My Canterbury Trail to Rome (My Conversion from the Anglican Priesthood to Catholicism)

Dr. Taylor Marshall as an Anglican cleric

before entering the Catholic Church

It is impossible to be just to the Catholic Church. The moment men cease to pull against it they feel a tug towards it. The moment they cease to shout it down they begin to listen to it with pleasure. The moment they try to be fair to it they begin to be fond of it. But when that affection has passed a certain point it begins to take on the tragic and menacing grandeur of a great love affair.

- GK Chesterton

I was not always drawn to the Catholic Church. I once resisted it with great force. Today my wife and I (and our six children) are Catholic - Roman Catholic.

As Chesterton described in the quote above, the moment I ceased pulling away against the Catholic Church I was slowly (even without knowing it) pulled toward the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, many Protestants and Anglicans cannot comprehend why someone might be drawn to Catholicism in the first place.

Many will grant that the Catholic Church is impressive. A trip to the Vatican will verify this for you. The Church is the curator of priceless pieces of art. The Vatican is a city-state. The Pope has a seat at the United Nations. The cathedrals of Europe are spectacular. Many of the great universities and hospitals of the world find their origin in the Church.

Yet there are strange and foreign elements that I found uncomfortable as I embraced my Holy Mother the Church - things that I had not encountered as an Anglican priest. There is the voiceless "silent Irish" phenomenon that occurs during hymns at Mass when nobody seems to be singing except for the ubiquitous cantor. The hymns were different, also. As an Anglican, we knelt for Communion. As a Catholic we were told to stand (!) for Holy Eucharist. I experienced churches in the round. I heard of alleged "Clown" Masses and other liturgical oddities.

Lastly, there were all the other elements of the Catholic Church that we Anglicans found questionable. Medici popes. Indulgences. Penances. Marian apparitions. What about the very serious blemishes, for example, the American priest scandals of 2003 and the years afterward?

Why would an Anglican priest in his right mind desire to become a Catholic?!

Fundamentally, I became Catholic because I believe with all my heart that the Church is the Body of Christ. As Saint Paul once wrote, "Love believes all things" (1 Cor 13:7), and I believe that the Church isn't merely an an institution, but that she is the Mystical Body of Christ.

He is the head of the Body, the Church; he is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in everything He might be pre-eminent (Col 1:18).

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church (Col 1:24).

That you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth (1 Tim 3:15).

The "Church question" is therefore unavoidable. The biblical description of "the Church" cannot be equated with a local congregation or voluntary club. It is something much more. The Church is not the invisible "Soul of Christ," she is the visible "Body of Christ." There is no such thing as "an invisible Church," because the Church is defined as "the Body" which is a visible, empirical reality.

Secondly, since the Church is the Body of Christ, then she must also be one. Christ cannot be divided. We must belong to a visible and united reality.

Thirdly, I became convinced that Christ instituted this Church to be authoritative on earth ("whatever you bind on earth"). He appointed Apostles and He promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church. The only way Hell could prevail against the Church is for the Church to be in error. To deny the Truth is to deny Christ Who is the Truth. Consequently, the true Church must be free from error. As Saint Paul wrote, the Church is "the pillar and ground of truth." The doctrine that the Church is the pillar and ground of truth is in the Bible, which I hold to be infallible.

When I was an Anglican priest, I accepted an amorphous "package" of historical Christianity. I believed in the importance of the sacraments, the priesthood, Apostolic succession, tradition (to a certain extent), the infallibility of Scripture with respect to faith and morals, the communion of the saints, the centrality of Christ, the role of Mary in the incarnation of Christ, etc. However, I was not willing to grant the Roman claim that the Church is the Catholic Church under the pastoral oversight of the Pope.

I believed that the Church consisted visibly of all baptized and faithful believers. Consequently, I had believed as an Anglican that the Church was "visible" in a certain sense. It was "one" in that all the baptized faithful consisted of one single group. However, the problem was that this "group" was not free from error. In fact, as I experienced it as an Anglican clergyman, the "group of baptized" was indeed plagued with heresy. There was no final authority for truth, except the Bible and then even the Bible might be subjected to many conflicting interpretations.

In Anglicanism alone, even among the "conservatives" there were Low Churchmen (more Protestant) and High Churchmen (more Catholic). These doctrinal parties never could unite together in order to fight the evil liberals who also carried a very different interpretation of Christianity. So my quest was one for authority. The ultimate "breaking point" for me was the realization that the Episcopal Church officially condoned abortion and supports groups like Planned Parenthood. I couldn't in good conscience persevere in fellowship with those who stood silent about the destruction of our society's most vulnerable members.

The argument for the authority of Rome is not sophisticated. It is simply that Christ instituted Saint Peter to bind and loose on earth (clearly "earth" denotes his universal jurisdiction) and that this office is protected by the Holy Spirit so that the Catholic Church will never be led into error in the realm of faith (doctrine) and morals (ethics). The buck stops with Peter and with his successors in Rome, which includes the present Pope, His Holiness Benedict XVI. This charism for truth is not based on the moral superiority of the popes or their intellectual astuteness. It is based in the power of the Holy Spirit fulfilling the promise of Christ made to Peter and the Apostles.

I believe everything taught by the Catholic Church based on this solemn and divinely insured promise of Christ to St Peter.

The Future
In May of 2006, I fulfilled the canonical requirements to remove myself from ministry in the Episcopal Church. I should first say that I am grateful to Bishop Jack Iker (Episcopal bishop of Fort Worth) for his faithful witness and fatherly care. He has been very gracious to me. The most painful part this process was submitting my letter of renunciation to the man who has been a father-in-God to me. I still raise a hand of blessing over all my brother priests in the Episcopal diocese of Fort Worth.

I would also like to thank my former parish of St Andrew's Episcopal in Fort Worth Texas for their love and prayers. The past several months have been a time of reflection and prayer over my vocation in Christ and how I might best serve in the decades to come. St Andrew's is the place where Joy and I were married, where all three of our children were baptized, and where I was ordained deacon and priest. It is a home to us in more than one way, and I will miss the people dearly. I continue to hold them in my heart.

We were received by Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth. My wife and I are so thankful for his wise counsel during a very stressful and confusing time. He is vigilant and ever-ready to serve those in need of prayer and guidance. The Catholics of Fort Worth, Texas are truly blessed to have him as their bishop.

My family moved to Washington DC, where I will at the Catholic Information Center with Father William Stetson. He is a very kind man and has been very gracious to me during this time of transition. Father Stetson is deeply involved in Anglican ecumenical affairs, and I will assist him with the Pastoral Provision by which Anglican priests can become Catholic priests.

As I unpack and have more free time, I will continue to post. It will likely be sparse in the next several days.

And lastly, it feels GREAT to be a Catholic! I cannot quite explain it. But it is a wonderful feeling!

Godspeed,

Taylor Marshall
Summer 2006


I have also published a book which includes the initial reason why I investigated Catholicism - The Crucified Rabbi: Judaism and the Origins of Catholic Christianity:




May God bless you,
and I hope you enjoy the Canterbury Tales blog.

- Taylor

The Story of my Conversion to Catholicism (Audio Version)


Click on the triangular “play” button above.

Christ's Mother and Mohammad's Daughter

I commend to you this great article by Father Timothy Matkin. He discusses the place of Mary and the place of Mohammad's daughter Fatima in Islam. He also relates the significance of the apparition of Our Lady of Fatima to Muslims.

The Quran and the Crucifixion

Muslems believe that Christ was born of a Virgin, was the Messiah of the Jews, that He ascended into Heaven, and will defeat the Antichrist at the end of time. However, they do not believe that Christ was crucified:

"That they said (in boast) "We killed the Messiah Isa [i.e. Jesus] the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah"; - but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for, of a surety they killed him not.
No, Allah raised him up unto Himself; and Allah is Exalted in Power, Wise." (4:157-158)

The interesting clause is the part reading: "but so it was made to appear to them." Many Muslim scholars believe that the crucifixion happened as an illusion to confound the Jews or that Judas was mistakenly taken and crucified. Whatever happened, Muslims do believe that it "appeared" that Christ was crucified. The Ahmadi Muslims interpret the apparent crucifixion in terms that Christians would identify as Docetic, and must Muslims believe the Ahmadi interpretation to be heretical.

I hope to post some interesting information about the place of Fatima (Muhammad's daughter) and the Blessed Virgin Mary in Islam.

Da Vinci Code & the Louvre's Erhart Magdalene

With The Da Vinci Code in the news, I have heard very little about Dan Brown's claim that the Catholic Church blackened Mary Magadalene's name by casting her as a prostitute. This in fact can't be true because Mary Magdalene is of course SAINT Mary Magdalene. The title "saint" is greater than Pope, Cardinal, Bishop, Priest, or Emperor, because by it the Church recognizes a soul that conforms his or her life to Christ and His teaching.

I recently read this article by Elizabeth Bard referring to "Da Vinci Code art" at the Louvre and it reveals that the Church never did wage a smear campaign against Mary Magdalene. Rather devotion to her was great and widespread. She was loved, venerated, and appreciated by the faithful. The quote below is about the "Da Vinci Code Tour" at the Louvre and it shows that Dan Brown's depiction of the Catholic Church and Mary Magdalene is incorrect:

In fact, we end not with a painting, but with a sculpture of Mary Magdalene. But unlike the typical image of the scarlet harlot that we see in so many of the late medieval and early Renaissance paintings upstairs, here we find a beautiful and very secular-looking nude with long flowing blond hair and a serene expression. She looks more like Botticelli’s Venus rising out of the sea than the lamenting woman often depicted at the foot of the cross.

This sculpture takes us out of Italy and into the early German Renaissance, around 1515. The sculptor, Gregor Erhart, worked in and around Augsburg. His Mary Magdalene has been carved out of a single piece of wood and delicately painted.

When we see Mary Magdalene like this, wearing her hair and nothing else, it illustrates legends about her life as a hermit, which pick up where the Bible leaves off. The legend tells us that Mary fled Jerusalem after the crucifixion. She sailed across the Mediterranean Sea in a rudderless boat, landing on the southern coast of France. From there, she went to the caves at St. Baume where she lived for thirty years as a hermit, doing penitence for her sins. She survived without food, water or clothing--just a choir of heavenly angels to lift her up to Christ during her prayers. In fact, this sculpture was originally meant to be hung from the ceiling. She would have been surrounded by a group of sculpted angels to show us the moment when Mary Magdalene ascends to Christ through her prayers.

So yes, St Mary Magdalene is a bride of Christ, but only in the same way that every consecrated nun is a bride of Christ - consecrated to Him by virginity.

Ambassador Tou of Taiwan Baptized

What is there in the Christian faith that is missing from Chinese culture that made you convert and get baptised?

I did not adhere to any religion before. Like many Chinese I followed Confucian precepts. I can say I am a disciple of Confucius who has become Christian. I have studied Confucius quite a lot, learnt how to be a good man, morally upright, respectful of others . . . He, too, like in the Gospels, said: “Go unto others as you would have them do unto you”. On many levels, Confucianism and Christianity have many things in common. If China gave Christianity freedom, many Chinese would convert. But in Christianity there is something unique. When you pray for example, you establish a personal rapport with God, one of closeness to Jesus. In Chinese culture there is silence, meditation, but it is a rapport with oneself, not God. Through praying, saintly intercession and that of the Holy Mother, one can realise one’s wish for holiness. Man’s moral solitude comes to an end.

From Asia News by Bernardo Cervellera

Provocative Answers to the Da Vinci Code

This is from John Wauk of the blog The Da Vinci Code and Opus Dei:

The Da Vinci Code is only a novel. It is not a source of serious information, but it does raise some serious questions.

1. Was Jesus Christ really married?
Yes. Jesus was married to the Church. In the New Testament, Jesus is frequently referred to as the Bridegroom, and St. Paul tells us: “a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh. This is a tremendous mystery. I’m applying it to Christ and the Church.” (Ephesians 5:31-32) In fact, the Christian vocation is nothing less than an invitation to the eternal “wedding supper” (Rev. 19:9) of Christ and His Bride, the Church.

2. Did the Church really create the New Testament?
Yes. Without the Church, we wouldn’t know which of the many ancient texts that talk about Jesus were inspired by God; we wouldn’t have the New Testament. Jesus Christ directly gave His divine authority not to a group of texts which didn’t exist in His time, but rather to a group of men, the twelve apostles and their successors (bishops), who teach in His name and with His authority.

3. Is sex really meant to be holy?
Yes. That’s why one of the seven Christian sacraments is called Holy Matrimony (the literal meaning of “hieros gamos”). Christian marriage and the priesthood are holy and sanctifying vocations approached through special sacraments (Holy Matrimony and Holy Orders respectively). All the sacraments – like Baptism or the Eucharist, for instance - are outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace, and, in fact, the ministers of this sacrament are the bride and groom themselves.

4. Did Jesus Christ really leave descendents?
Yes. Jesus is God, and He gave all who believe in Him the power to be God’s children. In short, we are His descendents: “See what love the Father has given us so that we might be called children of God – and so we are!… Beloved, we’re now God’s children” (1 John 3:1-2). So forget about the Merovingians. We are the royal bloodline of Jesus Christ: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9).

5. Is our culture really missing a figure of female sanctity?
Yes, in today’s world there is such a missing woman. Her name is Mary, and she should be venerated not as the wife of a mortal man but rather as the Mother of God. Happily, she is not hard to find. Hers is the most familiar female face in history, represented in countless works of art. The best place in the world to find grown men and women praying on their knees to a woman, perhaps saying the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is in a Christian church.

6. Should we really pray over the bones of Mary Magdalen?
Yes. Saint Mary Magdalen is honored by the countless churches and women named after her and by a special Mass on her feast day (July 22). In fact, for more than a millennium, Christians have made pilgrimages to pray in the Basilica of St. Maximin in southern France, where a tradition says that Saint Mary Magdalen was buried.

7. Does a Holy Grail really exist?
Yes. The popular story of “the Holy Grail” is a medieval legend, but a non-fictional Holy Grail can be found on the altar during every Mass. What made the chalice of the Last Supper so holy was the blood of Jesus Christ that it contained, and in the Holy Mass, that blood is once again present. This means that every chalice in every Mass is truly a “Holy Grail.”

8. Did a woman’s womb really carry the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Yes. The uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary contained not only the blood but also the entire body of Jesus Christ for nine months. That’s why, when they pray the “Hail Mary”, Christians refer to Jesus as the fruit of her womb and praise Mary as a most honorable “Vessel”.

The Laity and the Bible Before Luther

In 1480 (that's 44 years before Martin Luther published his version of the Bible) the German Catholic Cologne Bible contained these words in its prologue:

"All Christians should read the Bible with piety and reverence, praying the Holy Ghost, who is the inspirer of the Scriptures, to enable them to understand . . . The learned should make use of the Latin translation of St. Jerome; but the unlearned and simple folk, whether laymen or clergy . . . should read the German translations now supplied, and thus arm themselves against the enemy of our salvation [i.e. Satan]."

I don't have a problem with that.

The courtesy of your hall is somewhat lessened of late

Tolkien would not have approved of "Gandalf's" new project.

Making an Account for our Children

Today I heard Fr John Corapi preach about parenting. It was quite convicting. He was exhorting parents not to be lax with their children, but to discipline them. He said something that particular pricked my heart with respect to fathers. He said something like:

"You don't want to be the father who stands before God the Father at the end and has to explain why his child is in Hell because he was lax in his discipline."

The thought of one of my children in Hell is the most sorrowful thought I can ponder. If you read this blog, please say a prayer for all four of them.

Justification and Space-Time History

I recently learned of a quasi-Calvinist sect that believes it is only correct to say that one was justified at the death of Christ. To refer to being justified by faith at some point in one's lifetime is considered "works salvation" because "believing is something that we do." Thus this group believes they were conceived and born as justified Christians. They have never not been justified, because "God did it all." It's sort of ends up as a round about Pelagianism.

It reduces from the claim that the elect were always justified in God's mind from eternity past and eternity future (whatever those words mean). For this sect, justification is not something received by individuals in space-time history, but is just an eternal matter of fact.

Of course, the problem with this is that God created time and space and called it "good." He also placed humanity in time and sin space-time history. Adam and Eve fell in space-time history. Christ redeemed us in space-time history.

Obviously, Christ died on the cross for our redemption in AD 30 and before that he uttered the words, "It is finished." But there is something that the quasi-Calvinists neglect. In fact, I would say that it is something neglected by most of modern pop-Evangelicalism.

It is this. The eternal decrees are irrevocably harnessed to time and space, because the Second Person of the Trinity assumes human nature in space-time history from the womb of the Virgin and "spends time" on earth and in history. We cannot abstract salvation from history or location. It is not solely an "up there" salvation but also a "down here" salvation.

By defining the "truth Church" as the "invisible Church of the elect in God's mind in eternity," Evangelicals minimize the redemptive historical reality of Christ's incarnatoin. The Church is "the Body of Christ," not "the Soul of Christ." A body is visible. A body is tangible. A body exists in space-time history. The Church therefore cannot be "invisible" any more than could Christ's incarnate body be invisible or ghostly.

While "It is finished" at the cross, the Body of Christ extends out in time and while the redemption is accomplished, it is not yet applied. The application is NOT finished. The Church must grow by evangelization. People must be baptized, believe, repent, grow in sanctity, press on to Christ, finish the good race. Justification occurs in this real chronological, historical chronology of faithful Christian evangelization. The Blood of Christ was shed once. But Christ continues to apply that Precious Blood throughout time. This the function of a High Priest. Of course, this is the way to understand the Eucharist as well, but that's a whole other post.

Let it be said that the temptation to abstract salvation to eternal decrees ultimately ends up being Gnostic. Ultimately it requires that human beings be pre-existent (a heresy of Origen). It also requires that they be "saved always" because it assumes that historical progressions and changes are not real. This can be seen in the quasi-Calvinist sect's claim that the elect are always saved and were never non-justified, or it can be reflected in the claim Christians are "once-saved-always-saved" despite the warnings of real apostasy taught by Christ, St Paul, the author of Hebrews, and St John's Epistles and Revelation.

Compensation for House Wives and Mothers

If stay-at-home mothers received monetary compensation for their work and long hours, they would receive about $134,000 per year according to this survey.

Biretta tip to Rod Drehere via Amy Welborn.

Ron Howard Has an Axe to Grind

Curt Jester's Thought of the Day:

"The real reason Ron Howard took on The Da Vinci Code was that he thought Opus Dei was Latin for Opie Die."

Evangelical "Fissures" and the New York Times

"And it is with respect to the theological differences that the NYT article truly gets to the heart of real cracks in the evangelical edifice. Ultimately the unity of any group of Christian believers must be founded on doctrinal agreement. Practice is informed by belief. The eventual failure of the Life and Work and the Faith and Order movements of the ecumenical enterprise to remain completely separate testify to this reality."

Interesting article from the Acton Institute.