For å bli katolikk trengs en ekte omvendelse

To tidligere anglikanske prester skriver om sin konversjon og sin opptakelse i Den katolske Kirke – om risikoen og forsakelsene, men også om gleden. Den første av dem tok steget for mange år siden:

if I may speak to any former Anglicans who are out there, this is the time to really stop and assess your position. You need to asks some very serious questions if you have not yet done so. Where is the Church? Where, today, are the successors of the apostles? What is the most important thing about your faith? What really matters?

The days ahead will be a test. I am one of those who walked away from the Anglican Church and found the Catholic Church to be a welcome home, but it was also, as Fr Steenson says, ‘a purgative way.’ I had to make sacrifices. There was uncertainty. I had to step out in faith as never before. However, what sacrifices I made have borne rich fruit. … Genuine sacrifice always bears fruit. Walking by faith strengthens the whole church.

If you are an Anglican priest who wants to be in full communion with the Catholic Church you may have to step out in the months ahead and give all. Do not fear. God will provide! … Maybe you will walk away from your beautiful church and your nice rectory. Maybe you will worship in a tin hut with borrowed vestments and sacred vessels. Maybe you and your wife will have to get secular jobs to make ends meet. Maybe you will be ostracized by friends and family. Maybe you will struggle to understand what God is doing. Maybe you will become a Catholic and you will lose your ministry for a time. … This adventure of faith is open to you. Do not miss your chance!

Den andre ble katolikk bare for noen få måneder siden:
… The stories are often very far from one another but a common thread that I found in many of them is the silence about what it means to convert to become a Catholic. And, conversion is necessary I believe. I am a small fish who has been able to jump out of a small pond and into a vast sea where the world of the Catholic Church in all her beauty and frailty is being discovered each and every day. There is more in the Catholic Church than I ever imagined there could be. I’ve discovered (in the past 5 short months) that her beauty and maturity is beyond what is capable of my human abilities to grasp. She is a stable institution with a bridal maturity that is able to handle even the blips that come her way and has done so since her beginning in the calling of the Twelve. So, in her wisdom, she does know best what is needed in something like this gracious gift to the Anglican world from the Holy Father.

There are a number of voices that are being heard and aired throughout the world on this gift and I admit that my voice is only one among many. I speak as a very new Catholic convert but as one who I believe has had a radical conversion to a Catholic way of thinking in a very short amount of time due to some of the hardest days in my Christian life of struggling to come to terms with what was happening in my head and in my heart. If I were to give any word of encouragement, I think it would be that my former Anglican colleagues around the world must deeply consider what it means to have a complete conversion to a Catholic way of life. I believe a real head and heart conversion is absolutely necessary in order to submit to the Magisterium with a joyful submission.

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