Parsing The Great Disappointment

My regular correspondent writes,

I have been visiting some web sites associated with the heady days in the run-up to the establishment of the Ordinariates. The Anglican Use in the Philippines, a site maintained by Ben Villejo, who was also a frequent commenter on the Anglo-Catholic blog, wound down from a blog with 68 posts in 2010 to 4 in 2014, when it stopped. A Facebook page is still well-maintained, but the last scheduled event was in the fall of 2014, so it would appear that the vision no longer includes a worshipping community.

Speaking of The Anglo-Catholic, Incarnation Catholic Church, Orlando is surprisingly low-profile considering that the once-formidable Christian Campbell is apparently still on the Parish Council. The website is attractive but contains only basic information, the Facebook page is dominated by announcements from the Knights of Columbus. There does not appear to be a newsletter (although you can ask to be put on an email list). Bp Lopes made a one day visit during Holy Week but nothing was made of this on the website and it was not mentioned on Facebook at all.

The Anglo-Catholic had a very large readership. What happened to all that energy? The challenges in a small and widely dispersed organization like the OCSP are obviously great, but I think that we see here, and many other places around the net, traces of enthusiasm and leadership that was not fostered and guided, and eventually died down, or redirected itself. Foolishness to the World now seems to resemble Mrs Gyapong's original personal blog, which was largely about politics and issues of conservative interest, religious and otherwise.

I think the loss of energy can be traced to several causes in the first half of 2012.

1. The designation of Msgr Steenson as Ordinary. This had been kept a deep secret until the first of the year, but it had clearly been in the works since before his resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande in 2007. The blogosphere -- which is what we're talking about here -- had clearly favored either then-Bp David Moyer or Fr Christopher Phillips
2. The subsequent almost immediate denial of votum for ordination to David Moyer by Abp Chaput, thought to have been engineered by Steenson, and if this was true, for obvious reasons (see above)
3. The withdrawal of Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio from the process of joining the Ordinariate, revealed some years later to have been the consequence of Steenson's stated intent to force Fr Christopher Phillips into retirement -- for obvious reasons (see above)
4. The bungling of the acceptance of St Mary of the Angels into the Ordinariate between January and May of 2012. This resulted in two of the most promising candidate parishes staying out
5. The well-publicized allegation in August 2012 that the Ordinariate displayed favoritism in ordinations toward candidates from the Episcopal Diocese of Forth Worth, where Steenson had served before his promotion to bishop.

The overall impression to be gained from these developments was that the US-Canadian Ordinariate was dominated by careerists and members of an Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth-Nashotah House in-group. But in many ways, these developments were just a prelude to a greater and more pervasive disappointment -- as my correspondent puts it, the Ordinariate became "a small and widely dispersed organization", and it stayed that way.

My correspondent pointed out in a subsequent e-mail that "plum posts" were not in large supply (especially since Steenson's bungling had taken two of the plummiest out of the running). My corresponent continued, "As you say, there seem to be a fair number of disappointed former TEC/Anglican clergy out there who didn't even make it to ordination. Hard to believe, looking over the crop of successful applicants, that they represent any kind of 'best and brightest.'"

There were two classes of successful candidates: contemporaries and apparent cronies of Steenson from his days in Fort Worth, who were all approaching retirement "and/or had no expectation of ministering to an Ordinariate congregation", but who were often awarded prebendaries in Houston irrespective of ability. There was a second group of younger protégés, most prominently Charles Hough IV. As my correspondent put it, "Presumably Fr Hough IV's biggest asset was Fr Hough III", who was a member of the first class. This sort of nepotism seems to have disappeared from the Catholic Church when popes stopped making their "nephews" cardinals.

Looking at others, Andrew Bartus, Jon Chalmers, and David Wagner, on one hand we see resume references to Nashotah House or Yale Divinity School, but on the other, little sign that any has had a stellar career. This may reflect the overall limited prospects in the Ordinariate -- none apparently was able to secure more prestigious or better-paid assignments in Anglican/TEC dioceses before washing up in the Ordinariate (Bartus was fired from St Mary of the Angels after repeated personality clashes with both bishops and the rector). In South Carolina, Fr Chalmers had a day job in hospital administration and had few responsibilities as an OCSP priest, eventually leaving the OCSP in all but incardination. As my correspondent puts it, Fr Wagner's new assignment "places an apparently surplus OCSP priest on the payroll of another diocese".

Again, from my correspondent: "Let's hope that the implementation of a committee and regional interviews for prospective candidates makes the process more objective."