Travel With Me To The Alternate Universe

For Fringe fans, this is the one where Dr Walter Bishop is Secretary of Defense. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, it's an alternate universe where just a few things have changed. The US has a similar history, for example, but it uses the Nixon dollar in its currency.

In this case, rather than the Abp Garcia-Siller we have on our side, the other side has Abp Siller-Garcia, a holy man indeed. When approached by Fr Phillips about moving his OLA parish to the OCSP (Anglicanorum coetibus was promulgated by Bl Leo XIV, but everything else was the same), the good archbishop replied, "Ah, Fr Phillips, I've prayed fervently for the day when all the Anglo-Catholics, all 3500 of them with their 60 priests, can be one! Yes, take the parish, its property, and the school with my blessings! I've already spoken to Bp Lopes, and your transfer is already in motion! Vaya con Dios, my son!"

But what happened in that other universe was deeply troubling and led many in the thriving Anglicanorum Coetibus Society to a crisis of faith. The same afternoon, Fr Perkins, Bp Lopes's vicar general, gave Fr Philips a call. "Er, Welcome, Fr Phillips! Yes, er, welcome indeed! We just need to take care of a few details. You know, of course, that the retirement age in the archdiocese is 75, but retirement in the OCSP is 70. You're not that far away from 70, come to think of it, so we're going to streamline things here a little bit and bring you in as Pastor Emeritus.

"Since that makes you technically retired already, you won't mind if the bishop sends me out once every two weeks or so just to make sure the administrative tasks are in order. You can still celebrate mass, of course, but the staff reports to me as administrator.

"Oh, yes, I almost forgot. We'll be putting in a full replacement for you next year. Well, have a great day, and again, welcome to the OCSP!"

Indeed, in the first parish newsletter after the transfer, a message from Fr Phillips appeared. Many thought it had been drafted by Fr Perkins and published without Phillips's knowledge; others thought Fr Phillips had drafted something else, but Fr Perkins had edited it heavily and forced Fr Phillips's signature:

Last Tuesday, March 21st, our parish was transferred from the Archdiocese of San Antonio to the jurisdiction of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Our bishop is His Excellency, the Most Reverend Steven J. Lopes. We now go into the future with the Faithful of several other parishes and communities with a common liturgical and spiritual heritage. I return in a new capacity, that of Pastor Emeritus. Bishop Lopes has asked me to continue my priestly ministry here, and I am grateful to him. After more than thirty-three years as your pastor, I am ready to welcome a successor and to serve under him as a simple parish priest. So, while I am no longer the pastor, Fr. Moore and I serve as your priests, and there is no greater privilege than that!

Until a new pastor is found, the interim administrator is Fr. Timothy Perkins, Vicar General of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. Although most of his time will be spent in Houston, he will be at the parish from time to time as he works closely with the archdiocese in the legal transfer of our property into the Ordinariate, and in getting our parish – both church and school – settled into our new situation. Always grateful for our time as a parish of the archdiocese, we now look forward to taking our place as the newest parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.

This threw the great majority of OLA parishioners into dire confusion. The purpose of the move, as far as they could see, was to protect and promote Fr Phillips, but somehow the opposite had happened. They immediately formed a group, Save Atonement!, under longtime parishioner Charles Wilson. They contacted the thriving and influential Anglicanorum Coetibus Society, which, although massively in Fr Phillips's court, elected to avoid public controversy, as Bp Lopes advised them to do. He instructed his priests to do the same. Privately they began saying novenas, but those prayers apparently were superseded in the Almighty's inscrutable purpose. Fr Phillips, in spite of the deepest wishes of so many, was quickly marginalized and soon replaced.

Bp Lopes acquired the reputation of a ruthless gamesman, a terrifying example of everything bad in the Vatican. Like President Trump, he was quickly regarded as a master of four-dimensional chess. The bishop's residence, as one had once been named under Cardinal Spellman, began to be called the Power House.