When Archbishop Gomez took over in San Antonio, OLOTA had a rocky relationship with the archdiocese. Archbishop Gomez tried very hard to repair that rift. He personally (not an auxiliary bishop) conferred the sacrament of Confirmation on the students at OLA school. He was well aware of the history of the parish. It was no secret Fr Phillips had vowed publicly to never have another order of nuns/sisters as a part of his school. It was no secret to the Archdiocese that OLOTA had a vacant house that had formerly been a convent. It seems that Fr Phillips went looking for the contemplative nuns (my speculation here--perhaps to prevent Archbishop Gomez from finding some teaching sisters to place there!)Regarding the family's employment at the parish or its position as a beneficiary of business dealings, I've received quite a bit of information on Fr Phillips's son, Nathan.. . . The nuns were called back to the Mother House in Hanceville, not evicted by Archbishop Garcia-Siller. I called the archdiocese myself and asked point blank. I was told unequivocally that Archbishop Garcia-Siller had not kicked the nuns out of San Antonio. In 2016 the population of the Mother House in Hanceville had dropped. . . . So was the archdiocese lying or was the story circulated by Fr Phillips on his blog in a post that was deleted soon after it was posted the real truth? I know what I believe.
. . . , I do not think it is fair to characterize Fr Phillips’s motivation as being “out to enrich himself and his family”. I think the truth is somewhere closer to him being motivated by Faith but derailed by substituting his own private judgement for the messy, sometimes frustrating hierarchy of the Church.
My recollection on the new building contract was that Father P gave the contract to his son's (Nathan) construction company which raised all our eyebrows at the time.I proceeded to run this by them, and they provided additional perspectives. One replied,I cannot verify if that was before or after the Dolans left. . . maybe that's why they left?
I would see the construction trucks with "Phillips Contracting" on them. Funny thing is one day out of the blue a different company started coming and Phillips Contractors were gone. It was odd like everything there was.
Maybe you can verify all this with your other OLA contacts.
Nathan Phillips worked for Mr Dolan, for a time. I am not sure in what capacity. Prior to working for Mr Dolan, as far as I know Nathan worked for a local super market chain in the produce department. I would doubt that Nathan had the experience or resources to be a construction contractor. Especially on a large project like this. I would add that Nathan's wife worked as a teacher at OLOTA.Another replied,According to what Fr. Phillips told me the reason that Mr Dolan's company didn't get the contract for the new construction was that, as I mentioned to you, Mr Dolan appeared at Fr Phillips office, threw his keys on Fr Phillips desk, said that he had enough of Fr Phillips and this place, turned and walked out. I also mentioned that there was probably a lot more to this story, but that I didn't know what that may be. If Fr Phillips is telling the truth, it would appear that Mr Dolan left before the new contract was awarded.
I never saw or heard of trucks with Phillips construction company signs on them, but that is not to say they don't exist. But, if this company exists I would think it has nothing to do with Fr Phillips's family.
At the height of his time there, Dolan gave a job to Nathan Phillips, who is not very bright, is not well educated, had a spotty career up to that point. Nathan gained an instant career as a construction project manager and lucrative job. This power structure and Nathan's position remained as long as the contract for the construction project lasted. Once this project began to dwindle, Nathan was let go and THEN, Dolan and his company was gone. I never heard, and never cared about the details of his departure. He was spoken of as a saint prior to his departure and as evil once he was gone. That was a common m.o. at the Atonement.And another replied,Nathan then started his own construction company and once the newest expansion was begun, Nathan was retained by the parish as the owner's representative. I know for a fact this position carried a six figure remuneration for at least one year and perhaps two.
Understand, this project that Phillips and Orr ram-rodded through, as a memorial to Christopher Phillips extraordinary holiness, and conveniently provided a cushy arrangement for Fr's near-do-well only son, was ill-advised, expensive and is now a tremendous burden to the parish and the ordinariate. It cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000,000.00 (on which they make payments towards $9,000,000.00 every month) but was terminated before the bulk of it was built out. It is a beautiful shell of a building that looks like a medieval castle -- on the outside. Except for a couple of classrooms, they can't use it, because it is completely unfinished on the inside, and it would cost at least 3 million more dollars to finish out.
My progeny were still in attendance when the Dolans left and I had met them a time or two. I have no firsthand knowledge of why they left. There was silence, then rumors, but very little character sniping because the Dolans' financial contributions to the Church and school were so large and well-known. Everyone I knew assumed they got sideways with either Fr Phillips or Dcn Orr and chose to part ways. That is usually what made people resign and then disappear in the middle of the night at some odd time. It was the same pattern, the Dolans were golden and untouchable until they weren’t, just like Dr Hollingshead (a Headmaster), Mr Knox (the Music Director/teacher), the Murrays (Music Directors and teachers), the Athletic Director, the list could go on and on.There's a lot to digest here. But one issue that pops up is that the school expansion was incredibly ill-advised, and Bp Lopes appears to have been so caught up in the prestige of finally bringing Atonement into the ordinariate that he neglected to consider the impact of the huge debt for an unfinished facility. One wonders if Abp Garcia-Siller's presumed rage at losing the Atonement parish might have been partly for show -- oh, please don't throw me into that briar patch! I would say, though, that the Archdiocese of San Antonio has personnel who would be far better equipped to back out of that situation than Houston.. . . Usually when there was just silence from the administration, like maybe no one will notice that two teachers both left in the middle of the week in the middle of the night in the middle of a semester, it was because the people had been asked to make a sacrifice too big. If they just got sideways or disagreed, there seemed to be very active whisper campaigns to make everyone else think the people that left were somehow dangerous to the spiritual heath of the community. It was very important to drive the Devil from their midst…
During this season of Halloween and witches, it strikes me how similar the Atonement community was to some Puritan settlements back East in the 1600’s.
As time goes on, Abp Garcia-Siller looks better and better in this history, I'd say. He removed Fr Phillips and put in a trusted, experienced outsider to the parish, who lasted only a short time. Fr Lewis, we must assume, is in well over his head -- as, of course, are Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes.
