The Rt. Rev. Jeffrey N. Steenson told the House of Bishops Tuesday that the bishops’ last meeting, at Camp Allen in Texas in March, was “a profoundly disturbing experience for me.”

Bishop Steenson asked to address the bishops in order that he could request their permission to resign as Bishop of the Rio Grande before the end of the year. He plans to join the Roman Catholic Church.

“I was more than a little surprised when such a substantial majority declared the polity of The Episcopal Church to be primarily that of an autonomous and independent local church relating to the wider Anglican Communion by voluntary association,” Bishop Steenson said of that March meeting. “This is not the Anglicanism in which I was formed, inspired by the Oxford movement and the Catholic Revival in the Church of England. Perhaps something was defective in my education for ministry in The Episcopal Church. But, honestly, I did not recognize the church that this House described on that occasion.”

The bishop said he sees “three choices before us” and listed them:

1. “It seems to me that The Episcopal Church has made a decisive turn away from those extraordinary efforts to preserve the Communion, such as Archbishop Rowan’s [Williams] proposal last summer in ‘The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today.’ It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that The Episcopal Church has rejected the discipline of communion but wants it only on its own terms.

2. “Others in the Anglican Communion have taken it upon themselves to establish a separate provincial structure to challenge The Episcopal Church, some even arguing for a re-formed Anglicanism without reference to the See of Canterbury.

3. “The Windsor Report calls for a future Anglicanism governed by strengthened instruments of communion and a covenant, but the strong medicine of primacy, so necessary to Catholic order, is missing from its prescriptions.”

Bishop Steenson said he did not find an “inner dynamic toward Catholic unity” in those choices, and added, “It doesn’t appear that one can get there from where we are now, at least not corporately, considering Anglicanism’s present configurations.

“From time to time it seems necessary for some to embark on these personal journeys as a reminder that the churches of the Reformation were not intended to carry on indefinitely separated from their historical and theological mooring in the Church of Rome," he said. "I believe that the Lord now calls me in this direction.”

In concluding remarks, Bishop Steenson asked for forgiveness from his fellow bishops “for any difficulty this may cause and for anything I may have said or done that has failed to live up to the love of Christ.

"I hope that you will not see this as a repudiation of The Episcopal Church or Anglicanism. Rather, it is the sincere desire of a simple soul to bear witness to the fullness of the Catholic faith, in communion with what St. Irenaeus called ‘that greatest and most ancient Church.’ I believe that our noble Anglican tradition (‘this worthy patrimony’) has deep within it the instinct of a migratory bird calling, ‘It is time to fly home to a place you have never seen before.’ May the Lord bless my steps and yours and bring our paths together in his good time.”

Additional Coverage from the House of Bishops’ Meeting:

• Bishops Briefed on Lambeth Conference

• Bishops: New Document Will Preserve Status Quo

• Bishops Debate Resolution Behind Closed Doors

• Bishops Struggle to Craft Satisfactory Statement

• Writing Group Presents House of Bishops With Draft

• Historic Two Days Ahead for House of Bishops

• Bishop Steenson Will Become a Roman Catholic

• Multiple Resolutions Await Bishops on Monday

• Concluding his Visit, Archbishop Seeks to Lower Expectations

• Details Sketchy on Episcopal Visitors Proposal

• Eight Agree to Serve as Episcopal Visitors

• Bishops, Archbishop of Canterbury Begin Private Sessions

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