I found this obituary in the newsletter of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah, where Brown was native, but where he never served in his pastoral career. Brown, born in 1922, was ordained a TEC priest in 1947 and served variously as curate, priest-in-charge, and rector of St Luke's Episcopal, Evanston, IL. His career in Evanston isn't clear after that; while St Luke's is still in existence, there's no history page that might list past rectors. The obituary mentions that he had dinner with the Archbishop of Canterbury and an audience with Paul VI on a trip to Europe in 1965.
By 1971, Brown had become rector of St Matthias Episcopal Church in Sun Valley, CA. This is puzzling indeed. By roughly age 30, he'd risen to become rector of St Luke's TEC Evanston, IL. I know a little about Evanston, it's an upscale place. My uncle, a corporate CEO who was able to endow a university chair, retired to Evanston. The median family income there, based on web searches, is $102,706. Quite a plum assignment for a TEC rector. But by age 50, he'd moved on to St Matthias, Sun Valley, CA. I know a little bit about Sun Valley, too. It's a largely commercial-industrial area along the I-5, where the median family income is $44,959.
Something happened, and we don't know what, but it looks like he'd found a parish after considerable effort that would pretty much allow him to finish out a TEC career, but that's about it. And in TEC, clergy have careers. If someone can provide additional insight here, I'll appreciate it. St Luke's Evanston did note his 2005 passing in its newsletter.
It's also difficult to imagine that a hardscrabble place like Sun Valley, CA would have a TEC parish that was ultra-particular about its Anglo-Catholicsm. But the obituary mentions that "From 1977-1980, he was theological advisor to Canon Albert J. DuBois, Director of the American Church Union." This was the Anglo-Catholic dissenting group that issued its statement following the 1976 TEC General Convention, so that Brown would have been closely associated with DuBois and Barker during this period.
In fact, Brown's relative seniority and his history with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Paul VI suggest he might have had more credibility with the Vatican in 1977 than Barker, a hot-headed upstart. Even so, I can only theorize that by age 50, something had caused Fr Brown to be not the man he was at age 30 or age 40. The obituary continues,
Assigned to Saint Matthias Episcopal Church in Sun Valley in 1971, Father W.T. Brown served as pastor at Saint Matthias until 1986. In 1987, he moved to Palm Springs and began what was to be a brief “retirement.” He was received into the Catholic Church and subsequently ordained a Catholic priest on June 29, 1992, by Bishop Rene H. Gracida of the Diocese of Corpus Christi.Not mentioned here is that St Matthias Sun Valley would have been one of the parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles that left TEC in January 1977, so that Brown's position with that parish would have paralleled Barker's at St Mary's Hollywood -- after 1977, like Barker, he was rector of a parish without a denomination, without a diocese, and without a bishop. The two parishes were about 12 miles apart.
But something else doesn't fit: St Mary's Hollywood was at that time an upscale parish, drawing members from the prosperous Hancock Park and Hollywood Hills areas, unlike Sun Valley, where nearby communities were little better off. It's hard not to think Barker was the leader here, Brown the follower, and Barker's advice, wherever it came from (Stetson is a person of interest here) was not helpful to either priest or either parish.
The 1986 date for Brown's departure from St Matthias would have also been consistent with Cardinal Mahony's final rejection of the St Mary of the Angels application to go in as a diocesan parish in Los Angeles under the Pastoral Provision. St Matthias has subsequently dropped off the record completely.
Another parallel with Barker is that, following his departure from the breakaway TEC parish, Brown attended a seminary distant from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles -- in Barker's case, Menlo Park, CA; in Brown's case, Corpus Christi, TX. Both were ordained Catholic priests the same year. It's hard not to speculate that ordination under these circumstances, beyond Mahony's jurisdiction, must have been something arranged by Stetson-cum-Law as some sort of Plan B to make good on promises that were probably made to Brown and Barker 15 years earlier.
Brown, interestingly, was subsequently kept out of parish work in Corpus Christi. Per the obituary,
Father Brown served as Vice Rector and Spiritual Director of the diocesan House of Studies of the diocese, founded Saint Anselm Mission and acted as spiritual director for the local Newman Center, the Incarnate Word High School, and Incarnate Word Minor Seminary.However, Brown reached the canonical retirement age of 75 in 1997 and moved to Palm Springs, CA. According to the obituary,
In 1997, 75-year-old Father William T. Brown began his “second retirement.” Again, he did not truly “retire,” but acted as supply priest to Saint Theresa Catholic Church, Palm Springs, “continuing his priestly ministry in surrounding parishes almost to the day he passed away, December 27, 2005,” as stated in his obituary in the Los Angeles Times.Before moving to St Martha's in Murrieta, Fr Barker was Pastor of St Francis of Assisi, La Quinta in the Palm Springs area from 1994, so he would have reconnected with Fr Brown. In fact, following his own retirement, Fr Tea, formerly of the St Mary's Las Vegas Pastoral Provision parish, one of the original parishes to enter in 1984, moved to the Cathedral City, CA area near Palm Springs, and Fr Barker officiated at his funeral mass.
I can only assume the three men were close.
