More On The Orlando Chapel Group

My regular correspondent has found additional backstory on the chapel group in Orlando whose circumstances are so provisional that Bp Lopes must celebrate ad orientem on a windowsill.

I think I have solved the mystery of why the pastor of Incarnation, Orlando began celebrating a Sunday evening mass in the chapel of Nemours Hospital. Jason McCrimmon, a former curate in Incarnation's ACA days who did not go forward for ordination in the first wave five years ago is being ordained to the diaconate on August 14. Presumably, like Our Lady of Grace, Pasadena, St John Fisher, Orlando is a make-work project spearheaded by a sympathetic pastor to create a congregation for his protégé. Although I bet not one single new Catholic has been added to the rolls.

More information came in a later e-mail:

As we see about midway through this story by the ever-thorough Sr Thurley, at the time most of Incarnation's congregation was received into the Church Jason McCrimmon elected to "remain Anglican and live out his priestly ministry as a chaplain in the US Navy." I noticed his name, however, on the list of Parish Council members on the Incarnation website sometime in the past year. I suppose speculating about whether the chaplaincy gig ended would be too cynical.

I gather there is a significant shortfall in Catholic military chaplains. About a quarter of US military personnel are Catholic, served by only 8% of the chaplaincy staff.

Of course, the chaplains fall under a different prelature, which does Bp Lopes no good.

It looks like we're dealing again here with a clergy-focused opportunistic model, wherein Houston stretches every prudence to create billets for favored candidates whose careers are stalled elsewhere. It's worth noting that in the wake of the clergy sex abuse scandals of recent decades, the Church recognized that it was important to cull marginal seminarians and ease doubtful priests out of pastoral roles. By the way, had Mr McCrimmon already been reviewed and passed over five years ago?

Apparently the OCSP goes out of its way to recruit and find posts that will expose Catholics to some marginal candidates and doubtful priests. Er, do I need to list the names of the ones we've already come to know? One more time, I would never go to an OCSP priest for confession, and luckily, it would be easier for me to find an SSPX chapel if I needed to fulfill my mass obligation in some remote place.

The Shrinking ACA Diocese Of The West

A visitor pointed out that the ACA Church of the Epiphany parish in Phoenix, AZ, no longer appears on the ACA-DOW parish list -- there are in fact no longer any parishes listed in Arizona. The site was last updated in June, so this appears to be recent. Its pastor, Frederick Rivers, previously on the diocesan site as vicar general, no longer appears there. Until some months after the Bush group was evicted in 2016, Rivers also appeared on the DOW site as rector of St Mary of the Angels. A web site for the Church of the Epiphany in Phoenix still exists, but it has been edited to remove any mention of the ACA or the DOW.

Rivers continues as a defendant in the vestry's lawsuit against the ACA, the DOW, and individual parties. A reasonable conclusion might be that the defendants have been aware of their deteriorating legal situation for some months and have been moving to protect assets. (Good luck.)

Separately, an ACA California parish, St Columba Lancaster, has announced on its website,

Due to our inability to find a replacement priest, St. Columba's is now closed and there will be no further scheduled services. All of the parish property is being donated to the ACA Diocese of the West and other local area churches and monasteries. . . . Fr. Angus Bower is now retired but can be reached by phone for pastoral emergencies.

The inability to find a replacement priest is probably, at least in part, an indication of perception about the future of the ACA. However, Lancaster is also a hardscrabble place in the Mojave Desert with the usual methamphetamine problem and not an attractive post for anyone. The ACA Diocese of the West is now down to two full California parishes, both small, and a very marginal mission. There is a parish in Portland, OR that meets in another denomination's facility and a marginal mission in Montana.

St Columba is notable for having applied to join the OCSP in the first wave of optimism in 2011. However, Fr Bower, according to what I was told in early 2012, had been ordained in an Anglican-rite Orthodox denomination but had incurred some sort of discipline there on the basis of being "too Western" or some such, from what I hear a common problem in "continuing" Orthodox bodies. Either the CDF or the OCSP then told Fr Bower that it was not its policy to ordain men who were under discipline in former denominations. The parish then withdrew its application to join the OCSP and remained with the ACA, though I'm told that Fr Bower mostly did not return phone calls from the DOW vicars general.

As I've said here, the CDF or the OCSP has in fact approved candidacies from men under discipline in former denominations as it's suited them. Fr Bower and St Columba's parish basically came out on the wrong side of games that were being played.

So What's Next?

On one hand, the developments at yesterday's trial setting conference are very good news for the St Mary's vestry. On the other, neither the vestry, its counsel, Mrs Bush, nor the other defendants now without counsel are going to say anything about their plans going forward. Here are some general observations:

• Mrs Bush is 87 years old. Her legal situation is heading south in a hurry. She doesn't seem to be fully aware of this.
• The other defendants, now without counsel, are potentially liable for serious money in a two-day trial four months away. For them to have gotten themselves into this situation suggests extreme recklessness, but it's not beyond possibility that, already reckless, they may simply try to ignore the upcoming trial.
• It's likely that some degree of liability will be assigned to the ACA, now without counsel. Collection of damages if this happens would probably involve seizing any bank accounts and quite possibly garnishing diocesan tithes. To avoid having their tithes go to pay the judgment, parishes and dioceses could quite possibly withdraw from the ACA. I'm not sure if there will be an ACA a year from now, much less a Diocese of the West.
• My wife asked about any pending mergers with other "continuing" denominations. My view continues to be that no "continuing" denomination will seriously consider merger until Bps Marsh and Strawn are not just retired, but deceased. However, I believe the ACA will cease to exist well before that happens.
• If any of the defendants were remotely prudent, they would be hiring attorneys, who would be on the phone with Mr Lengyel-Leahu in very short order. It is much more likely that they will remain in denial.

Trial Setting Conference LA Superior Court Case BC 487079

I attended this conference this morning in Los Angeles Superior Court Department 32 under Judge Daniel Murphy. This is a case that was brought by the legal Rector, Wardens, and Vestry June 22, 2012, against the ACA, the ACA Diocese of the West, Anthony Morello, Marilyn Bush, and Keith and Diane Kang, for damages. At this point, the damages are in the multimillions.

There were two agenda items. One was that Lancaster & Anastasia LLP are seeking to be "Relieved as Counsel" from some of the defendants, to wit, ACA, the ACA Diocese of the West, Frederick Rivers as successor to Anthony Morello, and the Kangs, who haven't paid them since 2015. Judge Murphy immediately granted this motion. (Just before the conference, the vestry's counsel, Mr Lengyel-Leahu, said he'd been scuba diving, when some sharks turned up. However, they quickly got out of the way as professional courtesy. This may be apropos.)

I was given to understand before the conference that Judge Murphy is becoming impatient with Mr Lancaster's delays. As a result, he scheduled a two-day bench trial for this case for November 20, 2017. He scheduled a status conference for August 10. He directed Mr Lancaster to notify the former clients that he is no longer their counsel and to notify them as well that if they haven't secured new counsel by August 10, they are to appear at the conference in person.

The consensus from the vestry's side after the conference was that this is the best realistically possible outcome from its perspective. I haven't tried to contact Bp Marsh for comment. However, the defendants who have been cut loose by Mr Lancaster, presumably because they didn't want to pay an attorney, are now facing multimillion-dollar liability without counsel.

Is This Just In Canada?

Regarding yesterday's post, my regular correspondent replied,

To be fair, Fr Hayman was not the rector of Annunciation, Ottawa when its members entered the Church. He led a very small congregation in Spencerville, ON which ceased to exist after he was received (some former members may have joined him). Fr Carl Reid, then a bishop of the ACCC and now Dean of the Canadian Deanery led the Ottawa group.

I pursued this, and my correspondent replied,

Fr Reid left in April 2014. So of course there has been plenty of time for Fr Hayman, and the Canadian Deanery generally, to get the message out. Fr Kenyon was not a "continuer" and probably had little insight into their ways, so perhaps this is why remediation was not as robust as it should have been.

Further,

At the ACCC synod which more or less unanimously approved accepting the invitation of AC to join the Catholic Church, people received a lot of misinformation. Many of the specific points were similar to those which appeared on an early Anglo-Catholic blogpost in the form of questions and answers from Louis Falk, and were supposed to be codified in supplementary norms for TAC which of course never appeared. In the course of preparation for reception into the Church people should have been disabused of any notion that this was an inter-communion arrangement, that they would still be Anglicans, that this was in any way a buffet rather than a prix-fixe. I am sure that was the message they received from their mentor priest, a religious of the Companions of the Cross, I believe. But these were people who had left mainstream Anglicanism because they felt they knew better than the leaders of the Anglican church what Anglicanism was. As the ACCC limped along with no sign that Anglicans in general were getting the message, AC came along as a lifeline. "Everything must change so that everything can stay the same." But the point was for everything to stay the same, and of course AC could not guarantee that. So, up stakes once again. It's easier the second time, I suppose.

It looks like neither vicar forane in Canada has been aware of, or cares much about, whether the couple hundred members there have been catechized at all. The best part of this is that it involves so few souls. I'm told by my correspondent as well that Fr Martens, recently ordained a priest in Calgary as Fr Kenyon's part-time replacement, is from a Mennonite background and may not have been Anglican at all prior to going into the OCSP.

This brings up another question, which I would one day like to pursue with Bp Lopes. Catholic formation for laity involves a full development within the faith. I'm listing features of it that come to mind, primarily from my experience, but I don't mean to be exhaustive:

• The importance of developing habits of virtue
• The need to develop informed examination of conscience and go to regular confession
• The efficacy of prayer, including the rosary
• The efficacy and availability of other activities like adoration
• The importance of Catholic bible study
• The importance of fellowship with more fully formed Catholics
• The worth of various other Catholic activities like Steubenville.

I look at so many OCSP priests from "continuing" or other Protestant backgrounds -- so many of which are either indifferent to or actively opposed to components of Catholic formation like those above -- and have to ask how these largely ignorant, if well-intentioned, men can offer any sort of effective leadership to other novice Catholics. We assume a Catholic priest has arrived at formation from years of considering his vocation, followed by formal seminary study.

Some guy who didn't work out as a Presbyterian or Methodist or even Episcopalian but sees an opportunity in this new Catholic deal, ordained after minimal formation in many cases, is not the same thing as a diocesan priest -- especially when his immediate superiors aren't much better off.

I wouldn't go within a mile of this thing.

"Anglican Patrimony Issues"

My regular correspondent sent me an odd bit of news:

Apparently two members have left Annunciation, Ottawa recently over "Anglican patrimony issues," although it is not clear whether they left for another parish or returned to the Anglican Church. In any event, the lead article here addresses this subject in a thoughtful way. Reading between the lines one can see the "continuing" mentality still exists in the parish: "Nobody can tell us what to do!" Part of the problem, IMHO, is that in a marginal community it may be difficult to perceive that you are getting more than you are losing.

I had a few extra minutes, so I looked the link over. Just for starters, calling the bulletin of a Church of the Annunciation The Annunciator is one of the clumsiest plays on words I've ever seen -- I can imagine it appearing in something by Evelyn Waugh, which makes me wonder what he'd have done with Anglicanorum coetibus. But we'll pass this by.

Fr Hayman doesn't mention the specific circumstances that led him to address "Anglican patrimony issues", but I assume it was some epiphany that led someone to say, "When they said 'Catholic', I didn't think they meant that." Fr Hayman sort of circles around this question:

Many of us continue to struggle with questions of Anglican Patrimony in the Catholic Church, particularly regarding what we have or have not been able to bring with us into full Communion, and what might yet be part of our life and ministry in the future. Of course when, in our profession of faith, we declared, “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” we acknowledged our willingness to trust the Church to judge what of our Anglican heritage may be gathered in to express full and fruitful Catholic Faith.

The simple answer, it seems to me, is that nobody was sufficiently clear about Catholicism when the parish was catechized before its reception into the Church. When my wife and I took RCIA, we were given copies of the Catechism and the New American Bible. When we took the catechism class for the OCSP-in-formation a year earlier, we were given neither, just a superficial program called Evangelium, which, while it had the apparent tacit approval of Msgr-to-be Steenson and other authorities, didn't say much.

Bp Lopes has been clear at various times that "Anglican patrimony" refers primarily to certain supererogatory paragraphs which have been inserted into the Divine Worship mass and some thees and thous elsewhere -- and that's about it. On the other hand, at the University of Vienna, he gave as a reason for Anglicanorum coetibus the need for "creating a juridical structure which would allow the incardination of priests and the canonical membership of laity so that their distinctiveness was not lost". But if Anglican patrimony is a few paragraphs of liturgy couched in faux early modern English, why the fuss over "distinctiveness"?

There's a certain confusion here, a subtext that the Church is modifying something like doctrine so Anglicans will be more willing to come in, which, of course, no priest or other Church representative would consciously endorse -- but clearly people are getting this impression. Indeed, it sounds as if some people in Ottawa apparently felt they'd been misled. Fr Hayman's answer is remarkably namby-pamby.

This is in some measure their own fault, of course. In 2011, with the option of going into the Church before me, I took a careful look at the Catechism, which is on line and searchable. I didn't consciously say, "Gee, this Evangelium isn't telling me much, maybe I'd better be more careful here," but clearly an instinct along that line was at work. Thus I avoided some of the surprises others have had when they discovered being Catholic meant that, whatever that was. When St Aidan's Des Moines had to be told about that at a very late stage, whose fault was it?

Whose fault was it that some years after Annunciation of the BVM was received, some people got a big surprise over that? One thing that interests me over secular developments in recent months is the decline in credibility among formerly respected media sources and the rise in prestige of fringe outlets that nobody took seriously until they predicted things like the outcome of the 2016 election. By the same token, I listen to Catholic commentators like Michael Voris and recognize that he's right, the Church of Nice fails when it's not clear in its teaching.

Apparently this is all a big surprise to Fr Hayman. But why did it take his parishioners so long to get clear on being Catholic? This isn't Fr Hayman's fault. Someone, though, thought it was a good idea to make him a priest.

So, What Does The CDF Do?

I frequently go to Wikipedia to figure this out. The clearest explanation is this:

The Congregation has a membership of some 18 other cardinals and a smaller number of non-cardinal bishops, a staff of some 38 priests, religious, and lay men and women, and some 26 consultors.

The work of the CDF is divided into four sections: the doctrinal, disciplinary, matrimonial, and clerical offices. The CDF holds biennial plenary assemblies, and issues documents on doctrinal, disciplinary, and sacramental questions that occasionally include notifications concerning books by Catholic theologians (e.g., Hans Küng, Charles Curran, and Leonardo Boff) that it judges contrary to Church doctrine.

Now and then, it issues documents. The most recent in Wikipedia is "Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious" – (Re-affirmed by Pope Francis on 15 April 2013). Something like this comes out every few years.

However, as relates to Anglican outreach (and I use this term non-specifically to define what is practically undertaken with Anglicanorum coetibus and the Pastoral Provision, however one may choose to characterize it), it basically serves as a court of appeals-cum-civil service commission. Applications for ordination as Catholic priests from former Anglicans are evaluated, approved or disapproved, or apparently misplaced in the CDF, I assume by the clerical office.

This process is anything but transparent.

• A priest who has come exclusively from the Charismatic Episcopal Church will apparently not be approved if he goes via the Pastoral Provision, but will be approved if he goes via the OCSP
• A priest may or may not be approved whether he has a seminary MDiv or not
• A priest will be approved if he has an exclusively Reformed or Presbyterian background, at least if he's been ordained pro forma for a few months in the ACNA
• A priest will be approved if he's under discipline in a former denomination, at least if he's Fr Bartus or Abp Falk (whose deposition in TEC is a matter of record, but who by his account received a rescript).

A far as I can see, some number of the 38-member staff, apparently including then-Msgr Lopes, spent a great deal of time and effort on this peculiar process, which clearly has unpredictable results. My understanding is that officers as high as the Secretary are involved in putting the best face on dossiers to get them through the process. My goodness, is there not a better use for people's time here, especially when such high level people give us Frs Baaten and Treco for their efforts?

There may be better reasons for the clerical office. But its actions as relate to the ordinariates strike me as an enormous waste of resources, when there are clearly much more important issues facing the Church that the CDF is responsible for addressing.

If I were on a corporate staff charged with reorganizing one or another function, I would simply recommend dropping the whole ordinariate-related activity and restrict it to a more streamlined and transparent review of Pastoral Provision candidates, either laying off the deadwood thus freed up or reassigning the more capable people. (Er, was anyone in the clerical office busted at the recent gay orgy?)

UPDATE: My regular correspondent comments,

As we see here and here it is not necessary for a former minister to have had any time in an Anglican denomination to be ordained a Catholic priest. The article on the Baptist minister does not mention the PP specifically but says his application went through the Vatican so I imagine the CDF handled it.

From my own personal knowledge the OCSP approval process is fairly flawed, or was initially. In a diocese there are people on the ground to vet the candidates, and they are often from local parishes but in the OCSP it was easy for a lot to get swept under the carpet.

Certainly I've heard the argument that the OCSP can ordain whomever it pleases, because the Holy See can ordain whomever it pleases. But that multiplies entities: why is the OCSP involved at all, especially if so many supernumerary OCSP priests have to have diocesan assignments anyhow? Take the OCSP out of the process. Let all married candidates go through a single diocesan process, and I'll bet you'd get better results and maybe not some of the mediocrities who were so carefully shepherded in by Msgr Lopes.