Steenson Explains

The former Bishop of the Rio Grande (Episcopal), the Right Reverend Jeffrey Steenson, was received into the Holy Catholic Church in December of last year. Recently he addressed the annual convention of the Anglican Use Society and offered his explanation why he embraced the full faith. On the eve of the 2008 Lambeth Conference, which promises either to be chaotic or uneventful but certainly not productive; the disarray of the Anglican Communion, which seems to increase daily, it behooves all Anglicans of a traditionalist bent, especially those pondering whether or not to set sail for Rome, to read that address. Some excerpts:

It all begins with the conviction that the Catholic Church simply is. She is not one option amongst many. People who become alienated from their own churches will sometimes think that the next step is to go down to the marketplace and see what is on offer: which church is going to give me the best deal? Those people seldom find the Catholic Church because they have missed the essential point – the fullness of Christ’s blessings is not distributed across the ecclesial landscape but flows from the one Church.

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People come to the Catholic Church not because they have worked out every point of doctrine but because they trust that what the Church teaches is true. This is no blind act of faith but the conviction that the Church of Rome is the principal witness to the apostolic tradition. The early Church Fathers were very much aware of the unique vocation of the Bishop of Rome to speak with the voice of Peter in matters of faith. For some twenty years I have reflected on a famous text in St. Irenaeus: “It is necessary that all the churches be in accord with this greatest and most ancient church, whose foundations were supremely laid by the chief Apostles, Peter and Paul.” It really does all come down to the will, doing what you know to be true.

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Anglicanism as a church of the Reformation raises difficult problems for serious ecumenism, and it must be admitted that the goal of corporate reunion based on the principle, “return to the rock from which ye were hewn” (Is. 51:1), is unrealistic. But it is worth noting that significant understandings were reached before Anglicanism veered away. Anglicans had begun to trust Rome and looked to her for leadership in many areas of church life. The Anglo-Catholics were well disposed, of course, but one of the most encouraging signs was the warm regard from the Evangelicals. The great scholar of the English Reformation, Dr. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes (d. 1990) told me that the Vatican II constitution on divine revelation, Dei Verbum, had essentially answered the Reformers’ principal criticisms and that there was no compelling reason for the separation to continue.

UPDATE: It may be surprising to many how well talks in the 'sixties and 'seventies were going between Canterbury and Rome about eventual reunification; so well I have long speculated an unspoken motive of liberals in the Episcopal Church (and later in the Anglican Church) for pushing through women's ordination and other innovations was their horror at the prospect of reunification with Rome and their desire to thwart it. If so, they were spectacularly successful.

(h/t William Tighe)