Correspondence with a young person being received into full communion

The following is correspondence with a young person who has just completed EVANGELIUM and is preparing to be received into the full communion of the Catholic Church in Toronto on November 3.

She had read the recent posting here on the Blessed Virgin Mary and was wondering about some of her Protestant friends' questions and how best to respond to them.

As I write this, it is a great grace and a true joy to report that the lady, of very advanced years, who was the subject of postings some years ago on PEREGRINATIONS was received into full communion last Sunday.

She is my mother and at age 97 is now the senior member of the Ordinariate in Canada.  I am told that there is a 100 year old member recently received in Philadelphia.

In 2011,  a posting here "Letter to Margaret: To an Evangelical Anglican Friend" was actually correspondence with Mum about the call to unity in the Catholic Church. With prayer and conversation she came to a clear-minded decision to be received into full communion.

Fr. Lee Kenyon of St. John the Evangelist, Calgary, after receiving Mum (97)  into full communion.
Baptized in the Pentecostal church 80 years ago, she has had a remarkable journey!

It was a great privilege to be present as Fr. Kenyon anointed her and we then shared in Holy Communion in unity with the universal Church for the first time on Canadian Thanksgiving Day.  I can only quote my mother, Marjorie, a CWAC (Canadian army) veteran of the Second World War. She served in England where she met another Canadian, a dentist, my father.

As she said, we are left "in wordless wonder at the mysterious grace of God."

"And soul by soul and silently her shining bounds increase . . . "  
         from the hymn "I VOW TO THEE MY COUNTRY" in which Sir Cecil Spring-Rice refers to "another country" whose capital is the City of God.



Now, here is the correspondence with one in her 20's.

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Hello Elizabeth (not her real name)

I thought you might find this of interest in light of our conversations at EVANGELIUM:

"All generations shall call me blessed." . . . What were the generations before the Blessed Virgin Mary?

P.

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Hello, 

Happy to hear from you!  . . .  :)

I read with interest the subject on Peregrinations. I never have asked that question, myself, and it is a very good one!  I enjoyed reading the response!

Pertaining to Mary's perpetual virginity, I must ask your opinion on this counter article:

http://carm.org/did-mary-have-other-children

Of course, this organization preaches predestination, which I have never concurred with; hence, I do not hold much (if anything) of what they say as gospel.  However, their argument against Mary's perpetual virginity is certainly one I've heard before from many other Prostestant organizations.  I would love to know your thoughts on it, whenever you get a chance to have a browse.  There is no urgency :)

God bless,
Elizabeth 

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Hello again Elizabeth,

Here is a brief response to your e-mail and the attached article re. the BVM (see attached).

Better still, here are a couple of links to An Essay on the Development of Doctrine that you may want to read or at least you may want to look at a couple of chapters. It is the standard Catholic work on the development of magisterial teaching by that famous former Anglican, Cardinal Newman:

http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/

This is a related article form a recent lecture:

http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=7757

Independent of his theology, Newman is valued and read by many because he is one of the greatest English stylists of all time.  If you haven't already, sometime you will want to read his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, a classic of Catholic apologetics and personal witness.

We keep you in our prayers and hope to see you this Sunday for our STM general meeting.

Peregrinus

Our Lady of Walsingham, St. Peter, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist, St. John Houghton, St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion, St. Kateri Tekakwitha, Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us.