It was reported that the straw that broke the camel's back that night was that as the sisters were returning to their convent, across the street from the school, in the original rectory, people hiding in the bushes began throwing rocks at them. They felt threatened and left. It can not be proved but the legend around the parish is that Jim Orr and Father's son Nathan were among the handful of minions throwing the rocks, but that is just speculation. It was the first of many bizarre circumstances I witnessed at the Atonement.The circumstances that provoked this appear to be, according to the parishioner,
In August of 1994, the school opened for business with the School Sisters of St. Francis as the educators. They were very solid sisters, they wore habits, they were the kind of sisters any devout Catholic would love to have teaching their children. After a few years (I'm sorry I don't remember exact dates [but if the school opened in August 1994 and the sisters left in January 1996, it must have been pretty quick]) the relationship between the Order and Fr. Phillips began to deteriorate. I was told it began because the sisters wanted to use a guitar in the student mass and it escalated from there. I believe it also centered on the Sisters wanting to run the school, as subsidiarity would dictate (Think Bells of St. Mary's).Another visitor offers a different perspective:
The Sisters were hired to work at the school, I'm not sure why subsidiarity would dictate that they make decisions in running the school if those contradicted the pastor who had hired them. . . . Whatever other disagreements they might have had over how to run the school that might have run contrary to the vision that had brought it about, I suspect there were also disagreements over their living facilities. Father and his family had lived in the house while his new residence was built. He owns the current "rectory" and might have still owned the "convent", though I believe that ownership has changed. The sisters might have been unhappy over the configuration of the "convent", the provision of which likely meant they were paid less in salaries. Father generally relied upon a volunteer to do such things as repairs, so probably wasn't an ideal landlord.The first visitor continues,
A visitor, seeing the above, says, "I expect it would be more accurate to say that the school simply became a private school under Father Phillips's direction, not connected to the Archdiocese. It would seem that the school was trying to get back in to the Archdiocese for the 1997-98 school year when the Archdiocese applied new standards adopted in Feb. 1997 due to them being a 'new school'. This caused Father Phillips to hire a different principal from the one he had been using until the original replacement for Sister Clare had a chance to meet the new standards."The next anyone knew the sisters left town, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the school year. This caused an enormous disruption of course. Lay women were brought in to "teach" and in very short order the Archdiocese got involved, the Catholic Schools office came in direct confrontation with Fr. Phillips, the school was actually removed from the parish and became a private school of the Archdiocese.
The media got involved, petitions were circulated to the parishioners, the Archbishop (Flores) was vilified. I believe this was when Archbishop Flores reportedly attempted to remove Fr. Phillips but was unsuccessful and lacked the wherewithal to persevere, Chuck Wilson was squarely involved. [Another parishioner reported that Mr Wilson told the recent Save Atonement meeting that Cardinal Law saved Fr Phillips in this case.]We're looking at a picture that's becoming more and more clear: a Catholic convert from Anglicanism, a married Catholic priest with five children ordained under a special dispensation, appears to feel entitled to flout Catholic authority, order, and tradition, in this case quite possibly countenancing violence against religious sisters. He's then able to pull strings to avoid consequences for this action. And he's been able to sell himself as some sort of archetype of how Catholics should be -- the Anglicans are gonna show 'em all how!From this point forward, subsidiarity was never again present at the parish. Not only the school but every tiny facet of parish life, from the color of paint to the tint of light tubes, to the height of art in the halls to EVERYTHING would be dictated by Deacon Orr primarily, and sometimes Fr. Phillips. It's why the revolving door of headmasters and teachers and facilities managers and so on. Jim Orr, with the full support of Fr. Phillips, did not just micromanage, he micromanaged and if anyone blinked an eye, their loyalty would be questioned and they would be on their way out.
Eventually, the parish hired a school principal who knew how to work with the Archdiocese and the relationship was eventually restored. At some point, everything returned to the status quo, the sisters had been removed and Fr. Phillips and Jim learned they could overcome ANY obstacle ANY Archbishop set before them. I did not work at the Parish at the time so I had no first hand knowledge of the events. But one of the sisters was convinced to leave her order and remain behind (though in a different order, she is still at the Atonement). Her staying gave the parish elites some sense of justification. It's not terribly "traditional" for a sister to leave her order, but it's "Atonementesque".
This makes me sick to my stomach.
