For starters, while Fr Barker was ordained a Catholic priest in the 1990s, following study at St Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA, as a diocesan priest in the Diocese of San Bernardino, I don't believe this was under the Pastoral Provision, since Fr Barker is celibate. Second, his status as a "pioneer of the Anglican tradition movement" is spotty indeed -- I think at this point I know about as much as anyone other than Fr Barker himself about his time as an Anglican, since I was a parishioner at St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, his only parish, and learned quite a bit about its history from Fr Christopher Kelley, his successor as rector there.
UPDATE: Apparently in response to this post, the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society has published a new post with much more extensive biographical detail about Fr Barker, which can only have come from Barker himself, and which as far as I'm aware is completely new. Based on this post, he attended seminary in the UK and did further work at Bloy House in Southern California, although he gives no indication of having received an MDiv there. A few other details differ from this account, but the dates are consistent. He was a TEC priest for only a matter of months, by his account, before Fr Jordan passed away and the St Mary of the Angels vestry bypassed normal search procedures and hired him directly as its new rector.
As far as I can see, Fr Barker's involvement in the Pastoral Provision was marginal. Although he may have been encouraged by Bp Law -- this is unclear -- to take his then-TEC parish out of TEC, this was in 1977, fully four years before the establishment of the Pastoral Provision. There was simply no Catholic jurisdiction into which he could have taken the St Mary of the Angels parish at that time, clearly an irresponsible move if that's what he intended. Instead, the parish had no choice but to operate independently. And for reasons that should become clear here, two archbishops of Los Angeles had little choice but to reject his eventual application to be ordained under the Pastoral Provision.
Information on Fr Barker's life and career before the events of 1976-77 and his (non) role in the startup of the Pastoral Provision is actually quite hard to find. I posted a year ago on what we know here.
A thumbnail provided with one version of his history of the Pastoral Provision says he was ordained in TEC in 1970; elsewhere, information suggests he graduated from UCLA in physics and mathematics and worked in the NASA space program for several years before ordination in TEC. Apparently St Mary of the Angels was his first and only TEC assignment.. In the post linked above, the story continues:
Fr Jordan suddenly passed away in 1971, and the version I heard from Fr Kelley was that the vestry, deeply suspicious of the Episcopal diocese, chose not to perform a formal search for a successor and instead immediately hired Fr Barker as rector, though he'd been a priest for only a year [actually, per the new bio, less than that].
UPDATE: The new bio posted at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society stresses Barker's involvement in the American Church Union with Canon DuBois, but this changes nothing in the historical record, including Fr Barker's own previous accounts, that the ACU's resistance to the 1976 General Convention was feckless, that attempts to get the incipient first Anglican Church of North America to defer electing bishops in order to place it under a Catholic jurisdiction were unavailing, and the 1977 departure of St Mary of the Angels from TEC was without any provision that it would become Catholic under any jurisdiction, and in fact it never did.
But I think this also raises a question about his role in the dissident faction at the 1976 TEC General Convention, which approved a revised prayer book as well as the ordination of women. As a priest with only six years experience at the time, ordained without an MDiv, he somehow became chairman of the American Church Union's Planning and Policy Committee and issued strongly worded statements rejecting the actions of the general convention. The information we have is that most of his colleagues saw him as a hothead, and in the discussions that led to the formation of the first "continuing" Anglican jurisdiction, he was ignored by his own account.
It seems to me that this also raises a bigger question about his judgment and how he may have been used by Bp Law in the inchoate runup to the Pastoral Provision. In January 1977, he convinced the St Mary of the Angels vestry and parish to revise the bylaws, removing any mention of The Episcopal Church. This precipitated the first of three extravagantly wasteful rounds of litigation that absorbed many millions of dollars over a 40-year period. And the 1977 move also bitterly divided the parish itself.
I've been told by former parishioners over the years that although a pro-Pastoral Provision faction remained in possession of the property, two other large factions existed, one that preferred affiliation with Anglican Rite Orthodoxy and another that continued for several years as a separate Episcopalian parish under the auspices of now-Bp Rusack. This outcome could hardly have been more destructive, yet Bp Law countenanced it and quite possibly encouraged it. This is another question that someone may wish to put to Fr Barker in Toronto -- precisely what was the role of Bp Law in provoking the St Mary of the Angels exit from TEC, years before any possible Catholic jurisdiction could have received it?
The configuration of the parish that emerged from the first round of litigation created a situation where a valuable parish endowment without adequate supervision remained as a potential prize ripe for seizure by any new group of dissidents who came along. Fr Jordan while rector had begun a program of buying up property adjoining the parish, which Fr Barker continued. Once the first round of litigation was settled, Fr Barker built a commercial building next to the parish that was leased to a bank on a long-term basis.
This produced a large regular income for the parish that was exclusive of pledges, while the value of the commercial property soared with the real estate market. The result was that successive vestries could control highly valuable assets without anyone needing to pledge their own resources as part of the project -- a clear invitation for ignorant people to step in and try to make big decisions. The result was predictable. The vestry fired Fr Barker, though, when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles finally, after nearly a decade in which the parish drifted under his leadership, refused to admit the parish under the Pastoral Provision.
Both Cardinal Manning and his successor, Cardinal Mahony, made this refusal. In hindsight, given the parish history, as well as a candidate for ordination as pastor who had no MDiv nor anything resembling Catholic formation, and in fact little credibility among even his Protestant colleagues, how could they have decided otherwise?
UPDATE: Fr Barker's version of events does not mention his rejection by two archbishops and instead gives this account:
Finally in 1986 many members of St. Mary of the Angels together with 100% of St Matthias formed a new combined parish and where all were received into the Catholic Church at a single Mass celebrated by a Roman Catholic priest who was part of what was known then as the Pastoral Provision.But what was this "new combined parish", and where was it? St Matthias in fact continued as a mission of the still-Anglican St Mary of the Angels parish until it was dissolved in the early 2000s, and its remaining members moved to the Hollywood location. I assume the priest who received them was Fr Tea, but he was a Pastoral Provision priest of the Diocese of Las Vegas. I believe this statement needs more clarification than it's been given.
And how has Fr Barker, whose Anglican connection in his subsequent Catholic career has been minimal, somehow become a grand old man of the movement? He was at best a useful idiot for Bp Law, and in his retirement, he's a supply priest for Fr Bartus. I suppose the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society must find speakers where it can -- but why are there so few other potentially inspiring figures in the movement?
