THE
P RTAL
May 2011
Walsingham
Margaret Pearson has a long pedigree in the Catholic
Movement if the C of E. Her mother and father were
Mr and Mrs Whitmore
of Walsingham fame.
Her father and the family
ran the electrical shop in
the village. She is now
married to Terry, already
a Catholic. He is pleased
his wife is joining the
Church. Margaret told
me, “I always followed
Mum and Dad. I come
from
Walsingham
(she
pronounced
it the Norfolk way
-Wals’nham). Mum and
Dad were involved with the Shrine;
Dad was Beadle. I saw no reason to
change. But now the opportunity has
arrived and I took the chance to become
a Catholic. My friends here, I know
most of them. They have all welcomed
us.” Margaret is already involved with a
number of Catholic Charities and hopes
the Ordinariate will be too. Among her
interests are Aid to the Church in Need;
Let the Children Live! and The Apostleship
of the Sea. We had a lovely chat and she
was very enthusiastic about the future.
Another interesting person at Mass
that morning was Jane
Sanders. Her father is Mgr
John Broadhurst. He will
receive her into the Church
on Holy Saturday and
Confirm his Grandchildren
at the same time!
Deeply moving
Jane has found the whole
experience deeply moving.
“I feel I have come home,
and the children are really
excited.” She said. We had
quite a long conservation during which Jane told me,
“We are all looking forward with hope. We look for
comfort for the future. There was no movement in the
Church of England, it was all ‘them’ and ‘us’. Now the
fight is over. We have one purpose now; One meaning.
The welcome has been very warm, genuinely heart-
felt. It is difficult for the Deacon at Saint Mark’s, Simon.
Page 5
He is married and cannot be a priest, yet he has been
absolutely lovely; and as for Fr John (Fr John Byrne
the Catholic Parish Priest) he is kind and thoughtful.
He genuinely cares.” Jane
is obviously looking
forward to the future in
the Catholic Church.
A lovely lot of
people
Betty
Simmons
confided to me that
she is eighty-two years
young. She wondered, “I
would love to know what
the Queen thinks about
it all!” Betty too wanted
to record the warm
welcome received by the
group. She told me, “They are a lovely
lot of people. I joined Saint Francis
when I was ten years old, and apart from
a brief period when I was married, I
have attended ever since. It was heart-
breaking to leave. I cried. After we are
Received into the Church we shall have
our own Mass, as we do now, but after
Pentecost it will be with Fr Tim and Fr
Gordon.”
Out of the mouths of babes
At Hemel Hempstead about twenty
percent of the Ordinariate group is
made up of children. Ralph,
Haydn, Ben and Henry are
all joining with at least one
parent. Belinda Williams
has children attending a
Catholic School and signed
up for the Ordinariate when
one of her children came
home from school asking to
become a Catholic. Out of
the mouths of babes indeed.
In our conversation together
she said, “We shall come to
Saint Mark’s at 9am every
Sunday, but once every six weeks we shall go to the
Sacred Heart and I help with Children’s Services at
other churches too. The Ordinariate is an ecumenical
thing for us. All qu estions have been answered. All
obstacles that were in the way have gone away. They
do not matter. We are on the move. God has given us
this gift.”