Here's a representative e-mail, with my comments in bold:
I have to ask you, respectfully, to consider whether you are maintaining the same standards of scrutiny for SMA that you hold for other Continuing Anglican parishes and parishes of the Ordinariate. Consider:What I find especially intriguing is that my visitor elects to wander off into character assassination of Fr Kelley, when Fr Kelley has nothing to do with the rest of his e-mail. While admitting he has no basis for doing so, he proceeds to cite authoritative-sounding words regarding Fr Kelley's status. Where did he get these words? Bp Lopes clearly takes the CDF's policies of confidentiality very seriously, and the CDF would have been involved in any such decision over Fr Kelley. Was any OCSP priest involved in revealing confidential information to all and sundry, which my visitor characterizes as "unsubstantiated rumor" just before repeating it?If the idea here is that the use of DW is a means to instantiate SMA's desire to become an Ordinariate mission I thought it was made clear that this is not its intent , it would seem, um, "hinky" for it to do that under the orders of a bishop who, far from simply being not recognized by Rome, was actually told in no uncertain terms that he could only re-enter Rome as a layman, given his history. (We will leave to one side as unsubstantiated rumor So why bring it up at all? the word that Fr. Kelley has also been advised that transfer of SMA into the Ordinariate and his own ordination as a Catholic priest are two entirely separate matters, and that the likelihood of the latter is very slim indeed.) This sounds awfully definite and authoritative for an "unsubstantiated rumor" -- where did you hear this? Surely you would admit that if one of the other Continuing parishes that you generally hold in contempt decided to use DW without any clear indication that it intended to enter the Ordinariate, you would let them have it on your blog. Actually, I wouldn't think it was important enough to note. Imagine if +Marsh did that, for instance, and justified it by saying "that the previous eucharistic liturgy had never been approved by any jurisdiction." Would you accept that at face value, and say, oh, the parishioners seem to really like it? But Marsh uses the 1928 BCP, which has been approved by TEC and would be about as likely to use DW as the Quran.
- Archbishop Hepworth is now acting as the parish's ordinary, despite the fact that he was dismissed from the TAC / ACA, under circumstances that you yourself describe as, um, "hinky". He is an Archbishop without an Archdiocese or even diocese. He is in communion with no other jurisdiction, Anglican or Catholic. Before he retired as Primate of the TAC, which is how he characterized his departure, he created a Patrimony of the Primate, an entity described by ACA Bp Marsh as a "holding tank" for parishes intending to enter the OCSP. Although the ACA House of Bishops announced they were dissolving the Patrimony in January 2012, they had no authority to do so, as the Patrimony is an Australian entity under Hepworth's continuing authority. The US courts have at least de facto recognized this and the parish's right to be in it. Nor did the TAC ever dissolve the Patrimony, which continues in existence under Hepworth's authority.
- Likewise, SMA itself, having separated from ACA and not yet entered into the Ordinariate process, is in communion with no other jurisdiction, Anglican or Catholic. It, and its purported "ordinary," are both entirely vagantes. The ACA parishes that intended to enter the OCSP entered two possible jurisdictions, the Patrimony of the Primate and the Pro-Diocese of the Holy Family. There was always going to be a period of limbo, however short, for any parish that left one jurisdiction before being received into another. In the case of ACA parishes, this was sometimes many months. Canonically, there is nothing exceptional about St Mary of the Angels's status except for the time it's spent in limbo -- the circumstances have been unique and, at least in modern times, unprecedented for any parish intending to enter an ordinariate. How SMA's situation is eventually resolved remains to be seen, but in both Hepworth's and the parish's view, its status is temporary but licit, whatever jurisdiction it eventually joins. Nonetheless,
- Mr Hepworth has now introduced the use of Divine Worship: The Missal at SMA, and did so, as you concede, "not in response to any initiative from Houston," which is to say without the blessing or permission of Bishop Lopes. Let me emphasize that a vagantes bishop has instructed a vagantes parish to use the official liturgical book of a jurisdiction to which it has not successfully applied, without the permission of its actual Ordinary. Let me see. Dozens of "continuing Anglican" denominations use the TEC 1928 BCP without anyone's permission. (Indeed, as a graduate student, I was urged to secure a copy for literary study, being told by the non-Anglican professor that "the Episcopalians will probably be happy that it's being put to a good use".) Both the ACNA and the CEC use the 1979 TEC BCP, presumably not having secured anyone's permission. Anglo-Papalist parishes in the UK used the Tridentine mass up to Vatican II, and subsequently the OF, without anyone's permission.
I appreciate the insights you offer even when I think you are off base in your speculation, but in this particular instance, I think you are giving your old friends an incredible amount of latitude.
Again, if this were Abp Throckmorton of the Universal Anglican Episcopal Church of the Earth, the Moon, and Mars, nobody would care. But this is Abp Hepworth of the Patrimony of the Primate, and people are upset. I sense a disturbance in the Force, or maybe just a threat to the conventional narrative. That someone should feel the need to dig up old character assassination, which did in fact benefit an OCSP priest to Fr Kelley's detriment, argues the more strongly for this view.
Hey, guy, you can still make it to confession this Lent. Last I checked, calumny is still a sin.
