Former Episcopal bishop sees significant movement towards Rome

Jeffrey Steenson referred to the original link between this office and Rome at the Anglican Use Conference. Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic

BY CAROL BAASS SOWA
TODAY’S CATHOLIC

SAN ANTONIO • “I come to you with a truly grateful heart for the gift of full communion,” said Jeffrey N. Steenson, the former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande who recently renounced his orders as an Episcopal bishop to convert to the Catholic Church under its Pastoral Provision to the Anglican Usage of the Roman Rite.
Steenson was one of the featured speakers at the recent national Anglican Use conference which took place at Our Lady of the Atonement Parish here July 10-12.

In his speech he noted, “For too long I had stood outside the window, on my tip-toes wistfully looking in, wondering whether I could ever find the way to enter.”

His was a story that represents the anguish and struggles faced by others in the Episcopal and Anglican churches who have been dismayed by the recent turn of events occurring there, most notably the ordination of women and homosexuals.

While recent decisions by bishops of the Episcopal and Anglican churches threaten to dissolve long-held hopes of reunification with the Church of Rome, members of the more traditional branches of these churches are now increasingly finding the doors of the Catholic Church open to them and are accepting the invitation to enter.

Steenson recounted that from his early days as an Episcopal seminary student he sensed, though a devout Anglican, that his true home must ultimately be the Catholic Church. However, he believed it would be possible to uphold his faith through his ministry in the Episcopal Church and contribute toward the reconciliation of the two churches.

This path had become progressively difficult to follow, however, as it became apparent to him that his church was veering irreversibly farther away from its Catholic identity. “That church today is not the church in which I was ordained 28 years ago,” he said regretfully.

His decision to leave it was one not taken lightly and facing the practical problems involved in doing so kept him from moving forward for a time.

“But the difficulties that follow from functioning with a troubled conscience ultimately outweigh the sacrifices one makes to live in the truth,” he said.

As to the why of his conversion to Catholicism, he outlined four basic causes, based on the teachings of Aristotle from his recent studies for Theological Certification as a Catholic priest.

Aristotle, he pointed out, stated that change only comes about when something externally sets it in motion.
The “material cause” that led to Steenson’s conversion was the realization that the Catholic Church is not one option among many. “The fullness of Christ’s blessings is not distributed across the ecclesial landscape,” he said, “but it flows from the one Church,” this being the church governed by the successor of Peter.

In Anglican churches, he noted, the exercise of authority is predominantly “personal and provisional.” Over the years as an Episcopal priest and then, bishop, he found “there was so little to which I could point and say clearly and unambiguously, ‘the Church teaches.’”

Looking at The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Steenson found himself asking if his own church could have produced as penetrating and comprehensive a work. The answer was “no,” he said, “because it has deliberately cut itself off from the tradition.”

The “formal cause” for Steenson’s move to Catholicism involved the historical link between Anglicans and the Catholic Church, with St. Augustine commissioned by Pope Gregory the Great as the first Archbishop of Canterbury.
“The Anglican world today is seeking to invest the office with dignities and responsibilities that go well beyond its actual place in civil and canon law,” he said. “Why? Because of memories of what this office once was.”

Steenson noted that he was part of an Anglican delegation which met in 1993 with then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to discuss how smaller communities of Anglicans might be incorporated into the Catholic Church.

“We belong to the Latin Church because we have come from her,” he said. “In spite of being separated from the Holy See, we have always understood ourselves to be a part of Western Catholicism.” With Anglicans trusting and looking to Rome for leadership in many areas, he added, it was obvious “there was no compelling reason for the separation to continue.”

As to the particular event (Aristotle’s “efficient cause”) that precipitated his leaving the Episcopal Church, Steenson noted this, surprisingly, was the Second Vatican Council, whose words of ecumenical dialogue impelled him to long more intensely for the unity of which the pope spoke.

These hopes were crushed in 2007, when proposals that would have led towards reunification with Rome were rejected by the House of Bishops. Instead, the bishops held that the Episcopal Church was “independent, democratic and connected to the rest of Anglicanism only by voluntary association.”

“By sunset I knew I could not remain in the Episcopal Church under these circumstances,” he said.

“If the minimal ecclesiological structures of Anglicanism have been proven ineffective to maintain communion, and if the way to preserve orthodox teaching and life is to be sought in some other configuration, then why not Rome?”

The final cause of Steenson’s conversion was tied to Pope John Paul II’s intention to bring all the faithful into communion. Steenson had come to the threshold of the Catholic Church several times, but fear had always held him back. As a seminary student, he felt his personal destiny was somehow to be connected with Pope John Paul II and he recalled being moved when seeing on television the new pontiff step onto the loggia of St. Peter’s in 1978. He sensed then the importance of being in communion with the successor of Peter.

In his visit to Rome in 1993 as part of the Anglican delegation seeking unity, he remembers wanting to kneel and kiss the pope’s ring when John Paul II personally greeted them. He held himself in check, however. After all, he was still a Protestant. “How I wish I would have listened to my heart!” he said. “It troubled me for years afterwards.”

He grieved deeply at Pope John Paul’s death in 2005. “This news cut me to the quick,” he said, “for I had resolved those many years before, when I was still a seminary student, that I would become a Catholic while he was still pope.”

He has no doubts that the pope’s death brought a measure of urgency to his long unfulfilled desire to be in communion with the church Christ had founded.

Noting that Catholic-oriented Anglicans have spent much time and energy in trying to reach accord with the Church of Rome, Steenson said the solution is simple.

To his friends who have, as he says, “put one toe into the other side of the Tiber,” his words were: “Listen to your conscience!” God, he said, desires we serve him with a good conscience, though calls each of us “in his own good time.”

“My respect, my love and my prayers remain with you in these difficult days for Anglicanism,” he concluded. “Rome will be there for you. And that, of course is the whole point. ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’”

In the question and answer session that followed, Steenson was even more candid as to what he feels the future holds, particularly for those in the tradition-minded Continuing Anglican Movement, who have been moving towards establishing union with the Roman Catholic Church.

“I’m hopeful that many of those that are in the Anglican Continuing will seriously look this way now,” he said.
“Certainly, in the Church of England, I think you are going to see a pretty significant movement in the direction of the Church of Rome.”