Episcopal Abandonment

January 11, 2012
By Charlotte Hays

I am sorry to say that I can’t share my friend Phil Terzian’s pleasure that a court in Virginia has ruled that the Episcopal Church can reclaim property from a so-called breakaway Anglican group.

Phil says: “If people want to abandon the Episcopal Church, they are free to do so; but they cannot take historic Church property with them, or deprive Episcopalians of their parish homes.”

But who has abandoned the Episcopal Church? I would argue that the real abandoners of the Episcopal Church more rightly include those who have kept the miters and want to keep the property but have ditched all semblance of doctrine...

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I must admit that I suffered greatly when I had to give up the old Book of Common Prayer (the ’28 version!) upon swimming the Tiber. But now Pope Benedict XVI has given it back to us with his invitation for groups for former Episcopalians to bring our beautiful patrimony into the Catholic Church.

Speaking of which, may I invite you to join the St. Thomas of Canterbury Anglican Use Society in a festive Evensong to celebrate the erection of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter for former Anglicans and Episcopalians and the appointment of the new ordinary, Father Jeffrey Steenson?

Evensong is one of the most beautiful and characteristically Anglican of liturgies. Ours will be at St. Anselm’s Abbey, January 21, at 4 p.m. I can promise splendid music and reverent language, and, being former Episcopalians, we will lay on something more exciting than coffee at the coffee hour immediately following the service.

Read Charlotte's full article at National Review Online