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John Twisleton on The Anglican Communion in New Directions

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Keeping the main things the main things Sitting in my mud confessional in the interior of Guyana dealing with a brisk flow of penitents compared favourably with lonely hours in the confessional at my previous location at St Wilfrith, Moorends or in the parishes of St Luke, Holbrooks or St Giles, Horsted Keynes later in my ministry. What a privilege it seemed to spread my wings for a few years to the wider Anglican Communion and a Diocese of unquestionable Anglo-Catholic privilege with faithful keen to do the main thing in Christianity which is coming to God and doing business with him, here in a direct way hallowed by the Christian centuries. It was a special honour to run the seminary created as memorial to Archbishop Alan Knight, Bishop of Guyana from 1937 to 1979, who made his Diocese one of the great centres of  Catholicism in the Anglican Communion. My own service at the Alan Knight Training Centre (AKTC)  for indigenous clergy, rewarded by a Canonry, bore evident fruit not least
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John Twisleton on Ecumenism in October 2020 New Directions

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  All eyes to Rome John Twisleton reports on Zooming to this summer’s Petertide Seminars The e mail was relayed to me by a priest friend in the Society of the Holy Cross. It contained an invitation from Archbishop Ian, Director of The Anglican Centre in Rome, to attend their Petertide online interactive course subdivided into three sessions on Ecumenism, examining the work of the Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) and the International Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission for Unity and Mission (IARCCUM). Consequently on three Monday afternoons I Zoomed to join 100 or so folk across the world to reflect on Anglican-RC relations and the roller coaster quest for visible unity. ARCIC from the beginning Session one, on the Feast of SS Peter & Paul itself, was on the history of ARCIC I and II and the Lambeth Conference of 1988 with Old Testament scholar and ARCIC expert  Dame Mary Tanner and Bishop Christopher Hill, co-secretary of ARCIC from 1974-81. The Bishop trace
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Eucharistic sacrifice - an eye opener

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An eye-opener on the transformative power of the eucharist - paper by Canon John Twisleton reproduced in New Directions and presented to the Keble Seminar, Lewes 29 May 2019 Half an hour a day schools me and the cosmos for eternity. As daily Mass-er, attendee or celebrant, I am privileged to allay the agony of the world and open up new possibilities for the hopeless by pleading the Holy Sacrifice with, in and through Jesus Christ. When I talk about this day by day experience folk say they envy my faith, which is good - I suggest they ask God to show them Jesus! In 55 years of Mass attendance I have experienced a grand variety of celebrations but most have been conducted by priests for small weekday gatherings well aware of the significance of what Christians are about in this sacred act. To see beyond the outward sign or sacrament to the invisible power of the Offering of the Son to the Father for us and for all is something I myself ask for quite regularly and this article is
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Hopeful, heartwarming day at Westminster Abbey

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‘Greater in honour than the cherubim, and glorious incomparably more than the seraphim; thou who inviolate didst bring forth God the Word, and art indeed the Mother of God: thee do we magnify’ John Tavener’s setting of the Orthodox antiphon interpolated into the Anglican Magnificat covered the Catholic rite of censing the coronation altar by the Dean at solemn Evensong concluding a memorable day of devotion in Westminster Abbey.  Before that altar on the Cosmati pavement where monarchs are crowned stood the statue of Our Lady Queen and Mother carried from England’s Nazareth at Walsingham. The gentle tone of Tavener’s chant setting an unarguable statement about Mary captured the spirit of an ecumenical day of devotion in which the Walsingham Shrines collaborated with Westminster Abbey hosting a day of celebration in Mary’s month of May. As Priest Associate of the Holy House at Walsingham I’m committed with 2000 other clergy and hundreds of thousands of laity ‘to further, with
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Newman: Church development, reform and the Anglican future

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Newman: Church development, reform and the Anglican future - Canon John Twisleton’s paper at St Michael, Lewes Keble Seminar 25th April 2018 reproduced in New Directions June 2018   John Henry Newman’s greatness lies in his capacity to point us to the big picture of things which is Christianity’s forte and to shake off what’s parochial and narrow-minded, the stuff that puts the brakes on forward thinking and the beckoning dynamic of history. Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem was his motto - its on his grave: from shadows and images into the truth. Life is a forward movement we can choose - he chose it - from what Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 as from such shadows and images into the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  His great Apologia was first published 5 years after Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859),  a story of spiritual evolution that complements Darwin’s thesis on biological evolution. To live is to change Newman wrot
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