Msgr Stetson is a puzzling figure. For someone centrally involved in a highly secretive enterprise, he himself has actually gone out of his way to create a flamboyant legend of his time at Harvard. The Gueguen Early Days at Harvard document linked here a few days ago is intriguing. John Gueguen is an Opus Dei numerary (I must assume from context; more in accordance with Opus Dei style than Stetson, he does not out himself) who went to Notre Dame, later taught there, and in 1970 received a PhD from the University of Chicago. He was instrumental in founding Opus Dei centers in South Bend and Chicago, which I assume is how he became connected with Stetson.
Gueguen himself never went near Harvard, as far as I can tell, but he wrote several hundred pages about Stetson, Law, and prominent Opus Dei members there in the 1950s. Much of the material is footnoted as oral history provided by Stetson. Among the details of Stetson's life given in the Gueguen history are that he drove a Buick and lived in Adams House, which Wikipedia describes as a complex of "Gold Coast" luxury residences for wealthy students.
Another detail is that Stetson took a few companions on a road trip, presumably in the Buick, to visit his family in Greenfield, MA. So OK, this is information Stetson has made public about himself. This allows me to search other public records, including census and city directory information available via Ancestry.com, and from it, I find that William H Stetson Jr, born 1931, was the only son of William Stetson Sr, a plumber, and Irene Stetson, a utility company cashier, who according to the 1940 census lived in rented accommodations in Greenfield. Stetson's paternal grandmother lived with the family. Stetson's parents were eventually interred in a nearby Catholic cemetery, which suggests this was a Catholic family.
So this was by all indications a mildly prosperous blue-collar Catholic family. What was Stetson doing at Harvard, and not just Harvard, but driving a Buick and living at Adams House? Or maybe he wasn't exactly driving a Buick and living at Adams House, and this is just flamboyant legend. For that matter, I have a distinct memory that Stetson told at least some listeners when he was at a meeting at St Mary's in 2011 that he was involved in Anglicanorum coetibus because he came from an Episcopalian family. I'm trying to follow up with other sources who may have heard this as well. As far as I can see, his background is blue-collar Catholic, but somehow an undergraduate Buick and Adams House at Harvard are involved. What would have been wrong with UMass Amherst, for that matter?
If the stuff about the Harvard lifestyle is true, how did his parents afford it? A scholarship would be credible, but Adams House and the Buick are beyond even that. George Eliot, are you listening?
But here's the bigger mystery, tied in some ways to the minor ones. How in fact did Law and Stetson get involved in this whole decades-long Anglican boondoggle? John L Allen, Jr in Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church says:
Another cardinal with historical ties to Opus Dei is the former Archbishop of Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, currently archpriest of St Mary Major in Rome. Law met Opus Dei while a student at Harvard in the 1950s, when an early group of members came to the campus from Spain. Law, born in Mexico, spoke Spanish fluently and befriended them. When he left Harvard in 1953, he asked a friend, William Stetson, to keep an eye on the Spaniards. Stetson went on to become a priest of Opus Dei, living for a period at Villa Tevere in Rome, then serving as vicar in Chicago. . . . Stetson and Law have remained friends, and when Law was designated by the Vatican to handle cases of Episcopalian clergy who wish to be received in the Catholic Church, Stetson served as his aide.Stetson himself in his History of the Pastoral Provision mentions feelers from The American Church Union and the Society of the Holy Cross toward ordaining married Episcopalian priests in the Catholic Church during 1976-77, but this is in an entirely procedural context. He mentions in passing a 1977 trip to Rome by former Episcopal priests Fr W.T. St. John Brown and Fr John Barker, then of St Mary's Hollywood, to meet with the CDF.
However, it was not until 1978 that the USCCB voted to allow ordination of married men to the priesthood under those special circumstances, and it was not until 1980, two popes later, that Bp Law was specifically designated to develop the Pastoral Provision. As a result, we still know almost nothing about what kind of discussions took place in particular between Fr Barker in Hollywood and Bp Law in Missouri. But Barker took St Mary of the Angels out of TEC in early 1977, before the Congress of St Louis, and during and after the Congress, he was, by his account, serving as an intermediary between Rome and the very small number of Rome-leaning TEC dissidents.
Whatever was going on, as far as I can see, it had to have gone back before 1977. When did Fr Barker start talking to Catholics, exactly? Who were those Catholics? How did those contacts begin? Was Stetson involved? Where, in fact, was Stetson in 1976-77? How did this relate to the idea that Barker could take St Mary's Hollywood out of TEC? What sort of completely unauthorized promises were made or hinted at?
Raymond Chandler, are you listening?
UPDATE: Lists of famous Adams House residents also routinely include Bernard Law. This official Adams House page notes the opinion of the Harvard Crimson from 1949, roughly when Stetson arrived at Harvard:
Socially, Adams men are above par. They wear their share of dirty white shoes and striped ties, and drink brandy or sherry freely. The house’s dignified yet comfortable atmosphere is well-suited to impress a date."Above par" means above par for Harvard, which we've already seen was a snobby place for people like Ted Kaczynski just a few years later. How did Stetson wind up there? Who bankrolled it?
