The Tiber and The Thames

A Reflec­tion on What I Did and What I Did Not Do and Why

At the invi­ta­tion of our Editor-​in-​Chief, Mr. Adam Mitchell Bernard Bond, I offer our read­ers a reflec­tion on my recent Recep­tion into The Protes­tant Epis­co­pal Church in the United States of Amer­ica, hav­ing taken my leave from the chap­ter of those Chris­t­ian faith­ful in com­mu­nion with the Bishop of Rome. It is impor­tant for me to stress that I, Peter James Ether­ing­ton, Esquire, alone am respon­si­ble for the con­tent of this reflec­tion, and that it does not nec­es­sar­ily reflect any­one else’s eccle­si­o­log­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal, moral, or other views asso­ci­ated with The Gentleman’s Jour­nal.

On Sun­day a bishop in com­mu­nion with the See of Can­ter­bury and its Arch­bishop vis­ited the old­est parish of a cer­tain dio­cese in The Protes­tant Epis­co­pal Church in the United States of Amer­ica. Halfway through the fes­tal Eucharist I knelt at his feet and, lay­ing his hands on the crown of my head, the bishop pro­nounced the following:

We rec­og­nize you as a mem­ber of the one holy catholic and apos­tolic Church, and we receive you into the fel­low­ship of this Com­mu­nion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, pre­serve, and keep you. Amen.

The bishop did not pro­nounce the following:

Hav­ing care­fully drawn you out of a cesspool of Romish error and super­sti­tion; hav­ing wrested you free from the heavy chains of papal idol­a­try and oppres­sion, we absorb you into the only authen­tic deposit of Chris­tian­ity our dimen­sion of time has known, and thereby save you from sure and cer­tain damna­tion. May God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, empower you to bring into our sin­gu­larly safe embrace as many vic­tims of that Baby­lon­ian whore of a church as you can. Amen.

Nor the following:

Holy shit! It’s good to have you with us. We’re glad to have ya’! Feel free to believe what­ever the f – k you want and jack off to a block of Ver­mont ched­dar if it so pleases you. May the Pos­si­ble Divin­ity have some­thing to do with you. Amen.

Nei­ther did the bishop pro­nounce the following:

We rec­og­nize you as a mem­ber of the one holy catholic and apos­tolic Church inas­much as you do not believe that same-​gender sex­ual rela­tion­ships are immoral, women are inca­pable of receiv­ing the sacra­ment of Holy Orders, the Bishop of Rome is infal­li­ble in his reaf­fir­ma­tion of Chris­t­ian doc­trine, and that par­tic­u­lar churches must be in full com­mu­nion with said Bishop in order to par­tic­i­pate in the one holy catholic and apos­tolic Church. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit make sure you really under­stand what I just said, because if you do not, then we can­not rec­og­nize you as a mem­ber of the one holy catholic and apos­tolic Church.

The bishop merely said:

We rec­og­nize you as a mem­ber of the one holy catholic and apos­tolic Church, and we receive you into the fel­low­ship of this Com­mu­nion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, pre­serve, and keep you. Amen.

I will offer our read­ers a care­ful analy­sis of what the above for­mula implies, as far as the bishop who pro­nounced it, the Com­mu­nion he pro­nounced it on behalf of, and I under­stand it. First, though, I would like to explain why I chose to kneel at that faldstool: – The holy catholic faith is ours, before any­thing else, to make holy things that are not holy.

The words whole and holy are as closely related as the words large and large. To be holy is to be com­plete, to not be a crashed wreck of a soul or a sham­bles of a per­son. At holy mass we hail and bow low to the thrice-​holy, thrice-​complete one, the God who alone is per­fectly and infi­nitely com­plete. The tran­si­tive verb form of com­plete or holy is to redeem, to sal­vage bro­ken souls and bod­ies from the threat of damna­tion (for­saken­ness; left-​for-​refuse). The catholic — the uni­ver­sal, com­plete faith charges us to redeem men’s souls and bod­ies, to redeem time¹, and to redeem space². To say that we are called to holi­ness means noth­ing less than that we are called to con­tinue the work of Our Redeemer and redeem the shit of things until our backs give out from redemp­tion. This is not to say that we, the Church, are the redeemer; rather that we are the Redeemer at work, even as the Redeemer is at work in us³.

Yes, I sound like an Epis­co­palian, and it means noth­ing that I sound like an Epis­co­palian: if it takes an imam to wake a Mora­vian up from his slum­ber and remind of him of the work that needs to be done — so be it! We would do well to be reminded that that Mora­vian and that imam, that you and I who move and breathe and have our being are always mov­ing and breath­ing and hav­ing our breath­ing at a par­tic­u­lar time and in a par­tic­u­lar place. It is quite rea­son­able to assume that God, whose agenda is too impor­tant for him to wait for us to catch up with it, will use what­ever truth-​bearing thing is within a 50 mile radius to accom­plish it!

We are reminded of our respon­si­bil­ity to redeem, bind­ing on us through our Bap­tismal covenant, because I said I was going to share with you why I chose to let the bishop bless me with the first of the above for­mu­las: I for­got it!

I for­got the above, that that is what Our Lord com­manded his fol­low­ers to do, and that the organ he con­firmed and reminded us as that which was and is to affect this redemp­tion and rec­on­cile the world to Him­self is His Mys­ti­cal Body, the Church. Because of my spir­i­tual and the­o­log­i­cal imma­tu­rity I put myself in a posi­tion to really ruin my beau­ti­ful rela­tion­ship with the Roman Catholic Church. Let me make it per­fectly clear that I was as much in love with the Church Roman when my knees hit the chan­cel steps as I was with the Church Angli­can — what­ever the hell those stu­pid labels mean (there’s only one Church for Christ’s sake)⁴ and that when I finally did go through with the rite of Recep­tion into the Angli­can Com­mu­nion, I har­bored no ill will toward the Chris­t­ian faith­ful in com­mu­nion with the Bishop of Rome, or the Bishop of Rome, Bene­dict P.P. XVI, him­self for that matter.

I had for­got­ten the rea­son for my Catholic faith and, through poor deci­sions and unholy asso­ci­a­tions as a Roman Catholic, spoiled my rela­tion­ship with that assem­bly of the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ. God had other plans: I woke up on Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 2, 2007 and knew that I was going to the Epis­co­pal parish men­tioned above. I did. I went back. I was reminded — i.e., I was re-​minded, it was put back into my mind — what it meant when I answered “Yes” to all of the Covenan­tal ques­tions a holy priest asked me before my Bap­tism six years from that date, and what it meant when I allowed my fore­head to be anointed by a holy bishop a year after that at my Confirmation.

‘Why did you not, then, just go back to the main­stream Roman Catholic Church?’ it might be asked of me. Quite sim­ply: because I have picked up too much momen­tum in my Chris­t­ian work to go back­ward and undo things of lesser impor­tance; because I will now be able to offer Our Lord an answer when He asks me on that most fate­ful day: Peter, where were you when I was sick and hun­gry and thirsty and in prison?

I would never leave the Catholic Church. What ass-​wipe would leave the Catholic Church? It might be argued that I have joined a Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion that under­stands itself to be catholic with a lower-​case c, but that it is not really Catholic with an upper-​case C. F – k cap­i­tal­iza­tion. The Greek word katho­likos was used to describe the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ before cap­i­tal­iza­tion meant any­thing. The word “catholic” is not the prop­erty of the Church in com­mu­nion with the Bishop of Rome any­more than the word “ortho­dox” is the prop­erty of those ancient Chris­t­ian assem­blies in com­mu­nion with the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­arch of Con­stan­tino­ple. I am ortho­dox (I pray); I am catholic (please God). “Catholic” does not sim­ply mean not-​Protestant. I am not Protest­ing against much, if any­thing. I am not Protest­ing against the Pope.

I do not believe that being in com­mu­nion with the Bishop of Rome is the sine qua non deci­sive fac­tor of Catholi­cism. I am not Protest­ing against belief in the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion of Our Lady; I do not believe in the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion — not because “that’s some­thing those super­sti­tious Roman Catholics believe, and I’m not Roman Catholic, there­fore I don’t /can’t believe it”, but because I just don’t believe it. I do believe I could be wrong about the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion, I have to say, and if by the faith, rea­son, and tra­di­tion triad I arrive at a com­pelling case to believe in it, then I will. I am not Protest­ing against any­thing I used to believe. It would seem, then, that I am not a very good Protestant.

A priest once said to me in earnest: “If it doesn’t appear in the National Catholic Direc­tory, it’s not Catholic.” How small would be the Chris­t­ian assem­bly, how very small, if that were true! The host of faith­ful Chris­tians, bish­ops and clergy in com­mu­nion with the Ecu­meni­cal Patri­arch of Con­stan­tino­ple or Moscow; the Pol­ish National Catholic Church; Joris A. O. L. Ver­cam­men, the Old Catholic Arch­bishop of Utrecht; the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury — not Catholic? The saints present and past now mov­ing closer to God as He Is are not listed in the National Catholic Direc­tory—are they too, not Catholic? Chris­tians faith­fully imi­tat­ing Our Lord Jesus Christ with­out a bap­tismal cer­tifi­cate or home parish — not Catholic? Protes­tants hon­or­ing tra­di­tion, rea­son, and faith to the best of their abil­ity — not Catholic? How sad, how small would be the Church!

Hav­ing offered our read­ers the sin­gle, most impor­tant rea­son for my Recep­tion into The Epis­co­pal Church, I have pre­pared a Ques­tion & Answer “apolo­getic” to fur­ther explain the smaller, much less impor­tant details of what I under­stand I have done and what I have not done.

Q. Assum­ing the bish­ops of the Angli­can Com­mu­nion, the Ortho­dox churches, the Ultra­jec­tine Old Catholic Church are in fact “catholic”, where does their juris­dic­tion come from? Whence do the priests and dea­cons of these churches derive their com­mis­sion? When an exor­cism needs to be done: do you not have to call the Roman Catholic priest?

A. The dea­cons and priests of these catholic assem­blies derive their juris­dic­tion from their catholic bish­ops, who derive their juris­dic­tion from Jesus Christ. When an exor­cism needs to be done, the deci­sion of the jurisdiction-​holding bishop is what counts: the Roman Catholic priest does not nec­es­sar­ily need to be called when the fin­ger of God can be employed to expel demons from places and souls by non-​Roman Catholic exorcists.

Q. You don’t believe in the Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion, but you do believe in the Dormition/​Assumption of Our Lady? Are you not just pick­ing and choos­ing what you believe and what you do not believe?

A. No. That is what I believe and what I do not believe. I have no need to choose it. When I am com­pelled to believe the oppo­site, I will. One can­not be made to believe any­thing he does not, in fact, believe.

Q. So you must be gay or try­ing to get a sex change or something?

A. I invite all fine young ladies between the ages of 18 – 25, with “B” cup breasts — prefer­ably brunette — to visit me in per­son for a demon­stra­tion of my heterosexuality.

Q. Isn’t the church you should belong to the Uni­tar­ian Uni­ver­sal­ist group?

A. No, because I am a Catholic. I think that they are at least not vis­i­ble catholics, although I can­not tell you what God would say to that.

Q. Are you Anglo-​Catholic then?

A. In mat­ters of piety, rit­ual, and the­ol­ogy: yes, not that that means much. Our Lord is less con­cerned with where I fall on the silly man-​made spec­trums of Conservative-​Liberal, Catholic-​Evangelical, etc. than with our doing what He asked us to.

Q. So you think that the Roman Catholic Church is schis­matic and The Epis­co­pal Church is the true catholic Church in this coun­try [the United States]?

A. No. I believe both are Catholic/​catholic, and that nei­ther of them by them­selves are the “true” Catholic Church in this or in any coun­try. I sus­pect that in Rome and his­tor­i­cally Roman Catholic places the Roman Catholic Church is the more authen­tic catholic Church, whereas in the United King­dom and the United States nei­ther is more “authen­tic” than the other; I think there can be more or less authen­tic churches in cer­tain times and places, but I am not in a posi­tion to tell you which ones I think those are and where and when they were/​are, because 1) I am not an eccle­si­ol­o­gist, and 2) I don’t care, because there is work to be done that I can do and get Jesus points for with­out hav­ing to know the answer to that question.

Q. So you think there are two catholic churches?

A. No. There is one Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church par­tic­i­pates in the Catholic Church and is the Catholic Church, even as other katho­likos churches par­tic­i­pate in and are the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church is the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ, so when­ever the Angli­can Church of Canada or the Pol­ish National Catholic Church is the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ, it is the Catholic Church. When­ever the Roman Catholic Church or the Syro-​Malabar Ortho­dox Church is the Mys­ti­cal Body of Christ, it is the Catholic Church.

Q. Whoa, what the hell’s your problem?

A. I Gar­fun­kled your mother.

Q. Does the fact that you are an Anglophile have any­thing to do with what you did?

A. Yes, it was approx­i­mately 4% of why I became Angli­can. Other irrel­e­vant rea­sons were the 2% because I like Angli­can archi­tec­ture, 3% because I want a higher income through busi­ness con­nec­tions, 1.5% because the food is good, and 2.5% because I may be able to enter the ordained min­istry with­out hav­ing to wait 438 years to pay off col­lege and sem­i­nary debt. The remain­ing 88% is because I want to do an effec­tive job at rec­on­cil­ing the world to Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who I 100% believe is 100% God and 100% man I have known since my First Communion.

Q. Do you believe that women can be priests?

A. I don’t know the exact answer to that ques­tion. Whether or not they can, at least two women dressed as and oth­er­wise act­ing like priests have admin­is­tered to me what I will tes­tify in a court of law to be what I have always under­stood as the Sacra­ment of the Eucharist to be, and one of them abso­lu­tion. This does not nec­es­sar­ily mean that they can be or are priests — ask God, not me. The good news is that our catholic respon­si­bil­i­ties are not affected one way or the other because of this, and you can still do what Our Lord asks of you.

Q. So is fag­gotism okay for you now?

A. I’m less inter­ested in whether fag­gotism is okay than whether or not I can be an exten­sion of Our Lord to fag­gotism sup­port­ers and fag­gotism haters alike.

Q. You’re avoid­ing the ques­tions just like a good Epis­co­palian, aren’t you?

A. Sud­denly I’m sup­posed to have all the answers?

Q. So while the Church falls apart you’re just going to call every­thing a min­istry and serve fin­ger sand­wiches to the poor?

A. The Church and the drama of sal­va­tion: they are so, so much big­ger than the bitch-​ass petty shit that, if you haven’t noticed, clev­erly keeps us from doing God’s work. It is not the Church that is falling apart, but the hope for sal­va­tion because of dick-​stroking polemics that beat the shit out of Our Lord anew.

Q. Jesus! Cool down!

A. Suck a giant one.

Faith­fully yours,
Peter James Ether­ing­ton, Esquire