THE
P RTAL
January 2019
Page 7
Prayer and intercession
Sister Mary Joseph talks with Jackie Ottaway and Ronald Crane
F or those
of us who began our Christian journey in the Anglican Communion, the nineteenth
century re-discovery of the religious life was an important stage in the renewal of the church. Consequently,
the demise of the religious life in the UK, in both the CofE and the Catholic Church, is a mark of the crisis in
the church in the twenty first century.
It is therefore of great importance that the Personal
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham is supported
by the religious life. The Sisters of the Blessed Virgin
Mary in Birmingham, Brother Robert Augustine and
Sister Jane Louise both in Walsingham, as well as Fr
David Butler, not only live the religious life in the
Ordinariate, but all have been interviewed in the pages
of T he P ortal .
Now we complete the set as it were. Sr Mary Joseph
lives the religious life in the Westcountry. We met
her in the Lady Chapel of the Ordinariate Church of
Our Lady of Walsingham and St Cuthbert Mayne on
Torbay. The religious life, by definition, does not lend
itself to press interviews. It is therefore a great privilege
to be granted an interview such as this. We are both
aware of that privilege and immensely grateful.
and are, health issues so couldn’t enter as quickly as I
wanted.
“The religious community I entered was a closed
community, enclosed, and I was very happy. The work
was twenty four hours perpetual intercession. There
was always someone in chapel. I took my vows but also
felt the call to solitary life and I’d always felt the call to
union with Rome.
“I approached a priest to be received into the
Catholic Church when I was twenty one. He told me I
would have to leave everything from my Anglican past
behind; all the prayers and hymns, everything. I could
not do that. They are in me. As I could not leave all that
behind, the priest would not receive me.”
Sr MJ went back to Canada, to her birth place. “I
We began by assuring Sr Mary Joseph that we began living as a solitary. The church in its wisdom,
knew how important her work is, and also that it is which is correct, does not support solitarys or hermits.
important that the Ordinariate knows she is here and You have to support yourself. I worked looking after
that she does what she does because, in a way, it’s the seniors. I had my own flat at the top of the house, and
foundation stone of all that happens.
my own chapel with the Reserved Sacrament.”
Sr Mary Joseph (Sr MJ) said that prayer is a building
block. She began by telling us a bit about her life. “I
was born in Canada of English parents. When I was
eleven we emigrated to New Zealand which I didn’t
like. I left after nine years, coming to England having
previously spent a year in the Solomon Islands working
as a volunteer in a mission school.
“I realised how blessed I was to have had ten years
in religious community. That laid the foundations of
the discipline for the Divine Office. To say the office
on your own is not easy; to keep the silence on your
own, not just the absence of talking, but to be that
internalised silence.
“I wasn’t happy in the Anglican church, especially
“I came to England and worked as a nanny. I had in Canada. For various reasons, I joined the Anglican
already spent a year in a religious community in New Catholic Church of Canada. We were then received
Zealand. I was an Anglican then, but it was quite an into the Catholic Church. I was accepted by the bishop
active community. I realised quite quickly it wasn’t the to continue living as a solitary, to have the Blessed
right one for me and that I was quite immature and Sacrament in my chapel and to continue living my life
needed to do some growing up. I was a middle child as I was. I was also saving. Retirement was coming up,
with all that can happen with middle children. I hadn’t I could return to England and I was saving and looking
dated as I knew I had been called to be religious.
forward to that. I came over first in 2009 for a family
wedding and started looking at Ordinariate Groups
“From the age of twelve or thirteen I knew that the where I would settle, where God was asking me to
religious life was for me. As a result of a lack of a social be. Upon retirement in 2015 I looked at a number of
life, I was quite immature. Doing some travelling I places. I had been a nanny in the Westcountry; it was
prepared to enter a religious community. There were, home. I prayed about it and found somewhere to live