Rector, Wardens, and Vestry Retrial -- Day 1

The counsel for the elected vestry opted not to make an opening statement, saying that this was contained in the trial brief submitted to the judge. As a result, I don't have a completely clear view of the elected vestry's trial strategy.

The attorneys for Mrs Bush and the ACA, Messrs Lancaster and Anastasia, did on the other hand make an opening statement. Their strategy appears to be threefold:

1. Insist that the August 6, 2012 vote by the parish to dissociate from the ACA was invalid due to insufficient notice to Mrs Bush of vestry meetings at which the vote was planned. Their position appears to be that this was based on an effort to exclude Mrs Bush from the vestry.
2. In case this doesn't work, to claim that of 66 potential parishioners who could have received ballots in the August 6, 2012 vote, 7 were improperly excluded from the eligible voter list, although of the 7, 4 had become Catholic (and therefore had ceased to be members in good standing of the Anglican parish), 2 had been absent for extended periods as specified in the bylaws, and one was deceased.
3. In case this doesn't work, to revert to the earlier argument that the ACA continues to be the ecclesiastical authority over the parish, in spite of the fact that the appeals court had ordered that the retrial not consider this issue.

The actual story of Mrs Bush's relationship to the vestry came out in bits and pieces during testimony. After she was elected to the vestry in February 2012, she attended only two regular vestry meetings, the organizational meeting in February and the meeting in March. On April 9, 2012, during an attempted takeover of the parish by Anthony Morello, St Mary's dissidents, and members of the neighboring ACA parish All Saints Fountain Valley, Mrs Bush loudly announced in the parish courtyard her intention to dissociate herself from the elected vestry and cast her lot with the ACA.

Since she did not attend regular vestry meetings thereafter, although she knew the times and places, and since no members of the elected vestry tried to keep her away, it was assumed that she had voluntarily left her position on the vestry, and the vestry declared a vacancy in her position after the number of absences specified in the bylaws.

Mrs Bush, born in 1930, has aged visibly since 2012 and appears frail.

Much of the day's time was taken in cross-examination of the elected vestry's witnesses by Mr Lancaster. One puzzle for me was that, although Lancaster and Anastasia both sat at the counsel table, Lancaster did all the cross-examination, and as the day wore on, he clearly became tired and increasingly misspoke and repeated himself. He was bearing down on the tiniest clerical inadvertencies in things like vestry meeting minutes, but his own ability to keep these straight was challenged as he grew more tired.

In fact, his plodding, repetitious style wore down everyone in the courtroom. Several times, Judge Strobel rolled her eyes and looked at the clock. "Things don't happen like in the movies," a counsel told me in the elevator. "I do this every day."

We'll see how things develop.

Final Status Conference For Rector, Wardens, and Vestry Retrial

I attended this at the Los Angeles Superior Court this morning. Mainly it gave some hints on which witnesses will be called. Those named include Mrs Bush (the most likely candidate under any circumstance), Andrew Bartus, Karen Valentine, and William Ledbetter. The last three are apparently based on the fact that they did not receive ballots in the August 6, 2012 election. My understanding is that all three became Catholic prior to the election and, ceasing to be Anglican, were no longer members in good standing of the parish.

Other than that, there was some dispute over whether Messrs Lancaster and Anastasia would stipulate that another member of the parish had passed away prior to the election, eliminating the need for the elected vestry's counsel to provide a certified copy of the death certificate. Judge Strobel strongly urged Lancaster and Anastasia to work things out without the death certificate. Lancaster and Anastasia also made a motion intended to forestall a putative threat by the elected vestry's counsel to seat the entire vestry at the counsel table during the trial. Counsel for the elected vestry said they never made any such threat, and the matter seems to have been dropped.

Other than that, the whole thing ended quickly, and the trial will start Wednesday, September 23. I plan to attend.

Data Point

During a homily at our diocesan parish yesterday, our pastor noted a rule of thumb for Catholic finance: the realistic minimum for a parish school to be self-sustaining is 180 students.

Does any current or proposed Ordinariate parish school have anything like that current or projected enrollment?

It would be great to hear other guideline numbers for parish viability.

Retrial Scheduled For September 23-25

I attended the scheduling conference for the retrial of the Rector, Wardens, and Vestry cases at the Los Angeles Superior Court yesterday. As it happens, Judge Mary Strobel, who had been serving on the California appeals court for several months, will be permanently transitioning out of her current position in October. She wasn't clear on where she would be going. She appears to be a thorough and fair judge.

The attorneys for both sides, given the choice to schedule the retrial as soon as possible under Judge Strobel or wait to schedule one much later under a different judge, expressed the desire to move on quickly. As a result, the retrial, estimated to last for three days, will begin on September 23, less than two weeks. It will be a trial before the judge, without a jury, but with witnesses being called. The attorneys will prepare a list of mutually agreed witnesses for the final status conference on September 18.

I expect to attend all these sessions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Between the disappearance of David Moyer in late January 2012 and the filing of the Third Lawsuit on behalf of the ACA on May 24 of that year, we have a puzzling and chaotic period. The most notable feature is that the Ordinariate backed off the assurances from Msgr Stetson that the parish would in fact be received promptly. Apparently Houston began to request revisions to the parish bylaws that Msgr Stetson had earlier told the parish could be deferred, and likewise, it began to request an audit that had not earlier been a precondition.

It appears that Houston added to the confusion by not insisting that contacts go via a single point (i.e, the rector and vestry), and they appear to have relied extensively on back-channel communications with Andy Bartus, who was a member of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth clique, while Fr Kelley and David Moyer were not. Houston's version of events appears to be that multiple versions of revised bylaws were submitted, but none was satisfactory. Fr Kelley's version of events is, as far as I can confirm, that he submitted only one set of revisions, and it's not clear whether that version was satisfactory.

The only conclusion I can draw is that too many people were involved in the process, and Houston, as the authority in the matter, managed it poorly. The effect, if not the intent, was to allow unauthorized parties at minimum to delay reception. This was of benefit to the dissident group, and it was of benefit to Andy Bartus, who appears to have wanted Fr Kelley knocked out of the running to be priest of the Ordinariate parish and needed time for matters to resolve themselves.

The matter that parties in the loop knew would resolve itself was the pending seizure of the parish by the IRS for a year's worth of unpaid payroll taxes, scheduled for April 2, 2012. The premature arrival of the notice, which was the only IRS correspondence that apparently hadn't been intercepted by parties in the parish office, prevented the ultimate fruition of this plan, and the parish accountant deflected it. Bartus's relation to the parish ended in the aftermath of this revelation.

Any formal interest in receiving the parish from Houston also appears to have ended at this time. The US-Canadian Ordinariate has told the Los Angles Superior Court that it has no legal interest in the St Mary's parish. My understanding is that Msgr Stetson has maintained contact with the elected vestry throughout the subsequent legal process, but his association is with the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, not the Ordinariate, and eventual intentions by the Archdiocese or the Ordinariate remain unclear.

Their position has been that they can take no action while the legal process works its way through, but neither did they take serious action between January and May of 2012, when they had the opportunity. There is, of course, nothing new in this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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