I might not be a good

Catholic, but I am a real one
Charterhouse Chronicle Brian Brindley
4 0 F COURSE, if you were a real Catholic, like us..." said the Catholic mother
in-law of one of the , parishioners of my former Church of England parish. I had gone back for a family occasion, the golden wedding of two of my one-time flock. I had not encountered the opinionated old lady for about 20 years; it was the first time she had seen me in collar and tie. As we settled comfortably down after luncheon she asked: "And how do you like being a Catholic?"
"Very much," I replied. "Of course, I'm lucky: the church I go to has lovely services and lovely music." It was then that she said "Oh, I knew you'd say that. Of course, if you were a real Catholic, like us, you wouldn't bother what the services were like; for us, the Mass is the Mass, however it's done." She didn't mean to be insulting, she just spoke naturally what she was thinking. I'm afraid I exploded in anger: "But I am a real Catholic; I'm as much a real Catholic as you are!" She was flustered by my reaction, and eventually I was able to guide her towards the phrase "cradle-Catholic" to describe herself and her family. But I bet she still doesn't feel that I am a real Catholic.
This attitude is all too common among those who have had the privilege of being born to Catholic families, baptised in the Catholic Church, and brought up as Catholics. They are a bit like the labourers in Our Lord's parable of the vineyard: they have borne the burden and heat of the day and — though they theoretically welcome conversions — they half-pity, half despise, late-comers like myself.
Over the years the Catholic Church in England has received many converts, usually from among the practising and instructed members of the Church of England. I need only list the names of Newman, Manning, Knox, Chesterton, Waugh — without any need for comparisons, nobody will question that these became in their own right great ornaments to the Catholic Church in England.
In the past five or ten years the Established Church has become so hopeless that there have been converts in larger numbers than ever before. Statistics are not kept or, if they are kept, are treated as secret. It is impossible to say how many lay people have left the Church of England to become Catholics. In the case of the clergy, the "official" number is 600. I suspect this is an under-estimate, judging by the depletion of the circles in which I used to move, and by the numbers of former clergymen I meet as Catholics, whether ordained or not. For example, I had five curates during my 22 years as incumbent of a Church of England parish: of them, two are now Catholics (one a priest, the other a pastoral assistant in a Catholic parish), one became a Catholic but has since died, and two are still in the Church of England as incumbents. Many of my very best friends have become Catholics, and are scattered all over England, so I seldom see them; I miss going to Walsingham, for the Grand National Pilgrimage when you saw everyone you had ever known, for the Priests' Pilgrimage, and for the homely business of the annual Parish Pilgrimage.
IHAVE, of course, been made very welcome in the Catholic parish where I was instructed and received, and where I now worship; for obvious reasons, as I am not ordained, I have no part in the closed society of the priests of the diocese; in the Church of England I was on Christian-name terms with many bishops, as a Catholic I have met but one —my own — and him very briefly. Really, if you will forgive the jargon, it is as if one's whole "support-group" of friends and colleagues had been snatched away.
I was personally very fortunate in my circumstances, in that I suffered no material hardship in following the dictates of conscience: the Church of England pays me a pension, all sorts of institutions for the Anglican clergy remain open to me, and I have, by inheritance, a nice house to live M. Many convert clergymen were not so lucky: in becoming Catholics they lost not only their vocations, their status and their income, but also their home. There are many instances, especially among those who are married and have children, of really heroic sacrifice.
It is hard to think of any possible motive of personal advantage in their conversion; the same is true for those lay people who were often deeply and fulfillingly involved in the life of their (C of E) parishes and now find themselves cut off from their friends and with no opportunity afforded them of serving the Church.
I have to admit that, after 30 years of striving for improvement and perfection in worship, both at the parish level and in places like the General Synod, it irks me to experience (not, I say again, in my own parish) the treasures of the Roman liturgy being squandered by the ineptitude and inefficiency (sometimes also, one suspects, indolence) of priests and musicians. In the same way it is tedious to have to listen to homilies made up of pious clichés and ill-informed speculations by preachers whose imagination is as narrow as their education had been. Well, if I was a real Catholic...
Not even God can make me a cradleCatholic; nor do I claim to be a good Catholic. But to deny me the chance of being a real Catholic is to limit the power of God intolerably. I consider myself to be a true Roman Catholic: I believe in the power of the Roman Pontiff not only to teach doctrine, but also to regulate the liturgy and to define who is and is not, who may and may not be, in Holy Orders. I have not all my life been right about these matters, as "real" Catholics have been; but I am right now.
Even ex-Anglicans are God's creatures: we love to be loved, and to be made use of. Love us, and use us.