector. Both Bartus and Morello had unrealistic ambitions, which Mrs Bush could exploit -- Bartus wanted to be rector of St Mary's; Morello wanted to be bishop in the ACA. Mrs Bush was happy to help, at least as long as it suited her own purposes.
The then-ACA Bishop of the West, Daren Williams, was weak, struggling with personal issues, and on his way out throughout 2011. Stephen Strawn, ACA Bishop of the Missouri Valley, clearly with his own set of ambitions, appears to have worked more actively to forestall moves by ACA parishes to enter the Ordinariate. Despite an April 2011 pledge by ACA bishops not to interfere with parishes in the Patrimony of the Primate, Strawn appears to have worked through back channels with Morello, Mrs Bush, and others in her circle to sabotage the parish's entry.
Bartus in the meantime had every reason to want the parish to go in, as he had a conflicting ambition -- he could only become rector (or Catholic equivalent) if the parish went into the Ordinariate. Nevertheless, he was clearly close to Mrs Bush and her circle; many of them gathered regularly in the Bartus apartment for cigar, whiskey, and poker get-togethers throughout 2011. If their ultimate objectives differed, their interim goal was the same: get rid of Fr Kelley. For Mrs Bush, Morello, and Strawn, this would help forestall entry to the Ordinariate. For Bartus, this would clear his path to becoming rector.
This almost certainly suited Jeffrey Steenson and the other young members of the Nashotah House clique surrounding him as well. In hindsight, the senior Anglican and Anglican Use priests who hoped to enter the Ordinariate with their parishes were apparently a threat to Steenson, and his intent appears to have been to knock as many as possible out of the running or quickly force them into retirement.
Mrs Bush, of course, was playing a longer game than any of these others.
