Observing changes in the church

I admit to the guilty pleasure of watching from the sidelines the unfolding Catholic-Anglican situation. The Vatican has sent an invitation to conservative Anglicans (Episcopalians) who don’t approve of women’s ordination, gay rights in any form and liberal political or social ideas to come over to Rome. This includes married Episcopalian priests. I have no dog in this particular fight, but I admit I am curious to see what will happen.

There has always been a lot of traffic back and forth on the road between Canterbury and Rome. Both churches have welcomed refugees from the other side. Usually, appeals to change communions have been a bit more subtle. The Vatican’s latest move was bold and might increase the pressure to allow married priests. Priests forced out of the priesthood because they wished to marry might be a bit put out to find that Episcopal married priests are now being welcomed into the fold. Women religious (nuns, sisters) might find their hopes of eventual ordination grow even dimmer if the church can partially solve its shortage of priests by bringing in Anglican clergy. 

The American Episcopal Church long has been known as a big tent. It has had everything from people who were rather like Catholics before Vatican II to members who were almost secular humanists.

The Roman Catholic Church is more diverse than most Americans realize. Down through the centuries the Church allowed an astonishing diversity of thought through the creation of new orders. Until modern communications it was difficult for the Vatican to keep tabs on its far-flung flock. We tend to remember the burning of heretics while forgetting times the powers-that-be managed differences in a much less autocratic way. What approach will prevail in the future? I have no idea.

It could be that both churches will become more doctrinaire and less tolerant. The Catholics who are incensed over the Vatican’s positions on a plethora of issues could become Anglicans, and the Anglicans upset by that communion’s “liberalism” could take up the Vatican on its invitation. The Balkanization of Christianity would grow. Christianity would have less and less to say to a world torn apart by sectarianism, whether religious or political. The question of how a group remains faithful to its tradition without being authoritarian and oppressive would not be addressed.

Grappling with the question is a pain. Putting up with people whose ideas you abhor is draining. The alternatives just happen to be worse: rigidity, self-righteousness and intellectual laziness, three very attractive vices. 

Sometimes I need to get away and be with people who know who I am, need no explanations and will allow me to say things I could not get by with in a more mixed group. I need to joke about things that someone might find offensive. I need to say what I am actually thinking instead of what others think I ought to be thinking. I need it like I need vacations. I need it like I need to sleep in late, hang out all day in my pajamas without a smidgen of makeup and be a complete slob.  But once I get it out of my system, I need to get back to living among people who make me think, challenge my assumptions, put the world together differently from the way I have come to understand it and remind me that we have to share this little blue ball. 

It is a relief to watch this particular conflict from the bleachers rather than on the playing field, but eventually I will have to confront similar conflicts in my own religious community, my school, my town, my country, the world.

Patricia Hunt, of Staunton, is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain.