Posted on 12/08/2012 2:34:25 PM PST by NYer
.- Former Episcopal priest Laurence Gipson, who became Catholic in October, says his reaction to the Catholic ordinariate for former Anglicans is one of “gratitude.”
“The ordinariate, I think, is a wonderful opportunity for people like me, Anglican clergy and Anglican laity, who are seeking Catholic faith,” he said.
On Jan. 1, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI established the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter to allow Anglican and Episcopalian groups in the U.S. to become Catholic as groups, not only as individuals. It follows the Pope’s November 2009 apostolic constitution “Anglicanorum coetibus,” which authorized the creation of the special church structures.
Gipson, a 70-year-old native of Memphis, Tenn., said he is grateful to Pope Benedict for establishing the ordinariate. He said it is “advancing the cause of unity in the Church.”
“It offers Anglicans a way to affirm the Catholic faith, that is, a way to affirm orthodox or right belief, while at the same time being able to worship God and practice the Christian life according to the Anglican tradition and patrimony,” he told CNA Dec. 7.
“The Catholic faith and Anglican use are a great combination,” Gipson continued. “Catholics have welcomed us warmly. They’ve extended the right hand of fellowship to us, and I’m really grateful for that.”
Gipson and his wife Mary Frances were received on Oct. 28 into the Catholic Church at Houston’s Our Lady of Walsingham Church through the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter.
He was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1971. He served as rector of the Church of the Ascension in Knoxville, Tenn. and was dean of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Ala.
For 14 years before his retirement in February 2008, he served as rector at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. The church’s parishioners include former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush.
Gipson and his wife have been married for 48 years. They have two adult children and two grandchildren.
He said he was drawn to the Catholic faith in part because of the Church’s “clarity” in teachings and the “unity of faith amongst the faithful.”
“What I yearned for and sought was a more centralized understanding of authority, the magisterium, the teaching authority, which could much more quickly and much more definitely interpret scripture and decide on the faith when it was in dispute and settle those issues.”
Gipson said Monsignor Jeffrey Steenson, the head of the U.S. ordinariate, and the theology faculty of the University of St. Thomas were among those who helped him become Catholic.
“My hope is to be ordained to the priesthood of the Catholic Church,” Gipson said. “I would like to practice that priesthood in any way that’s useful to the ordinariate.”
“I’ve been a parish priest all of my life in the Episcopal Church, for 42 years,” Gipson said. “That’s where my enthusiasm is, at the level of the parish, teaching and preaching, pastoral ministry.”
There are at least 69 candidates for the Catholic priesthood undergoing formation for possible ordination in the ordinariate. The ordinariate has ordained 24 priests since its launch in January. Many of them are married men ordained under a special dispensation in place since 1983.
Gipson said he is “deeply grateful” for his 58 years in the Episcopal Church
“The clergy and the people of the Episcopal Church gave me and my family more in the way of acceptance and support and generosity and love than we could ever have imagined or have deserved,” he said. “Each day serving was a blessing. It prepared me for, and gave me a yearning, for the Catholic Church in its fullness in all aspects of Christ’s Church.
The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion have faced much controversy in recent decades over the interpretation of Scripture, the ordination of women as priests, Christian sexual morality and other issues.
“I see the controversies as an outcome of the nature of authority in the Anglican Church and the Anglican Communion,” Gipson said. There are 34 provincial churches in the communion which are autonomous.
“Without a magisterium to interpret and define the faith, what Anglicanism relies on is dispersed authority rather than centralized authority,” he added.
“What I realized of course is that the Anglican tradition about authority is a part of the identity of Anglicanism, and Anglicanism does not wish to change that manner of authority,” Gipson explained. “The Anglican Communion wishes authority to be dispersed. I decided that I could not ask Anglicanism to change its identity for me, so I was the one that had to do the changing.”
He asked Catholics to show “patience” towards new members of the ordinariate and the Catholic Church.
“We’re just learning how to be good Catholics and there’s a lot to learn,” he said.
Me, too! Very interesting American history there, Pastor. Bless you, and you, too, Mrs. D! Happy singing!
PS
Mrs. Don-o, I should clarify my above remarks and point out, especially with respect to our dear fellow FReeper xzins, that not all UMC congregations have drunk the Kool-Aid. It is mainly the areas around large cities most affected. There are many parts of the country where a truer strain of Methodism is still carried forward. I always enjoy going to church with my relatives in the Carolinas and Georgia, for instance; and rarely feel assaulted by secularism as I do in the UMC in the Northern areas. It’s going to take a long time to clear out the seminary graduates from the 60s and 70s still running the bishoprics.
John was married, but it didn't work out: Wesley married very unhappily at the age of forty-eight to a widow, Mary Vazeille, and had no children. Vazeille left him fifteen years later, to which Wesley wryly reported in his journal, "I did not forsake her, I did not dismiss her, I will not recall her." (Wikipedia)
I particularly like the phrasing, "Wesley married very unhappily": one can almost see him, all a-gloom at the altar, knowing it's a mistake.
That sinking feeling....wish I had known what a "feeling" was when I got married -- might have changed the course of events! LOL!
My father told me, “If you change your mind at the last minute, we’ll still eat all the food and drink all the champagne.” If only there’d been someone to tell John Wesley, “It’s okay to change your mind.”
My Depression-era mother had a fit when I threw away my wedding photo album after my divorce -- because "it had cost good money!"
I should have been a writer for the Carol Burnett show's "Mama" episodes.
LOL! It’s not like you could eat the album ...
PS
Now that you've given him 10 grandkids, has your dad come around to thinking it will work out?
Yes ... although he was always ready to back up any decision I made, even 15 years later (other than moving back in with him and Mom ;-). My parents’ friends and neighbors are surprised when the see all the pictures in their apartment, especially when they find out it’s all one family.
They also get surprised comments on the fact that none of the children have (by the standards of their generation) strange, trendy names. Any one of them could run for President with his heavyweight moniker.
What a great dad!
Well, off I go into the last smidgen of sunlight to trim the clematis off the trellis. It's been fun as always "typing" with you!
Same here! We just let our clematis turn brown and hang on the trellis, also the morning glories!
"Religious Coalition." Gah. See tagline.
Same story in TEC (The Episcopal Church).
... Also, the missionaries funded by the UMC were infected with cultural Marxism in Africa around the same time.
Did not know that wrinkle. Thanks for the insight.
Catholics are doubtless familiar with Protestant complaints against their denomination; however, this politically correct pressure to change the plain meaning of the scriptures has become endemic in the mainline Protestant churches over the past 40 years and points to the value of the Catholic magisterium. ...
I share your sensibility ... still the RCC has some more penance to go through to account for its history of shuffling pedophile priests off to new assignments where they could prey upon the innocent elsewhere.
... There is a vacuum at the top of Protestantism. ...
Excellent laconic statement! Now the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) has elected a black president (2012) in the hope that by embracing "diversity", it will reverse membership decline. Not going to happen.
... The rot in the UMC came to a head in the 60s and 70s, which is when the Methodist Episcopal Church began selling off its universities (which are now leftist bastions like Duke) ...
Earned my MS at NCSU in 1980 just down the road from Durham and worked in W-S,NC for 15 years. I can vouch for this statement.
... nursing homes (which are now politically correct Medicare outposts), etc., and consolidating with the Evangelical United Brethren Church in 1968. Attendance dropped dramatically in the 70s, 80s and 90s, way before anyone dreamed the U.S. would accept homosexual "marriage." The mainline Protestant denominations may never recover.
My crystal ball thinks there will be more Protestant schisms and mergers in the decades ahead. I can imagine a merger between the liberal (US) UMC, ELCA, PCUSA, and a host of smaller like-minded denominations.
To expand on this a bit further: when the original schism took place, Luther and Melanchthon intended for the Lutheran Book of Concord to take the place of the magisterium. Clergy and laypersons were to adhere to the written canon instead of buying and selling indulgences, etc. In fact, as an Augustinian monk, Luther never intended to break from the Roman Catholic Church, only to reform it. But once the break was set in motion, other breakaways began, with tight or loose canon law. Now Protestantism has become a mishmash of traditions, equities in real estate, local folkways, and even storefront ministries, with thousands upon thousands of misunderstandings.
Now the SBC (Southern Baptist Convention) has elected a black president (2012) in the hope that by embracing "diversity", it will reverse membership decline. Not going to happen.
This will work out approximately as well as appointing Michael Steele to head up the RNC in 2008 in response to a Halfrican dude being nominated for president by the Democrats.
Mrs. Don-o --> I believe that the originators of Methodism never intended theirs to be a separate church from the broad swathe of Anglicanism but were looking for revival in strict method. however, over time the CoE and the Methodists drifted apart
And, looking at the timing from the 60s onwards, I see a broad trend. If I was a conspiracy theorist, I would see a broadbased attack on all Churches starting from the 60s, with deep undercover "agents". Or, it could just be that the churches were lax in the 60s...
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Most are sadly destroyed by Satan's attacks and if we look at the largest denominations within these, they are already pagan -- the ECUSA leading the pack (and the CoE not far behind) with the ELCA, PCUSA following
Newer groups such as Baptists, Evangelicals, Pentecostals are break-aways from the first so are not technically Protestant as they did not break away from orthodoxy
They are also varyingly different in theology and beliefs from orthodoxy -- some close, some extremely far (for example the Oneness Pentecostals reject the Trinity, a basic Christian belief and the Seventh Day Adventists have concepts as strange as "Satan taking on the sins of the world" etc.)
In Greece the communist and then dictatorial places kept the Church separate
Churches should stay away from government, it's cancer to any Church.
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