Deacon Stephen Hill says if he has one regret about his forthcoming ordination as a Catholic priest, it is that Pope Benedict XVI will not be the pontiff when it happens.
Nevertheless, the former Anglican priest says, it is an exciting time to be a Catholic. It is a state of communion he believes God has been drawing him to his whole life.
On Friday, March 1, Deacon Hill will be ordained at St Joseph Church Subiaco for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, a special administrative structure bringing former Anglicans in Australia into communion with the See of Peter while retaining some of their Anglican patrimony.
Deacon Hill, 38, was born into a Lutheran family and literally stumbled across Ango-Catholic worship in his late 20s, joining an Anglican, and then a Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) parish before entering into full communion with the Catholic Church last year.
Before applying to join the Ordinariate in 2010, Deacon Hill served as a TAC Deacon and then a TAC priest.
In a frank, hour-long interview with The Record, he spoke to some of the issues many Catholics might want, but ultimately think too delicate to discuss:
What is ‘Anglican patrimony’? How does he view the status of the priestly orders he received as a Traditional Anglican priest and the Anglican Masses he celebrated? What does he understand by ‘Church’?
Christ’s command to unity was paramount in his decision to come into formal communion with the Catholic Church, the Deacon says.
One focal point of that unity and a major factor in his becoming Catholic, was the teaching and papacy of the soon-to-be Bishop Emeritus of Rome, Joseph Ratzinger.
“The fact is I am Catholic because of him,” Deacon Hill says. “I am a Catholic deacon today because of Benedict XVI.”
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How did you find yourself joining the Anglican, and then the Catholic Church?
It’s terribly complicated … I guess the short version is I was born Lutheran and I fell in love with the Anglican way of worshipping.
It had a lot of similarities to what I had grown up with; the Lutheran Church, the liturgy, and the hymns. I had come from a country version of that in Toowoomba, in the Darling Downs.
I stumbled across Anglicanism. I was literally just walking past a particular Anglican church. I had no [prior] intention of entering.
They were preparing to begin their Sunday Mass … a solemn High Mass; the priest in cope, the deacon and sub-deacon … the thurifer … all of these things I had never seen before and it really piqued my curiosity.
I didn’t know it was Anglo-Catholic. I didn’t even know what that meant, but it was the most beautiful thing I had seen in my life.
The choir and pipe organ: they sang the Gloria to the Marbeck setting. I couldn’t sing it because I was just so overwhelmed by it.
So, it was the reverence that most attracted you to Ango-Catholic worship?
Reverence was critically important to me and incredibly challenging to me as well.
Reverence is important for Lutherans as well but they tend to be very reserved in the way they express themselves, outward signs [and so on].
It took me a long long time just to be comfortable making the Sign of the Cross even though internally I understood what it was all about.
It was just something that was culturally anathema to where I had come from. The Anglo-Catholic way of being Anglican taught me new ways of expressing the faith.
Homilies were really important and that priest there, he taught the Catholic Faith, pretty much kit and caboodle.
They were very rich in Catholic theology. It got me to the point where I pretty much found myself believing Catholic things.
I never thought I would leave the Lutheran Church and I don’t have anything against the Lutheran Church, gripes or anything like that.
I started this journey of faith for reasons entirely beyond my control and really beyond my own decisions.
I found myself being led towards the Catholic Church and these other places were critical stops along the way in my particular journey in leading me to the Catholic Church.
What was your journey to Anglican priesthood?
I was in the Anglican Church for a number of years, then a TAC Brisbane parish was started and a bunch of us joined.
I had been discerning a little before that and started seriously discerning at that time.
I was ordained a deacon in 2007 and then a priest in 2008 for the TAC. I was full-time in my day job [as an electronic engineer] during the week and [ministered] during the weekends.
And then you applied to join the Ordinariate and the Catholic Church.
A lot of this journey happened in the shadow of what had been going on with Rome … The serious talk has only gone back around five years.
That shadow was setting a character to this particular journey… knowing that quest for unity with the Catholic Church was part of the deal.
There are many types of Anglo-Catholics … I would see myself as the type of Anglo-Catholic who would say that unity is something we must search for, and I guess we really see ourselves as the spiritual children of [Blessed] John Henry Newman.
He became Catholic under circumstances that were a lot more difficult than the circumstances we face in our own time …
One of the very first books I read in my Catholic journey was Newman’s Apologia … [In that book] you read about how he used to stand outside St Paul’s Cathedral and cry because of how much he missed the Anglican way of worship, but he knew [coming into communion] was something he had to do.
I think that is really the mindset we have today. We’re not doing this because it’s the easiest option or the prettiest option or the most culturally appealing.
We are not cultural Anglicans, that’s part of it but it’s not the only part. It’s about this quest for unity that Jesus prayed for on the night before he was betrayed.
So many of the Anglo-Catholics before us sought unity with the Holy See and I just think that we are incredibly privileged that we live in a time when there is a new way of doing this. That is just mind boggling.
The proposed liturgical texts for the Ordinariate have just been forwarded to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for their approval. Potentially, then, you could have the best of both worlds in coming into communion while retaining your own style of worship?
It’s probably more complicated now than it was in Newman’s time … Later on, some Anglo-Catholics saw themselves as being more Catholic than the Catholics and they wanted to imitate anything that was Roman to the furthest possible extent that they could take it.
There is not anything necessarily wrong with that; that was just their way of saying that unity with the Pope was essential.
Some would secretly use the Roman Canon in English translation, which was not allowed, of course. You were supposed to use the Book of Common Prayer … Now there are all sorts of canons floating around which slightly complicates the scene even more.
This is the big question that we have to face: What is the Anglican patrimony? And everyone is going to have a different answer to that.
It will depend on how we were formed as Anglicans and my formation as an Anglican was very specific, very high church, all the smells and bells etcetera.
But for others, their way of being Anglican was low church, where maybe all you’ve ever known is low Mass, which is an equally valid way of expressing the Anglican patrimony.
I’m very interested in seeing [the eventual liturgical texts for the Ordinariate]. Anglo-Catholics tend to get quite excited about liturgy. I’m not quite sure that is entirely healthy [laughs].
Why did you join the Ordinariate and how do you find yourself preparing for ordination to the Catholic priesthood?
It was the next logical step for me in this Catholic journey… I think I got to the point where I really believed it was necessary to become Catholic sooner or later and I think that if the Ordinariate had not eventuated at some point I would have felt I needed to pursue unity as an individual.
In some ways it would have been a lot easier to do that anyway.
We are effectively trying to start a new, small-‘c’ church from nothing. There are a huge amount of challenges facing the Ordinariate.
It would be a whole lot simpler just to be an ordained priest in a big diocese somewhere, but I think you always have to be faithful to the journey that God has led you on, and the way that I became Catholic was through Anglicanism.
That’s why I felt it was important for me to be in the Ordinariate.
In 2010, I asked to join … but how do you join something that doesn’t exist. The initial stages for getting it up-and-running were entrusted to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican and local representatives were appointed in each country wanting to set up ordinariates [Bishop Peter Elliott was the Australian representative].
Priests who wanted to join the Ordinariate needed to submit a dossier saying who they were and what their background was.
[The dossiers went to Bishop Elliott and, then, on to the Vatican, who decided whether each man was a suitable candidate for Catholic priesthood and assessed whether there were any impediments. Decisions were then passed back to the local representatives].
This is really very unusual in the Church. Most priests just go to the diocese where the bishop says ‘yay’ or ‘nay’.
In my case and those of the other priests in the Ordinariate, the advice comes from Rome.
Most of the other priests in Australia, they essentially get ordained straight to the priesthood, so they get ordained deacon and then priest in the one week …
In my case, the decision was that it would be beneficial for me and the Church if I had some additional formation …
In January 2012, I quit my job. In February, I started full-time at [the Holy Spirit Seminary at Banyo in Queensland].
Remember, at this time there is no Ordinariate, it doesn’t exist, so that meant I was studying for the Archdiocese of Brisbane …
No one knew when the Ordinariate was going to be announced … so this was basically a leap of faith for the Australian Church that they were starting to put things in place.
The Ordinariate came into existence on June 15, 2012. As soon as it existed I belonged to the Ordinariate and the rules that apply to the Ordinariate applied to me …
That meant a specific formation plan for each candidate was the responsibility of the Ordinary, Fr Harry Entwistle. He then determined what was necessary in each case…
I did everything [at the seminary in Brisbane] as any other seminarian but I didn’t go in at grade one.
That is the great thing about modern seminaries. The seminary programs these days look at where each man is at, where he has been, and what he has done, and from that they can come up with a formation plan.
How do you feel about the language often used in situations like yours; that you “converted” or that you only “joined the Church” when you became Catholic?
People can say that all they like but that’s not Catholic teaching. What they need to do is read the documents of Vatican II and it quite clearly says, in the teaching of the Church, that everyone who is baptised in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is a member of the church.
Now, if they are not in communion with the See of Peter then they are in a state of impaired communion, but they are still members of the Church.
What would you say of what you received on becoming an Anglican priest? Do you believe you experienced an ontological change?
Absolutely. I was an Anglo-Catholic so for us we basically believe everything that the Catholic Church believes, especially about sacraments.
Evangelical Anglicans would probably only recognise two sacraments, but Anglo-Catholics believe in seven …
Some [ultra-traditionalists] like to say “the Church has decreed your orders are null and void. Your Mass is totally ineffectual”.
But the fact is, the Catholic Church is not going to make any judgement today about my orders. The Catholic Church is not going to make any judgement today about any Anglican Mass.
What the Catholic Church says is that Catholics must go to Catholic Masses because communion with the See of Peter is necessary.
Apostolic succession is necessary to guarantee the validity of the sacraments, and Apostolic succession means being in communion with the See of Peter and it means his priests are ordained by a bishop who is in communion with the See of Peter.
So, look, there are all sorts of “ifs, buts and maybes” about Anglican orders and all sorts of supposed fix-ups … but the fact is that if at any point as an Anglican I had thought that I wasn’t really a priest I would have had to stop saying Mass immediately because it would be fundamentally wrong to purport to do a sacrament when you don’t think it’s the real deal; the worst thing you could possibly do to your people.
If I go into an Anglican church and I see a tabernacle do I genuflect? Sure I do. Would I receive communion? No way, not just because I’m not allowed to but because I can’t be certain, but I still respect what happens there.
People say, “well isn’t it terrible that you have to be ordained again”. But the priesthood is not about me, the priesthood is about the Church, and people have a right to know that when they receive sacraments in the Catholic Church there is no doubt whatsoever.
Now, I don’t have any doubts about what happened to me when I became an Anglican priest but that’s not good enough for the rest of the Church.
To me it’s an honour to be asked to do this by the rest of the Church because it means that I will be able to make the promises to the Church again, but in a special way and a way that is in communion with the See of Peter, which will be vacant at the time [laughs].
How do you feel about the departing-Pontiff?
When I was an Anglican priest, every Mass I offered, I offered with the intention of communion with the See of Peter.
I prayed that we could come into communion with Pope Benedict so I’m really quite sad that his retirement takes effect the day before my ordination because I really do have a special love for our Holy Father, and the fact is I am Catholic because of him.
I am a Catholic deacon today because of Benedict XVI and that just blows my mind.