From the beginning at St. Mary’s he became involved with the American Church Union (ACU) which was under the direction of its famous Executive Director Rev. Canon Albert Julius DuBois, affectionately known as “Mr. Catholic” in the Episcopal Church.The puzzling thing is how very little comes up in web searches about the famous Mr Catholic, Canon duBois, prior to the TEC 1976 General Convention. There's no Wikipedia entry, although there's one for Barker's other mentor, Edward Crowther, even though Crowther himself is largely forgotten. The fullest discussion of his career is in a TEC press release issued at the time of his death, which probably came from an ally, possibly Barker:
Long Beach, Calif. -- The Rev. Canon Albert Julius duBois, who served as Executive Director of the American Church Union from 1950 until he retired in 1974, died at the Memorial Hospital Medical Center here on June 6 after a long illness.There is an entry in in the Episcopal Dictionary of the Church that describes him as an "Influential opponent of the ordination of women and a leader of splinter groups", but although it gives somewhat more detail on his parish assignments, it mainly repeats the material in the obituary, and it stresses his post-1976 activities.Canon duBois, who was well known throughout the entire Anglican Communion as well as the Episcopal Church, served as the editor of the American Church News during the 24 years he headed the Church Union, an organization which endeavors to maintain the catholic and apostolic heritage of Anglicanism. In 1973 he was named Honorary President for Life of the Church Union.
For three years following his retirement in 1974, he served as professor of liturgies and church history at the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Kentucky at Lexington. In 1975 he became national coordinator of Episcopalians United and edited its newspaper. In 1977 he founded Anglicans United and became its first president and editor of its newspaper.
Canon duBois left the Episcopal Church following its General Convention of 1976. From that time until his death he was actively working through Anglicans United and the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury, of which he was an organizer, for the reunion of some Episcopalians and former Episcopalians with the Roman Catholic Church.
Canon duBois completed his seminary training in 1931 at General Theological Seminary in New York City. He was ordained deacon and priest that same year in the Diocese of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. He served parishes in Wisconsin, and during the years just before and after World War II, he was rector of Ascension and St. Agnes Parish in Washington, D. C. During the war he served as a army chaplain with the rank of lieutenant colonel, including time in General Patton's Corps.
Canon duBois, whose death came three days before his 74th birthday, was buried in Neenah, Wis., where he was born in 1906. A memorial fund has been established in his honor.
Given his longtime position as editor of the American Church News, almost nothing written by him during that period can be found on the web. A web search on "American Church News" brings up no hits.
The American Church Union survives as "the publisher for the Anglican Province of Christ the King", one of numerous "continuing" Anglican groups (duBois associated with it following the failure of his effort to bring the first Anglican Church of North America into the Catholic Church), but it makes no mention of duBois himself. References to it prior to the 1976 TEC General Convention in web searches are almost non-existent.
Among the few extant references to duBois prior to the 1976 convention are one in The Living Church July 23, 1954, in which he discusses something called the Chicago Anglo-Catholic Congress 1954:
Preaching the third (July 11th) in a series of sermons at the Church of the Ascension in Chicago, in preparation for the [1954 Anglo] Catholic Congress, The Rev Canon Albert J DuBois of New York said that the witness of the [1954 Anglo] Catholic Congress was a necessity in the face of the narrow outlook as expressed by Chicago Cardinal Stritch's Pastorl Letter.The Chicago Anglo Catholic congress did take place, but although it seems to have wanted to borrow the prestige of a series of Anglo Catholic Congresses held in London in the 1920s and 30s, it doesn't seem to have been authorized by the same people. (The London congresses seem to have been primarily gay pride events). The Chicago version seems to be in roughly the same league as the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society's upcoming conference.Fr DuBois said that the Chicago Congress will show that exclusiveness of the Roman position is not in accord with the facts: it will bring together Anglicans, Polish National Catholics, and Old Catholics from Holland, Germany, and Switzerland, together with representatives of most of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, to show forth the unity and fellowship that exists among them as Catholics, and to make it quite clear that the claim of Rome, to be the only Catholic body in the world is entirely false.
. . . Canon DuBois criticized the retired Suffragan Bishop of Chicago, the Rt Rev Edwin J Randall, for a public statement made in the Episcopal Church press last week in which Bishop Randall deplored the scheduling of the Catholic Congress as an unwise and divisive thing.
More interesting, if mostly from an antiquarian standpoint, is his use of the term "Catholicity", which I don't believe I've ever seen outside Mrs Brandt's television appearances as the St Mary of the Angels parish spokeswoman at the time of the 1977 break. Here's a use of the term from duBois in The Living Church November 30, 1958 This referrred to a controversy over the Church of South India and involved a resolution by the Council of the American Church Union endorsing an editorial written by Canon DuBois saying in part,
The Catholicity of the Church does not depend upon resolutions of General Convention, nor can that Catholicity be altered or abolished by resolutions of General Convention. Our Catholic heritage is firmly written in the Constitution of our Church, of which the Book of Common Prayer is a part.Canon duBois appears to represent views consistent with later figures like Louis Falk and John Hepworth, that Rome is somehow obligated to recognize groups who identify as Catholic, whatever Rome thinks of them. Obviously this didn't start with the "continuing" movement, and clearly it was rejected by the Catholic Church when such views were expressed in the 1950s. The use of "Catholicity" by Mrs Brandt in 1977 must certainly have come from duBois via Fr Barker, but it basically seems to mean you're Catholic if you say you are, and nobody can say you aren't especially if you use the Book of Common Prayer. Or something.
This gives an insight into the intellectual level of the Anglo-Catholic movement, which I've come to see has been pretty consistently low from the early 20th century through the optimistic reaction of Anglo-Catholics to Anglicanorum coetibus. What we see in duBois is a view that groups over the centuries may have left the Catholic Church for one or another reason, but now both they and Rome should simply overlook any of those issues, and with no other conditions, Rome should accept them back, Anglicans, PNCC, Old Catholic, Orthodox, whatever, without any other questions or conditions. (I'm sure a big part of what Rome should overlook will always be the Church's teachings on sexuality.) The part of Catholic these people want to accept for their own prestige becomes "Catholicity". And I'm a T-Rex if I say I am as well.
I've got to wonder how seriously anyone in Rome took either duBois or the combination of Barker and Brown on their various journeys there. DuBois comes off as little more than a self-promoter who was mainly a legend in his own mind, and among the few people he was ever able to con completely was Jack Barker.
