SHREWSBURY (CNS) Gavin Ashenden, a former bishop of the Christian Episcopal Church and a former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, was received into the Catholic Church in Shrewsbury cathedral on December 22.
The bishop said he had reached the conclusion that only the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches “have the capacity to defend the faith” from the influence of secularism.
A December 17 statement from the Diocese of Shrewsbury said Ashenden’s Anglican orders will be suspended and he will become a lay Catholic theologian.
The former bishop said in his own statement, “The claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief” and that he now accepted the primacy of the pope.
Ashenden said he was grateful to Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury, and the Catholics of his diocese for the opportunity to “be reconciled to the Church that gave birth to my earlier (Anglican) tradition.”
“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St. John Henry Newman,” he said.
“He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother Church with the vigour and integrity of the Catholic tradition,” he said. “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.”
Bishop Davies said it was “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.”
He said, “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.”
Ashenden was a well-known figure in the Church of England and served as a chaplain to the queen from 2008 to 2017.
He resigned from his post, however, so he could publicly speak out against the reading of a chapter from the Qu’ran, which explicitly denied the divinity of Jesus, at an interfaith service at St. Mary’s (Episcopal) Cathedral, Glasgow, Scotland.
Soon afterward, he was ordained as missionary bishop for the United Kingdom and Europe by the Christian Episcopal Church, a traditionalist “continuing” Anglican jurisdiction founded in the United States in 1992.
Helen, his wife of 23 years, became a Catholic about two years ago.
