Outspoken ex-Jersey vicar converts to Catholicism

Thursday 19 December 2019

An outspoken former Jersey vicar is converting to Catholicism after a fall-out with the Church of England inflamed by part of the Qur’an being read in a service.

Gavin Ashenden, who previously held a post at evangelical Anglican Gouray Church, says the faith will be better suited to him, as, in his view, his former church had bowed to the “increasingly intense and non-negotiable demands of a secular culture”.

A former chaplain to the Queen, the 65-year-old resigned from the royal ecclesiastical household in 2017 after a passage of the Qur’an denying that Jesus was the son of God was cited during a service at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow.

Pictured: Gavin Ashenden, who was previously Vicar of Gouray Church in Jersey, will be received into the Catholic Church on Sunday.

The saga led him to conclude it was his duty to uphold the integrity of the Christian faith, and he subsequently joined a breakaway group of traditionalist Anglicans. 

It’s now been announced, however, that he will be converting to Catholicism – one of the only churches he believes is able to fully “defend” Christianity. 

“I came to realise… that only the Catholic Church, with the weight of the Magisterium, had the ecclesial integrity, theological maturity and spiritual potency to defend the Faith, renew society and save souls in the fullness of faith,” he told the Catholic Herald.

He said he was also swayed by the Roman Catholic Church’s treatment of Holy Communion, adding: “The fact that [the miracles] were unknown amongst those who celebrated the Anglican version of the Eucharist, carries obvious implications.” 

Pictured: A meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican.

Ashenden’s pledge to publicly guard the faith from perceived attacks of modern culture has earned him a reputation of being outspoken, with his more controversial comments making local and national headlines a number of times over the years.

The conservative commentator is a longstanding critic of the ordination of women and gay men, and led a group of UK vicars in opposition to allowing same-sex marriage.

A newspaper column on the latter topic, which claimed same-sex partnerships were unstable and that heterosexual unions should be branded “natural marriage”, caused significant upset among Jersey’s LGBTQ+ community in 2015.

Video: Gavin Ashenden explains why he left the Church of England.

It led the then-Chair of Liberate, Christian May, to launch a petition calling for an apology from Ashenden to the “LGBTQ+ people of Jersey, their families and friends”. 

Ashenden will officially join the Catholic Church on the Fourth Sunday of Advent (this Sunday, 22 December) at Shrewsbury Cathedral. 

Bishop Mark Davies, who will lead proceedings, told Church Militant it was a “special joy” to welcome Ashenden into the Catholic Church, adding that it was “very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full Communicion in the year of the canonization of Saint John Henry Newman”.