ARTICLES

Anglican Convert Was "Too Catholic" for RCIA

RECEIVED INTO CHURCH ANYWAY

By Tom Barbarie

When John Henry Newman left the Anglican Church in 1845 in England, he was received into the Catholic Church by Passionist Father Dominic Barberi, who is now "blessed," a major step along the road to sainthood.

When Anglo-Catholic Marty Fisher sought to follow Newman's path in 1997 in San Diego, she was sent to the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults class at St. John of the Cross in Lemon Grove, where her instructor, a laywoman, identified herself to the class as a good Catholic because she had ten children.

"I went to an RCIA class that was apparently for people who were marrying Catholics," recalled Fisher. "This was a class for non-Catholics or people who had no affiliation whatsoever but were going to be marrying Catholics. In that class...in all fairness, the person who was supposed to be teaching the class could not do it, someone else came in to do it. She perhaps didn't have time to prepare but was not prepared, was there, as I say, primarily for those people who were not affiliated with any church. It was, 'Here is the church; we worship God here.' It was almost to that level.

"At the same church, the deacon wanted to establish an ongoing class for adults, a forum that met regularly, maybe even a rosary group, then questions and answers; a study group, pick a question this week, study it, find the answer for next week then come back and discuss it -- which I would have loved -- but we had a change of leadership and that hasn't yet come about. It still may happen. I hope it does."

After one RCIA session, Fisher was informed that she was out of place in the class. The reason? She was "too Catholic."

"After the first session [the instructor] called one of the clergy with whom I'd been working -- who sent me to the class -- and said she really didn't think that was the place for me....She wasn't being ugly about it."

Fisher had retired and moved to San Diego in 1996 to work as music administrator at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in San Diego. She is no longer associated with that institution because of her Anglo-Catholic leanings.

Was there anything in particular that Fisher found offensive about the state of affairs in the Episcopal Church when she arrived here?

"I was offensive to them....St. Paul's is a typical Episcopal church in already having accepted women priests, women bishops, ordained homosexuals....It's a church that has taken even the basic doctrine of the faith and said, 'We don't have to go along with all of this...we're just going to look at the core doctrine.'

"The dean out here in his sermons always made God 50 percent female. When he referred to God, he'd alternate between using the male pronoun and the female. A friend said listening to a sermon like that is like traveling down a highway with speed bumps on it. You're trying to listen to the sermon, trying get something out of it, and you keep crashing into the speed bumps, so you end up concentrating on nothing but the speed bumps."

So what does an Episcopalian who is called "too Catholic" by fellow Episcopalians do when he or she decides to take the path to Rome?

According to Father William Lawson, pastor of St. Anthony of Padua parish in National City, and a 1986 convert from Anglo-Catholicism, the prospective convert's understanding of authority in the Church and knowledge of doctrine are of the greatest importance in determining the manner in which that person should be received.

"That would be the first thing I would want to know. Then from that point I would decide whether the person should go into an RCIA program, which is very fundamental, or whether (an alternative) path should be taken."

A high-church Episcopalian, he pointed out, is to be distinguished from an Anglo-Catholic, with the former more interested perhaps in Catholic ceremony, while the latter has already given internal assent to Catholic doctrine.

According to Father Lawson, it is common for Anglo-Catholics already to embrace doctrines such as the Immaculate Conception and papal infallibility, positions which he held prior to his own conversion.

And with the numbers of converts relatively small, it is possible to treat each case individually. "I don't think any set canonical authority determines how the individual should be treated," he said.

To be received into the church, Fisher then -- at the suggestion of a deacon at St. John of the Cross -- went "one-on-one" with Father Steven M. Grancini, the pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary parish in San Diego's Little Italy, who eventually received her into the Church and confirmed her.

"I felt good there, it was definitely a place where I could worship. It was a place I could say the rosary -- which we did at the Advent [Church] also, and was not really permitted out here. I didn't find a single Episcopal church here that regularly permitted it."

"The Advent" is the Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts, where Fisher worshiped and resided prior to her move to San Diego last year. The Advent held regular Marian devotions and had other characteristics more usually associated with traditional Catholicism. Those features, said Fisher, actually drew to the Advent many Catholics in whose parishes many long-held practices had been suppressed in recent years.

"I came into the Roman Church because I wanted to be where the standards were high...not where I was made to feel good about sin."

She currently attends Mass at St. Joseph's Cathedral. "Another reason I'm there [at St. Joseph's] is the homilies. Father Campbell's homilies challenge you. It's not feel-good preaching."

Fisher, who was trained as a church musician, is not reluctant to comment on the contemporary church music scene. The state of Catholic church music is deplorable, she says, and likely accounts for the fact that many more Anglicans haven't become Catholics.

"The modern stuff is dreadful. It's people making a fortune off non-liturgical music and calling it, quote, 'Christian' music."

"There's a wealth of Gregorian chant; anyone can sing it. Churches tend to put their congregations down. They don't believe the congregations can do what they can in fact do."

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Sister Priscilla Lemire will start Adult Faith Formation classes at the Immaculata parish, Sunday February 1, 9:30 a.m. designed primarily for Anglicans interested in full participation in the Roman church. For information call 574-5700.