Posted on 09/04/2009 8:13:41 AM PDT by NYer
Churches and whole dioceses have left the Episcopal Church since the 2003 consecretation of an openly gay bishop brought a lonstanding divide over homosexuality within the nation's sixth-largest Protestant denomination out into the open.
But on Thursday, 10 Episcopal nuns from a Catonsville convent took what scholars say is the unprecedented step of joining the Catholic Church. At a Mass celebrated by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, each vowed to continue their tradition of consecrated life, now as a religious institute within the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
"We know our beliefs and where we are," Mother Christina Christie, superior of All Saints Sisters of the Poor, told sun colleague Mary Gail Hare. "We were drifting farther apart from the more liberal road the Episcopal Church is traveling. We are now more at home in the Roman Catholic Church."
In a statement, Bishop Eugene Taylor Sutton of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland wished them God's blessings.
"Despite the sadness we feel in having to say farewell, our mutual joy is that we remain as one spiritual family of faith, one body in Christ," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at weblogs.baltimoresun.com ...
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“I think the Converts are going to start coming in droves.”
If I were you, I wouldn’t get too excited about a few Anglo-Catholic “Nuns” converting to the RCC. They were already there in spirit as well as faith and practice. The only thing they had to swallow was the Pope.
On a worldwide basis there are far more Catholic to Protestant conversions than Vice Versa. Look it up. Whole countries in Latin America are making the switch.
Most Mexican immigrants to Houston end up in Pentecostal and Evangelical churches as well.
If you're a broad- or high-church Piskie, really the Catholics are the only alternative if you don't want to join one of the breakaway groups (and the Anglican Communion worldwide has got some serious systemic problems, just not as far down the funnel as the Americans). If a former Episcopalian is serious about the Real Presence and the Apostolic Succession, that is (and a surprising number are, even if they don't call themselves high-churchers).
Low-churchers are more likely to join an Evangelical body, but they are in the minority everywhere but in the South, where suspicion of Catholicism has been slow to die in some quarters.
Welcome home indeed.
Let us pray that those who separate themselves from Holy Mother Church follow their example.
fixed it.
I grew up Episcopalian.
And, as it happens, I was baptized as an infant, at my aunt’s suggestion, in the chapel of a convent of Episcopal nuns in Boston. My parents weren’t religious, but I think my aunt (thankfully) must have leaned on them from time to time.
We attend a Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod Church at present. I get sick every time I get near an Episcopal Church. And I loved the Episcopal Church. It’s a shame.
The Episcopal Church was all I’d ever known except for some Southern Baptist and Charamatic Churches I would attend (as a child) while visiting my Dad’s relatives in Deep East Texas.
But there’s not a whole lot of difference between Conservative Low Chuch Episcopalians and Missouri Synod Lutherans. (Except for that pesky “Real Presence” thing.)
I guess this depends from a country, where I live nuns dress traditionally. Hopefully new Pope will sort this out!
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