How Things Looked In 2007

A visitor sent me links to two threads at the Anglican Continuum blog that are contemporary with Jeffrey Steenson's 2007 resignation as Episcopal Bishop of the Rio Grande. The first asks why he didn't become a "continuer" instead of going to Rome, and the comments reflect widely varying assumptions about Steenson's motives. If you think about it, if certain churchmen see Anglicanism as "true", then the response of an Anglican bishop, who must certainly endorse the "truth" of Anglicanism more than most others, must be to seek out a version of Anglicanism that must be more faithful to its "truth".

(On the other hand, if you're a Burkean Anglican, which Roger Scruton pretty clearly is, then you endorse Anglicanism because it's traditional and a repository of good ideas, not because there's any central "truth" there, just a certain soundness, and your response to gay bishops, gay marriage, the ordination of women, or the revision of prayer books is basically to fulminate. I'm not endorsing this, either, and I don't believe this was necessarily Steenson's position, nor the position of the commenters at the Anglican Continuum blog, just an observation on a particular approach to the problem.)

A commenter at the blog says,

Jeffrey Steenson has been an Anglo-Papalist for many years, probably even since before his ordinations in ECUSA in 1979 and 1980. . . . In several conversations that I have had with him over the past three years he has more than once stated that "the answer is B16."

I would guess that this was a Delphic way of telegraphing that Big Things were in fact under way in Rome even then, though nobody would be able to put the pieces together until knowledge of the 1993 meeting with Ratzinger and continued contacts with Cardinal Law over the course of Steenson's career became more generally available. But the author of the original post concludes,

Both ["continuing"] Parishes and clergy appear to come and go and it is difficult to countenance a stable future ministry within something that appears so ‘fragile’ and ‘unpredictable’.

For those who have families / dependants and who seek a refuge from the instability of modern Anglicanism I can see why Rome appears the most straightforward option.

But this is again something of a modified Burkean option, a least-bad solution to circumstances that would make adhering to fully sound, whether or not "true", doctrine impractical.

The second post expands on this dilemma.

If anyone truly believes in the claims of the Papacy, he should go to Rome because of his conscience. If someone does not believe those claims, as I do not believe them (as defined in our time), he should not go to Rome. Furthermore, it is risky to enter our Continuing Anglican world unless one is sure of his financial health should the ministry fail to provide a living, which is often the case. Nonetheless, the only reason for a clergyman to join us is because he actually believes that the Anglican Way is right and good, and worth saving from the wreckage of the Cantuarian apostates. If Bp. Steenson believes, as it seems he does, in the claims of the Roman Magisterium, then I can only be happy for him to find a place among that branch of God's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The author then proceeds to examine the claims of Steenson's now-lost essay "The New Donatists" which currently seems to exist, like the writings of pre-Socratic philosophers, only in commentary. (The visitor who sent me the links says he may be able to locate a paper copy, which I will at least excerpt here if it becomes available.)

Second, he assumes that traditionalists question the sacramental validity of ECUSA and its allies on the ground of the personal unworthiness of ECUSA's leaders. This would be true Donatism but it is in fact a false depiction of the reasons for that question. Instead, those of us who doubt that ECUSA today either possesses or can confer valid Orders, and therefore doubt that it can validly confect and administer those Sacraments that depend upon an Apostolic ministry, do so not because of the manifest unworthinesss of ECUSA representatives such as Vickie Gene Robinson but on quite another ground.

I think the author and the commenters are all struggling to find noble motives for Steenson's move, but they're understandably based on incomplete information, which Steenson, Bp Clarence Pope, and indeed Cardinal Ratzinger and Cardinal Law had been at pains to keep strengstens geheim since 1993. "The New Donatists" was written a year or two before Ratzinger rose to the papacy, and Steenson would have had no clear path forward beyond remaining a good Burkean Anglican, so as a good Burkean, he endorsed the "traditional" path as more recent Burkeans endorsed Barack Obama as the most traditionalist candidate over two Republicans.

But knowing Ratzinger's agenda -- as he not too clearly implied in the B16 remark quoted above -- he simply saw a new path after 2005. A few of the commenters in the first thread linked above recognized that Steenson was a man on the make from the start, probably even before his Episcopalian ordinations, as indeed observers noted throughout his subsequent TEC career.

I've wondered, in fact, exactly where the Anglican personal prelature stood in Cardinal Law's own agenda, assuming the remarks from people who to some extent knew him, like Philip Lawler, are true, that Law expected to become pope after John Paul II. It's possible that had John Paul greenlighted the prelature idea in 1993 instead of placing it on indefinite hold, Law might have been able to use it as an achievement comparable to the Catechism in the runup to a conclave.

John Paul, for that matter, may have understood this about Law better than anyone else. Whatever the actual circumstance, it wasn't such a bad idea to put it on hold, and it would have been a better idea to keep it there.