VATICAN CITY: Pope taps cleric to head structure for Anglicans in United States converting to Catholicism
By Associated Press,
January 1, 2012
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday named a married priest and former sportswriter who converted from Anglicanism to head the first organizational structure for U.S. converts to Roman Catholicism wanting to retain some of their Anglican heritage.
A Vatican announcement said that the Rev. Jeffrey Neil Steenson, a former rector at an Episcopal church in Texas, will lead the Personal Ordinariate, the equivalent of a diocese. The Vatican created the first such ordinariate in Britain last year.
Benedict in 2009 issued an unprecedented invitation for Anglicans to join the Catholic Church in groups or as parishes. Formerly, converts were accepted case by case.
Married Anglican priests who convert can stay married and become priests in the Roman Catholic Church, an exception to the Vatican’s celibacy rule.
Steenson previously served as a bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, in Albuqueque, New Mexico, from 2004-2007. But while the Vatican allows married priests who convert to be priests in the Catholic Church, it does not allow married bishops to keep that rank when converting. Thus, Steenson is a priest but not a bishop in the Roman Catholic Church.
U.S. Cardinal Donald Wuerl had announced in November that Anglicans who want to become Roman Catholics would have a formal body to oversee their conversion starting on Jan. 1.
Anglicans have their roots in the Church of England. They split from the Holy See in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.
Steenson, 59, who converted to Catholicism in 2007, was married in 1974 and has three adult children. He was ordained a priest in the Catholic church in 2009 and assigned to the diocese of Santa Fe, in New Mexico.
He has a doctorate from the University of Oxford and a masters degree from Harvard Divinity School, among other degrees.
The pope’s choice has eclectic interests. Steenson’s resume, according to the Vatican, includes a passion for flying, and notes that he has private and commercial flying licenses. Steenson worked as a sportswriter for The News-Sun in Waukegan, Illinois, from 1972-1979, including while studying for an undergraduate degree in history.
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Whatever opinion one may have about the Pope’s invitation to dissatisfied ex-Anglicans to join his Roman Catholic Ordinariates around the world, he clearly does not see the marriage of clergy in the Ordinariate to be of any substantive theological difficulty. This does now beg the question of Rome’s demand for celibacy on the part of clergy in it’s own particular faith community.
Mind you, ever since the departure of Anglo-Catholic clergy from the Church of England – on the grounds of opposition to the C.of E.’s ordination of women to the priesthood – Rome has allowed married ex-Anglican clergy to be part of it’s ministerial work-force. So, in fact, Rome has no really clear policy on the matter of a celibate priesthood.
And now, with the elevation of an ex-Episcopal Bishop to the role of Head of the U.S. Roman Catholic Ordinariate, there is an even greater need to deeply question Rome’s understanding of enforced ministerial celibacy. Mind you, there have been Married Popes in the past history of the Roman Church – Saint Peter was one of them!
Father Ron Smith, Christchurch, New Zealand
Kiwianglo's Blog 
In addition, Ron, the Uniate churches (Eastern liturgy churches in communion with Rome) have had married clergy throughout. Like the Orthodox, however, married men may be ordained, but priests may not marry. Thus a priest who becomes a widower may not remarry.
In the west, the Latin Rite heirarchies have demanded that Uniate priests conform to the Latin discipline. For a time, this effectively meant the Uniates also had a celibate priesthood, but in the 1980s, when both Latin and Uniate churches began importing clergy from away, one started to see married Uniate priests. And in the 1990s, one would see men from Uniate chuches going overseas to be ordained after marriage, returning home to the West in due course. The pretence has finally started to break down, and in the last decade, Uniate eparchates have begun to ordain married men in the West.
One of the reasons for the Ordinariates, frankly, is to keep the married clergy ghettoized to prevent to many questions being asked by Western Latin Rite parishioners. aAfter all, the severe shortage of vocations in the Latin rite could be cut in half overnight if the Vatican were prepared to make the UNiate / Ordinariate discipline universal.
Yes, Malcolm, I was aware of the Uniate Rite Churches having married priests. However, the fact that priests who join the Ordinariates as already married clergy – like former Epsicopal Bishop Steenson – may still be ordained into the Ordinariate – will no doubt further exacerbate the impatience felt by R.C. clergy who are longing for the celibacy rule to be properly debated in their own Church. This fact, together with the declining number of Western males offering themselves for ministry in the Roman Church, may eventually force some changes.