Watching the General Synod of the Church of England this time round has been quite an education for me. I was well aware that the Episcopal Church in the USA in a few short years no longer bears any resemblance to the Church in which I laboured for a time. Now it is clear that the C of E has mutated into something altogether Protestant in creed and bitter in tone. I sometimes wonder, Who are these people who control what was once 'my Church'? I no longer recognise the lot, and it has left me very grateful for that enclave of Anglican Heritage we have in Houston with Our Lady of Walsingham Roman Catholic Church (Anglican Use).
Those who know me know that the issue of female ordination is not an issue of importance to me. I regard this sort of thing as a symptom of a larger spiritual illness wherein an association of Christians mistakes itself for Christ's poor Church and sets about legislating things for which it has no competency, and the Anglican Communion has never been a competent authority to alter doctrine, dogma, or discipline. I strode across the Tiber with the conviction that the total lack of authority and the ongoing doctrinal drift from faith in Jesus Christ to faith in a generic sort of 'God the blob' (who flits about blessing everyone and everything like a fairy grandmother who has had too much sherry) was simply incompatible with what I (and my anglo-catholic forebears) believed.
Now did I find Paradise in Rome? No. I found some things that made me retrace my steps back into the Tiber, but in the end I found myself at home in the Catholic Church among a vast number of people for whom Truth as revealed in Christ is everything. I am so thankful to Pope Benedict for continuing and expanding the work of welcoming the catholic-minded Anglicans home and for affording us a place of grace where we may share with the Universal Church those good things begun, continued, and accomplished among us by the Holy Ghost ... the Holy Father speaks of it as our patrimony, and our patrimony is a vast treasure resonant with what is most beautiful and true about the Church both Eastern and Western.
I have told my family wherever we may be scattered about the English-speaking world that the HMS Anglicana has run aground (or perhaps been torpedoed by an Enemy), and it is now time to escape to safety and to run into the open arms of Our Lord Jesus as He says to us all, "Welcome to Rome. Welcome home."
+Laus Deo!
