Spotlight on Terry Mattingly

Terry Mattingly wrote an excellent newspaper column last Saturday on the tantalizingly warm relationship between B16 and the more traditional bishops of th Anglican Communion.

Mattingly is my favorite religion writer. Period.

Which is surprising, since he isn't Catholic.

He is close to it. I've been following his newspaper columns for 15 years now. When I first noticed him, he was a professor and journalist working out of a small college in East Tennessee and had written a piece about area snake handlers. At that time, he was a Southern Baptist, but seemed to have problems with their congregational structure and non-liturgical services.

So he became an Episcopal, but never seemed happy there and started writing regular pieces about the slow heterodox disintegration of that denomination. I would sometimes see letters to the editor in my local newspaper from angry Episcopalians suggesting that if he didn't like his adopted Church, then he should get out.

He took them at their word, and became an Antiochian Orthodox Christian. This was one of the original Churches founded by the apostles in the first century which remained more or less in union with the Holy See until the Great Schism of 1054.

I suppose he would note, in that dry fashion he has, that he belongs to the other Church founded by Peter.

My personal suspicion is that he has been in a long search for a church with visible, apostolic roots. I believe he would have become a Catholic some time ago except that he has some specific doctrinal issues with which he simply can't reconcile himself in good conscience.

During his journey, he has also started a good religion blog here, and presently teaches at Palm Beach State University in Florida.

Very good writer.