Stetson and Law had met at the Harvard Catholic Club in fall 1950, shortly after Stetson entered Harvard College. Law introduced Stetson to other Catholic students, including Carl Schmitt, then a senior.On p 74, in a footnote:
Law, Stetson, Bucciarelli and others met frequently at the early Mass at St. Paul’s, the parish that served Harvard students. Several of them sang in the choir.In a footnote on p 85:
In his senior year, Law served as the [Catholic] Club’s vice-president and sang in St. Paul’s student choir with Stetson.On pp 102-103:
Like Bucciarelli, Bill Stetson had been introduced to the Work by Bernard Law during the 1952-53 school year, when he was a junior. Little by little he met other people connected in one way or another with Opus Dei and began to form friendships with Bucciarelli and Schmitt. On occasion, he would drop by Trimount for dinner, but took little or no part in spiritual activities at the residence until more recently. By the time the apartment opened, he was immersed in his law studies. Then came the breakthrough: Bucciarelli and Schmitt “got together with Bill at an all-night cafeteria in Harvard Square (Hayes Bickford) to discuss the Work and his vocation”. On April 24 “[He] asked to be admitted, and in May moved to Trimount House”.Trimount House was an historic home on Marlborough Street in the Back Bay neighborhood converted by Opus Dei to a student residence. According to this account, Stetson worked on the conversion, though of note is the fact that he's mentioned as driving a Buick, unusual for a student in the early 1950s. Stetson is frequently mentioned organizing choir activities and working as an organist in a local church.
In a second installment of The Early Days document, it mentions Stetson's departure for Rome on his graduation from Harvard Law School:
In the fall of 1957. . . . Curtin, Stetson, Helming, and Donlan left for Rome where several other young Americans were pursuing studies and receiving formation at the Roman College of the Holy Cross.This is explained on the next page:
Fr. Múzquiz, who served in those years as the U.S. delegate to Opus Dei’s central government, explained why so many young American members of the Work were going to Rome in these early years. With their free cooperation, they sent them, he wrote,Here's a question. By his own account, Stetson was a numerary member of Opus Dei, having joined in 1953. This would apparently be a typical Opus Dei pattern, whereby as a member he would continue professional studies in order to advance in a secular career and influence society later in life. (In Stetson's case, this doesn't seem to have happened, since despite the Harvard Law degree, he never practiced.) The account suggests that as a numerary, he also participated in recruiting new members. In 1957, he left for Rome to undergo formation at the feet of the Founder.in greater numbers than usual. It gave us much joy that they could be formed next to [the Founder]. If they had remained at home, the apostolate would have moved ahead faster, but I think it was a great blessing from God that so many…were able to receive formation directly from our Father. It contributed greatly to the spirit of filiation and the unity of the Work in the United States. (pp 261-2)
Others may react differently to this account, but frankly, I find it creepy. These guys take themselves very, very seriously, but for all the portent, they actually seem to have accomplished, like Stetson, less than their Harvard or MIT degrees might have predicted. My regular correspondent calls them birds of a feather. I think there was a movie about that, or maybe it was in French.
By his account, Stetson became Vicar of Opus Dei in Chicago, where he served for 17 years. According to this explanation:
Individual centers of Opus Dei are administered by a local council under a director which is subject to a regional (or national) commission under a vicar (sometimes also called the counselor who is a priest), and both are subject to the General Council in Rome under the almost absolute authority of the Prelate (who is called the “Father”).So Stetson would fit the description of vicar or counselor who is a priest -- apparently quite high in the organization. But at some point in the 1970s or early 80s, he seems to have left this important job and resumed his association with now-Bp Law, whom he apparently knew quite well at Harvard. He became the Secretary of the Pastoral Provision and presided over a generally lackluster program of Anglican outreach. This culminated in his recruitment of Jeffrey Steenson, an also-ran among TEC bishops, and a small clique of Nashotah House alumni, nearly all of whom faded from the picture within a short time.
So far, by the way, I can find no evidence that Stetson, although he was ordained a priest, ever had normal pastoral or parish experience -- he seems always to have been a little too stratospheric for that. Yet he was assigned to be the "chaplain" of St Mary of the Angels in 2011-12, and in the course of it discovered some real pastoral challenges that had already daunted men with more parish experience like David Moyer. I'm more and more convinced that he was in far over his head with the whole Anglicanorum coetibus project. But he was a real mover and shaker in Opus Dei, huh?
Actually, if I were to apply corporate experience to this résumé, I'd almost suspect he was the sort of guy who's somehow got an office in Mahogany Row, but nobody quite knows how he got there, and nobody quite knows what to do with him. Was the Pastoral Provision in some way a make-work project for one of the club members?
