FT. WORTH: Bishop Clarence Pope Returns to Rome...Again

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
8/7/2007

The Rt. Rev. Clarence C. Pope, Jr., 76, former Bishop of Ft. Worth, Texas announced this week that he is returning to the Roman Catholic Church. He is the second bishop in as many months to leave The Episcopal Church for Rome. The Rt. Rev. Dan Herzog, Bishop of Albany recently renounced his orders following his retirement and returned to the Roman Catholic Church.

This is the third time that Pope has left the Episcopal Church and gone to Rome.

Ft. Worth Bishop Jack Iker sent a notice out to the clergy of the Diocese of Fort Worth: "BISHOP CLARENCE POPE telephoned me this morning to let me know that Martha and he have returned to membership in the Roman Catholic Church, in full communion with the See of Peter.

We certainly wish them well and want to uphold them with our love and prayers at this important time in their pilgrimage. They both gave ten years of faithful service and witness here in the Diocese of Fort Worth, and we give thanks to God for their continuing friendship and ministry.

Bishop Pope wanted to assure me that he remains very attached to us and that his affection for the people of this diocese remains unchanged. Do join me in thanking God for both of these faithful Christians and praying His continued blessing upon them in the years ahead."

The Rev. Clarence Pope was received into full communion with the Catholic Church in the mid-1980s. According to a Roman Catholic priest who followed the bishop's wanderings, Bishop Pope, facing surgery, returned to the Catholic Church. This lasted a few months but again his ordination was delayed longer than he had expected and he returned to ECUSA. "This second return to the Catholic Church was kept very quiet, however; very few people seemed aware of it, and a priest on the staff of Saint Luke's in Baton Rouge adamantly maintained that the bishop and Mrs. Pope were at the altar rail there consistently every Sunday.

During that time Msgr. Graham Leonard and his wife were in the USA for a regularly scheduled assembly of Roman Catholic converts, and were guests in the home of the Popes; it was Msgr. Leonard who confirmed to a Washington-based journalist that during this second period Bishop Pope had been a Roman Catholic layman awaiting the rescript from Rome that would permit his ordination.

"At the time, he was expecting quickly to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood. This took longer than he had expected, and he had some sickness to deal with as well. Mutual friends had brought to the attention of then Presiding Bishop Ed Browning that he was not well and Browning was very solicitous, ultimately making it easy for him to return to ECUSA.

Pope then left The Episcopal Church in October 1994. He denied then that he was leaving right up until the day he left, said a source. "When he made the announcement, he said he planned to seek ordination as a Roman Catholic priest. He told us he had known for the previous two years that he would go to Rome," said Katie Sherrod, a liberal in the diocese.

The New York Times reported his 1994 announcement like this: "The 65-year-old bishop, who is married, said he had come to believe that the seat of Christian church authority had been divinely placed in Rome from the time of the Apostle Peter. He said that he had long prayed for a reunion of his church with Rome, but that possibility had foundered after the Episcopal Church, and the related Church of England, began ordaining women."

It quoted Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning as saying, "It saddens me that this breach has occurred. I pray that this new chapter in his life will be an occasion for grace."

Ten months later, after Pope discovered that Rome would not recognize his Episcopal orders, he returned to TEC, saying it was simply too painful to not have his orders recognized. The first time around, Bernard Cardinal Law, Archbishop of Boston, officially received Pope in a highly publicized event.

Pope was received into the Roman church at St. Mary the Virgin Catholic Church, a parish whose priest and congregation had been part of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth until 1991, when they all became Catholics and their priest was re-ordained as a Roman priest.

Bishop Pope allowed them to keep the church buildings. He was very sympathetic to their wish to leave, which they attributed to anger over the ordination of women, the new prayer book and fears of what new heresy The Episcopal Church might commit next.

The Times also reported on Pope's return to The Episcopal Church in 1995, quoting the parish priest's son as saying the congregation "was stunned by Bishop Pope's reversal.

'They were very dismayed,' he said. 'I think many of us feel betrayed.'"

The same Times story reported that the week Pope announced he had returned to The Episcopal Church, he publicly took communion from the hand of an Episcopal priest, saying in an interview that he had left the Catholic Church and abandoned plans to enter its priesthood.

The article quoted him as saying "he had succumbed to a 'growing unease' about his original decision. His unease, Bishop Pope said, lay in his feeling that he could not give up his status as a bishop, which he would have to do to be re-ordained as a Catholic priest. He described the rank of bishop in mystical terms, saying it was 'God-given' and not for him to surrender.

'I could not shake the image of my consecration,' he said, recalling the event at which his spiritual authority was signaled by a laying on of hands by his fellow Episcopalian bishops. 'I thought I could lay it aside. I couldn't.'

"He also said he felt a gnawing guilt at having left his role as a leader of Episcopal traditionalists, who oppose the ordination of women as priests."

Presiding Bishop Browning received him back into the Episcopal Church.

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