Being an Episcopalian - How That Lead Me to Catholicism

I didn't spend much time attending the Episcopal church - probably no more than a year or year-and-a-half. However, I believe my time in this faith tradition was a very significant event in my journey to the Catholic Church. I've written before about my time as an unofficial Episcopalian, but I think it's good to mention it again.

I say unofficial because I never actually joined the Episcopal church, although I came close to doing so. I had never even considered the Episcopalians until my grandparents died. In the Protestant tradition, there is no belief in purgatory and there is a perception that the Saints have much better things to do than worry about us on earth. This bleak view gave me a sorrow that I couldn't fill - I missed my grandparents terribly and was searching for some way to remain connected to them. At first, I was interested in the Freemasons because my grandfather had been one. Through my laziness, even though I had books about Masonry and membership pamphlets from the local lodge, I never handed anything in - this is good, since a person cannot be both an active Freemason and a Catholic. This is not to judge the individual members - it's just that the principles of Freemasonry as an organization are incompatible with the Church (for instance, the Italian group of Freemasons named Alta Vendita said, "Our final end is that of Voltaire and the French Revolution, the annihilation of Catholicity..."). So, I am sure it wasn't just my laziness stopping me!

I don't remember when I first had the idea of driving to the Episcopal church a couple towns away, if it was the spur of the moment or if I thought about it for a while. I remember it was a weekend when my younger brother was visiting (I think he was home from college for the summer and I still lived with my parents at the time). I found the website of the local church, saw when their liturgy was, and encouraged my brother to go with me. We walked up to the church and followed the others who were walking in. We sat in the very back and observed everyone - some of the older people genuflected and made the sign of the cross before entering the pew. In front of me was an altar and above it a bare cross bookended by icons of St. Stephen and the Virgin Mary. Services began with the people and choir singing a hymn as the altar servers, priest, and female deacon proceeded into the sanctuary. I thought to myself, "Holy crap, this looks awfully Catholic..." After a prayer, the priest then walked through the sanctuary, sprinkling the people with holy water. My brother and I looked at each other and I remember that we both had a "What is all of this crap?" look on our faces. I hadn't been to a Catholic church before, but I knew immediately that all of this looked very Catholic to me and I was very uncomfortable.

I don't remember anything else except that they had communion and I went to receive. The Episcopalians believe that any baptized Christian can receive communion, so I went to the altar and knelt at the rail. I was kind of grossed out at the idea of sharing a chalice with strangers, so I held onto my host and dipped it into the chalice (intinction) before consuming it. As we drove back after services, I can only remember feeling weird about the whole thing. I didn't know why, but I wanted to go back again. My brother wound up coming with me once more and we were surprised to see they were having communion again! In the Presbyterian church we'd have communion once a quarter, but they had it every week? How bizarre!

I can't remember if I went every week at first or if I built up to that over time, but however it happened for the first time since I was a young teen I was going to church every Sunday. I started to see all of these "Catholic" things that I had never seen before: genuflection, a rosary, Stations of the Cross, weekly communion, the sign of the cross, beautiful vestments, kneelers, a universal liturgy throughout (most of) the entire Communion; I started to warm up to a list of things that I had never even considered before. I believe that this was preparing me for full communion in the Catholic Church.

I was so curious about what I was seeing; I couldn't explain it, but I was "eating it up". I remember one day they had their retired bishop celebrate the liturgy. I couldn't explain it, but I was mesmerized watching him walk in with his miter, crosier, and beautiful vestments. However, the closer I got to the Episcopal church, the harder they were pushing me away. They had consecrated a bishop who divorced his wife and was currently living in a homosexual relationship. Although at the time I didn't see anything wrong with women deacons (I still saw them through the eyes of a Presbyterian, that they were just helping the pastor and were not a division of holy orders), I was still opposed to women priests and bishops - although I had never learned the Catholic belief that a priest is an alter christus and that bishops were the successors to the apostles, I could still feel deep down that something was amiss. I was disturbed by all the divisions within Anglicanism - from very "low church" to very "high church" and everything in between. There were even priests and bishops who where advocating heresy - like Bishop John Spong, who wrote that we needed to reject things like the Virgin Birth, miracles, and the Ten Commandments. The more I fell in love with Anglicanism, the more pushed away I felt by these various innovations. Therefore, I never felt truly at home within the Anglican Communion, although I still loved many of its elements. I bought a copy of the Book of Common Prayer and loved to read through many of its prayers and blessings. I used to always grab this magazine they had in the narthex and read up on whatever it was the Archbishop of Canterbury said. Still, I couldn't ignore the things that were bothering me...

At this time, perhaps a year or year-and-a-half went by and I had moved to Somerset County. After my move, I had not attended church anywhere, but was looking at the Episcopal church in my new town. However, I had not yet gone to that church because of the issues I had been struggling with. I started to research the American Anglican Council, which split off from the Anglican Communion in opposition to all the innovations being done. At that point, my frustrations with the divisions in the Church reached a breaking point again - I wasn't about to sift through the various fractions inside the Anglican Communion, as well, finding out which fraction within a fraction of Christianity I would feel at home in. I was saddened to admit it, but although I loved what I had found in the Episcopal church, I just couldn't bear to deal with more divisions, scandal, confusion, and innovation. I walked away for good (probably sometime in 2005) and started my church search once again...little did I know that my search was going to end at the Catholic Church.

Doubt and Drought - My Time in the Desert

For all the people who were not privy to my thoughts, my choice to become a Catholic might have seemed like an irrational decision made in haste, however that could not be further from the truth. From my earliest memories as a teenager, I started to doubt some of the inconsistencies that I was finding in the Presbyterian faith and the Bible. These questions were not getting answered and, like many teenagers, I drifted away from church - how true was "religion" if every denomination had a different point of view? If one Presbyterian church taught differently from another Presbyterian church in the next community? To my teenage mind, this showed that "religion" was something man-made and not necessary for salvation; to me, it was much more desirable to sleep late on Sundays instead of getting up early, dressing up, and getting bored to death.

As I mentioned in my last posting on my conversion, I was always encouraged to read the bible when growing up. I love all those famous stories to this day and am very thankful that the bible was made part of my life. In the Presbyterian church we always had these little monthly pamphlets called "Our Daily Bread", which offered daily reflections on Scripture; I often enjoyed these. In my experience, Protestants have a love affair with various translations of the Bible - lacking a magisterium that can interpret the Scriptures, I loved to gather together collections of various translations as a way of trying to figure out some of the more challenging passages. I owned the King James Version, the New International Version, and a couple study/student bibles. This experience has left my wife scratching her head as I continue to gather translations of the Bible (this time, Catholic versions such as the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Version, the Ignatius Study Bible, the Knox Version, and the Douay-Rheims version). To me, this is all normal.

I remember my dad reading the Bible - he would have one of those tiny New Testaments on his dashboard that he would flip open if he was sitting in a parking lot waiting for us to get out of Sunday School or something. I remember him once telling me that his favorite book of the Bible was the Gospel of John and he encouraged me to read that. How ironic that years later we'd be arguing over John 6, when Jesus said we had to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Still, to this day I find the Gospel of John an amazing and deep theological writing and I am thankful my dad encouraged me to read it over and over. In fact, in my last posting I mentioned reading the beginning of John's gospel in front of the Church - that was thanks to my Dad's encouragement. Again, how ironic that years later I would find out that this same part of John was read at the end of every Mass from the Middle Ages until the reform in 1970. Even as a little boy, standing in front of the Presbyterian church and reading part of John 1, God was calling me to his church through this ancient tradition.

Some people read the bible and leave Catholicism because they've heard a faulty interpretation, but when I read the bible I started to doubt Protestantism and church in general. I remember being filled with curiosity, but was sorely dissatisfied with the answers I had been given. If the Bible placed such an emphasis on the unity of the faith, why are there so many divisions. If we each contradict one another, how can we still consider one another Christians? How come our church didn't come into existence until the 1500s, but we say we practice the true faith of the early Christians? Hundreds of other denominations claim the same thing, but how are we right and they wrong? If Jesus said getting divorced and remarried is committing adultery, why is that accepted in the Protestant world? If Jesus said we should eat his flesh and drink his blood, why do we insist he was speaking symbolically? Why does there seem to be a contradiction between the bible and science? Where did the bible even come from? How come through the entire history of the bible, God seems to constantly reach his people through miracles and angels, but he doesn't do that anymore? I didn't know that in the Catholic world, God continues to reach out to us through miracles, angels, and visions. In the Protestant world, this break with the rest of salvation history was unsatisfactory to me - it didn't make sense. These issues - and various others - kept bouncing around in my head. I wasn't satisfied with any of the answers I was given - many of them were the theological equivalent of, "Because."

By this time I was probably in my mid-teens; I was bored to death by Church and was hoping that this would change if I got more involved. I had been baptized at 14 and a couple years later I was in what they call confirmation. All I can remember from this is that we would gather together with elders from the church and we'd have lessons on the Apostles' Creed. At the end of the series of lessons, we each had to write a summary on what we learned (I wish I had kept a copy). Our essays were submitted to the elders and they and the pastor would decide (based on our essays) if we had a good understanding of Christian beliefs - if so, we were confirmed as full members of the Presbyterian church. Sadly, this did not help me to become more interested in church. A Baptist friend of mine convinced me I was feeling this way because I wasn't "saved" yet. He said all the things I was doing was all well and good, but if I hadn't "accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior" then I still haven't been saved. Instead of asking him how he came up with that, I accepted it and immediately went home from school and composed a prayer to Jesus, asking him to be my personal Lord and Savior. The next day, my friend rejoiced that I had become "born again" and was now definitely going to Heaven.

Of course, things just got worse - church bored me to tears and by the time I reached 18, I stopped going altogether. I tried going back about a year later, but it was very short-lived. I knew I wanted to go to church, but at the same time I saw it as a boring torture. I would eventually convince myself that going to church didn't matter because I still loved Jesus, I would still read the bible (on occasion), and would occasionally pray; I was convinced this was enough. Even still, I felt a great unrest within me. Over the next six or seven years I would search the internet for information on other denominations, still wondering if the problem was that I hadn't found where I "belonged" yet. I would take these online quizzes that would select the "right" denomination for me, but when I was told I should be an "orthodox Quaker", I just laughed and didn't take the results seriously. At one point, I was heavily involved with a pan-Slav organization and it was recommended that I look into Orthodox Christianity - when I visited the website of my nearest Orthodox church and saw icons of saints and the Virgin Mary, I quickly hit the back button and said to myself, "No, that looks too Catholic." I didn't know why Catholicism was off-limits during this soul-searching, but it just was. Still, whenever these many tests would suggest another Protestant denomination, I would then read up on them to see if they were "a match". This would go on periodically over these years - sometimes several times a week or only once or twice a month - but this pull back towards church couldn't be extinguished. Eventually, mainly due to the passing of my grandparents, the Holy Spirit would call me to the Episcopal church in either late 2004 or early 2005.

Being a Theologian

I've been "attending" courses at Catholic Distance University for a couple years now in the hopes of eventually graduating with a BA in Catholic theology. I've often heard (and wondered myself) what the role of a theologian is: what am I going to do with a bachelors, masters, or doctorate in theology? My earliest thoughts were that as a theologian I would be limited to a career as a teacher or professor of some sort. However, I am starting to learn that as a theologian, my role in the Church has a multifaceted purpose. This posting is a summary of what is expected of me as a Catholic theologian and is mainly based upon the document "Instruction on the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian" released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith when it was headed by the future Benedict XVI, one of the modern era's most prolific and brilliant theologians.

Benedict (then as Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote: Theology has importance for the Church in every age so that it can respond to the plan of God "who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim 2:4). Ratzinger, through the CDF, wrote this piece in order to remind theologians that we are not here to reinterpret the Gospel, but are to hand on the true Gospel that has been given to us through the Church from Christ and his apostles. The words "Catholic theologian" have gotten a bad rap since the 1960s because many of their voices became the most unfaithful voices in the Church. Some theologians had started to see themselves as a new Magisterium (the Church's teaching office), offering heretical interpretations of the Scriptures, Sacred Tradition, and Church documents (especially Humanae Vitae and those from the Second Vatican Council). Therefore, whatever I say or teach can never be opposed to the official teaching of the Church - if it does, I cease to be passing on the truth and instead pass on my own interpretation.

God puts particular emphasis on the truth; Jesus calls himself "the truth" and the Holy Spirit guides us "in all truth". In opposition, Christ tells us that Satan is the "father of all lies". Theology is one of the ways that God has allowed mankind to learn more about him - therefore, the role of the theologian is to assist the Church in explaining the truth of the faith, which allows mankind to learn more about its Creator.

Ratzinger goes on to say, "His role is to pursue in a particular way an ever deeper understanding of the Word of God found in the inspired Scriptures and handed on by the living Tradition of the Church. He does this in communion with the Magisterium which has been charged with the responsibility of preserving the deposit of faith." The Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation states, "The study of the sacred page [the Bible] should be, as it were, the very soul of theology." Ratzinger follows by saying, "Theological science responds to the invitation of truth as it seeks to understand the faith." The Catholic Church has always insisted that faith and reason cannot live in opposition to one another - theological studies is a pronouncement of that truth so that the faith may be transmitted reasonably. "Theology strives to clarify the teaching of Revelation with regard to reason and gives it finally an organic and systematic form."

Ratzinger also explains that theology arises from love "and love's dynamism", for through our love of God, within us arises the desire to better know him. "Since the object of theology is the Truth which is the living God and His plan for salvation revealed in Jesus Christ, the theologian is called to deepen his own life of faith and continuously unite his scientific research with prayer." So, from my buying oodles of theological books and those on Church history and the Fathers, I am taking this call to deepen my life of faith seriously. As Ratizinger states, "The commitment to theology requires a spiritual effort to grow in virtue and holiness." This is a hard demand, but one that is not only expected of me, but of all Catholics.

Over the centuries, theology has evolved into a science and must therefore still exhibit those particular traits, viewing the exploration of faith through eyes of critical curiosity, but also allowing my eyes to be purified through faith. This doesn't mean that a theologian is not able to unlock something about the faith that was currently unknown to us, but a theologian must still always work to explain the faith, not to reinvent it; there must be a balance between faith and an inquisitive mind. "In theology this freedom of inquiry is the hallmark of a rational discipline whose object is given by Revelation, handed on and interpreted in the Church under the authority of the Magisterium, and received by faith."

Some of the Church's most helpful theologians also have a background in rhetoric or philosophy: Theology's proper task is to understand the meaning of revelation and this, therefore, requires the utilization of philosophical concepts which provide "a solid and correct understanding of man, the world, and God" and can be employed in a reflection upon revealed doctrine. Additionally, all my life I have been interested in history (much to the torture of my loved ones) and I find it a relief that the Instruction says that a theologian "cannot pursue his discipline well without a certain competence in history" - finally, I can put this personality defect to some good use!

The third part of the instruction the CDF released explains the teaching authority of the Church and emphasizes a theologian's responsibility to submit himself to that authority. "It must protect God's People from the danger of deviations and confusion, guaranteeing them the objective possibility of professing the authentic faith free from error, at all times and in diverse situations." This is because we believe that "all acts of the Magisterium derive from the same source, that is, from Christ who desires that His People walk in the entire truth." Section IV of the Instruction explains how a theologian collaborates with the Magisterium. The theologian gets to participate in the work of the Magisterium and is "reinforced by the commitment the theologian assumes in accepting his office, making the profession of faith, and taking the oath of fidelity. From this moment on, the theologian is officially charged with the task of presenting and illustrating the doctrine of the faith in its integrity and with full accuracy." The Instruction goes on to explain that there's a difference between the truth and the ways in which to express that truth - a theologian cannot make up his own truth, but there can be another way of expressing the established truth: When there is a question of the communion of faith, the principle of the "unity of truth" (unitas veritatis) applies. When it is a question of differences which do not jeopardize this communion, the "unity of charity" (unitas caritatis) should be safeguarded. The Instruction makes sure to put an end to the heresy brought about since the 1960s which tries to convince the faithful that their consciences can trump Church teaching - on the contrary, the Instruction reminds the theologian that even their conscience cannot justify teaching heresy "because conscience does not constitute an autonomous and exclusive authority for deciding the truth of a doctrine." Even still, the Church encourages open dialog between the theologian and the Magisterium because through open dialog, prayer, and charity, "His objections could then contribute to real progress and provide a stimulus to the Magisterium to propose the teaching of the Church in greater depth and with a clearer presentation of the arguments." At the end of the day, the Instruction reminds the theologian that although no one is forced to believe something against his will, at the same time the theologian cannot then teach dissent; the faith must be respected and preserved.

All of this doesn't mean that the faith is "one flavor". As far as theological pluralism is concerned, this is only legitimate to the extent that the unity of the faith in its objective meaning is not jeopardized...The ultimate reason for plurality is found in the unfathomable mystery of Christ who transcends every objective systematization." For instance, there are many ways in which the Byzantine and Roman traditions believe in the same truths, but express them in different ways - this is an example of the pluralism that is embraced by the Church for it expresses her universality without contradicting the truths of the faith. Another example would be the patrimony of the Anglican Ordinariate - although part of the Roman Rite, they are not forced to be Roman Catholics: [T]he Ordinariate has the faculty to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and the other Sacraments, the Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical celebrations according to the liturgical books proper to the Anglican tradition, which have been approved by the Holy See, so as to maintain the liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions of the Anglican Communion within the Catholic Church, as a precious gift nourishing the faith of the members of the Ordinariate and as a treasure to be shared. This is true theological pluralism in action.

The Instruction concludes by explaining that theologians and the Magisterium should not be confused with one another, and although the faith comes first through the Magisterium, both they and theologians are important in the life of the Church and in passing on the faith. Theologians "have the responsibility of participating in the building up of Christ's Body in unity and truth. Their contribution is needed more than ever, for evangelization on a world scale requires the efforts of the whole People of God."

The Vatican's International Theological Commission has released several instructions to assist theologians in their formation and studies, their most recent release being Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria. This document attempts to help the theologian understand the diversity in theology: diversity in unity and unity in diversity. This is important for me to learn and I look forward to reading this (loooong) document in the near future.

There are some additional instructions for theologians in the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini. One of the things we're encouraged to do is learn the original languages of the Bible, which explains why my university is offering Biblical Greek as a course. Additionally, the theologian must "have a deep spiritual life in order to appreciate that the Scripture can only be understood if it is lived." Although as theologians we must grow ever closer to the Bible, we cannot forget that we reject sola Scriptura; as Pope Francis recently said, "Sacred Scripture is the written testimony of the divine Word, the canonical memory that attests to the event of Revelation. However, the Word of God precedes the Bible and surpasses it. That is why the centre of our faith isn't just a book, but a salvation history and above all a person, Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh. The document Theology Today elaborates: The Church greatly venerates the Scriptures, but it is important to recognise that ‘the Christian faith is not a “religion of the book”; Christianity is the “religion of the word of God”, not of “a written and mute word, but of the incarnate and living Word”’. So, in a nutshell this is what is expected of me as a theologian. Yes, it is a commission to teach, but not necessarily as a teacher or professor. I am expected to be faithful to the teachings of the Church 24/7 - as Pope Francis recently stated, "[T]he Faith isn’t negotiable. There has been, throughout history of the people, this temptation: to chop a piece off the Faith, the temptation to be a bit like everyone else, the temptation not to be so very rigid." On the contrary, this is how I'm expected to live, especially because the Church sees this as an ecclesial vocation. One of the best things about theology is that it seems as if I will be studying and learning until the day I die.

The fact remains that I (and others in my life) occasionally wonder, "Ok, so what are you going to do for a living after this?" Some of the options are youth minister, teacher, director of religious education, a secular job in public service, a college or seminary professor, an author - I guess a theologian goes where he is needed. I've heard of theologians working throughout the Church in a variety of duties, such as on the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the International Theological Commission, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity - really, anywhere. Some people don't even go into a theological line of work, but continue to live their lives, using their theological knowledge to evanglize to everyone they meet in the "regular world". Certainly, this isn't a field to get into if one is looking for financial wealth - outside of selling books, I don't see myself ever "cashing in" on theology. The rewards in this field are heavenly-focused, and for that I believe it will be rewarding indeed.