Fron D.C.
The Rev. Mark Lewis is married. He also wants to become a Catholic priest. Lewis is the rector of St. Luke's in Bladensburg, the first Episcopalian parish in the U.S. to seek to become Catholic under Anglicanorum coetibus, a process outlined by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 that allows groups of Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church without discarding their liturgical heritage. Raised Episcopalian, the 52-year-old Lewis entered the ministry 10 years ago and has two grown children. He will become Catholic with his parish in October.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
Obviously, I am of the Catholic faith. Even as Episcopalians, we believed we were Catholic Christians. The Episcopal Church is a very broad church. In it you can have very evangelical people, and in it you can also have very high church Anglo-Catholics, of which I was one.
Why did you and your church convert?
I teach Catholic theology to my people. Once the apostolic constitution was announced, it opened a door that had previously been closed to us. I didn't really want to sway them with my excitement, so we looked at it together: "Is this something that is really of interest to us?" We looked at the difference between being a Catholic in the Anglican tradition, and being a Catholic in the Roman tradition. And we realized as a church that we needed to be in communion with the Church of Rome. This was an opportunity we must not pass up.
Did the arguments over homosexuality and female priests influence your decision?
We looked at the ordination of women and the sexuality issues, but we looked at something even more basic than that. I teach that the church interprets Scripture, but as Anglicans we wondered: 'Which church? The church in America?" We realized we needed Apostolic authority. It can't be left up to me or you or the Diocese of Maryland or the Diocese of Washington. Is there room in the faith to have a diversity of theologies? No, everybody can't be right. The Catholic Church has an authority that is not present in the Anglican church, which appealed to us.
Read more :
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/people/2011/07/credo-mark-lewis#ixzz1TghmBtK9
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