Welcome New Readers

April 23, 2012 By 4 Comments

Since moving this blog over to Patheos I am aware that there are a good number of new readers on board. Welcome! I hope you come often and stay to look around.

My story is this: I grew up in Pennsylvania in a devout, conservative Evangelical home. After high school I went to the fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. While there I became and Anglican through a little breakaway church from Episcopalianism. Struck with a severe case of Anglophilia from reading C.S.Lewis and T.S.Eliot I had a dream of being an Anglican priest in England.

I went to study theology at Oxford and was ordained into the Anglican Church. I served as a curate in East Sussex, a chaplain to Kings College in Cambridge, and then a country vicar on the Isle of Wight. I got married and had two children, then we converted to the Catholic Church. For ten years I served as a Catholic layman working for a small Catholic charity and writing books and articles. One of the books is More Christianity--a pun on C.S.Lewis’ famous book Mere Christianity. This book is a friendly introduction to the Catholic Church for Evangelical Christians. I’ve also written about a dozen other books and booklets you can browse here.

In 2006 my wife and now four children, moved to the United States and I was called to be ordained as a Catholic priest. This was possible, even though I had a wife and children, through the Pastoral Provision–a special measure set up by Pope John Paul II enabling married former Anglican priests to be ordained as Catholic priests. I worked first as chaplain to a Catholic high school in Greenville, SC and now am pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish.

My conversion story has been published several places, and I’ve collected some of them in the ‘Conversion Stories’ section of the ‘Archived Articles’ section of this blog. Some of them you can read free of charge, some others are longer and a small download fee is charged. There are also two audio files of my conversion story. One is My Journey to the Catholic Church and the second, Priesthood, Promise and Providence tells how God worked in a wonderful way to open the door to my eventual ordination as a Catholic priest.

I hope new readers will enjoy the blog, get involved in the comments and visit often. Thanks for visiting!

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About Fr. Dwight Longenecker
  • Renee

    Since you’ve moved to the new website, I can’t read your postings on Google Reader. Only part of it shows up then I have to click to go to the full blog post. On your old site I didn’t have to do that. Is there any way you can change the new site?

  • Rydeian48

    I always enjoy reading your blog Father. I was born and brought up on the Isle of Wight (your sojourn there is therefore something we have in common!) and went to an Anglican private school. That was back in the 50′s and 60′s. I wasn’t confirmed in the Church of England until 1988, but as soon as I was I felt that my Christain journey was incomplete. In 1990 I visited a Catholic church for the very first time on a return visit to Winchester (Hampshire, UK) where I had worked some years earlier. While walking round the church I happened upon these mouldings on the wall which fascinated me: I didn’t know what they were (they were in fact the Stations of the Cross as I came to realise later) and whilst looking at these, a loud, firm but friendly voice said to me: “You Belong Here!”. A Damascene moment! Astonished, I left the church with tears in my eyes, and after a lengthy period of prayer and reflection I began four years of instruction in the Catholic faith with a member of the community of England’s only Cistercian monastery, Mount St Bernard Abbey. One of the books I was advised to read was one of yours – “The Path To Rome”. I was received into the Catholic church at a special mass in the monastery in December 2007, and have been a very active lay member ever since.

    • Fr. Dwight Longenecker

      Wonderful story! Thanks for connecting.

  • http://jenniferfitz.wordpress.com Jennifer Fitz

    Dittoing Renee, Father. Would you please consider changing the feed setting to send whole posts to the feed readers?