"We Mustbe Careful From These Persons Who Are Claiming To Be Anglican Leaders"

Over the past week or so, I've had a series of e-mails from a visitor in India who's brought my attention to what amounts to a continuing con operation by the so-called Anglican Church of India. It's worth noting that in the runup to Anglicanorum coetibus, the late John Hepworth, then Primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion, was for a time the most vocal advocate for a Roman Catholic personal prelature for disaffected Anglicans, and in support of his petition, he cited a worldwide membership in the TAC of 450,000, of which 400,000 were assumed to be in India, since verifiable membership in the other TAC components, UK, US, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, was barely into the low five figures.

Nevertheless, it's hard for me not to think this number was in Pope Benedict's mind when he referred to "groups of Anglicans" who petitioned "repeatedly and insistently" to be received into the Catholic Church. But people who investigated the actual state of affairs in the Anglican Church of India came away with a very different impression. Early in the history of this blog, I posted the contents of an e-mail from a retired priest of the TAC-affiliated Anglican Church in America who moved to India and hoped to continue a ministry there in his retirement. His experience is worth reprinting here:

[E]very "number" I have ever seen published by the TAC or any member church has been greatly inflated or totally falsified from the beginning ... I have actually never seen any "church" here whatsoever - it's like a ghost.

The reason I decided to transfer my canonical residency to the TAC Church of India was because I fully expected to find an organized, thriving church here under Archbishop Samuel Prakash. A [thriving] group of TEC'ers poised and ready to enter the Ordinariate. +Hepworth was going to make a trip here (to Delhi, where +Prakash is located) in November of 2010. I was invited to go. I was told so by none-other-than +Hepworth during several Skype conversations. That meeting never took place.

When I arrived .... I found out from +Prakash that I would be living in the "Diocese of Nandyal" - - unfortunately, there is only one "parish" here... and "here" is the village of Nandyal - around 300 km. due-south of Hyderabad - and the Bishop is the Rector..."parish" is his family, meeting in his [house]...and no English is spoken - only Telugu.

Later in the post, I quoted Abp Prakash himself on the Anglican Church of India's website, who uttered the words that appear in the title of this post, "We mustbe [sic] careful from these persons who are claiming to be Anglican leaders". However, not much has been reported outside India on the subsequent history of this TAC-affiliated church and its activities. My correspondence with this visitor from India has brought things somewhat more up to date, but there's clearly been no change:

I was actually associated with Samuel Prakash, who claims to be the Metropolitan of India ACI, he has appointed many Non-Christian people as Secretary, Principal Officer, Property Officer etc. who are involved only in selling of the Anglican properties.

This is an accusation I sometimes saw about the ACI when I first looked at the whole question of the Traditional Anglican Communion. The visitor gives some historical background, which I have slightly edited to US from South Asian English:

The Anglican Church in India was formed in 1927 through the Indian Church Act, and the Church was governed by the Government itself, the Crown being the Supreme Governor of the Church. After the Independence of India in 1947, The British handed over the Church and its properties to the Anglican Church of India through a gazette notification. Since all aid stopped from the Government [i.e., the ACI as Church of England surrogate was no longer established in India] the Church started to suffer. In 1970 six Churches which included the Anglican Church of India came into a union through which Church of North India & Church of South India was formed. This is duly functioning up to now, although they are also involved into so many fraudulent activities for which I am contacting the International Anglican Communion, but have not got any positive response.

John Asa Prakash (Father of Samuel Prakash) was a priest of the Anglican Church of India during that time. It was he that resisted this union and declared himself the Bishop of the Anglican Church of India.

The visitor at this point brings Louis Falk into the story, and I'll supplement his account with what I've learned about Falk in the course of research for this blog. I gave a thumbnail of Falk's career in this 2013 post here. A member of a prominent Wisconsin family (though a bit of a black sheep), Louis Falk (1935-) was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1963, but he was almost immediately involved in scandal, and he was defrocked or "deposed" from the Episcopal priesthood in 1965, moving as well from Wisconsin to Iowa, where he quietly went into business.

However, the dissident movement in The Episcopal Church after its 1976 general convention rekindled his interest in the quasi-priesthood, and once the movement gained momentum in the late 1970s, he quickly rose in what became the first Anglican Church in North America, which then morphed into the Anglican Catholic Church, with Falk eventually replacing James Mote as its primate.

Always a political schemer, Falk ran into opposition within the ACC, but in retaliation, in 1991 he founded a worldwide umbrella body, the Traditional Anglican Communion, of which he became the primate, and he created the Anglican Church in America as part of the TAC, a body in which he could also preside. (The ACC, which had expelled Falk, continued as a separate body unaffiliated with the TAC. All these organizations were small, poor, and shrinking.)

The exact mechanism by which Samuel Prakash and the Anglican Church in India came into the Traditional Anglican Communion remains unclear. Although the TAC was founded in 1991, according to Wikipedia, "Prakash was consecrated as a bishop of the Anglican Church of India on 6 October 1984 at the YMCA Hall in New Delhi by Louis Falk, assisted by James Orin Mote and John Asa Prakash." Falk was a defrocked priest of the US Episcopal Church and a self-designated priest and bishop of the ACC; James Mote was a dissident Episcopal priest who had left that body and become a self-designated bishop and at the time was the retired primate of the ACC. Neither had apostolic authority except in his own mind to consecrate anyone a bishop, much less in a defunct denomination halfway around the world. (The Roman Catholic Church, which invented bishops, has held since 1896 that no Anglican of any sort has this authority.)

The visitor from India has forwarded a few documents that strongly suggest Prakash's business practices have been deceptive. For instance, here is a 2017 communication from the ACI to Indian government offices that misrepresents the ACI on its letterhead as part of the "Worldwide Anglican Communion", which it is not:

Another copy of a 2016 letter shows that the ACI letterhead as of then referred to the "Worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion", which was correct as of then. Nevertheless, it shows that the primary activity of the TAC-ACI was to acquire and sell off what properties of the defunct former Anglican Church of India that it could.

It's difficult to say how much Louis Falk or James Mote knew of Samuel Prakash's activities, which as far as I can determine have always been deliberately deceptive, since he seems to claim to be primate of a denomination on the Anglican model that actually has few or no actual parishes, few or no actual members, and indeed as we see employs many non-Christians in its holy work, which consists of acquiring and selling putative properties of a defunct denomination.

While the Traditional Anglican Church, as of 2020 successor to the TAC, currently makes no claim of numbers on its Wikipedia page, the TAC was well known as of 2008 for claiming numbers "like 400,000 and 700,000 for their worldwide membership". These would have come from Falk's successor as primate after 2002, the late John Hepworth. Hepworth's history is as sketchy as Falk's; he had been ordained a Roman Catholic priest in Australia but left the priesthood in uncertain circumstances and then married twice. After 1990, he became active in the TAC-affiliated Anglican Catholic Church of Australia, rose to be its primate, and succeeded Falk as TAC primate in 2002.

In the runup to Anglicanorum coetibus, he had hoped to be restored to the Catholic priesthood under its conditions, but as this prospect became unlikely, he alleged that he had been subject to abuse as a seminarian. I came to know him slightly after 2012, and from his accounts, I got the impression that Catholic authorities treated him politely but never took him seriously as an Anglican spokesman. In this, I suspect their assessments of his credibility were correct.

It's hard for me to avoid thinking that at best, Hepworth found it advantageous to look the other way over Prakash's claims, and we know from the above account of the retired US ACA-TAC priest who went to India that these were the sorts of claims Prakash always made -- but minimal inquiry would have shown they were false. From the same account, we also saw that Hepworth himself made optimistic predictions about India that also never came true.

The comic-opera TAC College of Bishops forced Hepworth out as primate in 2012, largely but not exclusively due to the debacle Anglicanorum coetibus proved to be for both Hepworth and the TAC, but I think it's significant that the man whom the bishops voted in to replace Hepworth as "acting primate" was Samuel Prakash, whose "province" was made up entirely of smoke and mirrors. This was likely convenient, as Prakash would be unlikely to rock the boat by challenging any of the other bishops, but none of the TAC's provinces was consequential, and all were and still are shrinking by the year.

Prakash was replaced as acting primate of the TAC when Canadian Bishop Shane Janzen of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada was elected primate, but the Wikipedia entry for the ACCC says that at the time of Anglicanorum coetibus, it had 35 groups, while at the current time it says there are 14. None of these people, Prakash or his colleagues, fronts a serious enterprise.

If the TAC-based Anglican Church of India is almost entirely a fictional church, we still have the question of how successful it's been as a fraud, and for that, we simply don't have a good answer. The visitor from India who brought this issue to my attention last week has been concerned that I help in making it public, but I can only surmise that the ACI is a tiny minority within a minority. Wikipedia says there are about 27.8 million Christians of all denominations in India, making up 2.3 percent of the population. Of these, Protestants of all denominations including Anglican are 59%, but the ACI must be a near-invisible component of this group.

For the ACI to attract the attention of Indian media, it seems as though it would need to be larger, and indeed more successful as a fraudulent enterprise, than it's been. And frauds of all shapes and sizes have been part of religious sects forever, the smaller and more credulous the groups the better.

Still, it's worth pointing out that the Traditional Anglican Church, he TAC's successor, continues to list the Anglican Church of India as a province on its website. Though it makes no claim as to its membership (or the membership of any other province), that it should cite India as a province at all must be considered a matter of borrowed prestige that in fact is deceptive.

But the "continuing Anglican" movement is tiny and shrinking no matter what. The actuarial tables have been driving this process from the start. It may be too much to expect the leadership of the Traditional Anglican Church to clean house at this late stage, although it ought -- if they did, it would be a sign that they take their roles as religious leaders seriously. At least they'd give the whole project a decent burial.

What Happened In 2012? -- II

This post will cover versions of personal conversations with Fr Phillips regarding the reasons for OLA's sudden reversal over joining the OCSP in May 2012. I believe that, in opposition to inevitably politic public statements, the reasons he gave in private reflect an exclusive preoccupation with his career and personal circumstances. I repeat what I said yesterday, I've come to recognize that both the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus are simply the syncretistic wing of the unproductive and moribund "continuing Anglican" movement.

A visitor reports,

I need to begin this by saying the Fr. Philips NEVER had a kind thing to say about Archbishop Flores, Archbishop Gomez OR Archbishop Garcia-Siller. Even though he feigns attention on wealthy Hispanic benefactors, in private he speaks very disrespectfully of "Meskins" as he calls them. He also looks down on any other parish in the city. He never attended, (nor did Orr), any Archdiocesan mandated retreats, conferences, or activities. They would laugh when parishioners bragged about going to mass at another parish earlier in the day but then coming to the Atonement for a "real mass", later in the same day. [Er, if mass is so important, why waste the time going to the "fake" one when you could go to two masses at OLA?]

It's important to remember that once Anglicanorium coetibus was published there was immediate anticipation and speculation about who the Ordinary would be. Because of its size and stature, much of this speculation centered around the Atonement. There was a conference held at the parish to answer questions about the impending ordinariate. This conference was attended by people from all over the country. The "Buzz" on the street was that Fr. Phillips was the odds on favorite to be the Ordinary. He did everything he could to present himself as the leading contender. He relayed stories to me about how people told him "they don't care what Rome says he (Fr. Phillips) was OUR Ordinary..." Deacon Orr spoke openly about his own impending role as the "Archdeacon" of the Ordinariate. He would travel the country showing the other parishes how the mass was to be said, in the light of Fr. Phillips's creation. [I've heard in e-mails that Fr Phillips has apparently told people that he wrote the BDW mass.]

Fr Phillips attended a meeting on Anglicanorum coetibus at St Mary of the Angels in December 2010, just before my time there, and pretty clearly represented himself as a major figure in the movement, if not ordinary-in-waiting. I mentioned a blog post from him made from this meeting in a previous post here, where a question arose about his report that he had just celebrated mass there. (Huh? said mass for a bunch of Anglicans?) According to Fr Kelley, whom I asked about it when the issue came up, this didn't happen. I was also somewhat irked that in the post, Fr Phillips pumped his protégé Andrew Bartus but never mentioned his host, Fr Kelley. I've always thought of Fr Phillips as something of a blowhard and grandstander.

The visitor continues,

After some time the Ordinariate was announced with Msgr Steenson as the Ordinary. I remember asking Fr. Phillips about him. Fr. Phillips told me he considered Steenson to be a nice enough fellow but rather "limp-wristed". I don't think he meant to imply that Steenson was gay, just weak and ill equipped for the position. I got the feeling Fr. Phillips figured he could manipulate the weak-minded Ordinary so the parish moved in that direction.

At this point, after a few days, Fr. Phillips made it known that the Parish was going to move to the Ordinariate. Soon, the Archdiocese got involved, inquiries were made and the parish was polled for demographic data. I remember Fr. Phillips meeting with the Archbishop and it was obvious the situation was being pondered by the Chancery. During this time the Atonement bulletin, written and published by Jim Orr himself began scurrilous attacks on the Archbishop, still relatively new to the Chair. This went on for several Sundays. I always wished I had hung on to one of those bulletins but sadly, I did not. It was the same clap-trap; "The Archdiocese is only interested in the money and property of the parish and will 'steal' the property from the parish, if given the opportunity" - It was all portrayed as a "land-grab". Orr even had printed and distributed new missalettes stating that the parish was part of the Ordinariate.

Then, out of the blue, Msgr. Steenson meets with Fr. Phillips and the very next day EVERYTHING changed. It was such an abrupt change of direction and focus, I asked Fr. Phillips what was going on. He was shaken. He said Steenson had made it clear that it was arrogant for Fr. Phillips to have purchased a home next door to the parish because he could be transferred to anther parish within the Ordinariate at any time. Joanne had previously made it clear she was NOT moving so Fr. Phillips was completely vulnerable to Msgr. Steenson. He told me, "for the good of the parish" he decided it would be best to remain within the Archdiocese. There was no other reason, the good of the parish was not involved, other than Fr. Phillips view that the parish could not exist without him. There was really no other reason - Fr. Phillips told me these things himself. All other explanations, intimations and justifications were concocted after the fact, "spin" to pacify the minions, who had been publicly fed with the hatred of the Archbishop (their now Father-In-God).

I say this because almost immediately Fr. Phillips published a blog post, explaining, in loving, glowing sentimentality how much we loved being a part of the Archdiocese as a Pastoral Provision parish and so on. He referred to Archbishop Gustavo as our "Father-In-God". It was enough to make your stomach turn, if you knew the whole story.

Some time ago I posted about another version of the dealings between Fr Phillips and Msgr Steenson:

A reliable source has provided an account of what appears to have been the real story on Our Lady of the Atonement. As it happens, during the first part of 2012 as Steenson was traveling to receive a parish into the Ordinariate, a group from that parish had picked him up at the airport and was driving him to town. Several people were in the car. Remarkably, Steenson got involved in a cell phone conversation while in the car with several witnesses in earshot and began explaining to whomever was on the other end that he intended to force the retirement of Fr. Phillips after a year and replace him with one of his younger priests, presumably a member of the Nashotah House clique with whom he surrounded himself. One of those in the car conveyed this information to Fr Phillips.

My source continues:

This came shortly after OLA's parish council had voted to enter the Ordinariate even at the price of relinquishing the title to their church and school property to the Archdiocese of San Antonio (with the Ordinariate congregation to have the indefinite use of the property), and just after they learned that this "compromise," which they thought had been a "hard bargain" originating with the San Antonio archdiocesan authorities, had actually been suggested to the archdiocese by Steenson himself. The parish council reversed itself immediately, and decided to remain within the SA archdiocese[.]

From this account, it appears that the parish did accept the conditions that Fr Phillips found objectionable in the e-mail I quoted yesterday -- but I can't rule out that any account from Fr Phillips may be embroidered to suit his own purposes.

I do find both versions of Msgr Steenson's role credible. I don't, based on this, think Steenson had any reservations about how Phillips ran the parish, Dcn Orr, or anything else that might have been a justifiable concern -- this was simply Steenson, an insecure careerist, meeting Phillips, an ego-driven opportunist. The OCSP wasn't going to be big enough for the two of them. Given the character of "continuing" Anglicanism as a pretty homogeneous movement, this isn't much different from the conflicts and intrigues surrounding the likes of Falk, Grundorf, Seeland, Hepworth, Gill, Marsh, and the rest.

But the problem of Fr Phillips's residence represents something I believe nobody thought through in drafting the Pastoral Provision or Anglicanorum coetibus. Celibate Catholic priests normally live in rectories, owned by the diocese. They may or may not own homes elsewhere, but typically not near the parish property, and often for vacation or retirement. In earlier years, celibate Catholic priests might expect stability in assignments, at least after age 50 or so, but the shortage of priests in recent decades has limited this, and the USCCB recognizes rotation of priests on 6- or 12-year cycles as a normal practice.

In this as apparently many other areas (like attending otherwise mandated meetings and retreats), Fr Phillips feels he's a special case. He owns a house right next to the property, gol dang it, and he's entitled to conduct himself as a proper Episcopal priest and stay as long as he likes. Msgr Steenson may have had his own motives for questioning Fr Phillips here, but he had a real point.

What else is the movement bringing into the Church besides alternate lifestyles for clergy? I'll have more to say on this.

A Small Step Toward Clarity

Yesterday I posted my developing view that the restoration of St Mary's is cause for larger reassessment and recalibration in the Anglo-Catholic project. One factor I mentioned was the massive embarrassment at St Aidan Des Moines: Louis Falk, a major figure behind the Portsmouth Letter and the Patrimony of the Primate, was going to bring his former ACA TAC parish into the Ordinariate -- except that, on the verge of this consummation, it turned out that most of the members just weren't clear about their Anglican annulments or whether it was OK to stay in the lodge.

Jeffrey Steenson came up at the last minute to give them the real skrinny, upon which the parish voted overwhelmingly to say, "Never mind". I would say that this is a pretty good illustration of the term "bungling", which I've used in reference to the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter in the past. A visitor has sent me some additional background:

Fr Seraiah [the prospective Ordinariate priest for St Aidan's] was a blogger on the Anglo-Catholic, but he was not an Anglo-Catholic, IMHO. His background was Protestant evangelical and then Reformed Episcopal Church, where he ran into trouble for his views on "headship" and support of the preterist Quiverfull movement, a bit too conservative even for them. I am not surprised that he failed to make an attractive case for the Ordinariate to the St Aidan's flock.

My visitor said in a later e-mail,

Many people expressed sympathy that [Seraiah] moved his family from Abingdon, VA to Des Moines to be rector of St Aidan's, only to have them ultimately decide not to enter the Ordinariate. In fact he had recently lost his job in as pastor of a small REC parish in Abingdon in a church split over Vision Forum and the Quiverfull movement, as I mentioned. Before this he was the pastor of a Reformed Bible church in Arkansas. The St Aidan's job was a bailout for someone who had been a very enthusiastic blogger, latterly, about AC. After St Aidan's made its decision he was ordained and given a parish in the Diocese of Des Moines. One hand washes the other.

This goes to some of the odd assumptions behind the establishment of the OCSP. Up to January 1, 2012, Msgr Steenson's identity was a closely-held secret (except that an in-group had clearly known the score for years). But as soon as he was designated, all sorts of candidate parishes and groups were going to be received, poof! The level of actual catechesis they got was, however, clearly inconsistent. Just how much Seraiah knew of Catholic doctrine prior to his reception and ordination is an interesting question -- I would have reservations about whether he was even capable of instructing the St Aidan's parish in much of anything. Somehow, nobody around Cardlinal Wuerl or Msgr Steenson asked any questions.

In a corporate situation, heads would have rolled. It took a few years for this to happen in the OCSP, but the people lower down are still running things, at least so far. But as Admiral Beatty (an Anglican) once said, “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.” I have a hard time avoiding the impression that Steenson, driven by opportunism and careerism himself, had a difficult time recognizing it among his subordinates -- I've noted before that the changed career paths in the Anglican Communion disadvantage straight males, and Anglicanorum coetibus offers tempting opportunities for clerics seeking an easier path. I repeat, we have cause for larger reassessment and recalibration in the Anglo-Catholic project.

The circumstances that led to the emergency ordination of a Protestant evangelical with highly uncertain theological background into the Catholic Church don't seem to be a one-time glitch. Mr Glenn Baaten, who spent his career as a Presbyterian pastor, but latterly had a brief period of months as an ACNA priest without specific pastoral duties, will be ordained an OCSP priest this coming June. My understanding is that several candidates with much better Anglican credentials were bypassed in favor of Baaten.

A Different View Of Abp Hepworth

A visitor, former ACA/TAC priest, comments,

A few years ago, there was a terrible controversy caused nationwide in Australia by Abp. Hepworth’s legal suits against some prominent Roman Catholic priests for homosexual molestation while he was a seminarian. That whole sordid matter gave me pause, to say the least. Furthermore, I have little knowledge of the primate’s day-to-day conduct while he was still the official primate of the Church in Australia and the TAC, financial circumstances included.

All of that notwithstanding, for what it is worth, I would like to vouch for the archbishop’s performance during a couple of trips that we made together to Japan in the early ‘00s to help found the Nippon Kirisuto Seikokai. I was there on my own dime as the interpreter.

The first trip was made toward the end of Abp. Falk’s long reign as primate of the TAC. That was when he and Abp. Hepworth converged on Yokohama with disaffected Japanese Anglicans in revolt against the recent action to ordain a woman priest. We were met by Fr. Furukawa, of recent memory, God rest his soul, and Fr. Furutaké, my tutor from my freshman year in seminary, who sadly fell off the radar soon thereafter. Bp. Kajiwara, longtime ordinary of Yokohama, the largest and most Anglo-Catholic diocese in the Nippon Seikokai (Anglican/Episcopal Church in Japan), was present as an observer. I recall that Abp. Falk acted petulantly, but Abp. Hepworth appeared to be more worldly, accustomed to the rigors of international travel and political negotiations, and eager to take the reins of the TAC.

The second trip came a year or two later, after Abp. Falk was out of the picture. and Abp. Hepworth had been selected as the new primate. Hepworth was a master preacher, clearly steeped in a knowledge of theology and bearing a compassion for fellow rejected Anglicans. He proved himself a deft negotiator, assuaging Bp. Kajiwara’s apprehensions, and paving the way for the latter to become the leader of the breakaway Anglican province, such as it was with a dozen members spread out all over the country. And, what an uproarious sense of humor Hepworth had! Still, all the while, one could sense the tremendous responsibility that he felt, especially as he coaxed the TAC toward on his mission toward some form of full communion with Rome, which came to fruition and exploded in our faces in the form of Anglicanorum coetibus. Hepworth was one of those men who are bigger than life.

Bp. Kajiwara has since gone on to become the first Catholic priest in Japan under the auspices of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross (Australia), but now an octogenarian, he confines his ministrations to his own household and the few who may gather in his house church in Tokyo. A protegé of mine and priest of the makeshift N.K.S.K.K., Fr. Yamaoka, has been (re)ordained a Roman priest in the Diocese of Hiroshima, with the blessing of the previous ordinary and the papal nuncio, but he has had to endure bullying from the other diocesan clerics in that diocese. Church politics never dies, what!

My own sense is that John Hepworth is much like the protagonist of a Greek tragedy: inspired, passionate, and determined. I hope that our narrow Anglican history will treat him kindly, for my own brief encounters with him proved to be rare brushes with genius, if not purity and holiness.

So, Can Samuel Prakash Actually Dissolve The Patrimony Of The Primate?

Over the past week, I've mused on whether anyone in the TAC ever actually dissolved the Patrimony, although this reminds me of the exchange in Henry IV, Part I:

GLENDOWER
I can call spirits from the vasty deep.

HOTSPUR
Why, so can I, or so can any man,
But will they come when you do call for them?

A visitor points out that as far as he knows, Abp Falk's source for much of his deposition was David Virtue, who tended to "filter" things a bit. "What Prakash actually said was 'I will not have the Patrimony in my Administration.'"

My visitor says,

In the end, Prakash was NOT elected Primate. So he cannot HAVE a "Patrimony of the Primate." He was only made "acting" Primate. This was to allow Marsh & Gill to keep a tight rein on him. I think the TAC website still lists him as "acting" -- last I looked.

. . . . Hepworth did nothing to let go of his "personal property" (as the TAC College of Bishops had already recognized it to be).

The accounts I've seen of Prakash's succession say that he was made "acting" Primate solely because he was the most senior bishop. I sort of think that if he could dissolve a Patrimony, he could also create one, which would not be what Marsh and Gill had in mind at all. I suspect the policy of the TAC College of Bishops has been to say nothing, which in effect allows Hepworth's Patrimony to continue. But even if it were otherwise, as I've said before, the TAC's only recourse would be to expel him again (and maybe denounce him to David Virtue as well).

But let's keep this in perspective. Within the TAC, perhaps two dozen people take any of this seriously -- but none is sending Marsh or Gill any money. Outside the TAC, this is mainly mild amusement. Nobody's sending Marsh or Gill money from anywhere else, either.

Mr Smuts is so far silent.

The Patrimony That Won't Die!

As I noted earlier this week, three bishops in the Patrimony of the Primate, including the Primate Emeritus himself, have made a declaration to the court that the ACA bishops who allegedly dissolved the Patrimony in January 2012 never had the authority to do so. In a 2012 declaration, however, retired TAC Arshbishop Louis Falk said,

I was aware that Archbishop Hepworth was retiring as of April 15, 2012, and that his named Successor, Archbishop Samuel Prakash of India, stated his intention to dissolve the Patrimony in his administration and upon his assumption of duties on April 16, 2012, which Archbishop Prakash in fact did. A unilateral abolition of the Patrimony, however, without consulting the United States Bishops, such as myself, who had voluntarily set aside our voting rights in matters that did not pertain to us, is an act that I see to be Ultra Vires (beyond their competence). In any event, if the Patrimony automatically dissolved on January 1, 2012 upon the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in the United States, as I understand to be Bishop Strawn’s position in this matter, then Archbishop Prakash would not have been required to take the action he did on April 16, 2012, because there would be no Patrimony or Primate in existence to dissolve.

Abp Falk says Prakash did in fact dissolve the Patrimony, but I can't find any reference to this on the TAC website. The closest thing I find to it is the October 2012 Statement by a TAC Tribunal expelling Abp Hepworth from the TAC College of Bishops, a gesture perhaps more comic-opera than Orwellian, though there are certainly elements of both. The Tribunal imposed a sanction

THAT all licences for any EPISCOPAL or PRIESTLY function within any affiliated church of the TRADITIONAL ANGLICAN COMMUNION, be with immediate effect withdrawn.

However, I doubt that the Patrimony of the Primate was ever an "affiliated church", being in effect Hepworth's personal creation. But let's assume that treating the Patrimony as still in existence is something utterly outside Hepworth's ecclesiastical competence, and this is anathema. What's the TAC to do? Expel him again?

And of course, the TAC itself is the outcome of the highly controversial 1991 Deerfield Beach Consecrations, felt by other "continuing Anglican" denominations to be uncanonical themselves.

Speaking as a Catholic observer who was formerly Episcopalian, I've got to say that the "continuing Anglican" movement comes off as pretty much of a canonical wild west in any case. I can't imagine Strawn or Marsh seriously complaining that Abp Hepworth has done something uncanonical!

Stephen Strawn And Letters Dimissory

Accoding to Merriam-Webster. a letter dimissory is "a letter given by a bishop dismissing a clergyman to another diocese and recommending him for reception there". It is pronounced DI-mis-so-ry (or possibly in the UK and Australia, DIM-sreh). The question of Fr Kelley's letter dimissory is related to, but separate from, the question of the St Mary of the Angels parish affiliation.

Fr Kelley's Letter Dimissory as an Anglican priest originated in Canterbury, England, in 1974, at the time of his ordination under the hands of Archbishop A. Michael Ramsey. It was well before the Anglican Church in America (ACA) had even come into existence. Thereafter, his Letter was transferred to appropriate bishops in the US, when Fr Kelley returned to this country to serve in successive Episcopal Church jurisdictions. It was transferred to the ACA's Diocese of the West (DoW), in Spring 2007 when Fr Kelley became rector of St Mary of the Angels.

It was duly transferred in 2010 by Daren K. Williams, then Bishop of the DoW, to the Patrimony of the Primate (PoP, based in Australia), when St Mary's began the process of leaving the DoW. By early 2011, Fr Kelley's Letter was held by Bishop David Moyer. bishop of the Patrimony. In late 2011, Williams abdicated. It is currently held by Abp Hepworth as the Patrimony of the Primate's bishop.

Stephen Strawn, the most junior ACA bishop in 2012, never possessed this required Letter, and thus never had jurisdiction or authority over Fr Kelley, who was under another bishop. However, on April 2, 2012, Strawn issued a "notice of inhibition" to Fr Kelley. It's worth pointing out that, during an attempt by Anthony Morello and others to seize the parish property on Strawn's behalf that day, Abp Falk explained to the Los Angeles police that Strawn had no authority to issue this letter.

The question of whether, or precisely when, the parish left the ACA for the Patrimony of the Primate is a legal issue that has been before the courts since 2012. The trial court found in October 2015 that the parish did in fact leave the ACA in August 2012. However, whether Bp Strawn had authority to inhibit or depose Fr Kelley is a separate canonical question, and this authority he clearly never had.

Thus Strawn's letter of inhibition was never valid, and beyond that, the ecclesiastical court that was held to depose Fr Kelley on October 11, 2012, never had authority to do this. As a result, the content of Strawn's allegations is not privileged, and is thus potentially libelous and defamatory.

Those who participated in this process, in the spirit of this Ash Wednesday, would seem to have something to repent. In particular, Fr Walter Crites of the APA, who participated in the proceeding to give it a veneer of objectivity, seems to have been derelict in not reviewing whether the "court" actually had jurisdiction over Fr Kelley.

On the other hand, Brian Marsh has said more recently that merger with the APA is "elusive". I suspect this sort of chicanery has been factored into the APA's review of the potential for merger.

A Couple Of Observations

My prediction over the past couple of months, that the Bush group would only be able to delay the inevitable for short periods, looks like it's turning out to have been correct. This leads to a couple of other questions. One is that we still don't have a clear picture of how the group financed what was, by Mrs Bush's own estimate, about $2 million in legal fees.

However, with the loss of the tenant in the commercial space and now the certain loss of the property, it's hard to imagine how they can continue the appeal of Judge Strobel's decision, which will involve hundreds of thousands more. My wife and I suspect they have been looting the parish of assets to meet expenses, but even this option will now be foreclosed.

The absence of Lancaster & Anastasia LLP from Mr Cothran's claim of possession may be significant -- it was a clear loser, but the Bush group's whole case has been a loser, and this hadn't deterred their intrepid legal team to date. Stay tuned.

The next question goes to the parish's affiliation. I have assumed up to now, and posted now and then to that effect, that the parish is unaffiliated. I now learn that the parish apparently intends to continue to identify itself as part of the Patrimony of the Primate. This was established by John Hepworth and Louis Falk in late 2010 to protect ACA parishes who intended to join the US-Canadian Ordinariate from adverse action by ACA bishops.

Although the ACA bishops unanimously requested that the Holy See erect the Ordinariates at the earliest possible time in March 2010, and in April 2011 pledged not to interfere with Patrimony parishes, they never acted in good faith over either move.

It seems more and more plain that their sole object was to seize St Mary of the Angels, a property worth somewhere in eight figures -- the only other ACA parish planning to leave with equivalent assets was Incarnation Orlando, which had put itself under a separate jurisdiction. Thus the ACA House of Bishops voted to dissolve the Patrimony in January 2012, when it became plain that David Moyer intended to continue to protect St Mary's from interference by Stephen Strawn.

However, court documents show that in John Hepworth's view, the ACA House of Bishops never had the authority to dissolve the Patrimony, since it was created by Hepworth himself as Primate of the TAC. As Hepworth put it in his deposition, the Patrimony still exists, St Mary of the Angels is still a parish in it, and Fr Kelley is still a priest in good standing in the Patrimony.

Samuel Prakash became the "acting primate" of the TAC following the retirement of John Hepworth (or his explusion by the TAC College of Bishops, depending on who you're talking to). He appears to be nothing but a figurehead, and the real power in the TAC, inasmuch as it exists, is with Brian Marsh and his ally Michael Gill. So far, none has made a move to dissolve the Patrimony on behalf of the Primate or the TAC.

They probably feel they don't need to. Remaining ACA clergy have either been cowed by Marsh and Strawn, or they stay out of their way and avoid direct confrontation. I would expect, though, that if the ACA's legal position continues to deteriorate in the St Mary of the Angels cases, we'll see an announcement of Marsh's "retirement". I wouldn't rule that out -- stay tuned.

Reactions To TEC Suspension At Canterbury

This development is only very tangentially related to the purpose of this blog, except that this post, on a blog speaking for a very tiny "continuing" splinter group, makes the point,

That the Global South primates have won a kind of victory is a step in the right direction, but only a step in a long journey. Many of us in Continuing churches know that this is approximately forty years later than it should have been. We know also that the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Donald Coggan, would have made all things better by recognizing the Denver Consecrations in 1978. The presence of ACNA Archbishop Foley Beach at the primates meeting this past week is good in one sense, but it also drives home the propaganda that we need to resist; namely that only now has a genuine Anglican alternative to TEC arisen. That notion has been presented only in an implied sense, but it is strongly implied at our expense, though it has never been true at all.

So OK, the main guy consecrated in Denver was James Mote. He in turn consecrated Louis Falk and then fairly quickly withdrew from active involvement in the "continuing" movement, leaving things as they developed to Falk and Falk's adversaries. Falk in turn consecrated -- well, let's look at just some on the list, Robin Connors, Stephen Strawn, Brian Marsh -- a disreputable bunch indeed. I recently heard from a conservative-leaning former TEC priest who basically said there were grounds for complaint against the US-Canadian Ordinariate and for that matter, the ACA -- and in comparison, the very liberal TEC Bishop of Los Angeles J Jon Bruno actually comes off well.

But then, I've heard from former members of the St Mary of the Angels parish who, while they have good wishes for it, chose to remain Episcopalian. Frankly, there are only two real options for Episcopalians. Either become Catholic, but considering the overall disappointment in the Ordinariates, probably not via Anglicanorum coetibus, or remain Episcopalian. A distant option might be, if an Episcopal parish is not convenient but an ACNA parish is, the ACNA.

Those who go with any "continuing" denomination are submitting themselves to charlatans and thieves.

John Hepworth On The Patrimony Of The Primate

John Hepworth made no public statements following his 2012 "expulsion" by the TAC College of Bishops. My understanding is that he had a serious medical issue around this time, was hospitalized as a result, and was presumably not in a condition to comment or engage in public disputes.

However, on February 24, 2014, he gave an affadavit in support of the St Mary's elected vestry that has now been posted on the Freedom For St Mary Site. Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5

The affadavit covers a number of areas relating to the Patrimony of the Primate as well as the circumstances of Hepworth's retirement (or, as some TAC bishops would have it, his "expulsion"). Regarding the canonical status of the Patrimony, he says,

The Patrimony of the Primate is a canonical device used by both the first Primate, Louis W Falk, and myself, to manage situations not anticipated by the Concordat (1990) of the world-wide Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC).

The Patrimony belongs to the Primate himself, not to the bishops of a national province (such as the ACA), and does not require the consent of the national province involved (if a province is involved). It is a "personal property" of the Primate. It is not a "diocese" as such, but an extension of the Primate's personal pastoral care, as required by certain unusual situations.

. . . . The powers were used again to prevent dissident U.S. bishops from taking legal action against Ordinariate-bound clergy and parishes by removing them from the jurisdiction of those bishops.

Hepworth then cites the August 2010 e-mail request from the ACA House of Bishops, via Louis Falk, to renew a previously-erected Patrimony to contain Ordinariate-bound parishes. He says,

It will be noted that there is, in this Consent, no mention of the Patrimony expiring "on the establishment of the American Ordinariate" as asserted in a letter of Brian R Marsh, newly Presiding Bishop of the ACA, on 10 January 2012. [The letter is posted here.] (That would appear to me as his own self-serving assertion.) It was always my understanding, from discussion with my Roman Catholic counterparts, that it would be some time after the Ordinariate was established before all applications could be processed and admissions and ordinations conducted; the Patrimony would serve as the vehicle for completion of that journey.

This understanding was entirely reasonable and borne out by events. The implication that Marsh's announcement of the "dissolution" of the Patrimony was self-serving is also borne out by events: Marsh did not attempt to seize any other Patrimony parish, presumably because only St Mary of the Angels was a property worth seizing. Hepworth's account of the events surrounding his retirement also strongly suggests that a desire on Marsh's part to seize St Mary's was involved:

The letter to the world-wide TAC bishops indicating I expected to resign on Easter Day, 2012, was signed and distributed by email on 28 January 2012. There were failed attempts by a certain few TAC bishops opposing the Ordinariates to force my resignation earlier. They had no power to do so.

Although I had announced on 28 January my intent to resign on Easter Day, 2012, I saw by then that the dissident U.S. bishops were making life and pilgrimage more and more difficult for chosen Patrimony parishes there [i.e., St Mary of the Angels]. I realised that signing any formal documents of resignation at that date would create even more problems for those parishes, so I refrained from doing so. I never dissolved the Patrimony.

Hepworth also says in the affadavit that, from his perspective, St Mary of the Angels is still a parish in good standing in the Patrimony, and Fr Kelley a priest in good standing as well.

The Events Of April 9, 2012

Not much was said at the most recent trial about the events of April 9, 2012, although statements allegedly made by Mrs Bush in the parish courtyard on that date are pertinent. In his September 23 testimony at the recent trial, Fr Kelley said that Mrs Bush loudly declared her intention to dissociate herself from the elected vestry in the parish courtyard on April 9. In her September 24 testimony, Mrs Bush denied that she had said this. Subsequent testimony at the trial established that, in any case, Mrs Bush did not attend any regular or special meetings of the elected vestry after March, 2012.

April 9, 2012 is the date of the second inchoate takeover attempt of the parish by Bishop Strawn in connection with the parish dissidents. It appears that this attempt was carefully planned and choreographed, and only the unexpectedly early delivery of a seizure notice from the IRS caused the misstep that resulted in the failure. Bishop Strawn, who had no authority to do so, since he was episcopal visitor to the ACA Diocese of the West, which St Mary's had left in January 2011, issued a notice of inhibition to Fr Kelley on April 2, 2012.

This notice was based primarily on non-payment of IRS salary withholding due from January, 2011, a matter which came as a complete surprise to the elected vestry and Fr Kelley, but which the parish dissidents appear to have communicated to Bishop Strawn as part of the planning. When the seizure notice for the unpaid withholding arrived four days early, the parish accountant was able to resolve the roughly $800 arrears immediately, establishing that it was an unintentional oversight and eliminating the issue. As a result, the pretext for the April 9, 2012 seizure attempt was removed, but the dissidents elected to proceed with it.

According to Fr Kelley, Keith Kang (a client of Mr Lancaster in the current legal actions) called him from the front office that morning to tell him there were two letters from the IRS there, one with Fr Kelley's name on it. Did he want to see them? However, there were no letters. (Presumably with the tax issue already resolved, any further correspondence did not take place, but the dissidents apparently proceeded with their plan nevertheless.) It appears to have been a stratagem to get Fr Kelley up to the front, where Anthony Morello, Mr and Mrs Creel from All Saints Fountain Valley and the ACA Diocese of the West, Mr Kang, and Mr Omeirs were waiting. Mrs Bush and Mrs Kang (also Lancaster clients) were in the courtyard, as they had used their keys to the parish door for the group to enter.

They presented Fr Kelley with Bishop Strawn's notice of inhibition. When Fr Kelley left with it to go back to the sacristy to review it, Mr Kang quickly brought in a locksmith to pick the lock to the rector's office. Fr Kelley returned and told the locksmith that what he was attempting to do was illegal. The locksmith recognized at once that he could lose his license and left. It appears that at about this time, the loud declaration that Fr Kelley testified to hearing from Mrs Bush in the courtyard appears to have taken place.

Fr Kelley called 911 to summon the police. According to the Freedom for St Mary timeline, someone from the dissident group then made four calls to 911 in an attempt to stop the police. Mrs Kelley also called Bishop Falk in Iowa, who was completely surprised at the move and spoke to the LAPD officers, explaining to them that Strawn had no authority to issue his letter of inhibition, since the parish was part of the Patrimony of the Primate. The officers then sent the Diocese of the West - parish dissident group away, saying there was no legal authority in Strawn's document.

According to Fr Kelley, Bishop Falk was taken aback to learn that Bishops Strawn and Marsh had "dissolved" the Patrimony of the Primate. The Kelleys contacted then-Bishop Moyer the following day, who was also surprised. Moyer said that if the ACA House of Bishops had "taken away" the Patrimony of the Primate (he didn't know how), then St Mary's had to be classed as "independent". This was the authority the elected vestry used in making its written declaration during the June 13, 2012 meeting.

Neither the Kelleys, Bishop Falk, nor Bishop Moyer was able to contact Archbishop Hepworth during this period. In reviewing the timing of events, I was surprised to learn that Hepworth had announced his intention to retire as primate of the Traditional Anglican Communion as of Easter 2012, which was April 8, the day before the inchoate takeover attempt. (However, the TAC College of Bishops expelled him on March 2.) It does seem to me that Bishops Strawn and Marsh were careful to act on the basis that the Patrimony had been dissolved only after the Primate himself was out of the picture, since the Patrimony was canonically his property. (Fr Kelley later learned that Hepworth was in any case incommunicado during this period due to hospitalization for blindness in both eyes.)

This timing leads me to believe that the first two seizure attempts, in January and April of 2012, were coordinated with elements in the TAC as well as in the US. I'll discuss this, and the possible reasons for it, tomorrow.

The Events Of June 13, 2012

One of the issues that Messrs Lancaster and Anastasia repeatedly brought up in the latest trial was an "illegal vestry meeting" on the afternoon of June 13, 2012. Several elected vestry members provided additional information on what happened that day in their testimony there. (I am continuing with a policy of not mentioning their names here to avoid the real possibility of harassment or reprisal against them.)

June 13, 2012 was the day that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann Jones dissolved the temporary restraining order against Fr Kelley and unspecified "John Doe" members of the parish, which had been obtained by Mr Lancaster on behalf of the ACA, Mrs Bush, and Anthony Morello on May 25, 2012. This turned out to be the first part of the legal quagmire that has nearly destroyed the parish in subsequent years: while Judge Jones dissolved the TRO and ordered the dissidents occupying the building to return the keys to Fr Kelley, she refused to enforce the order on the basis that this would involve her further in an ecclesiastical dispute.

As a result, the elected vestry returned to the building only to be turned away, apparently by Mrs Bush and other dissidents, who continued to occupy the building. (Mrs Bush in her September 24 testimony at the latest trial stated that she was on the premises on a daily basis at this time.) I assume they refused Judge Jones's order on the advice of Mr Lancaster, but this is probably covered by attorney-client privilege, and we'll never know.

At this point, Fr Kelley, elected vestry members, and other parishioners, a total of 12-15 people according to testimony, quickly had to develop a Plan B. The process of doing this, according to Mr Lancaster at the latest trial, immediately became an illegal special meeting of the vestry, as no notice of it was provided to Mrs Bush, who was barricaded in the church building only a short distance away.

Since Anthony Morello had already appointed a new alternate-universe "vestry" as of May 31, 2012, Mrs Bush at that time was, by her testimony, a member of the elected vestry, which had been turned away from the parish building by none other than Mrs Bush, who was also the senior warden of the appointed vestry in possession of the building. However, any attempt by the elected vestry to figure out what to do now would, according to Mr Lancaster, be illegal due to a lack of notice to Mrs Bush about this "special vestry meeting".

According to testimony, the vestry and other supporters were able to meet in the conference room of a local restaurant to consider their options. I assume that a call was placed to the elected vestry's counsel, although again, this is probably covered by attorney-client privilege, and we'll never know exactly what was discussed. However, the outcome was a handwritten statement signed by the elected vestry members who were present.

This statement was an exhibit at the latest trial and one subject of the repetitious questions put to all the elected vestry members. ("Is this your signature?" "Do you believe this as it applied to the parish, the Patromny of the Primate, and the ACA?" "Do you believe this as applied to you personally?" ad infinitum) The statement basically took the position that the St Mary's parish had been part of the Patrinony of the Primate since January 2011 and thus had left the ACA at that time. With the dissolution of the Patrimony, the parish had become an independent jurisdiction. This view was confirmed by Bishop Falk and then-Bishop David Moyer.

A source connected with the elected vestry tells me that the reason for the statement was to clarify the relationship of the parish to Bishops Strawn and Marsh of the ACA. The bishops had taken the position that with the dissolution of the Patrimony of the Primate (unilaterally announced by the ACA House of Bishops on January 10, 2012), St Mary of the Angels was back under the ACA's control, although this was contrary to the text of the January 10 announcement. This, of course, is the sort of ecclesiastical issue that continues to be part of the parish's legal quagmire.

Mr Lancaster then cited part of the Huber v Jackson decision to argue that in signing the statement, the elected vestry members had "denounced their prior promises to be subject to the governing documents of the national church and the diocese, abandoned their membership in the corporation, and lost the power and authority to be directors of the corporation, as they were no longer members in good standing of the [denomination]." Thus the elected vestry had lost all authority to call or hold any sort of meeting, ever.

The head spins. A source connected with the elected vestry has also provided new perspective on the timing of the Bush-Morello Easter Monday 2012 takeover attempt, which I'll discuss tomorrow.

Let's Revisit The Events Of 2011 And 2012 -- IV

Over the weekend, a visitor has provided some additional clarification to the chronology of events I outlined in last weeks post. The "clarification", though, actually raises more questions about who was in charge in both the ACA and the Ordinariate during this period.

First, Louis Falk's Wikipedia entry, which I'd relied on for his chronology, says Falk "retired as Primate of the Anglican Church in America and as Bishop Ordinary of the Diocese of the Missouri Valley. The church re-structured itself and decided not to have a primate, but instead a president of the House of Bishops. Falk was elected the first President of the House of Bishops."

My visitor tells me that George Langberg became President of the ACA House of Bishops at some point after Falk's 2005 election, but Falk resumed his post as President of the House of Bishops when Langberg resigned to pursue graduate studies about 2007-8, and he kept that post until April 26, 2011, when Brian Marsh succeeded him. This is not reflected in published sources. If anyone has additional information on some of these dates, I will greatly appreciate it.

Second, I had been relying on hearsay accounts from Patrick Omeirs and Msgr William Stetson on whether Louis Falk passed on the 40-page set of accusations against Fr Kelley to Cardinal Wuerl. A visitor tells me, "To the best of my knowledge and belief, Tony Morello was the one who sent it -- directly -- to Abp Gomez and Cardinal Wuerl, and to Msgr Steenson, after January 1, 2012."

It is entirely credible to me that Morello could have been claiming to act on behalf of Falk, but was in fact not authorized to do so. Exactly how influential this document was in actually stalling or delaying St Mary's reception into the Ordinariate is unclear. Msgr William Stetson, who has seen the document, though neither Fr Kelley nor anyone else connected with the elected vestry has seen it, has characterized it in discussion as "gossip". I am more and more inclined to discount its importance.

This brings me to the third issue, which is probably a better reason for the delay. I brought up a key problem in a recent post, that in order to change the parish bylaws, the members in good standing who would be qualified to vote would need to be Anglican. This leads to a paradox: if, prior to changing the bylaws to reflect the parish's admission to the Ordinariate, some or all members of the parish were received as Catholics, the members who were received would automatically cease to be members in good standing of the Anglican parish (the one legally still in existence) and would be ineligible to vote to change the bylaws!

My understanding is that Fr Kelley kept trying to explain this to both Msgr Stetson and Cardinal Wuerl in December 2011, but neither completely understood this before Cardinal Wuerl requested the second vote to join the Ordinariate for January 22, 2012. There seems to have been considerable confusion on the Wuerl-Stetson-Steenson side, which I understand that Msgr Stetson has acknowledged, as to how to proceed, which probably contributed to a perception that Fr Kelley was not cooperating with bylaw revisions.

This goes to my growing impression that poor management and poor planning for initiating the Ordinariate were responsible for the initial delays. The ACA, let's keep in mind, made two unsuccessful attempts to seize the parish, in January and April 2012, before obtaining the temporary restraining order in May. More decisive action in Houston could have forestalled this outcome.

Let's Revisit The Events Of 2011 And 2012 -- II

There's one figure in this story who suddenly disappears, David Moyer. Throughout 2011, he was the ordinary for the Patrimony of the Primate, the jurisdiction John Hepworth established to serve as a "holding tank" for TAC parishes in the US and Canada intending to enter the Catholic ordinariates to be set up under Anglicanorum coetibus. As the St Mary's ordinary, he was the focus for the various complaints and appeals that the dissidents and Andy Bartus were lodging against Fr Kelley.

He made a trip to Hollywood in June 2011, discussed in Mr Clark's statement on the Freedom for St Mary site, to try to resolve complaints about Fr Kelley from the dissidents and Bartus. Mr Clark, as an informed member of the vestry, felt that Moyer reviewed the complaints and determined they had no merit. I've heard via other channels that Moyer in fact reproved Bartus during the course of these meetings. However, according to Mr Clark's account, this outcome simply resulted in a redoubling of the dissidents' efforts to unseat Fr Kelley.

On December 21, 2011, Moyer made an additional visit to St Mary of the Angels to review demands from Bartus and the vestry that he inhibit Fr Kelley. Moyer again found the bill of particulars (included here) too vague and unsubstantiated for him to take action. However, by early December, according to a conversation I had with Patrick Omeirs, a key member of the dissident party, the dissidents had already intended to bypass Moyer and go to Louis Falk, who, retired from any position since 2005, had no authority in this matter. The dissidents do not appear ever to have approached the actual authority over Moyer, John Hepworth.

Meanwhile, Msgr William Stetson, representing Catholic authority to the parish, although at the time the identify of the Ordinary was still unknown, indicated to a meeting that the parish would be received into the Ordinariate on either the first or second Sundays of 2012. Nevertheless, based on later statements by Msgr Stetson to the parish, as well as my earlier discussion with Mr Omeirs, the dissidents had forwarded their accusations to Cardinal Donald Wuerl via Louis Falk, bypassing TAC authority.

The first and second Sundays of 2012 passed, despite Msgr Stetson's assurances, with no further word from Stetson himself or the newly designated Ordinary. In early January, the dissidents appear to have arranged a meeting with ACA Bishop Strawn, who had no authority over the parish. David Moyer warned Strawn away from the January 11, 2012 meeting when he told him "he had no Jurisdiction over, no interest in, nor business with St Mary of the Angels."

However, Moyer disappears from the story soon after this. It's plain that throughout his tenure, Moyer conscientiously followed his episcopal responsibility to shepherd and protect his flock. Even after January 1, 2012, when (in the view of the ACA House of Bishops) the Patrimony of the Primate was dissolved, and (according to the promise made by Msgr Stetson) the parish should have entered the US-Canadian Ordinariate, Moyer alone was for some brief period, perhaps just through force of personality, able to keep the ACA from interfering with the parish.

The next stage in the Moyer story is sometime prior to January 29, 2012, the date on which it was reported that

Moyer said he received a letter from Fr. Jeffrey Steenson, Ordinary for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, informing him that Archbishop Charles Chaput (Philadelphia) has declined to give him his votum (a promise) to proceed toward ordination in the Roman Catholic Church. No specific reasons were stated.

The cause of Archbishop Chaput's decline of votum, and Msgr Steenson's possible involvement in that decision, have been the subject of much speculation, on which I can take no position. On the other hand, the decision to deny Moyer a votum took him completely out of the picture within weeks of his successful defense of the parish from the interference of the ACA. Whether deliberate or not, whether at the instigation of Msgr Steenson or not, that was the effect.

Fr Barker's History -- I

As I'd requested, a visitor pointed me (many thanks!) to Fr Jack Barker's Early History of the Anglican Use. This turns out to be a very useful complement to Douglas Bess's Divided We Stand, since it gives a different perspective on the events surrounding the 1977 Congress of St Louis and in fact fills in several gaps. On the other hand, I think the history also provides an insight into what I think is the miscalculation that has led to the disappointing underperformance of both the Pastoral Provision and the Anglican Ordinariates.

Fr Barker introduces the issue by saying,

[I]t should be noted that Anglicanism has varieties of theological persuasions from liberal to conservative generally tolerated so long as unity of worship is maintained. The Elizabethan settlement had resulted in a Church that very much lived lex orandi lex credendi. Without the teaching magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church the commonality of worship through the use of various Books of Common Prayer became the earmark of unity in the various Anglican Churches throughout the world, in the face of what would otherwise have been certain disunity.

However, Catholic commentators from Frederick Kinsman to Richard John Neuhaus have pointed out that the prayer books provide only an appearance of unity, not just from calculated ambiguity in wording, but their effect is vitiated by a deliberate policy of looking the other way at heterodox practices. In fact, the heterodoxy that had been tolerated for about a century before 1977 included Tridentine vestments and Latin liturgy in Anglican services. As Kinsman has pointed out, Anglicanism has calculatedly allowed a faction to fancy itself Catholic.

Fr Barker continues,

It had always been the hope of catholic minded Anglicans that a full scale corporate reunion or intercommunion could ultimately take place between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

But many of those "catholic minded Anglicans" were the same ones that Kinsman recognized were allowed to fancy themselves "Catholic" as they were. This leads to the first major problem that Fr Barker describes. There was never unity of purpose among the High Church Episcopal dissidents.

Many other groups who had varying degrees of dissatisfaction with the Episcopal Church were active at the same time. The umbrella organization for them was the Fellowship of Concerned Churchmen (FCC). The Diocese of the Holy Trinity joined the FCC and attended its September 1977 meeting in St. Louis, Missouri. This meeting in St. Louis produced a loose amalgamation of several groups into the Anglican Catholic Church in North America (ACNA), and this was destined to become a new "Anglican" church in the United States and Canada Some of the members of the Diocese of the Holy Trinity identified with the aims of the FCC as it moved toward founding the ACNA. Canon DuBois and the Anglicans United (successor to Episcopalians United) did not. Those in the Diocese of the Holy Trinity who agreed with the aims of ACNA kept the name Diocese of the Holy Trinity and remained with them Those who desired reunion with Rome then formed the Pro-Diocese of St. Augustine of Canterbury (PDSAC) to act as the "corpus" for transitional jurisdiction to full unity with the Roman Catholic Church.

Note history repeating itself in the Patrimony of the Primate, with about the same result. In 1977, two delegates from the PDSAC, one of whom was Fr Barker, traveled to Rome to present

a proposal for consideration of what later became the Pastoral Provision, i.e. the possibility of Episcopalians returning to the Catholic Church while retaining something of their Anglican heritage.

The proposal was very favorably received by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. However,

Before leaving Rome, confidential letters from the delegation were mailed to Bishop Albert Chambers, the retired Episcopal bishop of Springfield, Illinois, and Fr. James Mote, bishop-elect for the Diocese of the Holy Trinity. Bishop Chambers was scheduled to be the chief consecrator at the ordination to the episcopate of four Episcopalian priests, including Father Mote, which would inaugurate the new Anglican Catholic Church in America as planned by the FCC. In those letters both were advised of the results of the Rome meetings and that Rome would see those planned ordinations as a serious obstacle to reunion.

Two weeks after returning from Rome, the delegates spoke at a joint synod of the priests of the Anglican Dioceses of the Holy Trinity and Christ the King, on December 15, 1977. Bishop Chambers presided at this meeting and allowed less than ten minutes for the report on the meetings held in England and Rome. It seemed apparent to all present that the bishop was not interested. For example he said: "Your people don’t want to be Roman Catholics." This sentiment was echoed by bishops-elect Mote (of Denver) and Morse (of Oakland). Bishop Chambers continued to plan for the consecrations to take place in January 1978.

The problems that have dogged St Mary of the Angels and the "continuing Anglican" movement were present from the start. My understanding, by the way, is that Louis Falk did not attend the 1977 Congress of St Louis, was not involved in the consecrations of Mote and the other bishops, and did not make any move to join the ACC until the following year. Yet the pattern of willful duplicity that we saw in later events like the 1991 Deerfield Beach consecrations and the formation of the Traditional Anglican Communion had already been established at the start. But all things considered, Bishop Chambers was right: there never has been a significant movement, even among disaffected Anglicans, to become Catholic in a body.

Let's Look Again At The Timeline

Most of the pieces have been public knowledge and published on various blogs for years. But nobody's pulled them together:

• October 2007: TAC and ACA Bishops sign the Portsmouth Petition to Pope Benedict XVI. Bps Marsh and Strawn were not present from the ACA. However, a knowledgeable party tells me that the draft of the Letter to the Vatican was in the hands of all the ACA bishops before the Portsmouth meeting. Marsh and Moyer delegated Langberg to sign on their behalf. The signed document reveals that he is the authorized signer on behalf of American bishops who could not be present, namely Brian Marsh and David Moyer. He added their names to the Petition. (They are all in his neat handwriting.)
• Nov. 4, 2009: Anglicanorum coetibus is issued together with complementary norms.
• March 3, 2010: All members of the ACA House of Bishops sign a petition to the Holy See requesting the erection of a personal ordinariate in the United States of America as soon as possible.
• Later in March 2010: Brian Marsh addresses at least one DONE parish opposing Anglicanorum coetibus.
• Summer 2010: Daren Williams refuses to ordain as priests two DOW transitional deacons who support Anglicanorum coetibus. He inhibits one, Andrew Bartus, on this basis.
• Late 2010: John Hepworth erects the Patrimony of the Primate to protect parishes wishing to enter the Ordinariate from adverse episcopal actions by ACA bishops who oppose Anglicanorum coetibus, in spite of their signatures on the March 3 petition.
• January 30, 2011: St Mary of the Angels votes to enter Patrimony of the Primate.
• February 5, 2011: ACA issues a letter through its chancellors saying it will not join with its Archbishop, John Hepworth, and accept the Pope's offer of a personal ordinariate. Brian Marsh, still only Bishop of the Northeast, speaks on behalf of the ACA. In the same letter, the chancellors announce those in the Patrimony are no longer in the ACA. Louis Campese resigns as Bishop of the Eastern US and takes numerous parishes into his own pro-diocese as well.
• April 26, 2011: ACA Bishops reach a "Solemn Agreement" that they would separate on amicable terms: The Ordinariate-bound bishops would no longer vote on any matter not pertaining to them, and the loyalists would not do anything to interfere with those heading for the Ordinariate. Following this agreement, which was brokered by Louis Falk, Brian Marsh was elected President of the ACA House of Bishops.

There's a lot -- a lot -- about the interstices between these events that I'd like to know, as, I'm sure, would many others. Clearly Marsh played a role that so far no one has disclosed. I deeply appreciate the continued insights of informed parties.

My Wife Is A Retired Attorney,

and she wasn't completely happy with my post showing the contradiction between Falk's April statement to David Virtue via Anthony Morello, that he had never provided episcopal oversight to St Mary's, and his declaration to the court in June 2012 that in fact he had. "St Mary's might need him as a witness," she said. In other words, if Falk were to testify in court, an attorney could destroy his credibility by raising that contradiction. That's too bad, I suppose, although for one thing, you can never be sure which side might think Falk would testify on its behalf -- next month, he might tell the ACA he had testimony that would help them, after all. And anyone can use Google, which is what I did to find the contradictions -- a lawyer seeking to damage Falk's credibility could find the same thing I did with half an hour's work.

For friends of St Mary's who've thought well of Falk for his June declaration in favor of the parish's case, I would simply say that his record would allow an attorney to destroy his credibility if he should ever actually testify. The help he appears to have provided in his declaration is worth little. What happened at St Mary's has certainly caused spiritual crises among former parishioners -- how, for instance, could excommunicating someone who's done nothing that would warrant it do anything else? -- but it's been a part of reassessments among people not directly involved with the parish, too. Some have certainly suggested that Archbishop Falk is a figure who mitigates any disillusionment they may have with the ACA. To me, the record says pretty plainly that Falk is completely comfortable in the company of Strawn, Marsh, and Morello; he has been complicit in what's been done to St Mary's; and his own public record of personal integrity is not good.

Of those I've spoken with who've been led to reassessement -- of church affiliation, of vocation, even of how God allows evil -- none has said they'll go back to St Mary's (they can't anyhow, they've been excommunicated!) or have anything more to do with the ACA. It seems to me that this is an entirely reasonable position. This is a small scandal, but it's been instructive. One question I have is how the Anglican Province of America can contemplate merger with the ACA, knowing what it must about the key people in the ACA. What assurance does anyone in the APA have that the ACA bishops will act in good faith on any agreement they purportedly reach with the APA?

The Missed Opportunity -- VI

Let me get one of the bigger bees in my bonnet out of the way now. St Mary of the Angels Hollywood is an important parish. It's been important as a bellweather since the 1970s. Of the issues that observers were watching in the runup to the US Ordinariate, what would happen to St Mary's was one of the big ones. What's happened so far, in addition to how David Moyer and the Newman Fellowship were treated, has been one of the big indicators that have led observers to feel the Ordinariate has been a disappointment.

Hollywood is a sophisticated place, with capable, intelligent people, some of whom are Catholics, or want to be. If you try to play games with capable, intelligent people, you risk disaster, which is the big error the ACA made in trying to play games with the parish. St Mary of the Angels is not a Plumstead Episcopi, a place where Steenson and Hough can deposit some favored mediocrity. It is definitely not the place for them to try to park Andrew Bartus. I speak here only as an informed observer, but one who has a good sense of what will never play. Let's keep this in the background from here on out.

But why did Houston, figuratively speaking, stop answering the phone from St Mary's after January 2012? The answer was partly the letter (my wife calls it "the ka-ka letter", probably the best term for it), which as I understand it was about 40 pages of rambling, ungrammatical and misspelled allegations against Fr Kelley. No one connected with the elected vestry, and not Fr Kelley, has ever seen it, so I can only surmise its contents. Apparently the ka-ka letter was enough to stall the process of joining the Ordinariate for the parish.

My surmise is this: we already know the Bush group has difficulty with spelling, grammar, and other indications of ordinary adulthood. Until it was pointed out, they styled St Mary's an "Angelican" parish. Their calendar errors are legion. I assume the ka-ka letter included the allegations against Fr Kelley that were contained in the charges brought against him in the ACA's "court", as well as the allegations of "misconduct" made to the California unemployment board. We know that these allegations were impossible as described and counterfactual. LA Superior Court Judge Jones reviewed them and found them unsubstantiated. The California unemployment board reviewed them and said there was not "a shred" of evidence to support them.

Nevertheless, based on the explanation Msgr Stetson gave a parish meeting in January 2012, Louis Falk felt they were important enough to pass on to Cardinal Wuerl in late 2011, and Wuerl felt they were important enough to pass on to Steenson. I'm scratching my head. Fr Z's advice for those appealing to bishops is not to have s single exclamation point in one's correspondence. I would guess that, at minimum, the ka-ka letter had quite a few.

In the real world, where my wife dealt with things like sexual harassment complaints, adults have to conduct an investigation and determine the credibility of charges. The responsibility of the Ordinariate, if only the responsibility of a Christian to act justly, was to investigate these complaints, determine their credibility, and act accordingly. Those connected with the Bush group had been making similar complaints to David Moyer when he was ordinary to the parish. Moyer made at least two trips to Hollywood in 2011 to investigate them and appears to have come to the same conclusion that every other responsible party has come to since: they were at best too vague to act on, but also illogical and wildly counterfactual.

This was a pastoral issue. There was a hard core of nut-job troublemakers in the parish. My guess is that Steenson wanted a Plumstead Episcopi, not a pastoral problem, and he punted. The result was what we've seen. This project isn't going to succeed any better in 2015 or 2016 than it did in 2012 if all Steenson and Hough want from the parish is a Plumstead Episcopi.

The Portland Mysteries

Still on the subject of unanswered questions, the news of Robin Connors's passing and the intrigues surrounding Owen Rhys Williams brings me back to what we don't know about the two sometime-ACA parishes in Portland, OR, St Mark's and St Francis. They appear to be key way stations in the progress of two inner-clique members of the ACA, Connors and Williams, as well as a point-of-origin for another mysterious figure, Terrance Tutor.

St Mark's Portland earlier answered my e-mail request for Robin Connors's dates of employment, but never answered my request on Williams. St Francis has never replied to my requests for information on either Connors or Tutor. According to St Mark's, Connors was Rector from January 1998 to December 2001. The biographical profile on Williams that was briefly available on the ACA Diocese of the West web site says that he was a curate there (presumably under Connors) and then Priest-in-Charge. However, I don't get the impression that Williams was ever Rector. He then left for unspecified reasons and wound up on the other side of the country in New Hampshire.

I speculated the other day that Williams, whose background included lumber yard manager and ski instructor, may have run into Louis Falk in Colorado in the mid-1990s and been referred by Falk to Connors in Portland. However that happened, Connors at some point looked on Williams, thought him good, and ordained him, though he never had formal seminary training. I'm told that during Connors's St Mark's period, Terrance Tutor, having left the life of an ordinary religious at an Oregon Roman Catholic priory, was hanging around St Mark's, wearing a clerical collar, and calling himself Fr Tutor.

After 2001, Connors left St Mark's and founded his own parish, St Francis Portland, under the direct supervision of Louis Falk, while St Mark's was in the ACA Diocese of the West until about 2009, when it went into the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Terrance Tutor followed Connors over to St Francis, while Williams remained at St Mark's as Priest-in-Charge. At some point, however, I'm told that Tutor somehow lost favor with Connors and fled to New Hampshire; I assume that Williams, by several accounts a good friend of Tutor, recommended New Hampshire as the sort of place where one could escape whatever bad vibes might have accumulated in Oregon.

Tutor, in the informal account I've heard, expected to be ordained by Connors on the same basis (whatever it was) that Connors ordained Williams, but it didn't happen. However, once Tutor got to New Hampshire, Williams prevailed on then-Bishop Langberg to ordain him, and the deed was done.

So here are some unanswered questions:

• Under what circumstances did Owen Rhys Williams find his way to St Mark's Portland and become an aspirant-postulant-candidate for holy orders?
• Under what circumstances did Robin Connors leave St Mark's Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Robin Connors leave St Francis Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Owen Williams leave St Mark's Portland?
• Precisely when, and under what circumstances, did Terrance Tutor leave St Francis Portland?

This, of course, is just the tip of an iceberg. Connors was, and Williams continues to be, at least until very recently, in sufficient favor in the ACA that the inner clique always seems to have found new places to park them as new sets of circumstances have arisen.

Here's My Working Hypothesis

of Louis Falk III's career. I've learned about as much as I can from public records, and without mad money to hire an investigator, I won't get much farther. (I'd love to see what kind of records may exist for a Louis Wahl Falk III at Kenyon College during 1953-4, though these, if they ever existed, have almost certainly been purged.) But even if I had mad money, Falk wouldn't be the first guy I'd hire Philip Marlowe to go after.

Nevertheless, let's go into the well-traveled sociological territory of college admissions. I went through the worst of that rat race in the 1960s, and my impression is borne out by the later opinions of writers like David Brooks. Falk, though, was in one of the earliest postwar cohorts to whom selective admissions applied, so my guess is that standards wouldn't even have been as stringent in his case as they were later.

First, there was, and continues to be, a rigid hierarchy of schools, with the Ivies and half a dozen others at the very top. Somewhat farther down were "safety schools", which appeared close to the bottom of each applicant's aspirational list -- if you couldn't get into Harvard, Stanford, or whatever, you also applied to schools that the counselors assured you would accept you without a doubt. (Mine was Gettysburg.) Kenyon College, based on my memories of the rat race, was widely felt at the time to be another on the safety list. Lawrence wasn't even on the screen, at least on the East Coast.

But the sociological studies also point out that the prestige schools have a separate set of admissions criteria for the children of potential major donors. The Falk family would almost certainly be in that league. If those applicants also prepared at private schools, they're even more advantaged. This fit Louis Falk as well. I went to an Ivy, and my sense was that there was a two-tier system throughout, not just in admissions. (I kept wondering why this or that guy had the same surname as _____ Hall, but never completely figured it out at the time.) However, the sociological studies also point out that even the Ivies have standards, and if John D Hackensacker V just can't make it no matter how far you bend the rules, some other tactful arrangement is made.

So I'm still left with the question of why Falk III didn't go to Yale. The possibility that he might have gone to Kenyon in fall 1953, frankly, looks more likely -- for whatever reason, possibly grades or test scores, Yale felt it had to forego even the potential of Falk money, and Louis was steered to a still-somewhat-prestigious safety school. But then, disaster of some sort strikes. Falk and his bride intend to return to Gambier, but things don't work out, and he finishes up at Lawrence College, a little down the scale from Kenyon, but summa cum laude. Of course.

My overriding impression is that Louis III's life, at least until he found the ACC, was marked by a series of disasters, mitigated by family money. Something happened to interrupt his college career, and it wasn't the draft. But somehow it's fixed. Then he gets an astonishing fast track in The Episcopal Church -- becoming a rector of a prestigious parish right out of seminary is highly unusual. Something, I've got to assume, facilitated that.

But then there's another disaster; Falk lasts only a little more than two years in that prestigious rectorship (and the problems presumably began to boil up well before he left). Unmitigated disaster, almost certainly not the first for the guy. I can only assume that Falk family resources were involved in setting up generous structured settlements and non-disclosure agreements that kept the business more or less quiet.

So he gets out of Wisconsin, where Falk is a very prominent name, perhaps at the urging of the family, and sets up in Iowa. I believe someone who fails as spectacularly at the priesthood on an initial try, as Falk appears to have done, would normally conclude that he simply didn't have an authentic vocation. Certainly the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac was of that persuasion. Indeed, if I discovered I had problems at the priesthood but did well in mall management, I'd take it as a message. But for whatever reason, Falk seems to have decided the Congress of St Louis was another good opening.

He'd gotten himself on an Episcopalian fast track, possibly using resources available to his very prominent family. Now he seems to have gotten on an even faster track with the Anglican Catholic Church. I would guess that family resources were available for that, as well.

What might have happened with "continuing Anglicanism" if Falk hadn't been involved? What if James Mote had made a serious background check when Falk turned up, figuratively speaking, at his doorstep? The answer is probably that "continuing Anglicanism" was always something of an alternate universe filled with wishful thinking from the start, and it was simply never the sort of place where anyone made serious background checks -- a place like Yale could think things over and turn down serious money if it absolutely had to. James Mote and the ACC were never in that league. The Episcopal Church could reconsider; the ACC could not.