Palm Sunday Greetings ~ Welcome Home!

Daniel Herzog and his wife Carol have returned home to the Catholic Church. After leaving the Church for the Episcopalians while a young man, he became one of the last conservative bishops of that dwindling denomination. It is a mighty thing to realise one has spent one's life in the wrong place albeit striving to do the right things for God. I know this from my own decision to leave the Anglican Communion, set down what I had received there, and enter the Catholic Church as a layman. I imagine it is an even greater struggle when one has been a bishop in that Communion. Nevertheless, Daniel Herzog has renounced his Anglican orders and returned to the Catholic Church as a layman. I pray the decision taken by the former bishop and his wife will be a like a great beacon in a lighthouse calling in those weary and lost at sea in the life-draining Anglican Sargasso Sea.

Many friends of mine found a safe harbour in his Episcopalian diocese when liberals and heretics forced them from their home dioceses in the USA, and I pray many Episcopalians will follow the example he and his wife have now set. The irony in his part of the USA is that his Episcopalian diocese was the protector of 'conservative catholic ideas' about many things whereas the Catholic diocese in essentially the same location is one of the most liberal in the world and is certainly not seeing eye to eye with Pope Benedict.

I pray with all my heart that the Herzogs receive the warm Welcome Home that everyone hopes to receive. I know well how difficult it is to be a conservative former Anglican entering a liberal Catholic diocese. But whether we are entering the Church for the first time or are returning home, it is the wisest decision we can make for the sake of our souls. To remain is spiritual suicide. The movement of such grace from the Lord to rescue us truly does make us eternally grateful -- even if one does encounter things in the 'liberal Catholic Church' that make one weep for the outrages committed against the Most Holy Trinity.

Thanks be to God for the only true safe harbour which is found on the Barque of St. Peter between the Pillars of the Most Holy Eucharist and Our Blessed Lady! And for those of us who nearly perished for lack of authority in Anglicanism let us endlessly praise the Lord Jesus Christ for the Vicar of Christ and the Magisterium of Holy Mother Church.