Recently, I had a letter from a young man considering the Ordinariate but very tied to
his Anglican roots. At the end of the
letter he included a long quotation from BARCHESTER
TOWERS by Anthony Trollope.
My young friend said
that it conveyed his feelings at the present moment. Following the quotation is
my response to him (edited):
From Trollope, Barchester Towers, ch. 20 "Mr
Arabin"
"And now came the moment of his great danger.
After many mental struggles, and an agony of doubt which may be well surmised,
the great prophet of the Tractarians [John Henry Newman] confessed himself a
Roman Catholic. Mr. Newman left the Church of England and with him carried many
a waverer. He did not carry off Mr. Arabin, but the escape which that gentleman
had was a very narrow one. He left Oxford for awhile that he might meditate in
complete peace on the step which appeared to him to be all but unavoidable, and
shut himself up in a little village on the sea-shore of one of our remotest
counties, that he might learn by communing with his own soul whether or no he
could with a safe conscience remain within the pale of his mother church.
"Things would have
gone badly with him there had
he been left entirely to himself. Everything was against him: all his worldly
interests required him to remain a Protestant, and he looked on his worldly
interests as a legion of foes, to get the better of whom was a point of
extremest honour.
In his then state of ecstatic agony such a conquest would
have cost him little; he could easily have thrown away all his livelihood; but
it cost him much to get over the idea that by choosing the Church of England he
should be open in his own mind to the charge that he had been led to such a
choice by unworthy motives. Then his heart was against him: he loved with a strong
and eager love the man who had hitherto been his guide, and yearned to follow
his footsteps.
His tastes were against him: the ceremonies and pomps
of the Church of Rome, their august feasts and solemn fasts,
invited his
imagination and pleased his eye.
His flesh was against him: how great an aid
would it be to a poor, weak, wavering man to be constrained to high moral
duties, self-denial, obedience, and chastity by laws which were certain in
their enactments, and not to be broken without loud, palpable, unmistakable
sin!
Then his faith was against him: he required to believe so much; panted so
eagerly to give signs of his belief; deemed it so insufficient to wash himself
simply in the waters of Jordan; that some great deed, such as that of forsaking
everything for a true Church, had for him allurements almost past withstanding.
"Mr. Arabin was at this time a very young man,
and when he left Oxford for his far retreat was much too confident in his
powers of fence, and too apt to look down on the ordinary sense of ordinary
people, to expect aid in the battle that he had to fight from any chance
inhabitants of the spot which he had selected. But Providence was good to him;
there, in that all but desolate place, on the storm-beat shore of that distant
sea, he met one who gradually calmed his mind, quieted his imagination, and
taught him something of a Christian's duty.
When Mr. Arabin left Oxford, he was
inclined to look upon the rural clergymen of most English parishes almost with
contempt. It was his ambition, should he remain within the fold of their
church, to do somewhat towards redeeming and rectifying their inferiority and
to assist in infusing energy and faith into the hearts of Christian ministers,
who were, as he thought, too often satisfied to go through life without much
show of either.
"And yet it was from such a one that Mr. Arabin
in his extremest need received that aid which he so much required. It was from
the poor curate of a small Cornish parish that he first learnt to know that the
highest laws for the governance of a Christian's duty must act from within and
not from without; that no man can become a serviceable servant solely by
obedience to written edicts; and that the safety which he was about to seek
within the gates of Rome was no other than the selfish freedom from personal
danger which the bad soldier attempts to gain who counterfeits illness on the
eve of battle.
"Mr. Arabin returned to Oxford a humbler but a
better and a happier man, and from that time forth he put his shoulder to the
wheel as a clergyman of the Church for which he had been educated. The
intercourse of those among whom he familiarly lived kept him staunch to the
principles of that system of the Church to which he had always belonged."
Thank
you for your sincere and very thoughtful message, Tom [not his real name]. I
very much appreciate it.
You
have given these matters a great deal of thought and prayer and for that we are
all thankful. In our Lord's time all will be resolved and all will be well.
I
was in something like your position for quite a time, practising what I
understood to be the traditional Anglican expression of the Catholic faith,
living as a country parson but always hoping for reconciliation and the healing
of the Body of Christ in some way that would allow us, as Anglicans, to enter
the full communion of the Catholic Church.
In
fact, it is over 20 years ago that a group of us approached Archbishop Ambrozic
about the Pastoral Provision. I recall hopeful Evensongs at St. Cecelia's here
in Toronto and then the candle of unity sputtered and Abp. (later Cardinal)
Ambrozic decided not to allow us to proceed.
At
the time, Jane and I had to provide for two young girls and so we had little
choice but to stay in the parish I had been serving, believing that we had done
what we could to move into unity under the circumstances. Time moved on and our
Lord's prayer that "they all may be one" began to work its grace in
different ways. All the time I felt and believed that we would be able,
somehow, to bring our Anglican patrimony into unity with the Holy See. How, I
had no idea.
It
had become clearer, over time, that the ARCIC dialogues would not be the
vehicle for unity so many of us had hoped they would be. Anglicans continued to
make doctrinal changes that could in no way be considered Catholic and there
was a widening gap.
For
me, Anglicanorum Coetibus (AC) in
2009 was nothing short of miraculous. It rang like a bell and I could not
resist making the journey over the newly constructed bridge into the arms of
Peter and the full embrace of the Catholic Church. I felt and continue to feel
more completely Anglican than I ever had. It is as though the first 1000 years
of the Church of the Anglo or English-speaking peoples has been restored to its
proper relationship with the single universal Church of Christ and the last 450
years are now in proper perspective.
In
terms of material well being our situation had changed and we now had our
daughters through university with most of the bills paid. We could travel more
lightly and Jane had supply teaching to pay the rent. My job ended but every
sacrifice was met with a blessing.
 |
| The Rev. John Keble, Rector of Hursley |
It
becomes clearer with every month that the journey into full communion is
different for each person and family. Your quotation from Trollope mirrors
exactly my feelings when serving in a country parish with John Keble as a hero
and model.
 |
| Hursley Parish Church |
 |
I understand your situation but I believe entirely that
the Anglican Patrimony can, in the long run, only survive with the protection
of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. The corrosive liberalism that Newman identified at the
heart of the establishment, sadly, continues to undermine the good faith and
work of devout Anglicans. The centre of that system, which now includes fundamentally
opposed groups and synods, as Newman saw, is fatally flawed and without
magisterial direction and the Petrine Office cannot hold against the zeitgeist and its winds of relativism.
As
we are both so well aware, our day is very far removed from the classical
Anglicanism of Newman, Keble and Trollope. Gone is the orthodoxy of belief and practice
with the advances of relativism, radical feminism and the juggernaut of gay
political activism. Secular, Islamist and other currents make the waters
exceedingly treacherous for those who, like you, sincerely hold to that
"system of the Church" (Trollope) we have known as the Anglican Way.
I
hesitate to compare myself in any way with Blessed John H. Newman, but his
words about his own reception into full communion and having the sense of
entering port after a storm express my feelings precisely now. This is not to
say that we don't need to launch out again from port in a larger and sturdier
barque and so I see the Ordinariate as one sail for the New Evangelization
which the Catholic Church very much needs and as our beloved Benedict XVI saw
so clearly.
I rejoice that we now have the whole patrimony of Anglicanism at the disposal of the Holy Spirit in the full communion of the Catholic Church that has so many resources but needs new impetus on many fronts.
The
very good news, as one young man put it to me recently, is that AC, as an
Apostolic Constitution, is part of the universal fabric of the Church. It will
be there in twenty or a hundred years and Anglicans will always be welcome
along with our many other fellow-travellers.
 |
| Blessed Pope Paul VI |
So,
we pray for you and all other faithful Anglicans who, as Unitatis Redintegratio from Vatican II puts it, are our baptized
brothers and sisters in Christ.
To rephrase Trollope, this is the one Church to
which we all belong. Together, we continue to strive for a more perfect unity in
the Church Militant because it is our Lord's will, knowing that the arms of
Peter are always open.
Faithfully,
in Christ
JLH
Fr.
John L. Hodgins, Priest Administrator,
St.
Thomas More Catholic Church, Toronto
A
Quasi (Mission) Parish of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter
Deanery
of St. John the Baptist (Canada)
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