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Spiritual letters of Monsignor R. Hugh Benson to one of his converts
Spiritual letters of Monsignor R Hugh Benson to one of his converts Author:Robert Hugh Benson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II EARLY CATHOLIC LETTERS Father Benson's kind and frequent spiritual letters, from a few of which the foregoing quotations are taken, gave no idea of the ... more »mental suffering through which he was passing during this time. Anxious not to trouble him unnecessarily, I did not write to him between May and September 1903. It was in reply to my question early in the latter month, " When are you going to preach another Retreat ? " that I received the overwhelming news of his intended and immediate reception into the Church. The heading of his letter was enough. The fact rushed out full-armed before one had even glanced at the writer's words. Father Benson was going to become a Roman Catholic! Then, if he was not a Catholic now in the Church of England, what was he ? What was I ? Up to the very day of his submission I fancy that very few of his spiritual children had any idea of the crisis through which he was passing. Speaking for myself, I know it came as a thunderclap. It is no exaggeration to say that the very foundations of Faith and all the realities of the Spiritual Life rocked and trembled from the violence of this utterly unexpected shock. " What is Truth ? " was the only question it was at first possible to formulate in those hours of darknessand anguish. To all of us High Anglicans who were under Father Benson's direction he had ever been primarily and essentially a Catholic priest—a statement which may seem obvious nonsense to a born Catholic, but which will be understood by any Anglican convert. It was extraordinarily difficult to know why one whom we looked upon as a pillar of " English " Catholicism should have found it necessary for his salvation to submit to the Church of Rome. And it was precisely on account of our absolute conviction that he must necessarily have ...« less