Journey Home - 2016-12-19 - Fr. Thomas Wray

[Music] [Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and I know this program eventually will re-air at different times of the year but I want to make sure that I mentioned that here we are just before Christmas and we've finished off our time of Advent and where we're preparing ourselves for the celebration of the coming of our Savior so I wish you a Merry Christmas and the blessings to you and your family it's a great pleasure to join you once again on this program our guest tonight is father Thomas ray he's a former Episcopal priest and I'm gonna get out of the way as soon as I can because I know you have a lot to share with us father Marcus great to be here with you it's really a blessing to be in this space here in this chair where so many of my pioneers and friends have been and if you're not offended it feels to me a bit like I'm in the Catholic converts version of Graceland well it's a pilgrimage really I uh it's a wonderful privilege of Mother Angelica gave me so many years ago never expected that you know 19 plus years of doing this program but for me it's a great privilege of hearing the stories because I hear all the Holy Spirit touches life well and you've made that available to so many and we really do salute you for your apostolate well thank you for the willing to set that chair cuz sometimes it's tough to tell the story it is tough to tell the story and we both know of course John Henry Newman my exemplar struggled it was late in his life that he chose to put down in writing the causes for his conversion in the apologia he said it's it's always something you can't take it in just one cup of coffee you know for him by the time it was also not really his desire but because he in the end he had he did public yeah circumstances forced that upon him in some ways but there's there's always he said in that Volodya there's always a negative and a positive reason I think that's part of why I've hesitated is because the negative as you well know is it's it's the search for thority and the lack of authority within Protestant that that manifests itself in these brokenness this party spirit and that just simply sounds negative for people to hear but there's also a positive reason a lifetime of the Lord leading and guiding providentially and it's that voice of Jesus echoing in the church that we should all be one and we have this this immense treasury of the Catholic spirituality that looks upon even though separated brothers and traditions and sees in Protestantism there's elements of truth there there's beauty there their source and summit is in the fullness of communion with the Roman Church but those are elements of sanctification and each of them can can ensure this the Catechism says impel us to reunion with the source so that's my story it's like a broken stained-glass window in a lot of ways a beautiful cathedral window that was just shattered by Luther and Calvin in the 16th century but we protestants as you well know we stumble across these shards of grip of glass and it's like wow this used to be part of a whole this used to be a beautiful designed window and and we have elements of that but that that invites us and really does there's a dynamic to say where did this window come from you know I think in in the years I've been a Catholic for over 20 years and and I think what what gets me as I get older hearing stories and his moved by the profound mystery of God's movement in in our lives but also in the world because he loves every single individual person even the most destitute ignorant excuse me a person he loves that and desires to reach out to that person and sometimes the reason they're not reachable is because of our sinfulness or the scandals that we have made to form a barrier for that to be open to here because of of the barriers have put in their life but I think one of the reasons that God called the bishops in the fourth century to put this wonderful book together was on the one hand it was never intended to be alone the Bible but on the other hand God also knew that there would be people in history that that would be the only way that they would hear of Jesus Christ yeah would be when this book fell in their hands so there's a mystery of the both a.m. yeah but I'm gonna keep talking so I gotta get out of the way right and invite you didn't tell your take your whole huge story and put it into an hour well it is a fifty year journey Marcus and I ask your help to help a town but it it it really is a straight line you know it is a continuous path for me to find the grace to say yes to a deeper relationship with Jesus and you know I was blessed that my parents were practicing faithful devout Protestants and by that I mean they took us to church we grew up as regular church-going family my father's side of the family was the Episcopalian side many generations my mother's side was the Methodist side and they as many married Protestant couples do found a third denomination that they made their own we get this as converse but there again was one of those shards of the beautiful stained-glass window that Protestantism is always seeking for something more it's always yearning to find that the the fullness so that was a great journey and I die to migrated through denominations as many of us do in my journey before coming home to the the Catholic Church my father was a Lecter in the Lutheran Church my mother was a Bible study person and I was an acolyte and one of the the gifts that the Holy Spirit made the impression that he made it was through that formation my years of being baptized as a Lutheran and confirmed as a Lutheran is that Christianity is inherently liturgical it's not a free-form me and Jesus there is something that is given and it's Jesus when you pray this is how you should pray and looking back on it Marcus I just see all these elements of Catholicism were embedded within Lutheranism the pastor who baptized me was vested in a cassock and surplus and stole he had a baptismal font there was a communion table as they called it monthly Communion clearly these symbols were not invented by Martin Luther in the 16th century they derived from his being an Augustinian monk a Catholic priest was Luther so that just impressed upon me that there were not free to just invent out of whole cloth a religion so that was a great grace Thomas Howard you know I know you know he's a just a wonderful writer and I encourage everybody out there to read one of his books Wheaton College has yeah you know all of that but this book evangelicals are not enough one of the parts and they're dealt with this issue of lurch I just want to throw this in there that those that think I'll know I don't need liturgy I just want the free free freedom to pray what I want to pray and worship the one I worship he demonstrates clearly in that book that even the most free liturgical independent Christian worship ends up liturgical inherently right you know the mega church is the big boxes have a clear system and structure and approach you know we see that so and and and why reinvent the wheel it's just part of our my part of the way God wired us in His image is this communal gathering to worship and to do that liturgy is an important part of us being able to speak one voice absolutely and it was not till many years later discovering Catholic theology and spirituality that the great teaching of prosper of a quitin the way we pray shapes the way we think about God it's not vice-versa the Protestant mind is the moai I believe this so I will build a service around that theology it's actually vice versa isn't it it's the way we pray in this beautiful apostolic pattern does wire us and gives us the capacity to say yes so I was well he would truly believe in young Lutheran men no I have to say I was pro forma in a lot of ways and and I wasn't until my college years that I had a very beautiful vivid personal evangelical awakening and that was through a college professor I was right down the road here at Oxford Ohio at Miami University had a unbeknownst to me a professor of history who was an inner varsity Christian Fellowship active guy dr. Yamaguchi who actually brought many people into the church through his ministry but he witnessed in the course of a college lecture about the archaeological evidence for the early Christian communities and it was just like the light bulb went off in me that this is not just a human institution this is an historical institution and that in propelled me then to reach back to a high school friend of mine an evangelical guy who introduced me to guess who CS Lewis in their Christianity and then it was pretty much game over to find that that beautiful once atheist Oxford Don turned devout passionate believer in the logic of Christianity did that plan to see you did it did for ministry exactly as you've so often highlighted and as we often do Protestants when we have an evangelical awakening we do feel called to ministry and indeed I did and off I went to protestant seminary I was very active in an evangelical church after college in Chicago pastored by a graduate of Wheaton College where I actually wanted out graduating from had a wonderful experience there and this pastor was was a very much involved in the social justice wing of Protestantism that you may recall that the sojourners community Jim Wallace and and and and reaching out to the homeless the poor the disenfranchised in inner-city Chicago beautiful ministry but this caused a lot of guess what conflict in the congregation between those who thought it really was just about maintaining our existing tradition and and this new kind of edgy ministry and I'll never forget the pastor was asked to say well what what does the church teach about social justice what should we be doing with the name the neighbor and stranger and he said I I have my own personal opinion I can tell you but I know once I do that you won't listen to me you'll all make your own minds up so there was right there that the the inkling of the problem of authority how ultimately could he teach so that then brought me to the the protestant seminary where i found a wide range of not just diversity but disagreement among the faculty you know there were the the followers of karl bartos I'd hold niebuhr of Paul Tillich and there was this piece that they brokered to to teach but there was there was no capacity to really form a unifying and gonna look back on that experience at the seminary well first of all your experience in the the church that was trying to figure out social justice as well as the gospel of evangelization then to seminary was there a common thread amongst those groups I mean there's diversity but if you were to look back what was it that what was the common thread yeah I mean it was really discipleship it was how do we live from our hearts and our minds and our bodies to be the body of Christ it was a very zealous beautiful living of the faith and and the search underneath that I think looking back was how do we know what is assurance how can we be assured that this is what indeed is right for our own salvation so there were these very passionate sometimes conflicted differing opinions so our guest is father Thomas R a former Episcopal priest but part of the struggle there in this common thread of discipleship of Jesus Christ you could say all those professors with their different theologies they all believed in Jesus Christ and they all believed in at least the authority of Scripture though they may have a different view on how to interpret it right and but there you had this this question of okay how do I apply the Sermon on the Mount and how does it still apply to us if we've surrendered to Jesus Christ and we're saved yes you know right and and again who who is ultimately the interpreter and if it's not the spirit with which the scriptures were written then we're into what Newman said famously we're just in a private opinion you know I that the Gospel of John was written in 180 ad he believes it was written in ninety a D and again near the twain shall meet there's no umpire there's no referee marked us and that that just gradually began to haunt me even at the earliest stages I was thinking back on my Lutheran upbringing that there's got to be a forum and a settled tradition and historical branch here and this free forum evangelicalism I just I knew was not going to be ultimately my home so it was while at the protestant seminary up in Chicago right on Sheridan Road in Northwestern's campus across the street from that seminary was the Episcopal seminary and I went to take my theology there because it was a much more patristic oriented classic form of theology but I found there a community that prayed in the liturgy the the Liturgy of the hours in the chapel and above all the sacrament it was my first understanding of the source and summit of this relationship with Jesus is channel to the sacrament and that was my initiation into high church Anglicanism you know saw itself is a branch of Roman Catholicism but it was very powerful and healing again a straight line into deeper intimacy with Jesus it's we believed in what we called not the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist but the true presence of Christ so we hedged a little bit and all that though sometimes they use the word real president but but not meaning it in a in the trans substantial way that's right it's consubstantiation we know that it does become the body and blood of Jesus but we can't say or shouldn't say how and when that happens and so it remains bread and wine as well as the body of Jesus which of course the catholic church thinks were you married yet to this boy I was married in 1990 so yes just in this time of my Episcopal Awakening my Anglican roots I met the love of my life she Janet my wife is the daughter of an American Baptist missionary so while she served with her father and family and overseas missions growing up and in Southeast Asia in the Philippines and in Vietnam so very practicing devout family again her parents gave her the gift of faith just as mine gave me mine you know sometimes I wonder so I see you moving into the Anglican Church or Episcopal visible angle camp both how do you put yourself at this line well it's it's it's a both end we'd love to say the Anglican Church is of course the English church and the branch of that in America is the Episcopal Church but it's the same that communion the Anglican key so you've moved into that out of for evangelical ISM and sometimes I wonder if Protestantism which I grew up we react against this group that we don't agree with anymore so we form our group you know and often in defining ourselves in relationship to that group we don't often compare how we can how we are to this group or this group or this other groups that have done the same thing yes we end up with all these different permutations of but usually it's a reaction again to form what we think is a better formation would you see your move into Episcopalian ISM that in that same move from where you were into what you now consider a better expression of Christianity yes and no initially I saw it as as entering the embrace call it of the the centering authority of tradition it deepened it amplified some of those those bright polarizing tendencies of Protestantism and yet it took twenty years of my ministry as an Anglican priest to discover that Anglicanism because it was itself a compromise a middle way of Via Media between Rome and Calvin it had two competing ecclesiology that were never resolved and were just politically settled and so it too fragmented internally but I could not and did not see that initially that was only over time yeah because the the externals the very liturgical high church can cover up the Calvinism again it's that beauty of the Eucharist Marcus you know it is a dynamic impelling us to Christian unity that was so much more intellectually respectable and real than a 45-minute sermon that that the pastor would preach and evangelicalism I knew there had any more substance than that and the Eucharist took us back to the Bible in its rightful interpretation through the tradition so with 20 years of just beautiful Protestant Anglican ministry right there in Chicago and here in Cincinnati that helped make me Catholic when you became Episcopalian was the Episcopal Church yet going through some of its major moral and issues absolutely and yet that the zeal of the new convert because it was such a deliverance from this cacophony of evangelicalism it was truly a unifying beautiful welcome but yes I mean beginning long before I was born as you will know back in the 1930s the Anglican Communion lacking that centering authority interpretive authority the church reinvented marriage by saying sure contraception on demand that's fine the first major Western denomination to split from the tradition then in the 50s it redefined marriage in the 70s redefined the sacrament of ordination and the 90s it redefined what it means ultimately to be a bishop and and again those were invisible to us but it's newman who later said you know we thought we could defend the catholic of the anglican church and and and separate out the Calvinist roots of private opinion but they the fissures became very manifest to me not until i became a pastor and that was here in southern ohio back in 1996 but when I was given the great grace and privilege to teach to preach and teach I found it increasingly difficult to see the Catholic thread in the denomination that said essentially the Holy Spirit can and does move in whatever ways we think it does and so it became as Paul Tillich himself said it became increasingly incoherent yeah you know so yes it was clearly breaking up I don't know if you've had the chance to see that very powerful movie hex or Ridge it's that's come out this fall yeah I'm not seeing it yet okay I want to give it away because I think it's a great move for guys to see a little bit violent otherwise but the point of the movie is a Christian man's conviction about his faith and what God's calling him to do under the pressure of everyone else for him to change and yet he would not yeah because it was love for God and that's kind of the core of the movement I picture yourself as an anglican priest with all the pressures to change convictions holding on to a tradition and yet it seems to me I don't want to judge that denomination but it seems to me that a lot of times over the last hundred years they get to an edge of pressure and they give absolutely yes it's we called it the spirit of what's happening now yeah and there's a beautiful intention there and that is that that as we now know from John Henry Newman doctrine does develop but it has to develop and evolve authentically in continuity with what's gone before it so each time at every major innovation which exceeded the initial logic of the Anglican argument the the church just invoked its autonomous local sovereignty over and against the Anglican Communion itself and so that was the teacher the seesaw that was up and down it was we belong to a communion and that that has precedence we we are faithful to it and its teachings and yet we saw this American insistence on the democratic structures the House of Bishops increasingly were not able to to find the mind of Jesus in conversation with tradition and so they began to as they said walk apart from the communion which sounds so sophisticated but ultimately again it was just not sustainable yeah there's an old Eastern saying about if you're going to make a thousand mile 1,000 mile journey begins with the first step that's right you know little steps yes right absolutely but you want to make sure that you're still going to the same destination yeah because your little steps can take you way off in a different direction if we do not know to what port we're sailing no wind helps right had played out now you mentioned Newman a lot you've mentioned others where was Rome in any of this journey at this point Rome was infused through through relationships particularly in my first pastor it in the Episcopal Church and I became fast friends with the local Catholic priest who introduced me in rapid succession to teaching sources that he was using that help me teach the faith to my Episcopal parish so I found myself using the Redemptorist publications of Ligurian x' at a beautiful catechesis called this is our faith so this is written by Roman Catholics but it's telling the Anglican Communion story in a way that preserves the Kath licit II and so I thought wow there's no Anglican that can write with that fidelity to Kath lissa T so that was one we were using a beautiful ministry called catechesis of Good Shepherd which is a child's formation program that's that's rooted in the gospel and a wonderful authentic development again it's Rome oriented I've had there been for you in any of that evangelical journey in a thought about Catholic Church within yourself yeah it was it was planted again through that leading of the Holy Spirit but you know my first bishop in Chicago was a Ignatian trained spiritual director he was a Benedictine man of retreats and spiritual direction so we like to think that again we had as he said we always thought we were to return to the Roman fold that we would be reunited institutionally with Rome and and that was the clarion call back in 95 especially through john paul ii his great encyclical aluminum's sent that we should all be one and and my bishop in Chicago my anglican bishop had a personal audience with john paul ii came back to us and said i have no problem seeing that the Vicar of Rome is indeed the visible unifier of Western Christianity what was it that was a heady statement to make which makes one pause to imagine if a part of the understanding of Anglicanism is an eventual reunion yes then when they're faced with certain decisions that obviously wonders is gonna make it farther away yes why would they make that this and why do we not then come home then and and so the question became how do we justify our continued separation from Rome and we thought we had these elements that were intrinsically orienting us to return but the behavior was was just the opposite and finally it was it was way back in 2007 when the American House of Bishops in a very clear definitive statement said that they were fundamentally a voluntary Association a democratic group that was choosing essentially effectively to walk apart from the Anglican Communion and at that point again the image from Newman that the Calvinist roots of the Church of England had literally overrun the beautiful rose that was the Catholic element and it became increasingly clear that I could no longer see a Catholic thread there and neither could the Holy Father at that time Benedict the 16th himself called us out and said at what point can you say you're Catholic if you keep issuing these individual autonomous pronouncements it can't it's thought congruous all right let's pause here father father Thomas tree is our guest and we'll come back just a moment and start now looking at what were some of the the issues that started open your your heart up to to make the major move which would have changed your whole vocation and their the direction of your life [Music] [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program and our guest tonight is father Thomas ray former Episcopal priest we've paused you in the journey when you were an Episcopal priest I Cincinnati Ohio you were you in a pastor at origin yes I was a pastor in Cincinnati had a wonderful congregation but again in the mid 2000s it was just rapidly polarizing in the denomination between you know high church and low church and it was increasingly clear that the House of Bishops didn't have that that Holy Spirit led centering authority to appeal to to hold it together you know and the image was the the winds are blowing through us and we just had to let it go where it will there was no again no umpire there was no referee there was no Court of Appeal and it just it was a centrifugal force to increasing autonomy and it was very difficult again to see that Catholic element lived you know in a organic way yeah I mean we don't know anyone else was hard so we don't want to judge the no fiscal issues but it's still always an amazing thing for me a former evangelical and I'm a Catholic was still an evangelical heart that with a commitment to the scriptures and I'm trying to understand how these whole group of Bishops would find a place in the scriptures to justify such radical decisions that had alienated if there was any desire to your Bree unite with the Catholic Church every step was putting a barrier to the havior was speaking otherwise and that became clear that you know it just became again as Newman said it's it was a house of cards it was talking Catholic but it was acting Calvinist and that caused this this conscience crisis that so many of us experienced is how can I make room for for an increasing Calvinist a polity that is inimical to Catholicism so but yeah okay so give us the what was the first 2x4 first the first 2x4 really was a very personal one that I did not see coming at all Marcus it was my mother in 2006 was struggling with cancer and my brother's wife his mother his mother-in-law is practicing Catholic in South Jersey out of love and charity for these three Rhea sons my two brothers and I she decided to reach out and pray for us and she sent us each miraculous medals and I was a replace for that in the Episcopal eNOS there was yes there's a deep Marian thread in anglicanism you know the saram right and Mary and blue and England is haunted by Marian themes but no person I had not practiced it but I'd said a mystical experience at my mother's deathbed you know that you know here was a pastor trying to comfort her looking for a way to understand this loss and and the Virgin Mary in a waking moment said I I will be your mother now and I began then praying the rosary and it just that was the first two-by-four and you know when our mother gets ahold of us it's not long so that then and it opened me to just a devotional path a heart isn't even said it's its core loquitur core the heart speaks to the heart right so I began reading more and discovered Chesterton and his stages of conversion and the first one is you you began to there's a matter of fairness just understand what Catholics really think because if you're defending in the cath licit II the church something that you should know what they teach and then you read them and you realize they're true they have the ring of truth and then he says it begins what he called so poetically this this dark and menacing love affair and you just know the source and summit of all this is Rome but by then it was a there was a time I'd resigned my last Episcopal parish and Cincinnati very painful very conflicted a difficult time for us I discerned a path forward maybe with some of the breakaway Anglican groups that became what's known the Anglican Church of North America went down to their their foundational Constitution down in Texas and again beautiful beautiful men and women faithful men and women but they were really emphasizing the English Puritan heritage that Calvinist route and I said I that's just not the path the Lord has me on so then it wasn't long after that that I came to your 2010 deep and history conference in Columbus and by then we were actively ready to come home but we were in what you call so well no-man's land there's no Newman use that phrase did you know I didn't well it's certainly a case for us you know you become anesthetized by this this the stipend and the comfort and the Rockefeller endowed pension and the very comfortable living and tuition paid for for your kids and it said what would I do without all that it's fear right so yeah I was just looking for a path forward and unbeknownst to me that turned out to be father ray Ryland who I met at your conference he and his wife Ruth very graciously took my wife Janet and I under their wing at that conference and in in a beautiful but unsentimental way said if you believe that the Catholic Church is indeed instituted by Jesus Christ you do have a moral obligation to act on that and again the it was just the word I needed to hear Marcus from a brother a fellow priest to say you can do this but it is now part of the teaching of the church that you are about to embrace it is the teaching of that church that that you know allegation so still I wasn't quite ready I needed to see everything laid out neatly and clearly in front of me I reached out to Archbishop Schnur in Cincinnati who was very gracious and indicated that he would he would take me on board and do this beautiful elaborate vetting process that's called the pastoral provision that john paul ii built for us back in the 60s and this happened he's the seed for that that started it was father rod I know and again the the exam as well that father God rest his soul father ray Ryland was the first Anglican priest convert who started the ball rolling back in a petition the petition it was his petition arted eventually a CD off and he therefore is the patriarch and pioneer I came to his funeral here just a few years ago and his his mass card is on my desk and will always be he is clearly a Holy Spirit led guide to me but again I had not yet become Roman Catholic I not yet renounced my orders as an Anglican and and that was another priest that God put in my life who was actually associated with the pastor provision Monsignor Jim Sheehan in Newark you probably remember Jim providentially his he had a doctorate in canon law and he'd studied the past over vision and guys like me who'd been through this and I remember agonizing on the phone with him saying Jim I am ready to go I understand that I must do this but I don't see the next step and I may not be ordained in the Catholic Church I have to surrender that that's a cross I have to bear and you know that in your own journey Marcus and he again the the the blinding glimpse of the Holy Spirit father Jim said what you really need is Jesus in the mass you have again an element a shard of that stained glass but you come into the Catholic Church you will have the fullness of sanctifying grace mass and then the next step will come clear it's up to you to come in humbly without your orders well then it was 2011 and archbishop snare graciously created a provision for me to and my family my two kids and my wife and I had to go through a kind of customized RCIA with a beautiful priest father Steve Walter Archdiocese of Cincinnati his parish appropriately st. John Fisher wanted a great and their kin martyrs so again it's all just these these are dynamics that are returning us back to the source you know well there's a I know I've probably said this program before but one of Christ's parables he is about a wedding feast and he warned people I said no when you go to this wedding feast don't take the front-row seat because somebody else might come and say wait a second that's my seat then you embarrassingly get pulled out he says when you come to the seat take the back roll until you're invited forward and I often felt that that is exactly the advice that a clergyman coming in the church needs to accept does that make sense amen absolutely better a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord and I I agree and and that's my heart's desire for my brothers that are still in the Anglican Church and I'd love them dearly these are lifelong friends as you know Marcus again Newman you know we find gray gain in coming in to church but there's also loss lose these relationships and time and time again it is an insurmountable barrier for them to say I just can't be reordain I can't give up there was a clutching at their identity their vocation and as we said earlier it clearly is a gift of grace for us to let go and say into your hands o Lord at great cost to my family and our security can you've ended up a priest and in our work in the coming home network were often faced with helping a non Catholic Christian clergyman to sigh do I make this decision because I'm I'm giving up at least perceived giving up Who I am yeah my vocation my calling and even my influence for the good of the gospel because once I decide to make the move I may lose that vocation I may lose that calling and I may lose that influence in other words I mean how many of those old parishioners not will listen to you how is you not many yeah yeah it's making that decision and often but I'd like to get your thought on this often what we try encourage the men or women who are making this decision is to at least begin to recognize that the reason God might be calling you to do this is not for a utilitarian purpose of your gifts being used in the church that really the reason might be for the salvation of your soul and absolutely you know it's it's August and our hearts are restless unless and until they rest in thee and so often I think our brothers and sisters and I and perhaps you as well believed that that our vocation was ours but our vocation is not ours it is a gift of the Holy Spirit given to us on loan through and by and for the good of the people of God and so how how do we rightly yield that up how do we invite that as we say the mind of the church the consensus fidelium to help us discern that that's a scary thing to a Protestant again as we how many of us just go directly into ordination at the instant we have an inkling that we are spiritual person and we want to serve the Lord so it's it's the voice of Jesus and the Holy Spirit speaking through the church he created and that again it's a Grace and yeah you mentioned the idea that when we were evangelicals and we had no wakening that the first thing comes to our mind as the pastor it must be meant to my that's my path right yeah and and often there's a an assumption that the Protestant world has a higher view of be the lay priesthood but in reality the Catholic Church Missy's of John Paul's teaching pursuit Christopher's only AG emphasizes yeah great vocation of the layperson oh absolutely and look at Cardinal de RINs a just the past two weeks is great teaching it let us not forget of course men and women religious consecrated renounce the things of this world to point us to the next priests help us sanctify but 99.9% of the faithful Our Lady living their vocation in their marriages and their careers in the Civic and political realm and and how vital that is and again that not to over think Newman but he said we need lady that he said the church needs lady he said the the clergy would look foolish without them and and that's the conscience the Holy Spirit does and can reliably speak through the successor of Peter you know that you come into that awareness like a child into its mother's arms and you can rest it's I don't know the answer to that but Mother Church does and that that's a form of dying and rising you still got that caller yeah in terms of how did I go to present you write the contract yeah again it just this three-year journey through the pastoral provision a theological faculty that's set up to to examine former Episcopalians and others who present themselves for this discernment we call it going to Catholic Charm School in some ways yeah you have to learn the niceties of Catholicism but truly there are there are gaps and shortcomings in our theological education particularly moral theology canon law and so it's a very rigorous full program of examinations and independent reading and and and so forth and at the end of that it is a formal petition that goes directly to the Holy Father and he personally individually approves or not our petition to be exempted from the law of celibacy and then and then the local ordinary is free to act on that or not so at each point it's I don't know Lord and there's a lot of waiting and it's not always clear and unambiguous there's and it's not easy on families but again well it's a great it's a great gift it would seem to me that one of the realignments that had to take place in those three years as you is a realignment of understanding how do you know whether I'm a your abiding in Christ because before you could kind of decide on what was important or not important for for abiding in Christ being faithful as an Episcopalian or as an evangelical you felt what's up to me in a way it's up to my conscience to decide of these interpretations of Scripture where as a Catholic it's a little different than that it's not slavery but it's understanding so what is that a part of your realignment how do you as a priest help Catholics understand to follow those rules of the faith that I don't understand or I don't quite agree with but yet I know that that must be best for me yes well again it's it's Jesus come follow me it is it is not understanding that church asks of us but it is a scent it is obedience it is simply saying I believe you are the Christ the Son of the Living God that profession of faith that echoes through us and through the faithful and it is it is not only believing it's it's that beautiful line from st. Anselm you know I believe not because I understand but so that I may under and so once we have our supernatural end aligned and we see that we are we are destined to this eternity with Christ through the sacramentality of the church then then our intellect relaxes and we can take on faith the teachings so there's plenty of wheat difficulties that was new men you know would continue to have intellectual difficulty we don't understand all the doctrines and dogmas you know but over time through regular reception of the Eucharist and and openness we we can see that oh yes there is a reason for this yeah we think we understand a Trinity because we can say three you know one God in three persons but we don't know no no and if Thomas Aquinas could not crack that neither hurt or should we we have an email Lloyd from Omaha writes when father Ray was searching for truth what role or impact did the witness of the early church have in his journey did it help make him Catholic absolutely and and the way thank you for that question the way that that voice of the early church came to us was through the devotions of the church it was for the bravery through the Liturgy of the hours in particular that we would have that beautiful first reading in the the morning office which is from the patristic s-- and we as Anglicans of course we we maintained that thread of catholicism the second way was through the teachings of our bishops particularly high church bishops which would routinely say to be deep in history is deceased to be protestant and so and it was ostensibly to argue for the Eucharistic centeredness of the anglican church that's how we defined ourselves over and against as you said Protestantism so yeah it was constantly patristic but it was you know it was Clement and Irenaeus and Origen all of them saturated in the Eucharist the I should I tried to remember before getting on live here your wife made the journey with you she did want to be sure she came in absolutely I was thinking so but it was a great a great gift that Jana made a great sacrifice you know in as you well and remember Marcus and protestantism pastor's wife has what a vocation you know an identity so the pastor's kids but not so when you are in in Rome and particularly when you're provision guy it's it's just strange for her to say no matter how much we explained the background of the provision to say my husband is a Catholic priest that's just a weird thing for many cradles to hear and so there's there's a there's an isolation at times it happens and so she's happily we've been welcomed lovingly with many new friends have been very gracious and loving to us but there's that misunderstanding you know hurt her they're her struggles or difficulties you know reflected in her family know that they don't understand this move well you know there's a kind of an undefined role for a pastor's wife in the Catholic Church in the in the Protestant world there are is an understanding of that right once you go yeah and one person that comes to mind we've mentioned father ray Ryland blopp oh we've got to mention Ruth Ruth oh my gosh yes she was at his side at every time and and and again I think that's the Holy Spirit it's by any and all means Merton said without exception God God right straight with crooked lines he can use this this element of sanctification to bring in and say look at look at the holiness of this this priest and and yes his dispensed from celibacy marriage you know that too can be luminous I got another email here if I'm going to pause that just for a second cousin other question with the Ordinariate which was after yeah are coming in they talk about the patrimony yeah and how would you describe what this patrimony is that Anglicans Episcopalians bring with them or can they don't always do but they can bring with them and right great question again it's out of the this is sheer generosity of church to say again and that stained-glass window shattered at the Reformation there's elements of beauty and truth in all of these separated traditions and the church rightly says some of them can indeed be woven into Catholic spirituality that that possessed singular capacities and that's the Anglican patrimony Gregorian chant Anglican Eucharistic spirituality in particular Benedict was a great student of an aficionado of these things and he said these clearly can transmit the Holy Spirit so so we can make room for this so there's a separate right the Anglican use now in Roman Catholicism that that permits that but it's it's just a generosity to say God is not limited by denominations God is not limited by sacraments God can and does make new creations and so you have these communities now that are flourishing in full communion with a successor of Peter and they're they're doing Anglican Gregorian chant and magnificent 16th century prayers 12th century prayers that from the from the Catholic element of the Church of England so it's it's very beautiful very people it was not my path I I wanted to just be a regular diocesan guy and and being coordinated and and be out in the rank and file of ministry but I I love and commend my brothers and the Ordinariate the email devon from maine writes what would be a few of the key differences between your liturgical experience in the Anglican Church and the Catholic Mass how was the mass a fuller expression of worship even though it seemed like there are many similarities between Anglican and Catholic liturgy yeah so we talked as Anglicans we recognized that there was something different qualitatively different about the Roman Mass we said it had a different density we could just see because we were high church smells and bells all the liturgy half the guilt we said there there there must be indeed real presence here and so that is a difference but also just an overarching sense of the epiclesis the Holy Spirit coming upon the entire assembly at that moment of consecration it's overwhelming Marcus it's just absolutely real and and we never had that as Anglican it is their adoration not some yes there are pockets of that but again remember the the anglican priest right next door to the adoring Anglican parish might say oh no the eucharist is a metaphor it's symbolic and and that lack of centering authority to rightly interpret john 6 is what leads many of the faithful to say it's just not real it can't be real because there's no agreement here i've got two minutes here how about let's say anglican Episcopalians watching newman talks in his personal letters to Anglicans don't miss this moment of grace talk about that why should they consider making the same journey well because of joy that was newman and philip near i just finding what he could never find in Anglicanism because we're constantly adjudicating which party which branch which wing which faction which theology which liturgy is ascendant or not who's in who's out it was it was a party spirit partisan that's over and you are home and you can again relax and and literally just be bathed in this in this peace that passes all understanding again it's the mystical element that you describe but it's through a visible human institution and it's because ultimately as newman said so beautifully i hold in veneration for love of christ alone the church that he created and her teachings as his own you hear that voice and it's it's a great peace that comes over us I'm a much nicer person I was a very intense and willful and and self-assured anglo-catholic warrior trying to you know our faction would win and I'm so glad to be over that the work of Christ in your heart yes as Newman said holiness rather than peace you know it cost you something you know father we have your blessing because absolutely Marcus Almighty God the father of all mercies may he bless you and keep you in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit amen thank you Father thank you so much Marco it's a great privilege thank you so much and those of you joining us on this last journey home before Christmas we wish you a Merry Christmas and a good season growing together as your family and I do pray that father raised journey is an encouragement to you god bless you see you next week [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 28 2016