So The House At The Woodlands Isn't A Rectory, But

The newly established Catholic Church of the Presentation in The Woodlands, TX first appeared on the radar here this past June, when it was still meeting in a local diocesan facility. In October, this blog covered its purchase of what I referred to at the time as a McMansion, a 3,000 square foot, million-dollar residence. I speculated that it must have been for use as a rectory. A visitor attended mass there recently and had an opportunity to see more of the property and reports:

The house situated on the property in The Woodlands where this ordinariate mission has set up camp seemingly serves as something more akin to a parish hall from what I saw. As far as I could tell, nobody seems to reside in the home and Mass was celebrated in a relatively large steel barn located behind the property. [The visitor later suggested "barn" wasn't fully accurate as a description, although I think "garage" might also be correct.]

Confessions were heard in the house in an upstairs room which I believe was an office (whether this was +Fletchers or not, I could not tell you). The rest of the upstairs seemed to have been used for miscellaneous storage: liturgical objects, vestments, bankers boxes filled with files/paperwork, tables & chairs, etc. The downstairs was more or less setup as a parish hall, as I mentioned before. It was sparsely furnished and clearly designed to host laity after mass; folding tables/chairs, coffee urns, the usual suspects. The only bathrooms on the grounds were also located inside the house; I used two of the three bathrooms and they were clearly not anyone’s personal bathroom.

Nothing about the place gave me the impression that anyone was actually living there. However, I could certainly be wrong about that — perhaps +Fletcher and Co. have considerably lower requirements for their living situation than I would expect. Additionally, I was there around the first week of November, so it’s possible that the house is being utilized differently by now.

Additionally, I struck up a conversation with one of the parishioners who appeared to be very much in the know about Presentation’s future plans. He pointed out to what appeared to be a newly laid foundation quite a ways off in the distance that he claimed was the site that the chapel will be erected. However, if I recall correctly, this property is somewhere between 20-30 acres and the area he pointed out was no less than 500-600 feet away, and I didn’t care enough at the time to inspect it further.

The big thing that strikes both me and my regular correspondent is that the only mention of this project other than on the group's website has been on this blog. For an ordinariate group, quasi-parish, mission, or whatever it is to acquire its own property almost from the start is completely new, but there's been no mention in any official ordinariate publication, and my regular correspondent doesn't think an Ordinariate Observer is on the horizon any time soon. The report we've had from Bp Lopes's presentation in Toronto doesn't mention it.

Beyond that, what the visitor reported doesn't seem fully consistent with the plan outlined on the plans page of the parish website. The plan as outlined seems more and more vague as I try to compare it with the visitor's report. The Fall 2019 phase includes purchasing land, establishing a music program, and beginning a CCD program. (I've noted before that the CCD strategy seems to involve confirming pre-teen children as "anchor babies" to make their initiated Catholic parents eligible for canonical "membership" in the parish.)

But although we're still in Fall 2019, the parish seems to have entered Phase II of the plan, involving renovating existing facilities at minimum. But the visitor also reports that a knowledgeable parishioner pointed to "what appeared to be a newly laid foundation quite a ways off in the distance that he claimed was the site that the chapel will be erected". This suggests that further Phase II and Phase III activity is already under way, with a chapel under construction as a possible intermediate stage toward construction of a large gothic building.

However, the plan as published is too vague to allow anyone to place that in any context. Has the new gothic building already been designed, with the chapel eventually to be incorporated as a transept or something? Who knows? More importantly, the numbers on the plan -- low six figures -- simply do not account for the level of expenditure that already seems to be under way. From what I understand, a diocesan building department would not allow construction to start without a detailed and carefully approved plan, for which a substantial part of the funding has already been secured.

I suspect some sort of plan is in place, and I would think the same consulting and architectural firm that built the Houston chancery and did a proposal for St John the Baptist Bridgeport was involved. But if that's the case, the plans page on the Presentation website is not fully ingenuous about what's going on.

Beyond that, if the project seems to be moving past initial plans into a construction phase of some sort, this means the actual project is probably more comparable to the Walsingham cathedral and the chancery than the initial plans suggest. And I would have to surmise multimillions have been pledged and assured for it.

But this raises more questions. Why The Woodlands? Why fund a whole new project, when the St John Vianney parish also has land and could use money for a building? Or the St John the Baptist parish in Bridgeport, which has had a proposal and could use funding for that project? And where, in fact, are the multimillions that already seem to be behind the project coming from?

And last but not least, why the radio silence? Is incompetence in the ordinariate communications department the only explanation, or, for instance, might Bp Lopes want to keep this quiet for as long as he can to avoid any possible sit-down with Cardinal DiNardo over poaching initiated Catholic families?

I've been wrong about this once already, but I can excuse myself by saying there's no reliable information anywhere on what's clearly a major project underway here. Why not bypass the blogger and just make things clear and public?

Fr Phillips's Faculties Restricted

In a letter to the Our Lady of the Atonement parish dated December 6, 2019, to be read at all masses there today, Bp Lopes has announced that effective immediately, he is restricting Fr Phillips's priestly faculties. This apparently means that he is no longer authorized to celebrate public masses in the North American ordinariate and "will no longer participate in the life of Our Lady of the Atonement parish, nor Atonement Academy".

The reason given is an additional past instance of inappropriate conduct toward minor boys by the late Dcn James Orr beyond those reported by the Archdiocese of San Antonio in January of this year, an incident which was first reported to Fr Phillips, but which Fr Phillips did not then report to the archbishop, as policy required. Bp Lopes in his letter also referred to additional documentation provided by the archdiocese covering repeated additional instances of abuse reports against Dcn Orr, which were made by parents to Fr Phillips, but which he deemed not credible on his own initiative and did not refer to the archdiocese.

However, it seems to have taken the one recent complaint that Bp Lopes received first hand, on top of multiple additional documented instances from the archdiocese beyond those reported publicly to provoke this new action, a bit of a puzzle -- as in the Calgary case of flagrant cohabitation by ordinariate priests in a decades-long same sex relationship, Bp Lopes seems to move very slowly. One wonders whether additional pressure had to be brought to force Bp Lopes's hand in this new move.

Another context to this move is the sudden withdrawal of Fr Phillips as keynoter of the recent Toronto Anglicanorum Coetibus Society conference. I believe "health" reasons were given at the time, but my regular correspondent feels it confirms impressions that it was in fact not health related. How long was this sitting on Bp Lopes's desk until he finally took the necessary public action, though?

Fr Barker was then named Fr Phillips's replacement as keynoter, but he then withdrew at the last minute as well. It seems like the ordinariate has no grand old men left, but no credible young leaders, either. Recall that Fr Phillips headlined well-publicized and well-attended meetings in San Antonio and Hollywood promoting the upcoming ordinariate project. What's come out in subsequent years, beginning with his keeping his own parish out of the new ordinariate, suggests the level of hype and disingenuousness behind his involvement.

But if the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society had to hold a new conference next month, who could they make a keynoter? The only possible choice now would be Bp Lopes, himself a late addition to the Toronto program. But he's simply not a charismatic leader, he's at heart an organization bureaucrat with no inspiring message. Says a lot about things going forward.

Building Religious Orders From Scratch!

In recent weeks, we've had published remarks from both Bp Lopes and Msgr Newton to the effect that they're both building whole dioceses "from scratch" -- indeed, at least in Houston's case, without the benefit of experienced men in key roles like vocation director. Clearly Mr Dennerly in yesterday's post has been influenced by this soap-box racer approach to running the Church, to the extent that he proposes establishing a whole new sorta-kinda religious order from scratch, notwithstanding the experience in Calgary. A diocesan visitor commented,

Out of an abundance of frustration I am sending you links to three Benedictine communities that have European roots (as all Benedictine communities hail back to the sixth century in what is now Italy). All of these groups are associated with larger organizations that span more than one country, one of which is Merry Olde England. It took me longer to type this email than find these and many more.

The Trappists: Originally from France, they have multiple Abbeys and Monasteries in the US. They had a nice history of the Rule of St. Benedict on their site that was worth the read.

The Solesmes Congregation: Also originally from France, the newest group in Hulbert, OK, USA, Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, celebrates their Masses in Latin using the 1962 Liturgy and Gregorian Chant. They have a very unique history in the US in that the Americans who went to France and then came back did so because they were inspired by a Great Books program at the University of Kansas in the 1970’s. Bishop James Conley, the patriarch of Lincoln, NE, became a convert because of that very Great Books program.

Last but not least, if these folks were really interested in Anglican Patrimony, the English Benedictine Congregation: This group, founded and primarily located in the UK has satellite groups in the US, Peru and Zimbabwe.

These folks do not seem to be interested in true spirituality, if they were they would live in one of these places first to discern if this is what the Holy Spirit is asking them to do. Then they would move on to create a new community if so inspired. Note, however, all these congregations began with multiple people and then grew to rather larger numbers BEFORE they became orders, some groups taking decades or longer.

The Catholic Church is not like its Protestant Brothers in autonomy. Every Tom, Dick and Harry does not get to invent something and then declare it Catholic. It works the other way. The Catholic Church invents something and Tom, Dick and Harry join and propagate. Anglican Patrimony does not seem to recognize this and thus the wheel spinning and “air castles”.

The whole Ordinariate project seems to suffer under the delusion, “If you build it, people will come” rather than the old school Catholic model, “Come with us and we will build it together.”

Certainly if a 14-year old came to his parish pastor and said, "Father, I think I may have a vocation to the consecrated life, but I keep thinking I want to start my own order -- I've been reading about Newman and the oratories," the priest would basically tell him to reflect further, maybe calm down, and certainly visit an existing monastery to get an introduction and flavor of what things are about. This is the sort of thing somone should maybe have been suggesting to Mr Dennerly before he went off with his half-baked proposal -- except that this is clearly fine in the current atmosphere of the ordinariates.

More St Mary Of The Angels Litigation

It's worth following the convoluted history of the tiny St Mary of the Angels Hollywood Anglican parish, because the litigation it started by leaving The Episcopal Church in early 1977 became the origin of the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus, and my experience with the parish convinced me that these have been the fruit of a poisonous tree.

As it happens, over the past couple of months, I've slowly learned of an entire new round of litigation, which appears as Los Angeles Superior Court case 18STCV04171. Anyone interested in the details of this case can use the on line case summary page of the Los Angeles Superior Court and enter that case number in the field.

My current understanding of this case as a non-attorney is that in 2014, the ACA-appointed Bush vestry took out a loan for about $750,000 from a finance company that represented private investors, using the parish property and rental income stream as security. However, the date of this loan was two weeks after the California Court of Appeals overturned the original trial verdict that awarded the property to the ACA, in the course of which it affirmed that the ACA-Bush vestry was not the valid corporate board of directors.

The 2012 Kelley vestry did not learn of this loan, or the payments on it, until possession of the property was returned to it by the court in January 2016, when a review of incoming mail discovered that payments were being made. This opened a whole new bucket of snakes, with the outcome being that although the loan was unauthorized, it was secured by the parish property, and if the parish wanted to avoid seizure, it needed to continue making payments. This it did.

However, in early 2018, the ACA-Bush vestry successfully appealed the 2015 verdict awarding the property to the 2012 Kelley vestry, and the property was returned to the ACA-Bush faction that summer. (At this point, nearly everyone involved with the 2012 vestry and the parish that applied to join the North American ordinariate moved on, and nobody in that group is directly involved in the new case.) The best I can determine is that once the ACA Diocese of the West regained control of the property, it stopped making payments on the 2014 loan its vestry took out, even though the 2012 vestry had continued making those payments.

I'm told, by the way, that since regaining the property in 2018, Mrs Marilyn Bush, who is nearly 90 years old, is no longer involved in the litigation. The individual with the ACA Diocese of the West who is identified in the new case history is now Mr John Creel, who has long held various positions with that diocese and the All Saints Fountain Valley ACA parish.

According to the new case history, the private lenders who financed the 2014 loan to the Bush-ACA vestry, Richard and Terrie Sommers, began legal action in November 2018, presumably when payments from the Bush-ACA vestry, now in control of the property, became delinquent. The ACA vestry, now identified in the litigation as "The Rector, Warens [sic] and Vestrymen of St. Mary of the Angel's [sic] Parish in Hollywood Los Angeles California", countersued at the same time. The basis of the countersuit is not clear.

The misspelling and grammatical error in the name are intriguing. In the past, the Bush-ACA group used a similar strategy to open or continue ownership of accounts actually belonging to the 2012 vestry, which used the same title, just without the misspellings. They apparently were able to maintain a separate legal identity from the 2012 vestry while continuing to cash checks issued to the 2012 vestry, on the assumption that bank employees would overlook "typos". They appeared to have used the name "Angelican" as opposed to "Anglican" for a similar reason.

As best I can determine from the information that's been passed on to me, the legal position of the ACA and the current vestry is that since the 2012 vestry had continued payments on the 2014 loan, even though Mrs Bush signed the papers, it was the responsibility of the 2012 vestry to make those payments, not the vestry now in control of the parish, although that ACA vestry had in fact taken out the loan. At least six attorneys are listed in he current case history, although no doubt there will be additional law firm associates involved as well.

So as of 2017, we passed the 40-year mark on litigation that dates back to Fr Jack Barker's reckless decision to pull the St Mary of the Angels parish out of The Episcopal Church, but as of late 2018, a new round of litigation has begun, and we may reasonably assume it will take years to resolve.

The value of the property, located in a highly desirable upscale area, is certainly into eight figures, even leaving out the value of the Della Robbia altarpiece, itself probably worth in the mid eight figures. Thus multimillion-dollar litigation is justified, although it's hard to imagine any result at this point other than bankruptcy for the parish and sale of the property to pay creditors. But the facility is so small that it would probably not be worthwhile for the Catholic Church, either the archdiocese or the ordinariate, to consider picking it up on foreclosure, even assuming it could come up with the money.

"You will be able to tell them by their fruits. Can people pick grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles?" It's worth noting that the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society chose Fr Barker, the author of all these fruits, to keynote its conference this past November. Fr Barker withdrew at the last minute. I wouldn't want to be in his position if anyone asked him serious questions about what he had in mind back in 1976-77.

Evangelizing The Desultory

My regular correspondent comments,

As I troll through blogs and Facebook pages where Anglicanorum coetibus is discussed I frequently see posts along the lines of “Is anyone else in the Podunk area interested in starting an Ordinariate community? “ The subsequent conversation reveals that the original poster and his (it’s pretty much always “his”) responders are already Catholics, often with no previous Anglican connection. Responders often suggest trying the TLM, which then leads to a discussion of why the TLM hasn’t gotten a foothold in Podunk—-usually lack of support from the local bishop.

Sometimes a sidebar about how any priest can offer the EF, where people who have never been on a payroll demonstrate a complete lack of understanding of why a priest might not wish to antagonise his superior. But in any event it’s crystal clear that the interest in AC is nothing about evangelism or Anglicans and everything about aesthetic preferences and being in a small group of like-minded people.

I let this percolate for a while, but a version of my perennial question then popped up: what problem are these people trying to solve? And I can't come to a good answer until I can get more information. For instance, although the people making these queries are apparently initiated Catholics, we don't know if they're currently attending any mass on Sundays and other days of obligation. I think if people were doing this, a different set of questions might come up.

When my wife and I became Catholic, our unspoken assumption was that if we were going to the trouble of getting into RCIA, trying to locate our baptismal certificates and the like, we were going to buy into the whole program, Sunday mass, regular confession, and other opportunities like Bible study and adoration as they arose. On that basis, if you happen to find yourself anywhere on a weekend, your job is to locate a mass, whether or not it's to your particular taste. If the cantor plays the guitar, shut up and receive the sacrament.

This would apply more widely if, as an initiated Catholic, you find yourself for whatever reason regularly attending a happy-clappy, flip-flops and halter-tops mass. It seems to me that if you;re not satisfied with that, there's a range of possible good options well short of either an ordinariate or a Latin mass. An OF parish 15 minutes farther down the road may have a more reverent atmosphere and a better music program. The OF mass is, after all, the one that's normally authorized, and what puzzles me is that it, and the associated three-year lectionary, have been major influences on Episcopalians and Lutherans.

So I'm wondering if the problem people who express these views on social media are trying to solve has more to do with saying something like "I'm not going to mass until I find a version that's actually unattainable anywhere near where I live, but I son't go to mass until I find one." Or at least, that's one option.

Another may be some form of oversompensation. There may be some part of Church teachings I find uncongenial, but the traddie sites like Church Militant and Lifesite News get people so stirred up against the bishops that they can disregard the Catechism until the bishops someday get themselves sorted out, and meantime they'll find an ordinariate group that shares their general resentments and receive the sacrament there from some poorly formed ex-Protestant who won't ask questions, if for no other reason than he can't imagine what questions to ask.

I can't think that if people are focused on being Catholic, they'll ask a whole different set of questions and think of a whole different set of possible solutions than "is anyone interested in starting an evensong ordinariate group in the Boise area?" And it probably says more than we think about active Catholics that so few people seem to think this route is any sort of living option.

Let's Think Some More About The Context Of Anglicanorum Coetibus

In light of the tenth anniversary and all, let's back up just a little and ask why, in that time, fewer than 10,000 Anglicans worldwide have entered the Church via that path, when the number of Anglicans who've come in via other routes in the same period is probably much greater.

First, an Anglican or Episcopalian national Establishment did exist at one time in both the US and the UK. I can speak more clearly to the decline of that Establishment in the US. One key vignette that came to mind as I thought about this was the 1991 opposition of the Rt Rev Edmond Browning, Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, to lifelong Episcopalian George H W Bush's policy on the First Gulf War. This reflected a schism in that Episcopalian Establishment that we never would have seen in the days of Episcopalian Franklin Roosevelt.

I think Douglas Bess understood this schism well in Divided We Stand, and he dates it farther back to public leftism in the Establishment that began to emerge even before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Figures like Malcolm Boyd, James Pike, and Paul Moore Jr were using Establishment prestige to advocate a leftist program that was leaving the rank and file behind, and Bess saw this correctly as a cause of "continuing" Anglicanism that dated well before the issues in the 1976 General Convention.

Since Bess was focused on the "continuing" phenomenon, he didn't have much beyond that to say about the fate of The Episcopal Church. But I think it's important to recognize that influential Establishment families, like the Roosevelts, the Harrimans, and the Bushes, as well as Episcopalian figures in key roles, like George Gallup père et fils and Walter Cronkite, were passing on and not being replaced -- and their secularist successors haven't had the same consequence.

I think this is a consequence of what the former Episcopalian bishop Frederick Kinsman recognized as part of his conversion to Cahtolicism, that the Protestant project was in the process of running itself out. Certainly this has been the story of main line Protestantism throughout the century following Kinsman's conversion. But this brings me to the question of why Bernard Law, late in this process, should see any value in trying to make the Catholic Church more appealing to Episcopalians, who were literally dying off no matter what.

There can be no question that Law was the single driving force behind the Pastoral Provision and Anglicanorum coetibus. The lack of any real success for either initiative is, I think, a clear indication of how completely he's misread the culture. There was no substantial faction of Episcopalians who wanted a denomination that wouldn't ordain women and would maintain a heavy-furniture liturgy but otherwise dress in Brooks Bothers suits and foulard ties like Episcopalians of yore. Those folks had no use for any of the old moral theology, they had better things to do on Sunday mornings and better use for the tithe money.

It's worth noting that Ven Fulton Sheen, whose reading of the culture and understanding of media were far more astute than Law's, didn't mess around with Episcopalians. His ecumenical gestures were toward Robert Schuller and Billy Graham, and Schuller's Crystal Cathedral has been a far larger single contribution to the Catholic Church than anything that's come in via Anglicanorum coetibus.

I've got to think Law's misreading goes back at least as far as his time in Adams House at Harvard, but probably even farther back to his parents. I think the visitor who suggests Law's father, Bernard A Law, had a lifetime career in US intelligence has some insight -- the Baptist populist Harry Truman bitterly resisted the persistence of the Establishment intelligence community in the postwar government. Cardinal Law was close for much of his career with the CIA-connected Bush family. Abp Sheen, on the other hand, seems to have had sympathies much closer to US evangelicals and Catholic rank and file.

There's an equivalent continuing struggle in US culture going on as we speak. Trump, highly media-savvy, is campaigning against remnants of the old, intelligence connected, media-based once-Episcopalian (or at least main lime Protestant) Establishment, on behalf of "deplorable" rank and file, including traditional immigrant communities and increasing percentages of minorities. He isn't causing it, and he isn't controlling it. He simply recognizes it.

In these developments, I think the ordinariates are simply irrelevant. They aren't aimed at, and they clearly aren't reaching, the evangelicals who make up the majority of the remaining Protestant movement. Their main current appeal seems to be to muddleheaded cradle Catholics who somehow feel they'll get a dispensation of some sort from the Catholic message if they throw in with snobby ex-Episcopalians. But it just isn't working.

Evensong Group In Portland, OR

From my regular correspondent:

From time to time I check the Facebook page of a “pre-Ordinariate” group in Portland, OR, which meets monthly for Evensong and rosary (a combo that sums up a lot about a fundamental flaw in Anglicanorum coetibus, but I digress). Occasionally a mass is celebrated for them. Lately I looked at their website and noted under FAQ that only some attendees are Ordinariate members, which I assume means others do not have even the tenuous Anglican connection required to be eligible, but that the group meets at Holy Rosary, Portland because most of the members of the group are parishioners there.

Holy Rosary is one of the largest parishes in Portland, having weathered the challenges of its downtown location over the years, and seems to have very dynamic Dominican leadership. Sunday mass is offered in the Dominican Rite as well as the OF. The “pre-Ordinariate” group states that its eventual goal is its own parish church. How is this helping the Church? What is evangelistic about this mission? Stealing members from another Christian denomination is hardly “evangelism.” Stealing members from your own is truly pointless, IMHO.

The group has its own little logo on its main page, styling itself the "Anglican Patrimony Society" of Portland, OR, with a face of St John Henry Newman. This again is at variance with the guidance from Bp Lopes that the "Anglican patrimony" does not extend much farther than the Divine Worship Missal, but the assumption here seems to be that there's some additional amorphous baggage that comes in as well. What, pray tell, might that be? Mrs Gyapong has insisted that the need to avoid near occasions of sin is not in the Anglican patrimony, so are former Anglicans given a dispensation here?

I would even raise the question whether what constitutes the Anglican patrimony is subject to the local option of particular Anglican Patrimony Societies, and it may in fact not be an exception voted by the Portland society, but should such a society take root in Pittsburgh, they would have the ability to determine this for themselves.

In addition, I'm puzzled by what seems to be the loose sponsorship of the Holy Rosary parish here. I can only look to the example in our parish, whereby Filipino cultural events, including a celebration of Philippine Independence Day at a municipal park, are in fact sponsored by a group directly affiliated with the parish. The parish also celebrates traditional Filipino special masses. But this group doesn't claim to have some potential relationship with a different bishop, nor does it intend to build its own separate parish church down the road at some indefinite future point.

Nor does it imply at all that being Filipino is other than being fully Catholic. But "Anglican patrimony" is something else. It refers to a version of Protestantism derived from Calvinism, friendly to state control, and despite specific guidance from Bp Lopes, adherents claim that this version of Protestantism is now entitled to bring unspecified additional material into the Church -- and in the real world, we see that this somehow appeals to cradle Catholics who in fact are fully initiated and attending weekly mass.

I keep going back to Abp Garcia-Siller's apt phrase, "not just unique but separate". If I were the Archbishop of Portland, I'd have questions. The qualifications for joining a Filipino cultural group at a Catholic parish are pretty clear and don't really need to be spelled out. Non-Filipinos may have lived or served in the military there, may have married into a Filipino family, or may simply have Filipino friends. But there's none of the intricate hair-splitting that entitles people to be "canonical members" of an "Anglican" ordinariate, and nobody's insisting that Filipinos are entitled to a separate jurisdiction.

But again, among Anglicans worldwide, almost nobody's bought what's on offer in any case, which ought to be one more reason to ask what's in it for cradle Catholics.