My Inner Detective Has Another Question

Why did Jeffrey Steenson really resign is Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande?

I say this because the more I look at the origins of Anglicanorum coetibus, the bigger the air of unreality that seems to surround it. Consider a major principle that governs the (largely theoretical) admission of existing Anglican parishes into the ordinariate. Such a parish must have no litigation associated with it. But we know from more than four decades of experience that The Episcopal Church does not allow existing parishes to leave the denomination with their property or endowment without litigation.

In an e-mail exchange I had in 2012 with Mrs Chalmers, the canon lawyer who was over her head in a situation that would result in litigation, she said, "We don't have the money for litigation". Well, doesn't that say something? The CDF had written an apostoilic constitution that allowed Episcopalian parishes to become Catholic, that is, if they could do it without being sued. Hey, I'd like to drive a Maserati, that is, if I can do it without that pesky car payment.

As I said yesterday, the big thing Steenson and Clarence Pope didn't bring with them to their meeting with Cardinal Ratzinger was at least $100 million in pledges. Otherwise, this whole idea was just blowin' smoke, and smoke to a particular kind.

Fast forward to 2007. Nothing had changed, except that apparently Cardinal Law had phoned up Steenson to say, OK, His Holiness has greenlighted the big project, c'mon over! In 2007, Steenson was 55, the minimum age for early retirement. But he had a private plane to support, and any subsequent benefits he got as a Roman Catholic priest would not cover his wife. I've got to think he was taking a financial hit to do this, but the story up to 2007 was that Steenson traveled first class.

A visitor reports that sometime prior to 2007, Bishop Steenson remakred at a private meeting that he had "changed his mind" on women's ordination and now tentatively in favor of it. The visitor remarked that for much of the 1990s he was Rector of St. Andrew's Fort Worth, a church which in its earlier days had been quite "high church" but in the 1940s and 50s had become much more middle-of-the-road, and is now consciously low church. It was long one of the "high society" churches of Fort Worth.

As rector, Steenson wrote articles on his "renewed appreciation" of the value of the XXXIX Articles, and I'm told that, still characterizing himself as an Anglo-Catholic, he advocated that Anglo-Catholics should eschew practices which, although good and laudable in themselves, would alienate their Evangelical Anglican brethren and get in the way of their collaborating effectively against "liberalism" in the Anglican Communion. The example he gave was the practice of "Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament" - which he insisted that Protestant Anglicans could not understand and would never accept.

So in many ways, he was theologically all over the map, and he often did what was convenient. The reason he gave in The Causes Of My Becoming Catholic was a last-straw obscure procedural move in the TEC House of Bishops -- he'd already called those who objected to Gene Robinson's consecration schismatics.

So my inner detective wants to know: Why did Steenson really resign as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande when he must have fully understood the project as approved could never succeed as a practical matter?

Reconstructing "The New Donatists" -- II

As far as I've been able to find so far, three excerpts of Jeffrey Steenson's "The New Donatists" exist on the web now. The main copy appears to have been on the website of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, and a commenter here appears to have found it in 2007 even after Steenson's resignation was announced. (I found a copy on line even after starting this blog in 2012.) The main point there was Steenson's apparent reference to the "continuing" option for Episcopalian dissenters not being viable.

This was, of course, insightful and correct. A second post quotes a brief remark,

. . . which ought to raise for us the disturbing images of continuing Anglican churches where prelates seem to outnumber people.

This carries forward Douglas Bess's observation a decade earlier in Divided We Stand that The Episcopal Church never felt the "continuing" secessions were worthy even of notice. Steenson on one hand is reflecting received TEC opinion here, but on the other hand, as a bishop, he's now taking notice of the post-Gene Robinson secessions that led to the ACNA, clearly a different matter if he's going to the trouble of comparing them to Donatists.

My regular correspondent notes that "The New Donatists" was delivered as the T. W. Smith Lecture at St John’s, Elora, Ontario, in 2005. Various references on versions of Steenson's curriculum vitae have said it was in the process of being published, so it appears to have been an important event at the time, at least for some, although it got little notice until it surfaced in the context of Steenson's 2007 resignation from his Episcopalian see.

The recognized start of the "continuing" movement was the 1977 Congress of St. Louis, which took place in the wake of the 1976 Episcopalian general convention that approved prayer book revisions and the ordination of women.

Steenson was not ordained an Anglican deacon in the UK until 1979, serving in TEC parishes as of 1980, so we must assume he had made his peace with the new order by the time he began his career. Those who knew him over this period recognized that he was extremely ambitious. Unlike Episcopal priests who'd been ordained before 1976, such as James Mote or Jack Barker, the developments did not come as any surprise or disappointment for Steenson.

Indeed, at least for him in his position as bishop, they were orthodoxy, or in parallel with Burkeans of 2008, since Roe v Wade was settled law, Barack Obama was the supporter of tradition, and any Republican who opposed it was the insurgent.

This comment carries the quote

Donatism did not represent a significant departure from creedal orthodoxy. But ... this is exactly what is happening in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Episcopal Church in the USA.... [These are] the creedal questions: for instance, same-sex blessing held out as marriage is a doctrinal not a disciplinary matter. When a local church acts unilaterally against the counsel, indeed the pleas, of the rest of the Christian world, who is the schismatic?

Apparently the post-Robinson secessionists are acting "unilaterally against the counsel, indeed the pleas, of the rest of the Christian world"! Edmund Burke rests peacefully in his grave with a slight smile!

Several visitors have sent me links to another excerpt, which appears to be the conclusion of the paper:

. . . May I conclude by taking up a point made earlier about the Donatists’ failure of confidence. They feared the intrusion of worldly influences into their community; the future was an ominous place; they wanted to close up the Ark because the rain clouds were on the horizon, and they feared further contagion from the wicked. These are the fears that traditional, orthodox Anglicans experience also. Can they sustain themselves and preserve their identity in a hostile church? Will they be overcome by ordination policies and deployment practices designed to deny them of leaders? Will they gradually change to be more like those whose values they despise and abhor?

It is such fears that induce faithful people to try schism, and certainly to them encouragement must be given. There is a positive value of living under the authority of this church even in those places where it seems hopelessly compromised. It is not compromise to live faithfully under the laws of such a church. And if we are in fact on the horizon of a newly aligned ecclesial world, it is crucial that we prepare spiritually for this future: by overcoming anger, by subduing passions, with charity to all. The Church that we experience now will not be the Church that will be gathered in heaven. Are not these words of the blessed Augustine wonderfully ã propos? -- “But let the separation be waited for until the end of time, faithfully, patiently, bravely.”

It's hard to avoid a conclusion that Then-Bp Steenson was basically out for Jeffrey N Steenson. As of the time he delivered the T W Smith Lecture in Elora, ON in 2005, all he knew was that John Paul II had put the Anglicanorum coetibus proposal of 1993 on indefinite hold. So his course ahead would have been to make the best of spending the rest of his career as an Episcopalian bishop. But once Ratzinger became pontiff and the prelature idea was resuscitated, things changed. We can be sure that Steenson made no move until his designation as the prelate in question was fully assured, at which time he moved.

One question that still remains is what he anticipated for the North American ordinariate -- as things have shaken out, of course, it has become nothing but a clone of a dozen or more "continuing" denominations. As my regular correspondent pointed out,

He had neither a record of experience in starting something from scratch or being on the margin, nor the desire of a younger man on the make to throw himself into a new task of that kind. He had no competent support staff. For every Yale Divinity/Nashotah House alumnus coming forward for ordination, he had ten men with degrees from Bethel Reformed Seminary, or no recognised Divinity degree at all. He had a part-time teaching job to support himself, thanks to his patrons, the Davises. One could feel sorry for him.

How Things Looked In 2007

A visitor sent me links to two threads at the Anglican Continuum blog that are contemporary with Jeffrey Steenson's 2007 resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande. The first asks why he didn't become a "continuer" instead of going to Rome, and the comments reflect widely varying assumptions about Steenson's motives. If you think about it, if certain churchmen see Anglicanism as "true", then the response of an Anglican bishop, who must certainly endorse the "truth" of Anglicanism more than most others, must be to seek out a version of Anglicanism that must be more faithful to its "truth".

(On the other hand, if you're a Burkean Anglican, which Roger Scruton pretty clearly is, then you endorse Anglicanism because it's traditional and a repository of good ideas, not because there's any central "truth" there, just a certain soundness, and your response to gay bishops, gay marriage, the ordination of women, or the revision of prayer books is basically to fulminate. I'm not endorsing this, either, and I don't believe this was necessarily Steenson's position, nor the position of the commenters at the Anglican Continuum blog, just an observation on a particular approach to the problem.)

A commenter at the blog says,

Jeffrey Steenson has been an Anglo-Papalist for many years, probably even since before his ordinations in ECUSA in 1979 and 1980. . . . In several conversations that I have had with him over the past three years he has more than once stated that "the answer is B16."

I would guess that this was a Delphic way of telegraphing that Big Things were in fact under way in Rome even then, though nobody would be able to put the pieces together until knowledge of the 1993 meeting with Ratzinger and continued contacts with Cardinal Law over the course of Steenson's career became more generally available. But the author of the original post concludes,

Both ["continuing"] Parishes and clergy appear to come and go and it is difficult to countenance a stable future ministry within something that appears so ‘fragile’ and ‘unpredictable’.

For those who have families / dependants and who seek a refuge from the instability of modern Anglicanism I can see why Rome appears the most straightforward option.

But this is again something of a modified Burkean option, a least-bad solution to circumstances that would make adhering to fully sound, whether or not "true", doctrine impractical.

The second post expands on this dilemma.

If anyone truly believes in the claims of the Papacy, he should go to Rome because of his conscience. If someone does not believe those claims, as I do not believe them (as defined in our time), he should not go to Rome. Furthermore, it is risky to enter our Continuing Anglican world unless one is sure of his financial health should the ministry fail to provide a living, which is often the case. Nonetheless, the only reason for a clergyman to join us is because he actually believes that the Anglican Way is right and good, and worth saving from the wreckage of the Cantuarian apostates. If Bp. Steenson believes, as it seems he does, in the claims of the Roman Magisterium, then I can only be happy for him to find a place among that branch of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The author then proceeds to examine the claims of Steenson's now-lost essay "The New Donatists" which currently seems to exist, like the writings of pre-Socratic philosophers, only in commentary. (The visitor who sent me the links says he may be able to locate a paper copy, which I will at least excerpt here if it becomes available.)

Second, he assumes that traditionalists question the sacramental validity of ECUSA and its allies on the ground of the personal unworthiness of ECUSA's leaders. This would be true Donatism but it is in fact a false depiction of the reasons for that question. Instead, those of us who doubt that ECUSA today either possesses or can confer valid Orders, and therefore doubt that it can validly confect and administer those Sacraments that depend upon an Apostolic ministry, do so not because of the manifest unworthinesss of ECUSA representatives such as Vickie Gene Robinson but on quite another ground.

I think the author and the commenters are all struggling to find noble motives for Steenson's move, but they're understandably based on incomplete information, which Steenson, Bp Clarence Pope, and indeed Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Law had been at pains to keep strengstens geheim since 1993. "The New Donatists" was written a year or two before Ratzinger rose to the papacy, and Steenson would have had no clear path forward beyond remaining a good Burkean Anglican, so as a good Burkean, he endorsed the "traditional" path as more recent Burkeans endorsed Barack Obama as the most traditionalist candidate over two Republicans.

But knowing Ratzinger's agenda -- as he not too clearly implied in the B16 remark quoted above -- he simply saw a new path after 2005. A few of the commenters in the first thread linked above recognized that Steenson was a man on the make from the start, probably even before his Episcopalian ordinations, as indeed observers noted throughout his subsequent TEC career.

I've wondered, in fact, exactly where the Anglican personal prelature stood in Cardinal Law's own agenda, assuming the remarks from people who to some extent knew him, like Philip Lawler, are true, that Law expected to become pope after John Paul II. It's possible that had John Paul greenlighted the prelature idea in 1993 instead of placing it on indefinite hold, Law might have been able to use it as an achievement comparable to the Catechism in the runup to a conclave.

John Paul, for that matter, may have understood this about Law better than anyone else. Whatever the actual circumstance, it wasn't such a bad idea to put it on hold, and it would have been a better idea to keep it there.

Comments On Yesterday's Facebook Exchange

Several visitors have commented on the Facebook exchange I reported in yesterday's post. One visitor says,

Reading the exchange between Mr. Smith and Mr. Beeler it felt like they were talking past each other and drawing different pictures. Mr. Smith makes the point some of the issues with the Ordinariate brand have to do with unforced errors: not utilizing optimized search engines, keeping their messaging up to date and not so overly fussy nobody actually reads it. Mr. Beeler seems to think boutique Catholicism is the way to go. Neither one seems to grasp that theologically mature Catholics understand the mission of Christ’s Church AND that it can be promulgated from more than one Rite.

Real Catholics I know are not rabid, fanatical and obsessing over only attending one kind of Mass. This was a lesson Fr. Phillips couldn’t seem to learn. He counted on regular Diocesan Catholics but misunderstood why they attended his Parish. Most Catholics who make the time to attend Mass every Sunday understand the Mass is the Mass and the decision about which Mass to attend has more to do with the times offered, the distances involved and whether or not they have something pressing to do on that day.

I know plenty of folks who enjoy attending TLM about once a month or so but also attend and support their Novus Ordo parish the rest of the time. Plenty of regular folks “put up with” the DW version of Mass because their kids go to the school. Even run of the mill Catholics know they can attend Mass in another language and it still counts as Mass even if they don’t understand a single spoken word, and most of them have done it at least once! My experience: extremely rigid systems fail much sooner than systems with strength and flexibility. I find neither Mr. Smith or Mr. Beeler’s postulations very compelling but they both seem overly rigid.

I think this goes to the sense Mr Smith's remarks give me that he's continuing a collegiate quest for authenticity past its normal expiration date. He seems to want to see authenticity in "working class" Catholics without understanding how "working class" authenticity works. Tasks in the crafts and trades are learned in some part through muscle memory, so that the "work" often seems to be done in an offhand manner, and it's hard for an outsider to parse out what the actual purpose is, or to separate the individual pieces of each task.

But what's being done is highly deliberate, and "the rules are written in blood", as rail workers say. But the workers "just do it". This goes to what the visitor here says about "authentic" Catholics going to mass. They aren't overanalyzing things, and they certainly aren't getting weepy about precious treasures of the Anglican spiritual patrimony. Mr Smith's approach will gain respect mainly over high tea with Mrs Gyapong.

My regular correspondent has a take that's not all that far from this:

Mr Smith feels that “ordinary people” —- let’s leave aside how we define them —- are looking for certain things in a Catholic, or even just a Christian, community, and if they find them then the specifics of the liturgy are of secondary interest at best—-possibly of no interest. I find this a more appealing idea than that there is a big thirst for the superficial trappings of Anglo-Catholicism, which is the alternative hypothesis presented. Of course I am not sure that the latter is what Anglicanorum coetibus was talking about, although that is certainly how it is being generally interpreted. If it is about that, it seems far below the theological sophistication one generally expects from Benedict XVI. Bp Lopes has chosen to interpret it in the spirit of this account of the conversion of St Elizabeth Seton, i e, that in the Episcopal church, as in others, there are “many elements of sanctification and of truth” which, rightly perceived, already belong to the Church and impel one towards unity with it. So, nothing new here—-these are the sentiments expressed by Pope Paul VI in his homily at her canonisation in 1975.

The dumbed-down interpretation, as expressed by Mr Beeler and found widely elsewhere, is that elements familiar from Anglicanism will make former Anglicans feel at home and lessen the trauma of making a switch. This of course is vulnerable to the rejoinder that Anglicans are an endangered species and not worth the effort to attract (Fr Bartus’s point, before he disappeared from Facebook). So was Pope Benedict just echoing sentiments expressed thirty years previously? Was he somehow pressured into enlarging the “soft landing” which the Pastoral Provision provided for former Episcopalian clergy in the US to serve the agenda of interested parties? Or was he trying to make some new theological point about some “treasure to be shared” which Anglicanism could bring to the Church? Mr Smith clearly rejects this last interpretation. TLM, Melkite, DW, OF—-any congregation which followed his rules would grow and flourish and its liturgy would become as the “mother tongue” of the congregation. The fact that no one seems able to explain this “shared treasure” in any intellectually respectable way does lend support to his point.

The question of just what Benedict had in mind with Anglicanorum coetibus is a conundrum, and I'm not sure if we'll ever have a good answer. My own hunch is that this was a secondary agenda item that was somewhere on Bernard Law's overall plan to become pope. It was certainly not as high on the priority list as the Catechism, but he was pretty clearly pursuing it throughout the 1980s and 90s. The interpretation I've heard is that Law was wrong-footed in his strategy when John Paul lived half a dozen years longer than expected, while Law had to flee Boston in disgrace instead of leaving for the big conclave he expected before 2000.

So Law, I would think from this version, decided to push Anglicanorum coetibus as something to do when he got to Rome and another guy was pope instead of him. And Benedict may simply have credited Law for knowing what he was doing. This might explain the overall incoherence of the project. But I think both Mr Smith and Mr Beeler are taking this far, far too seriously.

Another Atonement Insider On Fr Phillips And Anglicanorum Coetibus -- I

As we come closer to the tenth anniversary of Anglicanorum coetibus, it's very useful to develop all the information we can on the leadup to its implementation and, not incidentally, the trail of destruction it's left in its wake. Some time ago, we had input from an insider at Our Lady of the Atonement who gave one perspective on Fr Phillips's stewardship there and the reasons that led him to keep the parish out of the North American ordinariate until 2017.

More recently, I've had extensive correspondence with a second insider who confirms aspects of the first account, but he adds perspective from someone who saw the parish from a different point of view, including that of the several hundred parishioners who attended the Sunday evening OF Latin mass almost exclusively. For this substantial group, of course, "Anglican Use" was of very little meaning. This visitor's account is quite detailed, and I'll present it in posts over several days, with my own observations interspersed.

I will start out by saying I was not one of the original parishioners at OLOTA, so I do not have knowledge of some of the early events that took place at that time. I will try to give an overview of the facts as I know them. I do know that when OLOTA first started, with about 17 people, a moderate sized house was purchased for Fr. Phillips and his large family. Again, this was before I arrived at the parish so I don't know all of the details, but the house was owned by the parish, not Fr. Phillips. Not long after this, a small church and a school were built.

As I understand it, some Franciscan nuns were brought in to teach at the school. This did not work out well. The nuns had their own idea about the school and Fr. Phillips had his idea. A battle ensued that brought in the Archbishop of the diocese to negotiate a settlement. Fr. Phillips won and the nuns left. The interesting thing here is that one of the nuns left the Franciscan order, joined a new order and is to this day still at OLOTA.

This whole affair created bad blood between Fr. Phillips and Archbishop Flores. To my knowledge the Archbishop never came back to OLOTA. When Fr. Phillips needed a bishop for any occasion, such as confirmations, he called on an older retired bishop to come out and officiate.

Because of his falling out with the diocese, Fr. Phillips became somewhat nervous about his precarious position at OLOTA. He once said to me that he wanted his own house, one not owned by the parish, to protect his family in case something happened. An aside here is that sometime after he bought this larger home, he installed a pool. When asked by a parishioner if this luxury was necessary, he responded that he never took a vow of poverty.

Interestingly, we see this tendency echoed in the priests at Our Lady of Walsingham, who live in million-dollar McMansions. (It would be worth investigating how Fr Perkins is housed as well.) The visitor also commented,

All of Fr. Phillips's family members and their spouses with the possible exception of his elder daughter were paid employees of OLOTA in different capacities. I think that the new regime has put an end to this. To my knowledge, none of Fr. Phillips's family members are still employed by the parish.[But see below]

This goes to the oh-by-the way opportunism and self-aggrandizement that seems to be so common among ordinariate priests. It seems as though both the ordinaries Houston has had so far would suggest this is not a bug but a feature. The visitor goes on,

Now on to the Ordinariate. As is well known, JPll and B16 were favorable to the whole Pastoral provision/Ordinariate idea. As this was progressing to become a reality, Fr. Phillips started a campaign to sign up the parishioners at OLOTA. He wanted big numbers, so he strongly asked that we all sign up. Most did. In the interim Fr. Phillips was invited to a bishops conference in, I think, Washington, DC. Many of us felt that Fr. Phillips was invited to this conference to be made head of the new ordinariate.

Fr. Phillips told me that one day when the conference was in session a cart was rolled out with a birthday cake on it. The cart was placed in front of Fr. Phillips and the whole assembly got up and sang happy birthday to him. I am sure, with this display, he must have felt that he was on the inside track. Unfortunately the ordinariate announcement did not materialize at that conference. He came home full of joy. It would only be a matter of time until the announcement was made.

One day in conversation with Fr. Phillips, I asked who he thought were possible candidates to be head of the upcoming ordinariate. He thought he was the rightful choice because of all he had done to bring it about. I mentioned Msgr Stetson because he was a Roman Priest who could be elevated to the rank of bishop. A married man cannot be a bishop. He was also the liaison between the Pastoral Provision and Cardinal Law who, as I understand it, was put in charge of overseeing the ordinariate by the Vatican. [see below]

I should not have mentioned Msgr Stetson's name as this precipitated a volley of expletives unbecoming a priest. Fr. Phillips did not like Msgr Stetson, but had to tolerate him because of Cardinal Law. Fr. Phillips went on to say that there are four ranks of Monsignor and the highest rank was equal to a bishop.

This confirms the earlier insider's account that Fr Phillips and Msgr Stetson were on very bad terms. What we do know in hindsight is that Msgr Steenson had been working with Cardinal Law since at least 1993 to draft what went to Cardinal Ratzinger as a proposal for Anglicanorum coetibus. Had this been implemented under John Paul, it appears that TEC Bp Clarence Pope would have become ordinary, with Steenson likely vicar general and heir presumptive. Given the more than 15-year delay, Bp Pope's declining health made Steenson the clear choice once Steenson became an Episcopalian bishop himself.

This was kept a deep dark secret, since Steenson would likely never have been voted a TEC bishop in 2004 had the plans with Law and Ratzinger come to light prematurely. In fact, the actual reason for Steenson's 2007 resignation as TEC Bishop of the Rio Grande and journey to Rome under Law's auspice never was made clear even after Steenson's designation as ordinary in 2012.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl was made delegate for implementing Anglicanorum coetibus when it was promulgated in late 2009. Wuerl in turn made Fr R Scott Hurd his day-to-day designate. Hurd, a married Anglican Use priest, continued as Steenson's first vicar general. In the spirit of mutual self-promotion and self-aggrandizement we see throughout this history, he seems to have favored a clique of young graduates from the elite Nashotah House Episcopal seminary in recommending ordinations for Episcopalian and Anglican candidates.

Msgr Stetson's position in the implementation is something of a puzzle. Fr Phillips saw him as a prime candidate for ordinary, and it's true that he had a strong link to Cardinal Law since they were both at Adams House in Harvard together in the late 1940s. However, Stetson was 80 and already retired from Opus Dei. He was given the task of supervising the entry of the St Mary of the Angels parish in Hollywood, CA into the ordinariate, since he had moved to Los Angeles.

But between Stetson himself, Hurd, Steenson, and Steenson's legal adviser, Margaret Chalmers, the project of bringing that parish into the ordinariate was bungled disastrously over a five-month period that culminated with parish dissidents starting a seven-year round of litigation that is still not over. We should not neglect this chapter in recognizing the trail of destruction Anglicanorum coetibus is leaving in its wake.

The money in the blogosphere as of 2011 was on either Fr Phillips or David Moyer to become ordinary. Moyer, a "continuing" bishop, in my view might have been the best choice among all the potential candidates. He had what I think was a realistic vision of what the ordinariate could actually become, a sense of the risks in what it quite possibly would not, and a sense of personnel and personalities, which I don't believe any other candidate had. But Steenson in hindsight was the only reasonable choice, while if nothing else, Moyer's hidden health issues would quickly have killed him if he'd gone to Houston.

I'll continue with the visitor's account tomorrow.

UPDATE: The first insider who contributed to earlier insights comments, regarding the employment of Fr Phillips's family at the parish:

This account is all correct with the exception of Fr. Phillips's eldest daughter, named Christian, was employed by the parish, in the very early days of the school, as a librarian/aide.

With the exception of his second eldest daughter, all five of his children have worked at the parish in the past - and her husband was a custodian for a time.

His only son, Nathan, had an extremely lucrative contractual relationship with the parish, during the construction of the most recent buildings ($millions spent but not completed), and he still receives payment for services rendered, from a facilities maintenance point of view.

It has been an extremely challenging endeavor for Fr. Lewis to extricate this family from the cash flow of the parish.

A Parallel Case In Texas

A visitor e-mailed me following my most recent posts on Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio, saying they reminded him of a very similar situation at his own parish. He promised that after a few days to collect his thoughts, he'd send a report. This he did.

I'm going to post the e-mail here without additional comment, because the points it raises go to conclusions I've been coming to myself concerning what Ross Douthat calls "restorationism", the movement in the Church to withdraw from Vatican II and return to some supposed golden age before it -- or in the case of Anglicanism, find some previously undiscovered orthodoxy in a schismatic movement and inject it into the Church, which is pretty clearly Fr Hunwicke's view of Anglicanorum coetibus.

This is dangerous.

The visitor writes,

The ongoing saga of Our Lady of the Atonement, its financial woes, and the apparent personality cult surrounding Fr Phillips and the late Dcn Orr bears many striking similarities to the slowly-devolving catastrophe at my own parish, St William the Confessor in Greenville, Texas.

I’ve been one of Fr Paul Weinberger’s parishioners for very nearly two decades now – first at Blessed Sacrament in Oak Cliff, and since 2004 at St William’s. In that time, I felt that I got to know him very well, and held him in great esteem for his fiery, orthodox preaching and reverent, traditional liturgy (including a Latin Novus Ordo Mass celebrated ad orientem).

The latter is what kept me coming back Sunday after Sunday; St William’s really was one of the only bastions of good liturgy in the Diocese of Dallas. It’s essential to keep this in mind, especially when considering it alongside the situation at Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio. Perceived beauty and reverence covers a multitude of sins, and I’m sure I’m not the only person to have chosen it.

Fr Paul came to Greenville in January 2004 after having been removed as pastor of Blessed Sacrament. It caused a bit of an uproar at the time, and Rod Dreher and several other luminaries attended his last Mass in Oak Cliff. They subsequently wrote about how the evil Bishop Grahmann (perhaps not untrue) removed the innocent Fr Paul for being too traditional. Latin, that’s what got him booted out to the furthest reaches of the Diocese. (“Financial mishandling” is what you’ll hear in inner diocesan circles.)

From an outsider’s perspective, the next decade-and-a-half would likely seem wonderful. We had eight Masses a weekend, ten-plus hours of confession a week, nightly rosary processions, a Latin Mass (Novus Ordo, the bulletin was careful to point out), and for the last three years all Masses were celebrated ad orientem. For someone who knows just enough about liturgy to be dangerous, this was nearly as good as it could get in Dallas.

But many things didn’t add up – not that many of us did the math until recently. Your correspondent from Our Lady of the Atonement says regarding Fr Phillips and Dcn Orr, “Both could do no wrong, and if you wanted to stay at the parish, you’d better not insinuate anything to the contrary”. This describes Fr Paul exactly.

I hardly noticed parishioners and friends falling away from St William’s over the years, but disappear they did, and in significant numbers. (It’s amazing how many old, familiar faces I’ve seen at Mass in the last couple weeks now that we have a new, interim pastor.) Fr Paul’s word was law, and you could not argue with him. I could write at length about the problems that I see through the recent gift of hindsight, but what likely will interest you most is what’s happened in the last year.

Nearly a year ago, Fr Paul had a falling out with one of the bigger families at the parish, who I’ll call the Smiths, due to problems with how Fr Paul had organized the annual confirmation Mass (at which our auxiliary bishop presided). In short, many kids were getting confirmed who were neither parishioners nor prepared – but more confirmations make a parish look good.

Things spiraled downwards over the next few months, and came to a head when Bishop Burns (our current bishop) opened an investigation on Fr Paul, allegedly for financial mishandling (again) and spiritual abuse. While I I can't discuss the details I know, I’ve personally spoken to Bishop Burns, to Fr Paul, and to several others involved, and it’s very clear to me that Fr Paul had been acting outside his bounds as a priest and pastor for many years. (He’s not solely at fault here; the two previous bishops, including now-Cardinal Farrell, washed their hands of him and let him do his own thing rather than acting in a pastoral manner more becoming of their rank.)

In May, Fr Paul privately contacted me and asked to discuss an important matter in secret. Knowing how bad things were, and earnestly wishing to help in any way possible, I agreed to meet him. I was treated to an hour-and-a-half-long, manipulative rant that attempted to play on my emotions by bringing up old memories of good times at St William’s, insinuations that some men weren’t wearing the pants in the family, and even that my wife was suffering because of all this…and I wouldn’t want my wife to suffer!

I realized I couldn’t do anything productive to help at this point, so our meeting ended. That evening Fr Paul emailed me saying he’d come up with a solution, and not to worry about it. The very next Sunday, his infamous (in our parish) “Smiths and Joneses” letter appeared on the back page of the bulletin. In it he gave his own crazy take on the events that transpired a year ago and that led to his being investigated. That was the last straw for many other parishioners, including some friends that have been at St William’s for the better part of thirty years. More letters were written to the bishop, and finally, at long last, Fr Paul was removed as pastor. He was, however, allowed to frame it as a “voluntary resignation”, which it absolutely was not, and included another letter to this effect in the bulletin.

Needless to say, Fr Paul was once again a martyr. A local traditionalist blog wrote a paean to Fr Paul, and it was discovered by some deeply hurt parishioners who unwisely gave the traddies ammo by commenting things like, “That’s the face of a man who makes you hate the Catholic Church”, and many more in like vein.St William’s is polluted by evil parishioners who hate their good, orthodox, holy priest – never mind all the evidence otherwise, like the many people told to their faces to never come back by Fr Paul.

It’s been a miserable year in Greenville, and a hard one – I’ve loved and respected Fr Paul for many years, and still do, but I will not blind myself to the serious problems he’s created and the damage he’s done. I don’t think he’s pure evil, as some parishioners would tell you, but he’s not an spotless victim, as others would claim. As your visitor wrote to Fr Phillips, over the years I’ve seen many good parishioners, benefactors and priests chased away from our parish by Fr Paul.

The lightbulb’s been lit, and it’s now very obvious to me what’s been going on. Fr Paul’s true calling was not being a priest or deacon, sad to say, and in another world he would have made it big. Instead, he’s been reduced to an associated pastor (of St Monica’s in Dallas) with extremely minimal duties. His fan club will migrate there, hopefully leaving St William’s a saner place – but what good he did is already being undone.

The very first act our new pastor did was to turn around the altar and celebrate Mass versus populum. St William’s reputation as the most reverent parish in the diocese will likely soon be done, but in a few months so will I. I won’t be going to the FSSP parish, of course. I can put up with a lot for good liturgy, but the atmosphere there is far too poisonous. This is why some cradle Catholics flee to the Ordinariate – only to find that the grass isn’t greener on the other side.

I could write so much more, and in far greater detail, but at some point I’d no longer be able to tell the difference between the plain truth and a mean-spirited rant. I’m hurt and angry, and so is most of our parish. But by choosing a parish with good liturgy to avoid suffering, we merely traded it for another form of pain. C’est la vie.

I think the cases of St William the Confessor and Our Lady of the Atonement are similar because they come from similar causes. which clearly date back before Benedict, Summorum Pontificum, and Anglicanorum coetibus. Unless more urgent news supersedes, I'll talk more about this tomorrow.

A Back-Door Entry To The Catholic Priesthood?

A visitor asks,

For those who wanted to “preserve some elements of our Anglican heritage,” the Ordinariate-offered DW mass exemplifies, “be careful what you ask for.” I really can’t see how any right-thinking person could believe this would have sustainable appeal.

So I’d like to know what you think: did the founding potentates of the Ordinariate really give a tinker’s damn about “preserving Anglican heritage,” or were they more interested in gaining a back-door entry to the Catholic priesthood?

Let's go back to the earliest inception of the Anglican outreach project, the discussions between Fr Jack Barker and representatives of then-Bp Bernard Law surrounding the 1976 General Convention of The Episcopal Church. Last year I went into some detail on the events and personalities involved. Fr Barker has represented himself as something of a leader in this process, but his career as an Episcopalian priest was actually quite marginal. As I said in the link,

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. . . . He was hired as a curate (a fancy word for associate) [at St Mary of the Angels Hollywood] under the second rector, Fr James Jordan. 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. Just five years later, Barker became intensely involved in conservative dissent from the agenda at the 1976 TEC General Convention. I find it somewhat disturbing that Barker was by no means a senior figure in TEC at the time.

So far, I've found no information that Barker ever attended seminary before his ordination in TEC; he definitely did have to enter a full program at St Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, CA and receive an MDiv there before his eventual ordination as a Catholic priest. It's worth noting in the context of the "continuing" movement that those favoring the Roman option were a small minority among the 1976 dissidents, and Barker's efforts received short shrift among those seeking a new conservative jurisdiction. Barker, in fact, was seen as something of a hothead.

The two other priests most closely associated with Barker are St John Brown and Clark Tea. Both were older than Barker, but their careers seem to have stalled, and by early 1977, they were all busy burning their bridges. A more senior figure, Canon Albert DuBois, provided some degree of prestige to the group until poor health forced him to drop out. I have two major questions:

• Bp Law must have been fully aware of the low quality of this group, yet he appears to have given them some sort of back-channel encouragement to leave TEC (and in every case destroy their parishes). Why?
• By the same token, the TEC dissidents took their parishes out in 1977 without any jurisdiction to bring them into. In fact, it would be four years before the Pastoral Provision was erected. Meanwhile, the only outcome was expensive and destructive litigation. What on earth did they and Law have in mind?

Fast forward to Law's effort to restart Anglican outreach in 1993 with a proposal to Cardinal Ratzinger for a personal Anglican prelature that eventually became Anglicanorum coetibus in 2009. The TEC lead in this effort was Clarence Pope, who had risen to bishop in TEC and was on the verge of retirement. But he soon enough proved to be unstable and in poor health, hardly someone to provide serious leadership, and he had little credibility among the Catholic clergy who knew him. We know less of what Law's actual estimate of Jeffrey Steenson may have been, but Law did ordain him to the diaconate and presumably endorsed his designation as ordinary.

Steenson in turn, once the North American ordinariate was erected, brought with him a clique from the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth who had already in 2008 clumsily telegraphed their intention to leave and go to Rome. The question I've always had is how they were able to keep their jobs there after that -- Charles Hough III was Canon to the Ordinary, for instance. The subsequent history of the Fort Worth group in the ordinariate suggests that none was a high performer.

So my answer to the visitor is that no, the founders of the North American ordinariate actually knew next to nothing about the "Anglican heritage" (Barker didn't have an MDiv, after all), and in fact they seem to have been a group of opportunists who'd mostly exhausted their career possibilities in TEC, hoping instead to become bigger fish in a smaller new pond. Whatever we may say about Fr Phillips, he wasn't the same sort of bungling marginal performer the others were, and I think it's significant that his entry to the OCSP was delayed as long as it was.

We're left, though, with the impression that everyone from Barker and Brown through Pope and Steenson, up to Hough III, appears to have been identified and selected by Bernard Law, and insofar as Anglican outreach was one of his pet projects, he seems to have protected figures like Steenson as long as he was able.

But there are many questions left in this story to which we still don't have answers. Now and then, visitors fill me in.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent adds,

The "Fort Worth Six" were quite a mixed bag. Fr Chuck Hough IV became pastor of OLW, Houston at the tender age of 30, which I cannot feel reflected anybody's discernment of extraordinary gifts. But he did need a full-time job. Fr Whitfield, then 34, was in similar circumstances and he was excardinated almost immediately to diocesan ministry and has had nothing to do with the OCSP, even identifying himself as a PP ordinand in assorted on-line thumbnail bios.

Fr Cannaday, then 63, started St Gilbert's, Boerne but was associated with it for less than two years before going into apparently full retirement. It has now folded, of course. Fr Perkins, then 57 we know is now Bp Lopes' right hand man. Fr Stainbrook, then 52 was reassigned from the group he brought into the Church and put in charge of St John Vianney, Cleburne, a group started up by Fr Chuck Hough III.

The fate of this last is mysterious. He was Msgr Steenson's Vicar General and Vicar for Clergy, also sponsored by Steenson for a Distinguished Alumnus award from Nashotah House, but was ousted from his administrative positions almost immediately when Bp Lopes became Ordinary. Although he is now only 64 he has no assignment; he was removed as Priest in Residence at OLW, Houston some years ago.

The View From The Alternate Universe

Fringe fans know that Walter Bishop's early investigations into the alternate universe involved a device a little like an old-fashioned TV screen that, if you pointed it in a particular direction, showed what was basically a low-quality view of what you'd normally see, except it was on the other side. My regular correspondent sent me a screen shot of a comment on Vaughn Treco's Facebook page that gives me the same odd sense that we're not quite in Kansas any more (click on the image for a larger view).

My correspondent tells me that Treco is not making posts on his page himself, but he's not editing comments, either. The poster here, Alastair-Ian Bell Polycarp Means, is discerning a particular truth about Anglicanorum coetibus and the Divine Worship missal, but I'd say it's analogous to what we might learn about our own society by viewing it through a crude TV screen that shows the alternate universe. Alastair-Ian concludes, of Bp Lopes, "He's not a conservative, not a trad. He's there to keep an eye on the ordinariate and try to prevent its members from embracing the orthodox tradition. He's not there to legitimately confirm their faith. That's a front."

For starters, this brings to mind the insight of the visitor here who said, after getting to know then-Bp Bernard Law, that Law was never a conservative -- and how could anyone think he was, since Jospeh Bernardin was his mentor? But given that, I think you could go back farther to the inception of Anglican Use in the late 1970s and ask what Bernard Law’s motives were in starting the whole Anglican outreach movement and then, when it stalled in the early 1990s, trying to resuscitate it via Cardinal Ratzinger, a well-intentioned but ineffectual fellow?

As best I can tell, Alastair-Ian is a traddy, and I have a sense that he's among those who think wearing lace and celebrating the Tridentine mass ad orientem is some sort of vaccine. I'm with those at Church Militant who are slowly beginning to realize it's not. But Alastair-Ian's view of our universe through his crude TV screen is nevertheless perceptive: somehow the intent of tarting up the OF English mass with some thees and thous was never "conservative", and Bp Lopes isn't in Houston to confirm our faith, notwithstanding the lace and ad orientem.

This leaves open the puzzling question of what, if neither Bernard Law nor Steven Lopes was put in place to confirm our faith, they were ever actually meant to do. I certainly don't have an answer that's better than anyone else's, but I do think there's something hinky here, and that's what's kept me on this blog.

Fr Longenecker, Cardinal Coco, And The Anglican Project

In a post yesterday, Fr Longenecker takes up the question of Cardinal Coccopalmerio's published reservations about Apostolicae Curae, Pope Leo XIII’s ruling that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void". He quotes the UK Tablet:

“When someone is ordained in the Anglican Church and becomes a parish priest in a community, we cannot say that nothing has happened, that everything is ‘invalid’,” the cardinal says in volume of papers and discussions that took place in Rome as part of the “Malines Conversations,” an ecumenical forum.

While I'm not a Coccopalmerio scholar, this reminds me of another widely quoted remark, which I found in Wikipedia:

Nevertheless, if I stop at doctrine, I don't see the people anymore. But if I observe that two people really do love each other, say they practice charity towards the needy...then I can also say that, while their relation remains illicit, in those two people there emerge positive elements.

In both cases, he seems to be saying, well, if there's some good there, who's to judge? This of course violates the basic moral principle Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex quocumque defectu “An action is good when good in every respect; it is wrong when wrong in any respect”. Mr Foley, my 9th-grade English teacher in public school, taught me that. This is tangential to Fr Longenecker's concerns, but insofar as Coccopalmerio seems to represent some Bergoglian views, I think it's worth addressing the Anglican project from this angle as well.

I think Fr Longenecker comes closest to my worries here:

The liberals on both sides of the Tiber clearly think the ecumenical work is over. They believe we are all already united in a World Council of Churches kind of way. This is, of course, a lie, and The Tablet goes on to point out one of the pebbles in the shoe–or perhaps one of the Frankenstein monsters in the vestry…

Yet the major difficulty for the Catholic Church in recognizing Anglican clergy would be the perception of validating women priests, something that was strongly ruled against by John Paul II.

I was going to say, “Add to that Anglican gay clergy and bishops” but realize we have already achieved a certain ecumenical unity on that issue. . .

Oddly, while Fr Longenecker mentions the Pastoral Provision, he doesn't mention Anglicanorum coetibus, which is a much clearer lab experiment on how Anglican outreach is already taking place in the Church. It's a sleight-of-hand in many ways, one that I think Coccopalmerio would be pleased to examine: Anglicans with just about any level of formation are accepted with perfunctory remedial work. Those Anglican converts who supervise their formation have no experience as Catholic formators and don't strike me as especially intelligent -- our archdiocesan vocation director is in residence at our parish; I frankly don't think he'd take Fr Perkins seriously.

Gays are clearly no problem for Bp Lopes or Fr Perkins. I go back to a Nazi-Germany analogy here, which I normally hate to do, but I think this one applies. One justification that's been reported that rank-and-file Germans gave for Hitler was basically, "Well, here we have particularly extreme Nazis, but they aren't the rule. In fact, if Hitler knew what these people are doing in the name of the Party, he'd put a stop to it." Sorry, Luke Reese and the Gilbertine gays aren't a bug, they're a feature.

I think Bernard Law had this in mind when he started the whole Anglican project, in fact. Law was a liberal. I'm not so sure about Ratzinger, for that matter.

Has The Outfit Put Out A Hit On His Holiness?

From the UK Independent via a visitor:

Pope Francis's life is in danger from 'ndrangheta, Italy's most feared crime group, a leading anti-mafia judge has claimed.

Nicola Gratteri, a magistrate in the southern city of Reggio Calabria, near 'ndrangheta's heartland, has said the Pontiff's crackdown on financial corruption in the Vatican, has angered bosses in the brutal crime syndicate, which is thought to rule Europe's cocaine trade.

It does appear that 'ndrangheta, a version of the mafia located on the toe of the Italian boot next to Sicily, has been the subject of a European crackdown. From the BBC, via the same visitor:

Members of the notorious 'Ndrangheta Italian mafia have been targeted in a simultaneous police sting in Europe.

Hundreds of police are understood to have been involved in the operation in Belgium, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands.

At least 90 people were arrested, and more than three tonnes of cocaine and 140kg of ecstasy were seized.

Italian restaurants and ice cream parlours used to launder money were among the premises raided.

Well, as a true crime fan, I especially like mafia shows. I justify it to my wife by telling her it's Catholic history. But as far as I can see, at least so far, something doesn't fit. In 2009, Pope Benedict put Abp Viganò in charge of cleaning up Vatican finances. According to Wikipedia,

In 2009, Viganò was appointed Secretary General of the Vatican City Governatorate. In that role he established centralized accounting procedures and accountability for cost overruns that helped turn a US$10.5 million deficit for the city-state into a surplus of $44 million in one year.

In 2010, Viganò suggested that the Vatican should drop out of the Euro currency agreement in order to avoid new European banking regulations. Instead, the Vatican chose to adhere to the Euro agreement and accept the new scrutiny that tougher banking regulations required. In late January 2012 a television program aired in Italy under the name of Gli intoccabili (The Untouchables), purporting to disclose confidential letters and memos of the Vatican. Among the documents were letters written to the pope and to the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, by Viganò, complaining of corruption in Vatican finances and a campaign of defamation against him. Viganò, formerly the second ranked Vatican administrator to the pope, requested not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions in higher contract prices.

. . . On 13 August 2011, Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone informed Viganò that Pope Benedict was appointing him Nuncio to the United States. Reuters reported that Viganò was unwilling to take that assignment. Viganò stated that this decision was not what Pope Benedict XVI originally had manifested to him. One of the letters leaked by Benedict's butler in 2012 revealed that Viganò had gone over Bertone's head and complained in a letter to Benedict of corruption in the Vatican, for which Bertone arranged to transfer Viganò to Washington over Viganò's objections.

The letters were leaked as part of the Vatileaks scandal, which observers tend to connect in some way to Benedict's resignation.

But in 2013, Francis appointed Msgr Battista Ricca, who appears to be a thoroughly corrupt individual, as prelate over the Vatican Bank. It's difficult to imagine Ricca cleaning anything up.

We'll have to see what develops, but Francis, in demanding a "loan" from the Papal Foundation that's caused problems in the US, doesn't so far seem to be on the side of cleanup. We'll probably have to see what falls out, but I can't imagine that the Outfit is all that unhappy with him, though the threat we see here could simply be a worthwhile reminder to the guy to stay with the program.

In fact, if we take Dutch Schultz, Bugsy Siegel, Albert Anastasia, or Sam Giancana as examples, the Outfit generally doesn't bluff and bluster before it whacks guys -- it simply does it and lets the world speculate for decades over who did it and why.

A Visitor's Theory Of Benedict's Resignation

Theories of Benedict's resignation that I've found most credible center on a "Wikileaks dossier" that exposed misconduct in the hierarchy, delivered to Francis late in 2012. For instance, Michael Voris has mentioned these theories several times, as in this piece from last October:

[T]he original dossier was compiled in the wake of what was tagged "VatiLeaks," a reference to the theft and release to Italian journalists of various private documents of Pope Benedict.

The Holy Father ordered an investigation into the thefts but various media reports said what began as an investigation into one area quickly diverted into an entirely unforeseen area: homosexuality within the hierarchy here at the Vatican.

Three cardinal-investigators eventually compiled their findings into a dossier and presented it to Pope Benedict just a couple of months before his surprise retirement in February of 2013.

The explanation derived from this circumstance is basically that the revelations in the dossier convinced Benedict that he didn't have the energy to pursue the implications and decided to leave this task to a successor. That would certainly be taking an easy way out -- popes have been called to martyrdom, after all. I'm open to a better explanation.

A visitor had a suggestion:

[A]fter reading today’s post I am becoming more and more convinced that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI resigned because of his role in the unfolding homosexual scandal in the Church hierarchy. I suspect Pope Benedict expected former Cardinal McCarrick to recognize the gravity of his sins and the peril of his immortal soul when he asked him to retire from his ministry and live out the remainder of his life fasting, praying and repenting. It is a testament to the evil in McCarrick’s heart and the obvious lack of faith in the doctrines of the Church that he did not avail himself of that voluntarily and that he did not explain that to the Holy Father when Pope Francis requested him to “come back out.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict, I have come to believe, is a good and decent man who has seen what he allowed and/or facilitated by promoting very flawed men. As he expected McCarrick to do, I think he prescribed the same punishment for himself and he has withdrawn to a life of prayer, fasting and repentance. Perhaps Pope Benedict thought that by his example, the other Cardinals and Bishops who have wrought this blight upon our Church would also VOLUNTARILY do the right thing and resign their offices as well, allowing the Church to heal with as little scandal as possible.

The fact that almost NONE of these men have done this speaks volumes to the “Smoke of Satan” that has permeated our Church and the intrinsic evil that entails. I might be way off on this, but, the more I see, the more I think I might be right, and if so, my admiration for the integrity of Pope Emeritus Benedict grows and I think history will judge him better than our current Catholic brethren do. I also think, Pope Francis is beginning to understand this as well and seems to be turning the corner. We’ll see….

One thing that's kept troubling me is the number of corrupt bishops and cardinals who were promoted, not just by John Paul II, but by Benedict as well. Cardinal Levada rose under JPII among a corrupt Mahony clique -- all promoted by John Paul -- but Benedict made him a cardinal. The impression I have is that Levada sometimes said the right things, but his personal example was poor. The drunk driving arrest suggests a serious problem with alcohol that must have been of long standing and was probably of a piece with other private conduct -- and Steven Lopes, his secretary for some years, would have been a facilitator.

And Benedict must have been aware of this. Why, also, did he demote Abp. Viganò just as Viganò seemed to be getting a handle on Vatican financial corruption?

That Benedict may have felt remorse for some level of complicity in the scandals strikes me as credible, but as the visitor said, we'll see.

New Book On Benedict's Resignation

The visitor who follows the Italian press sent me a link to this review of Il Segreto Di Benedetto XVI, by Antonio Socci, on Marco Tosatti's blog. Even via Google translate, the Italian is somewhat murky, but it gives an interesting interpretation of the context for Benedict's papacy (I've tried to clean up the Google as best I can):

The resignation of Benedict remains for many a great question mark, a question with multiple concomitant answers. Socci offers here the thesis of the analyst Germano Dottori: "Although I have no proof, I have always thought that Benedict XVI was induced to abdication by a complex machination, ordered by those who had an interest in blocking reconciliation with Russian Orthodoxy, a religious pillar of a project of progressive convergence between continental Europe and Moscow. For similar reasons, I believe the succession of Cardinal Scola, who had been conducting negotiations with Moscow, was also stopped by the Patriarch of Venice ".

[Benedict said], "Nobody tried to blackmail me. I would not even allow it. If they tried to do it I would not have left because we do not have to leave when we are under pressure ". But the analysis by Germano Dottori is interesting. However, we are faced with a project of a unipolar world with American hegemony - which therefore has to bend a Russia that is independent and independent again - it is the last ideological folly born of totalitarianism since the twentieth century. . . It is an imperialistic project suicidal for the United States and very dangerous for the world, but so deeply impregnates the American establishment (both in the neocon and liberal factions) that even Donald Trump - who won against them and against this ideology - must now come to terms and is heavily influenced by this block of power,

It is important to remember, and it is good for Socci to do so, the maneuvers of the Obama-Clinton administration to organize a "revolution" in the Church. A revolution, in fact, there was, as we have seen, and as we see. And it is not few who link it to the strong financial and ideological powers that the Church of Benedict gave annoyance, and which bothered the American bishops, deployed in a cultural battle, which makes them define "cultural warriors" in a derogatory tone by the press priced - and this is not a way of saying - of the current regime.

I would say that more than a few American analysts would refer not to a Clinton-Obama administration, but to a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama foreign policy, but even that has been fairly consistent across all administrations in the post-World War II period. And from what we can tell, the corrupt Vatican financial dealings have thrived in that consensus environment.

I would also submit that if we put any tentative plans for reconciliation with Orthodoxy in the context of Anglicanorum coetibus, we must assume they would have been as feckless as the overtures to Anglicans. Beyond that, the Anglican program was undertaken at the instigation of what I think can be correctly called the Law-Bernardin wing of AmChurch. The view of Law that's emerged here with the help of a visitor who knew him is not of a cardinal opposed in any serious way to the Bernardin agenda.

Indeed, Law, as the principal figure behind Anglican outreach -- his protégé Jeffrey Steenson was groomed for his role from the late 1980s onward; he advocated for Anglicanorum coetibus with Ratzinger in a 1993 meeting set up by Law; and before Anglicanorum coetibus was promulgated, Law brought him to Rome, ordained him, and set him up for the eventual role of ordinary. With disastrous results. I'm not aware of any equivalent history of concrete steps toward Orthodox reconciliation, and certainly not at the initiative of AmChurch.

In fact, if anything, Anglicanorum coetibus amounts to a parallel effort to Eastern Rite jurisdictions, and in many contexts, an Orthodox outreach like it would be redundant. I think to take Socci's thesis here more seriously, we'd have to see concrete evidence of plans for new steps toward Orthodox reconciliation undertaken during the runup to Benedict's papacy equivalent to the Ratzinger meeting with Steenson and the subsequent draft of Anglicanorum coetibus.

I'll go one step farther. Earlier this year, I had a chance to conduct my experiment of mentioning Anglicanorum coetibus with a diocesan priest, a then-associate at our parish. It confirmed the result I'd predicted, he gave me a quizzical expression. Several weeks ago, I had a chance to repeat the same experiment with our pastor. I think I said, "I mentioned Anglicanorum coetibus to Fr _____, but he hadn't heard of it. You may know of Benedict's . . . "

Fr Jim, a Type A, immediately answered, "Oh, yes, I'm thoroughly familiar with it," but I'm not so sure -- he was hitting us up for the building fund, after all. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he must be one of very few busy and successful diocesan pastors who is.

But consider that of Benedict's two main initiatives, Anglicanorum coetibus and Summorum Pontificum, the first is unknown, and from someone who saw its implementation at close range, a failure. The second has had only mild success and is certainly subject to the whims of any bishop at any time.

Without a stronger argument, I can't sign on to any thesis that Benedict was on the verge of great things but was forced out by the Bushes, the Clintons, and Obama in concert with AmChurch. One of his two initiatives was at the behest of AmChurch -- and beyond that, it was Benedict who demoted Viganò to Washington, not Francis. On the whole, I'm coming to think Benedict is part of the problem, not a potential solution.