My friendship with an Anglo-Catholic Bishop

I just learned that my friend Edward Harding "Ed" MacBurney died last year (October 30, 1927 – March 17, 2022). He’d almost reached 97 years, and I imagine that they were very good years. He had a zest of friendship. He was immensely likable, intelligent and a dedicated listener, the kind of person who loved a good conversation, especially if it opened the door to a topic close to his heart and he thought it might lead somewhere. He held clear positions with regard to matters of faith, but the term pastoral would also be a good fit and blunts any harsh doctrinal edge. 

My mother remembered that at a certain point in life my grandmother faithfully read the Sunday obituaries in the Bridgeport Post to see how many friends she’d lost. Now in the day of Google, I join my grandmother in this pursuit, but I do not consider it at all morbid. I even do it with the joy of honoring my friends by revisiting our conversations, seeing how things stand and where we would be today if we were able to continue talking. 

And it’s conversations with Ed that I want to talk about. During my college years, he and I were quite close. Then I entered the Jesuits, and Ed’s priestly life started to move towards “The Right Reverend.” Over the years we lost touch except for an infrequent exchange of long letters. He became more conservative and I gravitated towards a very secular version of liberation theology, verging on agnosticism. However when we inevitably disagreed about somethings that he considered essential, even sacred, I never felt estranged or judged. I hope I can return that favor now as I talk about our friendship. 

I met Ed during my freshman year at Dartmouth. He was the rector of the Saint Thomas Episcopal Church that stands very close to the green. I don’t think that he had that title, but he was a de facto chaplain at the College. I saw a committed Christian and a priest who was always open to talking with students. I liked him immediately. The Newman chaplain, Father Bill Nolan, was a bit crusty for my taste in the all-knowing way of immigrant Catholic seminary training, as dogmatic as the rote study of Aquinas produced. To me Nolan’s attempts to be open-minded as befit an outsider at a prestigious waspy institution seemed superficial, even shallow. Ed was far more approachable perhaps because he didn’t have the immigrant Irish hurdle of having to prove himself. He was a Dartmouth graduate as well, and although as much of a traditionalist as Nolan, he was quite relaxed about it and spelled out his line of thought in a very personal way. Our conversations were like entering a well ordered house and feeling at ease. 

There was a small chapel in the rector’s house; it even had a small foot pump harmonium. At 5:30 Ed led Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer. I liked learning to sing the psalms in plainchant, or Anglican chant, and started including it as part of my practice. Nolan also said mass at 5 in the Aquinas Chapel at the end of Webster which I attended at least once or twice a week, but I actually preferred Evensong. There was never any pressure from Ed to switch allegiance. He told me in a matter of fact way that he’d entertained the idea of becoming Catholic, and had thought about religious life, joining an Anglican Order, the Cowley Fathers. When we talked about my intention to become a Jesuit, he encouraged me. 

In1963 I decided to go to the Universite de Caen for a semester abroad. Ed was planning a trip back to England, and invited me to join him for what he called “the crawl,” following a winding path from London north to Leeds and then south to Canterbury, cramming as many Anglican cathedrals as we could into the two weeks I had before I left for France. We visited Oxford where he’d been influenced by the nostalgic practices of the Oxford Movement at St Stephen's House. We drove over a long flat plane to Ely Cathedral where he’s been ordained, and of course included Westminster and Coventry. I forget the order. He introduced me to his friends. In Leeds I met the engaging Franciscan, Brother Michael Fisher whom I kept in touch with for many years. At the Cathedral of York I did not hit it off with a rather stuffy dean and his wife. Ed was disappointed. At several points we stopped at a motel or modest roadside inn and shared a room. I recall that after he’d put on his pajamas, he knelt by the side of the bed and prayed which I found very sweet. I am pretty sure that we ended our trip in Canterbury; then Ed drove me to Dover where I continued my journey onto Paris via train and ferry.

I look back on our crawl as a kind of Anglo-Catholic pilgrimage. I’ve located various dots on a map as accurately as possible to see where I physically was on this journey. With some grace and forgiveness for the intervening years, it’s close enough. But to get back inside the mind of the 20 year old Ken might actually take a bit of magic. The hopes, dreams, and aspirations of my college years go hand and hand with acquiring experience and knowledge, questioning, experimenting, trying to find my place in the world. Retracing those steps is far more difficult. The dots are not physical, their movement influenced by the position where I stood in the moment as well as where I stand now 60 years later. 

“Follow the Money” 

I remember that Ed had just come from an Episcopal conference in the US where Bishop James Pike had been slated to give a high level talk on the ecumenism coming out of Vatican II. Ed complained that all the controversial firebrand could come up with was how efficient it would be to save money not duplicating secretarial services. He expected some encouraging words about the “big questions,” and was disappointed. Then he laughed. A missed opportunity. I don’t remember if he mentioned Pike’s championing the ordination of women, but he certainly would have been against it. 

Let me fast forward 35 years and bring my wonderful friend Bonnie Johnson into the conversation. Ed and Bonnie would have loved one another despite being theological miles apart. Bonnie was a devoted Christian as well as an astute observer of the American Episcopal church. She brought Bishop Pike’s economic analysis back into the theological conversation about the big issues. She contended that as congregations became smaller and poorer, the acceptance of women priests grew simply because they’d work for less. Women now make up 40% of working clergy in the US. Though I hesitate to state anything definitively because reading their balance sheets is confusing and beyond the intention of this paper, both membership and revenues have also decreased substantially in most parishes although contribution seems to be up overall, an anomaly that I cannot figure out.

But just a snapshot from the available data In 2022 is telling. The salary of an Episcopal priest in the US is $52,707. There is an enormous fluctuation across various dioceses and churches, salaries ranging from $10,193 to $267,214. In 2002 male clergy earned 20% more than the female counterparts. Today the wage gap has been reduced to 13.5%. Perhaps a major reason for the gap is that larger, wealthier parishes prefer men and smaller parishes rely on married women whose income supplements their husband’s. Another reason for the decrease might simply be the increase in the number of women priests and the resulting proportional distribution of overall revenues. Anglo-Catholics continue to make a strictly theological argument, but Bonnie always looked at a wider picture and included several possible factors. It might be blasphemy to classify Deep Throat as a theologian, but I think “Follow the Money” is a valid line of inquiry. Ed might have been appalled but I’m sure he would have tried to continue the conversation in a civil manner. 

When I returned to Hanover from France in January, Ed told me that he was getting married and asked if I would be an usher at the service. I said of course, I would be honored. I think that I joined at least one of his wife Anne's sons, and Gaylord Hitchcock put on his best suit. I remember being at the rectory one afternoon several weeks before the ceremony. Ed took a phone call within earshot. In his cheery voice he arranged an appointment with the caller. When he hung up--this was definitely pre-cell phone--he turned and told me that he and his friend, Dr. Someone, had arranged to talk about “the birds and bees.” He laughed, and I’m laughing now just remembering his joy and his innocence. 

When Tara Doyle, whom my partner and I knew from MacLeod, stayed with us one Christmas, she wanted to attend Christmas midnight mass. I was assigned to choose the venue. Even though we knew that we had to arrive very early to get a seat, Grace Cathedral would have the best music plus we were meditators and welcomed a half hour in silence in a magnificent church while empty pews filled behind us. It was also about as high church as I could find. When it came time to receive communion, I didn't hesitate to kneel at the rail in front of the main altar. The priest who offered me the sacrament was a beautiful African American woman. It was perfect. 

References: 

https://www.comparably.com/salaries/salaries-for-episcopal-priest https://www.christiancentury.org/article/news/gender-pay-gap-among-episcopal-clergy-shrinking-persistent 

https://www.catholic.org/news/politics/story.php?id=3086