Anglicans swimming the Tiber, a one-year report

It's natural for any employee to want to know just how committed the big boss is to the company's future and, especially, to the expansion project that includes his job. So, even though Pope Benedict XVI didn't make it to America in person, Father Jason Catania still appreciated the message he sent to the former Episcopal priests and others who swam the Tiber to Rome after the pontiff's controversial "Anglicanorum Coetibus ("groups of Anglicans") pronouncement in 2009.

"We didn't just wake up one morning last year and said, 'Why don't we join the Catholic Church?' Many of us have made personal and financial sacrifices over the years to do this," said Catania, who leads Mount Calvary Church in Baltimore. This was the first American parish that voted to enter one of the new "personal ordinariates" -- the equivalent of nationwide dioceses -- that would allow Anglicans to retain key elements of their liturgy, music, art and other traditions, such as married priests.

"We were very intentional and took many steps toward Rome on this journey," he said. "Now we're starting to see the results of the Vatican's strategic step toward us."

Clergy and supporters of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter gathered at its home base in Houston last week to mark the first anniversary of this outreach effort in America. Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller, the new leader of the Vatican's powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, offered his share of theological commentary on this project, but made it clear that his main message was personal.

"For most of you, this has been a journey into the unknown. ... I want you to know that the Holy Father is following with great interest the establishment and development of the ordinariate," he said, in his prepared Feb. 2 text. It is common knowledge in Rome, he added, that this is "very much the 'pope's project.' I have come to understand how true that is. You are very much in his thoughts and prayers."

So far, Benedict XVI has approved two other bodies for Anglicans and those loyal to Anglican traditions and worship -- the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in England and the new Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross in Australia. British critics greeted these efforts with a skepticism, if not scorn, symbolized by this headline in The Times: "Rome has parked its tanks on the Archbishop of Canterbury's lawn."

In addition to the Anglican doubters and all those who accused the pope of being "an ecumenical poacher," the special arrangements built into these ordinariates have caused skepticism among some Catholics, Muller admitted. However, there is no easy way to begin the work of closing a schism that has lasted for centuries. Only displays of true unity and slow, careful growth will bring healing, he said.

"Anglicans will be interested in what kind of reception you receive and how well you are able to make a home in the Catholic Church that is more than just assimilation," he said. "Catholics will want to know that you are here to stay, strengthening our ecclesial cohesion rather than setting yourselves apart as another divisive grouping within the Church. It is safe to say that all eyes are now on you and your parish communities. ...

"Your decision to 'put out into the deep' in favor of the unity of Christ's Church must be developed and extended in the promotion of a culture of communion of which you are the architects."

During the first year of its work -- while leaders wrestled with thickets of legal and liturgical questions -- the North American ordinariate ordained or accepted 30 new priests, all former Anglicans, and took in 1,600 members from 36 parish communities. It is now expanding into Canada, preparing for a second wave of incoming clergy and making plans for its own chancery facilities in Houston.

The Vatican's goal has been to "build a safe haven for orthodox people who don't mind saying that they're loyal to the Holy Father and to the church," said Catania, who attended the Houston meetings.

"Our goal was to show that we're not just a bunch of Episcopalians who wanted to get out of that church. ... We always thought of ourselves as Catholics, but now our Catholic identity is clear to everyone. We made it all the way home."

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."