I have a certain sympathy for John Bruce because I understand, or I think I understand, his motivation. He is in search of justice for the Ordinariate-hopeful members of St. Mary of the Angels in Los Angeles and recently he has been doing a series of posts to explain —to anyone willing to give a fair glance—the circumstances that gave rise to charges of financial mismanagement and so on.
A while back, he had several posts that debunked the TAC’s numbers.
Interestingly, I have come across a census that was taken in either late 2009 or early 2010 of TAC members. Of course one would not expect Archbishop Hepworth to travel to each parish and count heads. Instead he would have relied on information sent him or given him by phone or Skype or visits by the various bishops in charge.
I looked at the figures for Canada and they were pretty accurate for the state of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada before parishes hived themselves off and/or we faced parish splits.
Canada:
Dioceses: 1
Suffragan Bishops: 2
Parishes: 38
Priests: 64
Deacons: 2
Laity: 1,200
Here are the figures for India and Southern Africa:
India:
Dioceses: 10
Suffragan Bishops: -
Parishes: 256
Priests: 368
Deacons: 28
Laity: 91,600
Southern Africa:
Dioceses: 1
Suffragan Bishops: -
Parishes: 56
Missions: 31
Priests: 25
Deacons: 7
Catechists: 53
Laity: 28,000
I wonder if anyone else can attest to the accuracy of these figures. Fr. Smuts, do the numbers for Southern Africa sound about right?
There are also figures for Japan, Puerto Rico, Latin America, and several other African countries. What ever happened to Kenya? Japan? Puerto Rico?
Anyway, I know some of the bishops, like Louis Falk and Craig Botterill have traveled to some of these countries and seen evidence of real parishes and people. Of course Hepworth also traveled quite widely to visit far-flung areas as well.
I sympathize with John Bruce, really. You’re put into a position where you know you’re right, and everyone else either don’t care, keep misunderstanding, or believe someone else who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or believe a bunch of people who have it in their best interest to make you look as crazy as possible.
In such situations, you’ve got a right to be angry. We are not statues of saints, we get angry, damn it! And then we go to confession, because we’re all weak sinners who love God and fear Hell.
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It seems to me that these figures need a very, very healthy dose of skepticism. Keep in mind that in late 2009 or early 2010, Hepworth was still expecting some potential preferment from the RC Church for his position vis-a-vis the Ordinariates, and he had every reason to exaggerate the numbers he was potentially bringing in. Louis Falk’s public statements, as well as even his stance on whether he himself would go into the Ordinariate, are already in serious conflict. This should normally affect his overall credibility. As “Archbishop” he was also rector of a parish numbering 25. Keep in mind as well that estimates of total TAC membership from Hepworth or those close to him during this period were 4-500,000 — even if we were to take an estimate of 91,000 laity in India at face value, as well as the rest of these, this would probably put the most optimistic estimate of TAC membership closer to 100,000, but I still don’t think this is remotely credible. But also, I believe Stephen Smuts has promised Athony Chadwick that Bishop Gill would send him actual numbers for Southern Africa some weeks ago. I was going to follow up with Fr Chadwick as to the status of this — Smuts implied it was gonna happen real, real soon. But beyond that, how do you relate the numbers you’ve seen to estimates in the Austrialian press of the ACCA at 400 laity? How can a major franchise of the denomination be so small, with the estimates of the others be exponentially larger? And what of the absence of estimates for the ACA, which is to the TAC as The Episcopal Church is to the Anglican Communion?
John Bruce, why do you insist on assuming Hepworth was exaggerating his numbers to the Catholic Church? If there were exaggerations, could it be possible they lie with the bishops of the respective constituent TAC churches who were asked to give an accurate rending of their communicants? For someone who objects to the way people have leapt to conclusions about the situation at St. Mary of Angels, you seem to leap to quick conclusions yourself. I did not include the whole census, which included other African churches. I wonder what happened to them? Kenya, Zambia, Congo?
The other thing that makes me more confident about the original numbers is this: the remaining TAC bishops decided to make Archbishop Prakash their acting Primate. Some of those bishops have traveled to India and seen for themselves that he was not pulling numbers out of the air, or I would at least give the benefit of a doubt that they had.
The census I have reports TAC worldwide numbers at around 200,000 and is more modest than the numbers Bill Tighe came up with that Fr. Chadwick has posted.
For the sake of history, I am interested in the truth regarding these figures, but I resist the notion Hepworth made up a worldwide communion out of thin air and gleefully filled in the numbers without having anything to back up the claims.
Wow. As a canonically-resident Priest (albeit now retired due to the fact that I can’t even find a real parish anywhere within 300 km of me) in the Anglican Church of India (TAC) – all I can tell you is, if there are indeed “91,600 lay-members” of the COI/TAC, they certainly are well-hidden. P.S. I was Curate at St. Mary of the Angels, Hollywood from 1996-2007.