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It is four years today since my dear father passed through his final agony and went to God. The Traditional Latin Mass has been offered again today for the repose of his soul and we have visited his grave to pray for him and place fresh flowers there. What follows is an updated version of his life and conversion story.
Christi Simus Non Nostri
This Latin phrase, immortalized by the great St. Columban, was carefully copied by Dad into the front page of his Missal. In English, it can be translated as: ''We belong to Christ, not to ourselves.'' Looking back over Dad's life, one can discern something of the mysterious workings of grace, leading him home to the Catholic Church and to the Most Holy Trinity from the very beginning.
He was born in Litherland, a suburb of Liverpool, during the crucible of World War II, on the 15th June, 1943. A short time later, he was baptized as Gordon Kenneth Houghton, in the local St. Philip's Anglican church. From his earliest years, Dad would be known more familiarly to everyone as ''Ken''.
Ken's childhood was not always the easiest, but he managed to get into the local grammar school and developed his interests in art and architecture. At the age of 16, he became a junior in the offices of the Norwest Holst construction company. In his late teens, Dad met his soul-mate Doreen at a local bus stop! When they got married a few years later, Dad was aged 22-years and Mum was just 19-years old.Â
They were married at St. Philip's church and spent a happy honeymoon on the Isle of Wight. Dad was a bit put out when Mum sent her parents a post-card with Wish You Were Here on the front!
Mum and Dad went on to set a good Christian example by being married together for 47 years. Dad was always keen to highlight the importance of Christian marriage by marking each wedding anniversary with celebration and thanksgiving to God. He bought Mum ruby-coloured Rosary beads for their 40th-Wedding Anniversary; and she bought him sapphire-coloured ones for their 45th! Mum had been baptized in the Catholic Church as a baby, and their marriage needed to be convalidated in the Catholic Church in the late-1980's; but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
Ken progressed through the ranks at Norwest Holst and, by his late-30's, had attained the position of Personnel Manager in the Bootle office. He had also managed to get a mortgage on a nice little new-build house and this became home for the family, which by now included us three children - Phil, Michelle and me. Â
As you can see, he was a snappy dresser! This was now the 1970's and Dad was, at this point, quite a party animal. He liked to sing, dance and partake of potent homebrew beer with his friends. He purchased a powerful Dynatron music system and our home frequently resonated with the sounds of Abba, The Beegees, Herp Albert, The Carpenters and James Last.
Nevertheless, these also became years of intense religious searching. Having grown up in the midst of a respectable Anglicanism, Dad first went through a period of 'dropping out' of going to church at all. On Sundays, he would just sit out in the garden in the sunshine, wearing flared jeans and white pumps. I recall standing on the gate as an infant and laughing at my siblings going off to St. Philip's in their Sunday-best with Mum. I also remember poor Mum, remonstrating with him and saying: ''Look what a bad influence you are having on that boy!''
Don't worry, Ken soon came good!
Around this time, Dad went through a deep and mysterious conversion experience and basically fell in love with Our Lord Jesus Christ. The search was on...
When he returned to the Anglican parish, he was fired up and soon became disillusioned with what he termed ''nominal Anglicanism''. He met a young and dynamic vicar in a neighbouring parish. This man was encouraging personal conversion, charismatic renewal and the formation of lay-people to pray, evangelize and visit the sick. Dad began to study and pray the Sacred Scriptures, to visit the sick and to join the vicar in street evangelization campaigns with a loud-speaker and tracts. One time, they even had some raw eggs thrown at them for their efforts!
Around this time, Dad was awoken from his sleep by a male voice instructing him to get up and read Malachi 1-2:9. The voice continued until he got out of bed. It seemed crazy - and a little scary - when Dad told us all about it the next morning!Â
If you have never read those verses from Sacred Scripture, they express God's indictment of unfaithfulness in the priesthood. How prescient they are for these times in the Catholic Church! Given where he was ''at'' in those years, Dad began to discern, around that time, whether he should offer himself to serve as an Anglican vicar and he deepened his prayer life accordingly. When he eventually attended an Anglican selection-conference, he was shocked to encounter many candidates who no longer saw conversion from sin to Jesus Christ as being as important as engaging in social action. Sounds familiar, hey? Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Dad was not accepted by the selection-panel for training...
This is Dad and I at Christmas 1981. He never wore an Anglican clerical collar, but he ended up wearing this surgical collar instead! This was because a fork-lift truck knocked a warehouse door on top of him, whilst he was cycling past with my brother one evening. To make matters worse, the driver ran out on top of the collapsed door to see if my brother was alright. Our poor Phil had to tell the driver that he was fine, but that Dad was all the while getting crushed beneath the massive door! Dad would suffer neck and spinal pain for the rest of his life.
One of my own earliest religious memories dates to those years. It is one of Dad telling me that Jesus wants to have a deep friendship with each one of us; we need never think of Our Lord as only being a distant figure in Heaven, but as also being always close to us. Friendship with Christ would become a hallmark of his own life and, in his latter years, Dad often loved to play Charlie Landsborough's Forever Friend on his CD-player.Â
Faith in Christ and family life were by now foundational aspects of Dad's life. In the early 1980's these helped him through some painful bereavements of close relatives. When his brother Ron died in the most tragic of circumstances in 1983, followed by his Mum from natural causes a couple of months later, local Christian friends stepped in and provided strong spiritual and practical support to our family.
As the decade unfolded, Dad's search for the full truth grew deeper and more intense. This sincere search took him - and all of us! - through several Anglican parishes, a Baptist community, and eventually to a free-church group. We even had family friends who were friends of Ian Paisley!
Dad's neck injury and spinal pain caused him to be away from work for many months. This led to him being made redundant from the company after a couple of decades of service. With a young family to provide for, he was naturally distressed. Remarkably, however, the pay-out the company gave him helped him to clear his mortgage and eventually to get another one on a bigger house. After a difficult period of about a year signing on the dole, Dad found new employment working as a secretary for the Liverpool office of the National Federation for Building Trade Employers (NFBTE). He went on to work there for around 10 years.
Throughout this time, Christian hospitality was a hallmark of Mum and Dad's marriage. The wild parties of earlier times had matured into meals and supper evenings with fellow Christian friends and the wider family. During their lifetimes, Dad was a strong support for his mum, sister and his great-aunt Annie who, with her chaise lounge, hat-pins and high-tea, seemed to us to be the last of the great Edwardian ladies! Dad also enjoyed gardening, book collecting and studying wildlife.
In 1983, my brother passed his driving test and our family bought our first car. It was a bright red Austin Maestro and we shared holidays at favourite locations, such as Llandudno in North Wales, Settle in Yorkshire and Keswick in the Lake District.Â
This picture was taken by my big brother, Phil, at the summit of Skiddaw near Keswick. Remarkably, the nearby Protestant Keswick Convention was to become a most unlikely setting for a totally unexpected ''Road-to-Damascus'' experience for Dad.
As I described recently, we spent a period of time attending a virulently anti-Catholic ''free-church'' in this period. We had certainly imbibed their fundamentalist reading of the Bible. The pastor there even belonged to that strain which held the Pope as the Antichrist and Rome as the Whore of Babylon! In those years, Dad was always on the look-out for polemical texts with which to try and convert Catholics to Evangelical Protestantism. He thought that he had found one in the book store of the Keswick Convention, when he gleefully brought out a paperback book entitled The Facts About the Catholic Church.
In reality, though, it was Dad who was about to be knocked from his theological horse. This was because the said book was actually not anti-Catholic rhetoric at all, but rather an articulate and balanced work of Catholic apologetics aimed at sincere Protestants and written in 1956 by a Redemptorist priest called Fr. J. Cummings CSSR.
Some years later, Dad wrote inside the front cover of his copy that he believed that God had led him to find it; and had opened his heart to learn from it that the Catholic Church is the True Church, founded by Jesus Christ, and wherein Dad had ultimately found the fullness of Truth and joy in His Name.
Sometime later, Dad attended an ''ecumenical'' Stations of the Cross at the local Roman Catholic parish of English Martyrs in Litherland. This was a time that ''ecumenism'' worked, because the good priests who had invited local Protestants to join the Stations of the Cross, during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, never tried to water-down the Cathoic Faith. Quite the opposite in fact!
After this, Dad began to frequently attend Holy Mass, Traditional Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and the Stations of the Cross devotion in the parish. Dad was awestruck by the beauty and reverence of the Catholic liturgies and devotions that he experienced there. He had discovered the One True Church, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.
He next began to go along one evening each week, after work in the city, to help St. Mother Teresa's Missionary Sisters of Charity with their soup kitchen for the homeless in Seel Street, in Liverpool. One day, Dad shared his joy that these nuns were not just speaking about religion, but living it. I was amazed at the changes in Dad, when he explained that the homeless men could sometimes be very aggressive and rude when he was serving them their food. He said that he was accepting this, because of his desire to serve Jesus. I must admit that I was thunderstruck at the time. He also began attending the Blessed Sacrament Shrine in Liverpool during his lunch hour. Dad found the Holy Mass and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament there to be an oasis of peace in the heart of the busy city. Â
A couple of very orthodox old priests helped Dad at this time to see, as Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman said, that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. After months of prayer, studying the Creed and learning about Church history, Dad was received into the Catholic Church, by Canon Michael Culhane, on 22nd December, 1989.
That night in the Catholic parish, I looked at the Tabernacle and said: ''Lord, all my life I have been taught that You are not there. If You are there, though, please help me to accept it.'' As the years unfolded, I very gradually received a deep love for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
This picture was taken of Mum and Dad on their 25th-Wedding Anniversary, which occurred around that time. When their marriage was convalidated in the Catholic Church, we had another nice little celebration here at home.
Mum and I noticed a real transformation in Dad in these months. In contrast to earlier years of volatility, he was now a man marked by deep and prolonged peace. With a bit of a giggle, we acknowledged to each other that the Catholic Church must indeed be true to bring such a remarkable change in him.
Dad next joined the parish S.V.P. to help the disadvantaged and went to a weekly novena to Our Lady of Perpetual Help. During that year, we all laughed with Dad to discover that he had actually worn holes in the knees of his trousers through all the praying he did in church! Although I laughed, I also reflected on the depth of Christian witness which this gave to me as a young lad. Â
Almost one year to the day after Dad's conversion, Mum was also received into full Communion in the Catholic Church at English Martyrs. This was a great consolation to Dad. It also became a special testimony to the spiritual union of validly married couples, who can worthily receive together the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Holy Communion.
As I reached adulthood in the following years, my own relationship with Dad was deepening and maturing. We became close friends and I often used to go for long drives with him, in my little red Austin Mini Mayfair, to talk about what was going on in my life and to listen to music on the radio with him. I hope to be eternally grateful to Dad for the time he spoke to me about John 6:53-58. Â
Dad told me that he was worried about my immortal soul, because I was not receiving the Body and Blood of Christ and - by Jesus' own teaching in that text - I could not have divine life in me.
To be honest, I was angry with Dad for suggesting such a thing at the time.Â
However, I had loved Jesus since I had given my heart to Him as a boy of 7-years of age. I could not get away from the fact that Our Lord, Truth Himself, had taught this about the Holy Eucharist. Indeed, He had even said that many would leave Him on account of this teaching. As I was getting pulled deeper into sin and worldliness at this time, it took several more years for this truth to really get through to my stubborn heart and, finally, to my will. Nevertheless, by God's grace, I was also converted and received into the Catholic Church at English Martyrs just before Easter 1993. It was one week before my 21st birthday.Â
Finally, Mum, Dad and I could all receive Holy Communion together. In those days, I still remember the local Catholic churches as being places of reverent silence before and after Mass. It was one of the striking differences between Catholic churches and Protestant buildings.
In 1999, Mum, Dad and I went on pilgrimage to Lourdes. This was the only time in his entire life that Dad left the British Isles. Having discovered Catholic Truth, he dearly loved Our Lady and regularly prayed the Rosary until the end of his life. As some of these images show, he often wore his Rosary beads, a Benedictine Crucifix or a large Miraculous Medal around his neck, to give public witness to the Faith.Â
That Lourdes pilgrimage took place as I was beginning to crash and burn from my two years in the Modernistic Ushaw Seminary; an experience which I partially described here in my recent article, Satan's War on the Mass. The hat's shadow hides the teary eyes!
When I eventually left the seminary, Mum and Dad were the number one support to me through a very dark and lonely time. In all truth, had Dad not walked me through that period, I do not think that I would have made it through. He often listened to me, gave advice, stayed with me, held me upright and put Holy Water on my head and about my room at night. Â
It was very hard for Mum and Dad to hear of the dreadful Modernism at Ushaw and to have to witness its impact on my life. For some years, it caused Dad to struggle to come to terms with it all. What got him and I through was our love for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the union with Christ which this central mystery provides. Â Â
On the Rock of Peter, and in the harmony of Sacred Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium, Dad had found what he had always been looking for.
Better than me, Dad could nevertheless see beyond the battle lines of the present Culture War, in order to love the souls of the Church's enemies. Sometimes we would argue vigorously about our different approaches - what Mum would call clashing of antlers! - but I know deep down that Dad was right that the Church's enemies really need our prayers rather than mere angry condemnation.
When Dad reached his early 50's, his career at the NFBTE came to an unexpected and disheartening end, due largely to cost-saving cutbacks. This was a hard period when Dad wrote off for over 200 jobs and received very few replies due to his age. Even those replies he did receive were negative. He generously offered his services to the Archdiocese, but received a polite rebuff telling him to watch the ''jobs column'' in the Catholic papers.
Although he found it hard to adjust to being stuck in the house all day, Dad was able to become a daily Mass-goer. He loved the gift of the Real Presence and desired for all of his family, friends, neighbours and Protestant former-confreres to enter into this peace.
To bear witness to the Catholic Faith, he cultivated a number of other ways, beyond just wearing his Benedictine Crucifix/Rosary. In addition to carrying his Missal through the streets to Mass, Dad wrote evangelistic letters to family, friends and neighbours about the Faith. In a throwback to his Protestant days, he made little tracts about the Catholic Faith to hand out to people that he met and got talking to along the road. Towards the end of his life, he even appended his phone number to these with an offer of help to potential converts. When he was eventually forced to resort to the use of an electric wheelchair to get about, Dad decorated it with key texts from Sacred Scripture. Each Christmas, he placed an illuminated crib-scene in the front window at home; whilst at Easter, and other times through the year, he made evangelistic posters to put up there instead. He also posted the times of Confessions and Masses in with his Christmas and Easter cards to local friends and neighbours.
I distinctly remember Dad trying to convert his Jewish doctor a couple of times and also writing a letter about the Faith to his local chemist. Denunciations of ''proselytism'' would have seemed most strange to Dad!
At the end of his funeral, as flowers were laid before Our Lady's altar, Dad's eulogy was read out. Dad had written this himself just a few weeks earlier, in order to counteract the culture of ''celebrity-funerals''. Instead of the usual litany of how ''great'' the deceased was, Dad had penned a request for prayers for his soul and an urgent and Christocentric call to all present to seek Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. It was touching to think that so many Protestant former-friends, among them some strong anti-Catholics, had come to the funeral and would hear this heartfelt call of Dad's.
Here are Mum and Dad near the Tabernacle after my marriage to Angeline in 2002. Â
For years, Mum and Dad hosted a weekly prayer group at home. This included the Rosary, Divine Mercy chaplet, intercessory prayers, traditional Catholic hymns, praise and worship songs, and a period of study of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Dad kept a book of newspaper cuttings of local tragedies and crimes, in order to assist the group in praying for those who suffer and who need conversion.
When Mum retired, they went to daily Mass together and, for years, prayed parts of the daily Divine Office together too. Every day, they also prayed for the safety, conversion and success of all of their children and grandchildren.Â
Dad designed a wall image with little cross symbols and a picture of some small children gathered around Jesus. He added the names of all Mum and Dad's six grandchildren between the words, ''Lord Jesus, protect our grandchildren from the works of the Devil. Amen.'' Mum and Dad also prayed every day that all of their grandchildren would receive the grace of Baptism.
Other wall images he made included Sacred Scripture texts for difficult times, a challenging daily examination of conscience regarding the choice between the Kingdom of God and that of Satan, and a framed catechesis on the ''obligation and joy of Holy Mass''. These all still adorn the home today.
Before she suffered a stroke in 2014, both Mum and Dad were a strong support to this Torch of The Faith apostolate. In fact, they were our strongest support to date. Just prior to his diagnosis with cancer of the stomach in 2012, Dad had come over to our apartment in Crosby to sign the on-line petition to the British Government to stand against so-called ''gay-marriage''.
Soon after that, Dad received a deep sense that he was being called to suffer, but that Christ would sustain him in his sufferings. He gathered us around him and said that God was closer to him now than was his own shadow.
Poor lad, he tried his very best to carry the heavy Cross of cancer after his shock diagnosis. He even used the opportunity to try and evangelize the nurses and his fellow patients.
A few days before he died, just 5 months after being diagnosed with cancer, Dad made his last Confession. Then, when Fr. Barry McAllister held up the Sacred Host to give Dad his last Holy Communion, he looked up and said: ''I know I am dying, Lord. I accept it. Please forgive me for all the sins of my life.''
He was unconscious for the last couple of days, but we remained near him to hold him, chat to him, and to pray the Rosary, Divine Mercy chaplet, and the Prayer to St. Joseph for a Holy Death. There was also a blessed beeswax candle burning in the room and Dad was wearing his Benedictine Crucifix and Brown Scapular. During his last day, he received the Last Rites and the Apostolic Pardon from two priests. As he peacefully left this life, with a single tear running down the left side of his cheek, I gently sang the In Paradisium over him. It was four years ago, today.
A few days later, as he was laid out in his best suit, Brown Scapular, and wearing the Jesus Lives badge that he had worn on his lapel so often in life, I had a really peaceful sense of the Resurrection. Since then, the Traditional Latin Mass was offered on his first two anniversaries on our home altar here, a Gregorian of 30 Traditional Latin Masses was offered in 2015 by the ICKSP, and the Traditional Latin Mass has been offered again today by the FSSP. We miss Dad so much that we pray the ''Eternal Rest'' for him every time we say the grace before meals each day.
In the final sad days leading up to Dad's final suffering, I used to watch and listen to the large flocks of geese flying off to other climes for the winter months. I remember thinking that, by the time they returned in the following spring of 2013, that Dad would have long gone from this world. It was a heart-rending thought. Whenever, I have seen or heard the geese, in each of the Octobers that have passed since then, it has filled me with grief and melancholy. That is, until tonight. As this was a long article, I popped out into the garden for a breather before the dusk fell and observed an enormous flock of geese flying high in the distance. Almost instantly, this flock changed direction and came low over our home here, with the setting sun illuminating their wings and bodies. I have never seen a flock of geese fly directly over here or so low in the sky above our home. For the first time since 2012, the sight and sound of the migrating geese gave me a sense of deep peace.
Perhaps the best way to conclude this tribute to my dear old ''pop'' is to let his own final diary entry speak. It witnesses so eloquently to the priority of grace working throughout Dad's life and to his loving response to these movements of grace. Sometimes, I am in awe of the graces we have received.
''This evening was bad again, with much pain. Sometimes it is so bad that it brings tears to my eyes. But I do offer it up for all those we are praying for. Lord Jesus, continue to give me the strength through your grace to cope with all this suffering. I was suddenly drained of all energy... it is as though you are dying - everything seems to drain away. It is at these times I realize I can trust in You Lord Jesus, for I can only rest in Your Love.''
At the conclusion of this day, I simply say: ''God bless Dad. May you rest now in Christ's truth and peace. Truly, Christi Simus Non Nostri - We Belong to Christ, Not to Ourselves.''
May we all learn this lesson.
If you've read this far, may God bless you: please pray an ''Eternal Rest'' for my old Dad before you go!Â
