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To the Editor:
Given my long and fruitful association with the Society of the Atonement, the move to canonize Father Paul Wattson has piqued my interest. Especially remarkable to me, but unmentioned in recent articles about him, is that they joined the Catholic Church at the suggestion of the Episcopal Bishop of New York at the time.
Imagine a group of Catholic ecumenists being encouraged by their bishop to join a different church, the better to advance their goal of promoting Christian unity. Utterly inconceivable, of course. Even if the bishop found them to be theologically unsound, or otherwise a nuisance. Now you get an idea of how amazing that Episcopal bishop’s suggestion was, particularly since it was in an era when the two churches were openly hostile towards each other.
One subsequent corporate move of a religious society or order that I can think of are the monks and nuns of New Skete, in upstate New York. Originally Byzantine Rite Catholics, they joined the Orthodox Church in 1983. As befits a society that also has Franciscan connections, they are best known to the wider public for their expertise in training dogs.
Mark Kolakowski
Fair Haven, N.J.
The writer is a former board member of The American Friends of the Anglican Centre in Rome.
