Damian Thompson reports this morning that Mgr. Graham Leonard has died. I never moved in the Anglo Catholic circles of Graham Leonard, but came to know him well after we both found ourselves in the Catholic church in the mid 1990s. By then Mgr. Leonard had retired as the Anglican Bishop of London and had been received into the Catholic Church. He kindly contributed a chapter to my first book, a collection of conversion stories called The Path to Rome. The book has become a best seller in England, being re printed every year since it's publication.
Like John Henry Newman, Mgr. Leonard was from an Evangelical home. As a young man he would get involved in 'beach missions'--Anglican evangelical enterprises in which college kids would hit the beaches with flannel graph boards, Bible story books and games to entertain and evangelize kids on vacation. He eventually heard the master's call to 'come up higher' and became and Anglo Catholic, rising to be Bishop of Willesdon, then Bishop of Truro in Cornwall, and finally Bishop of London.
When he considered becoming a Catholic he recounted to me his conversation with Cardinal Basil Hume: Graham Leonard argued that he wanted to bring along with him all the important elements of the Anglican patrimony. Cardinal Hume asked what those would be specifically. "What elements of Anglicanism would you wish to bring in that are not already part of Catholicism or which you would not be able to practice within Catholicism?" Mgr. Leonard said he was stumped. While there were things from the Anglican patrimony that he wished to share with Catholics that was already possible. What Catholicism excluded Mgr. Leonard wished also to exclude. Mgr. Leonard took the rather pragmatic view that as a priest everything worthy within Anglicanism would be available to him within Catholicism. I agree.
He was famously ordained as a Catholic priest conditionally. He had convinced Cardinal Ratzinger that his orders (which had been cross fertilized by through the Old Catholic succession) were 'valid enough' for there to be some doubt. Mgr. Leonard would recount with a twinkle in his eye that Cardinal Ratzinger said to him, "I won't say that you're not a priest."
My own memories of Mgr. Leonard are of a warm hearted and courteous English gentleman priest of the old school. He always had a kind word for everyone. I never saw an ounce of snobbishness or arrogance in him. In addition to his wordly accomplishments he was most of all a holy man--a lover of God and of his fellow man. May he rest in peace.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
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9 comments:
requiset in peace brother and give Cardinal Newman my congratulations
And just yesterday I had listened to his conversion story on the Journey Home archives!
May our Lord welcome him into His kingdom!
May light perpetual shine upon him. He sounds like a fine, fine man.
Requiescat in pace; et resurgat in gloriam.
Sheepcat - he was !
If such can be said of me when I die I'll be content.
Blessed repose and eternal memory!
On Fr Hunwicke's blog "Fr William" has an interesting comment about Bp Leonard's relationship with the then Cardinal Ratzinger. http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/placuit-deo.html
"Mgr. Leonard took the rather pragmatic view that as a priest everything worthy within Anglicanism would be available to him within Catholicism." Fr. Longenecker, I read your book with great interest soon after I left the TAC to become a Catholic some years ago. I remember being struck by this particular passage, and I have referred to it many times when discussing with others the obsession some Anglicans have with what they consider the "precious Anglican patrimony" that must be preserved at all costs whether through the pastoral provision or by other means. I regularly receive a newsletter from one of the Anglican Use parishes, and I have been somewhat exasperated to find that there are always far more references to Anglican theologians and personalities than to Catholic theologians, etc. I hasten to add that there is nothing objectionable in any of the quotations and so on, but this clinging to Anglicanism bothers me a bit. Jeremy Taylor and Richard Hooker wrote a lot that is of value, but they were not Catholic. So why keep using them and other Anglican thinkers as primary reference points? Graham Leonard, I believe, got it right. There is nothing more important that communion with the One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Anglicans hanging about in the courtyard until they can can enter with their Anglicanism intact have not, in my view got it right. Would the Anglicans who are currently so excited about the Holy Father's recent offer have, in the end, joined the Church in the absence of such an offer? If not, what does their desire for communion amount to?
But the moral of the story is that Cardinal Ratzinger could be generous, so he was. It didn't do any harm. This is the same approach he's taken in Anglicanorum Coetibus, as pope.
I mean, geez, it's supposed to be Protestants that are all against having what's not strictly necessary. There's nothing wrong with letting people bring along even their pre-Catholic teddybears, much less their hymns and nobler things. If it doesn't hurt and it saves people from schism, why not be generous?
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