I joined the little Episcopal congregation down the street on All Saints’ Day and began regretting it before I finished signing the parish register. I wish I hadn’t done so; I could have left my canonical relationship with the parish ambiguous forever and no one would have complained or made me stop being an acolyte. The only real reason to do so (and it remains a real reason, because I still feel called to the priesthood) is because I have to do so in order to form a priesthood discernment committee in the diocese, and some individuals who are very important to me think the only respectable way to act as a priest is to do so as an authorized clergy person within the denomination of which you’re a member, rather than being an Anglican or Roman Catholic communicant performing extra-canonical ministry on the side. So I’m implicitly committed to a course of action I do not prefer or think is entirely right. I’d much rather be an authorized Roman Catholic priest - or even a Roman Catholic communicant performing extra-canonical ministry - than an Anglican, ordained or lay.
It’s all more complicated than this simple snapshot suggests, I suppose. There are other factors, and these factors are sometimes momentarily more significant than the priesthood issue. It matters tremendously that I can’t find a good parish locally in the Roman Catholic Church and always feel like an outsider looking into an alien world, mistrusted by its long-term inhabitants. (Case in point: Arturo Vasquez writing on academic theologians, whom he labels “theological mercenaries”). Spiritually and sacramentally, I seem to be most attracted to a worship style that invites frustrating social experiences, because there are a lot of deeply conservative, anti-feminist, anti-gay, anti-pagan, etc. Tridentine Roman Catholics for whom I am probably the poster boy for everything that is wrong with the post-Vatican II Church. Plus it’s just awkward going to the same parish every day for months and never having anyone make conversation or eye contact or wonder about your name or your interests or try to involve you in the life of the parish. (Contrast: I was invited to become an acolyte after attending exactly one service in the local Episcopal parish). And then there is the uncontrollable, raging scrupulosity and never feeling safe to receive communion even if one has been to confession five minutes beforehand.
I’ll keep going to the little Anglican place - I more-or-less have to do so. But still, I’d rather be Roman Catholic - I just need a place to fit in, a way to be involved, a corner of the Church where my theological ideas interest people rather than being shot down on sight, and a way to exercise my ministry to the unchurched and ChristoPagans. And, I suppose, some means of coping with an absolutely unmanageable burden of guilt and dread and anxiety.
PS: If you guys would just let me be a Jesuit priest, I’d sign up tomorrow.
PPS: Thanks to the Roman Catholic friend who was kind enough to speak with me on the phone at some length about all of this. I appreciate it very much.
I think you’d be surprised by the variation in views present at some Tridentine RC parishes (as long as they attempt a High Mass — I’m not thinking of the mumble-mass crowd).
I definitely understand the desire to be open about what you believe and do, without being shunned, though.
The priest who does the Tridentine mass in town doesn’t mumble-mass, but he’s a scary Catholic apocalypticist - he once preached on how nature itself was going to rebel against the state of Iowa for rebelling against natural law by allowing same-sex marriage, and said he wouldn’t predict exactly what will happen because the last time he made a prediction of natural disaster because of sin we got the tornado that flattened St. Patrick’s. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Week_2006_tornado_outbreak_sequence : this brushed my apartment building and dropped a massive tree and a sofa from God-knows-where on each side of my car, but did no damage to the building).
And that’s the reasonable parish in town.
I’d love to see this variation sometime.
Maybe I’ll just have to be a good Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian/Indcath.