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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