Pondering Dual Membership

The other day, I was talking with a fellow student here at YDS who is studying to earn an MAR in Asian Religions who identifies as both Catholic and Buddhist. He was explaining his choices and I ended up explaining how I was baptized and confirmed Episcopalian, then prayed and worked for years at a TAC Anglican cathedral, and then was confirmed as an adult into the Catholic Church; and so then my classmate asked me: "So are you Catholic, Anglican or both?"

At first I was inclined answer only Catholic, since my entry into the Catholic church was an important development for me and I certainly consider myself to be first and foremost Catholic... but then I paused because I actually don't know - from either a technical or spiritual sense - whether the shift to Catholicism also marked a shift away from the Anglican Communion.

After all, in a technical sense, I never signed an exit paper or did anything to separate myself from the Anglican Communion (unless the Episcopal church considers my Catholic confirmation to be a cancellation of my Episcopalian one, though such an exclusion would be theologically a little suspect since the Anglican church, like the Catholic, considers its sacraments to involve a real transmission of grace and a real transformation of state; sacraments by definition can't get undone, can they? Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about that. I may be interpreting Anglican sacraments through a Catholic sacramental theology, simply on account of not knowing the Anglican theology as well.) Moreover, whether it's theologically true or not, I'm still on the books at St. John the Divine and St. James Episcopal churches as being a baptized and confirmed member of the church. Thus I don't know whether I confirmed myself out of the Anglican Communion or whether I am and always will still be part of it.

Spiritually speaking, I've realized here at YDS just how eclectic my theological informants have been. I certainly identify most with Catholic theology (and have especially enjoyed reading Rahner because his work resonates so well with my experience of God in life), but that doesn't mean I ever set out to reject the various emphases I learned as a child in Baptist Awana, Lutheran Sunday School, Episcopalian confirmation class, or Anglican liturgy. I've simply been adding all of these perspectives, layering them all into my spiritual basket and carrying them all around together, glad to have more rather than less.

In the end, I am and always will be first and foremost deeply Catholic - but I hope there is some theological way of understanding it in addition to the other identities that are floating around inside of me. My friend in Asian Religions joked in our conversation yesterday, "I'm fully Catholic and fully Buddhist. After all, Jesus didn't just do things one hundred percent - he was fully divine AND fully human." I laughed because I don't have a clue what theology would say about dual religious citizenship, but I do know what he means about feeling somehow more than merely one or the other.