Catholics, why do you attend an Episcopal church?

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My question is for any Catholics here who attend an Episcopalian Church: why do you go there? I am sure there are a lot of different reasons, but I am curious what yours are.

A little background on my question:

Over the weekend I attended a small, local Episcopalian church, for various reasons. I’d describe this particular church as “Anglo-Catholic”. The music is very fine, the psalm and parts of the communion prayers are chanted, the building is neo-gothic, and there is a fine icon of Our Lady of Walsingham with lit candles in a prominent place near the sanctuary.

As I was leaving, I spoke a few words with the priest. Not recognizing me, he asked me if I attended the other Episcopal church nearby. I said no, that was of the “Romish variety” and he said “ahh, we have a lot of Catholics here. In fact I have valid, but irregular orders from an Old Catholic bishop. Oh, here’s Mary Margaret; she’s catholic, aren’t you Mary?”

Mary said “oh yes, and your orders aren’t valid enough for my tastes.” But she said that she appreciated him anyways.

It was a little weird and awkward but everybody seemed to get along just fine.

Personally, I can see why some Catholics would go to this Episcopal church. It has a more Catholic style liturgy, with organ, choir and chant. Father at the local Catholic church is rather wooden; the priest at the Episcopal church is lively and jocular, but also reverent. The two buildings are very similar, but more care seems taken with with the Episcopal church. Unless you are paying close attention to details, the liturgies are nearly the same.
 
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May I ask why you went there?

I mean, I get the ‘Our Pastor has a personality I don’t have chemistry with’ but going to an Episcopalian Church doesn’t satisfy your Sunday obligation. They don’t have valid Holy Orders; so they can’t consecrate the hosts. You are missing out on the true Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Are you thinking of converting?
 
I can only guess that the Catholics who are going to Episcopal churches (or any others for that matter) are less concerned with their obligation than you yourself may expect or hope.

Chemistry is a huge factor in why some people choose one church over another. Catholic clergy, in my opinion, often rest on their authority and validity, and expect that that as an argument should be sufficient in itself to attract parishioners. I think that’s a form of laziness. Understandable and correct maybe, but lazy.

Protestants, on the other hand, appear to me to be too much the other way around. They would have little if they didn’t have charisma, if they didn’t create an emotional experience. Religion is principally felt; most people I think will choose something they can feel over something they can reason. It’s easy to write off an argument as sophistry, but something that is experienced deeply is hard to shake.

Maybe that’s what’s going on here, and maybe not. That’s why I wanted Catholics who attend Episcopal churches to weigh in on it for themselves.
 
I’ve only attended a Episcopal service once, at least, that I’m sure of. It was nice, and the pastor gave a very good homily.

A Catholic who I know spends time in an Episcopal environment because its school is better than the Catholic one. And Im guessing that they would be more interested in the Episcopal church rather than the Catholic if they had any interest in religion.
 
In my experience, the reasons why Catholics might attend an Episcopal service include:
  • The Episcopal Church in USA has largely embraced the idea of female clergy, gay clergy, and in some cases married gay clergy. They are perceived as a gay-friendly alternative similar to Catholicism.
  • Some Catholics also attend “high church Anglican” services because the services there are more old-school and formal and similar to the Catholic TLM, only in English.
Needless to say, Latin Catholics who attend these churches in place of attending Sunday (or Saturday vigil) Mass at an actual Catholic Church are not meeting their Catholic Mass obligation and are therefore committing a sin, unless somehow they’re confused and don’t realize the Anglo-Catholic church is not Latin Catholic, which occasionally happens.

There’s also a tendency on the part of some Anglo-Catholics to just describe themselves as “Catholics” which is misleading but we can’t do anything about it. They’re not actually members of the Catholic Church.
 
C.Ray said:
Protestants, on the other hand, appear to me to be too much the other way around. They would have little if they didn’t have charisma, if they didn’t create an emotional experience.
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I couldn’t help laughing, sorry !

My particular shade of Protestantism is very, very bad both at charisma and emotions. So bad it’s ridiculous. Most European Reformed Christians I know are an intellectual lot – all brain and seriousness, not many feelings.

This doesn’t answer your question, but there was a time where I stopped attending my Reformed parish and went to an Anglican one. The main reason for me was having a carefully executed and reverent Eucharistic liturgy (not the parish potluck we were having then back home) and still be able to receive.
 
OddBird said:
I couldn’t help laughing, sorry !
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Fair enough! I was thinking of the evangelical denominations which are always said to be growing at the expense of mainline churches. Sorry; no offense meant to your particularly unalluring and cerebral protestant church 🙂
 
OddBird said:
This doesn’t answer your question, but there was a time where I stopped attending my Reformed parish and went to an Anglican one. The main reason for me was having a carefully executed and reverent Eucharistic liturgy (not the parish potluck we were having then back home) and still be able to receive.
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If I may ask, what happened? Did your reformed parish step up its game, or did you come to the conclusion that a reverent and careful Eucharistic liturgy was not that important?
 
The parish didn’t step up its game, and I didn’t go back, but we moved one year later to a different country, and a different Reformed church with a completely different approach to the Eucharist (celebrated every Sunday, and mostly reverently), where I proceeded to become a pastor myself. That didn’t stop me from concluding the Eucharist was so important that, after a while, I grudgingly admitted to myself that I wanted nothing else than the real deal, which is why I’m on my slow way to Rome.

ETA that I will always feel grateful to that Anglican parish which was my gateway to the Catholic tradition.
 
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C.Ray said:
As I was leaving, I spoke a few words with the priest. Not recognizing me, he asked me if I attended the other Episcopal church nearby. I said no, that was of the “Romish variety” and he said “ahh, we have a lot of Catholics here. In fact I have valid, but irregular orders from an Old Catholic bishop. Oh, here’s Mary Margaret; she’s catholic, aren’t you Mary?”
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I’m a bit confused. Are you in the United States? “Romish” isn’t a word you would hear often in the US — it sounds kind of archaic. (You will sometimes hear “Romanist” from anti-Catholic apologists, but not otherwise.) Though I guess if you call the church “Episcopal”, it would have to be in the US — AFAIK no other Anglicans in the world call themselves “Episcopal”. (I could be wrong.)

And wouldn’t any “Anglo-Catholic” church be more “Romish” than an Episcopal church that is not “Anglo-Catholic”? Are “plain old Episcopal churches” ever thought of as being “Romish”?

(Full disclosure: for a few months when I was in graduate school, I grew disillusioned with Rome — not wanting to accept all of her teachings would be more like it — and attended a very liturgically conservative Episcopal parish. You would have had to have your eyes very, very wide open to realize you were not in a Roman Catholic church. Icons, statues, communion rail, kneeling for communion (booyah!), the whole nine yards. They did not call themselves “Anglo-Catholic”, though you would occasionally hear the word “Catholic” bandied about. The associate pastor, who was an absolute prince, I liked him very much, recently got married… to another man…)
 
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HomeschoolDad said:
I’m a bit confused. Are you in the United States? “Romish” isn’t a word you would hear often in the US — it sounds kind of archaic.
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Yes, I’m in the US. I suppose I picked up using that word on a recent trip to Maryland where I visited with the vicar at the Episcopal-now-but-Anglican-then parish where my immigrant ancestors were baptized. She gave me a tour of the old church, and on entering though a door near the sanctuary, I instinctively genuflected. She looked at me and asked “oh, are you ‘Romish’”?

She confessed she had been born Catholic, but I didn’t want to be rude so I didn’t ask why she left, but we had a good conversation about how it was that the young people are thirsty for tradition. She was fighting a contingent of parishoners who wanted to put in a projector screen into the 19th century neogothic church to “bring it up to the times”. 😬
 
C.Ray said:
She was fighting a contingent of parishoners who wanted to put in a projector screen into the 19th century neogothic church to “bring it up to the times”.
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When I was in Poland 15-20 years ago, they used a slide projector and screen to show the lyrics of the hymns, in lieu of having missals — missals were “not a thing” in Poland back then, this could have changed since then. They also used this at my son’s former Catholic school in the US during assembly Masses.
 
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C.Ray said:
She was fighting a contingent of parishoners who wanted to put in a projector screen into the 19th century neogothic church to “bring it up to the times”.
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Familiar problems. My husband, also a pastor, confronts the same people in his 1200 year-old, formerly clunisian, roman church (which, as all the other churches here, became a Reformed church in 1537).
 
C.Ray said:
My question is for any Catholics here who attend an Episcopalian Church: why do you go there?
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I really hope I can speak honestly here without getting flamed. Here goes.

I came into the Church having a really hard time grappling with some of its teachings. Throughout RCIA, I kept expressing my concerns and then hearing, “Oh, don’t worry, you’ll work through that,” and, “It’s OK. Your faith is a journey. You’ll work through it.”

Of course, after I came into the Church and expressed doubts, I heard instead, “NO! You can’t believe that! That defies Church teaching!” It was like I’d been sold a false package.

To the extent that it provides guidance and stability to the faith, dogma isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. When it gets wielded as a weapon of anti-intellectualism, I get frustrated. My sojourn into the Episcopal Church gave me a little more freedom to ask questions freely. For better and for worse, they’re not as hung up on dogma.

I’m still Catholic and regularly attending Mass, btw.
 
blackforest said:
For better and for worse, they’re not as hung up on dogma.
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Great answer. This gets to a deeper reason than “well, they have better music”. Thanks.

Also, I agree with your appraisal of RCIA. I went through it in 94 and I remember hearing all kinds of “oh, that’s OK if you don’t believe X Y or Z. Don’t worry about it.”
 
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I have always looked at Episcopalians as being rich Catholics.
 
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