"'Boutique'. . . Could You Elaborate On That?"

A visitor wrote,

On today's post, you write, "I'm not sure if I disagree, to tell the truth. I'm not here to say the ordinariate shouldn't be that, I'm just saying some of these people need to get a life, and that would include the prayer, sacramental, and fellowship life of the Catholic Church."

Could you elaborate on that? I am unsure just what you mean. I have not met the in crowd, who are going to Toronto and I am curious about them. Is it your position that they are too inward looking, and failing because of this?

I am shocked by the missionary zeal of the Ordinariate Priest I know. He works to jobs, one to serve a growing Ordinariate group, also serving at a local Diocese Church. From what I can tell, he is beloved in both communities.

His Ordinariate Parish works hard to be in step with the ministries of the Local Diocese and they seem to fit right in. Far more, say, than the Latin Only groups.

In other places, do you think this isn't the case? I worry that certain elite attitudes, instilled in us by Episcopalian Culture, prevents the Ordinariate from being effective, though this hasn't been my personal experience.

Well, just for starters, we have first-hand testimony on how the in crowd handles pastoral duties:

It does bother me that Fr. Fletcher is the OLW parochial vicar living in a house in The Woodlands that is worth almost a million dollars and that I haven't seen him since I found out about this Church of the Presentation.

Well, you've got to allow for how much time a dad has to take to get his family settled in their new McMansion, right? I think, from the details the visitor gives in his e-mail, we can narrow down who the ordinariate priest is who's serving both a diocesan parish and an ordinariate group and is busy at it, because, I hate to say it, there are actually so few in that position. I assume he won't be in Toronto trading pleasantries over wine and cheese with Mrs Gyapong. Dictionary.com defines "boutique" as

a small shop or a small specialty department within a larger store, especially one that sells fashionable clothes and accessories or a special selection of other merchandise. any small, exclusive business offering customized service.

The North American ordinariate fits that definition pretty closely, at least in what it wants to be, and I suppose that in a very few instances, it does fit that definition. Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston is probably the closest, if not the only, example. There's an upper tier of ordinariate priests, the graduates of Yale Divinity or Nashotah House, who form an elite, at least in their own minds, although they actually haven't been stellar performers -- most of them, in fact, have flamed out or never seriously undertook the work. But the current bishop is of Polish and Portuguese descent and was never Anglican.

In other areas, the North American ordinariate simply doesn't follow its own policies, and the bishop is pretty clearly OK with that. For instance, the Guide to Parish Development specifies that the relationship of ordinariate communities with their local dioceses should be "non-adversarial" or "supportive", and that they should act in concert with their local dioceses.

Yet the newest groups, in Murrieta and The Woodlands, appear to have been set up primarily to poach disgruntled cradle Catholics from the local dioceses, and Bp Barnes of San Bernardino appears to have expressed such reservations directly to Bp Lopes. The ordinariate's strategy is pretty clearly to get the cradle Catholics' families to confirm their children at the ordinariate groups, making them anchor babies for their parents, notwithstanding the parents were never anything but Catholic.

By the same token, the relationship between Our Lady of the Atonement and the Archdiocese of San Antonio appears to be bitterly adversarial. The conduct of Vaughn Treco appears to have irritated Abp Hebda to the point that Bp Lopes was forced to remove him and close that ordinariate group.

But this inclines me to post at greater length on how things stand with Anglicanorum coetibus on its tenth anniversary. And I wish I could schmooze over wine and cheese at some happier celebration, but I can't.

What Problem Is The Toronto Conference Trying To Solve?

I'm hearing that attendance at the Toronto conference coming up in two weeks is so far proving a disappointment. My regular correspondent comments,

Mrs Gyapong has posted that there will be attendees from California (Fr Barker), Pennsylvania (Fr Bergman, an Anglicanorum Coetibus Society board member), and New York (possibly Peter Jesserer Smith and others from St Alban, Rochester). No doubt there will be a contingent from Ottawa, and from Toronto, of course. But most of Bp Lopes’ clergy have just spent several days with him at this month’s conference in Mundelein. An expensive flight/stay in Hogtown in mid-November would be an act of supererogation, I think.

Another visitor commented,

The idea of having a conference of this type in Toronto was misguided. No wonder it isn't a bigger draw. There are people on the Ordinariate message boards and Facebook groups, who might like to go and I have seen some comments reflecting this. But Americans just don't cross the boarder often.

The event should have been in DC, Baltimore, or maybe Houston. Putting it up there is like the tail wagging the dog, or perhaps given everything we have seen: the inmates are running the asylum.

Baltimore is an important city for Anglicans and Catholics. It has the St. Seton stuff and all sorts of things, including Mt. Calvary Church. Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay are lovely in Fall, but Toronto will already be cold and rainy.

My regular correspondent added,

Christopher Mahon, who is organising the musical offerings, probably pushed for Toronto. The choir will feature many members of his extended family—-not a possibility if the conference had been held in, say, Omaha.

It's hard to avoid the impression that attracting the largest possible audience wasn't a priority. Instead, it looks like the point was to enhance the self-esteem of a small group of people, who see the ordinariate primarily as a boutique enterprise that caters to their individual insecurities.

I'm not sure if I disagree, to tell the truth. I'm not here to say the ordinariate shouldn't be that, I'm just saying some of these people need to get a life, and that would include the prayer, sacramental, and fellowship life of the Catholic Church.

I Don't Quite Get It

The Toronto conference sponsored by the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society is coming up in two weeks. The list of speakers has been subject to last-minute changes, with fr Phillips out, Fr Barker in, and Bp Lopes most recently added to the program. So, what will Bp Lopes bring to the party? My regular correspondent muses,

I predict that Bp Lopes will not be able to deliver a very optimistic State of the Union, if that is what is on offer. He hasn’t been left a lot of time to come up with anything more substantive. Previous to the Presentation, Montgomery start-up—-not really a triumph of evangelism—the latest OCSP communities to be formed were Holy Martyrs, Murrieta in 2017 —- another poach job —- and St Aelred, Athens, GA, a small gathered community supporting the ordination of Gregory Tipton the same year.

In 2016 two other small communities, also apparently gathered to justify the ordinations of local men, were created, one in Orlando and one in Louisville. Meanwhile, in that same time seven communities have closed, in Boerne,TX; Pinecrest, FL; St Louis Pk, MN; Indianapolis, IN; Savannah, GA; Corpus Christi, TX, and Greenville, SC. It appears that the “quarterly” Ordinariate Observer will be a semi-annual publication again this year. Nothing to see here, folks—-literally.

It's possible to get a sense that Houston has been trying a new business model, with gathered groups proving unproductive. Instead, they seem to be looking for angels who'll fund bigger startup packages for groups of cradle Catholics who for whatever reason (though they probably include not wanting Latin, Filipino, Vietnamese, or Other clergy and fellow parishioners) prefer not to be in a local diocese. The secret is to find someone with deep pockets who doesn't get along with the bishop, it would seem -- not necessarily a recipe that can be widely duplicated.

But since Bp Lopes is unlikely to go on record being honest about this sort of thing, he'll just deliver bromides. The audience, I suspect, will be chiefly Mrs Gyapong and a contingent of Bp Lopes's yes-clergy. My regular correspondent raises another question:

Fr Phillips remains a hero to a certain contingent in the Ordinariate blogosphere, despite the fairly conclusive evidence that he entered the OCSP just ahead of a diocesan posse and even then was only accepted on condition that he relinquish leadership of the parish. Efforts to clean up his messes are ongoing and may be too little too late—-in any event, a major drain on the Ordinariate’s limited resources.

Yet some still regard him as a shining star, including Mrs G, a woman who has never accepted the fact that John Hepworth sold TAC a bill of goods and has not himself reconciled with the Church despite the fact that he apparently has no congregation, let alone a see that needs him in a clerical role.

Apparently some people need stars and heroes. I think that for the most part such people (the stars) have deep flaws, which their adoring fans make it difficult for them to confront honestly. I am sure that Fr Phillips was told in no uncertain terms not to leave the doghouse, and had to reluctantly withdraw his acceptance of the AC Society’s invitation. But they should never have offered it.

That the Plan B hero should be Fr Barker is, if anything, more difficult to understand. He began the Episcopalian pseudo-migration to the Catholic Church by unilaterally taking his TEC parish, St Mary of the Angels Hollywood, out of TEC with absolutely no plan for how it would ever become Catholic -- and in any event, that hotheaded move resulted in seven years of wasteful and extravagant litigation. The parish in the wake of the departure was bitterly divided into multiple factions.

But predictably, his track record and that of the parish were completely unacceptable to two successive Archbishops of Los Angeles, and the parish never went in, while Barker himself could apparently be ordained only by leaving the area, and probably only through the repeated good offices of Cardinal Law.

The St Mary of the Angels parish he left behind has continued (and continues to the present) to be little more than a full-employment program for litigation attorneys. The trail of destruction Fr Barker began in Hollywood alone has had legal costs totaling in the high eight figures over a more than 40-year period -- the St Mary's dissidents' attorneys issue subpoenas across the US as I write this now.

Although Fr Barker continues to promise a book or books, I can't imagine that he'll have anything to say in Toronto beyond the very sketchy account he's already published of his role in the St Mary of the Angels saga. I suspect there will be little insight and no remorse for the rash judgment and recklessness that characterized that decades-long phase of his career.

But he's a hero. Except that heroes have fruits. Do men. gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? No heroes produced the very iffy parish now on Finley Avenue in Hollywood, or for that matter the very iffy movement of which he's become the only available grand old man.

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,

At least Fr Phillips would have been a draw, however misguided one may consider his fans to be. I don’t think anyone actually perceives Fr Barker as a hero. I think he was a very distant second choice, and with next to no one having registered for the conference (liturgies are obviously free and open to all) Bp Lopes was persuaded at the last minute to add his own name to the marquee.

And Even More On The History Of The Atonement Parish

I've heard over the past two years from about half a dozen long-term parishioners at the Our Lady of the Atonement parish in San Antonio, most of them now former parishioners. Especially in recent weeks, several have provided informed analysis of the parish's history and its current problems. Here's another perspective. It's worth noting that this visitor disagrees with other visitors, which is only to be expected given the time span and different viewpoints involved.

First, I have known Nathan Phillips for many years. Whenever I have spoken to him he has always been very polite. As far as I know he is a good husband and father. He and his wife have two adopted children. He seems to have put together a small business doing renovation work to support his family. I was previously unaware of this. There have been some unkind words used here to describe him which I think is unfair.

I think it is safe to say he would not have found employment in Mr Dolan's company without his father's (Fr Phillips) influence. I do not believe that he would have been able to engineer some kind of a maintenance agreement with OLOTA without Fr. Phillips's direct input. As to the large salary that Nathan was reportedly receiving, I find that questionable, but as we have seen there has been no oversight on monies spent by Fr Phillips, so who knows.

Secondly, when Archbishop Gomez arrived in San Antonio, he inherited a poorly run diocese. This malfeasance and mismanagement goes back at least to the two previous Archbishops of the diocese. Knowing this, one of the first things he did shortly after being made Archbishop was to summon all the priests of the diocese to the chancery. Fr Phillips told me that this was a mandatory meeting, no excuses. According to Fr Phillips, this was not a warm feel good introduction kind of meeting. In fact, the priests were dressed down.

Fr Phillips told me that Gomez said that he was not going to let any priest in this diocese take him to hell. This does not sound like, at least to me, that Gomez was going to try and get along with any priest or parish, including OLOTA; things were going to change. I do agree with a comment made by one of the visitors to your blog, that Gomez did come out to OLOTA to confer confirmation, but only on one occasion. After that it was auxiliary bishops.

To my knowledge, Gomez never returned. Another incident comes to mind regarding Fr Phillips and Archbishop Gomez. It appears that Fr Phillips took it upon himself to do something; I don't recall what that was, but it was a violation of some kind. Archbishop Gomez summoned Fr Phillips to the chancery and, as Fr Phillips related to me, the Archbishop "went up one side of him and down the other." Gomez was really angry and used some pretty harsh language. He also said that he would not tolerate this kind of disobedience again. I say this to show that Gomez was not out to get along with everybody, including OLOTA, but to bring about change.

Thirdly, giving some thoughts to Monday's post, what is to become of OLOTA? Well, to start out, as I have mentioned, there is a very good chance that the archdiocese will get the parish back for pennies on the dollar. What Archbishop Garcia-Siller had in mind for the parish and school is anybody's guess. I do know that there are a lot of failing parishes in the diocese with old buildings which are greatly in need of repair and renovation. The archbishop has proposed doing away with these old and poorly attended parishes and building three mega churches.

As you may guess this has been met with some resistance, but the big problem here is money to bring this about. San Antonio is a very large diocese, the seventh largest city in the country, but a poor diocese. Some years back I went to Mass at a parish in San Antonio, because of a particular priest, and found that they could not raise one thousand dollars in that parish to repair the sound system which had been in need of repair for a very long time. I thought at the time that that would be chump change for the collection taken up at OLOTA.

My guess is that your realtor visitor is right on target with his thoughts for the parish to become an office complex or residential units. I also agree that Bishop Lopes and Fr Lewis are woefully unprepared to correct the situation created by Fr Phillips and Dcn Orr. I wonder what would be on the menu in a medieval restaurant? [see below]

Finally, to the visitor who said that he called the chancery to find out if the nuns were being evicted from the diocese, he may be correct in what the chancery told him, but what they told him is not true. I personally spoke to the three nuns the night before they left OLOTA and they told me that the archbishop went behind their backs and called the motherhouse in Hanceville, AL to have them removed from the diocese. They were in tears. I believe the nuns.

Medieval Times offers a four-course utensil-free meal. According to its website,

We currently have nine Castles: Kissimmee, FL, Buena Park, CA, Schaumburg, IL., Hanover, MD., Lyndhurst, NJ, Myrtle Beach, SC, Dallas, TX, Lawrenceville, GA., and Toronto, ON. . . . We are currently building the kingdom’s 10th castle in Scottsdale, AZ which is planned to open in Summer of 2019!

I would think San Antonio, a tourist destination with many young families, would be a very good place to consider a further location.

And Yet More Perspective On Our Lady Of The Atonement

Highly informative and worthwhile comments on Our Lady of the Atonement continue to mount up, and they've gotten to be long enough that I can't deal with one day's input in the next day's post.

I think this is worth the extra time, because OLA and Fr Phillips were presented as a great success story in the runup to the North American ordinariate. but as events have rolled out, it turns out to have been a case of smoke and mirrors stemming largely from one man's self-promotion. This is inevitably a reflection on Anglicanorum coetibus and a potential explanation for why the overall enterprise has been such a disappointment.

A visitor gives more perspective on how OLA had previously fit in with other parishes in the Archdiocese of San Antonio:

Your puzzlement over the placement of Msgr. Kurzaj might be from lack of knowledge of the San Antonio archdiocese. The Bandera, TX parish that Msgr. Kurzj came from is VERY conservative and there are large pockets of ultra-conservative German and Polish immigrants in and around San Antonio, Bandera being one of those areas. Fr. Jan Klak is of Polish descent and a very conservative pastor of St. Anthony Mary Claret parish out in Northwest San Antonio (OLOTA is also in NW San Antonio) which could have been one of the major feeder parishes to OLOTA before Fr.Klak could build his school, but because of experiences his parishioners were having with OLOTA, Fr. Klak allowed a home school co-op in his parish, which, has since become quite robust, while they are raising funds to build their own Catholic school (the parish is about 20 yrs or so old- they were not allowed to build a school until they paid off their debt for building the Church, which they have).

Conservative Catholics from the more liberal parishes often attend masses there as Fr. Klak celebrates one of the most reverent OF masses in the San Antonio area. The Polish priest led parishes I am familiar with in the area closest to OLOTA are much closer to the Ordinariate liturgy in the sense of style (the vestments, the chalice, the candlesticks, the choir and music selections, the use of incense regularly, etc.) than the other OF parishes in San Antonio.

I would guess that Abp. Garcia-Siller placed Msgr. Kurzaj at OLOTA because A) he is a very experienced pastor, B) he is very loyal to the Church and understands its hierarchy, and C) he is conservative and supportive of reverent liturgy and Abp. Garcia-Siller did not want to provoke the parishioners with a modern liturgy type priest. The Archbishop misjudged the crowd -- he thought they didn’t like him because he was too liberal, thus he appointed a conservative priest; they didn’t like him because he was the Archbishop. No one put in that place would have been treated any differently by the Fr Phillips Crowd.

The fact that some parishioners rose up with metaphorical pitchforks and torches is more a reflection on the cabal that was whipping up anti-diocesan sentiment than the overlooked mortification of the pro-diocesan parishioners who upon seeing the true face of the rebellion, simply melted away.

If Fr. Phillips had been replaced without all the Ordinariate drama, OLOTA would have continued to draw conservative families from the surrounding Northwest area of San Antonio because they are the ONLY conservative Catholic school within 25 or more miles that does not have a multi-year waiting list. LET THAT SINK IN. The truly conservative parishes in the Northwest part of the diocese that are not already overcrowded are all fairly small or fairly new and do not have their own schools. OLOTA was a bird’s nest on the ground and should have grown into a wonder and jewel of Catholic education but Fr. Phillips's ego and his feud with all authority got in the way.

The Atonement Academy had several growth spurts and could have supported the new expansion but every time the growth of the non-parishioner student body became too great (Fr Phillips had a policy that the student population of parishioners to non-parishioners could not be less than 60%), Fr Phillips would have a strong arm campaign to insist incoming families join the parish or they would restrict enrollment. OLOTA parish was not and is not big enough to pay for that school.

The business model had to include Catholic kids from other parishes and it could be successful today if they had stayed in the diocese and played by the rules. The fact that it is in a death spiral is all on Fr Phillips and his pitchfork wielding friends. Sadly he led many people down a very tragic, broken path. And left many, many Catholic parents with one less option for a good Catholic education for their children. That’s on Fr Phillips AND the Archbishop of San Antonio. Shame on both of them.

That’s what really gets my goat.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that even at the supposedly successful OLA Anglican Use parish, the draw was that it was a conservative diocesan parish in a convenient area. The parish didn't mind a thee-thou liturgy as long as there was a reverent, visually appealing mass with good music. The school was also convenient (though the visitor raises the interesting issue that it didn't have a waiting list like the others in the area). But once Houston got involved and began to insist that this wasn't just a convenient diocesan parish, it was a boutique operation for members only, the bottom fell out, although the seeds of failure had already been planted.

It seems to me that there has been a misreading of the Anglican market from the start, viz, from the time of the 1976 TEC General Convention. Fr Barker, who will keynote the upcoming Toronto conference, led the St Mary of the Angels parish into 40 years of desert wandering, although it's starting to sound like those folks are never quite going to make it out. Yet he's apparently, after Fr Phillips withdrew as keynoter, the only other qualified ex-Anglican to represent the movement in North America. I know several now-Catholic laymen, ex-Anglican priests, who'd give a very different perspective.

I hope other diocesan bishops will pick up this message and recognize an important key to evangelization is to work with existing strengths, reverent masses, solid schools, credible fundraising. Anglicanorum cpoetibus is proving to be just a swing and a miss.

Disinvestment And The Atonement Parish

As we learn more about the $12 million empty shell of the Atonement school, which would require a further $3 million to finish it out, the question naturally comes up what the options are for the Archdiocese of San Antonio, which as far as we know holds the paper on the project. The school's enrollment has been declining, as has "membership" in the parish. The discontinuance of the Latin mass has apparently lost another hundred or more Sunday massgoers, but ordinariate policy has been not to support Latin masses.

My regular correspondent wondered what the value of the property would be should the archdiocese have to foreclose and regain its investment. (I've said here already that the school would make a great location for a Medieval Times restaurant franchise.) However, a visitor from San Antonio is in the real estate business, so I passed the question on to him. He replied,

The location is ideally situated to be a church and school for the Archdiocese. It's in an exploding growth corridor, there is not another parish for several miles, in either direction. I believe this would be their first approach. That would have to be initiated by Bishop Lopes -- so many canonical strings attached, et. al.

Beyond that, it could easily be developed into a multiuse facility; office, residential, retail. It would be extremely valuable. It could probably bring 20M or more, if the right buyer were motivated. It's over 17 acres of land and the buildings are well maintained.

This, in other words, was probably what Abp Garcia-Siller had in mind when he placed Msgr Kurzaj at the parish in early 2017. Instead, the property is now intended for a boutique use with declining appeal. A charismatic figure who could credibly step into Fr Phillips's shoes might bring it off. Instead, there's Fr Lewis, whose track record even in areas like building maintenance hasn't been encouraging. My regular correspondent reacted,

I think the optics of the Archdiocese of San Antonio, having taken its case to the Vatican unsuccessfully and been required to turn over OLA to the OCSP, then forcing the parish into bankruptcy and repossessing it, would be pretty terrible. The archdiocese must have approved the new construction and agreed to finance it, however unwise a decision it was on the part of the parish to expand the school. This is not analogous to the Diocese of Orange taking over the Crystal Cathedral.

Of course if the OCSP ultimately fails, that is another matter. Or if it initiates the return voluntarily—-a humiliating turn of events which would mark the effective end of Lopes’s career, I would imagine. Fr Phillips was a priest of the Archdiocese of San Antonio for 34 years. What he got up to, he got up to on the watch of Archbishops Flores, Gomez, and Garcia-Siller, and that includes an apparently ill-advised construction project on the school. I wonder what Abp G-S’s long-term plan was for the parish, had he been successful in retaining it while getting rid of Fr Phillips.

I don't know if the archbishop meant Msgr Kurzaj to be just an interim placeholder at Atonement, but it appears that he's overseen an extensive restoration at the St Stanislaus parish along traditional lines. Since he came from Poland, he would have had little in common with the Texans in that parish, yet he seems to have been an effective leader nevertheless. The same might well have applied to Atonement, especially since the membership there was heavily cradle Catholic, not Anglican converts.

As an observer of clerical assignments in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles -- promising associates cycle through our parish, often as a last assignment before they go off to be administrators -- I have the impression that vicars for clergy look for well-formed priests with a certain level of confidence and poise and then trust that with those qualities, they can do well at a new parish.

The problem is that, coming from Episcopalian seminaries, or even a rag-tag collection of Reformed or Evangelical backgrounds, the clergy in the ordinariate are pretty much by definition not well formed as Catholic priests. Nor do they get much exposure to real Catholic priests, especially not the sort that associates get in a rectory. So they're basically making things up as they go along with their Anglican or other Protestant experience as a guide, though there's a contingent of young seminary graduates who couldn't even start careers as Protestants, so for them, there's almost no experience to draw on at all.

This is not a formula for success. But my correspondent's suggestion that there are career-ending contingencies possible here for Bp Lopes is ominous.

And Still More On Fr Phillips, The Nuns, And The Family Business

I continue to receive comments and updates on the various issues connected with Our Lady of the Atonement and Fr Phillips. Regarding the nuns, a visitor comments,

When Archbishop Gomez took over in San Antonio, OLOTA had a rocky relationship with the archdiocese. Archbishop Gomez tried very hard to repair that rift. He personally (not an auxiliary bishop) conferred the sacrament of Confirmation on the students at OLA school. He was well aware of the history of the parish. It was no secret Fr Phillips had vowed publicly to never have another order of nuns/sisters as a part of his school. It was no secret to the Archdiocese that OLOTA had a vacant house that had formerly been a convent. It seems that Fr Phillips went looking for the contemplative nuns (my speculation here--perhaps to prevent Archbishop Gomez from finding some teaching sisters to place there!)

. . . The nuns were called back to the Mother House in Hanceville, not evicted by Archbishop Garcia-Siller. I called the archdiocese myself and asked point blank. I was told unequivocally that Archbishop Garcia-Siller had not kicked the nuns out of San Antonio. In 2016 the population of the Mother House in Hanceville had dropped. . . . So was the archdiocese lying or was the story circulated by Fr Phillips on his blog in a post that was deleted soon after it was posted the real truth? I know what I believe.

. . . , I do not think it is fair to characterize Fr Phillips’s motivation as being “out to enrich himself and his family”. I think the truth is somewhere closer to him being motivated by Faith but derailed by substituting his own private judgement for the messy, sometimes frustrating hierarchy of the Church.

Regarding the family's employment at the parish or its position as a beneficiary of business dealings, I've received quite a bit of information on Fr Phillips's son, Nathan.

My recollection on the new building contract was that Father P gave the contract to his son's (Nathan) construction company which raised all our eyebrows at the time.

I cannot verify if that was before or after the Dolans left. . . maybe that's why they left?

I would see the construction trucks with "Phillips Contracting" on them. Funny thing is one day out of the blue a different company started coming and Phillips Contractors were gone. It was odd like everything there was.

Maybe you can verify all this with your other OLA contacts.

I proceeded to run this by them, and they provided additional perspectives. One replied,

Nathan Phillips worked for Mr Dolan, for a time. I am not sure in what capacity. Prior to working for Mr Dolan, as far as I know Nathan worked for a local super market chain in the produce department. I would doubt that Nathan had the experience or resources to be a construction contractor. Especially on a large project like this. I would add that Nathan's wife worked as a teacher at OLOTA.

According to what Fr. Phillips told me the reason that Mr Dolan's company didn't get the contract for the new construction was that, as I mentioned to you, Mr Dolan appeared at Fr Phillips office, threw his keys on Fr Phillips desk, said that he had enough of Fr Phillips and this place, turned and walked out. I also mentioned that there was probably a lot more to this story, but that I didn't know what that may be. If Fr Phillips is telling the truth, it would appear that Mr Dolan left before the new contract was awarded.

I never saw or heard of trucks with Phillips construction company signs on them, but that is not to say they don't exist. But, if this company exists I would think it has nothing to do with Fr Phillips's family.

Another replied,

At the height of his time there, Dolan gave a job to Nathan Phillips, who is not very bright, is not well educated, had a spotty career up to that point. Nathan gained an instant career as a construction project manager and lucrative job. This power structure and Nathan's position remained as long as the contract for the construction project lasted. Once this project began to dwindle, Nathan was let go and THEN, Dolan and his company was gone. I never heard, and never cared about the details of his departure. He was spoken of as a saint prior to his departure and as evil once he was gone. That was a common m.o. at the Atonement.

Nathan then started his own construction company and once the newest expansion was begun, Nathan was retained by the parish as the owner's representative. I know for a fact this position carried a six figure remuneration for at least one year and perhaps two.

Understand, this project that Phillips and Orr ram-rodded through, as a memorial to Christopher Phillips extraordinary holiness, and conveniently provided a cushy arrangement for Fr's near-do-well only son, was ill-advised, expensive and is now a tremendous burden to the parish and the ordinariate. It cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $12,000,000.00 (on which they make payments towards $9,000,000.00 every month) but was terminated before the bulk of it was built out. It is a beautiful shell of a building that looks like a medieval castle -- on the outside. Except for a couple of classrooms, they can't use it, because it is completely unfinished on the inside, and it would cost at least 3 million more dollars to finish out.

And another replied,

My progeny were still in attendance when the Dolans left and I had met them a time or two. I have no firsthand knowledge of why they left. There was silence, then rumors, but very little character sniping because the Dolans' financial contributions to the Church and school were so large and well-known. Everyone I knew assumed they got sideways with either Fr Phillips or Dcn Orr and chose to part ways. That is usually what made people resign and then disappear in the middle of the night at some odd time. It was the same pattern, the Dolans were golden and untouchable until they weren’t, just like Dr Hollingshead (a Headmaster), Mr Knox (the Music Director/teacher), the Murrays (Music Directors and teachers), the Athletic Director, the list could go on and on.

. . . Usually when there was just silence from the administration, like maybe no one will notice that two teachers both left in the middle of the week in the middle of the night in the middle of a semester, it was because the people had been asked to make a sacrifice too big. If they just got sideways or disagreed, there seemed to be very active whisper campaigns to make everyone else think the people that left were somehow dangerous to the spiritual heath of the community. It was very important to drive the Devil from their midst…

During this season of Halloween and witches, it strikes me how similar the Atonement community was to some Puritan settlements back East in the 1600’s.

There's a lot to digest here. But one issue that pops up is that the school expansion was incredibly ill-advised, and Bp Lopes appears to have been so caught up in the prestige of finally bringing Atonement into the ordinariate that he neglected to consider the impact of the huge debt for an unfinished facility. One wonders if Abp Garcia-Siller's presumed rage at losing the Atonement parish might have been partly for show -- oh, please don't throw me into that briar patch! I would say, though, that the Archdiocese of San Antonio has personnel who would be far better equipped to back out of that situation than Houston.

As time goes on, Abp Garcia-Siller looks better and better in this history, I'd say. He removed Fr Phillips and put in a trusted, experienced outsider to the parish, who lasted only a short time. Fr Lewis, we must assume, is in well over his head -- as, of course, are Fr Perkins and Bp Lopes.