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Showing posts with the label conversion

Letter from a true pastor

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The Reverend Giles Pinnock, who blogs as One Timothy Four , has today written to his people to announce that he has offered his resignation as the Vicar of St Mary-the-Virgin, Kenton, to the Bishop of Fulham, with the intention of being received into full communion with the Catholic Church. His letter is a warm and heartfelt au revoir to his flock. He acknowledges that it is no longer possible to offer Anglican leadership to those who wish to remain members of the Church of England. He then says: To those of you who are considering becoming Catholics, either as members of the forthcoming Ordinariate under the provisions of Anglicanorum coetibus or in a local Catholic parish, I trust that I am, in the manner of a middle-eastern shepherd, walking ahead of the flock, leading you by my example to safe pasture. The name of the blog is taken from St Paul's first letter to my baptismal patron, St Timothy: ... take heed to thyself and to doctrine: be earnest in them. For in doing thi...
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Now "blogging as a Catholic layman"

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Back in June, as I reported then, former US Marine and Anglican priest, Jeffrey Steel, announced his intention to come into full communion with the Catholic Church, together with his wife and six children. (See: Journey Home to the Catholic Church: I Have Jumped into the Tiber to Swim Across ) Warmest congratulations to Jeffrey and his family who were received into the Church on 18 July. ( He comments on the relevance of the feast of St Camillus de Lellis in his own life.) After a few week's break for quiet and reflection, Jeffrey has returned to blogging - as a Catholic layman - at his blog de cura animarum .
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"... this blog is now a Roman Catholic blog..."

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Rev Jeffrey Steel, an Anglican minister in Durham, has decided, with his wife and family, to come into full communion with the Catholic Church. You can read his story here: Journey Home to the Catholic Church: I Have Jumped into the Tiber to Swim Across . I particularly liked his comment at the end of the post: "this blog is now a Roman Catholic blog."
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Jane Teresa on Tony Blair

Jane Teresa has a most interesting post on Tony Blair today in which she relates her own experience of conversion and inadequate instruction in the faith. She even has a picture of herself and Mr Blair!
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A conversion story

At Stonyhurst for the Faith Winter Session, I was very pleased to meet Jane Teresa of the My heart was restless blog. Go over and take a look - there is a good variety of posts there. A worthy addition to your blogroll. Just before the conference, Jane posted her Conversion Story . It is very inspiring; in character, more "St Augustine" than "John Henry Newman". There is some hard-headed wisdom garnered from the experience of the emptiness of the world and the futility of a feelings-based Catholicism. St John of the Cross would surely nod sagely at this observation: I justified all kinds of sinful things to myself – not going to Mass, being unchaste, wild partying – because it felt right, and because I could sink into deep contemplation on closing my eyes to pray. Without an appreciation of the Truth, my faith was almost meaningless. Not all who cry “Lord, Lord” will see Him in Heaven. Childlike trust in God, zeal for the teaching of the Church, and consecration to...
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Fine tribute to a brilliant convert

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Fr Ashley Beck, himself a former Anglican clergyman, now a Catholic priest of my diocese, has written an excellent and enjoyable  booklet on Ronald Knox , published by the CTS. Knox was a brilliant man in every way. He had the benefit of a classical education at Eton and Balliol and made the most of it. A friend to Harold MacMillan, Evelyn Waugh and G K Chesterton, fellow of Trinity, and later a chaplain to the Catholic students, always an "Oxford character", his bon mots were still being recycled when I was an undergraduate and probably still are today. His love for the scriptures led him to undertake single-handedly the translation of the entire bible - a tragic project in that he met opposition while undertaking it and within a decade the restrictions placed upon him were lifted to allow the immensely inferior versions that we are today using in the Sacred Liturgy. Although Fr Beck is keen to moderate the record concerning Knox's difficulty with the hierarchy over his...
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More on the anglo-Catholic dilemma

In the combox, John kindly directed me to the website of the See of Ebbsfleet where you can read Bishop Burnham's Message after the General Synod's vote on women Bishops. He also has an excellent homily for the 3 June Sacred Synod of the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC). Traditional Catholics are sometimes puzzled by the tendency of some anglo-Catholics to follow the worst of modern customs in the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Burnham presciently addresses this in terms of remaining true to the anglo-Catholic spirit: We shall need our pastoral experience, our inculturation, our catechetical and liturgical skill. We shall probably need to be a little less slavishly Roman: we shall need to be a bit more RSV and a bit less Jerusalem bible; a bit more on with fine liturgical music and a bit less indebted to 1970s folk masses; a bit more damask and a bit less polyester. It will require some of us older priests, brought up with Vatican II reforms, to be more patient and understandin...
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Coming back into the fold

Mary Rose has a blog about her journey back to the Catholic Church: True Confessions of a Prodigal Daughter At the first post, you can read the story of her return to the faith .
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Popular posts from this blog

Saint Gabriel

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The angels call for our veneration and awe as part of God’s creation. Part of the destructive modernism of the 1970s included advice to Catholic school teachers that they should not talk to children about angels. This wrought lasting damage which continues to need rectifying. We should include in our prayers a heartfelt recourse to our own Guardian Angels. The Archangel Gabriel “God is my strength” would be terrifying were he to appear to any of us. Our Lady was “troubled” at the word of Saint Gabriel and wondered at the manner of the salutation. Immediately, according to his mission, the awesome messenger explained himself. Modern retelling of the event is often reduced to the jejune “Mary said Yes to God”. In fact, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word”. This conveys more accurately the flawless faith and trust of the Immaculata. In the infinitely wise providence of the Father, we now know the structure of the event in even more detai...
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Plenary indulgences not impossible

Dilexit Prior in Letters from a Young Catholic asked some useful questions today about indulgences. I thought it would be best to do a post here especially to cover the controversial question of detachment from venial sin. But first the other questions: The conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence Pope Paul VI set down a number of norms relating to indulgences at the end of Indulgentiarum Doctrina . Norm 7 states: To acquire a plenary indulgence it is necessary to perform the work to which the indulgence is attached and to fulfil three conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It is further required that all attachment to sin, even to venial sin, be absent. If this disposition is in any way less than complete, or if the prescribed three conditions are not fulfilled, the indulgence will be only partial, except for the provisions contained in n.11 for those who are “impeded.” It is worth reading the other norms bec...
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Portiuncula indulgence tomorrow (and indulgences generally)

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Tomorrow, 2 August, you can gain a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions ( see below ) by visiting a parish Church and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . This is called the Portiuncula indulgence and goes back to St Francis of Assisi. Fr Z has the details . Don't forget that you can also gain a plenary indulgence by visiting a Church on the day of the titular feast, and there reciting the Our Father and the Creed . I made a list of other indulgences: please see the post Plenary indulgences for particular days which has a link to the list. The post has some background information which you may find helpful since indulgences are not well understood today - which is not surprising since indulgences are not included in most Catholic education curricula, and most priests never preach about them. Therefore many Catholics are left with whatever silly, half-baked, ill-informed nonsense about indulgences happens to be current. If you want to understand the theology...
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Our Easter Faith: Not a Pious Crème Fraiche

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In public life, some basically well-meaning figures have the graciousness to wish us well at Easter and to recognise the importance of the Christian feast day. Perhaps they might assure us that their thoughts are with us at this time. That is kind of them and in Christian charity we should thank them for their kindness, but Easter should be a great deal more than that for us. We must believe that Our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the grave, in the flesh, and lives for eternity. We cannot treat Easter as a jolly holiday that heralds spring, or the remembrance of a significant event from the past. It must change us today and every day, change who we are and what we do. The Christian faith cannot be a mild custard or blancmange of religiosity. (I am showing my age. Nowadays, I should say that it cannot be reduced to a pious crème fraiche .) We bow down and adore the King of Kings, risen from the tomb, who, “[…] continues for ever,...
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Blessing of the New Painting of St Bede at Clapham Park

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This morning, the parish priest at Clapham Park, Fr Marcus Holden, blessed a new picture of the parish's patron, Saint Bede, painted by James Tildsley. It is sited over a recently installed side altar near the rear of the Church. The altar itself was acquired from Antique Church Furnishings . The website gives the information that the altar was built and carved by a nun in a convent near Liverpool. It is a beautiful piece of work and it is always a joy when such works of art find a suitable and dignified home. The inscription on the gradine is AMANS AMATUS AMOR. The sellers translate this as “Loving is the object of love” which is a reasonable stab at “dynamic equivalence”. Today the parish's relic of St Bede was exposed for veneration in its distinctive brightly-coloured reliquary. After the blessing, there was High Mass with Fr Holden as celebrant, Fr Littleton deacon, and myself subdeacon. That gave me the enjoyable task of chant...
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