I had several comments on yesterday's post, all of which suggest that Taylor Marshall is unlikely to take my reply to his e-mail very seriously. In fact, one commenter, who had some experience with Msgr Stetson, suggested that Marshall and Stetson speak well of each other, and Marshall is unlikely to countenance any dissenting views. But my regular correspondent pointed out a peculiar similarity between Marshall's account of his own journey from Evangelical to Catholic through Anglicanism that matches many of the more recent ordinands in the OCSP. Here's an account of Marshall's "conversion":
When I later attended Texas A&M University, I majored in philosophy and minored in Greek and Latin. I gave up on the charismatics and looked for something more. There I encountered a “Bible Church” and was delighted to find a congregation that was biblical, conservative, and balanced.He met his wife-to-be, a PCA (in effect, "continuing") Presbyterian. He apparently felt a call to the Presbyterian ministry at the end of his time in college, but he goes into no detail, except that he attends Westminster Theological Seminary.. . . During this time I became fiercely anti-Catholic and convinced that Catholics were not “saved.”
. . . My mind was made up. I agreed with a remark the Puritan writer Richard Baxter once made: “If the pope be not anti-Christ, he hath the ill-luck to appear so much like him.” Here, I thought, was a man who fit the description of the Devil’s allies in the Apocalypse.
Westminster Seminary was a wonderful place for us, and we grew in our faith. Yet it became increasingly clear to us that Reformed and Presbyterian churches were too “Protestant” for us and that the Catholic Church was, well, too “Catholic.” So we followed the via media and became Anglicans.So within a short space of years, he's gone from "the Pope is the Antichrist" to Presbyterian seminary to wearing a black cassock, St. Basil the Great, and Saint Gregory Nazianzus. But there's no insight. It's a little like an account of a European tour: One day we were in Paris! The next day we were in Berlin! It was amazing! Where is some sort of reference to the sick soul? Where is some sort of sense that the pigs are eating better than he is, and he's got to turn around? His wife seems to have had some sort of effect, but other than hearing her say "eucharist", there's no clarity, just a sense that he likes the bells and the big words and the music.I felt an initial joy and excitement as I began to pray the Divine Office throughout the day, attend daily Communion, and receive spiritual direction from an elderly Episcopal priest. Our first child, Gabriel, was baptized in the Anglican tradition. Before long we were in seminary again — this time at Nashotah House Theological Seminary in Wisconsin.
. . . I wore a black cassock every day to prayers and classes, and I removed it only after the seminary celebrated Vespers toward the end of the day. Priests were available for confessions. The Anglican Eucharist was celebrated every morning — sometimes with the priest facing ad orientem as in the old Latin Mass. Eucharistic adoration was encouraged.
On some days I would wander off into the woods in my cassock, read devotional literature, and pray in silence. I often read works by St. Basil the Great and Saint Gregory Nazianzus during these times. Now I look back on those days as essential preparation for what would eventually become a difficult and rocky time.
He talks to a rabbi on his first visitation to the sick after ordination as an Anglican priest, and the rabbi in a passing remark gives him an insight into the role of the Virgin. That's it! Now he's got to become Catholic! "Joy and I decided to fly to Rome before we did anything drastic." Well, that's prudent, huh? While there, a cardinal says to him, "My son, you are a Catholic. It is time for you to come home."
When we returned home from Rome, I immediately went to see Bishop Kevin Vann of the Catholic diocese of Fort Worth. He received me warmly and became my true father in Christ. Three months later, I renounced the priestly ministry that I had received in the Episcopal Church in preparation for entering the Catholic Church.Wait a moment. He's spent years in two seminaries, at who knows how much expense, he's been ordained an Anglican and has a curate's job at a Fort Worth parish, and within about a year, he's going to dump it to become Catholic? Well, he goes to Rome before he does anything drastic.
This account leaves out the discussion he had with "Bill Stetson" that he recounts in the video I linked yesterday that must have taken place at about the same time, and in which Stetson offered him a job -- he cites that in the video as the proximate cause of his move. So I have some concern with the overall level of sincerity here, as well as with the extreme superficiality and lack of insight. Again, within a very short space, we've gone from the Pope is the Antichrist to Nashotah House to the EF mass.
As I say, it's a little like an if it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium tour, it's a little too healthy-minded, and it's troubling. As my regular correspondent put it,
Apart from the fact that he did not pursue ordination (not "currently called," he says) this man's story seems identical to that of many OCSP clergy: brief TEC career, in his case in the half-in, half-out diocese of Ft Worth, followed by moment of revelation and a PP gig, although in his case in a lay capacity. Conversion story, as you say, mentions all the names. He reminds me of Fr Bartus, and not just because he's an Aggie, although with more intellectual substance (not difficult). A guy on the make.
