Who Is Jeffrey Steenson? -- III

Discussions of Steenson's departure from The Episcopal Church trace his dissatisfaction at least as far back as the late 1980s. A comment at the Commonweal blog says,

According to William Oddie's book "The Roman Option" - if my memory serves me correctly - Steenson and Law had a pre-existing relationship. Both men were part of a group of Catholic and Episcopal clergy who were part of discussions in which a large group of Episcopal clergy were considering going to Rome as a group in the late 80s when Barbara Harris was made an Episcopal bishop.

Steenson gave the standard reasons for wanting to become Catholic in the 1993 meeting with Ratzinger, the ordination of women and the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. This would, of course, imply that Steenson had had reservations about The Episcopal Church since his ordination as a deacon there in 1979, a priest in 1980. His defenders tend to give the half-hearted response that maybe he thought things would change, or something like that.

What did he think might happen, that TEC would suddenly decide to lay all those women priests off? Steenson knew perfectly well what the denomination's direction was at the time of his ordinations. He also must have understood that the toothpaste couldn't be put back in the tube. Yet he was happy to continue in a highly prestigious career for 28 years, playing footsie with Rome as it suited him. It's worth raising the point that, had the Diocese of the Rio Grande known of his meeting with Ratzinger in 1993, Steenson's election as bishop might not have been assured.

Not only that, but as his successor as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande pointed out,

Steenson “seemed to have no trouble working with women priests” during his three years as bishop, Vono said. “He was celebrating with women at the altars.”

In other words, whatever sense of unease he may have had about women clergy didn't interfere with keeping his prestigious job as an Episcopal bishop. Vono continued,

Vono said this month that Steenson’s decision to step down just three years after taking his vows as bishop left Episcopalians “saddened” and “disillusioned.”

“He took vows, as we all do, in front of the whole church,” Vono said of Steenson’s choice to become a bishop. “It isn’t as though Jeffrey didn’t know what he was doing when he made those vows.”

The vows to which Vono refers, in the 1979 Service for the Ordination of a Bishop, include

Will you guard the faith, unity, and discipline of the Church?

To which Steenson presumably should have answered, "I will, until this other deal I've been working on comes through." But while Episcopalians understandably came away with a sense of bad faith and betrayal on Steenson's part, the puzzlement and even skepticism of Catholic observers is also significant. Mainstream Catholics do not trust Anglo-Catholics who come over, I've found, and there was little triumphalism in Catholic ranks over Steenson's move. The Commonweal blog observed at the time of Steenson's resignation, for instance,

Steenson is the third Episcopal bishop to swim the Tiber this year; the other two were retired.

Of course, all are welcome. But I find these conversions interesting because 1) they are all from self-styled "orthodox" Christians and 2) they all seem rooted in disaffection and disagreement with the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. . . .[I]f these neo-converts think they're joining a church with no disputations, well, they should check in on this blog.

I of course can't judge anyone's conscience. But going by the public comments of these bishops, I have to ask if these are "conversions of convenience"?

The voluminous comment thread for that post includes well-reasoned remarks from Catholics that the public reasons Steenson gave for his resignation were vague -- even "vacuous" -- and self-contradictory. I would summarize them this way:

• The main reason for a Protestant to become Catholic is a revised understanding of the sacraments.
• However, Steenson had always had a Catholic understanding of the sacraments.
• The Episcopal Church already gave him the latitude to have this understanding, which he had publicly professed, and his career had prospered.
• Church polity alone is not a good reason to make such a switch.
• Steenson himself had said the ordination of Eugene Robinson as a bishop was not a reason to leave TEC.
• So why, exactly, did he move?

But the commenters were working without the context of the 1993 Pope-Steenson-Ratzinger meeting, with its strong implication that any journey to Rome by either Pope or Steenson would be a package deal that included more than a simple affirmation of faith -- when part of the package fell through in 1994, after all, Pope backed out of the whole thing; he didn't even stay Catholic! Turning Catholic, even with his Episcopal bishop's pension assured, wasn't going to happen unless Pope got some other sweetener. Given the example of Pope, it almost certainly wasn't just a matter of faith for Steenson; it wasn't just a matter of ecclesiology, either -- it was a career move.