Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

As many of you know I spent part of the past week at the tenth annual conference of a Society I helped start in North America. The Society or Catholic Priests of North America (the scp.org) takes its name as a branch of the Society of Catholic Priests (SCP) that started in England.

It began as a way to recover, for Anglicanism, many of the gifts of the Catholic tradition such as pilgrimages, rules of life, intentional communities, healing prayer, confession, and a regular pattern of feast observances that had been lost or eroded in the swings back and forth between the Protestant and Catholic wings of the Church of England. In the UK the SCP has played a crucial role in the elevation of women to be bishops and its former patron was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and its current patron is the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. In the North American branch our first Bishop Visitor was the former Presiding Bishop, Frank Griswold and our current Bishop Visitor is Archbishop Melissa Skelton of the Anglican Church of Canada.

While other such societies existed they did not welcome women priests nor openly lgbt priests. So we started the SCP branch in North America with an eye toward ensuring that our female and lgbt colleagues would feel as much at home while trying to dive into the same riches that so many of us had access to without question. Our goal has always been to be formed by tradition but to not let the Church be trapped by unreflective traditionalism.

We have around 300 members now around the Church and they are a prayerful, energetic, and thoughtful group who have been sources of dynamism and depth in their parishes and dioceses. At the first two conferences, held in New Haven at Christ Church, I knew all the members either personally or through social media - at this one I knew about half of them.

I’m finding it a blessing and a joy to realize I’ve been singing and praying for a decade with some of these priests. I’ve seen them get married, have children, move to new churches and responsibilities - and we’ve seen some members go onto their reward and others leave as their conscience or circumstances have changed. I’m grateful for all those who have been members, all those that are, and all those who will be.

I was asked to describe what catholicity in Anglicanism means by a fellow member. I share a bit of my answer here:

“There is a story that one of my colleagues in the SCP has told me before, and shared again this year, of a young man, ravaged by HIV/AIDS, at the height of the crisis in the eighties. A group of former army nurses, ancient and feebly strong themselves, dragged him to the Altar every week for Communion when so many others feared to touch the man.

This is what catholicity is to me - we drag one another to meet Jesus in all the ways he gives us to find him - we do it when we feel weak. We do it when others wonder why or how or if it matters. We do it when it’s indecorous and socially questionable. We do it when we don’t want to or think we can’t. And we let others carry us when we’re too tired or broken to make the walk to the foot of the Cross and the throne of grace.

We do all of this because the giver of every good gift wants us to receive him in waters stirred, in bread chewed, in wine poured with abandon, in forgiveness made real with tears, in healing known so deep it sears, and in every moment made sacramental by the visible signs of God’s grace swelling and pulsing beneath it all.”

I’m thankful for the part I played getting this group off the ground over a decade ago, I’m grateful for the many members I don’t know yet, and I’m filled with hope about the conversations we’re having about its future and the ways we will carry others and one another and so many others to Jesus week by week and year by year as we give thanks for every good gift given from generation to generation.

Robert