Fiona Givens: “Out of His Treasure Things New and Old”

from A Thoughtful Faith for the 21st Century

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My conversion to the restored gospel turned on a sacred encounter that has never left me. This same revelation, however, also led me into a church and a canon that has on occasion perplexed me. Sometimes we Saints talk as though we have a monopoly on truth or are uniquely virtuous. In different quarters, God has been portrayed in contradictory ways and God’s church and love cast alternately as constricted or expansive. In working through these thickets over the years, I have grown to view heaven’s love as unbounded. I see my earlier Catholic faith as preparatory and complimentary and intrinsic, rather than as rival, to the restoration. I see God as welcoming all that is good, true, and edifying, no matter its source—just as our founding prophet taught. What follows are key strands along my path to this way of understanding the gospel.

Background

Anne Mary Martin was born in Tipperary in Southern Ireland, to a generationally strong Catholic family. Walter William Bulbeck was born into an Anglican family, whose forebears had resided for generations in Oxford. It is unlikely my father’s family attended church except as a formality at Easter and Christmas. By the time Walter and Anne were married, he was no longer a believer. Their public union occurred at a time when the non-Catholic spouse was required to assure that the children would receive a Catholic education before the nuptials took place. Consequently, my brothers and I were educated in Catholic schools.

My high school years were spent at New Hall, a Catholic boarding school in Essex. Education was rigorous, and I loved my English and language classes in particular. Initially, however, it was not the education that endeared New Hall to me. It was the stables where I could ride every week. Most of my teachers were lay staff, but the school was home to the Community of Canonesses Regular of the Holy Sepulchre. Tradition has it that this order has existed since the 4th century, when Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, accompanied Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, in her search for the True Cross. The order eventually settled at New Hall in 1799. The Elizabethan manor was placed conveniently between London and Harwich and was home to a number of royals, including Henry VIII, who had procured the manor in 1517. The wall of the convent chapel still bore his coat of arms, HENRICUS REX OCTAVUS featuring among the inscriptions.

As pupils, the only services we were obliged to attend were Sunday mass and compline, after which the entire school retired to our separate houses. While the canonesses were not renowned for their singing, I was always moved to a peaceful stillness by the repetitive antiphons and responses. No matter how difficult the day had been, I returned to Campion House soul rested. While I frequently attended mass during the week, I particularly loved the Sunday service, perhaps because it was not followed by classes. The hymns and readings nourished my soul and mind and our parish priest, as I recall, always centered his homilies on the themes of a loving, kind, gentle and compassionate God and the beauty of the universe in which he resides.

The great gift of my convent school education was immersion in the sacred and the beautiful: the 16^th century manor house, the creak and smell of ancient wooden floorboards, the evensong of the nuns, the equally ancient library and a curriculum saturated in the works of the most renowned literary minds. Summers I swam in the Indian ocean (my parents lived on Mahé, the largest of the Seychelles Islands). The other eight months I swam in the currents of Western art and literature.

Conversion and perplexities

During my gap year in Germany I became friends with a young woman with whom I felt comfortable talking about things divine even though she was not Catholic. Intrigued by the similarity of our views on God, I accompanied her to church one Sunday morning at her invitation. As I stepped over an ordinary threshold into an unimpressive room, I experienced something beautiful and powerful. I had not experienced the Spirit in this way before and only on a few occasions since. I paid closer attention to what followed. What I remember from this ineffable conversion experience is fire and light. A few weeks later I rang my parents to share with them that I had decided to change my religious affiliation: I was going to join what we then called “the Mormons.” I anticipated some hesitation, but not the devastation I saw in their response. My father wondered if I had joined the Baader-Meinhof terrorist organization, otherwise known as “die Rote Armee Fraktion.” My mother stuttered, “What about Brigham Young and all those wives?!” I knew of the former, as the Baader-Meinhof group was still active. As for polygamy, even though I was later taught that this practice was the order of heaven, I was surprised that it was not part of the missionary discussions.