An Anglican bishop and former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II is to be received into the Catholic Church in Shrewsbury Cathedral.
The Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, will confirm the Rt Rev. Dr Gavin Ashenden (pictured) in the Catholic faith during Mass on December 22, the fourth Sunday of Advent.
His reception into the Catholic Church means that his Anglican orders will be suspended and will become a lay Catholic theologian.
Helen Ashenden, his wife of 23 years, became a Catholic in the Shrewsbury diocese about two years ago.
Dr Ashenden served as a chaplain to Her Majesty from 2008-2017 but resigned from his post in objection to the reading of a chapter from the Koran at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland, which explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus.
Soon afterwards, he was ordained as a missionary bishop of the Christian Episcopal Church, a traditional Anglican jurisdiction founded in 1992.
Dr Ashenden is becoming a Catholic partly because he believes the Roman Catholic Church has the deep capacity to remain faithful to “the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values” at a time when powerful social and cultural challenges threaten to deny and extinguish them.
Much of his ministry is online, via the website https://ashenden.org/ that attracts hundreds of thousands of visits each year.
Bishop Davies said: “It is very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of canonisation of St John Henry Newman.
“It has been a special joy to accompany Gavin Ashenden in the last steps of a long journey to be at home in the Catholic Church.
“I am conscious of the witness which Gavin Ashenden has given in the public square to the historic faith and values on which our society has been built. I pray that this witness will continue to be an encouragement to many.”
Dr Ashenden said: “In my judgement, at this point in history, only the Roman Catholic and Orthodox expression churches have the capacity to defend the faith as our circumstances require.
“Having come to believe that the claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief, and to accept the primacy of the Petrine tradition, I am grateful to the Bishop of Shrewsbury and the Catholic community in his diocese for the opportunity to mend 500 years of fractured history and be reconciled to the Church that gave birth to my earlier tradition.
“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St John Henry Newman. He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother Church with the vigour and integrity of the Catholic tradition. Now, as then, however, his experience informs ours that the Church of England is inclined to be rooted in secularised culture rather than the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values.
“His experience also inspires ours, and charts the way to our proper ecclesial home which is the rock that is the Petrine charism of faith and witness in our struggle for salvation and heaven.”
Congratulations! Welcome Home, Bishop Gavin Ashenden
I wonder how many will follow him. Probably quite a lot. Maybe in the hundreds.
Hundreds?
Seriously?
How about… any…
Edgarson,
Have you read the comments on You Tube where the announcement was made. Gavin seems to have a lot (yes hundreds) of supporters and sympathisers.
Supporters and sympathizers are one thing. I am myself.
Following him to Rome is something very different. There are some key theological differences at play. For Gavin they seem not to matter much. For very many of us, they are insurmountable.
I could understand someone going to Orthodoxy, as in Eastern Orthodoxy. Rome? From Canterbury? There’s more of a theological difference.
Matthew 24:24 – For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.
(edit) I think Gavin has been hoodwinked
The mainline anglicans will rejoice he’s gone, the breakaway ones will feel his absence. It will make him less vague than he’s had to be in the long series of videos. I hope the Catholics will ordain him quickly with no hand wringing about his being (gasp!) married. They should be happy to have a straight cleric.
The path to RC ordination might be more bumpy than expected even for a well qualified candidate. It didn’t go so well for Bp. David Moyer and Abp. Hepworth even though they were bringing a flock with them.
He has made a change that is pretty much opaque and takes a very long time to sink in for Anglicans: he has stopped being a protestant. New planet. I knew one of the vey first “pastoral provision” Anglican clergy converts in 1980. He was treated abominably by the RC hierarchy. And this was in a time whe each of those guys were personally vetted by JP II. I hope things have changed for Gavin.
How very sad.
I am so extremely disappointed by this news. While my views concerning the RC Church have modified over the years, it still has much to answer for which biblically cannot be defended. Anglicans have lost a champion. Nevertheless, I respect Bishop Ashenden and his testimony and wish him personally the best.
I feel the same way. This is awfully disappointing to me. I also feel that while there is good in the Roman Catholic Church, there is too much that does not square with the Bible.
I, too, wish Gavin well, but I do so shaking my head in sadness.
Listening to Gavin talk over the past few months I am not surprised. This is based on what he has said regarding the RC Church. The sad thing is he feels he can not longer join in Holy Communion with orthodox Anglicans and those Anglican clergy like George Conger he can not longer view them as priest in Christ’s Holy Catholic Church. He can view them as one RC told me about Anglican clergy they are just playing dress-up.
What a huge catch for Rome! Probably one of the biggest since Newman,
Rome certainly needs to catch someone aa they are losing members by the thousands each day. Latin America, for example, is turning Protestant before our very eyes, but that is a good thing. It’s sad that Gavin would go to the Roman Church when orthodox Anglicanism is on the rise in so many places around the globe. Most importantly, the issue with Rome is that it really does teach some doctrines that are without Sciptural foundation and completely unknown to the early church.
Tragic.
Gavin, you have not chosen an assembly that teaches the word of God over those of man. No one is disputing you leaving the Anglican assembly, but you’ve gone from dark to darker.
Colossians 2:8English Standard Version (ESV)
8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Please keep in mind that there is only one mediator between God and men – Jesus Christ.
(edited)
Sandi- I think your first sentence might need re-phrasing. I agree with your sentiment.
Thank you David…..lol….I thought I cleared it up earlier in the day, but evidently made it worse. I’ll rectify it. Thank you. 🙂
Any time. My strong (or weak) point is pedantry.
Well, I just couldn’t seem to get the statement correct and needed some help 🙂
A weak and unstable drifter. He’ll gain little-to-nothing from it.
I think you are wrong. I thing Gavin is a warm and loving man – maybe a bit naive when it comes to the flattery they drew him in with. The saddest thing is, a man of good reputation is now going to be known by the spiritual error he chose. Very sad.
I believe that the last thing which could be said of Gavin Ashenden is that he is a weak and unstable drifter. He has been one of very few prominent clergymen in the UK to stand against the whole range of anti-biblical stances which the CofE as a whole is engaged in. He has suffered for it as well. He had hoped he could be part of an alternative UK Anglican trend but the model available in the US simply has not developed.
While I share the sadness of others about this development, not least because it may reduce the opportunities Gavin has had ( because of his transparent integrity and insights) to speak to national media in a way few others have, I am sure that Gavin will always put Christ before anything else. He knows that the RCC is far from perfect.
I hope we can all continue to pray for him. And for his co-presenters on AU for whom this must be a particular blow.
For the best follow up to this, follow “Anglican unscripted” which is produced by a priest and layman out of Florida, USA. Rt Rev. Dr Gavin Ashenden has been on Anglicanism unscripted for at least two years. Each of those talks is between 12 and 25 minutes. Ashenden has ”gravity”.
He “resigned from his post in objection to the reading of a chapter from the Koran at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, Scotland, which explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus.” Good for him. There are people standing up to the anglican and episcopal church’s heresy.. But on the flip side, going to the catholic church will all of theirs?! I’m guessing it is because of the structure and literacy are almost identical.
One, I believe that Gavin is a Christian believer.
Two, I hold to a proverb: (not scripture, but close) ”bloom where you are planted” ! Who really plants people ? answer: God I do not believe that Gaven went to the Catholic church to be ”used” by them but rather to be salt where no salt exists. I believe this after listening to him and two other orthodox American Anglicans from Florida on Anglican unscripted (see U-Tube) on over 10 podcasts. Listen to past podcasts over the past 24 months before throwing your rocks on his glass house.
Can we just get back to Kevin and George once again, like the good old days?? When Kevin would have an occasional guest like Jeff Watson, Archbishop Foley, one of the Ould brothers or Mr. Haley on legal events? I became an Anglican (Reformed Episcopal Church) as a result of watching Kevin and George for a year. I do not care to listen to a Roman Catholic convert about anything, let alone Anglicanism. The Roman church has a communist for a pope, it is rife with homosexuality and pedophilia, and certainly has nothing to offer the world. To become a RC, Gavin had to admit that everything he did before was heretical and of no account. Too bad for him that he would willingly erase his prior service, but so be it, the die is cast. Let him go, and let US Anglicans get back to Anglican Unscripted.
I can understand your point of view but please don’t forget that for some of us in the UK, the three good men on AU over the past couple of years have given regular and unique insights into what is happening across the Anglican world and in particular in our country. It’s simply not available elsewhere. Looking ahead I do hope that Gavin will be able to contribute to AU even if not as a fixture and from a different perspective. But I guess it will not be easy.