Contributors

Christian Campbell

Christian Campbell is the Senior Warden of the Cathedral of the Incarnation (Orlando, FL) and a member of the Standing Committee of the Anglican Church in America's Diocese of the Eastern United States.

He is also the CEO of Three Fish Consulting, LLC, an Information Technology consultancy based in Orlando, FL. He can be reached via email at ccampbell at threefishgroup dot com.

Bishop Edwin Barnes

Bishop Barnes read theology for three years at Oxford before finishing his studies at Cuddesdon College (at the time a theological college with a rather monastic character). He subsequently served two urban curacies in Portsmouth and Woking.  During his first curacy, and after the statutory three years of celibacy, he married his wife Jane (with whom he has two children, Nicola and Matthew).  In 1967, Bishop Barnes received his first incumbency as Rector of Farncombe in the Diocese of Guildford.  After eleven years, the family moved to Hessle, in the Diocese of York, for another nine years as vicar.  In 1987, he became Principal of St Stephen’s House, Oxford.  In 1995, he was asked by then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, to become the second PEV for the Province.  He was based in St. Alban’s and charged with ministering to faithful Anglo-Catholics spread over the length of Southern England, from the Humber Estuary to the Channel Islands.  After six years of service as a PEV, Bishop Barnes retired to Lymington on the south coast where he holds the Bishop of Winchester’s license as an honorary assistant bishop.  On the retirement of the late and much lamented Bishop Eric Kemp, he was honored to be asked to succeed him as President of the Church Union, which office he still holds.

Father Samuel L. Edwards

Fr. Samuel L. Edwards is a native of Waynesville, North Carolina and recently has returned there.  A graduate of Brevard College, The American University (Washington, DC), and Nashotah House Seminary (Wisconsin), he has served churches in north central Texas, southern Maryland and central Alabama.  He also served for seven years as the Executive Director of Forward in Faith, North America, then the largest organization of traditional Anglicans in The Episcopal Church, during which he traveled and spoke widely, both in the United States and abroad.

After 29 years in The Episcopal Church (23 of them as a member of the clergy), he became part of the Continuing Anglican movement in 2002.  Presently he is a member of the Anglican Church in America’s Diocese of the Eastern United States and serves as Vicar of Saint Peter’s Church in Waynesville.

Fr. Edwards’ ministry has a strong focus on teaching.  He is the author of numerous articles on religious, social, historical and political topics, both in church publications and secular newspapers.  He has also written two books (neither published as yet) –Constitution and Institution on the renewal of ecclesiology (the doctrine about the Church) and The Pondering Heart: A Rosary for all Christians. He is also engaged in a long and intermittent project of organizing his instructional material into another book with the working title, Faith and Life: Basics of Christian Teaching and Practice.

At this writing, Fr. Edwards is a contender for a seat in the North Carolina General Assembly’s House of Representatives in the General Election of 2010.

Fr. Edwards and his wife, Kay, have been married for over 30 years.  They have two adopted children.  David, the elder, is a Private in the North Carolina Army National Guard, currently serving in Iraq.  Rachel, the younger, lives with her husband in Waynesville.

Father John Fleming

Fr. John Fleming, himself the son of an Anglican priest, was ordained for the Diocese of Adelaide in the Anglican Church in Australia in 1970.  He served as President of the Union of Anglican Catholic Priests, an organization devoted to maintaining the Catholic tradition in the Anglican Church.  In the early 1970s, Fr. Fleming served as University Chaplain and Rector of St. Paul's Church, Adelaide ministering to university students and other young people.  From 1977-1978, he was Assistant Curate at St. Nicholas Church, Chiswick in West London before returning to Adelaide where he became Rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Plympton.  He remained there until Easter 1987, when he and his wife Alison were received into the Catholic Church.  Fr. Fleming was a member of the General Synod and the Social Responsibilities Commission of the Anglican Church of Australia.  The story of his conversion, dealing with the intellectual and spiritual issues involved, will be found in a new book to be published in April, 2010.

Fr. Fleming specializes in the development of public policy in bioethics.  His Ph.D. (Griffith University, Queensland) is in philosophy and medical ethics.  He was a founding member (1992-1996) of UNESCO's International Bioethics Committee which developed the Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights (adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on November 11, 1997).  Between 1998-2004, he was a member of the SA Council on Reproductive Technology (SA Parliament).

Fr. Fleming is a Corresponding Member of the Pontifical Academy for Life (from 1996), Faculty Member of John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (from 2001), and (from 2002) Member of the Gene Technology Ethics Committee (GTEC) set up under the Gene Technology Act 2000 (Commonwealth of Australia).

He was the founding President of Campion College Australia (2004-2009), the country's first Catholic liberal arts tertiary institution.  He also served as the founding Director of Adelaide's Southern Cross Bioethics Institute (1987-2004), where he currently teaches as Adjunct Professor of Bioethics.

In addition to bioethics, Fr. Fleming has a longstanding interest in the Reformation history and liturgy.

Father Michael Gollop

His father a churchwarden in the family's local parish for twenty years, Fr. Michael Gollop, SSC, the parish priest of St. Arvans in Monmouthshire, was raised in the Anglican Church.  He has a degree in law from Oxford University (Keble College) and a degree in theology from the University of Wales.  Following his university studies, he trained for the priesthood at St. Michael's College, Llandaff in Cardiff.

He first encountered Anglo-Catholicism as a young teenager, and, despite a period where he consciously rejected it, he returned to the Faith at university, having undergone what might be described as a "conversion experience" which swept away all of his previous doubts.

He was ordained a priest in the Church in Wales in 1986 and has served in various — and varied — communities in South-East Wales.  For the last sixteen years, he has been the parish priest of four quite diverse rural parishes in the Wye Valley of Monmouthshire.

Fr. Gollop's wife Kate is a solo 'cellist and together they are slowly restoring a farmhouse in the Vendee department of France which they, one day, hope to make their permanent home.

Fr. Gollop has a personal blog called Let Nothing You Dismay, which he refers to, only half-jokingly, as "the confessions of a recovering liberal," inasmuch as his experience of parish ministry, and perhaps of life itself, has been a quest for the recovery of an orthodox Catholic faith and for a true ecclesial authority which reflects that of the Lord Himself.

In addition to matters ecclesiastical, his interests include classical music, gardening (in two climates), and a St. Bernard dog who is a large presence in more ways than one.

I invite our readers to welcome Fr. Gollop as a contributor to The Anglo-Catholic.  We are honored to have him on the team!

Deborah Gyapong

I have been a member of the Traditional Anglican Communion's Ottawa Cathedral of the Annunciation for about ten years now.  I have a rather bizarre and convoluted spiritual journey that began with my Russian Orthodox baptism as an infant.  But I spent most of my teens and early 20s resisting spitefully any overtures from God.   Here's a link to my testimony that appeared in the National Post a few years ago.

I did have some tenuous links to Anglicanism in my childhood. My father called himself a "mercenary Episcopalian" because he got paid to sing in some of the top Episcopal Church choirs in the Boston area.  I would sometimes accompany him to the Church of the Advent but hanging around during rehearsals was a hardship and I was painfully shy around other children. But I grew up around the musical traditions of both the Russian Orthodox and the Anglican churches.

After my journey into apostasy, through various forms of Gnosticism and then into an "it's just me and Jesus"  cafeteria Christianity, I found shelter in a seeker-friendly Baptist Church in the Ottawa area.  It is there, in the evangelical world, where I began to develop my adult Christian faith.  I am so grateful for the gentle shepherding I received at Kanata Baptist.  Had I plunged right into the TAC, I would have suffered the spiritual "bends."

"What?  No women priests?"   "What? All this vain repetition?"  "What? Creeds!"   I would have been done in by the Athanasian Creed, I am sure.  Thus I have great respect for the different ways the Lord woos us and am comfortable in a range of worship settings.  And I hope no one keels over when I say this, but I am so grateful for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

At a certain point in my spiritual journey, I shifted from being someone who had to understand before I could believe to adopting Anselm's Credo ut intelligam — "I believe in order that I may understand."

Thus came a yearning to have an Apostolic faith.  It was not long after that a chance meeting after a lecture brought me to our idiosyncratic little cathedral parish and I found I loved the kneeling, the reverence, the language.  I  already had an intuitive belief in Christ's Real Presence in the Eucharist.

And I loved the way our then Bishop Robert Mercer prayed the mass.  Somehow, his focus and sense of recollection made it impossible not to be lifted to heaven, to hear every word, to pray with him.  I started bringing friends and some of them stuck, too.

Every Saturday, we have breakfast after the Eucharist in our parish hall.  What an opportunity for one on one catechesis that was.

When I joined the TAC around 1999-2000, I was still working as a television producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  Then I did a little stint as a communications officer for the then Leader of the Official Opposition.  Then I got fired when a new leader came in, and started my own little communications business.  I also polished up a novel that I had hoped would become a best seller and bring me a huge income I could retire on.  The Defilers won the Best New Canadian Christian Author Award and was published in 2006. But, alas, it has sold terribly, though people who have bothered to read it have liked it.

Work in my communications business strangely dried up in 2004 and I tried about eight months of "living the dream" of being a full time fiction writer.  But the isolation of writing fiction full time proved to be not all I thought it would be.  I confess, I like the idea of being a writer more than I like being a real writer.  If you see any typos, you'll get my drift.  (I don't see them even if I look for them, sorry).  I love churning out first drafts.  Polishing is a chore.  And I needed to earn some money.  So when I spied the notice of job opening with Roman Catholic papers to be the national correspondent for a cooperative called Canadian Catholic News, I applied.

Being a Roman Catholic was not a requirement.  In my interview with several of the editors, I told them I loved the Catholic Church and I loved the Holy Father.  "I'm more Catholic than 85% of the people in the pews of the Catholic Church," I told them.  (Yet I didn't know even what a monsignor was.  I had a steep learning curve ahead of me.)

The editors traded meaningful glances and left to discuss the matter among themselves.  Then they offered me the job.

What an amazing ride it has been.  I jumped immediately into covering the same-sex 'marriage' debate then raging in Canada.  Within a few weeks, I was covering my first plenary session of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB).

Now I've covered six plenaries.  I've seen some beautiful renewal in the Catholic Church in Canada even in my short time covering the Church.  My position in the National Capital has been a great perch from which to observe the many signs of hope here.  And I often wonder if there was anything providential in my being a member of the TAC writing for Catholic papers at this time in our journey towards union with the Holy See.

Case in point.  When the Apostolic Constitution (AC) was announced, I fortuitously happened to be down in Cornwall, Ontario covering the last CCCB plenary.  I had gone to my room on Monday night, checked my computer and people were Tweeting me (sending me messages on Twitter for those who don't use the site) that something was going to happen the next day that involved us.   So I set my alarm early and first thing the next morning I checked my email and by 6:00 a.m. Eastern a friend of mine from Zenit had already sent me the texts of both news conferences.  So I went off and got about a dozen copies printed off to pass around.

Who should happen to be at the plenary that morning but the Primate of the Anglican Church of Canada Archbishop Fred Hiltz!   I dunno, if I wrote a novel with all those "coincidences" in it, my critique partners would tell me it was just not believable.  Hiltz is a very nice man, but he didn't seem to think much of the AC.  When I interviewed him later that day, he said he did not expect many Anglicans would avail themselves of it.  The juridical authority of the Pope was the sticking point.

Last summer, I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Pope Benedict XVI.  I had flown over on the Canadian Prime Minister's plane to cover his first papal audience.  While the other journalists went off to cover the G8, I had to hang around in Rome for a few days. Poor me.

But a big scandal had broken back in Canada.  The Prime Minister, an evangelical, was accused of pocketing the Host during a Catholic funeral prior to leaving for Italy. He didn't, of course. But it sure made my life busy. The meeting with Pope Benedict took place on the day we flew home to Ottawa. I brought him greetings from Bishop Peter Wilkinson.

So here we are.

Father Seán Finnegan

Born in 1961, Fr. Seán Finnegan studied at the University of St. Andrews and St. John’s Seminary, Wonersh, England.  He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton on September 24, 1989 where he has spent the majority of his priesthood, apart from a few years in the Oratories of Oxford and London.  He is presently the Parish Priest of the Parish of Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Adur Valley, which is on the South Coast of England, not far from Brighton.  Fr. Finnegan is the author of the exceptional blog Valle Adurni (the ancient Roman name for Shoreham, the main town of Fr. Finnegan’s parish, is supposed to have been Portus Adurni).  He also teaches Early Church History at St. John’s Seminary.

Father William P. "Doc" Holiday

At the behest of my very good friend Mr. Campbell, I have been given the great honor of being allowed to participate in this endeavor that is The Anglo-Catholic.  Christian has asked that my initial post be of an introductory nature.  So, without any further ado, I beg your forbearance.

My name is Fr. William P. “Doc” Holiday.  The nickname is the result of my last name and American western history, not earned by way of the academy.  I serve as a curate at the Cathedral of the Incarnation (Orlando, FL), ACA/TAC, and have been so blessed since Advent season of 2007.  I am a Cooperator with the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, an association of clergy intrinsically united with Opus Dei, and it is my fervent hope that once the Ordinariate is established that I will be able to enter this Society as a full member.  I entered the ACA/TAC by way of another “Continuing” Anglican jurisdiction (you will become aware in short order that I in no way appreciate the moniker “Continuum” in the context of current Anglican affairs), and I entered Anglicanism via the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, via the Presbyterian Church in America, via the Baptist church, via being eye brow deep in the temporal.  Consequently, I approach things theological, and all the associated “logics”, from the perspective of one who has walked a very circuitous journey.  My worldview has run the gamut from paganism, broad evangelicalism, foaming-at-the-mouth rabid Calvinism (my M. Div. is from Reformed Theological Seminary), latitudinarian Anglicanism, to Catholicism,  and by that I mean real Catholic, capital “C” Catholic, Pope Catholic.  I came to this point by way of much prayer, study, and spiritual direction, and am happy to be here because I know I don’t need to search anymore.  Mother Church has opened her doors to me and my brothers and sisters and now we merely wait to step through.  Actually, when I came into the ACA/TAC, I was contemplating going directly to Rome, but being aware of the TAC’s overtures toward the Holy See I decided that if I could in any way assist in the effort to bring tens of thousands into the Church, as opposed to just me, I should put forth the effort.  Additionally, there exists in true Anglicanism a depth and richness of spirituality, a glory in liturgy, and a desire for the maintenance of Catholic tradition, that is not to be found in many Latin Rite parishes.  This is the Anglican patrimony of which so many speak in the context of Anglicanorum Coetibus, the patrimony we desire to bring into the Church of which we were once part.

Another facet of my life that lends to a somewhat unique perspective regarding my take on things, and my presentation as well, is my secular background.  After graduating high school in Kenton County, KY., I enlisted in the U. S. Marine Corps (a belated happy birthday to all you Devil Dogs [It's a Marine thing you others wouldn't understand]) where I served for over four years.  After my discharge I entered a career in law enforcement.  I am currently in my 25th year of service in that capacity.  Yes, you read right, still active.  By God’s grace I was able to segue my affinity with police officers into my priesthood by serving as a Chaplain for the Orange County (FL) Sheriff’s Office, a very large agency that serves the metro Orlando area.  During my tenure in law enforcement I served in Patrol, Street Crimes, Traffic, Aviation, and  for most of the time in my love of loves, SWAT.  As you can well imagine, that gives me a sort of “rubber-meets-the-road” perspective of ministry, and an ability to talk about guns if any of you so desire.

I pray that my role here will be to engage in a practical theological approach to many of the matters discussed.  I have a very distinct desire to overcome the prevalent, “Can’t see the forest for the trees,” paradigm so evidently displayed by so many self-proclaimed authorities in the matter of reunion before us.  Unfortunately, there are so many who conjecture concerning the meaning of something they read, or hear, and then by way of that conjecture parse the matter to what they present as logical consistency, when in fact their initial perception was flawed consequently making all they say about the matter at hand invalid, and I would submit quite often ridiculous.  In short, we need to address matters Anglo-Catholic objectively, parsing information of which we are sure, and letting things yet to be determined rest until they are determined.

I pray this was not burdensome, and I also beg your forgiveness if at times I become a bit edgy in my zeal to address issues that are so very dear to my heart, and there is nothing closer to my heart than the desire to see the fruition of the gracious work of the Holy Father in paving a way for us to come home.

Your servant in our Lord Jesus Christ and His most blessed and ever-virgin Mother,

“Doc”+

Ralph Johnston

Mr. Johnston has been a member of the Anglican Use parish of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio, TX since 2004.  Formerly a museum director, he now serves as headmaster of The Atonement Academy, the PK-12 parish school of Our Lady of the Atonement, and, to date, the only school in the Pastoral Provision and future Ordinariate community.  Like many other cradle Catholics worshiping in Pastoral Provision congregations, he has developed an attachment to the Anglican forms of devotion.  He has attended Anglican Use Conferences in prior years and is a member of the Anglican Use Society.

In Rome with an Atonement pilgrimage group when Anglicanorum Coetibus was published, he was the first individual to file a petition with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to establish an Ordinariate for the United States under the Apostolic Constitution.  He was a contributor at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Information Day in San Antonio on December 12 of last year, and he has followed recent events closely.  Mr. Johnston holds an MPPM from Yale University and a Certificate in Catholic School Leadership from the University of Dallas.

Father Christopher Phillips

Fr. Christopher G. Phillips is the pastor of Our Lady of the Atonement Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, where he has served for twenty-seven years.  He is the founding pastor of the first Anglican Use parish, erected in 1983 under the terms of the Pastoral Provision.

Fr. Phillips was ordained as an Anglican for the Diocese of Bristol, England, in 1975.  After serving as Curate for three years at St. Stephen Southmead, he returned to the United States and served in two Episcopal parishes in the Diocese of Rhode Island.  In 1981 he left the Episcopal Church and moved with his family to Texas, where he was subsequently ordained as a Catholic priest in 1983.

Fr. Phillips and his wife, JoAnn, have been married for nearly forty years.  They have five children and one grandchild.

Fr. Phillips also blogs independently at AtonementOnline.

Father Giles Pinnock

Fr. Pinnock currently serves as Vicar of St. Mary-the-Virgin, Kenton, a Forward in Faith parish in northwest London under care of the Bishop of Fulham.  An American citizen born in the Unites States of British parents, he received his theological training at St. Stephen's House, Oxford, and was ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood by the Bishop of Ebbfleet.  He served his title at St. Mary & St. Giles, Stony Stratford before taking up his present ministry at St.Mary-the-Virgin, where has has labored for nearly four years.

Fr. Pinnock is already well-known in the Anglo-Catholic blogosphere as the author ofonetimothyfour.

Fr. Chori Jonathin Seraiah

I am a priest in the Anglican Church in America (TAC). I am not, at this time, serving a parish but I am hoping that will change as soon as the American Ordinariate is in place; we are not sure what the future holds. I have served as pastor in various Protestant congregations, and have pretty much "seen it all". I was born into a family of lapsed Catholics. They had me baptized, but before long they gave up the whole thing altogether and ended up trying out the "new age" movement. When I got to my teen years I stumbled around in various evangelical circles for a while, but when I finally went to seminary (my early twenties), I was a "hard as nails" Baptist. After one pastor got me to start reading the Church Fathers (the best "mistake" a Baptist can ever make), I began to realize that I couldn't find my own personal theology in the Early Church. That really bothered me, because I believed that we should agree with the Church Fathers.

I got married to my wonderful wife back in 1990 when we were both Baptists, and she has followed me through this long journey with beautiful patience and love. We currently have five children and homeschool all of them. Early in my marriage I began to study church history quite intensively. During this time I became bothered by the divisions in Christendom, and thus also began to develop a passion for the unity of Christianity (John 17). After a number of theological shifts (infant baptism, sacramental effectiveness, liturgical consistency, etc.) I went through a wide section of Protestantism. From Baptist, to reformed Baptist, to Presbyterian, to reformed Presbyterian, to high Church puritan, to Presbyterianglican, to evangelical Anglican, and finally to Anglo-Catholic. I've pastored Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, and a parish in the Reformed Episcopal Church, and have fifteen years experience in all the best (and worst) of Protestant church life. After all this, I now find it quite ironic that the Lord is calling me back to the faith from which I was "kidnapped" as a child. Back then I did not know what it meant to be Catholic, because I was never taught; but now I that I do know, I am committed to returning. I am deeply thankful for the beauties of Anglican spirituality, for it was through it that I found my way back home.

After I first spoke with Bishop Louis Campese, I joined the ACA because of its clear direction in seeking full communion with the Catholic Church. The purpose of the ACA and its goals were made obvious to me from various sources, and I am fully committed to following this path into unity with the Holy See. There are a great many misconceptions not only about Catholicism, but also about what we are doing by "joining with them." I hope and pray that through Mr. Campbell's gracious offer for me to write for The Anglo-Catholic, that I may be able to help my brothers and sisters — Protestant, Anglican, or otherwise — to see the beauties of the Catholic Faith for what it is; and thereby, that Christ may be glorified above all.

Father Mark Siegel

My name is Father Mark Siegel, and I serve God’s One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church as the Dean of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Orlando, Florida.  While it has not been my practice to spend much time reading the blogs in cyberspace, let alone commenting on what I have read, I have decided to enter the fray for a couple of reasons.  The first is to support this wonderful effort of our outstanding Senior Warden, and the second is to add my voice to a very positive and reasonable response to the many negative and seemingly unreasonable blogs that are out there.

Being the Dean of the Cathedral means that my ministry is quite unlike most parish priests.  That is to say that while I do have the full measure of responsibility that comes with being a priest in charge of a parish, it also means that I have the added duties that come with being a part of the seat of the diocese.  Given my position within the diocese, I simply must maintain a “big picture” outlook and take on the weight and responsibility of serving the diocese, while at the same time being intimately involved in the lives of each and every member of the parish and doing all that I can to guide, direct, protect and feed the local flock.  Both responsibilities are quite an honor and blessing to hold, but in my heart and mind I merely see myself as a simple parish priest that has been called to serve the Lord in a unique way.  So, any contribution that I make to this blog will come from a rather parochial view of the situations that move me to comment.

As I am certain that many others will make comments that come from a much broader perspective (international, national, and even diocesan), I hope that my contribution, that focuses more on how the events of the day might impact each parish and its members, might be somewhat unique on this site, and God willing might even prove helpful.

It is my sincere prayer that anything that I might do here will first and foremost glorify our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but will also play a small part in the further unity, growth and outreach of His Church.

Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

Fr. Mark+

Dr. William Tighe

Dr. Tighe is Associate Professor of History at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  His papers have been published in numerous scholarly journals and his work has been featured in popular publications such as Touchstone and New Oxford Review.  Dr. Tighe has provided the following biographical sketch for our readers.

I was born May 5, 1952 in Lowell, Massachusetts, and since 1990 have been married to the former Silvija G. Sterns.  We have three children, Augustine Leo Tighe (b. 1992), Kirill Alexander Tighe (b. 1995) and Aija Theodoti Tighe (b. 2001).

I was born and bred a Roman Catholic, but as a graduate student at Yale drifted away and began to attend Episcopalian services.  Had it not been for the decision of the Episcopal Church in 1976 to approve the ordination of women, I would most likely have become an Episcopalian, but that decision gave me pause, although not enough to drive me away from Anglicanism.  When I left Yale (and America) for Cambridge (I lived in the UK from 1978 to 1986), I was able to cultivate an acquaintance with the late Anglo-Catholic theologian Eric Mascall (1905-1993), whose works I had discovered on my own as an undergraduate in the early 1970s and whom I had met in New York City on Good Friday 1977, and as a result of conversations with him, as well as with other new English Christian friends, I came to the conclusion that I could not justify formally becoming an Anglican, but, rather, should return to the practice of the Catholic Faith in the Catholic Church, which I did.  Shortly after taking up my present position at Muhlenberg College in 1986, I began to attend the local Ukrainian Catholic parish, and in 1995 petitioned for, and received, a formal “transfer of rite” to become, with my children, a member of the ecclesia sui juris Ukrainian Catholic Church.  I will acknowledge as well that I have been influenced by the admirable writings of Fr. Aidan Nichols, OP, whom I am pleased and honored to count as a friend.

My academic interests include the English Reformation (and its long-term “working out”) as well as the Reformation in the Scandinavian realms, and, additionally, the Orthodox Church and its relations with the West.  I teach courses on various aspects of European history between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, as well as one on (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity.

Father Ed Tomlinson

The son of an Anglican clergyman, Fr. Edward Tomlinson was born in Wigan before moving to Santiago, Chile as a baby where his father worked as a missionary with SAMS.  He returned to England in time for schooling and spent those formative years in Norfolk attending the Cathedral school.  He then moved to Homerton College, Cambridge before working as a primary school teacher in Colchester, Essex.

It was here that the boy raised as an Evangelical (for which he gives thanks) encountered Anglo Catholic devotion for the first time.  This soon led him to Westcott House in Cambridge to train for the priesthood.  At Westcott the joy of encountering Anglo-Catholicism was dampened however by the horror of encountering liberal theology!  The reason for his calling came into sharp focus as he avowed to stand up for the orthodox faith with every fibre of his being.

A happy curacy at S. Thomas of Canterbury church in Brentwood prepared him for his current post as vicar of S. Barnabas’, Royal Tunbridge Wells.

He writes a regular column for New Directions, the magazine of Forward in Faith and is also editor of the The Church Observer, a Church Union journal.  In addition he writes a daily blog which, much to his surprise, continues to gain a loyal following.  He is married to Hayley, a painting conservator at the National Gallery, and has two young children Jemima and Benedict.

Br. Stephen Treat, O.Cist.

Br. Stephen Treat, O.Cist. is a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank in Sparta, WI.  Like many others, his path led from an evangelical childhood in the South to Anglicanism and into the Roman Catholic Church.  He was received from Anglicanism in 2006 at the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes in Philadelphia.  He studied religion and public policy in graduate school, writing his thesis on the social politics of the 19th Century Anglican Customaries and earned his living in the NGO world working in public policy, fundraising and communications in Boston and Philadelphia until entering Our Lady of Spring Bank in the summer of 2008.

Our Lady of Spring Bank is a small Abbey of the Order of Cistercians, generally known as the “Common Cistercians,” located on 600 acres near La Crosse, Wisconsin.  The monks of Spring Bank divide their day between prayer, study, and manual labor, going to the oratory seven times each day to sing the Divine Office in Latin with English translations that would be familiar to most Anglicans.  The Abbey supports itself throughLaserMonks.com, a leading provider of computer printer ink and toner cartridges and reseller of monastic products from around the world.  LaserMonks has received significant attention in the US press both as an entrepreneurial success story and as a pioneer in the area of socially responsible business practice.

At the Abbey, Br. Stephen is the assistant to the Conventual Prior, a student for Holy Orders, and drives a mean snowplow during Wisconsin’s long winters.  His interests include apologetics, Cistercian history, and the re-enchantment of culture.  He blogs atSub Tuum and has been a supporter of the Apostolic Constitution since its announcement.  As someone who still has a great love for the Anglican Patrimony, he agrees with the great 19th Century convert, Fr. Basil Maturin, that our goal should be “to hold on to all that was good and true in the past, and to engraft the new upon the old."