Fr Clark A Tea Jr -- Part II

We saw in the first installment of this series that, at the instigation of Fr Tea, the St Christopher's TEC parish in Boulder City, NV voted on January 23, 1977 to pass a resolution declaring "that St. Christopher's Church affirms that it is no longer a part of, or in communion with, the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, or the Diocese of Nevada". Based on the record of the Nevada supreme court's denial of the appeal, the TEC diocese moved quickly to remove Tea as rector and evict the dissident group from the property. Based on a Google search, that TEC parish still exists in that building.

Thanks to research by my regular correspondent, who was able to locate an ad on the Church Directory page of the Las Vegas Sun Saturday September 17, 1977, a group claiming to be St Christopher's Anglican Catholic was meeting for an 11:30 AM high mass on Sundays at Christ Lutheran Church in Boulder City, while a new group calling itself St Mary the Virgin was meeting for a 9:00 AM low mass at St John's Greek Orthodox. (I can't locate the address given in the Las Vegas area.)

The St Mary the Virgin name is the one that the group took when it was admitted to the Catholic Church under the Pastoral Provision a full seven years later, and it had moved from Boulder City to Las Vegas. How many congregants were involved at any time is an open question. Since the St Christopher's TEC parish survived in the original property (and I assume the TEC diocese was able to prevent reuse of that parish's name), we must surmise that the St Mary the Virgin group was never more than a rump of the original TEC parish.

At some point after 1992, Fr Tea was removed as pastor, the Roman Catholic bishop declined to appoint a replacement, the parish was suppressed, and the property was sold. If anyone has more information, I'll be very grateful to hear it. It's hard to avoid thinking, though, that the number of congregants was never more than marginal, especially in light of typical group sizes in the OCSP, and it would probably have been a no-brainer for the bishop to close the parish.

Also at some point after 1992, Fr Tea moved to the Palm Springs, CA area. Palm Springs on one hand is a retirement destination for many people, but it's also an important gay mecca on a par in California with West Hollywood and Laguna Beach. My regular correspondent found a property record for Clark A Tea Jr at 29613 Calle Tampico Cathedral City CA 92234. A Stephen Delacruz is also listed at this address. Delacruz appeared in Tea's 2014 obituary as Tea's surviving friend. However, a Jack Duane Barker, currently of Murrieta, CA also appears at the same address. Barker appeared in the obituary as officiating at Tea's funeral mass, but it would appear that there was a connection with Tea that went beyond that in later years.

The whole question of how and why the exit of four California TEC parishes and one in Nevada was organized for January 23, 1977 seems to me to be very complex, and we've never learned the whole story. Barker, who was pretty clearly the organizer, was relatively new to the Episcopal priesthood and, like other marginal performers, had apparently come to it late as a second career. Tea appears to have been marginal throughout, while Brown, after a highly prestigious first assignment, seems to have fallen some distance by the time he wound up at St Matthias Sun Valley. All three found themselves in the Palm Springs area by the 1990s and appear to have been close while there.

I'll have more to say about the 1977 move tomorrow.