Please pray for Pope Benedict's visit to Britain.
Biographies
The Society's Secretary, its four District Organisers who cover England and Wales together with its Honorary Representatives in Scotland and Wales are all convert clergy. They have first hand experience of the 'Path to Rome'. There and Back Again by Fr Dwight Longenecker
Below are some personal testimonies which you might find to be an inspiration and encouragement.
Dwight Longenecker
"In 1995, when my wife and two children left the ministry of the Church of England to be received into full communion of the Catholic Church we had no idea where God would lead us, and what he wanted us to do. I had a sense of calling to the Catholic priesthood, but wanted to test this for a time living and working as a Catholic layman.
After being received into the Church at Quarr Abbey we moved to Lancashire where I began work as script editor with a small video production company. The company soon went out of business and I was left unemployed. It was then that Cyprian Blamires heard of me and got in touch. Keith Jarrett, former secretary of the St Barnabas Society, like Cyprian and me, had come from an Evangelical Protestant background and had been schooled for Anglican ministry at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. So when I traveled to the society's headquarters in Wolvercote to meet Keith there was an instant rapport.
A job opening as one of the society's organizers had come up, so we moved from Lancashire to Wiltshire. During this time I continued to pursue the possibility of ordination to the Catholic priesthood in England. It was not to be. For various reasons, the Catholic bishops did not reject me for ordination, but neither did they take any action to move my forward to serve as a priest. I worked for seven years with the St Barnabas Society, we were blessed with two more children, and I also developed a ministry writing and speaking on Catholic matters in the UK and my native United States.
It was during one of my visits home that I met the Bishop of Charleston in South Carolina and he encouraged me to consider being ordained in his diocese. It was to be another three years before a suitable job opened up. I was reading an American Catholic newspaper in England when I spotted a Catholic high school in my hometown of Greenville advertising for a chaplain. I emailed the headmaster saying, "I hope you have a creative search committee because I would like to apply for the chaplain's post, but I am not a Catholic priest, I'm married and I live in England."
St Joseph's Catholic School is one school in the United States with a very creative and positive approach. After interview they were very enthusiastic about my application and worked with the Bishop so that I could complete my studies, forward my paperwork to Rome to be processed to pave the way for my ordination. In 2006, after a three month trial period as lay chaplain at the school, I returned to England to pack up, put our house on the market, and move our family to the USA.
The St Barnabas Society was extremely supportive and generous in our exciting transition to South Carolina. The board listened to our needs, helped with practical details, provided moving expenses, and helped with our air fares.
By July the paperwork came back from Rome in record time, and in November I was ordained deacon, and a few weeks later, in December 2006 I was ordained priest. It was a joy to have Marcus Grodi of The Coming Home Network and my old friend Cyprian Blamires present to read the Scriptures at the ordination service. All of this happened just a few hundred yards down the road from a little Anglican Church in Greenville South Carolina where I had been baptized about thirty years before.
Three of our children attend the school where I serve as chaplain, so we go to school together each day. St Joseph's Catholic School has 550 students. It is an independently owned and operated Catholic school with full approval of the diocese. I also serve as weekend assistant and co ordinator of RCIA at St Mary's--a large downtown parish in Greenville.
Alison is getting used to life in the American suburbs, and the children are happily involved in excellent Catholic schools and are busy with a range of extra activities. A special joy is for two of my sons to serve Mass for me on a weekly basis.
We continue to keep up to date on the news of the St Barnabas Society, and remain grateful for the happy years we worked with the society, and for the generous help the society has been able to "
Dr Cyprian Blamires
District Organiser for Central England, East Anglia and South Wales
