Thanks, Siobhan. You can see Fr. Phillips, but not much of Sr. Elizabeth as her sisters hover about adjusting her black veil at her first profession.
Posted on 02/05/2003 2:40:56 PM PST by sockmonkey
SAN ANTONIO, Texas - Picture a Roman Catholic parish where the priest celebrates Mass facing away from the congregation, where the prayers sound like Elizabethan English and the pastor is married with five children.
You're in the Church of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, Texas, the first parish in the United States established to accommodate Episcopalians who become Catholic and want to keep certain liturgical and cultural traditions.
A pastoral provision issued in 1980 by the Vatican permitted the ordination of married men who were priests in the Episcopal church and allowed for a special adaptation of the Mass known as the Anglican-use liturgy, which incorporated Anglican traditions.
Now, 20 years after Our Lady of the Atonement was established, there is growing interest in setting up more such congregations. A group will gather in Queens, N.Y., Feb. 23 to explore the possibility of offering the Mass in the New York area.
"There's an opportunity in a large city like New York," said Joe Blake, a cradle Catholic who joined the Episcopal church and later returned to the Church. Blake recently moved from the Boston area, where he worshiped at the Anglican-use parish of St. Athanasius in West Roxbury, to Bethlehem, Pa., 90 miles west of New York City. He is helping to organize the February exploratory meeting.
Blake spoke of the Anglican use as an "outreach to Anglicans who are looking for a way to swim the Tiber," that is, to cross over to the Roman Catholic Church. "In a city like New York, you have a very strong 'high church' tradition, and many [Episcopalians] are distressed with the [secularizing] trend in the Episcopal church," including the ordination of women and homosexuals.
But it's not just former Episcopalians who are drawn by the Anglican-use liturgy. Churches like Our Lady of the Atonement and St. Athanasius list many cradle Catholics as parishioners.
Ray Ranzau, one such cradle Catholic, joined Our Lady of the Atonement because he "just liked the reverence."
"Everybody still genuflects," he said.
Father Christopher Phillips, Our Lady of the Atonement's pastor, said his parish is about half former Episcopalians or other Protestant converts and half lifelong Catholics. Father Phillips was ordained a Catholic priest on Aug. 15, 1983, as 17 other Episcopalians became Catholics and formed the beginning of the parish.
"People who come here as lifelong Catholics usually have a story," he said. "They're looking for something more formal, dignified and awe-inspiring."
Father Phillips was a member of the unnamed commission that drafted the Anglican-use liturgy - the Book of Divine Worship. The commission was convened in Rome under the authority of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship. Finalized in Rome in November 1983, it is based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and uses "thee and thou kind of language," Father Phillips said.
For example, the penitential rite, taken from the Book of Common Prayer, reads: "We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we from time to time most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us."
In modifying the Episcopal liturgy to make it conform to Catholicism, "there were some things that needed to be taken out and some things that needed to be added," Father Phillips said.
Because the Episcopal prayer of consecration is "faulty as far as Catholic theology and teaching is concerned," according to Father Phillips, it was replaced by an English translation of the Roman Catholic prayer in use just prior to the Protestant Reformation in England. Also, he said, prayers for the pope and the commemoration of the dead were added.
Anglican-use parishes have their own liturgy, which is not a separate rite, as is the Eastern Divine Liturgy, for example, but a "different way of doing the Roman rite," explained Father Joseph Wilson, the parochial vicar of St. Luke's Parish in Queens, N.Y.
The Roman rite prevails in the Western Church and was derived from Roman practices and the use of Latin in the Mass from the third century onward, according to the Catholic Almanac. The principal rites in the Eastern Catholic Churches are the Byzantine, Alexandrian, Antiochene, Armenian and Chaldean.
Father Wilson has written on the Anglican use in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, a monthly periodical for priests, and has celebrated the liturgy in Boston and is involved in exploring the possibility of offering it on a regular basis in New York.
'Real Ecumenism'
In some ways, the pageantry of the Anglican liturgical style strongly resembles pre-Vatican II customs. The Anglican-use liturgy "looks very similar to the traditional form of the Mass," that is, the Tridentine Mass, Father Wilson affirmed.
However, Our Lady of the Atonement is "not pre-Vatican II by any means," Father Phillips said. "If the Second Vatican Council hadn't been, we wouldn't really exist."
According to Father Phillips, Vatican II emphasized that "there can be great diversity within the Church. … We didn't all have to be the same." The "real ecumenism" of the council, he said, "allowed different traditions to unite under the leadership of the pope."
Anglican use is definitely a "postconciliar idea," Father Wilson said in agreement.
The pastoral provision governing the Anglican use allows married Episcopal priests to be ordained as Catholic priests but does not permit them to become bishops or remarry in the case of widowhood.
Father Phillips has been married 32 years. But he says that even if he had not been granted the dispensation to be ordained a Catholic priest, he would have become Catholic anyway. "I could not remain an Episcopalian priest," he said.
He called his conversion "a matter of conscience," in part because of "the whole matter of abortion."
"What the Episcopalian Church was teaching was incomplete and incorrect," he said. He said current Episcopalian doctrine teaches that "abortion could be seen as a moral good and may well be necessary."
"The basis of their moral teaching is immoral," he said.
In its 20 years, Our Lady of the Atonement has grown from 18 parishioners, "counting children," to "something around 400 families," Father Phillips said, and 1000 to 1200 people attend Sunday Mass. The parish runs a school, and plans are currently under way to expand the church building to accommodate the additional parishioners.
But the number of Anglican-use parishes remains small - six - and not all are as vibrant. Father William Stetson assists Cardinal Bernard Law, who is still officially the Holy See's delegate for oversight of the pastoral provision despite his resignation as Boston's archbishop. Father Stetson, a priest of the Opus Dei prelature based in Potomac, Md., oversees the process for preparing an Episcopal congregation or priest to become Anglican-use Catholics. He said he did not believe the Anglican use was growing much in popularity for two reasons.
First, "hundreds of thousands of non-Catholics become Catholic every year, the vast majority from non-Catholic Christian denominations, and the regular territorial parish meets their spiritual needs," he said. Second, the Episcopalians in general are a "diminishing community."
But requests to establish new Anglican-use parishes have "not been encouraged" by bishops, Father Phillips maintained.
"It's a pity that more bishops don't realize they have a real tool here for evangelization," he said. Anglican use is "a door that opens to allow people to see there is a place for them in the Catholic Church."
If they join an Anglican-use parish, Episcopalians "don't have to abandon everything they knew and loved" in order to convert to Catholicism, he said. Moreover, he added, there is "something about the beauty of the worship that appeals to many," not just former Episcopalians.
When asked if more people would convert if more Anglican-use parishes were established, Father Phillips responded, "I know it."
For information on the Feb. 23 meeting in New York contact: JBlake9147@aol.com.
Katharine Smith Santos writes from Garden City, New York
PROPOSED AGENDA: NEW YORK MEETING-of those interested in pursuing the possibility of an Anglican Use Congregation in the City of New York.
Sunday, 23 February 2002 Saint Luke's Church, Whitestone, Queens, N.Y.
11AM Morning Prayer lunch to follow, provided by the parish.
1PM - discussion Proposed points of disussion:
-whether there is need in NYC for an Anglican Use Congregation
-what form should that congregation take, and where should it gather (Queens? Brooklyn? Manhattan?)
-how to raise awareness and interest?
-who shall serve as the contact for inquirers.
-other points of interest to those interested in the Anglican Use will undoubtedly be offered by the eclectic group who will gather.
3:30PM Evening Prayer
4PM Holy Mass
-the request has been put for the faculty to offer Holy Mass in the Anglican Use.
Those who are able will adjourn to supper in a local restaurant. Probably Italian. Well worth setting everything else aside for. Supper is dutch, or, as has been noted, 'according to the Rite of Utrecht.'
* The schedule is very flexible, the agenda is very flexible. Feedback is welcomed.
* There is no expense whatsoever incurred by those who participate, who are honored guests of the Rev. Msgr. Nicholas J. Capua, and Saint Luke's Parish.
* It would be most helpful if there were a good turnout of folk interested in the Anglican Use from the Northeast area, people interested in the Anglican Use. If we get to know each other, it will help out future growth.
* We meet in the Diocese of Brooklyn, to discuss the possibility of forming an Anglican Use Congregation in the New York City area. The chancery of the Diocese has been advised of our meeting and the chancellor has expressed his appreciation for the notice. Every step we will take in this initiative will be in full accord with the canons of the Church.
What? A "folk mass" where people show up in sweats or dressed like Brittany Spears isn't awe-inspiring?
I'm a member of an indult parish that's strongly devoted to Latin liturgy. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of the grand and dignified English liturgies that were briefly in use in the mid-60s, before things went completely to hell. It's not a perfectly catholic (universal) solution, but the return to English dignity and ceremony could certainly do much to ease the faithful back into an embrace of Latin permanence and reverence.
My Priest Fr. Phillips used to offer the indult Mass at Our Parish, but after a few months, the Bishop rescinded the indult, so, now he offers the NO in Latin at our 6pm Sunday Mass.
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