Catholic Thought discussion

Chapter II
On his way to Egypt Benson traveled through France and Italy. To his astonishment he realizes how provincial the Anglican Church is. “We were nowhere. Here was this vast continent apparently ignorant of our existence! I believed myself a priest, yet I could not say so to strangers without qualifying causes.”
Upon arriving in Egypt this sense of isolation grew even more. He visited a modest Coptic church which impressed him of how integrated it seemed to the surrounding neighborhood. “Here for the first time it occurred to me as seriously conceivable that Rome was right and we wrong; and my contempt for the Catholic Church began to take on a tinge of respectful fear.”

He visited Jerusalem, and “here again, in the birthplace of Christendom, we were less than nothing.” He continues,

“[We] obtained permission for me to celebrate the Communion in the Chapel of Abraham. … We were not allowed to use the Greek altar; a table was wheeled in… I celebrated what I believed to be the divine mysteries, weighted down by a sense of loneliness.”

“In all the churches it was the same. Every Eastern heretical and schismatical sect imaginable took its turn at the altar of the Holy Sepulchre, for each had at least the respectability of some centuries behind it, some sort of historical continuity. … But the Anglican Church, which I had been accustomed to think of as the sound core of a rotten tree, this had no privileges anywhere; it was as if it did not exist; or, rather, it was recognized and treated by the rest of Christendom purely as a Protestant sect of recent origin.”

While at Damascus he “read in the “Guardian” that the preacher to whom I owed all my knowledge of distinctively Catholic doctrine, who had been the means of bringing me to my first confession, had made his submission to Rome.”

After all these revelations Benson returns to England to familiar surroundings and spends a very happy time at Kemsing.
About a year later he began to have doubts, “I wondered whether, after all, it was possible that I was wrong and that the ceremony [choral celebration] in which I had taken part, rendered so beautiful by art and devotion, was no more than a subjective effort to assert our claim to what we did not possess.” Troubled by these thoughts he treated them as temptations and confessed them. Yet he remained restless. “The sense of Anglican isolation that had been forced upon my notice abroad, and secondly from the strong case for Roman continuity with the pre-Reformation Church and the respective weakness of our own.” … “Since the Church of England was Catholic, she had a right to all Catholic privileges – did not satisfy me; rather, the fact that Catholic privileges were obviously alien to her character seemed to imply that she was not Catholic; … almost more than anything else, began to emphasize in my mind the real gulf that separated me from Catholic Christendom.

This restless tension stays with him, and at this time he takes the step of joining a religious community where he believes he can put all these “Roman difficulties [and] diabolical temptations” behind him.

Last sentence in chapter:
"I was to dedicate myself to God once and for all in the highest vocation open to man."

I found Benson's father's answer to what constituted "the Holy Catholic Church" rather interesting, if not puzzling. It's the very first two paragraphs of the chapter:

Up to the time of my father's death I do not think that a doubt had ever crossed my mind as to the claims of Catholicism. Once, I remember, in Birdcage Walk, as my father and I were riding back to Lambeth, I said to him suddenly that I did not really understand the phrase of the Creed, "I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." "For instance," I said, "are the Roman Catholics a part of the Church of Christ?"

My father was silent for a moment. Then he said that God only knew for certain who were or were not within the Church: it might be perhaps that the Roman Catholics had so far erred in their doctrinal beliefs as to have forfeited their place in the Body of Christ. I suppose I was satisfied with his answer; for I do not remember having considered the subject any further at the time.

A Calvinist type Protestant or other low church Protestant would have less of a problem with this I think. For them they are so different from Christian denominations that have a liturgy that Catholicism would seem completely foreign, and so the thought would not even enter their minds. Many don't even recite the Nicene Creed. I know Baptists don't. I was friends with one (we're still friends, we just have drifted apart) who had never even heard of it. But I can see how a high church Anglican or Lutheran, especially an Anglo-Catholic like Benson and his father would really have tension with this.

Notice the answer his father provides: "it might be perhaps that the Roman Catholics had so far erred in their doctrinal beliefs as to have forfeited their place in the Body of Christ." How far are Anglo-Catholics from Roman Catholics? They are about as close as any denomination you can find. Personally I think that's self delusional unless his father did not consider himself an Anglo-Catholic.

If you want to get a sense of how close Anglo-Catholicism is to Roman Catholicism, there was an episode of The Journey Home a few weeks ago that had a convert from Anglo-Catholicism, Fr. Stephan Jones. I think you can get a good feel for where Robert Hugh Benson is coming from when you hear Fr. Jones' conversion story. Here's the episode if you want to watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsgGz...

I am very impressed with Benson's humility as he describes his search for what is true in his and other religions. So many conversion stories lack Benson's subtlety. Benson doesn't gloss over his own flaws, and thus comes across as very very honest.

Nadine wrote: "this chapter so far is of interest to me, i didn’t go through the process of travelling but i slowly discovered, as a calvinist protestant that we were lacking in church history. and that it essent..."

Are you a convert Nadine? Welcome to our faith. We are blessed to have you.