Marion Morgan Pilgrims’ Guide to the Kingdom

Written in very accessible language, this edition of Pilgrims’ Guide to the Kingdom follows up on any conversion experience, linking the practical experience of the Christian life with a rich, Bible-based theology. It is a must-read for all Christians (and others) who seek a deeper understanding of what life is all about and where meaning is to be found. Marion Morgan was born in a London suburb during WWII and worked in East London before moving to Bristol in 1967. She has always been involved in church life, both Anglican and Presbyterian, and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1969. Along the way, she earned degrees in theology and pastoral theology.

Episode Links

Available from Shoreline Books and Searchline Publishing on Amazon: https://a.co/d/037r8ufT

Rush Transcript

Introduction

Announcer: Are you willing to accept Christ’s invitation to know Him more intimately, love Him more intensely, and follow Him more closely, and then go out into the world and live His good news? If you say yes, then you could be the Thirteenth Apostle. Join Tom Caffrey to share the goodness, beauty, and truth of Jesus Christ and His Church. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Thirteenth Apostle.

Tom Caffrey: I came to know about our next guest in the same way I have come to know several other recent guests since my son Kevin began his walking pilgrimage from the Shetland Islands to Rome, much of which is known as the historic Via Francigena, or the road that comes from France. Since the pilgrimage officially begins in Canterbury and then moves from France into Switzerland, I don’t understand how France gets top billing, but that’s not important. What is important is that throughout my son’s journey, he has had some special encounters with fellow Christians who have treated him with great kindnesses, even if just to extend a friendly greeting. It goes a long way if you’re traveling alone in foreign countries by foot and for thousands of miles. Marian Morgan was and still is such a person. She was born in a London suburb in 1942 in a short gap in the air raids, and her first three years were spent in and out of the air raid shelter in their gardens.

We had Marian on a little over a month ago, a month and a half ago, with an enjoyable conversation. But I decided not to air it because I wanted to get to know Marian more and just get the feel. Is she right for the program? And she was. I concluded she was emphatically right for the program, and I’m sure you in the audience will agree with me. So, before I welcome Marian, I’m going to say that you are welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Thirteenth Apostle, where we explore the good, the beautiful, the true of the Catholic faith and the Catholic Church, and we do that by having guests like Marian Morgan on. So, Marian Morgan, welcome back to The Thirteenth Apostle.

Marian Morgan: Thank you very much. And can I say hello to everyone who’s listening?

Tom Caffrey: Oh, you just did. So, you didn’t ask permission. You did ask, but you already said it live, so it’s too late. I can’t say no, but I wouldn’t say no.

Marian Morgan: I hope not.

Tom Caffrey: That would be a short interview. So you wrote a book. Here’s what Kevin told me. Kevin told me that it was at Mass, and then it was after Mass, and this has happened many times along his way. People would see his big backpack, or the priest would introduce him. Some priests over the course of his journey have met Kevin beforehand, before the Mass, and then have introduced him at some point in the Mass. People have met Kevin after Mass and been like you. They were eager to talk with him. They greeted him. I know about this because he tells me, and the only reason he tells me is because these were good experiences for him. So that’s what you did. You gave an explanation when we first talked, which again our audience hasn’t heard, but it was a simple act of kindness. That’s how you described it. Go ahead.

Meeting Kevin and Early Life

Marian Morgan: Well, we have coffee after the Mass, and we, being a city center church, we get all sorts of people coming in. At the moment, we’ve got the new students from the university looking around, and then he arrived yesterday. He was obviously walking because he had big boots on and a knapsack, so I just said, “Oh, hello,” and we just got talking from there. And he asked me how long I’d been at the church. So I said, trying to work it all out, 57 years, and he was slightly startled, but we get used to that. And then he asked me why I joined the Catholic Church. Had I always been a Catholic? So I said, no, I was brought up in the Church of England, but as my sister put it, we’re part-time Presbyterian, because grandmother was a Presbyterian in a little chapel in a small market town in the middle of Wales, which is where my father was brought up. And of course, when we went to have holidays there, we always went to the chapel. We wouldn’t upset grandmama.

And then I was brought up in the Church of England, which was a sort of middle-of-the-road Anglican church, and then we had a change of vicar. And he became very evangelical. He was actually a friend of Billy Graham, who visited our church. I’ve got a picture of him with my friend’s brother. From then on, it went a bit strange because it was all about spiritual birthdays and this sort of thing, and I found it quite difficult to relate to because I thought, spiritual birthday? I’ve never really had one. So I did it just in case. But that’s got me thinking. And the evangelical church, I’ve got a great admiration for them. They’re very mission-minded, they’re very kind, they’re nice people, but it did worry me a bit.

Then when I was 14, my mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. My sister had been accepted to start her nursing training, so it was just me and my father and my mother at home, and we all sort of took turns. My sister came back whenever she could, but it was difficult to see somebody getting worse in front of your eyes. But then I’d go to church, and the message I was picking up—it was probably not the message they were saying, but the message I was picking up—was, if you say your prayers, it will all be right, she can be healed. And I thought, my goodness, I’d have a fit if she suddenly was healed, and it was all down to my prayer, because there was so much personal responsibility put on people. You think the whole world depended on your prayer. So it worried me.

And then later on, another friend said, come to my church, and that was a high church of England, and I really liked it, but I couldn’t get over that they were both Church of England, and they were both different. But then, regrettably, when I was 25, looking after my mother, working full-time in the East End of London, actually, I was chasing people who didn’t pay their national insurance stamps. So that introduced me to a whole new range of people. I was working in a very cockney office, and I was meeting people from the professionals right down to people on garage forecourts, the occasional burglar, anybody who hadn’t paid their insurance stamps. I was learning a whole new language, and I thought, how can I bring these people to my church? It’s all words in the church I was at. It shook me up a bit.

Anyway, I went to this high church of England, really liked it, but in the end, my health gave out, and the doctor advised me that I’d got to leave home. I was under too much stress. So I got a transfer and came to Bristol, because my sister would eventually be working in Bristol, because she married somebody from Bristol University. So I came to Bristol, and they gave me a pile of files, and I later said, there I was beginning to visit people again on my own. Well, I thought, I’m going to have a life. I’m going to put all the past behind me, but it’s not that easy to put your past behind you just like that.

Path to the Catholic Church

Marian Morgan: There was a youth club at the Catholic church. So I went there once. This is quite interesting, really, because in my second year at school in Woodford, we’d had the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Well, this was in the fifties, early sixties, and that was before he was famous, and it became the sort of keynote to me of what made me different from my family, really.

Tom Caffrey: I know that. I always thought you meant Gerard Hoffman, the one who does the musical cartoons. Oh, wait, did you, Marian, leave out that it was Father Gerard Manley Hopkins?

Marian Morgan: Did I what? Leave out Father Gerard Manley Hopkins. I’m not certain that I knew that he was then. Anyway, when I came to the Catholic church, to the youth club, I sat on a table and the elderly priest came and sat with me the way they do, in the same crypt that we met, that I met your son. He said, “Oh, tell me about yourself.” And I said, “I’m odd. I like Gerard Manley Hopkins.” And the priest said, “Did you know he was a Jesuit?” No, I said, I’d never heard of the Jesuits.

Anyway, a year later, when I was really quite desperate because I’d tried all sorts of churches—I’d been teaching in St. Mary Redcliffe, the big Anglican church. I tried the cathedral, I tried the Methodists, and I could not find something that would satisfy my mind. And I thought, well, at least the Catholic Church claims to have the truth. I will go and listen, and at least they’d heard of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Whereas on Pentecost, actually, the vicar in St. Mary Redcliffe preached, “Allow yourself to be blown by the spirit.” So I thought, well, here goes. Went over to St Mary-on-the-Quay, which is about three-quarters of a mile away, the other side of the city center, and went into the crypt and saw one of the priests there, and I said, “I’m thinking of becoming a Catholic.” And he said, “Hoo, hoo, I thought you were one. You look just like one.” And I thought, what on earth did he expect me to look like?

So it went on from there, and I would have to say that the conversion was quite dramatic because I had very strong beliefs, and to try and put that into a new context, particularly a new language, because I had to learn the Catholic language. When they talked about grace all the time, what they meant was the Holy Spirit, the high language, and the direct access that we were taught in the evangelical church that we could have direct access to our Lord and speak to Him. That was all sort of summed up in the doctrine of the Sacred Heart, the humanity of Christ. But otherwise, you had to approach Christ, perhaps through Mary, which I disagreed with, through the saints. It was all very confusing. In fact, I went and just knelt in a church at one point and said to Mary, “I want to know, but can you sort of help me on this?” And all my prejudices sort of fell away from me, and I was free from them, so I could explore that side of it. Came back later, but then I would be able to think my way through them. But that was the key. I had to think my way through Catholic doctrine on what I’d already tested and found to be true in the Church of England. That’s where the book originated from.

Because when I became Catholic, my friends couldn’t understand it, and I was trying to write and say, look, it’s quite rational. If you think through it, it’s not as off-putting as it sounds if you just get bits and pieces or go abroad and see processions with Mary being worshipped. I know she’s not; I know we venerate, but that’s not what it looks like. So there was a lot to come to terms with, but the main thing was that it was communal. You’re one of a group, and it isn’t just your prayers. If you stop praying for a good reason, life would still go on; there’s everybody praying. It just put everything in perspective, and God became so much higher for me that everything else fidgeted underneath, and I just lost my heart to the Catholic Church, and I went over the top for about six or eight weeks. I couldn’t think of anything else, and it was absolutely wonderful. But then of course comes a time when you have to think, just a minute, I’m 28 now, I’ve got to work for my living, I’ve got no support otherwise, I’ve got to come down to earth. And that was the really hard bit. But it’s scriptural; you have to come down to earth. It’s the same as the incarnation. You have to actually enter in human life and relate to human people, as well as believing. It’s a constant effort, you might even say a constant choice, even now. It would be very nice to go and live in a retreat house and do the washing or whatever, just to be in that atmosphere, but that doesn’t work. So I’ve come down, and I felt very strongly that my calling was ecumenist and working with the other churches, because I knew them so well. I was one of them, and yet I disseminated the Catholic faith. So it went on from there, and I became secretary of the Ecumenical Committee in Bristol, representing the Catholics.

Oh, and sorry, I missed out that I went to university at Bristol to do three years in theology, because I needed to be trained. I wasn’t just going to breeze in with my own thinking. So I got a degree in theology, and then I did a year at Heythrop in pastoral theology, which was where I really learned about sacraments and spirituality and all the other things, none of which were particularly touched on at the university.

The Pilgrim’s Guide to the Kingdom

Tom Caffrey: What you write about in your book, the title of your book The Pilgrim’s Guide to the Kingdom, I thought it was such a good title for a couple of reasons, but of course, Kevin meeting you on his pilgrimage, not just a spiritual pilgrimage, but a physical pilgrimage, and what he likes to describe as his physical prayer. He feels the most prayerful when he’s all in it as opposed to—that’s his prayer, pray without ceasing. That, I think every step is almost like the story of the book The Way of a Pilgrim, which gave us the Jesus Prayer.

Marian Morgan: Yes, yes, yes, the Orthodox tradition. And you say it a thousand times, say it 5,000 times. What does it mean, what does Saint Paul mean? Pray without ceasing. And that’s my understanding of that, in a way, what Kevin thinks of. And so your book is titled Pilgrim’s Guide to the Kingdom. You describe it as a series of scripture-based books, kind of like a handbook. And you do put it in the context of joy. I think you laid it out very well. There’s a logic to it. And of course, you’ve just emphasized numerous times about how you had to work through the transition to the Catholic faith in your own way. And so there’s logic to it. St. Peter tells us we have to be able to give a reason for the hope that we have.

Tom Caffrey: Yes. Not enough, as you said, it’s not enough to have this personal faith. Otherwise if it was a personal faith, the apostles wouldn’t have gone anywhere, and you and I wouldn’t be having this conversation. Give a synopsis of your book to our friends in the audience.

Marian Morgan: Well, as I say, it started off by trying to explain Catholic stuff, but it really set against the background of the very strict sort of books that you can find, like the Imitation of Christ, and the teaching of the Purgative Way, the Illuminative Way, the Unitive Way, and all of them are very strict and ascetic, and they are meant for people in monasteries. And I was trying to discover whether all these stages can be actually experienced in ordinary life as lay people, because I believe greatly in the gifts of the lay people. I’m not devaluing the priests at all, but the lay people have the mission at the moment. We’re out in the world, we’re doing it, and we need to be able to talk about it, and we come across all these challenges—bereavement—and that’s really what the book is saying. It’s covering you can do all these things in your ordinary life and attain the unity or the way of union through just ordinary living, living and loving and serving, following the spirit, and you don’t have to make too much of a fuss about it.

Now this is going to be coming out now because I find the idea of striving for holiness very difficult, but the idea of giving ourselves to others and serving in every way you can, listening to people, helping them when you can, and improving your own self as well, obviously, keeping your own self growing and developing by reading, confession, the sacraments. I find that more meaningful than what appears to be an old-fashioned theology of it. It’s all about to save your soul, your own soul. Does that make sense?

Tom Caffrey: It does. It’s very interesting that you would conclude on the soul, because in the Catholic faith, so much of what we understand as the soul comes from Greek philosophy. It comes from Plato, and then go forward several centuries to Plutarch, and the three Ps, Plotinus. And there’s so much emphasis in getting our souls—not us, not our humanity—getting our souls leaving the planet that God created and soaring off onto the people’s soul rest to get to heaven.

Marian Morgan: Yeah, I know. Very annoying. We miss the part about so many of us are so focused on that that we have to get to heaven, maybe with a personal piety, but again, you see the person. Like you saw Kevin and you greeted him, whether or not—who knows whether he could have been lonely, maybe he wasn’t lonely, whatever—but that’s Christ. Remember, Christ says that if you greeted the lonely, I’m paraphrasing here, you greeted me.

Tom Caffrey: Well, I’m terribly into humanity and the whole person and the integrity of the whole person, body, mind, soul, divinity, as they say it in the Catholic, but you could have it the other way, having your mind cleared, working on your emotions, getting them sorted, understanding your history, being healed at depth until you’re a complete person, and then you just naturally can relate to others. You relate to them in the spirit. How did I see it? I saw it that instead of focusing on Christ, trying to be like him, you turn away from him to love the people, and he comes from behind. So he comes from behind and works with you, if that makes sense. And that relates to so many of the other churches, the non-Catholic, the Catholic.

Marian Morgan: Well, it is changing now. I mean, we’re talking—I was received in 1969. And you see it’s grown. And actually in England, the Catholic Church wasn’t English. It was a different culture. So you had to reshape your mind in all sorts of ways. But it was Irish and Polish and Italian, very much Italian. The English Catholic Church up north, I don’t know anything about. But in my own church now, because of all the immigration, there’s about five, at the very most 10% actually English people. And even then, they would have come from Ireland somewhere. We’re very, very multicultural. But we all fit together, we all do our own thing, we sing together, and there’s a tremendous community feel. In the end, you don’t notice where people have come from, you just know them as people. And it’s really inspiring, and I absolutely love it.

But from time to time, when I go to an event at my sister’s church, who’s still in the Church of England, like I went to a cake and tea thing on Bank Holiday Monday, I think, oh gosh, because the culture—my culture there, because it’s how I was brought up, and all the people were my sort of background. So you get everybody coming in. We’re near the hospitals. We get people coming in just to cry, just to have a space in the city center, and it’s immensely important that we’re open, and we’re encouraged to be open and to talk to people, listen to people, engage with people. And what happens at the end—okay, we hope to go to heaven, but in a way you get into the place where you think you can’t not be going to heaven, because you’re almost living in heaven here. It’s a natural progression, and the book, The Guide to the Kingdom, is trying to point out the bits that you might come across, like the bits where you feel totally dry and you can’t pray, and it goes on for years. But that’s all part of the journey. So it’s a guidebook that when you come across this sort of territory, don’t worry, it’s just a stage on the journey, you go through and move on.

Drought, Perseverance, and Closing Thoughts

Tom Caffrey: In the few minutes that we have left, the dryness. Kevin, as you know better than certainly all of us—who knows, we might have people listening to this who are in England or in the British Isles. But Kevin’s encountered a lot of areas of drought.

Marian Morgan: Oh gosh. You know, drought where you haven’t had rain.

Tom Caffrey: No, we haven’t. It’s been appalling. Right. Very, very interesting. The topography changes only because some areas, in some countries it’s lush, and other areas it’s brown, dry, and brittle. The journey goes on, though.

Marian Morgan: It does. And the lovely thing is that we’ve all had rain in the last three weeks, and the grass is springing up, and all the brown is turning green and lush. It’s staggering. See? And one of my friends has lost the plants in her garden. We weren’t quite so bad in the West Country. We had the odd thunderstorm, and I was allowed—I’ve got a hose so I could keep my few little plants going. But it’s all springing up again, things that I thought weren’t going to bloom this year. Got some newsy bugs coming. It’s lovely. Talk about resurrection.

Tom Caffrey: Resurrection. I was talking to somebody yesterday, and it was about we really got into perseverance. You know, just continue, just stay with it. You don’t know how far down you’re finally going to hit that spring of water. But you just got to stay with it.

Marian Morgan: Absolutely. We’re not coming out of the marriage idea. I want you to make this your concluding mark, and we’ll have you back again, but we got to wrap it up, so go ahead and finish what you’re saying to take us home.

Tom Caffrey: It’s about like the tide coming into an estuary, and it was gradually soaking up the reeds, and gradually it came in, and you gradually find your prayer life back again. But my final word, I say, is relax about it all. You’re in the hands of God, and just relate to other people.

Marian Morgan: Nicely said. And your book, again, is The Pilgrim’s Guide to the Kingdom.

Tom Caffrey: Do you remember that I had said to you, there’s one thing about your book and your title, and I was being coy with you. I wasn’t telling you. I was hinting at something that I was—if this was what you were meaning, if a big theme of your book in terms of the kingdom, what exactly that meant. And I’m still going to be a little coy with you, but that means it’s a way for me to lure you in and have you back for another conversation. But I got your book. I purchased your book on Amazon. At your instructions, you told me in your first email where you told quite a bit about yourself, you said my book is available on Amazon, it’s cheap. So I thought, she’s really applying the leverage, so I’ll go there and spend a few bucks. I can get the book. I won’t go to the publisher for a freebie. I’m going to help, I’m going to do it, give a charitable donation to Marian Morgan, and I’m glad I did. I enjoyed your book. But we really have gotten into some of it because some of what we’ve discussed is really part of the theme of your book. But there’s more to discuss. Maybe what we’ll do—we will conclude it now and we’ll have you back, get more into the detail, some of the chapters of your book. Because this is, again, this is your experience working with people and trying to catechize them in a way a little less doctrinaire as the catechism. So it’s—and I don’t even want to say it’s catechism light, but it is a way of catechizing that seems very relatable. So will you come back?

Marian Morgan: Of course, I will. I love talking to you, brother. That shut me up if I talk too much.

Tom Caffrey: Okay. So Marian Morgan, if people want to get in touch with you, do you mind giving out your email address?

Marian Morgan: No, no, I think that’s all right. If it gets too much, I’ll tell you next time. You can’t seem to stop. So it’s—

Tom Caffrey: You’ve got my email address, yes. Okay, so it’s Marian Morgan, M A R I O N M O R G A N 1942 at gmail dot com. So Marian Morgan 1942 at gmail.com. Marian, it was a pleasure. I enjoyed. This is our second conversation, the first time for our audience, but we’ll have you back for another conversation, okay?

Marian Morgan: Thank you so much. Thank you. Good night and God bless to your audience.

Tom Caffrey: God bless you too.

Sign-Off

Announcer: Hi friends out there, this is WQPH radio dot org. Thank you for your support. Marian, Gina, James, and the crew, always appreciated any help you can give friends. We will appreciate that as well. Up next is the Angelus, followed by your prayer intentions with Peter and Jimmy. WQPH radio, the 13th Apostle signing off.

Tom Caffrey: Bye-bye, Marian.

Marian Morgan: Bye-bye now. Bye-bye. Thank you very much.

Tom Caffrey: You’re welcome. Thank you. Very kind.

Announcer: Thank you for listening to The Thirteenth Apostle with Tom Caffrey. Tom’s website is faithpilgrims.com or email trcaffrey at faithpilgrims.com. How about you? Will you be the Thirteenth Apostle?