Catching Up On My Catholic Year

So. Started RCIA. Night One was on Thursday, January 9. Pretty eye-opening, actually. Not "informative" so much since I'd already discovered all or most of that stuff on my own. But informative more from the angle of the "culture" of Catholicism. That is new. The Catechists talked about Pope Francis a fair bit and what I eventually understood is that they view him the same basic way that a lot of Southern Baptists view the lead pastor at their churches. That is to say the spiritual leader and authority. Admittedly it's not a perfect comparison but it's the best I've got. It never really soaked through until then because I didn't really understand the concept. But it makes more sense now.

I figured most of my fellow Inquirers would be coming at this from more or less the same background as me. However, I was shown to be wrong. If I learned nothing else on that first night, it's that these people have all kinds of backgrounds. Two of the chicks come from Buddhist backgrounds but for everyone else it's the ABC's of Christianity as you might expect. I mention all of this though to say that what surprised me was how diverse the group was. Not just ethnically (although that too) but in terms of peoples' lives and stuff. The Catholic Church is not a homogenized institution by any stretch.

Something else though. Weeks ago, I dug deeper and researched the split that took place in the Episcopal Church USA that basically gave us the Anglican Church in North America and in particular how it affected the membership numbers for both institutions. I reached the conclusion that, by membership numbers, the schism hasn't benefited ECUSA or ACNA.

And that didn't make much sense because the sheer number of churches that split off from ECUSA should've made ACNA an overnight religious force to be reckoned with. I mean, it's just simple numbers, you know? But that's not what happened. ACNA's growth has moved at a snail's pace. It just mystified me. But either way, and as I said before, you can stick a fork in Anglicanism in America; it's done. I just couldn't understand why.

Well, RCIA Night 1 gave me at least part of the answer. Sure, a lot of parishes and even entire dioceses split off from ECUSA. That's been happening for at least a decade'ish. Maybe longer. But not all have moved to ACNA or one of the other Anglican schism groups.

Nope, a fair number of whole parishes joined up with Rome. Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI at different times set up an ordinariate to accommodate Anglican clergy and, if necessary, their parishes. If even 20% of disgruntled Episcopal Church parishes have joined up with Rome, that would tend to account for why ACNA's growth has been so relatively anemic. It seems I incorrectly linked dropping out of ECUSA with joining up with ACNA. Looks like a fair number of Episcopal parishes and clergy washed their hands of Canterbury entirely.

The Catechist then said that the ordinariate for my city is headquartered directly out of the Catholic parish at which I was attending RCIA. As a matter of fact, they have apartments on-site for priests, seminarians and other clergy to live in. And soon they'll have to build more apartments because Anglican clergy are joining the Catholic Church... and the married ones are bringing their families along. And this was where the aforementioned pontiffs had to take an active hand. Normally, as a religious discipline, the Church doesn't allow married people to be clergy. Simple as that. So those Popes had to set up an ordinariate specifically to deal with incoming married Episcopalian clergy.

And these clergy are apparently still allowed to be distinctly Anglican. They're permitted to hang on to their Anglican customs. The main difference is they're in communion with Rome now. But otherwise they're still "Anglican" in terms of their customs.

This all seemed really messed up to me. Frankly, I had a hard time believing any of it so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, a quick web search revealed this very thing is indeed happening and seems to at least partly account for why ACNA hasn't taken off the why I thought the number of ECUSA evacuations would have implied.

The common thread through a lot of the ECUSA dropouts finding refuge in Rome is that these Episcopalians/Anglicans were happy where they were so long as progress was being made (however slowly) to some kind of reconciliation with Rome. But when it became obvious that reunification was off the table (as ECUSA is all in for ordaining women, homosexuals and who the hell knows what else is coming), these priests and even entire parishes had to deal with matters on their own. And apparently they would sooner tempt their fates in Rome than with a breakaway wing of Anglicanism.

Of all people, I understand.

And to be fair to these refugees, ACNA isn't in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury. So these ECUSA washouts faced a dilemma: They couldn't stay in ECUSA but they obviously didn't feel right about joining up with ACNA either. So what the hell other option is there, you know?

All of this is a *VERY* long way of saying that I'd always assumed that the Catholic Church is a fairly monolithic institution, both in terms of membership and of religious practice. Turns out they're a lot more flexible than I ever gave them credit for.

Incidentally, this has also inspired me to e-mail the rector of my old ACNA parish to let him know about the ordinariate as he may not have heard. I love and respect him even now and it would be a joy to see him every Sunday again.

But anyway. There are some complications with all this though. Minor ones but still. For one thing, they want to see my baptism certificate. Normally I'd be willing to comply with that... except I don't have one. Because one never existed to my knowledge. See, I was baptized by my grandfather when I was 16 AT a Church of Christ but not BY that Church of Christ. So if I had to "document" my baptism, I wouldn't be able to.

Not that it matters anyway because that Church of Christ no longer exists in the form which I attended as a kid. There was a split in the congregation, and of all things it was over musical instruments in the church. The Churches of Christ teach that instrumentation is badevilwickednastynobueno.

That's been settled policy for them for decades so why it suddenly flared up in my town is beyond me. Anyway, but apparently the pro-instrument people won because what's left of the Church of Christ from my childhood is now located in some rundown old shack in a dumpy part of town as opposed to the original building.

So even if there was a baptism certificate for me at one time, methinks it's not on file anymore anyway. And this doesn't touch on how I'm suddenly not sure how canonically valid my baptism is because I'm starting to think of the Churches of Christ as a cult.

What I'm driving at here is that I think it might be necessary for the Catholics to do what they call a "conditional baptism", which basically says "If you were baptized before, you're only getting wet right now. But if you weren't baptized before, you're baptized now".

Since I'm here, may as well talk about RCIA Night Two. Basically the original group from the first night consisted of a total of 13 people. Four men and the rest were women. Going from memory, the numbers for the second week were down one man and two women.

People who know a lot more about this stuff than I do assure me the numbers will probably continue dwindling, either through lack of commitment or an unwillingness to obey the Church's teachings.

And to be honest, I think this is where all the study I did before even joining RCIA will pay off because I've already resolved my problems with the Church's most challenging doctrines. My agenda is to join the Church at this point rather than be persuaded that the Catholic Church is right.

I already know the Catholic Church is right.