More Infomation On The November 17 Lockouts From The Bank Buliding

A knowledgeable party has supplemented my speculation on the possible reasons for the squatters changing the locks on the bank building on November 17. Before I heard it, I had almost concluded that the Bush group had acted rationally, recognizing that utility expenses would be too great if the community groups continued to meet there, and in addition perhaps recognizing that, with insurance quite possibly no longer in place, it would be reckless to allow entry by the public.

Silly me. To start with, the issues are more complex than I imagined. The Los Feliz Ledger reported that one of the groups locked out was the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, which is an arm of the Los Angeles municipal government, and municipal property had been in the community room. The city functionaries are no longer able to access this city property. (This is simply a pattern the squatters have already followed in the church building next door.)

Second, my understanding is that the interior of the bank building had been trashed, something observed by the city functionaries when they first entered the building on the afternoon of November 17. The locks, as reported in the Ledger, were changed after this first entry, in which I'm now told the trashing was observed. The information I've been given is that the trashing must have taken place subsequent to the end of the bank's tenancy (and a major institution like Citibank has good reason to leave such property in good condition). It is not entirely clear whether city property was also damaged.

There's a lot apparently going on behind the scenes that is as yet confidential, and I know as little as you do. However, what I know here is enough to convince me that imputing rational, adult, or perhaps even lawful motives to the squatter group is a mistake.

As of this morning, their Christmas Midnight Mass is still scheduled for August 16.

The Squatters Have Updated Their Calendar

for the first time since September. If you look carefully, you can see that the Christmas Midnight Mass is scheduled for August 16.

It's definitely the C team that's running things there. I'm still wondering how long they can keep the lights on.

Regarding the November 17 lockout of community groups reported in the Los Feliz Ledger, I've heard two theories. One is that the creditor for the $575,000 financing may have foreclosed on the bank building, and thus changed the locks. My wife, on the other hand, has me convinced that the squatters, perhaps reading my November 16 post, suddenly realized that the community groups with access to the building would turn on the lights and air conditioning when they came in for meetings, something that now looms as a potentially big expense. So they called a locksmith and locked them out.

What puzzles me, though, is that Mrs Bush has been a member of all these community groups herself for many years. She must have all her colleagues' phone numbers and e-mails handy, yet she apparently didn't give any of them a heads-up. It's hard not to imagine that a few strategic calls might have eased any surprises, but they weren't made. I suspect Mrs Bush is unwilling to acknowledge that things are collapsing around her and the dozen or so other squatters.

Liturgy And The Market For Anglicanorum Coetibus

A regular visitor raised a challenging question about my remarks of this past Friday:

you wrote:

"Why not a reverent adaptation of 1979 Rite Two that doesn't take two hours?

A service with a sense of beauty and reverence that uses something like the 1940 PECUSA Hymnal and loses the guitar and tambourine, but without all the extra agony, ought to be a selling point."

I take your point with regard to the OCSP, or at least its United States section, but of what possible relevance or appeal would such a thing be to the Australians of the OSC, the English/British of the OLW, or even to Canadians? And since few Episcopalians are, as you yourself wrote, are likely to join the Ordinariate under any circumstances (and those Episcopalians fully at home with the 1979 BCP would seem to have no reasons not to join an Ordinary Form Catholic parish, when they can find one without liturgical abuses or without an "aesthetic" which they may find repugnant), it doesn't seem mistaken to me to pitch its appeal to those whose preferences are "traditionalist" or simply "old-fashioned."

We do agree on the OCSP. Regarding the UK Ordinariate, its perceived preferences (a Viennese professor was involved) appear to have been the basis for selecting the 1905 English Missal for all three Ordinariates -- but this liturgy has in fact been disastrous for even the UK, since the dwindling faction of Anglican Papalists that used it before Vatican II abandoned it wholesale in favor of the Ordinary Form mass, where they can now find it whenever and wherever they choose. Indeed, the English Missal mass was never more than tolerated by UK laity.

But there's another assumption here: my visitor notes, "few Episcopalians are, as you yourself wrote, [likely] to join the Ordinariate under any circumstances". It's not much more of a step to say, just as accurately as far as I know, that the great majority of the potential Anglican market for Ordinariates has already made its move. Neither "continuers" nor ACNA members are any more likely than Episcopalians to come over now.

But this leaves another untapped market, and possibly not the only one, if some of Bishop-Elect Lopes's remarks are to be taken seriously. Pope Francis (presumably with input from the CDF, and this means potentially from Lopes) extended eligibility for full Ordinariate membership to cradle Catholics who haven't completed the sacraments of initiation. A priest at our diocesan parish remarked just the other week that only a third of registered members there had in fact completed the sacraments of initiation.

If Bp Barron is an indicator of mainstream Catholic opinion, Vatican II continues to be seen as a Very Good Thing. A major outcome of the Council was mass in a dignified but contemporary vernacular; revisions continue, and if Fr Z's opinion is any indicator, so do stylistic improvements. Vatican II was clearly also the inspiration for 1979 Rite Two. In that context, the English Missal version of the Ordinariate mass, with precious contrived archaisms, is beside the point and adventitious.

I think Catholics are beginning to understand that if you tell people the Catechism and the Sacraments aren't important, they'll believe you. A good part of the New Evangelization, as far as I can see, is to say that when we said those things weren't important, we didn't mean they actually weren't important -- the New Evangelization is talking to Catholics primarily, as far as I can see. In our diocesan parish, the suggestion is being made that perhaps people should reconsider coming to mass in flip flops and tank tops that show off tattoos. Who knows where that may lead?

A service with a sense of beauty and reverence could be a part of a larger movement aimed at Catholics. Bishop-Elect Lopes, by all indications, is not a stupid man and probably sees this and other potential.

New Los Feliz Ledger Article

The December Los Feliz Ledger is out, decorating our front lawns with the latest update on the saga from their viewpoint. (Ms Cohen promised to opt our neighborhood out of the litter distribution, but so far the promise is feckless.)

Before I make more general observations, two passages strike me. The first:

The Los Feliz Neighborhood Council (LFNC) found itself suddenly denied access [to the now-vacant bank building with its community room] for its regular monthly meeting November 17th when their keys—which they had used to gain entry a few hours earlier that day—no longer worked.

The Los Feliz Improvement Assoc. also found itself locked out of a meeting November 19th.

This can only be characterized as erratic and somewhat bizarre conduct on the squatters' part. What on earth changed to make it necessary to lock them out with no notice? I can only guess that, with their hold on the property slipping away, they feel the need to assert whatever arbitrary authority is left to them.

The second passage:

Bush, meanwhile, has indicated the church’s finances are in such dire straits, she, as the church’s most senior laity leader, can no longer countenance providing the 2nd floor community space for free and will lease it out, saying they have currently amassed about $2 million in legal fees defending their ousting of Kelley.

So does Mrs Bush now want money to let the neighborhood groups back in the building, or what? We don't know. But the $2 million figure is a puzzle. Earlier this month, I estimated that income to the parish from all sources during the time the Bush group had possession of the bank accounts could not have been more than $800,000. Beyond that, they had to meet ordinary expenses, making money available for legal fees from regular income considerably less. We have fairly reliable information that the Bush group obtained $575,000 financing in November 2014.

This leaves somewhere in the order of $1 million, at least based on Mrs Bush's statement, that had to have come from someplace else. One explanation, which I can't rule out, is that Mrs Bush is simply exaggerating the amount to inflate her own importance. But clearly there's going to need to be a forensic audit -- and this will take place no matter what, since even if the Bush group is somehow able to retain control, the corporation will soon enough wind up in bankruptcy court, where a judge will want his own set of answers.

Otherwise, I'm seeing some movement toward greater neutrality by Ms Cohen, although if the writing is any indication, the whole set of circumstances surrounding the parish is more than a little beyond her cognitive powers. She went as far as interviewing John Hepworth, although whatever explanation he gave of the Patrimony of the Primate didn't take -- she refers in her account to the Primate, not the Patrimony!

The overall foggy impression in the story, I have a feeling, comes in large part from her reliance on Mrs Bush for the bulk of the account. I'm increasingly convinced that Mrs Bush has been in well over her head. Yet once more, I urge her family to get involved, as this isn't going to end well for her.

A Couple More Reactions To The New Bishop

One visitor e-mails:

Msgr Lopes is evidently very familiar with the elements of the Anglican liturgy which were considered in the preparation of Divine Worship:The Missal. I doubt that he knows much about Anglican hymns, simnel cake, embroidered kneelers, vestry meetings, or all the other trappings of parish life in the Church of England or its former colonies. I think his appointment signals that the Vatican sees the Ordinariate Use of the Latin Rite as the focus of the Ordinariates' identity, a message which must be discouraging to the OOLW for obvious reasons. While the OCSP should be fine with the liturgical agenda as far as it goes, I am not sure that will be enough to offset the sense that the promise of "united, not absorbed" just got a little less realistic. I am sure the OCSP will be better, more professionally run under soon-to-be Bishop Lopes. Whether it will be more attractive to current Episcopalians/Anglicans is another matter.

Bishop-Elect Lopes has already appeared in this blog as Msgr Lopes, quoted in The Portal in 2013 remarks on Anglican patrimony.

. . . these expressions from the Anglican prayer books and how they are interpreted through the years - I’m thinking of the Comfortable Words, the Summary of the Law, the Collect for Purity, the Prayer of Humble Access - these are not museum pieces.

So I think the English Missal version of the mass will continue in the US-Canadian Ordinariate. Another visitor writes,

. . . I see no Anglican "chops." He's a young man of 40. And his mission simply mentions "nurturing beauty in liturgy." Maybe he will cast out the overbearing mass and get things moving.

My own view is that the idea of 250,000 Episcopalians chomping at the bit to cross the Tiber was always a complete misappraisal. The New Evangelization is going to take work -- Bp Barron, for instance, sees himself as an instrument of New Evangelization, and his is clearly a non-trivial effort. Something along that line is going to be needed to attract any significant numbers of new converts to the Ordinariates.

I still think the choice in liturgy between the 1905 English Missal mass and the Ordinary Form is unfortunate. It's either chapel veils, threefold Lord I Am Not Worthies, or the same product you get down the street. Why not a reverent adaptation of 1979 Rite Two that doesn't take two hours?

A service with a sense of beauty and reverence that uses something like the 1940 PECUSA Hymnal and loses the guitar and tambourine, but without all the extra agony, ought to be a selling point.

A Few Reflections A Day Later

The comments at Virtue Online are virulently anti-Catholic. The comments at Fr Z's blog tend toward "Ordinariate? Wha?", which is probably the most appropriate Catholic response (speaking for myself as a Catholic former Anglican). Of all the comments on both sites, I agree with the one on VOL that Steenson's retirement sure was early, and I agree with the one on Fr Z that His Holiness is full of surprises.

Actually, I tend to think that having a real Catholic Ordinary in Bishop-Elect Lopes is probably the best possible move the Vatican could make. At minimum, this should begin to dissipate the influence of the Houston-Nashotah House-Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth in-group that seemed to have settled into almost instantaneous complacency. Certainly I've heard the comment that the Ordinariate had attracted retired Episcopal clergy who mostly wished undemanding part-time work compatible with relocation to the Sun Belt.

By all appearances that was Jeffrey Steenson. I don't think, frankly, that his remark that he hadn't had enough time for his hobby was all that much of a joke.

I hope and pray that things will change for the better and that this may involve the St Mary of the Angels parish.

Welcome, Bishop-Elect Lopes!

Amid all the other news this morning, I got to my computer to find a new face on the US-Canadian Ordinariate web site. Interesting that the appointment should come in anticipation of Advent I.

Msgr Steenson has retired with immediate effect. For a Catholic ordinary to retire prior to age 75 is quite remarkable.

Frankly, as I've suggested here from time to time, I haven't been sure if the St Mary of the Angels parish would choose to enter the US-Canadian Ordinariate if its legal situation were resolved to allow it, and I'm not sure if the US-Canadian Ordinariate would have accepted the parish if it had renewed its application. Now, though, there might be some hope for change in that situation, although I speak only for myself and not for the vestry or Fr Kelley (and certainly not for anyone else).