A long Anglican road to Rome

In the fall of 1979, a cluster of Episcopalians made another trip to Rome seeking a haven for Anglo-Catholic believers anxious to exit their increasingly divided church. Vatican officials agreed that it was time to petition their new leader, the young Pope John Paul II. The document was prepared and then signed on the altar of the North American Martyrs at Rome's North American College. In it, members of the Society of St. Augustine of Canterbury and other like-minded clergy made a blunt request.

"We pray and beseech your Holiness to receive and accept us into the Roman Catholic Church," they wrote, "for we are sheep not having a shepherd and would return to the care of that Holy Apostle singularly commissioned by the Divine Lord to feed his sheep."

The pope soon said "yes." But that simply opened another chapter in a long, long, story, one that continues decades later.

There is certainly more to this story than headlines about a sudden decision by Pope Benedict XVI to commence sheep stealing in the wake of his "Anglicanorum Coetibus ("groups of Anglicans") pronouncement in 2009. This document allowed Anglican priests and congregations to join new "personal ordinariates," the equivalent of national dioceses, while retaining key elements of their liturgy, music and other traditions. The plan allows for married men to become priests, but not bishops -- as in Eastern Rite Catholicism.

In England, The Times knocked this 2009 plan, saying, "Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury's lawn." Today, tensions remain high on both sides of the Atlantic after a Jan. 1 announcement that the ordinariates are set to open.

It's almost laughable to call these developments "sudden" or the result of unilateral actions by the pope, said Father Allan Hawkins of St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church in Arlington, Texas, a priest in the Church of England before coming to America. The roots of these events even predate the Episcopal Church's 1976 vote to ordain women as priests and later to the episcopate.

"The end of the '70s was important, but this really goes back to the Oxford Movement," said the 77-year-old priest, referring to a mid-1800s surge toward Anglo-Catholicism. While the ordination of women "made headlines, it was just a symptom of what was happening deep down. ...

"So many of us had yearned all our lives to be part of a church with a clear sense of authority. That yearning is what pulled us to Catholicism."

Converts had been "trickling into Rome" for decades, he noted. Still, more Anglicans made the move under the "Pastoral Provision" announced in 1980, which stopped short of creating a separate, Anglican-friendly "personal ordinariate."

Another pivotal moment came in the early 1990s, when the Church of England voted to ordain women. At that point, it appeared a sweeping "Roman Option" might become a reality, and the late Cardinal George Hume said the time was right for the "conversion of England for which we have prayed all these years. ... It could be happening -- a realignment of English Christianity."

But some in the British hierarchy stalled, including liberal Catholic who feared waves of traditionalist converts committed to conservative approaches to liturgy and doctrine. The key Vatican official in these talks, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, finally exclaimed: "What are the English bishops afraid of?"

Ratzinger, of course, is now Pope Benedict XVI. His years of personal contact with Anglicans seeking shelter eventually led to "Anglicanorum Coetibus."

Thus, on Jan. 22, Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore will enter the U.S. ordinariate -- the first Episcopal congregation that voted to take that step. Father Jason Catania, it's priest, expects to complete his own journey sometime this coming summer.

At that point, he will do something that once seemed unthinkable. Catania will kneel at his parish altar, as a Catholic priest, and recite one of Anglicanism's most famous texts -- the Prayer of Humble Access from the 1662 edition of The Book of Common Prayer.

"That's the prayer just before Holy Communion, the one that begins, 'We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table,' " said Catania, quoting from memory.

"That's when I will know that this has really happened, that we are finally home."

Bill Keller vs. the religious aliens

Less than a year after 9/11, a New York Times columnist stunned the newspaper's remaining conservative readers by suggesting that both the Vatican and Al Qaeda were on the wrong side in the global war against oppression. "The struggle within the church" in recent decades, he argued, is "interesting as part of a larger struggle within the human race, between the forces of tolerance and absolutism. That is a struggle that has given rise to great migrations (including the one that created this country) and great wars (including one we are fighting this moment against a most virulent strain of intolerance)."

After all, he noted: "This is ... the church that gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition."

The symbolism of "Is the Pope Catholic?" increased a year later when the self-proclaimed "collapsed Catholic" who wrote the essay was selected as the new executive editor of the Times.

Now, shortly before stepping down as editor, Bill Keller has ignited another firestorm with a Times column arguing that religious believers -- especially evangelicals and conservative Catholics -- should face stricter scrutiny when seeking higher office.

After all, he noted, if a candidate insists that "space aliens dwell among us," isn't it crucial to know if these beliefs will shape future policies?

Yet Keller also claimed: "I honestly don't care if Mitt Romney wears Mormon undergarments beneath his Gap skinny jeans, or if he believes that the stories of ancient American prophets were engraved on gold tablets and buried in upstate New York, or that Mormonism's founding prophet practiced polygamy (which was disavowed by the church in 1890). Every faith has its baggage. ... I grew up believing that a priest could turn a bread wafer into the actual flesh of Christ."

What gave this manifesto legs online was his decision to draft tough questions for suspicious believers such as Romney, Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum. After all, he argued, voters need to know "if a candidate is going to be a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed."

For starters, he said, journalists should ask these candidates if America is a "Christian nation" and what this would mean in practice. And if elected, would they hesitate before naming a Muslim or atheist as a federal judge? Voters also need to know if candidates hold orthodox Darwinian views on evolution.

Journalist Anthony Sacramone, who blogs at the journal First Things, was one of many conservatives who immediately turned Keller's questions inside out. For example, he thought reporters could ask some candidates: "Do you think that anyone who believes in the supernatural is delusional? If so, do you believe they should be treated medically?" Here's another one: "Do you believe that there is such a thing as life unworthy of life? Explain."

The problem with Keller's essay, argued Amy Sullivan, author of "The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap," is that it settled for aiming tough questions at Republicans, instead of seeking relevant questions sure to probe the beliefs of all candidates.

"If a candidate brings up his faith on the campaign trail," she noted, blogging for Time, "there are two main questions journalists need to ask: (1) Would your religious beliefs have any bearing on the actions you would take in office? And (2) If so, how?"

Another reason Keller's piece created controversy and hostility was that it contained crucial errors, such as grouping Santorum -- an active Catholic -- with GOP candidates "affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity." It didn't help, noted Sullivan, that his piece "read like a parody of an out-of-touch, secular, Manhattan journalist," with its references to evangelicals as "mysterious" and "suspect."

It was also easy to contrast the tone of Keller's broadside with the values he preached in a 2005 letter -- entitled "Assuring Our Credibility (.pdf)" -- that tried to address the concerns of his newspaper's critics, including many who frequent religious sanctuaries.

It is especially important, he concluded, for all members of the Times staff to make a "concerted effort ... to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation. … This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in."

Amarillo makes Catholic news -- again

The Catholic Diocese of Amarillo is not the kind of place that makes national news very often.

Yet the bishop of the Texas high plains did precisely that in 1981 when he took an idealistic -- some said foolhardy -- stand to defend the sanctity of life. Bishop Leroy Matthiesen urged workers at the nearby Pantex plant to walk away from their jobs assembling nuclear weapons.

Peace activists cheered, while big-league journalists rushed to cover the story.

A quarter of a century later, the tiny Diocese of Amarillo is back in the news and, once again, its leaders are speaking out on the sanctity of life. This time, the conservative Bishop John Yanta is providing a home for a new Catholic society dedicated to activism against abortion, euthanasia, the death penalty and other symptoms of what the late Pope John Paul II called the "culture of death."

The priest who leads the new Missionaries of the Gospel of Life society isn't expecting media cheers this time, although he believes there is a connection between these life-and-death issues, from nuclear bombs to unborn babies.

"All human life is sacred and whatever the threat to it is, the church must be there speaking out," said Father Frank Pavone, director of the existing Priests For Life Network and founder of the new organization for priests, deacons and laity. "Silence is not an option when lives are at stake."

It may seem odd for this project to be based in such a remote location, in a 26-county diocese with only 49 parishes spread across 25,800 square miles. Amarillo certainly represents a change for Pavone, who grew up near New York City and was ordained by the late Cardinal John O'Connor into that powerful 397-parish archdiocese.

Rome has given the Missionaries of the Gospel of Life approval to train and direct the ministries of its own priests. The society hopes to claim Mother Teresa and John Paul II, author of the Evangelium Vitae ("Gospel of Life") encyclical, as its patron saints.

"The idea of a new religious community founded for the purpose of working to protect human life may seem like a sign of contradiction -- but it may just be what the world of today needs," wrote Cardinal Renato Martino of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. "The call to protect life is ... the very basis of our recognition of human rights."

Pavone said 50 men have already attended retreats to learn more about the society, while 300 have inquired by email. Meanwhile, 15 priests are talking to their bishops about joining.

"I do not know how large we will be. It could be 40 priests or it could be 400. There will also be deacons and lay people involved," said Pavone.

While some of these priests may be based in parishes, most will travel nationwide taking part in protests and teaching clergy and laity how to lead demonstrations and to counsel women who have had abortions. In effect, they will do what Pavone has done with Priests For Life, including his high-profile work with the parents of Terri Schiavo, who died last March in Florida after her feeding tube was removed.

This is precisely what worries Planned Parenthood leaders, who have circulated an Institute for Democracy Studies report claiming that Pavone and his associates have consistently presented a "moderate" face to the public, while supporting clinic blockades and other illegal protest activities. "Priests for Life say they oppose violence, but their actions send a different message," according to the report.

The Missionaries of the Gospel of Life will continue to be committed to public marches and prayer vigils, with a renewed emphasis on nonviolence, order and the leadership of trained clergy, said Pavone, during a visit to Washington, D.C., for last week's annual March For Life.

"If a priest or a bishop comes out and leads a protest or a prayer service, then you don't have a leadership vacuum that can lead to trouble," he said.

"People are going to protest against abortion. This issue is that central to our faith. Would you rather have protests by trained people who are well organized and have responsible leaders or would you rather have protests that are random and chaotic? That's the question people on the other side need to be asking."