The Catholic Message Board

Robin Ward, former principal of St Stephen's House, an Anglo-Catholic college in Oxford, announced his reception into full communion with the Catholic Church at St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough. Ordained in the Church of England in 1991, he led the seminary from 2006 until April 2025 and authored books on Christian priesthood.
Catholics online, including former student Fr Calvin Robinson and priest Fr Dwight Longenecker, offered warm congratulations, while reactions evoked St John Henry Newman's famous conversion and celebrated Ward's journey into what one called the 'One True Fold.'

Since the Church of England decided to ordain women in 1992, 300 Anglican bishops have become Catholic. 300 bishops in 30 years seems like kind of a lot.

And not only bishops. Female ordination was but another stake in the coffin.

Highlander wrote: ↑Sun Feb 15, 2026 1:09 pm And not only bishops.

Right, but the conversion of a bishop is a much bigger deal than that of a parish priest or a layman. If a Catholic bishop left the Church to become Lutheran, I would be more concerned than if a 1000 Catholic laymen did the same. Bishops just shouldn't defect.

There's a video where Sarah Mullally is actually fighting back tears as she says the word "microaggression", in the context of women in the CoE facing microaggressions. That degree of lachrymosity over such a silly concept...

p.falk wrote: ↑Sun Feb 15, 2026 6:31 pm There's a video where Sarah Mullally is actually fighting back tears as she says the word "microaggression", in the context of women in the CoE facing microaggressions. That degree of lachrymosity over such a silly concept...

I consider a woman pretending to be a priest, never mind a bishop, to be a microaggression against me.

Bonus points to P. Falk for using lachrymose in a sentence.

It is worth 25 points in Scrabble, more if it lands on a double or triple word score

Give 'em a thousand points.

As one of my friends calls them, bishop shaped objects. In olden days, I sat in an ECUSA pew and listened to the first sermon delivered by our new priest shaped object. I left stunned, beyond dismay. It was the most inane, shallow, vapid connection of utterances I had ever heard coming from the pulpit by a supposedly Christian person educated in theology. But it was woke, and self-congratulatory, which was, I suspect, the point. No tears, except from me.

I have been playing Scrabble since I was a teenager so I have developed a habit of counting the value of words, 25 points for such a long word seems low, but most of the letters are only worth one point. However, I am aware of an area on the board where a word that would hit two triple word scores and a double word score, making it worth a total of 450 points.

And after more than 35 years playing the game, I have to say that if my opponent legally played a word worth 450 points, even though I am usually a gracious loser, I think my response would be to flip the table over and say "I am not playing this stupid game with you anymore," and angrily storm off, a move also known as "the only legal way to end a game of Monopoly"

Doom wrote: ↑Mon Feb 16, 2026 6:20 pm It is worth 25 points in Scrabble, more if it lands on a double or triple word score

Good luck working that in. It has ten letters which means you'd have to piggyback the thing on something else.

Yes, I know, it is impossible to play that word

I don't know if I'd say impossible...if "la" was on the board and a word ending in "e" was the right number of spaces away it could be squeezed in. Highly improbable, for certain.

When I play Scrabble, I often joke with my opponent that I have the letters to spell "transubstantiation", another impossible word.

A Mozart roll?

Indeed.

Went to a memorial event, which I think included a "service", yesterday. Conducted by a priest shaped object. She offered vanilla, relevant, resonating comments during something like a sermon in which "Aloha" was the dominant concept. I think that God was mentioned once, Jesus not at all.

It was excruciating.