Recall that Steenson's agenda with all parishes and groups coming into the Ordinariate was apparently to knock senior priests out of the running or quickly force them into retirement, replacing them with his protégés. This would have been his intent with Fr Kelley at St Mary's as well, and his protégé Andy Bartus was on site, available, and eager to take over when the opportunity arose. Mrs Bush, while she had absolutely no intention of allowing any such thing, was happy to permit Bartus, Steenson, and Fr Scott Hurd, the then-vicar general, to think this is what would come to pass, for exactly as long as it suited her purpose.
A formal campaign of character assassination against Fr Kelley had been under way since late 2011, which also suited Steenson, and back-channel communications between Bartus and Hurd on one hand, and Morello, Strawn, Hurd, and Steenson on the other, seem to have been under way throughout the winter. My own view is that the repeated delays in admitting the parish, with postponements depending on repeated requests for new parish votes, were deliberate, aimed at allowing the seizure of the parish by Bush and the ACA, planned for Easter Monday 2012, to be the event that overtook the process.
The Easter Monday Putsch had clearly been in the works for some time. The scheme not to pay the parish's withholding taxes had been in place since January 2011, with members of the plot removing the quarterly IRS notices from incoming mail during the following year. Mrs Bush, Morello, and Strawn were fully aware that the IRS would seize the parish on Easter Monday; Strawn's letter of inhibition to Kelley had been prepared and post-dated in anticipation. Bartus contacted key parishioners, including my wife and me, saying there would be a major announcement that Tuesday, presumably of Fr Kelley's removal and Bartus's designation as ACA priest-in-charge.
It was only the early arrival of the IRS notice that thwarted this plan. While Strawn's "inhibition" of Kelley (Kelley was never under Strawn's authority, and it was never valid) stuck as far as the ACA was concerned, Bush, Morello, and the other dissidents were unable to seize the property, and Bartus was summarily sent packing. This was the first major setback for Mrs Bush, but it also gives an insight into Steenson's agenda.
Following the failure of the Putsch, Mrs Bush withdrew from the Patrimony parish with her dozen or so stooges and malcontents. She proposed holding their own mass in the common room of her luxury condo a few blocks away. Oddly, Steenson arranged for an individual to celebrate Anglican mass there for the Bush group with his permission and encouragement, a most peculiar arrangement. It appears the individual who was encouraged to do this was given some type of assurance that his own application to enter the Ordinariate as a priest would be viewed with favor. The Bush mass celebration was also tacitly approved by the ACA.
Clearly Steenson and the individual he'd asked to celebrate the Bush mass, and probably Hurd and Bartus, were under the impression that the Bush parish would succeed in seizing the property, resolve the various irregularities alleged to have taken place under Fr Kelley, and turn things over to Houston at some appropriate time. For Steenson, this had the particular advantage of keeping his fingerprints off any action against Fr Kelley, but it would bring the parish into the Ordinariate in due course anyhow. I recall during this period hearing that Morello was saying this would certainly take place, saying he was on first-name terms with Jeff Steenson.
Mrs Bush returned to the property with Strawn and Morello, armed with a court order, on May 26, 2012. This second Putsch was more effective, though never completely successful. In the May 26 meeting, though, Morello and Strawn announced that the ACA was now "neutral" on whether the parish would go into the Ordinariate. All present at that meeting took this to mean the Ordinariate was a dead letter. But at the same time, with the property now under Bush-ACA control, there was no further reason to maintain any charade, and the individual Steenson had persuaded to hold Anglican mass for the Bush group was told his services were no longer required -- in fact, with the property in hand, Bush, Strawn, and Morello saw no reason to celebrate any mass at all.
Steenson was out of the picture, utterly outmaneuvered. For that matter, Bartus was also gone, no longer of use to Mrs Bush.
