Congregation of St. Athanasius in Boston, MA | Christianity

Congregation of St. Athanasius

We are a congregation of about fifty members, most of us recent converts from the Episcopal Church, although a number of life-long Catholics have joined us because they are drawn to our liturgy and music. We are fully in Communion with the Roman Catholic Church, but our liturgy, our hymns, and our chant will be familiar to anyone close to Anglicanism or the Episcopal Church. Mass is celebrated every Sunday and on other Holy Days. Solemn Evensong is sung and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is celebrated from time to time.

The decision to leave the Episcopal Church was painful, for Anglicanism had provided most of us a spiritual home for many years, sometimes from birth. There were four main considerations.
First, we were convinced that Our Lord's will for His Church is that it should be one (John 13:34-35, 17:11, 22-23). Historically, the Anglo-Catholic tradition within Anglicanism has always sought to bear witness to that truth; from that tradition we have come. The history of the Anglo-Catholic movement is marked by a steady stream of conversions to the Church of Rome, as the life of John Henry Newman witnesses.
Second, the distance (especially in the past twenty or thirty years) between official Anglicanism and what might be termed historical faith and order has grown rapidly. Increasingly unorthodox belief and practice has crept in, so that both Catholic and Evangelical ways of understanding the Gospel have become incongruent with it.
Third, the present disarray of Anglicanism is, in itself, clear evidence of the need for a defined focus of authority in the life of the Church on earth, and that such a magisterium is to be found in the person of Peter and his successors in the Holy See.
Fourth, we thank God for the good and beauty we have taken from the Anglican tradition, and we long to bring all that is best in it to the life of the Universal Church. As Anglicanism decays around us, we have come to feel it can best and most safely be preserved within the household of the Roman Catholic Church.
Contact us at
617-325-5232