[music] Marcus Grodi:
Well, good evening, and welcome to
'The Journey Home.' I'm Marcus Grodi,
your host for this program. Once again, let's relax.
Let's sit back. Let's hear how God has
touched someone's heart and drawn them on a journey, both originally,
in terms of, to faith, and then the deeper journey, to a place maybe this
particular guest didn't anticipate going. And I don't mean
becoming Catholic, but spending his life
studying Canon Law. But we'll talk about
that in a moment. Our guest is
Father James Bradley, former Anglican priest. He's now a priest
of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. We'll probably talk a bit
about the Ordinariate later. He's also Assistant
Professor of Canon Law at the Catholic University
of America. He hasn't lost his accent yet,
as you will find out. Father Bradley,
welcome to the program. Fr James Bradley:
Thank you for having me. It's good
to have you here. Good to have you here. And I was jokingly saying
that you didn't come across the pond just
for the program. - I didn't.
- You're here now. That's right. Yeah. I'm glad to be
in Washington DC, at the Catholic
University of America. Okay. Well, it's good
to have you here. Thank you. So, let me
take a step back and invite you to take us
on our journey. Well, I suppose
I should start right at the
very beginning. Sure. I was born on the fourth
of January, in 1984, which is the Feast of
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Not that I realized it
at the time, not that my parents
knew it. But I came
later to see that. I was born to a family
in the south of England. My father is a
solicitor, a lawyer. My mom's a housewife,
and I'm one of two. So, my sister was born
five years later. And growing up, I suppose from a
perspective of faith, really from the very
earliest time, went to church, but didn't really have
a family life of faith. We went
to church on Sunday. I remember the parish
where my baptism took place, Saint John the Baptist
in Busbridge, a beautiful Victorian
church. And that parish when
we were growing up was important in the sense that it was where
we went on Sunday. My mother, I remember
being confirmed as an adult in the Church
of England whilst I was growing up. So, there was a sort of, probably more than most
Anglicans would experience of the life of the Church. But I wouldn't describe
us as a devout family in that respect. Well, because I've wondered
from my own reading... I kind of wondered,
from afar, in my reading, to what extent in the history of
the Church of England, from its formation
in the 16th century, how quickly in becoming
the state church that it became that
which people went to as separate from
whether they themselves had faith in themselves. It seemed like that was
a common problem throughout its history. Yes. And I would say, this is probably something we'll speak about
as we go on. But in a sense,
Anglicans in England are perhaps
not confessional in the way
that they might identify themselves to be
in North America. So, in a sense, if you're
a Christian in England, you're likely
to be an Anglican and you're unlikely
to be a Catholic or a Methodist
or a Baptist or a member of the United
Reform Church or whatever. So, it was the default. When a child's born,
they get baptized, they get baptized
in the C of E. And that was certainly
the case for me, I think. My christening, as we
would have called it, in a sense, was an
important family event, a natural event
in that sense. Although, of course,
I now come to realize that it had great supernatural
importance as well. So, the parish,
St John the Baptist, was a sort of Low Church, Evangelical
Anglican parish. I remember singing hymns
from 'Mission Praise,' the old "Mission Praise'
hymn book, and the sort of things
that were organized for the young people
and children in the parish were of a sort of
evangelical nature. But that really didn't
have much of an impact. I remember it,
and I remember it fondly. But I wouldn't
describe that as a kind of formational
experience in that sense. We moved from there
several years later and moved around
a little bit and then ended up
in a beautiful village in Surrey, called Compton. And I like to say
to people in America who would understand
this phrase, "I'm straight out
of Compton." But it's not
that sort of Compton. Beautiful sort
of Surrey Hills. And in the village
was a church that had pre-dated
the Norman conquest. So, it had Saxon
foundations, St Nicholas, a beautiful,
beautiful building. And we found ourselves
very drawn to that and to village life and to the
life of the parish, which was very intertwined
with village life. My mother became, I think
a member of the PCC, the Parochial
Church Council. My father, my mother,
myself and my sister all joined the
parish choir. We sang on Sundays,
in the morning, and then occasionally
at Evensong as well, evening prayer
about once a month. And that was
a wonderful community and a place, I suppose, where we first established
a kind of ecclesial life, in that sense,
where our family life began to rotate around
going to church on Sunday, our commitments
to the choir, commitments to the PCC,
and so on and so forth. Again, not in any sort of
dramatic or explicit way, but just, there was
a pattern emerging. And I look back at that
now, certainly, and see the Lord
at work in that. Would you say,
as a young man...? Another issue
that cracks me up is that when you talk
about the village and that, it really amazed
me when I go to England, how there's so much
pride of a little town, a little village
in the architecture... Yes. We don't
find that in America. Right. We're so spread out
and so quick in the way we spread. That is a unique
part of England that I wish
we could capture, like in our
little town here nearby. But when you look back
then at that time, you guys became more
active in your church. Well, that can be parallel to becoming more active
in your community. Did you, as a young man,
have a faith in God? Had that developed
at this point? Was there family faith? Yes. I think there was, but it was a very
natural thing. It wasn't something that
I would have articulated. And I would have been
surprised if someone had asked me the question, 'Do you believe in God?' Well, yes.
Of course I do. It was a
very natural thing, and it wasn't something
that we really spoke about in the home. I was helped very much
by the fact that I, around this time
also went off to school. And I went to boarding school
from the age of seven. Now, I should say,
in defense of my parents, that they didn't sort of cart
me off to boarding school. They actually sent
me as a dayboy. And a few months
into being there they had a weekend where dayboys
could stay for a weekend and experience what it
was like to be a boarder. So, I asked my parents
if I could do this. And they said,
"Oh yeah. Sure. It will knock
any idea out of your mind of wanting to stay
at school overnight and to be a boarder there." Well, I loved it. But that's a very British
thing though, still. I mean,
that's a tradition. Eton and...
- Yeah. That's right. ...the whole nine yards. So, I begged them,
in fact, to send me. And they said, "Well, we only live half
an hour up the road. But okay." So, I went
to be a boarder. And the school was,
it was a wonderful place. I wanted to be a boarder, not to get away
from my parents, but principally because
the boarders were allowed; there was a lake. And the boarders were allowed
onto the little island in the middle of
the lake, which was called
Monkey Island. And there were rope bridges
and all the rest of it. So, it was an attraction
to a young boy. But also at the school,
there was a life of faith. It became apparent to me. I noticed that there were
things that we were doing that I hadn't
experienced either at home or elsewhere in my
life at that point. We all had to have a copy
of the NIV, and we'd sit on our bunks
in the evening. and we'd have to read
a chapter of Scripture. There'd be a sort of Bible
study before we went to bed. And I still have my NIV
on my shelf in my office. And the headmaster of
the school was a kind man and was very committed
to his faith and was involved
with the Scripture Union, which is a sort of evangelical
group in England and organized
summer camps for boys. So, we'd go off to another
school somewhere for a week in the summer
and play games and learn the Scriptures. And so, these things,
these experiences, I suppose, began to be more
prominent in my life. Now, you asked
a little while ago about whether or not
I sort of sent, I had a sense of faith. I think at this stage, it was
still a very natural thing. Yes. This is part of; it was as normal to me as
going to my Geography class that we would have
Scripture study and these sorts of things. But there was also
a chapel on the school. And on Sundays,
we went to chapel, and the headmaster would
either lead the service or someone else
would come in. There was a little
bit of music, and we'd sing a hymn
and have a sermon, and I got quite
interested in the music, and the director of music
encouraged me to audition, and he gave me a
place in the choir, and I started singing. And that was certainly
an important moment. I really enjoyed that, and I seemed to have an
aptitude for it as well, getting little solos
here and there, and as a result, they encouraged me
to have singing lessons, and as a result of that, I was encouraged
to audition to be a cathedral
chorister. Which is quite
a significant thing. So, I went to
Winchester Cathedral and had an audition there and ended up being asked
to join the cathedral choir, which was a great,
great honor. It was about the same time
as I think the BBC were doing a dramatization of Joanna Trollope's
novel, 'The Choir,' which is perhaps
not the sort of thing that we should promote. But it was very much in the kind of culture
at the time, and people were
very aware of the life of cathedrals
and of cathedral choirs. I went to Winchester and had an amazing
two or three years. It wasn't always
the happiest time, but it was a very, very
important time for me, and those experiences
that I'd mentioned about reading the Scriptures and going on
Scripture union holidays and all the rest of it, suddenly seemed
to make much more sense, and the experience that
I'd had in the parish church, which we were
still connected with, took on a new life
in the cathedral where we weren't just singing
at a service on Sunday. We were singing every day. So, every morning we would
troop over to the song school and have our rehearsal, and then in the evening, we'd sing Evensong
in the cathedral, magnificent cathedral with an amazing acoustic
and amazing organ and wonderful music, and then on Sunday,
three services: Matins, Eucharist,
and Evensong. So, the music was certainly
very important there, learning the great
classics of the English
choral tradition: Charles Stanford,
Herbert Howells, Thomas Tallis,
William Byrd, but also, a treasury
of Catholic music as well, which, people
always say to me that "Oh, your Latin's
pretty good." Well, it needs to be
to be a canon lawyer. But it's also good
because I learned to pronounce it
very early on. I didn't necessarily
understand it, but I learned to
pronounce it in singing and singing the
Latin Mass settings by Palestrina and so on. Our guest is
Father James Bradley. On this side
of the pond in America, English writers had
a big influence on men, like CS Lewis. I'm wondering at that
point in your life, did they have any influence on your side
of the pond for you? Not at all. I'm always amazed when
I speak to Americans. They say, "Oh,
you must know Tolkien. You must know CS Lewis." I really had no experience
of that growing up. My father read Tolkien. I've got his 'Lord
of the Ring' series. Well, I think he's still
got them on his shelf. But no, I never really
experienced any of that. I remember watching 'The Lion, The Witch
and The Wardrobe' on the BBC on
a Sunday afternoon, lying on the floor eating
crumpets and watching that. I remember that
very vividly. But there wasn't really
the influence of those
characters for me. Really, the...
- The music. The music. Exactly, and the experience
of worship actually. So, in the cathedral,
as I said, singing this
exquisite music, but also,
the pattern of prayer, praying every day, and particularly,
praying the Psalms. The recitation of the
Psalms every single day, at Evensong can't help but
make an impression on one, and I still now
hear the, hear a tune from
one of the Psalms and know what text
it's related to, or read the Psalms
and can hear the chant that we used to sing it to. Really a formative
experience in that sense. And I was confirmed
in the Church of England while I was there. The choristers had
a little dispensation that they could
be confirmed early because they went
to church every day. So, they were probably
ready a little earlier than the others
at the school. And so, that was
a great experience. Again, I remember
the classes for that and being confirmed and being given
by my parents a copy of 'The Book
of Common Prayer' when I was confirmed, again, a copy,
which I still have, signed by the then
Bishop of Winchester, who confirmed us. I went from there to
senior school in Sussex, to the South Downs, beautiful area
of natural beauty and an opportunity for walks
and all the rest of it. Also very close
to Chichester, which is a very
beautiful city, again, with a fine cathedral and fine musical tradition. I went to school
with a choral scholarship, and the intention was that I would
sing then in the choir, and the school had
attracted a number of former Cathedral
choristers. So, the quality of music
there was very high, and I enjoyed
very much that. And again, we would sing
this fine music in the school chapel, at Evensong on Wednesdays
and services on Sundays, and I was still a boarder. The chapel was
interesting. It had been the parish
church of the local area, and that had closed and then
become the school chapel when the school moved there
from, after the war, and the vicar or the
rector of the church when it was a parish had been a young
Henry Edward Manning before he became
Archdeacon of Chichester, before he became
a Catholic and Cardinal Archbishop
of Westminster. Now, I didn't know who
Manning was at the time, but I was familiar
with the name. But an important
development, I suppose, in my time there was that, the diocese of Chichester, the Anglican diocese where
the school was is quite, is known to be quite
High Church, quite sort of
Anglo-Catholic, historically, at least, and we were sent a new
school chaplain, a very nice man, and he arrived and he
introduced himself as Father Mark. And I thought,
hold on a second. "Father," that's Catholic, but you're in the Church
of England, aren't you? So, I was aware of these
sort of titles and things. And he said, "Well, I am. I'm a priest and so on." And very gently
and very quietly began to present
the Catholic faith in the context of
the Church of England. He was a member of the
Society of the Holy Cross, which is an Anglo-Catholic
organization that really sought
to continue the Oxford movement
tradition and bring
the Church of England back to its Catholic roots, and that was
very important. Both he and one
of the masters who was similarly inclined were very influential and
encouraged me in my faith and in my understanding
of the life of the Church and the connection,
seeing the liturgy not just as beautiful
music that we perform in this beautiful place, but to see
the real orientation of that towards God, towards the Glory of God, towards the edification
of ourselves. Great. All right. I think we're going
to take a break now. We've got some issues
outside the building here that we're going to avoid, the annual alarm
that shows off. So, we're going to
take a break right now, and we'll come
back with that. Because I don't think
folk in America may not realize as much as is more common
in England, that this High Church versus
the evangelical part the distinctiveness of that within the Church
of England is a very big distinction. It certainly is. It goes all the way
back to Newman and Pusey and that whole
group of folk. And there you are
in a church that was very much
a part of that. That's right. Absolutely. Okay. We'll come back
to that in a moment, Father Bradley. And as we take this break, I do want to remind you of
our website, chnetwork.org. If you go to that website, you'll find lots
of conversion stories, as well as an
online community, if you happen
to be on the journey. If you go to the website, you might be able
to find others who can walk with you
along with that journey. But we'll see you
back in a moment. [music] [music] Welcome back to
'The Journey Home.' I'm your host, Marcus Grodi, and our guest tonight
is Father James Bradley, former Anglican priest, and we've paused
in your journey with really music is what's the center
of your life and faith. Yes. I would say so, and the real sort of fuel
in what's coming, I hope. Yeah. So, as I was saying, I had this wonderful
experience at school. We had a chaplain who was from this
High Church tradition, and we were talking
about that a little bit, someone who has encountered
the Catholic faith, but in the Church
of England, and has tried to teach
Catholic truth, even in a church
which is separate from the fullness
of Catholic Communion. And so, that was the
experience I had at school, albeit in a very
sort of soft touch way, in a gentle way. And when I finished
at school, I went to be a choral
scholar, again, music, in Portsmouth on
the South of England, known for being
a great naval town. A funny story;
when I went for the audition for the Choral
scholarship, I didn't know
that there was; I didn't even know there
was an Anglican Cathedral in Portsmouth
to start with, let alone
a Catholic Cathedral, and as I was driving
into the city, I saw the sign
saying 'Cathedral.' So, I thought, well,
there's the cathedral. So, I stopped and got out
of the car and rang the doorbell
and said, "I'm here
for the audition." And this very nice,
tall gentleman in a gray clerical
shirt said, "Oh, I think you must mean the Anglican cathedral
down the road." Well, it turns out, later I found out it
was the Catholic bishop. I had knocked on his door. He was the one who'd said, "Go down the road
to the Anglicans." So anyway, off I went, and I sang in the Cathedral
Choir in Portsmouth for a year and worked
in the local school. And when I was there,
I lived with the precentor of the cathedral, who is the clergyman who's
in charge of the music and worship and liturgy
in the cathedral, and he was very good
at just sort of gently introducing things. So, I was obviously
going to church already. I was very involved
with music, but he would introduce
me to new things. So, the daily Eucharist that took place
in the cathedral. Well, I started
going to that. And then I realized that
there were people there when I arrived
for the Eucharist, and they'd been there
for half an hour before saying
morning prayer. So, I started
going to that. And several months
later, he; one evening,
we'd had supper, and he sat down in his
armchair and he said, "Is there anything
you want to tell me?" I said, "Yes. I think
I want to be a priest." And to this day, I don't know
where that came from. Well, I do. But I couldn't tell you what caused me
to say it that night, and it was really
a moment of decision, that was very
surprising to me. But this experience
of reverent worship, of beautiful music, of this orientation
of life towards God, which had come about
through this experience of the Church
of England and sort of High
Church Anglicanism had brought me
to that point. I still hadn't
been to university, so I went off
to university and I went to study music. So, I was involved again with singing
in the local church. In fact, I became
the director of music at a little parish there
and helped out. But all the time
that I was there, this sense of wanting
to be ordained stuck with me. I didn't try and fight it. I wasn't into fighting it. I wanted this, but I also wasn't
sure about it. So, that progressed through the three years
of university. At the end of that, I then went to work
in a parish in London. Again, a very sort of High
Church Anglo-Catholic parish, and had a great
experience there, and went then to Oxford
to study theology at St Stephen's House, which of all of the sort of
Anglican seminaries or theological colleges, I think is probably the one that people would recognize as being the most
sort of High Church Anglo-Catholic place, and I had three of the
most wonderful years of my life there
with great people. And there, I really
experienced very coherent
and integrated way all of these things that I had encountered
along the way. So, the integration of
music into the liturgy, the integration
of the liturgy into the life of faith, the integration of study and appreciation
for theology, and so on, into
this coherent whole. And I was there learning
what it was to be, as I understood it
at the time, a Catholic Christian. We would have said; we went to daily Mass,
we had benediction, we prayed the rosary, we said the
'Divine Office,' we called all
the clergy "Father." And in a sense,
it was there that I was introduced
to the Catholic faith, albeit in an
imperfect way, as I came to realize. This is something
I've wondered, and maybe I
should know this, but the High Anglo Catholics
part of Anglicanism that you were
experiencing, would they have looked back at the 16th century break
under Henry VIII and the whole gang
as unfortunate? Yeah. An accident
of history. Yeah. I considered
myself at the time as a Catholic Christian, not in communion with Rome, as a result of an
accident of history. And I had no
difficulty at any point during that period. I had grown into
this, obviously. But I would say that by
the time I was at Oxford, I had no problem with any
of the Church's teachings on any issue. I obviously thought that
they were, the Church was, the Catholic Church was
wrong about Anglican orders. But that was a sort of
misunderstanding that we could gloss over, and it might be resolved
in the future anyway, you know,
the sort of hope that... Now, I should say that at
the time of all of this, this has been
a period of, really from
the 1990s onwards, a period of real turbulence
in the Church of England, particularly
for these people who have held to Catholic
beliefs within Anglicanism, the ordination of women to
the priesthood in the 1990s. But at the time that I
was at St Stephen's house, the ordination of women
to the episcopate in the Church of England
was also going through. It was a time of
real pain, I think, and of questioning
the premise of living a Catholic life
in the Church of England. And I remember I was
present, in fact, in the Synod Chamber
when the decision was made, when the vote was taken, and it was a very
traumatic experience. But I think knowing
with certainty the truth of
the Catholic faith, even in that
imperfect setting, was an encouragement, and I realized,
in a sense, that all of the things that I believed to
be true about my faith came to me, not from
the judge of England, but, as it were, through
the Church of England, from the Catholic Church. So, you would
have, in your, I don't want to use
the word faction. That's a negative. But you grew up within
the Anglican Church, would have looked,
would have been saying, 'Amen, Amen' to any
of the critiques that we Catholics
would have made of what happened
in the 16th century. Would have said,
"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah." Absolutely. You wouldn't have called
Her 'Bloody Mary.' You know what I'm saying?
- Yeah. You wouldn't have had
a negative view of Mary. You would have looked
at Elizabeth in that. But I'm wondering also
at the time that you're talking about with the rise
of these things, was the previous hope that you're moving closer
to reunion with Rome. But all of a sudden,
these are things that are insurmountable
barriers to that union. That's right. Really, you can trace all
of this back to Newman. He has to
come up at some point. Newman in 1845
when he became a Catholic, he left behind
two groups within the Oxford
movement, really, those who decided that they would become
Catholics individually and follow him on that path, and those who decided
that they would stay to try and encourage and grow a Catholic
understanding within Anglicanism, but for the purpose
of eventual reunion, not just to make the Church
of England Catholic, but to do that for
the purpose of reaching a point where
there is a conference between the Church of England
and the Catholic Church. That was very, very
important in all of this, and really I think
from my earliest days at St Stephen's House
at Oxford that I realized that that
had to be the answer. You can't just
sort of say, you can't be faithful
to the Lord's call that all may be one,
and also say, but not us. And try and live a Catholic
life in a finite way. It has to result
in Communion, and the movements
that we were part of, organizations that will be
familiar to some viewers, like Forward in Faith,
the Society of the Holy Cross, the Confraternity of
the Blessed Sacrament, all very Catholic-sounding
organizations, all during their history
and to that point, had stated explicitly that the end goal was
Communion with the Holy See. We felt that.
We believed that. We pursued that. But as you said,
these decisions are being made that were
insurmountable barriers. That's right. So, when the ordination of
women to the episcopate was before the Church
of England, I remember there was a meeting
of the Lambeth Conference, and Cardinal Kasper
came to speak to the Lambeth Conference, and he said, "You're
making a decision. Are you a Church of
the first millennium or a Church of
the Reformation? And if you go forward
with this," he said, "Then we'll continue
to have dialogue, because we're bound
to that morally. But the end of that dialogue
cannot be the same." And when the ordination
of women to the episcopate took place in the
Church of England, when it was decided on, in a sense, that
ecumenical conversation, what we might call
'Inter-ecclesial Reunion,' between the Church
of England as a whole and the Catholic
Church fell away. It was no longer a
reasonable expectation. Instead, it left groups
within Anglicanism who wanted to continue to pursue the
ecumenical agenda, this trajectory
towards reunion, it left them with
the responsibility to see that through. I was at
St Stephen's House when Pope Benedict
XVI announced 'Anglicanorum coetibus,' which is the apostolic
constitution that allowed for Ordinariates
to be established, precisely to allow
groups of Anglicans to come into full communion
with the Catholic Church. I was going to say,
up until then, starting in the 1980s, we
had the pastoral provision. - Right.
- Which was for individuals. Absolutely,
and a great advocate of the pastoral
provision in England was Monsignor
Graham Leonard, who we were
speaking of earlier. But that never took, never took off
in England, for historical reasons. The pastoral provision,
they were married, former Anglican clergy
who were ordained. But there weren't... There wasn't that same
movement, that same structure that
was put in place in the US. So, in England,
it still was possible for individuals
to become Catholic and to be ordained,
even married clergy. But not en masse,
not with groups, not with any structure. So, when I was sitting
in my room in college, we knew something
was going to happen. Hitting F-8, I think, which is the refresh
button on my computer, with a very good
friend of mine, and there, the Apostolic
Constitution appeared on the screen, and we read it and looked
at each other and said, [knocks on table]
"That's it." It made sense. Everything that
we had done, everything that we'd said, everything that we
believed had now a purpose and
a very clear trajectory. Now, that was 2009, and the Ordinariates
didn't appear until 2011, in England, January 2011. I was at the end of my
studies in my last year, I think, at college, and the advice
that we were given was simply to continue
doing what you're doing until there's
a reason not to. So, I was ordained in
the Church of England. I went to serve a title,
a Curacy, in Kent, in John Fisher's
diocese, in fact, the Diocese of Rochester. I was ordained a deacon. I was due to be
ordained a priest. But I was never ordained
a priest in the Church of England. But I went to a parish
that was very sympathetic with all of this. The parish priest, the vicar was very sympathetic
with this way of thinking. The parishioners had been,
for many years, in this sort of
Anglo Catholic world. In fact, the principal
of my theological college had been the parish
priest there. So that's the sort of
conference that existed. When I got there, there
was already much talk about the Ordinariate. Although it didn't exist,
there was an excitement and a desire to pursue it. And so, we gathered
together parishioners who were interested, and we began
to meet and to do, actually, to run an RCIA
course, essentially, ourselves, for our
Anglican parishioners. And many of them decided,
thanks be to God, to come into the Catholic
Church later on. A very important moment in
all of that was the visit of Pope Benedict
to England in 2010. So, having announced
the Ordinariate in 2009, he then came for a state
visit the following year, in September. And I think, given
England's history, any visit of a Pope to
England is significant. John Paul II's
visit in the 1980s. <i>Yeah. Yeah.</i> But Pope Benedict had
already revealed himself as someone
who understood us, and there was a great
excitement around his visit amongst Anglo-Catholics,
High Church Anglicans, who were looking
towards the establishment of these Ordinariates
and what that might mean. And we took a group of
about 30 parishioners to Hyde Park
in Central London for the vigil before the beatification
of John Henry Newman. And I remember vividly
being in Hyde Park surrounded by all
of these people, many of whom had
been Anglicans, and had
since become Catholics, and had gone to Hyde Park
for that reason. Many of whom
I didn't know, but were obviously
Catholics. And Pope Benedict came in and he gave a magnificent
homily, as he always did, and then we had
benediction. And I can picture it
in my mind now that the stage
with the Blessed Sacrament on the altar,
and Pope Benedict, the universal
pastor of the Church kneeling before the
Blessed Sacrament, surrounded by the bishops
of England and Wales, with the priests
and deacons, and the field
full of laity. And I thought,
here I am in the midst of what is the Church
before me, and yet I'm
not part of it. And I realized
at that moment that I had no choice
but to be part of it. It was an overwhelming
sense, a compelling, impelling
sense that this was, this was the Church of Jesus Christ, and that all of the things
that I believed about the Church
found their realization in what I was seeing
very tangibly before me. So, I left Hyde Park. We went back home and we
began tough conversations about what this was
going to look like, and I remember having, just soon after
my ordination as a deacon of
the Church of England, going into the
church one morning. As the curate, it was my
responsibility to unlock the church in the morning
and to light all the lamps. So, I went around lighting
all the lamps at all the various shrines,
and I stopped. I looked up at the altar
and thought, I thought, I needed to stand
at the altar of the Lord. So the real sense
of priestly vocation. And if that means that
being a Catholic and putting myself forward
for ordination means celibacy and so on
and so forth, then in a sense, all of
that's in the Lord's hands. So, the vocational journey,
as it were, towards the priesthood and this real sense that
I had to become a Catholic were perhaps two sides
of the same coin. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Family? So, yes. My wonderful parents
and sister who have been so supportive
and so kind throughout all of this. When I told them that I wanted
to become a Catholic; this has been going on in
the background for some time. And when 2011 came along
and we said, "Now we're going
to do this," we left the Church of England
with 40 parishioners on the Sunday
before Ash Wednesday. And on the Monday morning, my mother called me
and said, "Now, look. We know this is
important to you. And if it's important to you,
it's important to us. What can we do?" And I said, "Well,
don't become Catholics, just because
I'm becoming one. I'd rather you were
lousy Anglicans than lousy Catholics. But you could go
to the classes. You could attach yourself
to one of these groups, and see how it goes, and make a decision
at the end. Go and hear
the Catholic faith proclaimed to you,
in a sense, and make a decision
at the end." So, they did that. My sister did
something similar. She was at university
at the time. and at the end, they all,
thanks be to God, decided to become Catholic. So, my sister, who will
never let me forget this, was received into
the Catholic Church on the Wednesday
of Holy Week. I was received
with our parishioners on the Thursday of Holy Week. And my parents were received
on Holy Saturday, and my sister and I
were their sponsors. Oh, wow. So, we
were greatly blessed. So, within the
Anglican Church, you have these two groups
of Anglo Catholics. One group either... One group converts
individually. <i>Yes.</i> The other group now, well, is coming as groups. Then you have
another group which stays with the goal of kind of a
long-term unity, but a slow, gradual move. But there's a lot of
other Anglicans... Yes. ...that may not be keen to this whole
Catholic thing. - Yes. Yes.
- How do they respond? Did you have a group
of friends in that group of folk that; how do they respond to
this whole movement of Anglicans
who are papists? Bewilderment. I think for most
Anglicans, they would say, "Well,
if you want to be Catholic, go and be Catholic." They don't
really understand the Oxford Movement's
intentions and what it was
there to do, to kind of awaken within
the Church of England, within Anglicanism, a greater understanding
of Catholic truth. To be honest,
I'd, by that stage, drifted so far from the
mainstream Anglicanism that I'd experienced
growing up in beautiful Saxon churches and singing in the
cathedral and so on. That had really been
formational and foundational for me. It was, as it were,
the language that I spoke when I talked
about my faith. This was the natural
trajectory for you because of
the way the Lord had prepared you
all along. Exactly, and so,
when I became Catholic, really, the people
that I left behind weren't so much
Evangelicals or sort of liberal
progressive Anglicans. Because we'd already
distanced ourselves in the sense from that
by being Anglo-Catholics. It was more people
who chose not to come into
the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate
when that was set up in 2011. So you had mentioned
Father Graham Leonard, who was the second guest
on 'The Journey Home' back in 1997. But he was pretty high up
in the Anglican Church. Right? I mean, he was
bishop to the queen, if you will. Right? He was bishop of London.
That's right. Bishop of London. How did the Anglicans
respond to that when that happened? That's long before the
Ordinariate had anything. I mean, this is
a fairly high prelate that becomes Catholic. Well, I mean, I don't really
remember the 1990s, but certainly, there
were kind of rumblings. The people that had left
had left their posts. They weren't
quite deserters, but yeah, they'd really
run away from the fight, and the fight was to
continue to build sort of Catholicism within
the Church of England. But it had got to
the point by the time that the Ordinariates
were set up that the end goal that
we'd always, always said was the end goal, which was
Communion with Rome, was just no longer possible at a kind of
intra-ecclesiastical way. So, the only way
to achieve that, by the time the Ordinariates
came along, after the ordination of women
to the episcopate and so on, the only way to achieve that
is in groups, and that's Pope
Benedict's genius. He saw that,
he understood that, and he made
provision for it. Thanks be to God. Another question
that I've had, because in our work with
the Coming Home Network, we're working with
Protestant and Anglican and other non-Catholic Christian ministers
all the time, is the Ordinariate, to be a part
of the Ordinariate, unlike the pastor
provision where you're an
individual minister petitioning Rome to have
dispensation from celibacy so you become
a Catholic priest. In the Ordinariate,
you have to have a group. Usually, yes. You're usually
supposed to. So, what I wondered is, what happens when
an Anglican priest, in his parish,
he has that awakening. Yes. And he wants to. But how does he start
talking to his folk to find out how many of them
want to come with him? Well, we simply said to them,
"This is being proposed, and in good faith, we need to respond
to that proposal, and to do that,
we need to talk about it." So, the reality of the
Ordinariate is there, and I think,
for Anglican clergy, who are of a kind of
Anglo-Catholic outlook, that the presence of the
Ordinariate, in a sense, keeps asking the question, and it allows them to have
the conversations with their parishioners. Why aren't we
part of the Ordinariate? Why haven't we
become Catholics? If we profess all that the
Catholic Church believes and we find ourselves
at odds with what the Church
of England professes, then what's stopping us? What is it?
Is it a personal thing? Is it a theological thing? Is it a liturgical thing? Work it out, and then work out
where you need to be. And I think that's
the great gift of the Ordinariate,
in a sense. It's part of
the landscape now. Someone said to me
a few years ago, it's a little bit
like the microwave. In the old days, people
didn't want a microwave in their kitchen. But the microwave
came along, and now everyone's
got a microwave. and you might not like it,
but it's there. And in a sense,
the Ordinariate is there. It's not going anywhere, and it might be a thorn
in the side to some people, but eventually, I think
it will be seen, as Pope Benedict said,
as a prophetic gesture, as a constant reminder that
you can bring these gifts, these things that have
brought you to faith, into the full communion
of the Catholic Church without any diminution, and, in fact,
with great gain. Another aspect
of the Ordinariate, which I wanted
to ask you, is there's no guarantee
for you when you entered
the Church that you were going
to become a priest. Absolutely.
That's right. So, outside
the Ordinariate, if a Presbyterian pastor,
a Baptist, a Lutheran become Catholic,
they become a layman. Yes. And then in time, they can pursue, through work
with the local bishop, whether they might be called
to the priesthood. There's no guarantee. And there's no guarantee
in the Ordinariate. Right. Although in
the very early stages of the Ordinariate, because we came
with groups, the Holy See was very good at ensuring that all of
the necessary paperwork and decisions
that needed to be made about ordination happened
at the same time. So, remarkably... In fact, in some
cases, almost beforehand. Indeed. Yeah. Decisions were made
about me before I became
a Catholic. That's right.
- Okay. When we were received
into the Catholic Church, the vicar and I, obviously, we became
laymen at that moment. We were no
longer Anglican clergy, and we weren't clergy
in the Catholic Church. But we immediately became
candidates for ordination. In fact, were told to
wear our clerical attire, because we went from
being Anglican clergy one minute, to being candidates
for ordination the next. That obviously, there's not the same
need for that now. If a pastor brings
a group, then the Ordinariate
often finds a way to care for that group whilst that person is
preparing for ordination. But you're right.
There's no guarantees. There's still that sort of
throwing yourself at the mercy of the Church
and doing that in faith. I would only say that
I was greatly blessed in that. Yeah. Another question
that we often get from men and women
on the journey who come from
other traditions, they wonder, well,
is there going to be an Ordinariate
for the rest of us? Right. So, why was it
uniquely for Anglicans versus Lutherans or
Presbyterians or Baptists? Well, I think
there are probably two or three reasons. Amongst them,
first of all, the Second Vatican
Council recognized that within Anglicanism, certain Catholic
institutions were retained. So, unlike many other
protestant denominations, the Church of England,
Anglicanism more broadly has bishops and diocese and the threefold order of priests, deacon
and bishop, so on and so forth. These institutions -
cathedrals is another one. You don't find cathedrals in many Protestant
denominations. Because of that,
it's easier, in a sense, to patch things over. Also, because of these
groups, this development of a very clear group
of Anglicans for over a hundred years
who have said, "We believe all that the
Catholic faith teaches, and we believe that
so that we can bring ourselves to this point." I mean, we haven't
mentioned ARCIC, but the Anglican
Roman Catholic International Commission, the formal ecumenical
dialogue, that was the great hope
for these groups, and when that didn't
realize its goals, at least for now, and when the Church
of England and the rest of
the Anglican Communion walked away from some
of the common beliefs about order and faith, that were held
with Catholics, those groups were kind of
left without any leadership, and so, in a sense, took
the initiative themselves, approached the Holy See, and Pope Benedict
recognized that. Yeah. I don't know too
many groups like that amongst the
Congregationalists, the Baptists or
the Presbyterians. Well, we pray
that that might happen. Exactly, but there isn't
presently a history within those groups
of men and women becoming more Catholic and thinking they're
going to end up there. Right.
There are some groups. So, for instance, there have
been some Lutheran groups, where that's happened, in
Scandinavia, for instance, where a congregation has kind of gravitated
towards the Catholic Church and been received
in a corporal way. Yeah. Yeah. So, we just
need to pray for that. Absolutely. Another question.
I do have an email, but before I get there, I remember reading
in Newman, Newman's journey that an
interesting event happened in the 1860s,
I think it was, and that was that
Father Faber translated a Catholic book into English
for the first time. It was DeMontfort's
book on Mary. 'Devotion To Our Lady.' Faber did that. Introduced it
into English. Right? Pusey writes a book
ripping it to shreds because the devotions
to Mary are not comfortable. And then Newman
has to respond, and Newman talks about
English culture versus other
Catholic cultures. So, how about the journey
of the Ordinariates to Catholic
devotion to Our Lady? Well, again,
in the Church of England, I think many of the people who
now make up the Ordinariates were very Catholic
in their beliefs. So, they understood and
believed in the sacraments and so on, and they also had
great Marian devotion, and the clue is in the
title of the Ordinariate, 'Our Lady of Walsingham.' Walsingham, this tiny little
village in Norfolk where Our Lady's said
to have appeared over a thousand years ago, and which was a great
site of pilgrimage. Many of the monarchs of
England went on pilgrimage to Walsingham. That became a place
of real importance for Anglicans who were
becoming Catholic. In fact, the
Catholic Shrine... There's a Catholic shrine
and an Orthodox shrine and an Anglican shrine. There's even a Methodist
church in the village, and it's a great sort of
center in that sense of Marian devotion,
but a very ecumenical place. Albeit, separate still. Our Lady of Walsingham, I think, is a sign
of a reminder to us of what it looks like when Christians
come together. Not just Christian
to each other, but Christians
with each other, to be in Communion. And Our Lady, through
Walsingham, I think, drew a lot of Anglicans into a devotion to Our Lady
and to the saints, to a more Catholic
understanding of their own faith, such that they're
then prepared to come into full Communion. All right. Excellent. Let's take our email. Thomas from Massachusetts
writes... So, I think
this is broadly speaking, what we call
'The Branch Theory,' that people sort of
really emerged from the Oxford movement, that there are three
branches to Christianity: Rome, Constantinople
and Canterbury. I think the point is this, that you can only
hold to that if all three believe
and affirm the same fundamental
doctrines and teachings. And the point is that
it's been shown not to be the case
with Anglicanism, precisely because of the
decisions it's made towards the
ordination of women, and so on and so forth. Now, I don't want to
so focus on those as the kind of reasons
to become a Catholic. Well, even with
the 39 articles. The 39 articles. Yeah. I mean, that is not aligned
with the Catholic Church. Teaching on contraception
and so on and so forth. All of these things,
they are, as it were, signs that the Church
of England and the Anglican Communion
cannot be a branch, as it were,
of the Catholic Church, because they're so far
from Catholic teaching on these matters. So, I would say that
someone who finds themselves in those circumstances would find a home in the
Ordinariate, in a sense, because the liturgical life
that will be familiar - the prayers, the music,
the culture of the parish - all of that's retained in
the life of the Ordinariates and in full communion
of the Catholic Church. All right. Excellent.
Another email. Let's see,
Erica from Texas. So, in a typical parish
in the US, I think you'd find
the liturgy celebrated really quite reverently,
actually, I find. In the Ordinariates, the music would be
from the Anglican tradition, a lot of English music. You might find things
that are familiar from Latin chants,
but in English, and also, the way that the liturgical
celebration occurs. So, the priest is often
facing the same way as the people. It's often more solemn than perhaps you might get
in some parishes, with the use of incense
and servers and so on. And the language, of course,
is the language from the Book of
Common Prayer, albeit sort of passed through the filter
of the Catholic faith. Do American
Ordinariate priests have to get
an English accent? Unfortunately not.
Wouldn't that be great? "Unfortunately not." [both laugh] So, let's say we've got
an Anglican watching the program
right now. What would you say to
them about their need to consider the journey? All of the things that are
important to you, all of the things that have
formed you in the faith, all of the things
that allow you to speak with passion about
your faith in Christ, your love of the Church,
the beauty of the liturgy, all of those things came
from the Catholic Church, and all of those things
find their proper home in the Catholic Church. And there is no need to
jettison those things whilst also gaining the
full communion and peace, the peace of coming
into full communion. You say that
within those groups of, within Anglicanism, they look on
the 16th century as - what'd you call it? An accident of history. An accident of history. Do the majority of Anglicans
look at it that way? You know what I'm saying?
- No. Or would there be some
that would say, no, and they would,
they would really... Well, I've
certainly had people who have told me that
I'm completely wrong in holding it that way
and who think otherwise. But I would say that most who have sort of
a sacramental, broadly Catholic
understanding of Anglicanism would see it
in that way. Yeah. All right. We've got
a couple of moments. Could you close us
with a blessing? Certainly. Thank you. The peace of God which
passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds
in the knowledge and love of God and of His Son,
Jesus Christ, Our Lord, and the blessing
of Almighty God, the Father, the Son
and the Holy Ghost, be with you and remain
with you always. All right.
Father Bradley... Thank you so very much. ...thank you very
much for joining us, and our prayers are
with you and your work, as you teach up at
a Catholic university. Thank you. Thank you for
doing that for us. Thank you for joining us
on this episode of 'The Journey Home.' I do pray that his journey
is an encouragement to you. God bless you.
See you next week. [music]
