Roman Catholic Priests Quietly Find a Home in Episcopal Ministry : Clerics: About 345 troubled by rules on celibacy and doctrinal issues have made switch since 1970.

A path between the Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Church has become well worn in recent years. While considerable attention has been focused on married Episcopal priests being accepted as Catholic priests, a far larger contingent has been moving steadily, though with little notice, in the opposite direction.

The journey by more than 300 Catholic priests since 1970 to the Episcopal priesthood has been all but ignored in Catholic quarters and largely played down by Episcopal leaders.

According to data collected by the Episcopal Church, at least 345 former Catholic priests are serving as Episcopal priests. That compares to about 90 former Episcopal priests who have gone the other way since 1981, the year the practice was approved by the Vatican.

“There seems to be silence on both sides,” said the Rev. Steven Infantino of Libertyville, Ill., a former Catholic priest who joined the Episcopal Church. “The Roman Catholic Church wishes it would go away. Episcopal Church leaders don’t want to call attention to it because they don’t want to disturb relations with Rome.”

Some of the former Catholic priests are reluctant to talk about their experiences in changing churches for fear of causing discord.

Those who agreed to talk about switching to the Episcopal Church consistently used the same phrase to describe the experience: “I felt like I was home,” they said, one after the other.

Several former Catholic priests spoke of finding a comforting familiarity in the liturgical style of the Episcopal Church and in its involvement in social issues. At the same time, several said they had discovered a new freedom to think and act in a church where decisions on major issues are made not by papal decree but by broad consensus of laity and clergy.

The Rev. Donald Knapp, pastor of Grace Episcopal Church, Allentown, Pa., who made the switch in the early 1960s, says he felt exhilaration when he attended an Episcopal seminary after leaving the Catholic Church.

When Knapp attended the Catholic seminary in the 1950s, reading material was closely guarded and certain thinkers and Bible commentaries were off limits. The training was rigorous. At the Episcopal seminary, which he attended in the late 1960s, “we studied a Catholic in this area, maybe a Lutheran in that area, or Jew or a Baptist for something else. Whoever was the best. The ecumenical openness to truth wherever it occurred was beautiful.”

In terms of numbers, those who have switched represent a small percentage of the thousands who have left the Catholic priesthood, many to marry, since Vatican II. They also represent a small portion of men and women ordained in the Episcopal Church, which is experiencing a clergy glut. On the other hand, priests who switched represent a drain of talent and enthusiasm from a church that seems unable to make headway in the United States against a diminishing and demoralized priesthood.

It is common in some Catholic circles to characterize the switch to the Episcopal priesthood as a result of nothing more than dissatisfaction with the Catholic Church’s rule of celibacy for most priests. In recent interviews, former Roman Catholic priests said they were as troubled by such matters as authority, papal primacy and the Catholic Church’s teachings on divorce and birth control as by the church’s view of celibacy for priests. While some left the priesthood to get married, others said they had not begun dating or making plans to marry until several years after they had resigned as Catholic priests.

For Episcopal Bishop Mark Dyer of Bethlehem, Pa., a former Catholic Benedictine monk, the decision to leave the priesthood was based on intellectual differences with Catholic teaching that he found irreconcilable. It was only after being received as an Episcopal priest that he considered marriage.

The crossover of married men from the Episcopal to the Roman Catholic Church--a process that, unlike those who go the other way, requires re-ordination--commands a certain fascination. The ceremonies often attract vocal protests by former Catholic priests, adding fuel to the debate over the church’s celibacy rule. Former Catholic priests have accused the Vatican of operating with an unfair double standard by agreeing to ordain married Episcopal priests.

In each case, when a married Episcopal priest is ordained, the Pope has to grant an exception to the church’s celibacy rule--a rule that many believe is the prime reason for a shortage of Catholic clergy in the United States and Europe.

The 90 or so Episcopal priests who have been re-ordained Catholic priests since 1981 included 70 who were married, said Father James Parker, who assists Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston in overseeing the program by which Episcopal priests are accepted into the Catholic priesthood.

There is a significant difference in what the priests who have switched can do. Former Catholic priests have access to a much wider range of ministries in the Episcopal Church than do their counterparts in the Catholic Church.

Married men accepted into the Catholic Church are not allowed to serve as parish pastors. While they are permitted to help out with pastoral duties, they are mainly confined to administrative jobs, said Parker.

In the Episcopal Church, former Roman Catholics find the full range of ministry open to them.