Scottish Priest Dies One Week After Ordination

EWTN News:

Father Graham Turner, 48, was a priest for only one week when he passed away  from leukemia.

“There is a great wave of sadness here at the moment but it was important  that Graham was ordained,” said Monsignor Roderick Strange, Rector of the Beda  College in Rome, where Fr. Turner studied for the priesthood.

“Although we are ordained for active ministry this was also a completion of a  significant period in Graham’s life of discernment and commitment. So it was  wonderful that he was ordained a priest.” Fr. Turner was supposed  to be ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of St. Andrews &  Edinburgh, Scotland last June. That was postponed, however, after he was  diagnosed with leukemia.

Cardinal Keith P. O’Brien of St. Andrews & Edinburgh decided to move  swiftly after being told by the deacon’s father during Holy Week that his son’s  prognosis was very bleak.

Fr. Turner was ordained on Easter Monday in the chapel of Salford Royal  Hospital, near Manchester, England. “The ceremony itself was very  moving, very poignant, very powerful,” Msgr. Strange recalled, noting that “there is a line in the ordination rite where the bishops tells the ordinand to  model their life on the mystery of Christ’s cross and that was very much  fulfilled in that ceremony.” Fr. Graham was wheeled into the chapel  in his bed but was transferred to a wheelchair. He was able to assist at the  Mass and, with the help of the nursing staff, stood for a short time at the  beginning of the Eucharistic prayer. His parents, Marilyn and George, along with  his brother Ian and sister Sue were able to be at the ordination.

“With Graham, I will remember the gentleness, the humor, the intelligence,  the patience, the extraordinary strength of character, and in particular, the  fortitude with which he responded to and coped with the last 12 months of his  life,” Msgr. Strange said.

RIP

 

Traditional Anglican Communion Archive

Fr Anthony Chadwick has kindly provided a historical archive for Traditional Anglican Communion events and material.

As promised, I have recovered all the material from the now-defunct English Catholic blog. I have made it available to researchers in an archive of material related to the Traditional Anglican Communion and Anglicanorum coetibus between the summer of 2010 and Easter 2012. It is published on Civitas Dei. It was originally published on the English Catholic blog. Some of the articles were written by Deborah Gyapong (Foolishness to the World) who is a Canadian journalist and was received into the Roman Catholic Church on 15th April 2012 with a group of clergy and laity from the TAC in Canada.

I joined the Patrimony of the Primate of the TAC under Archbishop Hepworth’s direct jurisdiction in August 2005 and was accepted as a validly ordained priest. I recently received a letter (without any application on my part) from Archbishop Prakash informing me that I was under the jurisdiction of Bishop Craig Botterill in his capacity as Episcopal Visitor to The Traditional Anglican Church in England.

I brought the English Catholic blog to an end on account of the reasons explained on English Catholic blog is gone forever.

2010 SeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember

2011 JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember

2012 JanuaryFebruaryMarch and April

The Current Situation of Archbishop John Hepworth. Page not updated since October 2011.

Here are the pages that appeared on the top of the blog’s homepage:

TAC Documents

Archbishop Hepworth’s Charge – undated but it would seem to be from the 2010 Australian Synod.

Comments are welcome by e-mail for the purpose of factual or historical corrections. The articles I wrote on the English Catholic and reproduced in this archive do not necessarily reflect my current position. Direct comments to this blog have been turned off. My e-mail address is anthony DOT chadwick AT wanadoo DOT fr.

It is likely that the TAC will now continue in a changed form in Africa, India, the United States of America and other countries, seeking links of communion with the other Continuing Anglican Churches. This archive does not concern the TAC as reformulated at the College of Bishops meeting in South Africa and since Archbishop Hepworth’s resignation came into effect on Easter Sunday, 8th April 2012.

 

A Fete Worse than Death: The Seething Hatreds and Rivalries Beneath the Surface of Parish Life

The Rev Dr Peter Mullen in the Telegraph:

I love the story of the near punch-up at the parish meeting in the holy and venerable village of Long Melford. “Shut your mouth!”  and “One more word from you and I will thump you now!” And all over a villager’s criticism of another villager’s handling of the tombola draw. Forget the turmoil in the Middle East – the real aggro goes on in the English countryside. There are people there, I can tell you, who would shoot one another for the second prize in the Saturday whist drive. I know what I’m talking about because I was a country parson in Yorkshire for twenty years. Sometimes we teetered on the verge of carnage.

I ought to have gleaned some hint of what I was in for when I went for the appointment and my interview by the Parochial Church Council in the big house next to the common. I imagined I would be asked whether I was High Church or Low, did I prefer the old Prayer Book to the new Noddy version, or even did I believe in the Apostles’ Creed and subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles. Not a bit of it. They talked for an hour about money and how much those “swine” in the diocesan office were swindling the parish out of every year.

Then there was a long silence before a lady with a big hat and an eminent moustache said, “I have a question for you, Vicar: do you think whist drives are sinful?”

That was a showstopper. I fended it off with as good a humour as I could manage: “Could be, I suppose. Especially if you cheat.”

“No, “she said “only the reason I ask is that our last Vicar preached against whist drives. Said it was gambling. He turned up at one and started a rumpus during the prize-giving at the end.”

She appealed to the assembled PCC for support and addressed the chairman, “You remember, Fred, it was Connie Hardcastle who’d won the bottle of sherry. Our last Vicar was against booze as well. Anyhow, he kept blathering on until he’d right got Connie’s goat. She just flung the bottle of sherry at him. Missed. And it smashed against the wall. Glass everywhere. And you can still see the stain on the wall.”

I tell you, recent events in Long Melford were tame compared with some of the rural aggro I’ve witnessed first hand up i’Yorkshire.

One of our wildest excitements happened – as all the best excitements do – at a village funeral. It was one of those permafrost winters we used to get in the 1980s and the ground was solid. Old Jack Stevenson, blacksmith’s assistant, was going to his last repose. Trouble was, they hadn’t dug the grave wide enough to accommodate his generous frame. We had to send for the men with the shovels. It took them half an hour to make the necessary indentations in the ice-earth. In the process they got very hot and one took off his woolly jumper to reveal a t-shirt bearing a very rude logo.

I couldn’t work out whether the red cheeks were owing to embarrassment or the gale blowing off the North Yorks moors. The tedious interlude was enlivened by Jack’s son, Dennis. I should explain that Jack had been a steady – or unsteady – imbiber all his days. Dennis relieved the considerable tension by calling out, “Dad, you were tight all your life, and now you’re too tight for your bloody grave!”

Garden fetes should be renamed garden fights. One year Mollie Turner – a lady of the most flamboyant geriatric sensuality – excited the Events Committee by offering to run a fortune-telling tent as a fundraiser. That got them going. They were up in arms. There were accusations that our village was bringing back the Witch of Endor and there were those who said it was all the devil’s work.

After an almighty skirmish, it went ahead and no one was killed or even seriously injured. But I will say that if you went into that tent with Mollie, you took more than your life in your hands.

 

Lt Col Shalom Eisner Dismissed from Post

On the IDF Blog today:

Following consultations between GOC Central Command, Major General Nitzan Alon, and the Chief of the Ground Forces Command, Major General Sami Turgeman, it has been determined by the Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Benjamin (Benny) Gantz, to dismiss Lieutenant Colonel Shalom Eisner from his post as Deputy Division Commander on moral grounds, while dealing with the incident.

Lt. Gen. Gantz concluded in the investigation of the incident that there were professional and command failure as well.

Lt. Col. Eisner was dismissed from his position and will not serve as the Deputy Commander of the IDF Officer School, and will not be eligible to serve in commanding positions in the next two years.

You may recall, it was for doing this:

But do take a moment to read this:

Shalom Eisner is the man the world would flog. This is the kind of man he is (hat tip: JewishPress.com).

Hagit Rein, grieving mother of the late Major B’naya Rein who was killed in the Second Lebanon War and whose body was recovered by Eisner under fire, called the Army Radio to express her dismay at the way Eisner was being judged by the “media court.”

During that war, B’naya Rein assembled a special force to assist damaged tanks. He was killed on that mission for which he had volunteered, and his body remained in enemy territory. At the command level it was decided that rescuing the body was too dangerous, according to the reservists’ letter. Then it was decided they lacked the necessary resources for a rescue mission.

After three days, Shalom Eisner, who was then commander of an armored battalion, heard about the abandoned body and said it was unacceptable that the body of an army officer would be lying on the ground while his parents were waiting for him at home. Eisner took a jeep, recall his fellow officers and soldiers, put on a flak jacket and went out to get B’naya. “Surrounded by burned-out tanks, missiles flying in every direction, he just went out into the field, loaded the body and brought it back.”

Lt. Col. Eisner’s supporters expressed their complete faith in him “as a man, as a friend and as a moral commander.”

For more on how protesters are treated in Denmark, take a look here.

The former IDF Chief Rabbi Avihai Ronski was critical of the swift decision to suspend Eisner:

… who he described as “a highly ethical individual.”

The reaction, he said, “most likely stemmed from the fact that the activist had just assaulted him and broke his hand. It was instinctual.”

Ronski also questioned what he called the rash decision to suspend the officer: “What’s the rush? Conduct your inquiry first and impose discipline only if the result warrants it.

“How can you say this was ‘a serious event’ after only a few seconds of footage? These kinds of incidents are why today’s commanders feel they have no backing.”

 

Canadian Anglican Groups Welcomed into Catholic Church

Deborah Gyapong writing in The Catholic Register:

Ottawa – Bishops in Ottawa and Victoria received two groups from the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada (ACCC) into the Roman Catholic Church April 15, including two former ACCC bishops and about a half dozen clergy.

“Today, the Body of Christ is a little more healed, a little more unified,” Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast told more than 700 people who packed St. Patrick’s Basilica. “Today, after half a millennium, separated brethren are separated no more. We are brethren, rejoicing at the same banquet table. Hallelujah.”

In Victoria, an estimated 600 people packed St. Andrew’s Cathedral, where Bishop Richard Gagnon welcomed the former metropolitan bishop of the ACCC, Peter Wilkinson.

The two groups received on Divine Mercy Sunday will soon become part of the Canadian Deanery of St. John the Baptist of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter under Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, who was named the Ordinary when the American Ordinariate was erected Jan. 1. Steenson, a former Episcopal (Anglican) bishop, is a married Catholic priest who teaches theology at the University of St. Thomas and St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston.

“I am overjoyed to be a part of your journey today and to welcome members of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church,” Prendergast said in his homily.

Prendergast celebrated the Anglican Use Liturgy using the Book of Divine Worship approved for use in the Catholic Church. He was the first Roman Catholic archbishop outside of the United States to celebrate this liturgy.

“I commend the courage and fortitude of our brothers and sisters of the Anglican Catholic Church of Canada. Your journey has not been easy,” Prendergast said. “I commend your humility and your sacrifice. You have suffered much. I commend your tradition and your zeal. You will bless and strengthen the Roman Catholic Church by your presence.

“You are not just favoured guests. This is your home,” he said. “We love you. I love you. May our public witness of unity draw many from the edges of faith into God’s Kingdom, no longer subject to judgment but to Divine Mercy.”

About 30 were welcomed in the rite of reception in Ottawa, while other members of the former ACCC were received beforehand or will be soon. In Victoria, about 22 were received.

More groups will be received from the ACCC in the coming weeks. On April 22, Toronto Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Nguyen will receive an ACCC parish from Oshawa, Ont., and Kingston Archbishop Brendan O’Brien will receive an ACCC group from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory.

An ACCC group from Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., was received on Jan. 1 by Hamilton Bishop Douglas Crosby. ACCC groups in Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and Sydney also hope to be received soon.

A former Anglican Church of Canada parish in Calgary, St. John the Evangelist, was received on Dec. 18. Steenson visited the Calgary Ordinariate group on April 15 and baptized the daughter of former Anglican priest Lee Kenyon and his wife Elizabeth. Kenyon will be ordained soon as a Catholic priest.

There is also a Toronto Ordinariate group composed of former Anglicans. Toronto Cardinal Thomas Collins received four former Anglicans into the Catholic Church on Dec. 18.