Jeffrey Steenson In Context

I asked a knowledgeable visitor if he knew of any Episcopalian bishops other than Jeffrey Steenson and Frederick Kinsman who'd resigned their sees well before retirement age in order to become Catholic. He was able to add one other to the list, Levi Silliman Ives (1797-1867). In this discussion, I'm excluding "continuing" bishops who may have resigned their positions to become Catholic, as I think they're fringe cases whose careers are simply not comparable.

According to the Wikipedia link,

Ives was rector of Trinity Church, Southwark, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1823 to 1827; later he served as assistant minister at Trinity Church, New York, and as rector at St. James Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until 1831.

After the unexpected death of the Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft in 1830, Ives was elected bishop of North Carolina on May 21, 1831. He was the 25th bishop of the ECUSA, and was consecrated by bishops William White, Henry Ustick Onderdonk, and Benjamin Treadwell Onderdonk. As a bishop Ives took great interest in the education and religious training of the black community.

Ives was deeply attracted to the Oxford Movement, which as we've previously seen was a highly controversial issue for the Episcopal Church during this period. His Catholic leanings resulted in a canonical trial in 1848, at which he was acquitted after signing a pledge in effect not to go too far with his Anglo-Catholicism. Wikipedia continues,

Despite these concessions, Ives's theological convictions continued to evolve until he was no longer able to accept that his denomination was a branch of the true Catholic church. In 1852, after obtaining a six-month leave of absence, the 55-year-old cleric left for Europe with his wife. They went to Rome, where, on December 22, 1852, he sent a letter to the Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina resigning his office of Bishop of North Carolina in view of his decision to join the Catholic Church. Ives was the first Protestant bishop since John Clement Gordon, Anglican Bishop of Galloway, to convert to Catholicism. Signalling his prominence, it was Pope Pius IX who received him into the Church on December 26, 1852.

. . . In the spring of 1854 Ives published his apologia, The Trials of a Mind in its Progress to Catholicism.

This apologia, as well as a contemporary review, is available on line. I hope to investigate Ives further.

I've discussed Frederick Kinsman (1868-1944) several times here already. Kinsman resigned as Bishop of Delaware after 11 years in 1919, at age 51. Neither Ives nor Kinsman sought ordination as Catholic priests, although they did both get teaching appointments at Catholic universities. Kinsman in particular seems to have been of independent means, and he appears to have lived in semi-retirement after his resignation and conversion, although he continued to publish and lecture.

Both Ives and Kinsman published serious apologias following their conversion. Steenson so far has not -- the closest we have is a 13-page 2008 talk, On The Causes Of My Becoming Catholic, which is disingenuous -- it makes no mention of his presumptive appointment as North American ordinary under the forthcoming Anglicanorum coetibus -- self-absorbed, and often sheepish.

Although Steenson resigned as Bishop of the Rio Grande in 2007 at age 52, comparable to Ives and Kinsman, we now know that he'd been pursuing discussions with Bernard Law and intermediaries since the late 1980s about taking some type of ecclesiastical position in a proposed Anglican personal prelature. His intent, unlike either Ives or Kinsman, was to continue a career under the patronage of a major player in the Catholic hierarchy. This, with the absence of a serious apologia, suggests a lack of any real introspection.

In addition, Ives was heavily influenced by Newman and the Oxford Movement, Kinsman by Leo XIII and Apostolicae Curae, and some of Kinsman's writings suggest he was influenced by other of Leo's encyclicals. I tend to take Bp Barron seriously when he suggests Leo XIII is underrated as a Catholic thinker, and I hope I'll have the time to look into him more fully. But there is no serious equivalent influence with Steenson.

Benedict, as far as I can see, operated only under the influence of Bernard Law in issuing Anglicanorum coetibus, and Law in turn was promoting a pet idea, an Anglican personal prelature, which derived from "continuing" Anglicanism, hardly a powerful intellectual movement.

This goes to the basic disappointment that I think underlies Anglicanorum coetibus.