With the news about the Vatican’s change for Anglicans desiring to come into the Church, I decided to ask the perspective of an American who has taken that journey.

Father Douglas Grandon, pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Moline, Ill., is a former Anglican pastor who is married and has children. He came into the Catholic Church in June 2003 and was ordained a Catholic priest in May 2008.

“It’s a monumental and historical event,” said Father Grandon. “I’m absolutely delighted. We’ve been hoping for this for a long time.”

According to Father Grandon, while this move is something that Anglicans were hoping for for quite some time, particularly those in England, many were hesitant to come into the Catholic Church under the jurisdiction of certain dioceses that weren’t as faithful as they, the Anglo-Catholics, themselves were.

Father Grandon found it interesting that the archbishop of Canterbury was not consulted about the move.
“He said that the announcement was ‘made to him at a very late stage,’ which indicates that the Vatican wanted to be gracious to him, but that the Vatican recognizes the train wreck that Anglicanism is,” said Father Grandon. “The Episcopal Church has become tyrannical to those who’ve departed, and has taken a seriously anti-Christian turn theologically,” said Father Grandon.

“We’re talking about potentially hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people coming into the Church, as well as hundreds, if not thousands, of Anglican clergy,” he said.

“This really opens the door wide for those Anglicans who’ve said that they are ‘Catholic.’ Since you can have almost everything else — aside from being a bishop if you’re married — the big question for a lot of these men is whether they love their miter more than the Catholic Church.”