Monday, April 18, 2016

So, Are The Ordinariates A Very Good Thing?

A visitor has been prompting me to react to Mr Murphy's post on the five-year anniversary of erecting the first Anglican Ordinariate. Mr Murphy asserts at the start that he is a "member of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham", which, since I believe he lives in Germany, is hard to distinguish from an assertion that one is entitled to receive secret code messages over the radio from Captain Midnight. I'm sure his intentions are good.

I'm not a member of any personal ordinariate -- I simply struggle to do my best as a new diocesan Catholic. I would in fact say that, raised Presbyterian and moving to Episcopalianism as an adult, neither denomination equipped me to deal with what I encountered in an elite-school education in the 1960s. I suspect that even an average Catholic education wouldn't have helped me out much if I'd gone, say, to Notre Dame or Georgetown, where I would have been fed the same awful misinformation.

The cultural problems serious Christians encounter, frankly, go much wider and deeper than the issues Mr Murphy tries to address. Whether there are Comfortable Words or a Prayer of Thanksgiving in a version of the mass complete with faux thees and thous, or whether a dozen married now-Catholic priests are alumni of Nashotah House, is completely irrelevant in this context.

My visitor says,

[Mr Murphy] is making the point that the theological implications of attempting to incorporate the treasures of the Anglican Patrimony into the Catholic church are important regardless of any success the Ordinariates may or may not have proselytising among Anglicans or others.
I'm not from the UK, and I don't have the perspective of Mr Murphy or for that matter Fr Hunwicke. I do sense a certain Rule Britannia strain in the remarks I occasionally see from both, a subtext that Rome is finally coming around to do things the English way. If it makes them feel better, that's fine. I simply don't have the same perspective, and I just don't get all sentimental about the Spiritual Treasures of the Anglican Patrimony. They're nice to have, but they aren't essential to salvation.

I see a much bigger obstacle to the Ordinariates, which is simply how they can generate enough celibate vocations to produce a second generation of priests, especially when the current generation of former Anglican priests are near or at retirement age. I e-mailed this to another visitor in a different conversation:

I would nevertheless say that a much bigger issue would be how many celibate vocations any of the Ordinariates can generate in the next 15+ years -- there's the actual future. A retired guy, OK, but so far, the Ordinariates are pretty much of, by, and for retired guys!

One thing I'm noticing in my diocesan parish is that in fact, of five priests on staff there, several do in fact provide inspiring examples of celibate clergy, enough to produce more vocations, it seems. Even as a new Catholic, they're changing my ex-Protestant attitudes toward the Church and the role of priests. I read accounts now and then of young boys who see a priest celebrating mass and begin to think that would be an attractive role, as others might find a teacher or firefighter. Now I begin to see how that could happen!

This probably needs to happen in the Ordinariate more than it is, even now.

This visitor replied,
As to the importance of celibate vocations for the ordinariates, there are two salient points.
  1. The Vatican will NOT allow ordinariates to fail on account of the issue of clerical celibacy. The ordinariates are the Vatican's solution to reconciliation not only for Anglicans, but also for other Protestant traditions -- and one cannot expect those who are not yet in communion with the Catholic Church to adopt it if they perceive that it cannot work. If it becomes clear that the ordinariates are not getting enough vocations to be sustainable, the demand for celibacy will bend very quickly.

  2. And in any case, Pope Francis has indicated very clearly that he wishes to relax the discipline of clerical celibacy in the Roman Rite, but that he wants the initiative in this regard to come from dioceses and episcopal conferences rather than from the top down -- and no wonder: there are many practical difficulties with which dioceses and episcopal conferences will have to deal in implementing such a change, including major restructuring of budgets to provide sufficient compensation for married clergy to support their families and reconfiguration of rectories to provide suitable accommodations for married clergy with families. These adjustments obviously require planning and fundraising, and thus will not happen overnight. Nevertheless, a relaxation of the present discipline may well happen within a decade, and perhaps even more quickly -- and it obviously will extend to the ordinariates whenever it happens.

I simply am not seeing any hint of imminent changes like these from, say, Bp Barron. I'm not sure how realistic this is -- what, Rome is going to relax the discipline of clerical celibacy in order to let Ordinariates continue? My own view is that any effective attack on the current cultural situation is going to come from more of what traditional Catholicism has been, not bending things to bring in more Anglo-Catholics or Lutherans or whatever.

I get a certain sense of unreality in the remarks of my visitor here, as well as Mr Murphy.

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

St Mary And The Ordinariates In Context

A visitor very kindly sent me a copy of Louis Bouyer's Memoirs. As a new Catholic, I hadn't previously heard of him, though now I realize he was a very important figure. Raised a French Lutheran (another new thing for me; I'd thought the French had only Huguenots), he admired Catholic liturgy and Anglo-Catholicism from his time in Lutheran seminary.

Fairly quickly he realized that Lutherans were not friendly to his respect for the liturgy, thinking him too Catholic, and he became Catholic, entered Catholic seminary, and became a priest of the Oratory. However, many Catholic authorities then found his respect for scripture too Protestant. Notwithstanding, he became an important Patristic and Newman scholar, and he was a key theologian in the Second Vatican Conference. (I'm finding his other books, even used, aren't cheap, which may be an indication of their continued demand.)

His story keeps bringing me back to the homily David Moyer delivered at St Mary's in early 2011, on the subject that the Church is a battleground. Possibly because much of Bouyer's experience takes place in France, the story is an amazing pattern of betrayals, disappointments, careerism, backbiting, egoism, petty jealousies, and so forth. My wife reminds me that the lives of the saints are full of just this sort of thing. When I think about what's happened in the progress of the Ordinariates and the ongoing saga of St Mary's, it's hard not to draw parallels.

Saturday, April 9, 2016

Fr Catania's Move To Omaha

Ordinariate News has posted on Fr Catania's sudden and unexpected move to become a temporary administrator at a diocesan parish in Omaha. It's my understanding that this move is due to the opposition in the diocese to the Ordinariate group in Rochester. "It has blocked Fr. Catania from having anything to do with the diocese - no job, no faculties, no housing, no participation in any other diocesan church or event." Apparently this is in spite of appeals from both Msgr Steenson and Bp Lopes.

Elsewhere, the Diocese of Rochester is described as "one of the most progressive/liberal, moving toward post-Catholic, dioceses in the country". That link suggests that Bp Matano, installed in 2014, was meant to be a more conservative influence, but perhaps he can accomplish only so much.

Please pray for the Fellowship of St Alban and the Ordinariates.

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Virtue Online Covers St Mary's After All

This past February 20, I noted that David Moyer had been given information that David Virtue did not intend to cover the restoration of the St Mary's property. However, a visitor recently pointed out that a story about the restoration of the property did appear at Virtue Online dated February 24, 2016. Frankly, I'm not pleased that the author used a photo I posted on my blog (and took myself) without permission or attribution. I think I'll point this out to Mr Virtue.

The piece is by someone writing under the name Mary Ann Mueller, who frequently writes for VOL. The same visitor has told me that "Mary Ann Mueller" is a pen name for someone named Sister Thurley Riley, who has been referenced in print as a lady truck driver (scroll down to "Furry Tour Guide") who has since retired, according to the cited source, to become a hermit nun. With what order, and under what supervision, nobody seems to know. I'm scratching my head -- the whole St Mary's story is peppered with digressions into people who use AKAs, as well as hermit religious with puzzling backgrounds.

It appears that Sr Thurley has some sort of contacts with the Houston authorities, and my visitor notes that her birthday is regularly remembered at Our Lady of Walsingham, but can find no other information. Her artilce concludes,

It is still the intention of St. Mary's re-established leadership to enter into the Ordinariate. Following the initial erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, Monsignor Steenson visited the parish to help facilitate the process. but found that the legal entanglements with ACA halted any further progress until the court issues could be resolved.

It is rumored that Archbishop Hepworth attended the enthronement of Bishop Steven Lopes, the Ordinariate's new bishop. However the Ordinariate has never been forthcoming with a list of ecumenical visitors who attended the event earlier this month in Houston.

It is also believed that Archbishop Hepworth is headed to California to personally help shepherd St. Mary's into the Ordinariate. But St. Mary's is mum on providing details or a time frame for the archbishop's visitation nor is the Ordinariate willing to answer any questions.

I'm not sure under what authority she has made any of these statements. At this point, I would assume that any further move by the St Mary's parish to enter the US-Canadian Ordinariate would require further action by the vestry and the membership, since the only affiliation the parish currently recognizes is the Patrimony of the Primate, and much water has passed under the bridge since 2011-12. By the same token, it has been reported to me that Fr Andrew Bartus of the Bl John Henry Newman group in Irvine has stated that the St Mary's parish will not enter the Ordinariate without his approval.

I believe that, at minimum, Bp Lopes would need to clarify Fr Bartus's reported remarks. As a friend of the parish with some sense of both the membership's and the vestry's minds, I surmise that no proposal to resume a process of joining the Ordinariate will be countenanced without firm assurances from the vicar general and Bp Lopes that Fr Bartus, who has acted to damage the parish in the past, would not be involved going forward with the parish in any way.

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Letter to Owen Williams

A copy of a letter from Fr Kelley to Owen Williams, formerly pastor and bishop-in-residence at St Mary of the Angels during some of the time the ACA-Bush group held the premises, has been made available to me. This was mailed on March 17, 2016, and according to the Postal Service, delivered on March 18, although the return receipt has not come back. To date, there has been no reply.
Dear Owen,

As you were never named in any litigation here, I address you directly in matters of concern. This is “pastor to pastor.”

As you know, the California Court of Appeal ruled that our duly-elected Vestry is the lawful body. The Superior Court also found in our favor, as you know; and the Court ordered the Sheriff to restore us to the property. Much mischief has been done by your partisans, by misrepresentations of me according to their fantasies, by slander and worse. 'Bearing false witness' is a crime before God. The fact is, this Parish left the DoW in November, 2010, and entered the Patrimony of the Primate, which continues to this day, uninterrupted. On Saturday, February 5, 2011, we were “disowned” by the ACA, when its Chancellors unanimously ruled that the PoP (being a foreign entity) was “outside the ACA Constitution.” That ruling is legally correct. The Court of Appeal made a similar ruling. This means that all efforts of Strawn and Marsh to contradict their own Chancellors are null and void. The fact is, the method they used to re-insert themselves, by means of a long-contrived fraud using the IRS, was an interstate criminal conspiracy. You deserve to be told the Truth, as I do now to you. You are warned.

The upshot of this is that the missing Parish Register is not yours. It must be returned at once.

Likewise, the Relic of the True Cross, observed & accounted in the Sacristy as recently as the Summer of 2013, is also to be returned forthwith. [If this was gone before your arrival, do so inform me.]

I am not accusing you personally of these acts in violation of God's Commandments, but in case you know of the Perpetrators, you may need to remind them, sternly, that 'Stealing' is forbidden by God.

Among my treasured volumes is Sir Henry Spelman's 1637 text, The History & Fate of Sacrilege. It was 'too hot' to publish in his lifetime. It first saw print in 1691 – yet the Printer kept his anonymity even then! It detailed the horrendous curses visited upon leading English families that had received monastic lands. It was republished by “two priests of the Church of England” in 1841, to mark the return to the Church of the grounds of St Austin's Abbey in Canterbury. {One of them is now known to be John Mason Neale, of blessed memory.} It first saw print with the name of the publisher & final editor in the 1890s! It catalogues the historic consequences of stealing from the Church. Sacrilege is not an offense unpunished by Almighty God. Even the pagans knew this, as Sir Henry demonstrated. How much the more should Christians be attentive & scrupulous in such a grave & sacred matter.

I would remind you, again, of the stolen copy of my 17th C. printing of the complete Ecclesiastical Polity of Richard Hooker – which might be among the books taken from the rear Library. Stolen goods. And, in case you had not otherwise been informed, the yellow wagon that was atop the kitchen stairs is the personal property of John & Jackie Yeager. One of your charges apparently made off with it, & should return it to them.

With good wishes & prayers for your Gospel ministry among a notoriously hard-hearted & errant flock,

/s/[+ Christopher P Kelley]

My own view is that poor Williams is now 60 years old, apparently unwanted at his last parish back in Rochester, NH, and ejected by the sheriff from St Mary of the Angels. A typical "continuing" bishop, he is without formal ecclesiastical education, and his prior work experience ranges from creative writing teacher to lumberyard manager to ski instructor. It would appear that the "continuing Anglican" racket has run its course for him as well, but he has no choice but to avoid giving offense to Mrs Bush or Presiding Bishop Marsh. As a result, he will do nothing, as any move to restore stolen property, or urge anyone else to do so, would provoke them unnecessarily.

I'm wondering if the Armchair Detective over at the Freedom for St Mary of the Angels site might get in touch with his law enforcement contacts once again. The ACA, as I've said before, redefines passive-aggressive. On the other hand, while the powers that be at the ACA All Saints Fountain Valley parish ignored my warnings that their interim, Robert W Bowman, had a child pornography arrest, Bowman miraculously moved on soon after I brought the arrest to the attention of the Fountain Valley police.

Law enforcement may have some good advice to offer in this situation.

Friday, April 1, 2016

More On The CEC And Ordinariate Policy

I got an e-mail from a former TEC-CEC-ACA priest whose views I respect -- unfortunately, my computer seized up, I wound up having to pull the plug to reboot, and it scrambled his e-mail. When he resends it, I'll quote from it extensively.His point, with which I can't disagree, is that there are, in fact, sincere and conscientious priests in the so-called "fringe" denominations, where circumstances may have caused them to leave the more mainstream groups.

In his view, the CEC had some bad bishops, some of whom have moved on to be bishops, bad or not, elsewhere. The rank and file among the priesthood didn't necessarily reflect the conduct at the top, and he sees no reason why priests in such situations should not be considered for ordination in one of the Ordinariates.

My concern is with the appearance of how things have developed in Houston -- Houston states a "policy" in various informal ways that it will not ordain priests who are not coming in with groups -- when it will manifestly do this. Houston states a "policy" in various informal ways that the Ordinariates apply only to certain Anglicans -- when it seems to make exceptions fairly frequently.

The result is that, with a total roster of priests numbering well under a hundred, a remarkable proportion seem to be exceptions -- priests without groups, priests whose Anglican background is at best pro forma.

Presumably it's who you know.

UPDATE: Here's the e-mail from the priest I mentioned above, slightly edited to maintain his privacy:

Let me say two things about my experience in the CEC in the late ‘90s.

One, to be blunt, the CEC was always a personality cult that centered around our “patriarch”, Randolf Adler. Obeisance was paid to Abp. Adler for his founding of the denomination, for its rapid growth, and for the special prophetic “anointing” that all assumed that he possessed. Since the CEC was a personality cult, it all came crashing down when Randy himself went off the tracks in the mid “oughts” (2000’s), and a big church split ensued. That is the shorthand; further research will give you the expanded history, to be sure.

Two, there were many clergymen of the CEC who were better trained and more-legitimately ordained than Randy himself. Our own bishop, Richard Lipka, had been a cradle Roman Catholic, who was trained at the Vatican, was “abd" (all but dissertation) in psychology at Johns Hopkins and, had he not had a charismatic experience, and had he not married and started a family, might have been considered for a Catholic bishopric. He boasted that he had taken a parish in Baltimore from 25 to 700 members while he was a priest in the Episcopal Church during the 1970s and ‘80s. Let the record show whether this was true or not, but I am inclined to believe it. We . . . had priests who had graduated from Lutheran, Methodist and Anglican seminaries.

Once he became a bishop in the CEC, Lipka took the bully pulpit by the horns and, having led the majority of a medium-sized Episcopal congregation out the door in reaction to Pres. Bp. Edmund Browning’s leftist pronouncements, and the apostasy of the Episcopal Church itself, making bold claims of imminent explosive growth, reduced that thriving parish by two-thirds within ten years, before he hightailed it . . . back to Maryland, from whence he hailed. He was a stubborn man, who would not listen to his fellow priests’ precautions about ordaining unqualified men too soon, but who would not budge when it came to minor issues like moving our gathering from one expensive rental space to a cheaper one. Ordination to the episcopacy, and the arrogance that derived therefrom, was the worst thing that could have ever happened to Rich Lipka’s ministry. He left the CEC when the scandal blew up in 2006, and is a bishop of the ACNA in the Chesapeake Bay area now, as far as I know, if he is not retired.

All heretofore notwithstanding, it is my opinion that there are many men in so-called “fringe” denominations, who have either sensed a calling to the ordained ministry, but lack no access to the major players, or who have fallen afoul of their own hierarchy, for one reason or another, who have done their level best to be trained for the ministry, who have pastored a flock, and who have approached the ordinariate, or some other mainstream ecclesial group in good faith, and who now offer themselves for catholic/orthodox ordination and who sometimes bring along with them their congregations, however small, to the greater Church. If these men have taken to the theology and practice of the Anglican patrimony, and have used the Book of Common Prayer as a primer to a more catholic faith and worship, then they should at the very least be considered seriously for ordination within the ordinariate, no matter where they have come from. Consideration is no guarantee of ordination, but surely the missional nature of the Church catholic would call for that consideration, even if there be a need for remedial scholarship and practical training.