Why Not Rome?

by James K. Fitzpatrick on January 4, 2007 · 15 comments

One would think the recent twists and turns of the Episcopal Church in the United States would convince large numbers of Episcopalians to convert to Catholicism. It is not happening. Why not? Let's take this one step at a time.

For starters, you have to admit that if someone had proposed ten years ago that the Episcopal Church would consecrate as a bishop a man like Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual who deserted his wife for his live-in homosexual lover, people would have thought it a heavy-handed satire by a Christian fundamentalist seeking to illustrate the impact of moral relativism on modern society. The reaction would have been similar to what would take place if I suggested that the Episcopal Church within a decade will approve of infanticide to deal with children found to be "defective" in the weeks after their birth. (Want to bet on that one?)

The lesson seems obvious: that there is a need for a central teaching authority, a Magisterium of sorts, to prevent the private interpretation of Christian beliefs from devolving into a worship of the spirit of the age, the religion of fashionable opinion; that Christ would not have come to earth and preached the Gospel to leave His followers as confused about the will of the Father as they were before the Incarnation. Why aren't Episcopalians seeing it that way?

After all, the Greeks and the Romans of the first century were as capable of organizing discussion groups to determine enlightened opinion on moral issues as a group of well-mannered Episcopalians at afternoon tea listening to one of Bishop Robinson's supporters describe the way the "spirit" is talking to us in our time. They did not need the Word becoming Flesh for that. Jesus confronted and challenged the fashionable opinion of His time, the musings of the Scribes and the Pharisees and the adulation of the state promulgated in Rome.

Serious-minded Episcopalians know this, of course. That is why they are refusing to go along with their leaders who are promoting the homosexual agenda. It is as obvious to them as it is to you that one cannot just flip on a centuries-old Christian teaching with an "Ooops…I changed my mind," without destroying credibility. If the Episcopal Church was wrong on homosexuality all this time, why take them seriously on anything else?

In the years since the consecration of Gene Robinson, about three dozen American Episcopal churches have voted to secede and affiliate with provinces overseas. But things seem to be coming to a head in recent weeks. On Sunday, December 17th, the story was all over the newspapers. As the New York Times' reporter phrased it, "the family is breaking up." On December 17, nine Episcopal churches in Virginia announced an overwhelming vote by their parishioners to cut their ties with the Episcopal Church. The Falls Church and Truro Church in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington voted to join the conservative Convocation of Anglicans in North America organization, which is linked to the Episcopal Church of Nigeria. Other churches are considering joining Anglican dioceses in Asia and Latin America. As the Reverend John Yates, rector of the Falls Church, puts it, "The Episcopal ship is in trouble. So we're climbing over the rails down to various little lifeboats. There's a lifeboat from Bolivia, one from Rwanda, another from Nigeria."

Rwanda? Bolivia? Nigeria? Why not Rome? There have been some notable Episcopalian conversions to Catholicism, of course, but not a great wave. What is holding the Episcopalians back?

Some will argue that recent events in the Catholic Church make that step unattractive for them, everything from the sex scandals to the tampering with the liturgy. No doubt there is something to that proposition.  If I were an Episcopalian serious about my beliefs, and I thought of the Catholic Church as the church of Sr. Joan Chittister and Fr. Robert Drinan, I wouldn't be lining up for conversion classes.  But there must be something else going on. Intelligent and informed Episcopalians know that Drinan and Chittister do not represent Catholicism. They know the percentage of Catholic priests caught up in the sex scandals is no greater than that of Protestant clergy involved in the same sort of shameful behavior. We have to look elsewhere.

Some will contend that it is certain Catholic teachings that hold the Episcopalians back, specifically the Church's teachings on divorce and birth control; that Episcopalians who are genuinely convinced that these practices are not immoral cannot reconcile themselves to joining a Church that forbids them — and which therefore is demonstrably in error, in their eyes. Fair enough. But here's the rub: Episcopalians who take this position are saying that their forebears in the Episcopal Church who first challenged their Church's traditional teachings on birth control and divorce — which took place not that long ago — were correct to do so, but that people like Bishop Robinson are not entitled to challenge the current teaching on homosexuality.

How does the logic go? That we should extend the line on acceptable morality to include behaviors and beliefs of mine that clash with traditional Christian beliefs, but not so far as to include those of my less righteous fellow congregants? That sounds like worshipping the spirit of the age to me — just a different spirit of the age. Are we to believe that that is what Jesus wanted for us? I can't help but think that large numbers of Episcopalians have thought this thought.

Which leads me to believe that there is something else that holds the Episcopalians back, something they would be reluctant to admit to in public, not due to any dishonesty on their part as much as to their characteristic good manners. I submit that becoming a Catholic would seem to them too much a betrayal of their people and their family heritage.

We know the stock images of the Episcopalians: tweedy WASPs, the "blue-stocking" crowd, the upper crust, the guardians of the Social Register, the people who can be found at the opening of the Metropolitan opera and at polo matches in the Hamptons. It is a caricature, of course. Not all Episcopalians are like that. But many are, especially those in positions of influence. Central to their understanding of the Episcopal Church is their belief that educated, refined, high-minded, socially conscious people like themselves do not need Rome to preserve a virtuous social order.

Let me be blunt: their belief is that they do not need the Church of the lower-class Irish, Italians and Slavic immigrants to instruct them on righteousness; that their collective religious endeavors will lead to a preservation of what Jesus wants for the modern world. Turning to Rome would mean abandoning the church that was central to the lives of the men and women of their stock who built not just the businesses, grand homes and country clubs of upper class America, but also the museums, universities, libraries and hospitals that represent the best of the American experience.

It is not unfair to say that Episcopalians have traditionally thought of themselves as the moral guardians that would lift the huddled masses to a higher understanding of how one behaved in a well-ordered society, one more enlightened than the priest-ridden world the immigrants left behind. They were convinced that proper people of their class did not need the church of Bishop Sheen and Mother Cabrini to preserve and extend for future generations the correct understanding of what it means to be a good Christian. The serious deliberations of well-intentioned folks of good breeding were enough for that.

It will not be easy for them to say, "I guess we were wrong." Better to turn for leadership to an Anglican bishop in Rwanda or Bolivia, who they believe has correctly preserved the dispensation given to him by the Episcopal Church of old, than to Rome. Even if there is no guarantee that doing so will preserve those teachings for any length of time.

By

  • Guest

    As a convert to Catholicism from the Church of England, I can easily see the parallels between the mother of Anglicanism and the American Episcopalians. Both have become essentially middle-class, old money organizations; both share the engrained English belief that decency is at least equal to holiness, if not preferable to it; “decency” being defined by the polite society of the well-meaning and well-informed – which in our day, means adherence to all the mantras of political correctness.

    However, I think Mr Fizpatrick omits two major obstacles to more widespread conversions. Although the remnants of “Anglo-Catholicism” are still there, conservative High Anglican clergy are a dwindling band; and for many congregations that view themselves as High Church, it is the trappings of Anglo-Catholicism – the vestments, the neo-Gothic architecture, the well-polished liturgy – that define their religious life. Preserve these, and after some harrumphing, many will go along with fundamental doctrinal and moral shifts. Indeed, a similar method was employed when the C of E was originally foisted on Catholic England! And to be fair, when the Church first converted the ancient pagan world.

    No – it is conservative Evangelicals who both offer the greatest resistance to the liberal Protestant agenda, yet find the thought of converting to Rome problematic. Why? Some – relatively few – undoubtedly still see Rome as the whore of Babylon: the enemy of true, personal faith, substituting for it a legalistic religion of observances and submission to human authority. In pursuit of truth, they go on arguing and splintering into ever smaller factions: the classic experience of sincere Protestantism.

    To a great many more, however, the Catholic Church is simply outside their experience. They have no great animus against the Church; many will have admired the late Pope John Paul as a man of obvious vision, faith and holiness; but the Catholic church , certainly in England and Wales, has been very diffident about reaching out to them, partly out of an historic fear of rocking the boat, but largely because the same is true of Catholics – they have little knowledge of what happens outside, despite the obvious debt much current Catholic liturgical practice and thought owe to the Reformed traditions. As an organist, a lady recently approached me after mass to tell me that she loved the “old hymns” like the one I had just played – Charles Wesley’s “Love divine, all loves excelling”, and that she had heard that Protestants had started singing that sort of devotional hymn too! I hadn’t the heart to tell her they had been singing it ever since one of them wrote it. This is of course anecdotal, but illustrative of the sort of religious isolationism common in England, and I suspect in the US too. It is not something our fellow Christians in say, Pakistan, suffer from – they will have a very full awareness of the doctrine and practice of Islam. The Catholic church itself has to reach out, both clergy and laity, if it is to reclaim what is its own.

    The second point follows from this: if we are looking to convert whole bodies rather than individuals, there is no harm in adopting or adapting practices compatible with Catholic truth. The wording of the Book of Common Prayer and its modern derivatives requires very little alteration to render them unambiguously Catholic. I hope the Pope’s advisers are looking at this.

  • Guest

    Becoming Catholic is not a matter of seeing a problem. Every protestant sees the problem of either becoming liberal or becoming schismatic. The problem is they cannot imagine the Catholic solution is right. They are so sure about this they don’t even investigate it. I know It’s difficult to imagine how people can ignore such a large and historical church but I was there just a few years ago. I was even married to a Catholic and active in a Catholic parish and never considered the truth claims of the church. I barely knew what they were. How does that happen? Well, a lot of Catholics don’t know what they are or don’t believe they are true. At the parish I am at they seem more focused on bringing in protestant ideas than defending Catholic doctrine. They were embarassed about Catholic claims to have the fullness of truth.

    Converting will always be hard. I know it impacts you family and your social circle big time. It requires a huge admission that things you believed for as long as you can remember are wrong. The one thing that can make it easier is a human. Someone who can put a face on Catholicism and articulate the belief system well. When we get more of those the converts will start coming. Then internet was the only place I could find such a Catholic. We need them in every parish even to get Catholics to discover their own faith.

  • Guest

    I think the bottom line to the whole issue with the Episcopalins it the lack or void of the Holy Spirit to guide them. The church mission is to change people, make disciples especially in our mordern times and not the contrary.

  • Guest

    I concur that there is a social and cultural issue that makes it difficult for Piskies to cross the Tiber, but it is not so much a refusal to mix with the Micks and the Wogs as it is the deep connection between English-ism and anti-papism. Much of what defines Piskies is being informed by English things, and much of what defines being English is being against the Romish Pope. A part of English patriotism is anti-Romanism. Sometimes that can turn into a social snobbery, too. But the one does not automatically follow the other.

  • Guest

    As a convert from the Episcopal Church to Roman Catholicism I read Mr. Fitzpatrick’s article with interest, and at the risk of sounding like a snob, my issues with joining the Catholic church had to do with the behavior of the people at mass.

    I switched from the glorius Anglican chant to guitar masses, people arriving on time to mass and leaving only when over to folks wandering in and out throughout the service seemingly randomly, Sunday best clothes to jeans and thongs.

    Those were the “culture shocks” for our family—and I come from a long line of Irish peasants—no blue blood here.

  • Guest

    Many years ago, an Episcopal clergyman told me something I have never forgotten. This priest had spent an entire week at a workshop where the main presenters were not theologians. but sociologists. The workshop dealt with the whole topic of church demographics and church growth. What he learned was this: the majority of Episcopalians who leave their church do not go ANYWHERE. In other words, they simply stop going to church altogether.

    To me this underscores the points made by the other commenters here. For a lot of people being Episcopalian is primarily a means of establishing social contacts with certain types of people. If you’ve been brought up in it (as I was), you tend to have the notion that “people like us are Episcopalians.” The whole “faith” thing can often be secondary. No dramatic conversions to Rome for this crowd. These people are cultural Episcopalians in much the same way that many of the Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants to this country were – and to some degree still are – cultural Catholics.

    I’ve always known this, but have only recently come to a greater understanding of it. My friends have all been very supportive of my going into the Catholic Church. No one has been condemnatory. Not one has expressed any sort of overt anti-Catholicism. But if you ask these same people why – given their despair over the current mess in the Episcopal church – they either cannot, or will not, consider doing what I’ve done, you get these long-winded explanations about how they want to continue hanging in there and they want to change things in a more orthodox direction. In the very next breath they will then state that in all likelihood this is NOT going to happen. So they know in their hearts that the church has turned a permanent corner.

    I am also noticing that many of these same dear friends are cutting way back on their level of involvement in the church. Regular church-goers who never, EVER missed Sunday services have turned into people who only seem to be able to get around to going to church once a month, if that. It’s easy, too, when you’re in the empty nest phase of life, to justify this by saying that you’re traveling more now, going to see the grandkids on the weekends and so on. Most of us have grown adult children, and none of these families have produced the next generation of actively involved, church-going Episcopalians. These adult offspring usually do not attend ANY church. I guess the final conclusion here would be that this whole controversy in the Episcopal church is simply contributing to the ongoing ‘secularizion’ of our society that Pope Benedict has written so eloquently about.

  • Guest

    “The second point follows from this: if we are looking to convert whole bodies rather than individuals, there is no harm in adopting or adapting practices compatible with Catholic truth. The wording of the Book of Common Prayer and its modern derivatives requires very little alteration to render them unambiguously Catholic. I hope the Pope’s advisers are looking at this.
    Submitted by Andrew Bowyer on Thu, 01/04/2007 – 2:44am.”

    This has indeed was looked at by Pope John Paul II in 1980 and there is a provision by which a parish may retain elements of the Anglican liturgy (through the Anglican Use) although it must have permission from the local bishop to do so. The wikapedia entry on Anglican Use is a useful starting point with links to Anglican Use Parishes plus the Vatican documents, Anglican Use Society etc. So far there are only Anglican Use parishes in the US.

    I found out about this through the online radio service provided by Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Church which is an Anglican Use parish.

    Emily

  • Guest

    Jolly good responses! If I were to add a thing, it would diminish who have said what they have here . . .

    Just that . . . well . . . as Randy rightfully alludes . . . in any case or sect, ‘ignorance is no excuse’. Christ showed this by marching for thirty-three years into the passionate torture that was His death for us.

    Face the truth; learn the truth; live the truth. And, you folks are doing a marvelous job of it!

    God be with us all this new year, and forever.

    I remain your obedient servant, but God’s first,

    Pristinus Sapienter

    (wljewell @catholicexchange.com or … yahoo.com)

  • Guest

    Most anglicans believe that they already belong to the universal church.
    To be quite honest they do not have a proper understanding of what the church really is. In their belief as long as you are a baptized Christian you are a part of the catholic church. That is why a Catholic may take communion in an Anglican church. They don’t see a problem with it. Just as anglican priests believe that they have proper orders. So – with most of them – I believe it is a matter of preference.

    from an anglican convert whose wife won’t hear of converting but will accompany me to Mass weekdays.
    Walter Brietzke

  • Guest

    I was there too only 5 years ago. The arguments can make some progress, but in all likelihood the questions are arising without being asked, and the explanations will mean little until asked for. Let us all remember to pray for our anglican brethren, and to love them so that when they are ready to ask, they will ask us, or at least we will have set an example they can live with to make it easier.

  • Guest

    As Oscar Wilde said, “the Catholic Church is for saints and sinners alone. For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.” (Note, by the way, that some of Wilde’s aphorisms are included in a recently published book of aphorisms collected by Fr. Sapienza, head of protocol at the Vatican – http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2531949,00.html. Not that this amounts to an imprimatur on the works of Wilde; but it says something admirable about looking for wisdom wherever wisdom may be found.) One can indeed glean much wisdom and truth from a Wildean bon mot. Taking Wilde’s maxims too seriously and too literally, however, is not what Wilde himself would have intended. If Wilde’s writings are, in any way, “dangerous,” they are so only for people who have “irony deficiencies.”

    So it is with the observation that Episcopalians remain Episcopalians basically because they wish to remain culturally “respectable.” My own experience as a former Episcopalian says both Wilde and James Fitzpatrick have correctly identified a certain level of the very complex issue. But to take that explanation too literally would leave us with a skewed perception.

    Regardless of what Anglicanism represents culturally, it has a long spiritual tradition rooted in the earliest centuries of the Catholic Church: monastic spirituality and its liturgical ethos. (I admit that the line between spirituality and culture can be very thin, if non-existent. But for the sake of argument, . . .) Catholicism, following the rise of scholasticism, the Protestant Reformation, and the Counter-Reformation, has largely shifted its focus to spiritual and liturgical emphases that ignore the monastic heritage of the Church. (By monastic I do not mean the Jansenist-inflected understanding of religious life that was widespread in the pre-conciliar Church. In all of these questions of culture, spirituality, liturgy, and so on, we need to take a much longer view than merely the past several centuries.) Because of the importance of monasticism in the very fabric of English culture and society at the time of the English Reformation, Anglicanism took a different spiritual and liturgical course than either continental Protestantism or Counter-Reformational Catholicism.

    I suggest that Anglicanism’s striking successes (some might say “excesses”) on aesthetic grounds have obscured an adequate exploration of what it offers by way of having maintained and developed an ancient spiritual tradition and liturgical ethos that predates the Protestant Reformation. Rome has apparently acknowledged this contribution by accepting a modified form of the Book of Common Prayer in the Book of Divine Worship, used by parishes that come under the 1980 Pastoral Provision for the “Anglican Use.”

    May I propose reading an article I wrote on this issue? (The article does not state my own thesis, but attempts merely to update the claim made much more eloquently by others.) It can be found (in its revised form) at: http://www.anglicanuse.org/TheMonasticQualityofAnglicanism.pdf

    Identifying Episcopalians as archetypal WASPs, with blue-blood pedigrees, coming from “old money,” and so on is not, historically, without its element of truth. Moreover, focusing on these characteristics/caricatures from other cultural perspectives (Irish, German, Italian, Hispanic, and so on) reveals yet other elements of truth. For instance, no matter how resolutely theological our observations might be, there’s a cultural subtext in asking why “they” might consider themselves to be too good for the likes of “us.” Might there also be some worry about what will happen, culturally, if “they” really do join “us”? But perhaps its time that we look at the Episcocrat stereotype with a healthy does of irony (after all, Episcopalians themselves do) and as something of a red herring. Instead, we need to acknowledge, I believe, that there are, in the words of Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism, different forms of spiritual life and discipline, that there is (or should be) a variety of liturgical rites, and that there are various theological elaborations of revealed truth. Many Episcopalians are as reluctant to jettison their spiritual and cultural heritage as—let’s face it—many Catholics would be if the underlying theological and ecclesiological tables were turned. To give up one’s spiritual heritage, which is what Episcopalians considering conversion to the Catholic Church know they must face, is not an easy thing to contemplate much less to do.

    If I may mention my own experience, I’ve never had the least shadow of doubt on my decision to “swim the Tiber” twenty years ago. But I’ve had to acknowledge that in some ways, the Catholic Church in the U.S., in some of its spiritual and cultural expressions, is not truly my home. I see this as a good thing, frankly. Having been cut off, for 20 years, from the liturgical tradition with which I most completely identify, I have found myself—by default and not by virtue or wisdom—to be at quite a distance from some of the issues in the liturgy wars that have been waged in the Catholic Church of the past couple of decades. For this and many other reasons, then, the costs have been worth it. But I won’t blithely tell an Episcopalian that the costs of converting aren’t real.

  • Guest

    As an “Orthodox Anglican” priest in the Diocese of San Joaquin (central California)which is taking steps to separate itself from the Episcopal Church (as a Diocese) I found Mr. Fitzpatrick’s article interesting, thought provoking and a tad condescending all in one.

    While I am appalled at the state of the Episcopal Church and consider it seriously heterodox on multiple fronts, the Catholic church retains much that a biblical, historical and universal Christian can find hard to swallow.

    I think it might be more helfpul to focus on perfecting ones own church rather than criticisizing the motivations of others in not being attracted to it. By doing so you have the advantage of both taking the higher ground (attractive in itself) as well as removing real (and unneccessary) obstacles to others who may be tempted to join.

    As for a few of Mr. Fitzpatrick’s suggestions–I happen to think the Catholic church is correct on most items of both theological and ethical dispute with the Episcopal Church (so do most of my colleagues). I believe the Catholic church is right on abortion, euthanasia & birth control. I was an admirer of John Paul II and am a huge fan of Pope Benedict.

    Mr. Fitzpatrick mentions the Catholic view on Divorce and the sex scandals as disincentives to “conversion.” However, it’s the implementation rather than the theology that causes difficulty. I am pleased with the high view of marriage the Church upholds, but appalled with what appears to be the hypocrital abuse of annulments. And, while Mr. Fitzpatrick rightly points out other churches have their sex scandals, the Episcopal church, for one is a generation ahead of American Catholicism in disciplining its clergy.

    Culturally, it is helpful to understand that most churches have their social-economic components this is true within the Episcopal church as well as across denominations. I’ve had people leave churches where I have been called to serve because the Baptist or Methodist church in town was “the place to be seen”–so Episcopalians do not have a lock on that aspect of the culture.

    I happened to Grow up in the suburburbs of Detroit. And my experience was that if your heretage was Italian or Polish you were Catholic, if it was English, Lebanese or West Indian you were Anglican. My roots are English so I grew up Episcopalian. If I was raised in the Catholic church I would be a Catholic. I am certainly called to serve Christ above all and to serve him where he calls me to serve. Sometimes the call is neither atractive nor pleasant, but I don’t believe we’re guaranteed either on this side of paradise. I will remain in the Episcopal Church or somewhere in the Anglican Communion until the Lord calls me out of it. But sometimes we’re called to serve in the least preferable places to help others who are also in the mire see the truth. You can do a lot more from the inside than the outside.

    As a final thought, I hope Mr. Fitzpatrick has realized by now that his parting shot in criticism of those in the Episcopal Church that “It will not be easy for them to say, ‘I guess we were wrong.’” Is “Laugh-Out-Loud” funny to anyone outside the Catholic church looking in. It calls to mind something about “living in glass houses” or “pots calling kettles black.”

    The Rev. Michael Fry, Rector
    St. Mary’s Episcopal Church
    Fresno, CA

  • Guest

    Rev. Fry – ‘disciplining your clergy’? – while noting that you have become so dreadfully heterodox that you are falling apart at nearly every seam?

    Just what ‘discipline’ – who is abiding? Are you saying that, of the tight issue of scandalous sex behavior, your church has an edge? Indeed, perhaps, if adultery were accounted in with sex abuse of young, we would find just how advisable celibacy is.

    You do not like the patronizing condescension, huh? How else does one demonstrate what he or she believes is the higher order? The higher order itself is a patronization, a condescension; and the evangelizer is surely ‘patronizing’; yea, and even in a good sense.

    Then, too, your post . . . quite . . . condescends. Indeed, I detect a bit of the ‘sniff’ about those ethnic Catholics.

    Through Christ, with Christ, in Christ,

    Pristinus Sapienter

    (wljewell @catholicexchange.com or … yahoo.com)

  • Guest

    Rev. Fry,

     

    Thank you for a practicing Anglican’s perspective on this discussion.

     

    While you may have a point about the Catholic Church not being without it’s own problems. It appears to an outsider that the Episcopal Church’s problems stem from moral confusion.

     

    The Catholic Church’s central teaching authority makes it very clear what a Catholic may consider moral, and what he may not.

     

    I feel our problems stem more from a lack of leadership at the Diocese level, and apathy at the parish level. We could sure use an influx of sincere Christians like you, and the others “in the mire” with you.

     

    Tom Tobin

  • Big Al

    Hey, Jimmie, I’ve got a reason why an Episcopalian who is distainful of the changes in the Episcopal Church might not want to become Catholic: by joining the Catholic Church, one would have to put up with people like you.
    When one considers all the crimes committed in the name of a certain religion, (Croatia in WWII for example) the charge of being a TWEEDY W.A.S.P. seems mild indeed.
    Big Al