Crossing the Line - Part 5
I was three months old when my parents left their home, job and ministry, taking their baby with them into an uncertain future. They left without telling anyone in the parish, leading to a headline in the local paper, “Vicar disappears with wife and baby!”
What prompted this rash action will seem almost
incomprehensible to most people today but in 1963, for conservative
Anglo-Catholics, it was an issue on a par with women priests and bishops more
recently.
What was the issue?
Methodists!
In 1963 the Church of England and the Methodist Church
appeared to be nearing agreement to come together and be united as one church. While for many this was a cause for joy, the
idea struck horror and fear into the hearts of those whose identity lay in
seeing the Church of England as the true ‘Catholic’ Church of England. For them it was not politics or the
Reformation which defined the Church of England. Rather, it was its Catholic heritage with
orders of ministry handed down by Apostolic Succession. After all, Henry VIII’s faith was thoroughly
Catholic. His treatise “Defence of the
Seven Sacraments” in 1521 against Martin Luther, earned Henry the title Defender
of the Faith, bestowed on him by Pope Leo X.
Whatever his political and marital motives, Henry was no Protestant!
Unity with the Methodists would put the Catholicity of
the Church of England in jeopardy. In
England, Methodists had no Bishops and their theology was methodically reformed
in its nature. There was no Apostolic
Succession and they had ministers, not priests.
For my parents, this would be the end of the Church of
England as they knew it.
My father wrote to his Bishop to announce his resignation
and intention to convert to Roman Catholicism.
The Bishop’s reply was polite but to the point – if you are going, go
quickly. I have the letter, and it
almost reads like Jesus’ words to Judas at the last supper (John 13:27).
So that is exactly what he did. Together they left without a word. They took nothing with them except a baby and
a couple of suitcases. They stepped out
into the unknown.
There were others at Top Meadow too, beginning a new life
having ‘gone to Rome’. It was a kind of safe-house for defecting Anglican clergy.
While there, we were all baptised again (at the time The Roman Catholic
church didn’t accept any other church’s baptism as valid) and my parents were
confirmed. In more mischievous moments, I
have teased my Baptist and Pentecostal friends by telling them I have been
baptised twice. They would invariably
nod with approval, assuming that I mean once as a baby and again as an adult
when I was old enough to do it properly.
I usually wait a moment before spoiling it by saying that both were as a
baby and one was as a Roman Catholic!
After a few months there, the Converts Aid Society found
David a job as a Maths teacher in a Roman Catholic school in Kirkby,
Liverpool. David could not be a RC
priest, of course, with wife and baby in tow.
We moved into Kirkby and settled into our new life.
In any case after a year in Kirkby, David decided to find
his own job as a teacher. He was offered
a job in a local authority school in Rochdale.
We moved to Hollingworth Lake on the edge of the Pennines and David
started work at his new school, only to find that the Head Teacher and the
Deputy Head were both Methodist lay preachers!
Whoever said that God doesn’t have a sense of humour?
Over the next two years, they had a profound effect on
David’s life and attitudes. Having ‘jumped ship’ and left his church, his
vocation, and his ministry on account of Methodists, he could have simply jumped
ship again and found another school to teach in. Maths teachers were in demand, but something
made him stay.
During his time at that school David came to the
conclusion that they were two of the finest Christians he had ever met. Their pastoral care and dedication to all the
children in that school, from the most able to the most troubled, made a deep
and lasting impression on him. He began
to see that there were more important issues than Apostolic Succession or
Church labels.
For Irene, it had not been an easy transition
either. She went from vicar’s wife in
the CofE to an oddity in the Roman Catholic Church and no-one knew how to treat
her. A former nun, married to an
ex-Anglican priest with a baby!
By 1966, David knew what he had to do. He went back to the Bishop who ordained him
and said, “I’m sorry. I was wrong. Can I
come back?” Graciously, the answer was
yes, albeit with a challenging first appointment to test his resolve.
From that moment onwards, David and Irene were committed
to a very different form of Christianity.
Their theology had not changed. They
were still Anglo-Catholics, steeped in sacramental faith. They still went to Walsingham each year. They continued as Oblates at the convent in
Wantage but from then on, they refused to be sectarian Christians and were
always open to expressions of Christian faith different to their own. The most important thing was recognising Christ
in others, whatever our disagreements might be.
That is the Christian home where I grew up from the age
of 3½ and these values have become a deep and intrinsic part of who I am. At times they have been tested by the
intransigence and prejudice of other Christians, but the roots run deep and
were forged in the fire of those difficult years in my parent’s lives.
I admire them for their courage to act on principle, even
if they later regretted it. Faced with similar
dilemmas, many people just stay and grumble. This usually results in their impotent
moaning sapping life from those around them and provides no opportunity to be
challenged or changed.
I admire them even more for being willing to change when they
realised they had been wrong - for being willing to admit it and say sorry.
Crossing the line doesn’t always lead us in the right
direction, but when we do it in good faith it gives God the opportunity to do
something in our lives and bring us to where he wants us to be.
