A New Video Of Rev. Mr. Robert Chapman Kirk

This now appears, dated July 9, on the YouTube channel of Fr Edward Meeks, which confirms my regular correspondent's impression that Fr Kirk is some type of longtime crony of Fr Meeks. But what does this new ordinariate priest bring to the party? We know nothiing about him, other than he appears to be in late middle age. What was his previous career? Where? What was his Anglican formation? The homily he gives with pursed-lips nods and pompous pauses seems to be a cut and paste from any web search on why bad things happen to good Catholics.

Does he have a family? He reminds me of my fifth grade music teacher, who did not.

UPDATE: Fr Kirk does have a family. Here is a Twitter post, I think dated 2013, from his current wife, a Reggie Littlejohn:

Thanks to the visitor who also sent me a link to a 2011 story in the San Jose Mercury News covering Fr Kirk's prior ministry in the United Methodist Church.

The Rev. Rob Kirk, who became pastor of Cambrian Park United Methodist Church last July, took a trip around the world while he was attending divinity school, and it was during the six weeks he and his wife spent working with the poor in Calcutta, India, alongside Mother Teresa that helped him focus on what he wanted to do with his life.

. . . The trip around the world was a kind of time out for the Kirks. He took time off from studying, and she took time out of law school to visit places all over the world, including Tibet and Africa.

Kirk is a graduate of Wesleyan University in Middleton, Conn., with a degree in religion. Between that and his entrance to Yale Divinity School, he and his wife traveled; he worked in a psychiatric hospital and he drove a bus.

I guess the pompous part comes from Yale Divinity, huh? Here's a guy who's been Catholic for how long, a year? And in between portentous water sips, significant pauses, and meaningful glances over the top of his half-glasses, he explains what all Catholics need to think about.

The visitor notes that the story in the Mercury News from 2011 lists a wife named Gina Giannini, who is not Reggie Littlejohn (but further web research indicates that at least for a time, Ms Littlejohn did go by that name, or Ms Giannini went by Reggie Littlejohn.)

In the context of YouTube, perhaps Fr Kirk will wish to reconsider the homiletic style he seems to have brought with him from the Ivy League -- this may be of assistance.

If ordinariate members find his current style appealing, they are a special breed indeed.

How Do They Expect A Different Result?

Via the usual unquestioning hype at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog and the usual YouTube, we learn of the Ordination to the Sacred Priesthood of Rev. Mr. Robert Chapman Kirk and Rev. Mr. Gregory Blake Tipton this past June 29. My regular correspondent's reaction:

Who is coming forward for ordination in the OCSP? The two men ordained this June seem typical. One was a marginal TEC clergyman, recently ordained in that denomination, who couldn't find a real TEC job. There is a short description of his path to ordination here. The other is, I believe, a former APA clergyman who was ordained to the diaconate October 30, 2018 at Christ the King, Towson. [This was erroneously reported as an ordination to the priesthood in the St Luke's newsletter at the time, par for the ordinariate course.] There is some vague idea that he will serve the three MD parishes/communities but there is nothing else about him on the net. I assume he is some old pal of Fr Meeks.

Besides the routine misreporting in ordinariate publications, it's more disturbing that Robert Kirk may as well be an Albanian sleeper agent for all anyone can find of him on the web. OCSP ordinands usually have some sort of paper trail: they appear in seminary class news, presiding over weddings and funerals as Anglicans, in parish newsletters welcoming them as new curates. We simply have no record of Mr Robert Chapman Kirk anywhere -- there isn't even a Robert Chapman Kirk on Google who is a Ford dealer in Boise. Just nothing besides a deceased one on Ancestry.com.

So this raises an entirely reasonable question: does now-Fr Kirk have an MDiv? Records of seminary graduation and subsequent Anglican ordinations do normally turn up. Not in his case. Aren't we entitled to know more about Fr Kirk? And let's get real, it's the stealth candidates with no MDiv who go bad within a few years of their ordination in the OCSP.

Now-Fr Gregory Blake Tipton's background has in fact been discussed on this blog here. Although he was ordained in his local diocese of The Episcopal Church with several others in a cohort that year, unlike most TEC ordinands, who typically aren't ordained unless they already have a parish assignment, he drifted in a series of token jobs like cleaning out a campus Episcopal center before he focused on putting one of those tiny OCSP Potemkin groups together as a Plan B.

What we've found already is that men without clear direction and without good personal skill sets have a good chance of flame-out several years down the road in the OCSP. A visitor commented:

Though the Ordinariate is “like” a diocese, it is a guest of the diocese. Ordinariate priests are allowed to function as a “favor” to the Ordinariate. A bishop can withdraw faculties of Ordinariate priests in his diocese just as easily as he can religious order priests or priests from other diocese.

I think Houston is beginning to build a track record of sending men out into dioceses who haven't been adequately formed or even vetted and then letting the local bishop take the heat for the inevitable result. A visitor draws an analogy by suggesting Houston may not know what's in the package:

I liken this to a person who needs a couch badly but has very little money. The person goes to a thrift store and buys a decent little used couch. Unfortunately, before the couch was donated to the thrift store, it was stored in a garage, where unbeknownst to anyone, a group of spiders crawled into the frame and laid about a billion eggs. When the guy brings the couch home from the thrift store, he is satisfied it looks good and is comfortable. Then, about a month later, he is watching TV and is attacked by all these fresh hatched spiders.

Should Bishop Lopes et. al. be punished for not knowing there were spiders in the sofa? Probably not. But how much sympathy will he get if he goes to a thrift store and buys an upholstered chair and doesn’t spray it/check it for spiders this time? Bishop Lopes is in danger of forfeiting his very few remaining sympathy points.

The analogy here isn't fully apt. It speaks of someone buying a couch to watch his own TV shows -- but actually, a better parallel might be a guy who runs a business selling furniture to motels. He cuts corners by going to a thrift store. The baby spiders aren't coming out while he watches Live PD at home, they come out at motels in Indianapolis, St Paul, and Calgary, and angry guests are storming the motel office.

The question I have is whether Bp Lopes is spraying his thrift store chairs and checking them for spiders, when he already knows the couches and chairs from that particular thrift store are coming back with spider eggs. Archbishops in St Paul and Indianapolis have already learned about the spider eggs. My regular correspondent comments,

Fr Kramer may be boasting about three or four queries a week but in fact the ordinations in the OCSP are failing to keep pace with deaths, retirements, and of course, laicisations. At the moment there is still considerable redundancy---OCSP priests who have never had an Ordinariate assignment---but with the exception of military chaplains Bp Lopes seems not to be continuing Msgr Steenson's practice in this regard. So I think the ranks are thinning, although I cannot feel confident that there is any corresponding improvement in quality.

A Visitor Takes A Closer Look At The Treco Case

From a visitor this morning:

I read your blog and decided to listen to Fr. Treco’s sermon (which was not appropriate to be given during a Mass- he should have given a homily instead) [available on YouTube here -- jb.]. I was curious if I could pick out the problematic parts. I made a list as I listened. I then read the “Timeline: A Case for Fr. Treco” blog. Funny thing, my list matched up exactly with what Bishop Lopes pointed out to Fr. Treco.

Fr. Treco disingenuously claims Bishop Lopes has not pointed out exactly which words in his sermon were the problem. In Bishop Lopes defense, Fr. Treco’s sermon was so incredibly verbose that if you were to quote exactly the phrases that were blantantly wrong, the document would almost be a novelette. I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess Fr. Treco has not actually read all the documents that were produced by the Second Vatican Council. I’m also going to go a little further out the limb and guess Fr. Treco’s theological formation and foundation is way more Protestant than Catholic as he either misunderstands or is willfully misrepresenting papal actions and words, Councils and Synods, as well as Catholic doctrine. Here are a few examples:

Fr. Treco claims that the conciliar popes in three iconic actions (as ) Peter, set aside the mandate given to him by Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Fr. Treco says Pope Paul VI refused to rule the Church of Christ, Pope Paul VI would not defend the Bride of Christ, Pope John Paul II would not honor the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone. None of the iconic actions by these popes cited by Fr. Treco were Ex Cathedra (meaning they had to be believed by the faithful under penalty of mortal sin) nor were the actions at the time or afterwards purported to be new dogma or doctrine. In essence, Fr. Treco either misunderstands the doctrine of papal infallibility or has purposely slandered those popes to make it seem like Catholics should not follow their other teachings (that ARE magisterial).

Fr. Treco rants about Vatican II not being an infallible Council. Yes, Vatican II was a PASTORAL Council, meaning there were no extraordinary proclamations (meaning infallible because they said so), however, there were ordinary proclamations and clarifications that were outlined, and, as a valid Council of the Church, the proclamations must be considered magisterial, meaning they should be promulgated to the faithful. Here Fr. Treco pulls what in Logic class would be called a false syllogism because first two propositions are not both true. Fr. Treco claims,

• By their fruit you will know them
• The Fruit of Vatican II was rotten
• Therefore, Vatican II was rotten and to be ignored.

Seems true, but wait, was the fruit of Vatican II rotten? Imagine there were three apple trees planted in a triangle. Tree A was Vatican II, tree B was the Sexual Revolution and tree C was Relativism. Fr. Treco goes to gather the apples that fell from these three trees. They are all on the ground in the middle of the triangle. Selecting only the rotten apples, Fr. Treco announces that all the rotten apples came from the Vatican II tree so it must be cut down.

But did all the rotten apples only come from the Vatican II tree? How many came from the other trees? Were there no good apples from Vatican II? This is why I surmise Fr. Treco has not actually read the documents of Vatican II which did not so much promote new teachings as it offered clarification of and new encouragement to follow Church doctrine with a renewed zeal.

Because Fr. Treco refuses to recognize or recant his obviously erroneous statements, and is in willful disobedience to his Bishop, I am not surprised they gave him the boot. Sadly, it is obvious by the Timeline blog and the host of comments in support of this nonsense that there are a whole lot of Catholics who are as poorly catechized as Fr. Treco.

I tip my hat to Bishop Lopes for dealing with this mess quickly and decisively. Good on him.

I agree fully with the visitor, but I'm still concerned with the circumstances that led up to, and surround, the heresies Treco expressed. The first is how this situation came to be -- I think there must be some consensus here, from Bp Lopes to outside lay observers like the visitor, that Treco was poorly formed as a priest. There must have been a general understanding of this at Msgr Steenson's level, and at the level of the authorities who proposed Treco's ordination to him at the time. Yet he was ordained.

Second, Treco was sent to Minnesota without any real supervision, although there must have been some understanding that the man wasn't fully capable. It appears, from the bits and pieces that have reached me, for instance, that he would celebrate daily mass as at the hospital chapel ad orientem. Especially to congregants who weren't used to the practice, this might have seemed unusual, disturbing, or even disrespectful, and prudent advice to Treco might have been that sometimes, with some audiences, versus populum is a better pastoral choice.

I assume he never received this sort of advice -- quite possibly the problem never got to Fr Perkins for him to offer it. Reasons for this might be the simple circumstance of inexperienced staff in Houston trying to supervise clergy a thousand miles distant, or some combination of complacency and obtuseness in Fr Perkins that might lead him to ignore the potential problems with that situation. Again, the remarks Fr Perkins made in Calgary suggest he sees reasons someone like me might attribute such qualities to him.

I agree with the visitor that it was commendable for Bp Lopes to have moved quickly and decisively in Treco's case, but I'm still convinced that the case was brought to his attention, when the circumstances of the ordinariate might have suggested to him earlier that better communication and closer supervision of his clergy were urgently needed. The Calgary problem is simply another symptom of the same poor formation and poor supervision that seem prevalent in the ordinariate. I still think the deficiencies of the North American ordinariate are recognized by the US bishops, and it was probably their action that forced Lopes's hand.

The question is how many other problems are festering out there among a collection of men who are almost as poorly formed, with judgment almost as poor, and with the same lack of supervision.

Friends Of Fr Treco Website

My regular correspondent forwarded a link to a website calling itself the Friends of Fr Treco. This provides an extensive timeline from poor Mr Treco's perspective of the events leading to his removal from the priesthood and excommunication. My concern about this poor guy from the start has been that he was done no favors by anyone in allowing him to proceed over at least a decade, through various routes, toward ordination. I'm very sorry to have to say this, but the timeline in question is terribly incomplete, and it ought to include the imprudent moves by various authorities over this extended period that allowed Treco to continue on his ill-advised path and caused such unnecessary trouble and hurt to everyone involved.

But reading over the timeline, it's hard not to draw the conclusion that the story -- or this particular chapter of the extended story -- is about Bp Lopes, though not in the way he's portrayed in the timeline account. I think the critical event was Treco publishing his homily at The Remnant on December 5, 2018. I've said here several times that I think US bishops have some situational awareness of the slipshod evaluation of candidates in the North American ordinariate, and Treco's homily became a case in point. The critical event isn't listed in the timeline on the web site, but it would presumably be a call from a brother bishop -- presumably a powerful one -- to Bp Lopes shortly after December 5. I suspect the tone was less than friendly, and it may have been backed up by a call to Rome.

The Remnant is one of several "traditionalist" thorns in the side of the US bishops, along with Church Militant, Lifesite News, and many others. I've got to say that my personal experience in the Church hasn't borne out the impression of day-to-day apostasy that these groups seem to want to sell, and in fact, I keep asking how, if Cardinal Mahony has been a poster boy for errant bishops, the capable and holy men I routinely see in our parish, passing through it, or working with it could have come through seminary and been promoted in the diocese's ranks during his tenure. The story just can't be that simple, and I give such sites less and less credence.

By the same token, I've got to wonder what Church Treco was complaining about, especially in light of what must be seen as even unjustifiable generosity by a series of authorities in allowing him to continue toward ordination. I've got to sympathize with the US bishops in their struggle to maintain an accurate public perception, as well as a perception among the faithful, of what the Church actually does day to day, as well as what it continues to be in human affairs.

So I've got to see the image of Treco putting unhelpful material up at The Remnant in the context of what seems more and more likely to me, a perception by the bishops that the ordinariate is drawing membership and support from the traddies who also support Church Militant, The Remnant, and the others, and their concern was directed not to poor Treco, who is just an irksome ant in this matter, but to Bp Lopes, who is seeking publicity as a new bishop in some measure by catering to angry traddies, who use their not-parishes as a way to bypass their local bishops.

I suspect this is a way to bring this issue to Bp Lopes's attention, as well as the issue of whom he's been ordaining. Treco has to be made aware that in this environment, he's not the issue, and his penalty is not going to be mitigated. Yet again, this is a very sad case. Fr Treco showed poor judgment in ever thinking he should leave the day job he had, and a number of Church authorities seem to have been negligent in not giving him more realistic guidance over a period of many years. We are culpable by inaction as well as action.

I wish Mr Treco well, but he's definitely going to have to get serious about a Plan B.

"Tick,Tock,Tick,Tock"

A visitor comments,

I was thinking the other day all three Ordinariates have a combined population of around 12,000 (11,531 reported in 2016). which is the size of a large parish in any substantial Roman Catholic diocese, yet they have one Bishop and two Ordinaries to oversee this. They also have a total of 177 priests to serve this population (12,000 /177 = 67.79 parishioners per priest). In a parish of 16,000 parishioners, that would be the equivalent of having a pastor and 235 parochial vicars to assist him.

Looking at the three Ordinariates, I have no real idea what Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia is like as I rarely hear any news from Down Under, but a quick perusal of the congregations on their website indicates they are a lot like the OCSP: they meet at/are given use of local Roman Rite parish facilities and have very few locations of their own. On their website they state the have 18 worship communities and communities in formation.

Our Lady of Walsingham in the UK has about 3,500 people and 91 priests (3,500 / 91 = 38 parishioners per priest) and seems to be fairly stable but a closer look at their congregations reveals the same pattern, smallish groups meeting in local Roman Catholic facilities.

Whew, what a conglomeration! Short of a miraculous occurrence of some sort of mass revelation to Anglicans and Episcopalians world-wide causing a stampede of new Catholic converts, this looks like a future footnote in the Vatican archives. With official numbers to be reported to the Vatican this year and the time it takes to compile the official census document and publish it, the days are few indeed ( I am predicting March to mid-April in 2020) before big changes are in store. I guess none of the Ordianriates can afford to have any one of their flock run off or turned off by a poor shepherd. Perhaps that is the danger of the Fr. Kenyons in this game and why the SJE situation required the Bishop and the Vicar General to fly to Calgary. Time will tell. Tick, tock, tick, tock

My regular correspondent comments as well,

The OCSP hiring model---taking in other peoples' mistakes and bad judgement calls---might be seen as hard to avoid when you are out of any meaningful local or denominational loop. I am sure we are going to see more flame-outs.

So many men. So few good ones.

It's hard to avoid thinking that the clerical shuffle between the UK, Calgary, Victoria, and Omaha was the result of pressure on Bp Lopes -- the recent personnel shuffle in Houston, wih a new secretary for Bp Lopes, was conceivably a result of that pressure then being passed further down onto Fr Perkins, with the result that he got additional "help". More flame-outs would probably result on the removal of both, but the problem isn't personnel, the problem is that Anglicanorum coetibus was poorly conceived.

St Luke's Washington, DC Moving Again

The St Luke's Episcopalian parish in Bladensburg, MD was a very early entrant to the North American ordinariate. The Episcopal Bishop of Baltimore, on the verge of retirement, allowed the parish to leave his diocese in late 2011, before the ordinariate was canonically erected, but also before the new bishop took office and while the parish was still his to give away. So I believe that for a short time, it was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Washington. The parish leased its facility from the Episcopal Diocese of Baltimore. According to this post at Ordinariate Expats,

the church in Bladensburg was leased from the Episcopal Diocese, an agreement which will soon expire. While purchase of the facility was an option, it would have been a costly move for the small parish family.

My regular correspondent adds, "St Luke's was given option to buy the Bladensburg building but apart from location it had not been well-maintained and needed potentially expensive renovations." The lack of maintenance, of course, would have been the responsibility of the St Luke's parish itself and raises the question of whether the group was ever capable of surviving as a full parish.

This news was an inspiration to me at the time, and I asked Fr Kelley why St Mary of the Angels Hollywood couldn't do the same. (I only gradually learned the answer: if the members of the St Mary of the Angels parish were received as Catholics as part of the process, but the parish bylaws were not revised, those received would no longer be members of the parish and thus ineligible to vote on the needed changes to the bylaws. Thus the parih could be seized legally by a rump of dissidents who stayed out of the ordinariate. Fr Kelley seems to have made himself unpopular in Houston by trying to point this out to Msgrs Stetson and Steenson, as well as Fr Hurd.)

How much we've all had to learn.

In any case, St Luke's was one of a very few Episcopalian parises to come into the ordinariate as a continuing entity. By June 2014, it became plain that the parish could not afford to lease its facility in Bladensburg, and it became a tenant of the Immaculate Conception diocesan parish in Washington.

My regular correspondent notes that Msgr Steenson made St Luke a full parish sometime in 2015, although it did not have a permanent facility as called for in the ordinariate guidelines. The long term goal was for St Luke's to have its own new property, something Fr Lewis noted in the parish newsletter, and last year they made an offer on a suitable building site. This plan apparently ran into problems. My correspondent has now found that the parish has announced another move, from the Immaculate Conception parish to St Ignatius Church in Fort Washington, Prince Georges County, MD.

The announcement from this past Sunday's bulletin at St Ignatius is at right. Fr Vidal has been appointed Pastor of the diocesan parish, to which the St Luke community will move at a later date. When he was pastor of St Luke's, Fr Lewis continued to live in the Episcopalian rectory in Bladensburg, but when Fr Vidal replaced him in Washington Fr Vidal moved into the rectory at Immaculate Conception after some renovations were undertaken, and it was renamed Seton House. Presumably Fr Vidal will continue to live at Seton House with his family.

As far as I can see, one important change is that Fr Vidal will be paid at least part time as a diocesan pastor, similar to Fr Sly's arrangement in Kansas City or Fr Seraiah's in Missouri. My regular correspondent confirms that Fr Vidal, prior to this move, had not had any part-time assignment at St Ignatius. Further,

No doubt the merits of this arrangement have been carefully considered. But it does mean that St Luke's will move for the second time in its eight-year history, to another building owned by the Archdiocese of Washington, which will also be paying part of the Pastor's salary, as he ministers to the several hundred diocesan attendees. Not the most solid example of stability and sustainability.

It's hard to avoid thinking that St Luke's was always a very marginal candidate for parish status, and in the light of day it was not realistic for it ever to own or try to maintain property as an ordinariate parish. But it sounds also as though Fr Vidal has had enough free cycles in his day that he won't, in the judgment of Abp Gegory, be overburdened now with a diocesan parish in addition. And the question is whether the St Luke's parish was able to pay Fr Vidal's salary, supplemented as it may have been by a possible pension. My regular correspondent comments,

Fr Vidal did put out an APB about a place to crash in DC while "Seton House" was being renovated. Don't know if he's hard up or just thrifty

And of course, we now know that Bp Lopes is determined in some way not fully clear to make the Bl John Henry Newman community in California a full parish, bending whatever criteria will certainly have to be bent to do so. It doesn't bode well.

Who Are They Trying To Kid?

I was curious about the property that the Church of the Presentation in Woodlands, TX announced that they'd agreed to acquire, but thanks to the link, I went to the listing. This is it, 3,000 square feet, three bedrooms, three baths, a remarkably nice place:

But naturally, this isn't suited for conversion to faux gothic with a fancy reredos. It took me a little while to recognize that this is actually a residence for the group's priest, and the "Church of the Presentation" is to move out of its acoustic-tile chapel and become a home church. I assume masses will be held in a glorified front parlor, probably without a reredos, linen or wood, much less stone.

My regular correspondent filled in additional details.

Fr Fletcher doesn't have a diocesan day job; he's a Parochial Vicar of Our Lady of Walsingham, which given its membership (ASA 1000+) and mass schedule (Saturday Vigil and four Sunday masses, plus daily mass) needs more than one priest, I assume. Initially there were three priests-in-residence besides the Pastor, now Dean, but they seem to have faded out of the picture. Presumably someone put up significant cash for this Woodlands spin-off, which wasn't necessarily the Ordinariate's first priority.

This leads me down other paths. Home churches are a feature of "continuing" Anglican denominations -- but let's get real, those home churches don't grow, they only get smaller and smaller until they just drop off the list of parishes in their "continuing" sect. This is not, repeat not, a journey beginning with a single step. It's a dodge that will justify giving a lightly-burdened new associate a 3,000 square foot house.

And there's not much Catholic about it at all -- the Catholic priesthood is a sacrifice. Instead, this guy's being treated like a socially prominent young Episcopal priest on the rise -- what, did he go to St Paul's before Yale and Nashotah House (and by the way, he's married to the bishop's daughter)? Must be something like that with Fr Fletcher here, mutatis mutandis. Apparently some OCSP priests fly first class, while others are in the baggage compartment with the pets.

Regarding how the masses will break out in Houston, my correspondent reports,

Presentation has mass at 8 am and 10 am. This would make Fr Fletcher only available for the Saturday Vigil Mass at OLW, and/or the mass Sunday at 6 pm. Presumably Fr Kramer and Fr Perkins help out at OLW, as well as the bishop, when he's around, but I think Fr Fletcher's title of Parochial Vicar means he's on the payroll.

Regarding another ongoing "parish" dodge, my regular correspondent reports,

I see that John Henry Newman will be officially declared a saint October 13, which means only a few short months to find 30+ families/100+ Ordinariate members on the rolls of a community-in-formation which holds two Sunday masses in a rented chapel which seats 65. Celebrated, normally, by a supply priest, the PA being otherwise occupied.

The weirdness gets weirder and weirder.