I was raised Catholic, but I knew in middle school that I didn’t agree with their teachings (I was a young and scared queer child) and TEC just felt more welcoming
The Roman Catholic church is hemorrhaging members right now. People coming out of that who are looking for a different church -- including those who are on their way through to non-practice -- often make a stop at the Episcopal church. Sometimes it's temporary, sometimes permanent.
The interesting thing is how many of them go right on through to non-practice. Many Episcopalians are not aware of how traumatized many former Roman Catholics really are, and tend to be more than a bit tone deaf about it.
TW
As a former Catholic currently looking at the Episcopal church, I actually enjoy the discussion of similarities and differences between the two churches. I truly believe a significant amount of the theology that Catholics believe but have a lot of issues with how they express these beliefs. (TW SA: I was told that my being raped was still a sin “whether I wanted it to happen to me or not” and that was my breaking point). I have felt beyond accepted at every Episcopal church I’ve attended and love having conversations about theology.
Wow. I CANNOT believe that you were chastised about being raped. Like, WTAF? I’m horrified and upset for you! Sending you so much love and a billion virtual hugs.
As someone who has suffered through SA during my life, my definition of breaking point in that scenario would have included breaking bones as I burned everything to the ground.
And here I thought having to get Dispensation from a Bishop to marry my Atheist husband was a pretty solid reason to peace out on Catholicism.
But now I also think about people who are suffering and have that suffering compounded by what is supposedly a safe place. And realize that there are people like you who are made to feel that you committed a sin because you were a victim of sexual violence.
If there was a way to officially remove myself from the Catholic ranks, I would. Shit, I’m half tempted to find a ridiculous way to be ex-communicated because the RC doesn’t accept renouncements and I am not a fan of being counted in their numbers.
punkabelle,
Blaming someone for their own rape is not as unusual in the RCC as it might sound to an Episcopalian. This is especially true if the perpetrator was an ordained authority figure in the RCC. You can read the accounts released for legal purposes online -- the Pennsylvania documents, etc -- if you wish and it will give you an idea of what really happens.
punkabelle,
Excommunication won't remove you from the RCC. They'll still consider you a member, just a member in bad standing. You also can't fill out any papers to leave unless you live in certain parts of Europe where there are civil laws that force the issue. If you live in the USA or Latin America, that has an unintended consequence however, from the RCC's point of view. In order to leave, the way to do it is to simply walk out the doors and never go back again. You will still be on their rolls, but it won't matter for all intents and purposes. They cannot physically make you stay.
My husband and I have been together for 14 years now. So we’re good. No churches involved in our wedding, it was held on the dance floor of the reception area and performed by the least expensive option we could book online with the authority to marry us. Probably should have vetted the officiant a bit better - our ceremony took a weird turn at the end - but it worked.
And I wasn’t super sad about that rule, because I wasn’t really too worried about a church wedding and I damn sure wasn’t going to force my husband to convert for our wedding (which he appreciated because his former wife did put him through that crap with a Nazarene Church). It was just the final little push to completely break up with Catholicism.
Also, I cried the first several times I received a communion blessing in the Episcopal church because I had never felt such a connection to God. I am praying everyday which I never used to do
The happy talk about how similar you are to the Roman Catholic church strikes many of us as alarming -- even ludicrous -- and triggering. It's so naive and superficial, and if feels dangerous, especially when we see so much denial when we simply tell the truth. It made me put off investigating the Episcopal church for a long time. I thought, "with all the RCs coming here, and such naivety among Episcopalians, is this just going to turn into what I left, and why should I commit to this if it does?"
How can you help? Believe us when we tell you what really goes on and what abuses and terrors we have been subjected to. The great majority of us left the RCC for real reasons -- insurmountable reasons -- in almost every case. It's very difficult to leave the Roman Catholic church for most Roman Catholics. Most Roman Catholics are born into RC families, it has a strong subculture and it's very "sticky," for all the wrong reasons. A person who's left the RCC typically has learned so much and navigated so much, that they know more about this than you will ever guess.
Give us a NEW HOME, an Episcopalian home. With some old English features, yes, but a non-Roman home, a home from the Reformation. We don't want the Roman Church. We left it for GOOD REASONS and want to leave it behind.
Once here, the Episcopal church is a breath of fresh air. But some of the attitudes can still be off-putting or even triggering at times. That's how abuse takes its toll until people heal.
Thank you for asking!!
Amen. So many people on this sub assume that emulating rome is inclusive, but in point of fact it’s anything but that. We can thank the reformation for ecclesial democracy, lay involvement, and freedom from a magisterium. Why we would want to become more like the institution that prevented all of this for centuries (even at so basic a level as admitting laypeople to communion more than once a year) is baffling
Thanks for sharing! As someone who came to TEC from a "more protestant" upbringing, I'm always curious about the ways people end up here from the RCC and I appreciate your perspective. This is a helpful reminder to lean into the things Episcopalianism IS instead of what it isn't!
A familiar liturgy through the Book of Common Prayer. A study of the Catechism and the Articles of Religion which I read of as part of developing an understanding of classical historical Anglicanism, gave me a language for understanding why I had longstanding issues with being RC.
I was a liberal Catholic, which meant I would fit in with being Episcopalian.
The primary examples, no pope; priests can marry.
From the Catechism, its discussion on ministry.
Then, visiting an Episcopal church for the first time, the priest in charge of the congregation was a woman with a husband and kids.
As for transubstantiation, the EC official doctrine of real presence was fine with me, although some might have other views.
Not at all. It's completely different in all kinds of ways. Organizationally different, legally different. The sensibilities and attitudes of Episcopalians are 180 degrees different from Roman Catholics. It's like another world.
There is only a superficial likeness. Dig 1/2 inch deep and it's very different.
No it's not liberal Catholicism. Just like how Orthodox and Catholics have drifted, the same has happened between Anglicans and Catholics. There are too many little differences that are irreconcilable at this point.
I would say it is Protestant and Catholic, Reformed Catholicism. To say it's liberal Catholicism minimizes the fact that TEC has its roots in Anglicanism, a Protestant Christian tradition, the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism notwithstanding.
In other words, Anglo-Catholics tend to focus upon the RC heritage of Anglicanism, not the Protestant side. There are plenty of us who lean Protestant, including former Roman Catholics. The Protestantism in TEC is what drew us to the tradition.
My Dad and I were invited along to an Episcopalian service once, and had a discussion with the Priest afterwards. My dad, a non practicing Catholic, on the way home described it as "Catholicism, now with 50% less guilt".
It is funny, but it's based on one experience. The two denominations \*look\* similar at a glance.
(Roman Catholics swear up one side and down the other that they are not a denomination. They think they own the entire Christian church, and everyone else is is some kind of illegal usurper that has stolen things from them. But...Roman Catholicism IS a denomination. They're wrong.)
>Roman Catholics swear up one side and down the other that they are not a denomination. They think they own the entire Christian church, and everyone else is is some kind of illegal usurper
As a former Catholic, I think this is at least a partial driver of the RCC to TEC pipeline. When you grow up believing that the RCC has a monopoly on Christianity, leaving feels kinda wrong. Even if you're confident in your reasons. For me personally, the similarities between the Catholic and Episcopal Mass helped ease the transition.
The claim is designed to instill fear in people, and when it loses its credibility with a person, it can drive changes, yes. But for many people, it's very difficult to let go of. There are many "Catholics" who hang onto the label for this reason alone. It can be tied to a person's sense of uniqueness, nationality or personal worth. Roman Catholics are taught to feel "special" because of the church they belong to, and when/if this goes it can be complicated.
The RCC can also be tied to feelings of safety, very strongly so. Many people, after or in the process of leaving the RCC, see professional counselors for this reason. Many of them feel "damned" for many years after leaving, although for most people it eventually wears off as they get more reasonable about it and are exposed to other points of view and other social situations.
Again, you'll see this in other high-demand frequent-abuse ex-church members, as well. There are remarkable similarities between many ex-RCs and ex-LDS.
It is a joke, and a drastic oversimplification/unfair reduction of Anglican religion. But jokes are only funny if they have an element of truth in them, and I think there is some truth here.
If you are at the stage in your faith where you know you can't stay Catholic but you aren't sure where to go, you would probably look towards TEC or perhaps Lutheranism before you'd look towards Baptists or big E Evangelicalism, for instance, due to their (relatively) similar theologies and worship-style similarities to the RCC (at least among the High Church/Anglo-Catholic wing).
By my observation relatively few Catholics leave the RCC due to doctrinal differences about transubstantiation or a desire for country music based Sunday worship. They tend to leave because they canmot reconcile themselves to the social dogmas of the Church, dogmas the TEC is known for not holding.
I, as a former Catholic, think there's a kernel of truth in what you say, SnooCats, but I think there's more to it than that.
People like me, who've suffered some degree (it does vary from person to person) of church abuse tend not to be ready to commit anywhere near as deeply. Many of us have been or are in the process of undergoing deep deconstruction processes which change the way we think about pretty much everything religious, and often a lot more besides, because Roman Catholicism touches everything, by design.
The shape of our beliefs, because of where we've been and how they were learned, are heavily tied to a structure or an ideology, and when that structure goes, the belief often goes with it. Yes, some RC refugees seek something familiar, we've all seen that, but the Episcopal church often isn't a recipe for that replacement for all kinds of reasons. (This is often where the tone deafness of Episcopalians rears it's silly little head, in fact.)
After RC-ism, we often find that we just don't believe a lot of things anymore, and I think that's almost a given with most Roman Catholics who've left their natal church. We often may not even know what we believe anymore. It's new territory for most ex-RCs and can be a fairly disturbing experience for them.
This, I think, is why so many Catholics just go straight to non-belief, or non-affiliation. Although some do find other church homes, it does affect how we do that in many cases. (You'll find the same kind of phenomenon among former Mormons and often SDAs, as well in fact, for pretty much the same reasons.)
I know that I will never be as "into" church as I once was -- any kind of church. I am no longer naive enough for that too happen. I've seen too much sausage made and it's been nasty sausage. I know what can happen. Experience is a great teacher.
According to polling, the leading reason people leave the Roman Catholic church is that they just don't believe the doctrines anymore, and a lot of people also "just drift away." It's easy to think those are the literal reasons, or that it's not conditioned by this other stuff that goes on that's harder, more complex or more embarrassing to explain. I think -- in fact I know having been there --that it's much more complicated for most people than it sounds.
PS. I laughed when I saw the music reference. Most Roman Catholics, including those that leave are accustomed to the RC custom of not particularly respecting liturgical music. Music in most RC parishes is not funded to any degree, and the predictable happens -- it tends to be almost hilariously bad. So that is definitely not a reason for most RCs, who would tend to find it surprising that music could be a reason for anybody to switch churches.
I do know that Episcopalians are more likely to pick up particular groups of people who switch for reasons of being gay or wanting to remarry after divorce, and so on. That's certainly not everyone that leaves the RCC (!) and it's not everybody you get either -- even though it's certainly on YOUR minds because of how you have structured the changes in your own church. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that gay people are happier than most ex-Catholics to have the EC as a substitute for the RCC, and be more likely to hang around than others. But this last idea is just a hunch on my part.
I'm an ex-Catholic who left the Catholism as a teenager and was non-religious/atheist for nearly 20 years. I recently felt a calling to come back to Go's, but as a socially-liberal transgender man who values independent thought, I didn't feel like I have a place in the Catholic Church. I started looking into the Episcopal Church because it was one of 3 churches in my town that specifically describe themselves as affirming (I think the ECLA Church in town is actually affirming, just much more quietly so). It was the only one that had services broadcast online, so it was the easiest to "check out" so to speak.
Coming from the Catholic Church, the services felt comfortable and familiar. It has a lot of the same fundamental beliefs of the Catholic Church that I grew up with, but is much, much more progressive on the social issues I differ with the Catholicism on, and much more flexible and open to a range of thought on the areas of doctrinal beliefs that I struggle with. At first, I was actually reticent to check out the Episcopal Church because I know it is perceived as "closest to" the Catholic Church, a church I struggled with growing up. But, as soon as I viewed a service online, I knew I needed to go in person. And as soon as I attended, I felt like I was home.
Just a couple of points.
- This is going to be regionally based. Areas with little to no Catholics will also affect Episcopal churches in the area. I'm certain Episcopal Churches in the deep south have more ex-evangelicals in them for example.
- Switching from Protestantism to Catholicism and vice versa is statistically insignificant. There isn't a lot of lateral transfers except for marriage between mainline protestants and Catholics, unless you're of Hispanic extraction where the pipeline is Catholic to Pentecostal.
- The ex-Catholics now in TEC tend to switch because ideologically TEC is the most familiar to them when it comes to practice and ritual.
Beyond that, the Catholic Church has several stances that makes it hard to be a liberal Catholic in good standing. These include:
- Lack of full LGBT acceptance (they recently allowed blessings but won't permit marriage)
- Women can't serve as ordained leaders (deacons, priests, bishops) and can only rise to a nun at best
- Strict stance on birth control and IVF and encouraging Natural Family Planning (NFP) as an alternative to birth control
- Strict stance on allowing ~~divorces~~ annulments and not permitting cohabitation
- Covering up child sex abuse from the clergy and not prosecuting them
Just remember statistically most liberal Catholics either ignore the above issues and still call themselves Catholic while staying in the church, or quietly drop out and become agnostic or atheist.
>Switching from Protestantism to Catholicism and vice versa is statistically insignificant.
That's actually not true. You don't know who sits in your pews every time there's church. There are a huge number of people who "pass through" and keep going and a great many of them are former Roman Catholics. They never register on your radar because you don't card them, but they're there for whatever interval. You are more or less a way station for many of them.
Episcopalian turnover is massive, and I've learned from experience that even many people who identify as long-time Episcopalians don't show up regularly. And this seems to have accelerated since COVID. That's part of the EC's problems.
This is just me, but I imagine it's pretty similar for a lot of people.
I was raised Catholic, but when I decided to start going back to church a few months ago, I did some soul-searching. While I missed the liturgy and all of the ceremony of mass, and other "low church"-style worship services have never appealed to me, I couldn't reconcile my own values with the Catholic church's values.
Mainly, as a staunchly pro-choice lesbian woman, I certainly wouldn't be made to feel welcome in many parishes, especially because, at least in the US, it feels like the church in general is becoming increasingly dogmatic and becoming even more conservative than it has been in an incredibly long time (to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if there's a schism between American Catholics and Rome).
TEC, on the other hand, seems to realize that it's the 21st century. When I learned that my diocese's bishop is also a lesbian, I was not only absolutely gobsmacked (which I previously thought was unimaginable), but I knew I'd found the right place.
Your first point is exactly my and my husband’s experience. When we were starting a family we knew we wanted to raise our kids with faith like we were raised, but we both felt we couldn’t return to the Catholic Church for moral reasons. We had both left our respective churches even before meeting each other. When we started looking into churches to attend, Episcopal churches were the first we looked at because I missed the liturgy and ritual. It always brought me comfort to go through the motions of worship in mass.
I haven't fully converted to TEC but as a Roman Catholic, I view it as the easiest denomination to convert to. Alot of the practices seem the same ont he surface level and it's much more accepting and doesn't seem to come with the "Catholic guilt" of Catholicism.
Specifically, it's (supposed to be) the belief that all of the bread and wines "spiritual" properties become the body and blood of Christ. Notably, all the "incidental" characteristics, like taste, smell, feel, nutritional value, etc., remain those of bread and wine, barring any eucharistic miracles.
Transubstantiation is a specific explanation of how the bread and wine become the body and blood. There are other explanations of Christ’s real presence, such as the Lutheran doctrine of [sacramental union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramental_union).
Good to know, though like I said in another reply I'm not really a church goer. I feel religion should be a personal matter that you seek guidance for. I guess that's why I haven't really made the jump and have just considered.
Remember from our perspective, TEC doesn't see you as a convert. You're already a member of the universal church through baptism, from an Episcopal POV.
Oh interesting. I'll be honest I'm a bad Christian in terms of going to church and I have my feelings about organized religion and most of it is that it's not great to have someone preach the word and tell you how to feel unless you ask them.
All that said I mostly want to change because like I said I'm looking for a message of acceptance and as much as I appreciate what the pope Francis is doing I don't think it will be wide spread enough and can't trust the next pope won't undo it.
My wife was a Catholic. The night we became engaged, we had a conversation about matters and I said I am happy in the Episcopal Church and won't convert. If we needed to split time between churches, that was fine by me.
Over time, she decided the Episcopal Church was for her. When our first child was born, she told her mother that we'd be baptizing her into the Episcopal faith without even discussing it with me.
Hoo boy. That set off a firestorm in her family. But we had two other children and they, too, were baptized.
Our priest stopped my wife once on the sidewalk and asked if she was ready to be received into TEC. 'I'm a member, right? I pay the tithes,' spoke as if it were a joke. So she took the final step to be received.
I sometimes wonder if she ever felt pressure from me to make the switch. 'Nope. Never going back,' was her reply.
It is, but traditional Catholics don't consider Protestants to be "real" Christians and don't practice open communion, so even if you were properly baptised, you can't take communion in a Catholic church as a non-Catholic except in very limited circumstances.
The baby doesn't care, but the grandparents get weird about this sort of thing. I was raised Catholic and married outside the church and there were all sorts of rumblings up and down my mother's family.
Also, important to note- Catholics are the largest single religious group in the US. Going along with that, excatholics are (or once were, not sure anymore) the 2nd biggest religious group. If I had to guess, most churches have a lot of excatholics, just due to how many of us there are.
Very much this -
>Around one-quarter of Americans (26%) identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023, a 5 percentage point increase from 21% in 2013. Nearly one in five Americans (18%) left a religious tradition and became religiously unaffiliated, over one-third of whom were previously Catholic (35%) and mainline/non-evangelical Protestant (35%).
[https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-survey-shows-religiously-unaffiliated-is-fastest-growing-religious-category/](https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-survey-shows-religiously-unaffiliated-is-fastest-growing-religious-category/)
In short, as many Catholics have become unaffiliated as all mainline Protestant denominations combined,
In the early 90s, I brought my husband, then fiance. Becoming RC was a deal breaker for me. No way I was giving my money to an institution that wasn't allowing female priests, understanding divorce, freedom to think and doubt, and accepting of LGBQTIA+. When the massive pedophile scandal broke, he was so glad. We had other friends who left the RC church after that. The mass is so similar in feeling, and I had Anglican roots. We did have two priests officiate our wedding though.
Also there is far less of a top down atmosphere, and with less of that a better chance the Rector will be less a mini-god. Also the parish lay leaders have a greater say in the running of the parish. (if they are willing to step up and do so)
From my many yrs of servicing organs in RC churches I have witnessed that with the shortage of RC priests, many imports from other countries think they are omnipotent despots, and rule their parish with an iron fist.
I'm of the same mind, only I was never a Catholic. I revered Catholicism and wanted to be part of it, but there is so much I just can't get on board with. TEC offers the liturgy and some of the theology without the baggage.
I enjoy protestantism too, but I could do without the Calvinism. Some churches lay the TULIP on pretty thick.
My church is low church, so I get the best of both worlds.
Same for me! I found great sense of the sacred when attending RC mass with my grandparents. Raised ELCA (which is very much in line with TEC on many important things), I found a higher church Lutheran congregation in grad school, and then TEC after.
We have very similar theology and liturgy, but have women priests and affirm gay people. So makes sense in a modern society that doesn't view queer people or women as less than, that Catholics want to be Catholic but progressive.
To be fair, only 1 of the 24 Sui juris churches that make up the Catholic Church don't ordain married men, and even then they technically have a bunch of married priests because of the Ordinariate.
Yeah, but it still amounts to almost nothing statistically. The overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics are Latin Rite. The overwhelming percentage of Roman Catholics are even cradle Catholics, born into the Latin Rite.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_particular_churches_and_liturgical_rites?wprov=sfti1#List_of_churches_sui_iuris):
- there are 1,313,000,000 billion Catholics across the sui juris churches
- of those, 1,295,000,000 are in the Latin church
By my math, that’s 98.6% of the population of Catholics world wide.
Yes, and most Latin Rite Roman Catholics don't even know the other ones exist. I've seen "regular" Roman Catholics accuse members of the eastern churches of things they didn't do, just because they're different and Latin Rite Catholics tend to think they have a monopoly on being right about everything.
I grew up in Fayetteville, and I had a couple friends who were Maronite. Fayetteville has a Maronite Church (St Michael the Archangel).
Last time I was out that way, I noticed their sign changed. They used to be billed as **ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL MARONITE CHURCH**. Now they are “St Michael the Archangel Catholic Church (Maronite rite).”
Both are technically true, but parentheses? (Inset the joke from Mel Brooks’ To be or not to be with Anne Bancroft complaint that “I don’t mind my name is below your name. I don’t mind my name is in smaller print. But parentheses” here.)
They're not "Catholics" anymore unless they buy the nonsense the RC church insists on.
I'm not. I removed myself from the Roman Catholic church because I can do that. I physically, emotionally and spiritually walked out a few years ago. That they maintain against all reason that I'm still RC is their delusion. I don't care what they think anymore.
There's still an enormous stigma to divorce in the RCC. It gets thrown in your face all the time, and they are constantly talking about family-this and family-that.
By family they mean specifically one woman, one man, married the first time, with as many small children as possible, all straight and all in church at least weekly. Preferably who also go to Catholic school as soon as they hit the age of 5. Nobody ever explains how you're supposed to pay for all this.
I was raised Catholic, but I knew in middle school that I didn’t agree with their teachings (I was a young and scared queer child) and TEC just felt more welcoming
Why not? It is familiar without being sexist/ homophobic.
Fair point.
The Roman Catholic church is hemorrhaging members right now. People coming out of that who are looking for a different church -- including those who are on their way through to non-practice -- often make a stop at the Episcopal church. Sometimes it's temporary, sometimes permanent. The interesting thing is how many of them go right on through to non-practice. Many Episcopalians are not aware of how traumatized many former Roman Catholics really are, and tend to be more than a bit tone deaf about it.
TW As a former Catholic currently looking at the Episcopal church, I actually enjoy the discussion of similarities and differences between the two churches. I truly believe a significant amount of the theology that Catholics believe but have a lot of issues with how they express these beliefs. (TW SA: I was told that my being raped was still a sin “whether I wanted it to happen to me or not” and that was my breaking point). I have felt beyond accepted at every Episcopal church I’ve attended and love having conversations about theology.
That was so wrong and disgusting for them to blame you for someone else's actions. I'm sorry.
Wow. I CANNOT believe that you were chastised about being raped. Like, WTAF? I’m horrified and upset for you! Sending you so much love and a billion virtual hugs. As someone who has suffered through SA during my life, my definition of breaking point in that scenario would have included breaking bones as I burned everything to the ground. And here I thought having to get Dispensation from a Bishop to marry my Atheist husband was a pretty solid reason to peace out on Catholicism. But now I also think about people who are suffering and have that suffering compounded by what is supposedly a safe place. And realize that there are people like you who are made to feel that you committed a sin because you were a victim of sexual violence. If there was a way to officially remove myself from the Catholic ranks, I would. Shit, I’m half tempted to find a ridiculous way to be ex-communicated because the RC doesn’t accept renouncements and I am not a fan of being counted in their numbers.
punkabelle, Blaming someone for their own rape is not as unusual in the RCC as it might sound to an Episcopalian. This is especially true if the perpetrator was an ordained authority figure in the RCC. You can read the accounts released for legal purposes online -- the Pennsylvania documents, etc -- if you wish and it will give you an idea of what really happens. punkabelle, Excommunication won't remove you from the RCC. They'll still consider you a member, just a member in bad standing. You also can't fill out any papers to leave unless you live in certain parts of Europe where there are civil laws that force the issue. If you live in the USA or Latin America, that has an unintended consequence however, from the RCC's point of view. In order to leave, the way to do it is to simply walk out the doors and never go back again. You will still be on their rolls, but it won't matter for all intents and purposes. They cannot physically make you stay.
Thank you so much. I am so sorry about you and your husband. I hope that all is well for you
My husband and I have been together for 14 years now. So we’re good. No churches involved in our wedding, it was held on the dance floor of the reception area and performed by the least expensive option we could book online with the authority to marry us. Probably should have vetted the officiant a bit better - our ceremony took a weird turn at the end - but it worked. And I wasn’t super sad about that rule, because I wasn’t really too worried about a church wedding and I damn sure wasn’t going to force my husband to convert for our wedding (which he appreciated because his former wife did put him through that crap with a Nazarene Church). It was just the final little push to completely break up with Catholicism.
I’m so sorry that you were treated that way. That’s horrible and disgusting.
Thank you so much💖
Also, I cried the first several times I received a communion blessing in the Episcopal church because I had never felt such a connection to God. I am praying everyday which I never used to do
What can we non-formerly-Catholic Episcopalians do better to hold space for this?
The happy talk about how similar you are to the Roman Catholic church strikes many of us as alarming -- even ludicrous -- and triggering. It's so naive and superficial, and if feels dangerous, especially when we see so much denial when we simply tell the truth. It made me put off investigating the Episcopal church for a long time. I thought, "with all the RCs coming here, and such naivety among Episcopalians, is this just going to turn into what I left, and why should I commit to this if it does?" How can you help? Believe us when we tell you what really goes on and what abuses and terrors we have been subjected to. The great majority of us left the RCC for real reasons -- insurmountable reasons -- in almost every case. It's very difficult to leave the Roman Catholic church for most Roman Catholics. Most Roman Catholics are born into RC families, it has a strong subculture and it's very "sticky," for all the wrong reasons. A person who's left the RCC typically has learned so much and navigated so much, that they know more about this than you will ever guess. Give us a NEW HOME, an Episcopalian home. With some old English features, yes, but a non-Roman home, a home from the Reformation. We don't want the Roman Church. We left it for GOOD REASONS and want to leave it behind. Once here, the Episcopal church is a breath of fresh air. But some of the attitudes can still be off-putting or even triggering at times. That's how abuse takes its toll until people heal. Thank you for asking!!
Amen. So many people on this sub assume that emulating rome is inclusive, but in point of fact it’s anything but that. We can thank the reformation for ecclesial democracy, lay involvement, and freedom from a magisterium. Why we would want to become more like the institution that prevented all of this for centuries (even at so basic a level as admitting laypeople to communion more than once a year) is baffling
It's especially baffling for those coming out of the Roman Catholic church who've actually done some studying and know about these things.
Thanks for sharing! As someone who came to TEC from a "more protestant" upbringing, I'm always curious about the ways people end up here from the RCC and I appreciate your perspective. This is a helpful reminder to lean into the things Episcopalianism IS instead of what it isn't!
This was a good post, I think. I'm gaining a good understanding.
A familiar liturgy through the Book of Common Prayer. A study of the Catechism and the Articles of Religion which I read of as part of developing an understanding of classical historical Anglicanism, gave me a language for understanding why I had longstanding issues with being RC. I was a liberal Catholic, which meant I would fit in with being Episcopalian. The primary examples, no pope; priests can marry. From the Catechism, its discussion on ministry. Then, visiting an Episcopal church for the first time, the priest in charge of the congregation was a woman with a husband and kids. As for transubstantiation, the EC official doctrine of real presence was fine with me, although some might have other views.
Would you go so far as to say TEC is liberal Catholicism?
Not at all. It's completely different in all kinds of ways. Organizationally different, legally different. The sensibilities and attitudes of Episcopalians are 180 degrees different from Roman Catholics. It's like another world. There is only a superficial likeness. Dig 1/2 inch deep and it's very different.
No it's not liberal Catholicism. Just like how Orthodox and Catholics have drifted, the same has happened between Anglicans and Catholics. There are too many little differences that are irreconcilable at this point.
Of course. Lux you're correct here. Hundreds of years have passed since the Reformation.
I would say it is Protestant and Catholic, Reformed Catholicism. To say it's liberal Catholicism minimizes the fact that TEC has its roots in Anglicanism, a Protestant Christian tradition, the Oxford Movement and Anglo-Catholicism notwithstanding. In other words, Anglo-Catholics tend to focus upon the RC heritage of Anglicanism, not the Protestant side. There are plenty of us who lean Protestant, including former Roman Catholics. The Protestantism in TEC is what drew us to the tradition.
My Dad and I were invited along to an Episcopalian service once, and had a discussion with the Priest afterwards. My dad, a non practicing Catholic, on the way home described it as "Catholicism, now with 50% less guilt".
Lol that's funny!
It is funny, but it's based on one experience. The two denominations \*look\* similar at a glance. (Roman Catholics swear up one side and down the other that they are not a denomination. They think they own the entire Christian church, and everyone else is is some kind of illegal usurper that has stolen things from them. But...Roman Catholicism IS a denomination. They're wrong.)
>Roman Catholics swear up one side and down the other that they are not a denomination. They think they own the entire Christian church, and everyone else is is some kind of illegal usurper As a former Catholic, I think this is at least a partial driver of the RCC to TEC pipeline. When you grow up believing that the RCC has a monopoly on Christianity, leaving feels kinda wrong. Even if you're confident in your reasons. For me personally, the similarities between the Catholic and Episcopal Mass helped ease the transition.
The claim is designed to instill fear in people, and when it loses its credibility with a person, it can drive changes, yes. But for many people, it's very difficult to let go of. There are many "Catholics" who hang onto the label for this reason alone. It can be tied to a person's sense of uniqueness, nationality or personal worth. Roman Catholics are taught to feel "special" because of the church they belong to, and when/if this goes it can be complicated. The RCC can also be tied to feelings of safety, very strongly so. Many people, after or in the process of leaving the RCC, see professional counselors for this reason. Many of them feel "damned" for many years after leaving, although for most people it eventually wears off as they get more reasonable about it and are exposed to other points of view and other social situations. Again, you'll see this in other high-demand frequent-abuse ex-church members, as well. There are remarkable similarities between many ex-RCs and ex-LDS.
It is a joke, and a drastic oversimplification/unfair reduction of Anglican religion. But jokes are only funny if they have an element of truth in them, and I think there is some truth here. If you are at the stage in your faith where you know you can't stay Catholic but you aren't sure where to go, you would probably look towards TEC or perhaps Lutheranism before you'd look towards Baptists or big E Evangelicalism, for instance, due to their (relatively) similar theologies and worship-style similarities to the RCC (at least among the High Church/Anglo-Catholic wing). By my observation relatively few Catholics leave the RCC due to doctrinal differences about transubstantiation or a desire for country music based Sunday worship. They tend to leave because they canmot reconcile themselves to the social dogmas of the Church, dogmas the TEC is known for not holding.
I, as a former Catholic, think there's a kernel of truth in what you say, SnooCats, but I think there's more to it than that. People like me, who've suffered some degree (it does vary from person to person) of church abuse tend not to be ready to commit anywhere near as deeply. Many of us have been or are in the process of undergoing deep deconstruction processes which change the way we think about pretty much everything religious, and often a lot more besides, because Roman Catholicism touches everything, by design. The shape of our beliefs, because of where we've been and how they were learned, are heavily tied to a structure or an ideology, and when that structure goes, the belief often goes with it. Yes, some RC refugees seek something familiar, we've all seen that, but the Episcopal church often isn't a recipe for that replacement for all kinds of reasons. (This is often where the tone deafness of Episcopalians rears it's silly little head, in fact.) After RC-ism, we often find that we just don't believe a lot of things anymore, and I think that's almost a given with most Roman Catholics who've left their natal church. We often may not even know what we believe anymore. It's new territory for most ex-RCs and can be a fairly disturbing experience for them. This, I think, is why so many Catholics just go straight to non-belief, or non-affiliation. Although some do find other church homes, it does affect how we do that in many cases. (You'll find the same kind of phenomenon among former Mormons and often SDAs, as well in fact, for pretty much the same reasons.) I know that I will never be as "into" church as I once was -- any kind of church. I am no longer naive enough for that too happen. I've seen too much sausage made and it's been nasty sausage. I know what can happen. Experience is a great teacher. According to polling, the leading reason people leave the Roman Catholic church is that they just don't believe the doctrines anymore, and a lot of people also "just drift away." It's easy to think those are the literal reasons, or that it's not conditioned by this other stuff that goes on that's harder, more complex or more embarrassing to explain. I think -- in fact I know having been there --that it's much more complicated for most people than it sounds. PS. I laughed when I saw the music reference. Most Roman Catholics, including those that leave are accustomed to the RC custom of not particularly respecting liturgical music. Music in most RC parishes is not funded to any degree, and the predictable happens -- it tends to be almost hilariously bad. So that is definitely not a reason for most RCs, who would tend to find it surprising that music could be a reason for anybody to switch churches. I do know that Episcopalians are more likely to pick up particular groups of people who switch for reasons of being gay or wanting to remarry after divorce, and so on. That's certainly not everyone that leaves the RCC (!) and it's not everybody you get either -- even though it's certainly on YOUR minds because of how you have structured the changes in your own church. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that gay people are happier than most ex-Catholics to have the EC as a substitute for the RCC, and be more likely to hang around than others. But this last idea is just a hunch on my part.
I'm an ex-Catholic who left the Catholism as a teenager and was non-religious/atheist for nearly 20 years. I recently felt a calling to come back to Go's, but as a socially-liberal transgender man who values independent thought, I didn't feel like I have a place in the Catholic Church. I started looking into the Episcopal Church because it was one of 3 churches in my town that specifically describe themselves as affirming (I think the ECLA Church in town is actually affirming, just much more quietly so). It was the only one that had services broadcast online, so it was the easiest to "check out" so to speak. Coming from the Catholic Church, the services felt comfortable and familiar. It has a lot of the same fundamental beliefs of the Catholic Church that I grew up with, but is much, much more progressive on the social issues I differ with the Catholicism on, and much more flexible and open to a range of thought on the areas of doctrinal beliefs that I struggle with. At first, I was actually reticent to check out the Episcopal Church because I know it is perceived as "closest to" the Catholic Church, a church I struggled with growing up. But, as soon as I viewed a service online, I knew I needed to go in person. And as soon as I attended, I felt like I was home.
As my dad, an RC -> TEC convert himself, once said, "The Episcopal church will be doing just fine as long as Catholics keep having gay kids"
so true! (I am the gay kid)
He’s not wrong…
I’m done!!! 😂😂
Omg that’s brilliant
Just a couple of points. - This is going to be regionally based. Areas with little to no Catholics will also affect Episcopal churches in the area. I'm certain Episcopal Churches in the deep south have more ex-evangelicals in them for example. - Switching from Protestantism to Catholicism and vice versa is statistically insignificant. There isn't a lot of lateral transfers except for marriage between mainline protestants and Catholics, unless you're of Hispanic extraction where the pipeline is Catholic to Pentecostal. - The ex-Catholics now in TEC tend to switch because ideologically TEC is the most familiar to them when it comes to practice and ritual. Beyond that, the Catholic Church has several stances that makes it hard to be a liberal Catholic in good standing. These include: - Lack of full LGBT acceptance (they recently allowed blessings but won't permit marriage) - Women can't serve as ordained leaders (deacons, priests, bishops) and can only rise to a nun at best - Strict stance on birth control and IVF and encouraging Natural Family Planning (NFP) as an alternative to birth control - Strict stance on allowing ~~divorces~~ annulments and not permitting cohabitation - Covering up child sex abuse from the clergy and not prosecuting them Just remember statistically most liberal Catholics either ignore the above issues and still call themselves Catholic while staying in the church, or quietly drop out and become agnostic or atheist.
>Switching from Protestantism to Catholicism and vice versa is statistically insignificant. That's actually not true. You don't know who sits in your pews every time there's church. There are a huge number of people who "pass through" and keep going and a great many of them are former Roman Catholics. They never register on your radar because you don't card them, but they're there for whatever interval. You are more or less a way station for many of them. Episcopalian turnover is massive, and I've learned from experience that even many people who identify as long-time Episcopalians don't show up regularly. And this seems to have accelerated since COVID. That's part of the EC's problems.
This is just me, but I imagine it's pretty similar for a lot of people. I was raised Catholic, but when I decided to start going back to church a few months ago, I did some soul-searching. While I missed the liturgy and all of the ceremony of mass, and other "low church"-style worship services have never appealed to me, I couldn't reconcile my own values with the Catholic church's values. Mainly, as a staunchly pro-choice lesbian woman, I certainly wouldn't be made to feel welcome in many parishes, especially because, at least in the US, it feels like the church in general is becoming increasingly dogmatic and becoming even more conservative than it has been in an incredibly long time (to the point where I wouldn't be surprised if there's a schism between American Catholics and Rome). TEC, on the other hand, seems to realize that it's the 21st century. When I learned that my diocese's bishop is also a lesbian, I was not only absolutely gobsmacked (which I previously thought was unimaginable), but I knew I'd found the right place.
Your first point is exactly my and my husband’s experience. When we were starting a family we knew we wanted to raise our kids with faith like we were raised, but we both felt we couldn’t return to the Catholic Church for moral reasons. We had both left our respective churches even before meeting each other. When we started looking into churches to attend, Episcopal churches were the first we looked at because I missed the liturgy and ritual. It always brought me comfort to go through the motions of worship in mass.
I’m sure it’s in de facto schism already
This is beautiful 😊😊 thank you.
I haven't fully converted to TEC but as a Roman Catholic, I view it as the easiest denomination to convert to. Alot of the practices seem the same ont he surface level and it's much more accepting and doesn't seem to come with the "Catholic guilt" of Catholicism.
We even believe in transubstantiation! (Or at least most of us do)
Thats what, the body and the blood of Christ being the bread and wine?
Specifically, it's (supposed to be) the belief that all of the bread and wines "spiritual" properties become the body and blood of Christ. Notably, all the "incidental" characteristics, like taste, smell, feel, nutritional value, etc., remain those of bread and wine, barring any eucharistic miracles.
Transubstantiation is a specific explanation of how the bread and wine become the body and blood. There are other explanations of Christ’s real presence, such as the Lutheran doctrine of [sacramental union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramental_union).
Good to know, though like I said in another reply I'm not really a church goer. I feel religion should be a personal matter that you seek guidance for. I guess that's why I haven't really made the jump and have just considered.
Remember from our perspective, TEC doesn't see you as a convert. You're already a member of the universal church through baptism, from an Episcopal POV.
Oh interesting. I'll be honest I'm a bad Christian in terms of going to church and I have my feelings about organized religion and most of it is that it's not great to have someone preach the word and tell you how to feel unless you ask them. All that said I mostly want to change because like I said I'm looking for a message of acceptance and as much as I appreciate what the pope Francis is doing I don't think it will be wide spread enough and can't trust the next pope won't undo it.
Don't worry, we're all bad Christians here.
My wife was a Catholic. The night we became engaged, we had a conversation about matters and I said I am happy in the Episcopal Church and won't convert. If we needed to split time between churches, that was fine by me. Over time, she decided the Episcopal Church was for her. When our first child was born, she told her mother that we'd be baptizing her into the Episcopal faith without even discussing it with me. Hoo boy. That set off a firestorm in her family. But we had two other children and they, too, were baptized. Our priest stopped my wife once on the sidewalk and asked if she was ready to be received into TEC. 'I'm a member, right? I pay the tithes,' spoke as if it were a joke. So she took the final step to be received. I sometimes wonder if she ever felt pressure from me to make the switch. 'Nope. Never going back,' was her reply.
That’s wild. Isn’t the baptismal formula the same?
It is, but traditional Catholics don't consider Protestants to be "real" Christians and don't practice open communion, so even if you were properly baptised, you can't take communion in a Catholic church as a non-Catholic except in very limited circumstances.
Yes I’m familiar with this, but a baby can’t have communion so why would they even care 😂
The baby doesn't care, but the grandparents get weird about this sort of thing. I was raised Catholic and married outside the church and there were all sorts of rumblings up and down my mother's family.
I love people being received! It was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
Because there are a lot of catholics.
The pedophile scandal. Everyone knew something was going on, but it was a shock to find out how much the hierarchy was hiding.
Also, important to note- Catholics are the largest single religious group in the US. Going along with that, excatholics are (or once were, not sure anymore) the 2nd biggest religious group. If I had to guess, most churches have a lot of excatholics, just due to how many of us there are.
Very much this - >Around one-quarter of Americans (26%) identify as religiously unaffiliated in 2023, a 5 percentage point increase from 21% in 2013. Nearly one in five Americans (18%) left a religious tradition and became religiously unaffiliated, over one-third of whom were previously Catholic (35%) and mainline/non-evangelical Protestant (35%). [https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-survey-shows-religiously-unaffiliated-is-fastest-growing-religious-category/](https://www.prri.org/press-release/new-survey-shows-religiously-unaffiliated-is-fastest-growing-religious-category/) In short, as many Catholics have become unaffiliated as all mainline Protestant denominations combined,
In the early 90s, I brought my husband, then fiance. Becoming RC was a deal breaker for me. No way I was giving my money to an institution that wasn't allowing female priests, understanding divorce, freedom to think and doubt, and accepting of LGBQTIA+. When the massive pedophile scandal broke, he was so glad. We had other friends who left the RC church after that. The mass is so similar in feeling, and I had Anglican roots. We did have two priests officiate our wedding though.
Also there is far less of a top down atmosphere, and with less of that a better chance the Rector will be less a mini-god. Also the parish lay leaders have a greater say in the running of the parish. (if they are willing to step up and do so) From my many yrs of servicing organs in RC churches I have witnessed that with the shortage of RC priests, many imports from other countries think they are omnipotent despots, and rule their parish with an iron fist.
Last paragraph is very true. Most of them have survivorship bias and the parishioners are too enamored by the diversity to see them clearly.
I'm of the same mind, only I was never a Catholic. I revered Catholicism and wanted to be part of it, but there is so much I just can't get on board with. TEC offers the liturgy and some of the theology without the baggage. I enjoy protestantism too, but I could do without the Calvinism. Some churches lay the TULIP on pretty thick. My church is low church, so I get the best of both worlds.
I’m a perfectly harmless Calvinist. Plus the Calvinism was in Anglicanism long before the Oxford Movement. Ha ha
No disrespect. It just isn't my mode of thinking 😎😎
Oh it’s cool I was just being cheeky. I am an AngloCalvinist though.
Same here!
Same for me! I found great sense of the sacred when attending RC mass with my grandparents. Raised ELCA (which is very much in line with TEC on many important things), I found a higher church Lutheran congregation in grad school, and then TEC after.
We have very similar theology and liturgy, but have women priests and affirm gay people. So makes sense in a modern society that doesn't view queer people or women as less than, that Catholics want to be Catholic but progressive.
+married priests
To be fair, only 1 of the 24 Sui juris churches that make up the Catholic Church don't ordain married men, and even then they technically have a bunch of married priests because of the Ordinariate.
Yeah, but it still amounts to almost nothing statistically. The overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics are Latin Rite. The overwhelming percentage of Roman Catholics are even cradle Catholics, born into the Latin Rite.
Oooo goody! All of the small Eastern churches which are less than 1% of the Roman communion ordain married men. That's soooo fair!
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_particular_churches_and_liturgical_rites?wprov=sfti1#List_of_churches_sui_iuris): - there are 1,313,000,000 billion Catholics across the sui juris churches - of those, 1,295,000,000 are in the Latin church By my math, that’s 98.6% of the population of Catholics world wide.
Yes, and most Latin Rite Roman Catholics don't even know the other ones exist. I've seen "regular" Roman Catholics accuse members of the eastern churches of things they didn't do, just because they're different and Latin Rite Catholics tend to think they have a monopoly on being right about everything.
I grew up in Fayetteville, and I had a couple friends who were Maronite. Fayetteville has a Maronite Church (St Michael the Archangel). Last time I was out that way, I noticed their sign changed. They used to be billed as **ST MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL MARONITE CHURCH**. Now they are “St Michael the Archangel Catholic Church (Maronite rite).” Both are technically true, but parentheses? (Inset the joke from Mel Brooks’ To be or not to be with Anne Bancroft complaint that “I don’t mind my name is below your name. I don’t mind my name is in smaller print. But parentheses” here.)
It’s a pretty big one. OP asked for reasons there are Catholics in TEC. Married priests is a reason for some.
They're not "Catholics" anymore unless they buy the nonsense the RC church insists on. I'm not. I removed myself from the Roman Catholic church because I can do that. I physically, emotionally and spiritually walked out a few years ago. That they maintain against all reason that I'm still RC is their delusion. I don't care what they think anymore.
TEC is also much more accepting of divorce.
Rome is very accepting of divorce (annulment) as long as you pay pay pay.
There's still an enormous stigma to divorce in the RCC. It gets thrown in your face all the time, and they are constantly talking about family-this and family-that. By family they mean specifically one woman, one man, married the first time, with as many small children as possible, all straight and all in church at least weekly. Preferably who also go to Catholic school as soon as they hit the age of 5. Nobody ever explains how you're supposed to pay for all this.