The Roman Option

Fort Worth Episcopalian David Leedy is working on a history of the diocese. In his research, he came across these interesting pieces and posted them on the Fort Worth Via Media listserve. The articles add some background information to the presentation four of our clergy made to the Roman Catholic bishop of Fort Worth. See blog below: So. How do you feel about being Roman Catholic? posted on Monday, August 11, 2008
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Excerpt From:
September 17, 1991 – Episcopal News Service (ENS)

The 150-member Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Arlington, Texas, voted nearly unanimously on August 2 to sever ties with the Episcopal Church. "We were very disturbed by the outcome of the General Convention," said the Rev. Allan Hawkins, rector of the parish. "We were concerned about the church's inability to affirm traditional Christian morality."

Hawkins reported that the parish would seek affiliation with Rome under a provision approved by the Vatican in 1980 that permits individuals to move from Anglicanism to the Roman Catholic Church. The provision allows individuals to use a modified version of the Episcopal Church's 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

A handful of Episcopalians who have converted to Roman Catholicism have organized "Anglican Use" churches in San Antonio, Houston, and Austin. However, St. Mary's is the first Episcopal congregation in Texas to seek affiliation with Rome.

"There is no provision from a Roman Catholic point of view for a local congregation to negotiate its way into the Roman Catholic Church," said the Rev. William Norgren, ecumenical officer of the Episcopal Church. Norgren said that the "Anglican Use" provision was adopted to make individual converts from Anglicanism feel comfortable as Roman Catholics -- not as a tool to pave the way for entire parishes to leave the Episcopal Church and join the Roman Catholic Church.

Norgren suggested that there would "be no ecumenical problem" for incorporating the Episcopal parish into the Roman Catholic Church, if authorities in both churches agree. However, he said that the Roman Catholics would likely require a pastoral meeting with each parishioner to determine that he or she was prepared -- as well as willing -- to accept Roman Catholicism.

In a statement responding to the action of the parish, Bishop Clarence Pope of Fort Worth indicated that he would not stand in the way of the parish's decision to leave the Episcopal Church. Pope is president of the Episcopal Synod of America, an organization of traditionalist Episcopalians that opposes what it perceives as liberal trends in the church.

Although a decision on the parish's relationship to the Diocese of Fort Worth would not be determined until the diocesan convention in October, it appears that Pope will not fight St. Mary's over control of its church property. "My concern is for the care of the souls of the members of St. Mary's, and not for their property," Pope said.

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[Undated] The Roman Option commentary and proposal by Mark Cameron

[You can read it here. From their website: The Una Voce International website provides information about officers and national associations: http://www.ifuv.org/]

From Una Voce (from the Preface of the Most Holy Trinity (with one voice) is an international federation of associations, founded in 1966 in Rome, that now includes national associations in 17 nations on every continent. It is dedicated to ensuring that the Roman Mass codified by St. Pius V is maintained as one of the forms of eucharistic worship which are honored in universal liturgical life, and to restoring the use of Latin, Gregorian Chant, and sacred polyphony in Catholic liturgy.

I recently read (almost at a sitting actually as I found it quite gripping) William Oddie's The Roman Option (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), the story of the entry of Anglo-Catholic dissidents into the Catholic Church in the UK, and to a lesser extent the US, after the decision of the Church of England to "ordain" women. I think there are many lessons in this book which are relevant to traditionalist Catholics, especially when it comes to tactics on how to carve out our own distinct but integral place in the Church.

The Anglo-Catholics were by and large perfectly orthodox, willing to accept all Catholic doctrine and to submit themselves to reordination. But they also wished to preserve some of their liturgical and historical traditions. Quoting Pope Paul VI's statement to Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey, they wished to be "united but not absorbed." They also wished to maintain their group and parish identities, not simply be absorbed into the anonymity of large (and liberal) suburban Catholic parishes. While traditionalists may argue with some of their liturgical preferences, and certainly with married priests, I think most of us would sympathize with their general goals.

The path they faced in trying to find a way to join the Church as distinct groups and to preserve their liturgical heritage is both discouraging and highly familiar to traditionalists. At first, they received a warm welcome from Cardinal Hume, and an even warmer welcome in Rome (where their biggest ally was, surprise, surprise, Cardinal Ratzinger). Their ideal goal was an Anglican rite personal prelature. But they quickly realized that this was a non-starter, so they started negotiating for a lesser aim: a canonical structure that would allow them to be catechized and join the Church together, and to continue to worship together after they had joined. (I will come back to the details of this later) Rome was keen for this, and Hume was initially willing. But the English Catholic bishops, egged on by liberals and feminists in the Church who did not want to see 1,000 priests and 50,000 laity loyal to Rome and against women priests enter the Church, balked.

What the English Bishops eventually produced was a very watered down statement saying that parishes or groups could join together, but once received they would be absorbed into the mainstream church. The hope of staying together as parishes or keeping elements of Anglican liturgy was more or less crushed. It was join Father Flippant at St. Teilhard de Chardin's for the Novus Ordo, or nothing.


Some U.S. bishops, led by Cardinal Law, were more keen and were promoting a wider expansion of the "pastoral provision", by which a few Anglican parishes, mostly in Texas, had already been received into the Church. Rome tried to push for a more generous settlement in both the US and the UK, but it came to nothing.


Some of the individual stories are shocking. One key player in the negotiations was Episcopalian Bishop Clarence Pope of Fort Worth, Texas. He tried to negotiate for a personal prelature, or some form of nationwide, expanded pastoral provision, with the help of Cardinal Law. They had a meeting in Rome with key Cardinals, which concluded with a dramatic meeting where Pope John Paul II embraced Bishop Pope and gestured towards him saying, "in communion." But when they went back home, nothing happened.


Finally, the ailing Bishop Pope announced his retirement as Anglican bishop, and that he couldn't wait any longer and wished to come into the Church as an individual. On retirement, he moved to the diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The bishop of Baton Rouge had said that he would happily reordain Bishop Pope as a priest. But having said this, the bishop then said that he would first... (wait for this) put it to a vote of the diocesan priests council. Guess what? They voted against allowing an Anglican bishop, involved in direct negotiations with the Pope and Cardinals Law and Ratzinger, to become an ordinary priest. Pope was completely isolated from the Catholic community in Baton Rouge, and was left in the dark as to what was happening at the national and international level (after all, he was just a retired layman now). Old and sick, he started getting calls from the Episcopalian primate and the new Episcopal Bishop of Fort Worth to return to the Episcopal Church to the dignity of being a retired bishop. He did, thanks to the petty jealousies and heartlessness of a small bishop and his liberal priests.

In the end, thanks to a myriad of stumbling blocks on the Catholic side, and a more creative response on the Anglican side by giving the dissident parishes four bishops of their own and allowing them to opt out of the regular Church of England structure, the negotiations with Rome and Westminster came to nothing. Many individual priests and laity came over, but the prospect of a mass conversion of whole parishes flopped.

The similarities to the position of Roman rite traditionalists to the Anglo-Catholics discussed in Oddie's book were striking. How many times have we had friendly words or documents from Rome, only to be shot down by bishops? How many times have we heard initially positive responses from bishops, only to be shot down by a vote of the priests council? How many times have we had to endure insults that we are not really loyal to the Church because we want our own distinct liturgy?


It also makes me think that if Rome is too powerless to bring over an Anglican bishop who the Pope has said he is "in communion" with because of the Baton Rouge priests council, or unwilling to help bring over 200+ whole Anglican parishes, how much power will they have or energy will they spend to help us? We may have to come to the same sad lesson that most of the Anglo-Catholic dissidents still in the Church of England came to: the bishops and priests don't want us, and Rome is unwilling or unable to help us. Therefore, we have to help ourselves. The dissident Anglicans, with their own four bishops, are united through the Forward in Faith movement in the U.K. (and now in the U.S.as well) This will give them a powerful structure to negotiate with Rome as a bloc. Next time, it will take more than kind words from Cardinals: they will want it in writing.

Canon 372
Another very interesting point raised in the book was that after the initial pipe dream of a "personal prelature" like Opus Dei had been abandoned, was that the Anglo-Catholics started focusing on another provision in Canon Law, one which I have never heard of in traditionalist circles. This provision is known as Canon 372, which is part of the Canon Law governing the life of particular churches (usually meaning dioceses). Canon 372 states:

"Can. 372 §1 As a rule, that portion of the people of God which constitutes a diocese or other particular Church is to have a defined territory, so that it comprises all the faithful who live in that territory.

§2 If however, in the judgement of the supreme authority in the Church, after consultation with the Episcopal Conferences concerned, it is thought to be helpful, there may be established in a given territory particular Churches distinguished by the rite of the faithful or by some other similar quality."

This was the provision that the Anglo-Catholics were negotiating to have invoked, and the Vatican and Cardinal Hume were initially in favour of it. Such a particular church would have to be governed by a bishop, but we need not have our own bishop like a "personal prelature." An existing bishop could do the job, say the Cardinal responsible for the Ecclesia Dei Commission.
If and when the next conflict flares up in the Anglican Church (as is occurring right now over gay ordination, and will occur over women bishops in the UK) Anglo-Catholics seeking union with Rome, this time more powerfully organized, will lobby for Canon 372 to be put into effect.


I see no reason why this should not be our goal as traditional Catholics as well: a particular church "distinguished by the rite of the faithful" (i.e. the Tridentine rite) uniting all traditionalists world wide.


In the wake of Protocol 1411 and the divisions in the FSSP, the traditionalist movement needs to start moving forward with a positive agenda. I suggest that calling for a Tridentine particular church, under the terms of Canon 372, should be our goal. As much as possible we should work with like minded groups of Anglo-Catholics, either those groups already united with the Church who would like a stronger status to maintain their identity, or Forward-in-Faith or "continuing" Anglicans who would like to join the Catholic Church, but don't feel able to under the circumstances.