IC/OC Ministry and Spiritual Adventurism

I’ve been thinking a lot in recent weeks about Independent Catholic identity and what it means to be a priest in this movement. I suppose that’s inevitable given my leave of absence and the questions I hope to resolve with it, and recent posts have reflected that concern.

So when I read this post by Derek warning against spiritual adventurism on the part of Episcopal clergy, I naturally thought about our own churches, especially when I came to this sentence:

The Book of Common Prayer is, among other things, a defense for laity against spiritual adventurism on the part of the clergy.

I would also add that it can protect a clergy person from themselves, too.

Now, the BCP doesn’t and can’t play those roles in our movement. (Nor do the contemporary Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours and Missal, the pre-Conciliar Breviary and Missal, or the various Eastern rites and usages found in our parishes.) Liturgical diversity is a strong point of our movement, and (if I can toot our horn a little) a special charism of the jurisdiction I’m privileged to serve in. But we have other practices that help center us when we use them.

The kind of mostly-clerical spiritual adventurism Derek describes is something we suffer from as much as or more than the Episcopal Church. I can say that in part because I’ve given in to it myself frequently. For me it has taken the form of a couple of related searches — the search for the final answers about my vocation, and the search for the “perfect” liturgy. I’ve found — and I believe other IC/OC clergy have found — that this adventurism can derail a search for God in all God’s beauty and grace in favor of a search for something contingent, something less than God.

Both the searches I’m talking about in my personal life are on some level good. Discernment of vocation is a lifelong process, and listening for the voice of God at each stage of one’s life is holy and necessary. Likewise, familiarity with several expressions of the liturgy of the Church can be wonderful both personally and for one’s ability to minister to all comers — something that is especially important for IC/OC clergy and laity who minister on the margins to all who need God’s grace.

But looking for final answers or the perfect liturgy leads to trouble. It has meant that I have jumped from book to book as I’ve gotten bored, rarely striving to really pray once I’ve learned the words by heart. And it has meant I’ve gotten myself too wrapped up in what my priestly life would look like six months or a year down the road to see the need for my ministry in the here and now. More generally, most of us in the movement know how common it is for folks to jump jurisdictions, jump to Rome and back or to other churches and back, change the rite used for public liturgies on a wild and unstable basis, and so forth. It’s bad for the clergy and communities involved.

I like Derek’s Benedictine emphasis on obedience, stability, and conversion of life. We have to foster an ethos in our movement of “blooming where you’re planted”, as my bishop puts it, not worrying about where the grass might be greener but recognizing that God lets us experience amazing, beautiful, wonderful things in exchange for the challenges of being an IC/OC leader. We get to minister in places and situations where no one else can — whether that means agreeing last-minute to include a wedding in the parish Corpus Christi celebration because a mainstream minister flaked out (true story!) or hearing an airport or train-station confession from someone who hasn’t confessed in years because they feel marginalized or left out.

I want to stress that being called back to the center of what we are about as a movement is good for all involved, however hard it may be at times. Just as the Anglican Communion balances its significant doctrinal freedom with a strong shared liturgical tradition, we must balance our many freedoms with commitments that can anchor us to our central vocations as Independent Catholic Christians. While we have the freedom to go from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, we must clearly discern the vocations of our various jurisdictions and make them fertile soil for everyone who shares that vocation, encouraging them to stay and flourish. While we get to be adaptable to circumstances, we should do everything we can to encourage one another to see the deeper commitments we’ve made that do not change so quickly.

In my opinion, this means recognizing that we are not just churches that harbor fugitives from misguided ecclesiastical justice, who get to fold up shop when our old churches get a tiny bit better. It means we stop obsessing about quality control when our saints and blesseds were by and large seen as colossal screw-ups by people who didn’t understand what our foremothers’ and forefathers’ vocations were. It means we stop oscillating between chasing recognition from mainstream churches and making vicious attacks on them.

None of what I’ve written above is very original. We all know and talk about this stuff, and certainly I’ve been taught all of it over and over by people I’m blessed to have in my life, who remind me of our shared call every time I wander. But the above is not the everyday narrative we experience in our movement. The conversations on mailing lists, on blogs, and at gatherings tend to center on exactly those problematic points I’ve identified. It’s gossiping about who left which jurisdiction for where, and letting that eat away at our own commitments to our bishop and those we serve. It’s laying out grand plans for ecclesiastical unions — whether with other tiny IC/OC jurisdictions or with the mainstream churches. It’s worrying about how we can build an Independent Catholic empire instead of how we can answer God’s call at this moment in this place.

I repent of my self-centered wandering. I re-commit myself to supporting my sisters and brothers in their lives as IC/OC bishops, priests, deacons, religious, and lay people. I am passionate about helping our sisters and brothers in other churches from a position of confidence in who I am and what we are, not from a position of doubt about what our movement is worth to God’s Kingdom. Will you join me?