Anglicnaorum coetibus was promulgated in 2009, with Fr Phillips a key cheerleader in the runup to the erection of the North American ordinariate. I'm told that he expected to be named ordinary, although other figures like David Moyer were also mentioned. As questions have gradually come to light, indicating that he was enabling and covering up for Dcn Orr, as well as running a financially squirrely operation with the parish and Our Lady's Dowry, I suspect he knew he could not have continued in the role he had as pastor, much less an Anglican papalist leadership figure, if he hadn't been made ordinary, so there was one big problem for him at the start.
As of January 2012, it was immediately clear that he wouldn't be named ordinary. Beyond that, as my regular correspondent puts it,
I remain amazed that Fr Phillips got away with as much as he did for as long as he did. We have agreed, I think, that Fr Phillips changed his mind about joining the Ordinariate in the first round because he had reliable information that Msgr Steenson intended to replace him. Why was that? On paper, he was by far the most successful priest in the Pastoral Provision and a leading force in the run-up to the erection of the OCSP. Presumably, however, Steenson had information that led him to believe, correctly, that the parish and the school were rife with personnel and financial problems rooted in Fr Phillips’ management.I agree that Fr Phillips elected to remain with the Archdiocese of San Antonio once he realized in early 2012 that he would have no future in the North American ordinariate. From the posts on his blog that we've linked here, though, we know that he'd been planning to expand the school since 2010. The post from 2014, after he'd decided to keep the parish in the archdiocese, indicates that the finalized plan, at least as it existed in his own mind, would be to expand the school as an empty shell, with no finished classrooms.
The basic question here is why anyone would do this, incurring something like $11 million in new debt with no revenue earning classrooms available to pay it off. A subordinate question is why the archbishop would sign off on the project, which we know from Fr Phillips's blog he did in January 2016, if he understood this. My tentative conclusion, based on what we've come to know about Fr Phillips, is that he somehow misrepresented the project to the archdiocese.
New information is becoming available that may shed more light on this issue. I would say, based on that, that multiple factors brought the shaky nature of the project to the archbishop's attention over the course of 2016, and what must have been concealed from him probably built an unavoidable case for Phillips's removal, although the archbishop also know it would be controversial.
But given what we've been learning over the course of several years, it seems plain that Fr Phillips knew he wouldn't be able to keep all the balls he was juggling in the air much after 2012 if he weren't named ordinary. (The Church, of course, dodged a major bullet there, for which we must be grateful). So what problem was he trying to solve by building the school addition that, as specifically planned, could never pay for itself, especially when the blog post for 2014 indicates there was an apparent refocus from a plan for a smaller expansion that would have revenue-making classrooms to a bigger one that would not?
New information suggests Phillips may have thought he could continue to rely on donors who would let him keep kiting that check, so to speak, so that's one potential explanation. I'll talk about this in subsequent posts.
However, the overall recklessness of Fr Phillips's behavior -- and that goes to his strange relationship with Dcn Orr as well -- makes me wonder if Fr Phillips's judgment was somehow seriously impaired throughout the period he was pastor at Our Lady of the Atonement. In fact, I would go so far as to ask if this had an influence on his leaving the TEC diocese in Rhode Island.
Anglican papalists are men with secrets.
