Why I Don't Have Comments, Revisited

A visitor e-mailed me asking again why I don't have comments on this site. I have two main concerns that led me to this decision. One is that the popular Anglo-Catholic blogs, by Chadwick, Smuts, and Gyapong, have a lot of regular commenters who, if they aren't strictly speaking trolls (a troll, by the definitions I've seen, posts pseudonymously), tend to be people who are either ignorant or deliberately obtuse, and they make opinionated posts at length. I simply don't see the use of giving them a platform: I'd have to spend a lot of time repeating myself and refuting them. My purpose here is to get information and informed opinion out, not to host a playground for juveniles.

The second issue is that members of the St Mary's angry core do in fact post as psuedonymous trolls, especially on the Smuts blog, where they apparently feel "Father" Smuts is simpatico, and since he often posts announcements from the TAC without question, I'm pretty sure he is. I have what I think is a realistic expectation that these people would flood a comment section here with counterfactual assertions, calling anything I say into question. It's a free country, if they want to disagree with what they see here, they can start their own blog.

Those who've had corrections, clarifications, additional information, new leads, and so forth know that I make factual corrections as soon as they're brought to my attention, and I do not publish information provided in confidence. In general, this system seems to be working; I have a gut feeling that I'm making little bits of progress now and then by publishing information here that needs to get out, and the low stress level I have without the need to babysit comments allows me to continue with this effort.

AN OPEN APPEAL FOR MERCY

This comes from Fr Chip Wheeler of Honolulu. I'm as puzzled as he is by the silence in the ACA.

To past and present clergymen and laity of the Diocese of the West, Anglican Church in America:

Whenever I read the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 25-37), I try to plug myself into the story. I ask myself how I have responded to the proverbial wounded traveler that I have encountered on life's journey. Have I demonstrated compassion like the Samaritan outcast, or have I just passed by the wounded like the priest or the Levite, in denial of the existence of the man in crisis lying in the road?

I would submit to you that our fellow priest and brother, Fr. Christopher Kelley, is one such man who has fallen amongst thieves, and been stripped and wounded. His wife Mary Alice, his daughter Elizabeth and his son Andrew have been even more severely wounded in their relative vulnerability.

Fr. Kelley and his family have endured the most surreal persecution that could possibly befall the most miserable of all clergymen and their families in this litigious nation of ours. There is a veritable lynch mob that has seized control of St. Mary's, Hollywood for the last year. They have harassed Fr. Kelley and his family through actions tantamount to terrorism, and hounded them out of his rightful cure, their parish and their home. These evil people have garnered a semblance of ecclesiastical legitimacy by seducing avaricious ACA clergymen to lend their imprimatur to their despicable crimes. Together, clergy and laity have accused Fr. Kelley of all manner of conduct unbecoming a clergyman, tried him in a ecclesiastical kangaroo. They have even hauled him into secular court to prosecute him under civil law, and yet every one of their accusations has been utterly bogus.

Rightful members of the vestry and other humble members of the parish have been excommunicated and barred from the Holy Eucharist at St. Mary's. They, too, have suffered persecution at the hands of these false brethren. The violation of the rights of these innocent people is absolutely inexcusable.

If I were still affiliated with the Diocese of the West or the Anglican Church in America, I would be distraught at the fate that has befallen the Kelleys and the vestry of St. Mary's. I would be utterly ashamed of my association with my diocese and denomination and would seriously consider using whatever authority I had as a priest to appeal for sanity in Fr. Kelley's case, and mercy for the whole Kelley family. As it is now, I regret ever having been a part of the ACA DOW.

As Lent approaches, I implore you to consider this appeal in your prayers and to do whatever you can do to see that justice is done and mercy prevails for the Kelleys. Remember that all of us will stand before our Judge one day. I urge you to make your voice heard by the standing committee of your diocese, and by the clergy and lay usurpers of St. Mary's, Hollywood.

Your brother in Christ,
Fr. Lawrence B. "Chip" Wheeler
Honolulu, Hawai`i

P.S. Just so that you know that I speak only as a friend and former DOW colleague of Fr. Kelley's, I would like to make it clear to you that, after two years of regular participation in worship and fellowship in the local Catholic diocese, I have decided not to join the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter or associate myself with the Roman Catholic Church any further.

"I've Never Seen Anything Like It,"

a vestryman remarked to me when the anti-Kelley frenzy was at its height. "I was on vestries, served as warden, at Episcopal parishes back east. I've seen lots of things, but I've never seen anything like this."

That remark came to mind as I was reflecting on an e-mail chat I'd had a few days ago with a knowledgeable party. He'd basically said (and I'm paraphrasing freely), "OK, I'm now pretty sure that Fr Kelley didn't steal anything, wasn't on drugs, didn't have a naked black girl hidden in the basement, wasn't running a cult. But why did he get so many people ticked off at him?" It's worth pointing out that, in a roundabout way, the knowledgeable party was saying that there was no basis for the charges in the ACA's presentment against Fr Kelley.

What he was saying, though, was that people were angry with him. Really angry. Eight or twelve people, and they were going to do whatever they could to get rid of him. The party listed some of the sore points, which I won't go over here, except to say that they were all within Fr Kelley's province as rector, since they had to do with staff personnel decisions and the use of the property.

In other words, we move from the phantasmagorical to the mundane: every parish has factions, every parish has sore points, every parish has little controversies over the new dossal or the departure of a sexton. It's worth pointing out that canonically, this is exactly what a bishop is supposed to concern himself with: if the factions in a parish get out of control, it's the bishop's job to step in and resolve conflicts between the factions and the rector, generally leaning toward supporting the rector unless the rector is doing something obviously out of order.

The bottom line with St Mary's is that the system wasn't working, and in fact there really wasn't a system to work at all. This is part of the illusion that the "worldwide Traditional Anglican Communion" has tried to create: with a few hundred members in any given diocese, topheavy with bishops and prebendaries, the TAC tries to promote itself as an alternative to the outfit run by the guy in Canterbury -- indeed, a full sibling to the Catholic Church, denied its proper status by the churlishness exhibited in Anglicanorum coetibus. Balderdash. These guys have no idea how to run a denomination.

A major reason for the disaster of 2011-2012 is that the bishops weren't doing their jobs, and as far as I can see, this is because the canons weren't being followed, and lines of authority were completely invisible. I keep hearing from numerous sources that Louis Falk was a major player behind the scenes in all the events, which is peculiar, since the man was doubly retired, having left the post of Archbishop in 2002, the post of Bishop of the Missouri Valley in 2007. By comparison, can you imagine what the ACA would do if now-retired John Hepworth tried to involve himself in any ACA parish or diocese? Why is Falk allowed to keep meddling?

By multiple accounts, Falk, retired, nevertheless gave the authority for St Mary's to enter the Patrimony of the Primate in late 2010, in his own words asserting episcopal authority to do so. Where was David Moyer, the bishop nominally in charge of the Patrimony? At the same time, by multiple accounts, Falk verbally gave authority for an Episcopal priest to serve as a priest at St Mary's, though he never followed through with paperwork (this looks more and more like a typical Falk operation).

Although Moyer made an episcopal visit in January 2011 and involved himself in personnel issues at various times during the year, it's clear that on major issues, Louis Falk was calling the shots, though Hepworth was nowhere to be seen. A clerical observer formerly in the Patrimony has noted that in his experience, he was never quite sure who was in charge, Hepworth, Falk, or Moyer. This is a recipe for disaster. Moyer, of course, had been preoccupied with his legal disputes against Episcopal Bishop of Pennsylvania Charles Bennison Jr since 2002, and throughout 2011 was clearly distracted by his final ejection from the property at Good Shepherd Rosemont. He was simply in no position to offer episcopal supervision to any parish in another denomination.

This left Falk to meddle from the shadows. In late December 2011, when Moyer finally decided (correctly) that the allegations by the angry dissident core were too vague to act on, the angry core had already learned that they could go around Moyer to Falk and Strawn. Falk obliged them by passing a 40-page bill of particulars (which has never been made public by the ACA) against Kelley to Cardinal Wuerl, although as a retired prelate, he had no authority to do so and no standing other than that given by the artificial prestige of the TAC. John Hepworth would never have equivalent standing to do anything like that.

The last ACA Bishop of the West, Daren Williams, had been elected on the first ballot by the diocesan synod despite the fact that he came from Pennsylvania, had no connection with the ACA or the Diocese of the West, and had a complicated marital history. He basically didn't work out and retired suddenly after a few years following a vote of no confidence from his standing committee. A good part of what happened to St Mary of the Angels was a result of weak and inconsistent episcopal authority, giving the small number of angry dissidents ample opportunity to circumvent the rules, and indeed simple common sense.

But as the saying goes, a fish rots from the head. I worked for a company where the CEO went to prison for securities fraud. It showed at every level of the organization -- the company worked the way the clique at the top wanted it to. The ACA and the TAC are Louis Falk's organization.

The Standing Committee Of The ACA Diocese Of The West

is somewhat equivalent in its function to a vestry in an Anglican parish. It serves as the board of directors of the temporal corporation that makes up the diocese. According to the ACA-DOW Diocesan canons,

6.2 The Standing Committee shall consist of four Clergymen canonically resident in the diocese and four Lay communicant members of the diocese, elected by a concurrent vote of a majority of the delegates from each order at Synod. Not more than one member shall be from any one Parish or Mission.

also,

6.4 The terms of all members of the Standing Committee shall be four years, except that one members [sic] from the Clerical order and one member from the Lay order each may be elected to serve a one, two, three or four year term, to insure that the terms of only one clerical and one lay delegate expire each year. Mid-term vacancies shall be filled by vote of a majority of the Committee's members. The election of members of the Standing Committee elected by the Committee's members to fill mid-term vacancies shall be ratified at the next meeting of Synod in accordance with Canon 6.2.

A clerical observer has pointed out with some distress that Mrs Marilyn Bush appears as a lay member of the ACA Diocese of the West Standing Committee as of December 2012, with a term that theoretically expires in 2014. Mrs. Bush has previously appeared on this blog as a member of the angry dissident core at St Mary of the Angels, who revealed her loyalty to this faction only following her election to the St Mary's vestry in February 2012. She was designated "senior warden" after other, elected members of the vestry were uncanonically removed (as acknowledged by "Bishop" Strawn in an e-mail to the late "Canon" Morello) following the ACA's seizure of the parish.

I assume that Mrs Bush was elected to fill a vacancy in the Standing Committee after the 2012 Diocese of the West Synod. To anyone's knowledge, no representative, either clergy or lay, from St Mary of the Angels attended the 2012 diocesan synod, since the status of St Mary's as an ACA parish was in dispute, and the ACA House of Bishops by its January 2012 resolution (following the 2011 opinion of all its diocesan chancellors) had ruled that parishes in the Patrimony of the Primate were in fact no longer in the ACA.

Mrs Bush is the widow of Irving Bush, a noted trumpet player from the big-band era who later played with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who passed away in 2009. My understanding, based on her own account, is that her husband was against all religion, and she did not attend church during their marriage. She began attending St Mary of the Angels Hollywood in early 2011, at about the same time as my wife and me. She would have qualified as a member in good standing of the parish, at least on the basis of attendance for a year, in early 2012, just in time to be elected to the vestry at the February annual meeting that year.

There was no confirmation class during 2011 and no episcopal visit for confirmation during 2012, which leaves open the question of whether Mrs Bush was ever confirmed by an Episcopal bishop, since the ACA and other "continuing Anglican" denominations did not exist prior to her marriage to Bush. I've been informed that members of the angry core group of dissidents were actively opposed to my wife and me joining the parish from our arrival in early 2011 (at the same time as Mrs Bush), and vociferously insisted that Fr Kelley obtain all applicable documentation on our confirmation as Episcopalians and our membership in prior Episcopal parishes, even though we'd been active churchgoers throughout our marriage.

I'm not aware of an equivalent effort regarding Mrs Bush, who by her own account had not attended church for 40 years prior to coming to St Mary's. I know nothing of her religious life prior to her marriage. However, since the angry core group of dissidents had been punctilious in wishing to verify my wife's and my eligibility for membership, I would assume there would be that much more reason to want to investigate whether Mrs Bush had ever even been an Episcopalian, much less confirmed in the denomination.

Mrs Bush is an octogenarian, and many people feel she's been manipulated by the angry core. However, she is also a Hollywood social fixture due to her marriage to Irving Bush. It seems likely that she was placed on the Standing Committee by a vote between synods at the urging of the late "Canon" Morello and is there because she will ratify without question any action taken at the behest of "Bishop" Marsh.

Several questions remain. She was presumably named to a two-year term by vote of the Standing Committee, between diocesan synods. Why the two-year term? Did she replace a member of the Standing Committe who had resigned? Which one resigned? Will the 2013 diocesan synod ratify this election? Will it take into consideration Mrs Bush's minimal association with the parish, the diocese, the denomination, and religion in general? What if the ACA loses in the appeal process over the St Mary of the Angels seizure?

I would find it difficult to be associated with the ACA or the Diocese of the West. As I've said many times, it's a tiny, corrupt organization. It appears that the Standing Committee has been in the pockets of Morello, Strawn, and Marsh and is complicit in this corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, you now have a chance to turn around and make things right.

Getting Back To The Issue

in yesterday's main post, I think there was another, and not completely related, reason for the enormous upsurge in anger at Fr Kelley and the parish majority during the spring of 2012. The core dissidents had managed to put four of their members on the nine-person vestry during 2011, which led to the inconclusive vestry meeting of December 11, 2011, in which a letter was presented to Fr Kelley requesting his resignation.

The fact that this took place was a bombshell for the parish rank-and-file, which had been completely unaware of secret meetings between the dissidents, Bishop Moyer, and Bishop Strawn, as well as their overall hidden agendas. The majority of the parish was certainly satisfied with Fr Kelley's performance, and the fact that the move to get rid of him had been kept such a secret was an indication that the people behind it knew it wouldn't be popular.

The result was that, since this unpleasant news came out in mid-December, the rank and file began to talk informally to come up with a picture of what was going on, who was involved, and how that related to the terms of the vestry members. As it happened, most of the key players had come onto the vestry between parish annual meetings, and they faced re-election at the next annual meeting, which would be in early 2012. The fact that these same people, thwarted in their December 11 attempt to remove Fr Kelley, had then gone to Cardinal Wuerl via "Archbishop" Falk with their complaints and had the parish's reception to the Ordinariate delayed, added to the rank and file's desire to have the conspirators off the vestry.

As a result, the rank and file informally came up with a set of candidates for the vestry election in the annual meeting that would replace those in the conspiratorial core. All of the conspirators termed off the vestry in 2012; none was renominated from the floor, and replacements were voted in who were actually representative of the parish as a whole. Marilyn Bush, the current "senior warden", was voted in because the parishioners were not aware of her support for the angry core; had the parish election been held with a valid electorate at the 2013 annual meeting, when she would have termed off the vestry, she would not have been renominated and would not have been re-elected.

One motive for the growing anger at Fr Kelley as 2012 moved along was simply the recognition that he had the support of an overwhelming parish majority, which among other things did not wish to elect the angry core of dissidents to any position of responsibility. It was simply not a coincidence that the first steps "Bishop" Strawn and the late "Canon" Morello took were to remove the elected vestry by any means, however uncanonical and indeed illegal.

I Updated

Sunday's post to include some clarifying information from Michael Frost; I had misinterpreted information in some blog comments he had made, and he does not currently live in the Omaha area. However, his e-mails to me raise another question. He does appear to attend the eucharist at the breakaway "continuing Anglican" parish at St Aidan's Des Moines. He appears to recognize that, although he calls himself Antiochan Orthodox, the Orthodox churches do not view Protestant communion as something its communicants are eligible to receive:

Further, Orthodox Christianity does not permit its faithful to receive Holy Communion in non-Orthodox communities, whether they be Roman Catholic, Protestant, or whatever. Hence, while Roman Catholicism may extend Eucharistic hospitality to Orthodox Christians, it does not mean that Orthodox Christians are permitted to accept such hospitality.

Mr Frost has not said in his e-mails whether he actually receives the eucharist at St Aidan's, but if he does, I still question what's going on here. If he doesn't actually receive the eucharist, how does he deal with that problem? Wouldn't it be better to attend this Western Rite Orthodox parish in Des Moines?

UPDATE: So Mr Frost responded to the post:

Mr Bruce,

I was unpleastanly surprised to see you blogging specifically about little old me on your site. Why you'd care about me, an average layman, is beyond me. But if you really want to know something about me, why didn't you just ask? You have my e-mail.

Not that it is really any of your business and it is certainly not any real concern of your blog!. . .

Actually, I disagree, because I've been making a point here quite a bit about misplaced punctiliousness. It is the obligation of every Orthodox Christian to receive the eucharist frequently. Mr Frost has explained to me at considerable length how this or that particular Orthodox service or Orthodox priest (there appear to be three or four Orthodox parishes in Des Moines) doesn't suit him. So instead, he attends an Anglo-Catholic splinter-group parish, but doesn't receive the Sacrament. It sounds so far as though, despite his protestations, he isn't really Orthodox, or at least not a good one, in the sense that he doesn't seem to be meeting his obligation to receive the eucharist frequently in an Orthodox parish, but he certainly isn't an Anglo-Catholic, although he frequently opines on punctilious Anglo-Catholic issues, and he opines on me, on St Mary of the Angels, and on Fr Kelley, in the comment sections of various blogs.

I'm just saying this guy, based on the accounts he gives of himself, is strange, and even somewhat representative of the strange folks who do post on "Father" Smuts, Ms Gyapong, and elsewhere, in the matter of misplaced punctiliousness, or perhaps more simply characterized, hypocrisy. I'm picking on you, Mr Frost, because you've been picking on me, on St Mary of the Angels, and on Fr Kelley. That's my business.

The Timeline At The Freedom For St Mary Blog

is sketchy for the last years of Fr Gregory Wilcox's roughly 20-year tenure there. Since the timeline indicates that the vestry recommended hiring Fr Kelley in early 2007, Wilcox resigned as Rector in April 2006, having come to the parish in 1987. (He is now at St Joseph's Anglican, an APA parish.) I wasn't around for the last controversy involving him: I'm told that he had joined one of the cult-like movements derived from est, either Landmark or Lifespring depending on the account; he had moved out of the rectory in connection with this new association and was neglecting his pastoral duties. There were one or more highly contentious parish meetings, and the parish was deeply divided over whether to terminate him, but it eventually did. This was the proximate cause of Fr Kelley's hiring as rector.

That the parish would have been as divided as I've been told it was over what should have been a simple issue -- est and its derivatives are clearly an alternate, non-Christian belief system, and a Christian clergyman who embraces them has abandoned Christian communion -- goes, I think, to one of the unfortunate strains in St Mary of the Angels Hollywood's history. (If anyone can provide additional information on the circumstances of Fr Wilcox's departure and the surrounding controversy, I'll be eager to hear it.)

Sin, conscience, repentance, and their relationship to the Church work in mysterious ways. Since none of us is without sin, we're all troubled in conscience. The route away from a troubled conscience is repentance, which takes various forms in the branches of Christianity. Where repentance is incomplete or nonexistent, all sorts of problems develop, ranging from hypocrisy to overcompensation to double lives. Jesus of Nazareth understood the working of hypocrisy very well when he urged his followers not to make a big display of religiosity in public, drawing a clear distinction between projecting an image and living out a reality.

Unfortunately, Anglo-Catholicism presents a real temptation in this regard, because its elements -- elaborate vestments, punctiliousness over liturgy, a sense of exclusivity -- offer ample opportunity for ostentatious display. This is one reason I've found it extremely refreshing to participate in Ordinary Form masses at a real Catholic parish, and it's created a new sense of perspective on the mass at St Mary of the Angels, which is about as high-church as anyone can get. I certainly don't think all Oxford-Anglican style liturgy is hypocritical -- I think Fr Kelley is a devout and sincere man who follows liturgical propriety from a sense of high duty.

On the other hand, as far as I can see, there have always been parishioners at St Mary's who for whatever reason find liturgical ostentation a temporary salve for whatever is actually ailing them, and I'm sure that whatever it is, it isn't the same with any two people, and it may often not be all that bad a thing -- it's just ailing them, and it isn't getting fixed. What they're after is basically a phony church. What they'd really prefer is someone who will at least tacitly endorse the phoniness: thus the support for a rector who makes it plain that he doesn't actually believe any of that stuff, and the unwillingness among a certain faction of the parish to clean house.

I think this is one factor, though not the only one, at the root of the bitter opposition among an angry core minority to Fr Kelley and the move to join the Ordinariate. The Catholic Church is a real denomination. For 25 years previously, St Mary's had been drifting between two tiny "continuing Anglican" splinter denominations, with minimal and ineffective episcopal supervision, to the point that the rector was becoming less and less Christian in any actual set of beliefs. There were people who liked it that way, and they bitterly resisted any move to make St Mary's less about image and temporary salves to conscience and more about real religion and real repentance.