"Give Them A [Bleep]ing Chance!"

A regular visitor with a close connection to St Mary of the Angels sent me an e-mail with that subject (slightly redacted). I'm sorry he's unhappy. He says,

I have removed your blogsite from my list of daily readings. Your constant drumbeat against anything and everything ordinariate is something that I can no longer tolerate. I myself, have decided to renounce my sacred vows as an Anglican priest and to request to be received into the Orthodox Church. So, I will not be a part of the revitalization of St. Mary’s, Hollywood for which your poisonous weblog was once named. That is just a bridge too far for me, but that is a personal issue that is an aside to the larger issue. I still support Fr. Kelley and St. Mary’s determination to join the ordinariate. You yourself, John, a few years ago darkened St. Mary’s doors to enter the Roman Church via the ordinariate. My question for you is this:

Do you still support their heartfelt determination, John?

Or, do you plan to do all within the power of your gossipy weblog to sabotage their bid to join up? After your all-negative, all-the-time yellow journalism against the ordinariate, especially as regards your recent commentary about Fr. Phillips and Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio, I am truly suspicious of your designs. The CDF saved them, no thanks to you.

We are coming up on Holy Week. Why don’t you just back off and give the ordinariate generally, and St. Mary’s specifically, a [bleep]ing chance? You won’t take some perverse pleasure in kicking a man while he is down, will you?

My first question is why Fr _______ wants me to continue to support St Mary's entry to the Ordinariate when he himself, after deliberation, is unwilling to become Catholic via any route. This simply seems to be a case of do as I say, not as I do.

Fr Kelley, Dcn Yeager, and other clergy who've been associated with the parish are in my nightly prayers, as are their families and the people of the parish. I do know that other longterm members have elected at this point to enter the RCIA program simply due to the continued uncertainty of the litigation. The Bush group seems intent on dragging things out as long as possible, and the litigation will almost certainly outlive Mrs Bush, who is 87.

I have several observations about what I'm beginning to see is the Catholic wing of the "continuing Anglican" movement. It reminds me increasingly of a phase in my working career, where due to a sudden demand for the specialty, I found myself working in computer security. It was a new field, and I discovered that most of my professional colleagues were ego-trippers, opportunists, and blowhards who could exploit the newness of the field to bypass ordinary screening for basic competence. They specialized in looking good while avoiding work. The usual abuses were consequent.

Maybe it was this life experience that primed me to approach "continuing Anglicanism" with skepticism. So far, in looking at cases like Tony Morello, Stephen Strawn, and others on the ACA side, as well as figures like Jeffrey Steenson and the Fort Worth clique on the OCSP side, I think my skepticism has been justified.

Anglicanorum coetibius showed up as a disappointment within months of the OCSP's erection, and the St Mary of the Angels fiasco was part of it. But that fiasco has roots at the very start of "continuing Anglicanism". Fr Barker as Rector of St Mary's as a TEC parish did the bidding of Bishop Law even before the Congress of St Louis, and he trusted Law that the parish could enter the Pastoral Provision. It was a monumental error in judgment that neither saw the need for a clear and enforceable path for the parish to do this.

Anglicanorum coetibius is generally recognized (in part I think due to this blog) as an effort, sponsored by Cardinal Law, to rectify the errors that led in part to the first St Mary's fiasco -- except that trying to correct these errors did nothing to prevent a second St Mary's fiasco. In effect, the Anglo-Catholics traded in their Gremlin for a Pacer. I can't support someone, other than a weird-car collector, now going on the market for a used Pacer.

I was back at the parish for a concert not long ago, and I'll be back during Holy Week for another visit. The clergy and people remain in my prayers and have my best wishes. Fr Kelley and the vestry have a fiduciary duty to continue with the litigation process for as long as they can do so. If they can clear title to the commercial space, they have a fighting chance to preserve the parish.

On the other hand, this is a small worship space only a few blocks from a Catholic parish that isn't filling its own space. There's a thriving Latin mass parish in West Hollywood that probably best serves the traditionalist movement in the area, and as my wife and I have found, there are Howard Johnson's style middle-of-the-road reverent masses to be found not far away as well.

The timetable suggests that the best Fr Kelley and the vestry can do is preserve the parish through litigation so that a future generation of leadership can take it over and determine its course. The parish is in my prayers and has my best wishes, as well as moral and some financial support, but I think it's important to be realistic about its prospects.