If you have been an Anglican in North America for more than a decade or two, there is an experience you have almost certainly had. You have known someone who got up one day and jumped into the Tiber River. In fact, you may know many people who did that. The departures to the Roman Catholic Church are especially pronounced among the young, the highly educated, and those who came to Anglicanism as disaffected evangelicals. But by no means are these the only groups. Just in the last few months there have been high-profile conversions of older leaders in the conservative Anglican world, including a prominent rector of one of the largest parishes in the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA).[1]
Why? From the perspective of our fellow Christians who are Catholics, the answer is simple enough: truth wins, and the bark of St. Peter is always willing to rescue those who find themselves in the water. But if you, dear reader, are still an Anglican, that explanation will not satisfy.
For those of us who are Anglicans, the question is not simply why this or that conversion to Rome happens. The question goes deeper: what is it about Anglicanism that makes it so susceptible to conversions to the Catholic Church? There are conversions to Rome by Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians, but not nearly so many. Why is Anglicanism so vulnerable?
The enigma deepens if viewed in historical perspective. It has not always been this way. There has always been an occasional convert from Canterbury to Rome, and vice-versa, but once the Reformed English Church took shape under Queen Elizabeth I, this was a two-way trickle, not a one-way stream. The change begins with John Henry Newman. Since his conversion to Rome in 1845, there has been a steady and disproportionate flow of Anglicans into the Catholic Church. For modern Anglicans, especially conservative Anglicans in North America, the pace of the conversions seems to have quickened. Again, why? Read More
They made Newman a saint last October. They need to beatify the composers of the 1979BCP (Urban T. Holmes et al)- the hallway opening to Rome of the 20th and 21st centuries.
ReplyDeleteI understand that Cardinal Newman performed the requisite number of miracles to qualify him for beatification in the Church of Rome. Greg Goebel posted an article on Anglican Compass in which he claims as a part of the Anglican tradition what are actually recent additions to the American Prayer Book. They reflect the influence of the twentieth century ecumenical and liturgical movements upon the compilers of the Episcopal Church's 1979 BCP and the influence of the 1979 BCP upon the Anglican Church in North America's 2019 BCP. Goebel is a ACNA presbyter and one of its re-interpreters of the Anglican tradition. Goebel was originally a pastor of a non-denominational church who was attracted to the ritualism of the ACNA. As I drew to his attention in the comment section of his post, these additions were largely borrowed from other ecclesiastical traditions. In some cases they are reconstructions of what was supposedly the practice of the early church. They were not part of the reformed Church of England's practice. To regard them as representing Anglicanism, one must view Anglicanism as a kind of modeling clay which each generation of self-identified Anglicans can shape to their liking. Goebel's article was reposted on Church Leaders. Regrettably its editors did not do their homework before publishing the article.
ReplyDeleteIt might be interesting to determine what statistics might apply to the number of Episcopal clergy who are former Roman Catholics, as well as the number of lay folk who have come from Rome.
ReplyDeleteWhen I attended General Seminary in the late '70s, many if not most of the same textbooks were in use as I had encountered in graduate studies at Fordham University, the training ground for Jesuit postulants.
I would be surprised to discover if the transition from Catholic to Protestant (Anglican) ministry were as fluent in the Church of England (or the Church of Ireland for that matter) as in the United States - in recent years especially.
It would be curious to know what percentage of "Continuing" Anglican clergy - including those of the new ACNA - are former Catholics. I have encountered a substantial number in my forty years in that movement. Crossing the Tiber may have been made easy but crossing the Thames (from the Abbey to the Cathedral??) much the same.
From what I have read, Charles, the Roman Catholic Church is losing more people to Protestant churches than it is gaining from them, particularly in South America. Protestant conversions to Roman Catholicism, however, tend receive more media attention because they tend to involve high profile individuals. I was involved in a Southern Baptist church plant in southeastern Louisiana in which a large segment of the population is nominally Roman Catholic and the Roman Catholic Church was actually experiencing growth in communities on the North Shore--in St. Tammany Parish across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. In Louisiana counties are called parishes, a carryover from the days when Louisiana was a French colony. We had a substantial number of former Roman Catholics in our congregation--particularly individuals divorced or separated from their spouse. A number of these former Roman Catholics, while they had been baptized and even confirmed as Roman Catholics, had not regularly attended Mass and were considered lapsed Roman Catholics in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. The United Methodist church plant in which I had previously been involved attracted couples where one spouse was Roman Catholic and the other was Protestant. It had weekly communion and served as a bridge church for such couples. Before 2003 St. Michael's, the Episcopal church that I helped to pioneer and in which I was involved for fifteen years also served as a bridge church. The North Shore is a fairly socially and politically conservative part of the state and the Episcopal Church's consecration of a practicing homosexual bishop would cost the Episcopal churches on the North Shore not only new members but also longtime members.
ReplyDeleteAmong the factors that attract evangelical and non-denominational pastors to the Anglican Church in North America is its use of the more recent Anglican service books and its embracing of the Ancient-Future Church/worship renewal movement of the last 30 odd years. These pastors share a penchant for ritualism. They are fascinated with the so-called undivided Church of the first eleven centuries of Christianity and its rites and ceremonies. From what I gather, the ACNA is attracting more clergy in this category than it is attracting Roman Catholic clergy. They are part of a wave of Protestant clergy that migrated to the Episcopal Church before 2003, attracted by its use of the 1979 BCP, or launched new denominational bodies that used the 1979 BCP. They have tended to be Arminian or charismatic/Pentecostal in their theology.
The ACNA does have a number of former Roman Catholics who entered the ACNA by way of the Episcopal Church. They became clergy in the Episcopal Church and then migrated to the ACNA when it was formed.
A factor that may affect the pre-ACNA Continuing Anglican Churches's ability to attract Roman Catholic clergy disaffected from the Roman Catholic Church over such issues as celibacy and clergy marriage is their use of the older Anglican service books, including the Anglican Missal. Most of these clergy are post-Vatican II. They are accustomed to the contemporary language rites of the Roman Catholic liturgical books that were produced after Vatican II. Those who have clung to the older Tridentian Mass are more likely to migrate to one of the independent Catholic Churches that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church than to a Continuing Anglican Church.
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