that serve liturgical enrichment. A companion volume on preaching and liturgical welcome.
John Twisleton
THE PATH TO ROME Modern Journeys to the Catholic Church
Ed. D. Longenecker Gracewing, 412pp, pbk 978 0 85244 729 1, £12.99
by media
‘LARGELY IGNORED the mainstream [but
unnoticed by
hardly this
publication] the impressive conversions
flow to
of the
Catholic Church which took place in the last two decades of the twentieth century has shown no sign of abating in this new millennium.’ Tis is an expanded tenth anniversary edition of a book which has helped a large number of people ‘towards the fullness of Catholic Faith’. Te book is a collection of short
biographical essays by a wide range of people, beginning with women clergy, and moving through Evangelicals, a New-Ager, Anglo-Catholics, a couple of CofE bishops and two parliamentarians, who have converted
Over 40 Years Of Service
To Orthodox Anglicans Published since 1962
THE CHRISTIAN CHALLENGE
is the only independent orthodox journal providing such comprehensive news of
the Anglican Communion and extramural Anglican churches. Plus, special reports/ features, some general religious news, humour and more.
For New Directions readers, we are
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email:
info@challengeonline.org 32 ■ newdirections ■ July 2010
re-enchantment would be
and been received into the Roman Catholic Church. Some are simple, straightforward
accounts. Neville Kyrke-Smith I vaguely remember as a fellow-student, and then hearing that he had poped a few years later. His account of visits to Russia when a young curate and his encounters with clergy being persecuted and even martyred for their faith under the former regimes is unexpected
and powerful;
if this led him to a greater commitment in his own faith, who are we to argue? It is simple, honest spiritual autobiography. Others are less persuasive.
Te American Episcopalian woman priest rehearses arguments that are so familiar (to us) that it is hard to be interested in her moral and
intellectual progress: that is hardly her fault, and her piece might well be of greater interest to others. One of the least
convincing is the editor’s own story: perhaps he is too much of a journalist, for he has dressed his tale with too much cleverness as well as his slightly pretentious self-designation as a former ‘mainstream Anglican’. It was the comment of a ‘plump’ rural dean, ‘Tere is no such thing as an objective theology’ that was the first crack in the wall of his former certainties. Maybe that is true, but if he had been asked to write a fictional propaganda account, would he have needed to change a word? I think not. Te late Graham Leonard’s account
is interesting on a wider ecclesiological level. ‘All I had asked for in my petition to the Pope was that I should not have to deny my former ministry and that I did not have to do. Included in the rite was a statement in the words of Vatican II recognizing my ministry as an Anglican and a prayer that it would be fulfilled in the Catholic priesthood. In my case, I was ordained conditionally because I had been ordained as an Anglican by a bishop who was in the Old Catholic succession, and on the Pope’s personal instruction I was ordained straight to the priesthood without having first to be ordained deacon. But the
statement and prayer are included in the ordination of all former Anglicans.’ MP Ann Widdecombe’s conversion
was one of the least gracious of the many that occurred aſter the 1992 vote. Is there any sign of a more irenic spirit all these years later? Perhaps, but not much. ‘So I leſt the Church of England in a blaze of publicity utering not very kindly sentiments towards George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury.’ She seaks of the ‘media circus’ and finds some reasons for that response, but not within herself, which makes her article of interest but not a piece of spiritual autobiography. Tis book, it seems, was not compiled
for those considering the journey to Rome, but to provide solace and encouragement to those already there.
David Nichol
LIFT HIGH THE CROSS Anglo-Catholics and the Congress Movement
John Gunstone Canterbury, 384 pp, pbk 978 1 853118 17 3, £25
AS I began life as
a postgraduate in September 1967, I moved into a South Kensington vicarage behind a big
brick
Buterfield church. I already knew that
few other churches had large gilt Martin Travers retables in the Central American baroque style, but I had yet to discover that this church had complete High Mass
sets of vestments that
included Refreshment Sunday pink (Western, of course), and that Frank Weston had prepared his address to the 1923 Anglo-Catholic Congress in St Augustine’s vicarage. I had stumbled upon the Anglo-Catholic history that is the subject of this book. It must first be said that this looks to
be a detailed and accurate history of the Anglo-Catholic Congress Movement. Te author does not assume that readers are versed in the Movement and includes chapters giving the background, political and social, to England in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Church of England at that time. He explains the origin of the Congress Movement, and then describes the
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