They are Roman Catholic priests but each has a wife and children.
They don’t report to Bishop of Victoria Richard Gagnon, although Gagnon was the person who ordained them. They don’t even report to any other Roman Catholic offices in Canada.
Instead, they report to a special office in Houston, Texas, called the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. And from there, the hierarchy leads directly to Rome.
“We are not part of the Diocese of Victoria,” said Catholic Rev. Michael Birch, 70, of Victoria, who is married with two grown children.
Birch was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest on June 14 at St. Andrew’s Cathedral, along with Rev. Don Malins, 74, of Victoria, married with one grown son, and Rev. Peter Switzer, 70, of Port Alberni, married with three children and two grandchildren.
All three began their careers in the clergy as Anglican priests, which was when they started their families.
After retirement, they left the Anglican Church to join breakaway Anglican organizations, like the Anglican Catholic Church or the Anglican Network.
They have now been ordained as Roman Catholic priests, by special dispensation from the Vatican.
“This all comes from the Holy Father,” Switzer said from Port Alberni. “If someone has a problem with it, go talk to the Pope.
“This was his idea, not mine.”
Two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI issued the Apostolic Constitution Anglican Coetibus, allowing Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church.
Benedict also ordained the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in Houston and gave it responsibility for all of North America. Canada is now a deanery in that jurisdiction, headquartered in Calgary.
The three new priests — along with Rev. Peter Wilkinson, 72, who has never married or had children, was ordained in December and is now a church monsignor — are the latest chapter in the story of recent dissatisfaction within the Anglican Church.
Most recently this discord erupted over the blessing of same-sex civil marriages, now permitted by Anglicans.
But the men all trace their disgruntlement to 1977 and the Anglican Church of Canada’s decision to ordain women as priests.
“It was decided not as a theological issue but as a social issue,” Birch said. “It would be more popular, it was thought — it was the politically correct thing to do.”
The new priests have now taken up their duties. They can perform marriages, hear confessions, celebrate mass and perform all other duties of priests.
But though they have been ordained Roman Catholics, at least two of the new priests are hanging on to some vestiges of their previous Anglican life, including pensions.
When the two Victoria priests celebrate mass for their 25-odd parishioners, they do so in a building leased from the Anglican Diocese of British Columbia, St. Columba’s at 40 High St. (Switzer, meanwhile, shares the priest’s duties at Holy Family Notre Dame, a Catholic church in Port Alberni.)
Even the liturgy the Victoria priests recite at St. Columba is derived from the Anglican Church — the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, with its use of the old-style “thee” and “thou.”
“I will always be an Anglican in certain ways,” Birch said.
But when they fill in for sick days and vacations at Victoria Catholic Diocese parishes, they will use the standard Roman Catholic liturgy.
All three men say the process has offered no personal conflicts. Instead, they take comfort from the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its positions. “When we act as clergy and when we teach the faith, we know the teaching authority of the church stands behind us,” Birch said. “What we say is what the bishop and the church as a whole believes.”
And they all say the reception from Catholic clergy and parishioners has been nothing but warm. It feels like a homecoming.
“I have been accepted with open arms,” Switzer said. “There has been no difficulty with the fact that I am married with a family.
“This Sunday night, they are even having a special banquet for me.”
