The Journey Home - 3-5-2012- Joanna Bogle

good evening and welcome to the journey home my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program each week I have well this week's pretty special each week I have the opportunity to bring before you men and women who because of the movement of the Holy Spirit in their hearts and minds were brought home to the church but tonight our guest is is a woman who's been a lifelong Catholic but also a longtime friend and it's good to have Joanna Bogle back on the journey home program she's an English author journalist broadcaster and familiar to most of you EWTN viewers for her program feasts and seasons she's certainly been on the journey home before and she has a blog she's a blog writer the modern equivalent of the hell are Belloc's who had to write a book every week to stay alive well now we got the modern blog writers I've got something to say every everyday Joanna Bogle dot blog spot.com if you want to write that down with Joanna it is so good to have you back on the jury yeah it's good to have you just around to sit and talk and and what's amazing to the eyelets said to the audience that Joanna and I talked quite a bit but we are never refighting the American Revolution that battle doesn't get in what we're really talking about is the growth of the faith and the church on both sides of the big pond right I mean very much so yes yes and things even in our the time we've known each other was almost 20 years the the world has changed a lot in that time in the the way the church is affecting both countries very much so we've seen extraordinary things some good some very good some bad and I would say lots of very good things in the church and some really rather ghastly things in society yes extraordinary changes in all sorts of ways I mean one thing that we see from from over here is you know we look on what's happening with the royal family and and all of politics there there seems to be an openness to the Catholic Church amongst the hires in England we don't understand I least I understand that Wells American but it seems that there's a softening and openness a willingness just were see in our news I would say taken with the wide suit of history that is certainly true I think if you had said to anyone a hundred years ago and certainly two hundred years ago that the heir to our throne would go to a papal funeral canceling his own wedding arrangements to do so which is exactly what happened with Prince Charles and the funeral of Blessed John Paul the great John Paul they would have been a standard they would have been a standard and we have in my lifetime seen two magnificent really magnificent papal visits to Britain and in 2012 we'll have the anniversary of the visit of John Paul to Britain and then just two years ago we had this state visit of our present Holy Father which was a huge a triumphant magnificent success gosh that would have seemed absolutely unthinkable to anyone in Victorian England and beyond unthinkable to anyone in Georgian England I mean just completely impossible so yeah there is there is an openness and we've seen some very significant conversions to the church there's a slight danger in this in that one level it's not quite chic to be Catholic in Britain it's quite chic in a sense that you know Catholics were persecuted hundreds of years ago so it's sort of chic to be a persecuted minority so it's very okay to be Catholic in that way at another level of course it's not alright to be Catholic because the Church's position on protection of the unborn abortion is a disgraceful and ghastly thing to do Garcia the idea that the church says to men cannot marry not may not but but cannot is regarded as a dreadful thing to say and we are probably going to have gay marriage unquote dumped on us by Parliament and please God we may be able to oppose it but it doesn't look as if the opposition will win because I mean the government has a majority and so on so at another level you know things could be difficult not only for Catholics but for all people of deep religious convictions and already there's a very good alliance between Catholics and evangelicals and Jewish people who are very very concerned about the new marriage swati's not marriage how can you call it marriage the new marriage proposals so one level for good Catholics who love the church loyal to the Holy Father you think things could be tough but it on another level as this this new openness to and a rediscovery of our history I mean the most recent royal wedding last year Prince William's wedding was in when in one way of very Catholic ceremony Westminster Abbey lots of ornate robes candles things that they would not have had at a royal wedding in the in the 18th century so yeah so your lifelong cap yes I am never even for a second put your toe outside the church and visited or considered or considered yes I'm certainly a lifelong Catholic baptized as a baby I'm very grateful for the faith I was taught certainly in my not teens early 20s I found Protestant Church is very attractive in a way because it Oliver a jolly and very open and in a way of course whatever you're brought up with is slightly boring isn't it you know it just is and I had always gone to Mass every Sunday and thank god I've never stopped there was never a time I broke that but there was a slight sense in which particularly Anglican churches were very beautiful lovely music I love singing hymn still do I liked a lovely open service but to me to be honest I think what helped me was that when the Catholic Church introduced the vernacular English in the liturgy some has been dreadful we all know about that silly guitars and stupid songs and poor English but even allowing for that I mean American English some really ghastly jargon now we have them as some beautiful English no problem but for a while when I was in my 20s I remember thinking I love the mess in English but I also loved the Anglican service with its dignity and so on seemed to me they have the best of both worlds I was brought up on a very silent mass and so on and I love the Latin tradition but I wanted a you know mass I could see and hear and I I do find it much easier to pray the mass to pray it when it's a mix of Latin and English you know what's going to hear it you know it's valid if it's all silent how do you how do you know it's valid and so so to one degree I I never never wanted to anything other than a Catholic one church one faith one Lord there's just no doubt in my mind when I was a strong Evangelical Protestant regardless of whether I was I was the first ordained the Congregationalists and then very quickly Presbyterian but really during all that time my loyalty as how I understood my faith was English but it was the English evangelicals the CS Lewis's it was that strand of evangelicalism that was a part of the church or maybe even separate from the church but very committed to inspiration of Scripture conversion to Jesus Christ evangelization living a holy life I mean that was but it really came from from the English to America that great influence on dear did that ever influence on you yes it did I remember as a as a Catholic in my late teens are being urged to read CS Lewis and it was an enormous help it nurtured my faith I had to say it made me more of a Catholic because CS Lewis was profoundly Catholic in his thinking for example on purgatory I mean these letters to Malcolm and he writes about purgatory very beautifully but I did find this urgency that he had in explaining the faith and he did that and wireless radio talks at the time during the Second World War and he had a huge and wonderful influence on people but it was in that sense evangelistic I am also very fortunate in that as a Catholic and I certainly never wavered I mean I went to Mass every Sunday and I I thank my mother for that it was it was long negotiable I mean you know of course you got a mass on something I mean you know people died for this this is you know you don't even don't even think about not going of course you must pray and be developed when you're there but is absolutely minimal that you go at the Holy Sacrifice of the mass this is the most this is heaven on earth don't even think and I'm so grateful for my mother that the discipline of our family was that sunday is sacred and you go to Mass on Sunday I'm so grateful for that I think there's a lot to be said for family discipline in that way but I did find CS Lewis and that evangelistic thing meshed beautifully with my Catholic faith and I was reading him alongside Ronald Knox and as I got older he told by then reading John Henry Newman bit chewy for my teenage years but I remember reading his apologia privy to sewer on the train and finding it so exciting really that I missed the station at Catherine Cookson and went whooshing onto Waterloo and I know that that was when I was in my 20s because I was working on a newspaper then in Richmond and that was the line and when I got to Waterloo oh gosh I'd been reading so all of that really helped I think that English tradition to an English language are under under the Providence of God has become the world language and I was conscious of that and so much in the in the best of the English tradition was also shaped by certain Anglicanism which we you know it's just a reality of history for a lot of people that's how they came to know Almighty God so there's something in it they're all mighty God used that and of course that was also a patriot I hope I still add there's so much about my country that is ghastly at the moment but I love my country and you can't love it without loving the whole of that tradition and and there's something very beautiful about that then of course the English Catholic tradition which is very rich and that was the heritage into which I was born and I love it many viewers we've received emails from viewers that when they hear conversion stories sometimes I wouldn't want to use the word jealous or envious but sometimes they'll express the idea that you know I've been faithful I've been faithful in my faith all my life but I wish I had that I wish I had had that empowering awakening maybe maybe if I had had something like that it might make me appreciate what I've had all along and I'm wondering as you look back in your own life talk about the so you would represent those that have have been in the long run not the short Sprint's but the long distance runner in the faith but have you had awakening with Duncan within that yes I've never been jealous of somebody who had a conversion story but like a lot of lifelong Catholics I've been fascinated by it we all adore reading their conversion stories I think I would also say and gosh I'm not unusual in this at all I owe a lot to previous converts because my grandfather converted to the Catholic faith and this was a massive thing for him I mean it was long before I was born it was in the 1930s and my mother was 11 or 12 at the time and so she converted to so this was a massively important part of our family history and in a sense the way I was brought up was to be told a great deal about that and the books I'd mentioned particular Ronald Knox and Chester's and of course again a Newman particular John Henry Newman and Woodhouse at a big part to play in all that to not be enchanted by PG with her oh and so much more and I have to say the whole English thing about being funny that's also I don't know whether it's Mary England but that was part of us yeah I I think that whole English Catholic thing people yeah pity what a pity PG Woodhouse wasn't imagined because he was to go much about totaling off the mercy whatever happened I can't see was anything Catholic conversion thing was hugely important to my family background and when I was little girl we didn't go to Mass in a church because there wasn't one there where we lived and we used to walk past the local Anglican Church which was a magnificent is a magnificent beautiful pre-reformation building to the tea Hut that he had in the park where there was mass and I didn't realize the word t-hub meant the hut where you have tea it was only much later it dawned on me of course I'd also been there during the week and had ice cream so it was the tea hot but the word tea heart I ran the word together to me it was just the place where you had mass but I remember my mother explaining that of course there was only one church and there was a grateful model in Henry the eighth and so there was the Anglican Church which was temporary and it was all a great pity and the Queen was a wonderful person we were all hundreds applauded her very patriotic family my father in the army and all of that very patriotic stand up when the royal family when the national anthem was played and all that but it was just a muddle and we were part of that original church and I I always understood that and also that grandpa had made not a massive sacrifice but with some social sacrifice to become a Catholic wasn't always quite so easy in the thirties and it was also perceived in the way I understood it as a child is a very significant intellectual thing that it was an intellectually coherent thing and there was always more to learn and my memory of my grandpa who was was very much books books books big picture of Thomas More big shabby old flat a certain sort of sorrow in there like that first world war generation you know and he got a dreadful cough every winter because of the gassing and the trenches and all of that very patriotic very patriotic so that was very much part of their Catholicism it's intellectually coherent real grandpa went to Mass every morning I remember staying with my grandparents as a little treat in there in a very shabby cozy house code bookish going with grandpa to morning Mass these were very profound things I think in the end though even if you brought up a Catholic you do have to have your own conversion experience and at some point in my 20s I came to understand in a very strong way exactly why I was a Catholic I owe a lot to a thing called a faith movement I a lot to the faith movement which was an intellectually coherent passionately loyal to the church movement synthesizing faith and science that's never been my thing aren't no scientist but he gave this intellectual crunch at a time there was a lot of confusion in the church in the 70s I always say was a conversion experience but it made me understand yes you can defend your faith and also you keep learning about it keep reading not just Newman but all the new people with that what you're saying is and I agree every single individual person needs to make an intellectual willful choice of Jesus Christ in the church yes and this is not even just a once-off choice because you have to keep making it and there will be times and I'm sure there will be times in my life yet to come and in all our lives where you have to make that choice again perhaps under difficult circumstances when not life isn't always easy once private life it may not be easy just because it's been relatively smooth might not always be the case you have to make a choice and this is a choice of the heart and the mind and the soul and the mind is part of that I was very much taught that I would also say that the English Catholicism in which I was brought up was in one sense very tolerant it had to be because we had learned if you like the hard way that you have to be tolerant in a real sense of the word that doesn't mean everything is acceptable but you live with what is unacceptable in the hopes of interchanging patriotic very English not stupidly but a great love of country based on also the sacrifice of war and so on and I was brought up on stories of that of course you know Dunkirk and all of that and and also a large miss a few the Catholic Church is true and you believe it because it is true and this is a truth consecrated by the blood of martyrs in our land in our city in London Thomas Moore Edmund Campion but there was also a sense in which my father who was not a Catholic when my parents married it was what was called a mixed marriage but my father was a most wonderful person it's just terrific person and very much the moral leader of our family Oh wonderful daddy and a terrific just the best husband and father there could be and I knew and everybody knew and he knew that the reason he was not a Catholic was not because he chose not to be but he was born into an England where for 400 years the Catholic Church was persecuted I don't think until he met my mother when fat he told me once until until I met your mother I mean the mimetic happening and the families knew each other and they liked each other and when they got mommy and daddy got married everyone was delighted you know but for him Catholicism was jolly good but it wasn't something that was in his heritage and that gave us an understanding that you needed a large view of things but having said that I also learned from my father funnily enough a deep respect for the Catholic Church because I remember in discussions on the great moral issues of the 60s my father was one hundred percent with the Pope I think your Pope is right which was grand you know gave me your understanding here is Peter on the rock I think your Pope is right and I've always remembered that in a funny way he taught me in some Catholic morality in a very profound way and I really have helped you then appreciate it more than you otherwise would have yes yes very much and I also remember my father being profoundly moved when he would come to Mass with us profoundly moved and on my wedding I mean I gonna start crying in a minute which is lovely happy happy day I love my father weeping well I suppose daddies do you know because I was terribly close my father who most lovely daddy and on earth and everything and I've been all this excitement and fuss and Mommy and Me enjoying every moment of all of this and so on and then mummy was sitting in the front pew and here's daddy leading me in and of course he worked and of course I wept but it was partly because the mass was very beautiful the words are so glorious and here is this fine young man Jaime Bogle and he's a Catholic a convert so my parents were thrilled everything was fine but I do think that my father's great reverence for the mass was was partly precisely the reason freshness that perhaps only a non Catholic could see and I mean that is something magnificent the holding up of this this transformed bread which is unimaginable this is Jesus Christ and this is awesome maybe more takes it for granted as a Catholic well no we shouldn't it's it can be just as in any faith you can start taking too for granted when you've always seen and that doesn't say that what they're doing is bad just because you take it for granted but you've got to take a step back and look at it and say is this true mmm that's the issue I mean the it's truth that stands as I've often said something is true not because the Catholic Church said it's true but the Catholic Church said it's true because it's true yeah I mean there's the a real fine distinction and that's what we try and point to I did have another question which when you say England mmm as I'm listening as an American are you thinking of England are you thinking of Britain which includes Ireland and Scotland the church in England are you thinking of that or do you think of a unified Church of Ireland and Scotland Oh your vanishing point I suppose if I'm honest I am English and I think about England as England and this is a very intense point at the moment because of Scotland perhaps having a declaration of independence you know there's this possible referendum and so on I am passionately committed to the Union I think the Union has served Scotland very well and Wales and so on the whole Irish thing is a great big agony but I must admit to a certain English arrogance which is not particularly attractive in me if I think of Scotland I think that is a magnificent nation but it is another nation it's it's at one level quite different and I wouldn't dream of thinking of myself climbing Scotland in that sense but I have to say I think the union of England and Scotland has served both of them very very well and certainly in terms of England Scotland has been magnificent it's provided us with many of the leaders of Britain and the innovators and the engineers and the intellectuals and the fabulous heritage so if there ever is a I along with most people in Britain England I think I would regard it as a tragedy of course English should be an unbearably arrogant but we all know that I mean it's something you're also brought up with and we've now become adept at apologizing which is probably quite good I am conscious as well that as a Londoner I'm arrogant about being a southerner Londoner I am probably somewhere in my background there's a sort of sneering at other people which is revolting but having said that I'm not sure I'm being quite genuine because I'm very conscious of all the faults of the English and I'm also conscious that I'm living now in a dying culture I mean our birth rate across Europe were dying we're dying the future of Britain and particularly England is in doubt because the biggest single growth is in the Islamic population in the Islamic faith many of our cities are now likely to be Islamic in the short term and there's no point in being arrogantly English it's an anachronism to be we have to be humble and admit that we have lost so much and even this Catholic resurgence which we see may gently but we see it is a gift of God in tough times and in these tough times there won't be much room for English arrogance I'm allowed to cherish what I love about England but I'm under no illusions and I'm under no illusions in America it seems that what I would call the most prominent heresy in America is the individualism of the faith which is a Jesus in me without any need for a church or anyone else to tell me what that means Jesus and me so on the positive side will they love Jesus Christ a surrender to Jesus Christ Allah for scripture maybe trying to live it out but any idea that I need to be a part of a church or sacraments or even somebody or some group telling me how to live my faith that's at best an add-on man-made but it's just Jesus in me I see that across America aims at hit England yes in snow I think a bigger problem in England is a sort of casual secular view which has a lovely spiritual machinist when I needed this is a legacy of Anglicanism it's the legacy of the established church I think you could get it even if the established church was Catholic and I'm very glad it isn't I don't really like that concept of an established Church does not in the end been that helpful truth is truth it will triumph you know you don't need to have it imposed by the government but or even too arrogant at churches it's not a good thing no a bigger problem in Britain is oh well I think I'm a Christian I don't go to church of course but the church is sort of there for nice things for making me feel good when somebody dies they'll whoosh into heaven and we'll have a lovely church service and it's church you know it's almost the church without Christ rather than me it's the opposite of the American problem which is Christ without the church it's a mushy you'll get this silly expression where people say well Joanna I'm not a Catholic but I'm a very spiritual person and I've always wanted to say the other thing way around well I'm a Catholic because all true and I know I should live this way and I love it but I'm not really so that's perhaps not entirely true but I say it deliberately - do you know what I mean we're all spiritual people so of course we are but I find it's a mushy slightly bogus unconsciously arrogant feeling of I don't really need Jesus Christ with the nails ran through his hands I'm a very nice person really I know Jesus is lovely but you know I'm very spiritual and I love the mountains or something rubbish like that I would say that's our biggest heresy that and consumerism you know shopping food our biggest problem is obesity smugness alack sexual morality because after all who cares always you're nice to people and it's lightly soppy I give money to charity and I'm a nice person all that and then an indulgence I don't see why you're so fussy about the faith Joanna you know there all religions are alive almost kind of drivel and in fact I think I see a certain strength in that American commitment to Jesus but you're right without the church it degenerates into nothing just into nothing and the thing I learned and it's very important in our history is Peter as the rock Jesus Christ founded a visible Church and where Henry the eighth in 1535 you know breaking with the church made the mistake was he thought he could be head of the church and in fairness there was a model there because they always had been a sense in which the king was head of the church but it had always been under Peter and Henry the eighth did a UDI he wanted the church on his own terms but he died in that sense a Catholic he had the sacraments he believed in the mass everyday left money for masses to be said for his soul he believed in Saints analogy but he didn't want the humility there is Peter and the thing I've realized is a great great strength in the theological models of our day is Peter now we've been blessed with some truly holy Pope's john xxiii amount of holiness and pope paul of six who pope in difficult times very holy and he suffered you know the agony of Humana vitae and everyone attacking him but he said what was true and beautiful and there was ghastly suffering you could see it hatched on his face in the latter version of Blessed Pope John Paul a great man the full measure of whose greatness were just beginning to see I think he's right up there with Leo the great and Gregory the Great barbarians at the gate and here is John Paul you know great and the present Holy Father unquestionably the greatest mind on the planet at the moment so we've been blessed with great Pope's but even the ones that were not great were Peter they were the rock and to me that's the great thing and martyrs died for this in England I mean you know blood-soaked soil of London golly the Tower of London the rack the chopping block one well you and I stood on that little spot out in the middle of the traffic jam where they hanged people to to burn right through traffic island now where the edgeware Road meets the edge of Oxford Street and that's where they were hanged and drawn and quartered I was there the other day actually because I had to cross and I stopped and kiss the ground I said the Hail Mary you just don't get faster in your middle age so who cares you know and I remember thinking oh Edmund count him pray for me because I'm such a stupid arrogant woman and golly I think I'm in ortant and you've just not history won't remember me but what a privilege there we are and then there's some when I was a little girl I was 11 and transferring to senior school and we had a choice of outings for the end of term and I signed up to go to Hampton Court Palace but but then all my friends said they want to go to the Tower of London so I signed up for the Tower of London instead and I wished I hadn't because it haunted my nights for a long time afterwards I'd wake up in the night worrying about the rack and the dungeon and I remember my mother getting a bit cross that they'd taken us to the tower we were a little too young and she told me I don't think when you had your head chopped off in those days I I don't think you felt anything after the first moment or two you just there you were in heaven so I was to lie down and snuggle down and go to sleep and really being beheaded wasn't so bad and I was not to worry because it didn't really hurt I don't think that was true but I think it's what you say to a little girl of 11 in the middle of another and as an adult I'm sort of grateful for that early experience and again I'm not sure I would take children to the dungeon zatar but when I last went back I remember thinking you're grown woman joiner and you need to understand that people suffered he suffered for the faith so think about that you're not eleven years old now and you and your mother failed to know that this was a gift of faith passed on at that cost of sacrifice so leave it like that and don't show off about it you've got the easy version in the 21st century jump well we have to say the same here in the States we have to appreciate the faith that we have because our forefathers mothers you know fought very hard for the freedoms we have here we just can't take these freedoms for granted or abused and too far as if I mean even the Holy Father during the time of the French Revolution was warning against the abuse of freedom let's take a break now and we'll come back a few more things we can talk about when we come back in the second half of the program welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi my guest tonight is Johanna Bogle and the biggest problem that I have is I've got about a half hour and as far to much as I'd like to talk to you about Johanna one thing that we've seen on the journey home over the years as people have talked about is that that when God opens someone's heart and minds to the beauty and the fullness of the church that that conversion is not just for that person it can have an impact like a stone thrown in the lake with the ripple effect you can affect other people and in that sense I do believe that a convert needs to be very humbly grateful for what by God's mercy we've come to discover a life longer needs to be humbly grateful for what you've had all your life because your life my life the guests in the journey home have an effect on spouse children grandchildren friends and neighbors as a witness that's the New Evangelization that our Holy Father talks about and so sometimes we're given that gift so that it can affect us do you see that even as the strength of your faith now as a result of that oh gosh yes I do my grandfather became a Catholic my mother's father I think largely it was started by the Great War the First World War his generation was so idealistic and they loved England that lovely Edwardian England that seemed so enchanting in retrospect before cars and television and noise and so on you know in eighties in long frocks and big hats and all that and there was this immense nobility if you look at that heartbreaking gosh heartbreaking poetry of the Great War you know Rupert Brooke if I should die think only this of me there's some corner of a foreign field which is forever English absolutely but then it all ended with the mud and the blood and the battle of the somme the most tragic day in the history of the British Army first day the Battle of the Somme thousands and thousands thousands thousands of boys all Christian machine-gunning one another the French and the English against the Oscars and the Germans all Christians most need lots of Catholics massacring one another ghastly so after the First World War the Anglican Church didn't emerge well from it in the sense that it looked rather silly as an established church you know and in England the Catholic Church did emerge rather well because you'd had these Padres the Catholic chaplains there was freedom for the Catholic faith by that time in English history and they were right there in the frontline anointing the sick whereas the Anglicans didn't have a sacramental theology what do you do with the dying was a Catholic priest knows what you do you hear his confession you anoint him and prayer for the dead these these men have gone to God we can ask for God's mercy on their cells there's purgatory well what do you do if you want Anglican you know what is the communion of saints they didn't know they didn't think you could pray for the dead it's a mess it's a mess you're dead are dead they can wear as for Catholics the dead are part of us we pray for them the Holy cells and I think it always remind me of something though I don't take you ever track but it's almost like you need to know just what you said to understand bright has revisited well that's suddenly true and I need to know that background to appreciate a book like that that's true and that back wash of the Great War which also destroyed the optimism of Edwardian England all that everything is going to get a little bit better and so on and grandpa and granny they'd eloped actually when they got married because granny was working in the hustle where my grandfather was the sort of son of the house and so big big sort of controversy because she was only the lady's companion to his aunt and deemed not suitable and all that so when they got married they were quite enthusiastic socialists and granny was a suffragette and so on and I think there was a great optimism in Edwardian England and they were fabian society members and so then comes the great war and of course grandpa immediately you know commissioned and goes and fights and then there was this disillusionment afterwards but the Catholic Church had emerged rather well from the great war because the certain confident Anglicanism hadn't had not emerged well so when grandpa became a Catholic first became an Anglican and then got higher and higher you know and so on and my mother told me all about this she was eleven twelve thirteen something like that when he converted and she became of course a Catholic - along with a couple of her brothers and not the oldest who was already grown up yes that hadn't effect on me and I can remember this being discussed very much when I was a teenager the books my mother encouraged me to read there's a lot of talking about why you are important and when my parents got married mommy had been as it were brought up a Catholic from the age of 12 is very important to her the two families they knew each other my mother's father and my mother's parents and my father's parents knew each other in the Second World War when their respective children were all away at the war my me was evacuated and daddy of course was the soldier and there when they met my father family were not Catholic and my father was not a Catholic and they had a wonderful 40-year wandering around Paul's conversion had made my mother the Catholic she was it was understood that we any children of their marriage would be brought up Catholic we all were my father was comfortable with that he thought the Catholic Church was jolly good even though he never became a Catholic and but he was a terrific man so yes grandpa's conversion produced all of that and now here I am you know talking to you I do think that conversion which always brings with it some sacrifice I think there were difficulties in my grandfather's life that he didn't really explain but it was all very socially complicated becoming a Catholic in the 30s it wasn't so easy as now at all and yes Here I am and I am gosh I'm so grateful for that thank you I am so grateful and in today's extremely messy Britain there are a lot of very good people who are trying to live the good way but without the firm teaching of the Catholic faith you know the awful thing is I think it's so easy to drift you can start by saying for example for example I know that homosexual activities roll whereas if you're a Catholic you know why it's wrong you have the whole rich tradition of the church Christ and his bride man and woman bright you know you have a rich theology the theology of the body you can really oh I'm so grateful to be a Catholic you know in in America it is true that one of the key issues or themes that divides Catholics from non Catholics is the Holy Father mm-hmm all right but there's another issue that also divides him and that's our lady eye and I wonder in England where's the threat of Our Lady throughout both Anglicanism as well as your own Catholicism well I would say she's always been important and remember that because the Anglican Church inherited let us say all the beautiful old Catholic churches and I'm one of the McLaurys in England an English countryside of absolutely unbearably beautiful churches I mean almost unbearably beautiful and when I was a little girl you'd go to one of these ancient churches on a country walk Chiqui on holiday if it was raining and you couldn't be on the beach you would go for a walk and you would stomp around and there'd be these glorious churches and my sister in her teens got interested in brass rubbing you put a bit of paper down on one of these beautiful old tombs and then rub it with though dark wax pencil and get the image but all around you will be images of Our Lady she had never gone you see in the stained glass and so on the Reformers tried to bash out a lot of the images but any inevitably a lot were left and in the 19th century the great revival in the Anglican Church John Henry Newman who eventually became a Catholic of course but he revived devotion to the saints in Our Lady by the way he wrote the way he saw the fathers and so on so you got an image of Our Lady restored to the Anglican Church and now in most Anglican churches there will be images of Mary not only in high Anglican churches but just in general she's and she never left England and there was this tradition in England there are more churches named after Our Lady in England and I think anywhere else on earth they're called st. Mary's this answer with a Catholic revival you have this idea of Our Lady of ransom Our Lady of reparation our lady who will get her diary back and I was always taught pray to Our Lady in England will be reconverted and England to the best of our heritage as a sort of gentleness and tolerance and humor and that's very Marion Marion won Marian shrine that I think of is our lady of Walsingham hmm and hid it's quite quite a history as you know I think it was a Chaucer you know that talks about the pilgrimages way back when I think that was a part of it but it's gone through went through a time of demolition and and now is there not only come back but the Ordinariate itself is connected yes the great revival of Walsingham at the beginning of the 20th century and the end of the 19th it began at the end of the nineteenth this this lady Charlotte who revived the Walsingham shrine and in the process became a Catholic so she then created this little or helped to foster into being let's say this revived Catholic shrine and then in the 1920s an Anglican clergyman the Reverend hope Patton who revived the Anglican shrine and now the Holy Father makes this magnificent historic gesture to Anglicans come on in cross the Tiber just pack everything you can on the boat some of your best traditions evensong bring it you know Harvest Festival bring it some of the hymns we already sing them but bring them apart anything else we would say in England please bring them because they're so sick of the rubbish we'd only come by our bring us the hymns bring us a certain dignity bring us that sense of reaching out to the whole nation bring us the Bible you know in in the way you appreciate it now come on just come and a lot have I want a lot more to come please because I honestly think the Anglican Church in in an in the most tragic way it's all over really once you have women bishops which is the next thing that's coming any concept of apostolic succession has gone I mean it wasn't there anyway but you could say there was a sort of way of trying to claim it well as soon as you ordain women it's not possible the church cannot not may not but cannot ordain women not because women are inferior absolutely not but because the plan of God lived out in Jesus Christ is this is what they choose men and this is very profound it's like bread and wine at the Eucharist you can't do apples it has to be bread and wine the stuff of the priesthood is very men there's a lot we could say about that but it's non-negotiable so Anglicans are coming in and the Holy Father who knows England pretty well he really has a good understanding of England he loved John Henry Newman and he just is a man who absolutely understands England very well as a an academic and so on called the new ordinary at the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham and the special patroness John Henry Newman I have like a lot of Catholics in England great hopes of the ordinary out we long for the Anglicans to bring with them a tradition of dignity and liturgy an English humor they are good fun the Anglican ordinary at CHEP's I've met are very amusing the only thing is it's going to be difficult there are hurt feelings on the Anglican side know they can't make use of glorious our churches which we wanted we hoped maybe they could be shared but in 20 years time who knows what will happen I could see a bright future there but the thing to invoke is our Lady of Walsingham and Walsingham is in a particularly glorious part of England a very lovely countryside bit bleak but glorious in its bleakness it's about six miles from the sea and the wind comes straight from the North Sea and there's a great beauty in Our Lady of Walsingham and I was there just recently and I mean it's almost heartbreaking me lovely a really glorious countryside and Washington's a nice little village with tea shops and nice pubs and all that and in the winter it's deliciously bleak really almost nobody there and in the summer very very warm and beautiful because it's it's it's just an enchanting bit of England that's bleak in the winter but in the summer lovely green green green fields and little sheep oh it's lovely and Our Lady you feel very close to her there because people have walked barefoot that holy mile from the slipper Chapel to the village so many times and praying the rosary Oh Our Lady of forcing and pray for us she'll cope with the difficulties and there are difficulties there are big difficulties facing the ordinary at financial also I'm sure of work but we have an email which I think kind of connects to that this comes from Chris from Florida I am currently an Episcopalian and I'm interested in Catholic conversion I've been watching EWTN for many years and have grad gradually eliminated most fears and prejudices about the church I recently visited st. Peter's in Rome and words cannot express the renewal of faith I experienced after my visit to the Vatican I understand the Catholic Church has created a special path to conversion for Anglicans and Episcopalians how can I learn more details while I perfectly move forward with my conversion decision your help is appreciated so he's interested he's being drawn he's hearing about the options as you said some are open to these options so they need to know practically how do i how do i make this move we in the coming home network that's what we do to help people make the move and one thing we recognize is it isn't always easy and the ordinary it is special is for a minister and his flock yes not every Anglican who comes in full communion with the Catholic Church will do so through the ordinary odd at all and the church's provisions it's a provision from two groups of Anglicans Anglican orange attaboys it was two groups of Anglicans and the idea is you come in with your flock and there are there are individual decisions to be made because every member of that flock has to make their own decision and that's one way into full communion but it does have to be said that you can simply become a Catholic and the Holy Church makes the possibility for you to be ordained as a Catholic priest although she doesn't promise it because it's not a you don't have a right none of us have a right to the priesthood in any sense at all but these are different ways home ways home and then there is a very different tradition coming from the evangelical and free churches which is another journey which brings its own richness I have to say to the Catholic faith it really brings its own richness I would say the the Anglican ordinary is in its very early stages and there will be I think some difficulties along the way and I'm not saying that from my knowledge I'm saying it from what these good men have told me and there are some heartaches because you can bring your flock but not all and you can't necessarily bring your church and there are tragic difficulties with old friends who don't understand and also maybe family members who don't understand and I'm learning this that that for me as a born brought up a Catholic I don't think it we should underestimate some of the heartaches involved so I I hope this your correspondent here was this chap I would say if you knew how we are praying for you if you knew how we want you in our church with the gifts you'll bring and even the experience of difficulty that you'll bring will we will be united with all that richness in the church maybe God has got some great plan here oh please come and also please teach us something also even through your own suffering you know I hope that doesn't sound pompous but when he talked about being in some Peters I can I hear that I know once and thinking gosh beneath us the bones of the first Apostle Peter that's so exciting well I was going to say that in America and after all these years I can't member if I've said it's 50 times than the journey on program I apologize that we have but one of the biggest difference that I sense between America and England or Europe is that in America on any corner there may be four or five six churches on the town they may have towns full of churches but none are older than the others you may have something built in twenty years of you but an old church in America is 200 years yeah so you don't have this sense of history that draws you to think boy this church is here has a whole lot more of a depth of its historical foundation than this church over here which was started on Tuesday you get to Europe you get to England I mean when I visited there and I'm standing before the Canterbury Cathedral is like wow this all dates America of course I do think that's one thing that makes conversion in that sense easier in England it's it's it's very difficult for me to see it from the perspective of somebody in Italy or France or something and I think that glorious unbroken tradition I remember as a little girl being told well you know in Italy they never lost the faith you have this grew how wonderful and how dreadful of us in England you know Henry the eighth how dreadful of us all you know but it has its own difficulties because those are taking it for granted thing you know that the church will always be there and the present Holy Father has been saying it won't always be there unless you go to Mass it the it won't be there this church could be a mosque in a few years if you're not careful or or just closed you know please the faith is every single person making a decision every day but certainly in England yes I mean you see these grand old churches and who built them with what faith what happened in them you know and it's clear this was Catholic this was Catholic well either they were hideously wrong truly hideously wrong for over a thousand years in their sense of the mass the sacraments confession that there is a real forgiveness through Ministry of a priest or they were right I think the other thing you have to understand I remember being taught I have to say in a Catholic school is that yes there were corruptions in the medieval church that has always got his corruptions and golly we've seen that in recent times too you know hideous abuse and so on the church had its corruptions and they were partly in those days connected with power the church is always needs to be reformed and a lot of what Luther said was right it's just that he broke with Rome and that's what was wrong but you know a lot of what he said was absolutely what Thomas More was saying about the corruption of the clergy and son and I I think we need to understand that there's an unbroken truth but there's also the church which always needs always these reforming oh yeah but and when you see an old church you think that was Catholic it should be Catholic my first trip to England I'm looking at these notes with a priest and I looked at this church I said you know I can tell this is stolen property because all the places where the Saints were are empty yes everything's been changed we do have an email that Linda from New York Buffalo says if there was one st. the Johanna would recommend to help someone today who was genuinely struggling with living a holy life gosh who would she recommend well if I if it was an easier question if there's one saint of somebody who would like to convert I would go for Blessed John Henry Newman who who agonized his way in that sense into the church living a holy life living a holy life well this probably sounds awfully easy but I would go for Blessed John Paul because he was not a martyr although he very nearly was he was not somebody who struggled his way into the Catholic faith on the country like so many of us he was born and brought up a Catholic but he achieved what he achieved because he was holy it's the hours that he spent in prayer we now know because people cursed him have said that they would find him prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament he often spent a night in prayer that way holiness do you know I would go for John Paul well he was a modern man he was holy in that most difficult of centuries the 20th century and he was not all the Pope's have been holy they haven't they've all been the rock on which but they haven't all been holy so in terms of holiness and also his way of praying he prayed the rosary well he was a man of great intellect and everything also he was a priest who prayed the office but he didn't disdain the rosary isn't that beautiful it's a humble prayer isn't it it's a very ordinary you and me prayer I mean I pray it you know at the bus stop and you know I'd go for I would get some other Saints especially if I'm thinking of England that I I think are of great must be of great prayerful encouragement are the priests the wreck isn't Reese who had to live such challenging simplistic guarded sacrificial lives to nurture the faith of of the Catholics that were trying to were surviving what I pray if the question were different if it was can you name a say prayer a priest or I mean a saint who would help you in difficult time for courage I'd go for the English martyrs that's a different thing from holiness but the actual raw courage I can't be the only person who at the dentist I know that sounds silly but the great an Englishman artists in your Ireland but hey Edmund Campion pray for me help me and I've sometimes thought I was once with some friends and we followed the trail of some of the northern priests in Lancashire living out in the most difficult circumstances hiding never knowing where your next safe bed would be or whether the knock on the door would come and I've been doing some study at Maryvale which is the Catholic Institute of distance learning in Britain we had a wonderful week of Catholic history and we went to a fine old house which had three priests holes and we superb lecturer with us and he asked for a volunteer to go into the priest hole and I remember thinking no thank you and one of our group who was skinnier than me hopped in and there was a trapdoor that shot and I remember I think we all thought oh how beastly for her being in there and when she came out we all laughed and it was fun but we she said it wasn't nice at all you could be in a hiding in a priest hole for three or four days they might have had time to put a bucket in there for your needs they might not you might get some food on water you might sometimes when they you were fun you were already hungry thirsty dirty then you were taken to the tower I mean it it doesn't bear thinking about if you want courage play to the English martyrs and I prayed sometimes when I've been frightened or lonely I've prayed to the English masters I mean for courage or in difficult circumstances I remember once in a thunderstorm when I and I was very frightened I was had some reason to be physically frightened and I prayed to the martyrs they were in this position not because they would lose their money or their home but it was for their faith they were willing to sacrifice this for the faith of the faith and they were not seeking to reimpose a grand Catholicism on everyone they just knew they must win souls back one by one by one by one and they didn't know which we do that it would all take a hot breaking a long time so they lived by faith I know I'm as witness to what is true and all the evidence is that people loved this they were grateful for the faith in the sacraments and campion the great Edmund Campion would hear confessions until late into the night and then celebrate Mass in the dawn and he was very firm with people exhorting them to be humble and faithful no this is amazing thing and I arrived faith to these men who cherished and passed on this pearl of great price and if they had known you know that they would never get back those glorious churches I think they still would have carried on and it's a real lesson to us and I don't know where the difficult times are going to come in Britain but you know for all of the West things are difficult and any trend that we can see in very general terms in Britain is not good we now have abortion on demand and it's regarded as part of the imposition you're right and tragically we don't even have the great pro-life movement you we have in America or we have a pro-life movement and it's good and it's very good but we we don't have the numbers that we have in the March for Life we have a homosexual marriage perhaps on the agenda we have the most disgraceful rubbish taught in sex education in schools and every supermarket sells the most revolting lurid horrible pornography and our common culture is vulgar to a degree and there's an awful cruelty to in the way people treat one another broken marriages contempt for the innocence of childhood and also rising crime rioting it's not going to be easy but my gosh for Catholics we have a heritage and we can say right we cling on to our faith we teach it we live it and we evangelize and the spirit of martyrs is alive yet but we do know about them I mean there are schools and churches named in their honor and increasingly they're they're honored and Pope Paul the sixth canonized them under the influence of Cardinal Heenan who was then the archbishop of westminster who could sense that catholics needed a strong identity and a lot more children probably know their names and they did a generation ago because there a number of our Catholic schools are named after the martyrs particular modern schools and so you will hear non Catholics referring to the names of the martyrs simply because they mentioned the name of a school in a netball match or something so I think the martyrs are coming into their own and which is rather marvelous but gosh yeah we do need to think about them do you want a real quick we don't have a whole lot of time but you've done some new episodes to your series right yes I have I've been making celebrations of the Saints and I've been following through the whole calendar with things to make for the feasts and seasons and I've just done Saints and I've done a whole lot of different recipes for different Saints days loved it great fun what the Saints ate things didn't eat very much good day I mean you think of Catherine of Siena I baked a sienna cake to celebrate her but actually she had very little there's no evidence she tucked into fruitcakes at all so and it's a great pleasure to have you on the show thank you so much and thank you for also the work you do with EWTN on the series and also your brave work that you do back in the home country than fighting the battles in the name of the church and the values of the church as sometimes a lone voice so thank you for doing that and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home god bless you see you again next week

Channel: EWTN

Views: 10,126

Rating: 4.8699188 out of 5

Keywords: Bogle, export, 640x480, Catholic, JHT01347

Id: lGR3gMDBLDk

Length: 56min 7sec (3367 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 06 2012