Gavin Ashenden Conversion: Moment of Grace

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Youtube/Turley & Ashenden/Screenshot

An NCRegister/Kevin Turley story.


As we walk around the ancient streets of Walsingham, the most obvious question is, of course: Why did he decide to become a Catholic? “Slowly, but surely,” Ashenden explained, “over the last 10 years it became clearer, both in my mind and in my prayers, that what the Catholic Church taught, particularly about the Mass, was not only true, but had always been true, from the Apostolic Fathers onwards.”

[...]

“So as my own tradition disappeared from under my feet,” he continued, “a number of voices in the Catholic Church, among them my own local Catholic bishop [Bishop Davies], reminded me that a struggle for the purity and faithfulness of the Church would never be wasted if it were brought to the service of Catholicism. Bishop Mark asked me to act on my convictions and be reconciled with the Church, sooner rather than later.”

“I had also begun to realize, with an increasing urgency, that I had a personal responsibility to heal the schism in Christ’s body that my spiritual ancestors had created,” Ashenden added. “And that could only really be done by returning, in all humility, to the Mother Church, in penitence for the schism and by being received penitentially into full Communion.”


What better way to heal the centuries of division in Christ's body that our ancestors created than by joining a community of the Personal Ordinariate? The Ordinariates of North America, the United Kingdom and Oceania, established by Pope Benedict XVI, are examples of lived and living ecumenism intended to restore unity.

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The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.

POPE LEO XIV

The right to freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and even the right to life are being restricted in the name of other so-called new rights, with the result that the very framework of human rights is losing its vitality and creating space for force and oppression. This occurs when each right becomes self-referential, and especially when it becomes disconnected from reality, nature, and truth.

BISHOP BARRON | Loving One's Enemy

About twenty-five years ago, Joseph Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago was accused by a young man named Steven Cook of sexual misconduct. In a speech given at Mundelein Seminary shortly thereafter, the cardinal said that he was devastated by this charge, indeed so demoralized and traumatized that he had taken to praying, spread-eagle on the ground in his chapel, that the Lord might deliver him from the shame and hurt that he felt. After two agonizing months, Cook withdrew the charge, admitting that it was based on a false memory. Who would have blamed Cardinal Bernardin if he had said, “Good riddance!” and never had a thing further to do with Steven Cook? But the cardinal didn’t do that. Instead, he travelled to see the young man, brought him the gift of a Bible, anointed him (Cook was dying of AIDS), and offered his forgiveness. That’s what loving, and not just tolerating, one’s enemy looks like.

MARCUS AURELIUS

There is but one thing of real value - to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

MARK TWAIN

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.