Fr. Steenson: Policy Reflects Pope’s Passion

Posted on: October 20, 2009

Even as he studied at the Pontifical Irish College in Rome last year, the Rev. Jeffrey Steenson did not know just how much the Vatican was preparing to widen its arms to Anglican pilgrims like himself.

Fr. Steenson, as he is now known again, served as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande from 2005 to 2007, when he resigned to join the Roman Catholic Church. He now teaches theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.

“I was certainly aware that there were very significant conversations going on at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but I didn’t know the scope of things,” Fr. Steenson told The Living Church.

He believes the Vatican’s policy change reflects the passion of Pope Benedict XVI. “I really think the Pope helped move things along,” he said. “Evangelization is really the heart and soul of what he’s about. When people are knocking on the door of the Church, the Catholic Church needs to take extra steps to welcome them in. It’s all about the gathering in of souls.”

Fr. Steenson said the Vatican’s new policy is neither an effort at poaching Anglicans nor at creating a permanent Anglican enclave within Roman Catholicism.

“People would misunderstand the intention of this if they think it’s to created a protected zone or a cul-de-sac in which you can hunker down. The Catholic Church recognizes that there are elements of truth and beauty in Anglicanism that ought to be preserved for the good of the whole church,” he said.

“It is genuinely open-ended. I don’t think there is any timetable or a ticking clock,” he said of Anglicans becoming assimilated Roman Catholics.

Fr. Steenson cautioned that Anglicans, in turn, should not see the Roman Catholic Church as a platform from which they fight with their former communion.

“It’s about wanting to be in communion with Peter,” he said. “It’s can’t just be a matter of being angry about this issue or that issue.”

If any congregations are engaged in legal battles over property, they had better leave those at the banks of the Tiber.

Roman Catholic bishops “do not want to intervene in what they see as a dispute within the Episcopal Church,” Fr. Steenson said. “There’s got to be closure and you’ve got to move forward.”

Douglas LeBlanc

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Former Episcopal bishop discusses his new life as Catholic priest

"For Father Steenson, the role of the pope as the successor of St. Peter, the servant of church unity and the guarantor of the church's fidelity to tradition was key to his decision.

"It is not negative things that turned me to the Catholic Church," he said. "I just felt God saying, 'It's time.'"

The time came, he said, in 2007 when he felt the bishops of the Episcopal Church had decided to give priority to their autonomy rather than to unity with the larger Anglican Communion.

Father Steenson said that for him gay people were not the issue. "It was the way the decisions were made and the way they were defended," placing the local church and modern cultural sensitivities ahead of the universal church and fidelity to tradition, he said.

The priest said that while the Episcopal Church spoke of the importance of Christian unity, it continued to approve practices -- ordaining women priests and bishops, ordaining homosexuals and blessing same-sex unions -- that everyone knew would be an obstacle to Christian unity.

"The frustration with being a Protestant is that every morning you get up and have to reinvent the church all over again," Father Steenson said..."

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Controversies within the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church have encouraged Episcopalian bishops, clergy, and laity to seek reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. Last September Jeffrey Steenson, the Episcopal Bishop of Rio Grande, New Mexico, resigned his office to become a Catholic...

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Jeffrey Steenson's decision to leave his post as an Episcopal bishop in New Mexico last year came with a steep price.

The former Bishop Steenson, a married father of three who will become a Roman Catholic priest later this year, said his lifestyle was "nothing to complain about." Along with other perks, he left a $100,000-a-year salary for a pay cut of $75,000.

"It's a very big step. All the things you took for granted are gone," said Mr. Steenson, who laughed about his change in financial fortune.

"And if your identity was shaped as a [Episcopal] priest or bishop, that has to be unmade and redone again. That's a big thing. But I feel being in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church is worth those sacrifices..."

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