Into Full Communion: Joanna Bogle to Launch New Book on the Ordinariate at the WeBelieve Festival

A new book by Joanna Bogle invites festival-goers to discover the Ordinariate’s remarkable story, from its roots in the search for Christian unity to its mission in the Church today.

This year’s WeBelieve Festival will include a special celebration for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, as Catholic writer and historian Joanna Bogle launches her new book, Into Full Communion, marking the 15th anniversary of the Ordinariate’s foundation.

The book tells the story of the Ordinariate: its origins, its place within the Catholic Church, and the remarkable journey by which former Anglicans have brought the treasures of their patrimony into full communion with Rome.

For those new to the Ordinariate, this is a story worth discovering. Established by Pope Benedict XVI, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham provides a home within the Catholic Church for Anglicans entering full communion, while preserving and sharing the spiritual, liturgical, musical, and pastoral traditions that have formed them.

For Joanna, the story is not only historical, but personal.

“I became involved with the Ordinariate in the early days,” she explains, “partly through my friendship with Joan Lewis of EWTN’s Joan’s Rome.”

When the Ordinariate was first announced by Pope Benedict XVI, Joan came to London to cover the story and asked Joanna, “as an English Catholic, to explain the background.”

That background, Joanna says, “goes back a longish way” - through ecumenical ventures in the 1920s, the long and often prayerful search for Christian unity, and more recent events in the life of the Church of England.

As the Ordinariate began to take shape, Joanna came to know the South London Ordinariate group and became increasingly involved in the whole project. When the Ordinariate came to fruition, she began attending Precious Blood Church at London Bridge, where she remains a regular at the 11am Sunday Mass in the Ordinariate Form.

Fifteen years on, she sees the Ordinariate as a continuing gift to the wider Church.

“I believe the Ordinariate is a sign of hope and a realistic way ahead,” she says, “bringing some wonderful gifts of Anglican heritage and traditions to the wider Catholic Church.”

That sense of hope will be at the heart of the book launch at WeBelieve.

The launch will take place on Saturday 25th July at 17:30 in the Vianney Garden, a beautiful walled garden beside the College Museum. The event will begin with a short drinks reception, followed by a conversation hosted by Joanna with Bishop David Waller and guests. Together, they will explore the Ordinariate’s origins, mission, and contribution to the life of the Church today. There will also be time for questions, and copies of the book will be available.

The Ordinariate’s presence at WeBelieve is a wonderful opportunity to gather with the wider Church, celebrate 15 years of life and mission, and share this remarkable story with those who may be encountering it for the first time.

Whether you are already part of an Ordinariate community, curious about its place in the Catholic Church, or simply interested in the story of Christian unity in Britain, this promises to be a joyful and thought-provoking evening.

We warmly encourage Ordinariate members, friends, families, and all those interested in our mission to come along!

Discover the Festival here

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Albino Luciani, who became John Paul I, (and was later beatified), shared with St John Henry Newman’s inspiration, St Philip Neri, a very playful approach to preaching the Gospel. The Vatican, after the pope’s death, two months into his reign paid this moving and, in its phrasing, quite unique official tribute, by saying he was “…like a whirling comet…a flash of hope…a marvelous rainbow.” 

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The choice of such analogies would have intrigued Newman – as well as being applauded by him. One of his interests was astronomy, he built an observatory and always championed examples of using the gift of imagination in respect of religion.

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Newman and John Paul I kept their gaze, like St Philip’s own, heavenward. But  all three grounded their spirituality in humility and its linguistic connection to humour – which kept them earthed. The Oratorian watch-word is, after their founder, “love to be unknown”. Newman’s motto ‘heart speaks to heart’ embodies St Philip’s ideal. John Henry also had a great sense of fun too. While John Paul I chose as his papal motto “Humilitas”. He makes explicit the theological links between humour and humility in his first weekly catechetical address to the crowds gathered in Rome:

“When St Thomas Aquinas said Joking and making people smile was a virtue, he was in agreement with the “glad tiding” preached by Christ and the hilaritas recommended by St Augustine.  He overcame pessimism, clothed Christian life in joy and invited us to keep up our courage also with healthy, pure joys, which we meet on our way.” (General Audience, 20th September 1978).

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Newman, who with Aquinas is now the co-patron of education, is characterized by his friend Frederick Rogers, as seeming to have “…an intuitive perception of all that you thought and felt, so that he caught at once, all you meant or were driving at in a sentiment, a philosophical reflection, or a joke”. (Letters of Lord Blatchford, p14-15).

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Newman shares in the same instinctive grasp of holiness and the inner joy that John Paul I experiences when he writes:

Let us pray to be filled with the spirit of love.  Let us come to Church joyfully; let us partake the Holy Communion adoringly; let us pray sincerely; let us work cheerfully; let us suffer thankfully; let us throw our heart into all we think, say, and do; and may it be a spiritual heart! This is to be a new creature in Christ; this is to walk by faith. (Parochial and Plain Sermons V, 12).

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Newman would also agree with John Paul I’s synthesis of what mission means when he says that the principal ecclesial “task of divinizing does not exempt the Church from the task of humanizing.” The coming of Christ as one like us in all things but sin, reveals that God understands us from the inside and communicates with us through our conscience.  Newman taught that this encounter helps us identify right from wrong.  Then, in freedom, he says, we can prudently choose, using practical wisdom, how to apply the Church’s teaching, revealed by the Holy Spirit, to particular situations. By educating our conscience, through prayer and the sacraments, the closer we will unite ourselves with God. And become, more speedily, the most humane person he calls us to be. As Newman, with the energy of Christ-centred zeal, states:

In all circumstances, of joy or sorrow, hope or fear, let us aim at having Him in our inmost heart.  Let us acknowledge Him as enthroned within us at the very springs of thought and affection.  Let us submit ourselves to His guidance and sovereign direction.  Let us come to Him that He may forgive us, cleanse us, change us, guide us and save us. (Parochial and Plain Sermons V, 16).

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Newman’s words direct us to look through the telescope of salvation and locate the constellations of faith, hope and love. We, as the Christmas-Magi and Easter morning star-gazers, are enthused by St John Henry Newman and John Paul I to become what we see.