Here Is A Switch: Anglican Priest Becomes A Catholic Jesuit

What Have 'ex-Anglicans' Done for us?
7/19/2008
The Catholic Herald (UK) (www.catholicherald.co.uk/)

Some excerpts.

LONDON (The Catholic Herald) - Last week, The Catholic Herald revealed that the Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, wants to lead his traditionalist flock into full communion with Rome.

The reaction of some Catholics was indignant. "The last thing we need is more ex-Anglicans," they groaned.

Such a response is not only un-Catholic; it also betrays depressing ignorance about the history of the post-Reformation Catholic Church in England. ..............

Meanwhile, one of Britain's most distinguished architectural historians, Anthony Symondson, is now a Jesuit priest, having left his Anglican ministry in the mid-1980s.

.............One of the blessings of the arrival of former Anglo-Catholics is that they bring with them precisely the skills needed to implement Pope Benedict XVI's liturgical reforms.

The best Anglo-Catholic liturgies - and by this I do not mean the most ornate - are performed with an attention to detail and a devotional intensity that arises partly out of the movement's need to prove a point - that they are true Catholics. Once received into the Church, the former Anglicans do not need to prove anything; but the intensity remains.

Many Anglo-Catholics "get" Pope Benedict's theology of worship in a way that some cradle Catholics do not. The next wave of Anglican conversions, if it comes, could be the most important of all.

Link (here)

Photo is of the nave at St Mary the Virgin in Wellingborough.