By Thea Jarvis

David M. Dye, a married former Episcopal priest, has received approval from Pope John Paul to be ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Dye is the second married former Anglican clergyman to receive permission for ordination in the archdiocese. Father Thad Rudd was ordained a Catholic priest in December 1991.

Dye will be ordained a transitional deacon Saturday, April 4 at 10 a.m. in the St. Francis Chapel of the archdiocesan Catholic Center. His ordination to Catholic priesthood will take place at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 30 at Sacred Heart Church in Atlanta. Archbishop James P. Lyke, OFM, will preside at both ceremonies.

“I am delighted that permission to ordain” has been granted, Archbishop Lyke said of the news, adding that he is happy for Dye’s family as well. He said the people of the archdiocese will be most welcome at Dye’s priestly ordination in May.

The waiting time “has been a real school of Catholicism for (Dye),” the archbishop said, particularly in the slow, cautious way Rome approaches such matters.

Dye’s request for ordination in the Catholic Church was submitted December 8, 1998. He had been assistant rector at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Episcopal Church in Atlanta for 10 years.

“I am grateful that the Catholic Church has been so opened-armed with (me and my family),” Dye said.

Any change is difficult, Dye said, but as a Catholic he has found “more clarity, a sense of being where I belong.”

Raised a Southern Baptist, Dye was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1971. Before working at St. Martin, he spent four years as chaplain to Americans living Brussels, a largely Catholic environment.

Spiritually, Dye says now, the Catholic Church is “home” to him.

Notification of Dye’s approval for ordination was communicated to Archbishop Lyke in a March 3 letter from Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The letter reaffirmed that Dye’s request was in accordance with the church’s pastoral provision addressing the ordination of married Episcopal clergymen in the United States.

It also reiterated conditions for the ordination of married priests, including a prohibition of remarriage in the event of a wife’s death and assignment to administrative, social or educational work, rather than full-time parish duty.

Although his wait for ordination to the Catholic priesthood has been longer than expected. Dye said it has been fairly easy for him to “just shift gears and minister as a lay person.”

For the past three years, Dye has served as campus minister at Georgia State University. He will continue in that capacity after ordination.

During his time at Georgia State, he has sought to make the Catholic Church a stronger presence on the commuter campus.

Under his direction, and with the support of the archdiocese, a 1,500 square foot student center was opened in 1990. There, Masses are celebrated by visiting priests during the week and a comfortable lounge area has made it a student haven.

Dye feels having a full-time priest at GSU will be a “luxury” and an enrichment of campus life.

“Georgia State is a place where you need everything you can get” because the diversity and daily dispersion of the campus population. He said having an ordained campus minister “says something about the commitment of the Church” to people there.

Patrick Warner, first president of the Georgia State Catholic Student Organization who served in that office from 1985 through 1990, said Dye’s work at GSU has “brought a real (Catholic) presence” to the campus. “He made people aware of the fact that he was there and the Catholic Church was there.”

During his first week at the university, said Warner, Dye quietly distributed pro-life literature outside a talk given by an abortion advocate and was angrily confronted by some women students. The result was prolonged coverage by the campus newspaper of both pro- and anti-abortion sentiment and the founding of GSU’s first recognized pro-life campus organization, the Committee for Life.

For the last three years, Dye has led campus Catholics in sponsoring an annual Mardi Gras party for GSU’s student body, an event that lets people know “we’re part of the university, too,” Warner said.

Dye and the Catholic Student Organization have fielded softball and volleyball teams and donated proceeds from snack sales at the Catholic Student Center to two elementary schools serving disadvantaged youngsters.

“David brings a lot of gifts, a great background and diversity to Georgia State,” Warner said. “He relates well to students because he has teenagers of his own.”

Having a priest on campus should “stabilize things,” Warner feels, particularly in terms of making Mass and the sacraments regularly available.

Since coming into the Catholic Church in 1988, Dye and his family have attended Our Lady of Assumption Church in Atlanta, which is close to their home.

His children, 18-year-old Gabrielle, 15-year-old Leslie-Marie and 11-year-ol David has been in Catholic religious education classes for some time. Both girls attend Marist School and David has applied for entry next year.

“It is a privilege for anybody to be a priest,” Dye said. “To be a married person and to be a priest is even more of a privilege.”

He is acutely sensitive to those who experience pain over his ordination, he said, whether they are women, students, priests, or married men.

He still remembers his own pain in leaving the Anglican Church. It was, he said, “an uprooting, a leaving of many friends, a said time.”

Affiliating with the Catholic Church was, for Dye, “a matter of conscience.” He was increasingly attracted to a church in which decisions were made with magisterial authority, in communion with the Pope, he said, a faith community in which “things are clear.”

But clarity did not diminish the difficulty of leaving and the risks he faced in doing so.

“It takes a lot of courage to leave your professional identity” and stand on unfamiliar ground, he said candidly.

He faced discouragement more recently, he admitted, after the ordination of Father Rudd. Happy for Father Rudd and his family, Dye said it was “a difficult time” for him because permission for his own ordination had not yet come from Rome.

“I was like a fish out of water,” he said. “People don’t know what to do with you.”

The experience became “a real watershed” for Dye after he worked through the loss he was feeling. “There was an inner peace that came,” he said. “I stopped worrying about it and knew whatever God wanted was fine.”

Now, with ordination just two months away, he feels, “a sense of release and thanksgiving,” he said.