Confessing and Glorifying Thy Holy Name

We were delighted when this blog put us back in touch with another former member of the serving team at St Mary’s, Bourne Street, Scott Vannan, who moved to Canada some years ago.  Scott was received into the Catholic Church in April this year, together with other members of the Fellowship of John Henry Newman, a group of former Anglicans in Victoria, BC and which includes their former bishop, who will be ordained priest next month, and four of their former priests.

The Fellowship rents a Carpenter Gothic church, dedicated to St. Columba, from the Anglican Church of Canada (a marked contrast to the blinkered hostility shown by Richard Chartres) in which they celebrated their first mass on the Feast of All Saints.  The Fellowship will enter into the Canadian Deanery of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter when it is created. For the present it acts as an Anglican Use proto-parish within the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria.

Scott speaks of the peace experienced by a joyful group of people in true communion with Holy Mother Church, a peace and joy in which we share.  We join with them in the prayer for uniity of Blessed John Henry Newman.

O Lord Jesus Christ, who when Thou wast about to suffer didst pray for Thy disciples to the end of time that they might all be one, as Thou art in the Father and the Father in Thee, look down in pity on the manifold divisions among those who profess Thy faith and heal the many wounds which the pride of man and the craft of Satan have inflicted on Thy people.

Break down the walls of separation which divide one party and denomination of Christians from another. Look with compassion on the souls who have been born in one or other of these communions, which not Thou, but man, hath made.

Set free the prisoners from these unauthorised forms of worship, and bring them all to the one communion which Thou didst set up at the beginning – the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Teach all men that the See of Peter, the Holy Church of Rome, is the foundation, centre, and instrument of Unity. Open their hearts to the long forgotten truth that the Holy Father, the Pope, is Thy Vicar and representative; and that in obeying him in matters of religion they are obeying Thee, so that as there is but one company in heaven above, so likewise there may be one communion, confessing and glorifying Thy holy Name, here below.