South Carolina Episcopal Parish Members to Convert to Catholic Church

(The Post and Courier) The breakup in the Episcopal diocese has led some members of one local parish, the Anglo-Catholic Church of the Holy Communion, to make a move of their own.

Five families will follow the Rev. Patrick Allen, curate at Holy Communion, into the arms of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Rev. Dow Sanderson, rector of Holy Communion, will remain part of the Episcopal Church, along with most of the congregation, and strive to be neutral as the drama plays out, he said.

The fracture comes as no surprise; worshippers at this historic downtown parish at 218 Ashley Ave. have long preferred to uphold Catholic traditions.

Holy Communion adheres to the Oxford Movement’s assertion that the Church of England (and other Anglican Church bodies) has been, and is now, an apostolic church, a direct descendant of St. Peter’s church, a true inheritor of the word of Christ.

Protestantism, instead, holds that there is no “one true church,” that individuals have the authority to forge a personal relationship with Christ and don’t really require the aid of an institution.

The 19th-century Oxford Movement asserts that the doctrine of apostolic succession accommodates “One True Church” with three branches: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Anglicanism. Its ideas were promoted in a series of pamphlets called “Tracts for the Times” (1833-41).

Allen said the process of becoming Catholic will take several months.

“I will continue to serve as curate at Holy Communion through the end of the year,” he said. “Of the families who are making this move, several adults are involved in ministry and leadership positions here, so they will serve out their terms.”

In January, Allen and the others will join the congregation at St. Mary Catholic Church on Hasell Street to worship. Allen said he hopes to be confirmed as a priest in the Catholic Church by late spring or early summer.

“At that point, we will begin having our own ordinariate (Catholic community of former Anglicans) and Mass,” he said. The group will share St. Mary’s.

More than a year ago, Holy Communion, as a parish, considered opting out of the Episcopal Church and joining the Catholic Diocese of Charleston, but that possibility faded, according to Allen, who addressed the matter in a Nov. 7 letter to the congregation.

 

With the split in the Episcopal diocese, Allen saw a new opportunity to pursue his goal, though the controversies were not central to his decision, he wrote.

“Mine is a move forward to the Catholic Church, and I am nothing but grateful for my own years in the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina,” Allen wrote.

Link:

• Group to Leave Church

Related:

• Katharine Jefferts Schori Takes Action Against the Episcopal Bishop and Diocese of South Carolina

An Archbishop of Canterbury in retreat

Thursday, July 10, 2008, 06:39 PM GMT [General]

The immense damage done to the Archbishop of Canterbury during Monday night's debate on women priests is still sinking in. Dr Rowan Williams had not intended to speak, but he was so alarmed by the lack of provision for traditionalists in the code of practice that he appealed to Synod members to reject it. They ignored him.

It was as if a Prime Minister, having quietly supported a piece of legislation in the Commons, suddenly lost his nerve, appealed to the House to change its mind, and was then rebuffed. Even Gordon Brown has yet to chalk up that sort of disaster.

Rowan being Rowan, the meaning of his intervention was not immediately clear. But, as Ruth Gledhill noted, a cold chill swept across the chamber as it dawned on people that the Archbishop "now wants the whole thing blown out of the water". Which was not, of course, what happened.

And so Cantuar's leadership is further diminished, just before the start of the Lambeth Conference. Andrew Carey, son of Archbishop Carey, has produced a pretty devastating analysis of Monday night's "train wreck" on the American Anglican website Stand Firm:

"While Dr Williams has often given traditionalists hope that he would back a structural solution to their problems of conscience, he seems to have completely ruled out strong leadership on theological and ecclesial issues. Wearing permanently now, it seems, the persona of the mediator, Dr Williams was seen by Synod trying to have it both ways. 'I am deeply unhappy with any scheme... which ends up structurally humiliating women.' But he was equally unhappy about marginalising traditionalists. He therefore came 'not very comfortably to the conclusion', we needed a 'more rather than less robust form of structural provision'.

"The Archbishop by his thoughtfulness, gravity and seriousness carries great weight and affection in General Synod but he failed to use this credit on Monday night. And as for the House of Bishops in general, the one word you will never hear them using these days is 'collegiality'. The Bishops are pulling in all directions at once. It is no surprise then to see that the Church of England is now synodically led and governed."

If I was a member of the C of E, I'd be sick to death now of the Archbishop's haunted hand-wringing. The word that comes to mind is Amletico - "Hamlet-like", as Pope John XXIII described his tortured successor, Paul VI.

I don't think Rowan Williams wants to be Archbishop of Canterbury any more; indeed, I'm not even sure he wants to be in the Church of England.

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‘Anglo-Catholics must now decide’

By the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet
11 July 2008

Bishop Burnham, left, with Fr Raymond Bristow, centre, and Fr Neil Hibbons

So we are to have a code of practice. Traditional Anglo-Catholics must now decide whether to stay in the Church of England in what, for a while, will be a protected colony - where the sacramental ministry of women bishops and priests is neither acknowledged nor received - or to leave.

Leaving isn't quite so easy as it sounds. You don't become a Catholic, for instance, because of what is wrong with another denomination or faith. You become a Catholic because you accept that the Catholic Church is what she says she is and the Catholic faith is what it says it is. In short, some Anglo-Catholics will stay and others will go. It is quite easy to think of unworthy reasons for staying - and there are no doubt one or two unworthy reasons for leaving.

There are also honourable reasons for staying. Like the Anglican clergy who wouldn't swear allegiance to William and Mary at the end of the 17th century and the Catholic clergy who wouldn't swear allegiance to the French Revolutionary government a century later, the "non-jurors" of the present day will soldier on and die out but they will be faithful to what they have believed and history will honour them for their faithfulness.

Recent history teaches us that those who stay on - for instance, in similar circumstances in North American and Scandinavia - are not left alone for long. The pressure of secular culture bears down on them to ensure conformity with secular values.

As for those who choose to go, like in the early 1990s these will include some of the finest Anglican clergy.

Most of them are not motivated in the least by gender issues but by a keenness to pursue Catholic unity and truth.

For them, the decision of the Church of England to proceed to the ordination of women bishops without providing adequately for traditionalists renders the claims of the Church of England to be part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church shaky or simply untenable.

Codes of practice are shifting sands. The sacramental life of the Church must be built on rock.

How could we trust a code of practice to deliver a workable ecclesiology if every suggestion we have made for our inclusion has been turned down flat?

How could we trust a code of practice when those who are offering it include those who have done most to undermine and seek to revoke the code of practice in force for these last 14 years?

The synodical process for traditional Anglo-Catholics is over. Some will try to draw new lines in the sand. But what the General Synod of the Church of England demonstrated on 7/7 (2008) is that, as on 11/11 (1992), it has decided that it is unilaterally competent to alter Holy Order. At one stage in the late 1990s it even had a go at changing the Creed. Here at work is a democratic Magisterium which at York this week showed that it values the advice of archbishops and bishops' prolocutors less than it does the outcome of a show of hands.

What we must humbly ask for now is for magnanimous gestures from our Catholic friends, especially from the Holy Father, who well understands our longing for unity, and from the hierarchy of England and Wales. Most of all we ask for ways that allow us to bring our folk with us.

Meanwhile we retreat into the wilderness and watch and pray.

Andrew Burnham is Bishop of Ebbsfleet, Suffragan Bishop in the Diocese of Canterbury and Provincial Episcopal Visitor

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