Second Centenary Lecture: Judge Michael Yelton - The Quest for Unity: 100 Years of the Catholic League

The Quest for Unity: 100 Years of the Catholic League

Judge Michael Yelton, 6th July 2013. St Magnus the Martyr, London Bridge

May I first of all say how honoured I am to have been asked to deliver this short address to mark the Centenary of the Catholic League, which was for many years the most important group within the Church of England supporting the cause of reunion with Rome and in later years has transformed itself into an ecumenical grouping, albeit one with the same aims. Regrettably I am neither a Doctor nor a QC, as the initial flier would have you believe, nor indeed the President of the Anglo-Catholic History Society, but I do know, I hope, a considerable amount about ecclesiastical thought in the period we are dealing with.

I well recall some 40 years ago attending a Catholic League mass in St. Mary Elms, Ipswich, at which Leslie Gray Fisher, the long time secretary and one of those responsible for the survival of the Society through difficult times, proclaimed the well worn words: “Rome is the rock from which we were hewn and the Mother to whom we will return” which is and was an appropriate slogan for the League.

It is important however since we are today marking the Centenary to look back at the beginnings of the Society. I shall concentrate on the early years as they may be less familiar to those listening, and also because I have no wish to enter into controversies involving those still with us. The First 50 Years were chronicled in a pamphlet of the same name by Brian Doolan, which was produced by the Crux Press, run by Father Clive Beresford, the then Priest Director, from his somewhat decrepit vicarage in Newborough. It did not appear until 1966 because Father Beresford intended to write it himself but then found he did not have the time to do so. The 75^th Anniversary was marked by a rewriting of that history by Father Robert Farmer, whose account is shorter but still includes some additional information. Both have been very helpful to me.  

We can date with some precision the commencement of what came to be known as Anglican Papalism, a movement which was embodied in the Catholic League. In 1900 a series of addresses was delivered under the auspices of the Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom, which had begun as a meeting place for Anglicans and Romans but from which Romans had been barred by order of Cardinal Manning. On the Feast of St. Peter at St. Matthew, Westminster, Father Spencer Jones, a country clergyman and relative of Keble, delivered one such address in which he strongly advocated reunion with Rome. Among the congregation was Henry Joy Fynes-Clinton, then still a layman, who was both impressed and affected by what he heard. Following the delivery of the address both he and Lord Halifax, who had also been present, urged the speaker to publish it. In 1902 a rewritten and extended version of Father Jones’ address appeared as England and the Holy See. This formed one of the basic documents on which the later leaders of the Catholic League relied. A new body, the Western Church Association, usually known as the Association of St. Thomas of Canterbury, was formed, which was to have annual lectures delivered alternately by an Anglican and a Roman. 

In November 1907 Father Jones, in correspondence with an Episcopalian priest in the United States, Father Paul James Wattson, suggested the celebration of an Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, running from the Feast of St. Peter’s Chair in Rome (18 January ) to the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (25). This began in 1908 and was another important backdrop to the Catholic League.

Father Fynes-Clinton was ordained priest in 1902 and in 1906 moved to be curate of St. Stephen, Lewisham. He was an inveterate founder of organisations, some of which had a short life, others much longer: he found it much easier to be involved with societies he ran than with those run by others. Both he and the Revd R.L. Langford-James, then vicar of St. Mark, Bush Hill Park, were members of the Guild of the Love of God, one of many Anglo-Catholic  groups then in existence and after attempting to urge that a more definite line being taken by the Guild in relation to reunion, they led a secession. The two of them, with others, set up the proposed constitution of the Catholic League, and invited Father Arnold Biddulph-Pinchard, a well known priest then in Birmingham, to become the Superior General. In the event he turned down the request. Father Langford-James was then elected as Superior General and Father Fynes-Clinton as his Assistant.  

A meeting was then held at the Holborn Restaurant on Wednesday 2 July 1913 at which the League came formally into existence.  This was a huge establishment on the corner of High Holborn and what is now Kingsway.

On Saturday 5 July 1913 the League was ceremonially inaugurated at the church of St. Mary, Corringham, Essex: it seems unlikely that this venue was chosen at that late stage and much more probable that it had been suggested in advance: this is reinforced by the attendance of John Kensit junior, the well known Protestant ranter. The location was at the instigation of a founder member, A. Clifton Kelway, who was a well known writer and was a lay reader at Corringham. He wrote a book describing the work of the Society of the Divine Compassion, which had a house in nearby Stanford-le-Hope. 

Thus it was that a substantial group met for an early mass at St. Margaret Lothbury and then travelled, presumably by train to Corringham, where they joined the patronal festivities presided over by the rector, Father John Greatheed: Corringham was a family living.

There was a procession in which the participants sang the Litany of Our Lady and the Salve Regina, in Latin, and then at the high altar in the small church the League was dedicated and the Foundation Deed was signed by Fathers Langford-James and Fynes-Clinton and 95 others. The League was placed under the patronage of Our Lady of Victory, of St. Joseph and of St. Nicholas of Myra. The Deed hung in Father Beresford’s study in later years and I saw it about 1972, but regrettably did not photocopy it: it has since been lost. Later Solemn Vespers of Our Lady were sung before the pilgrims returned to London. 

At that time, Essex was in the Diocese of St. Albans. The Bishop, Edgar Jacob, came to hear of what had happened and inhibited the Superior and his Assistant from officiating in his Diocese. He then threatened disciplinary action against Father Langford-James unless he resigned his office and indeed his membership, which he did. Father Fynes-Clinton was certainly forced to step down, although whether he was made to resign his membership is not clear and if he did it was only temporarily. Clifton Kelway’s licence was withdrawn.

In place of those forced to resign, the League elected as its Superior General Father Edward Secker Maltby, who had with his own resources erected his church of St. Mary, Bermondsey, now covered by the Millwall football ground.

On 25 October 1913 the League’s first annual festa was held at the long-since disappeared church of St. Michael, Bingfield Street, Islington at which the preacher was the brilliant Father Ronald Knox, soon to leave on the Rome Express. The parish priest of St. Michael, Father J.H. Boudier, was a member of the League and in later years he had an audience with the Pope in which he seems to have given the impression that the entire Church of England was ready and willing to accede to the Vatican’s control. Would that it had been so.

It was one of Father Fynes-Clinton’s characteristics that he not only founded many organisations, but founded them as offshoots of others. Thus with the Catholic League. On 17 February 1914 he and Father Maltby set up the Sodality of the Precious Blood, under the patronage of St Charles Borromeo. Membership was restricted to celibate priests without connection to freemasonry and who were prepared to say the Latin Breviary daily. These requirements excluded many prominent Papalists who were married and some, such as Father Hope Patten, who had no command of Latin, probably because he was dyslexic.

The Sodality reflected Fynes-Clinton’s essential view, which was also reflected in the League. He believed that the Church of England was truly part of the Catholic Church, and that reunion should be corporate and should be effected by an internal revolution within the Anglican Communion, so that all its priests subscribed to Roman doctrinal and liturgical ideas. In her penetrating book on the Benedictines of Nashdom, Dr. Peta Dunstan remarks that Abbot Martin Collett's insistence never to deviate from the Roman way of doing things was "a profound sharing- not, as his critics would have it, a slavish mimicry. It was an ecumenical deed more powerful than pages of words".

Father Maltby did not have the time available to run the League and soon resigned, to be replaced by the then retired Father W.J. Scott, who had set up the first Back to Baroque altar in his church at Sunbury Common and was an authority on railways. Father Maltby remained Director of the Solidarity and Father Fynes-Clinton was secretary.

No member of the League had ever been consecrated to the episcopate, although in 1914 Father G. Bown, the Principal of St. Stephen’s House, was appointed as Bishop of Nassau. However he died before being consecrated.

In 1913 a monthly magazine known as “The Catholic” began: this ceased at the outbreak of the War but from 1915 the “Messenger” took its place.

In late 1914 Father Fynes-Clinton moved to be curate of St. Michael, Shoreditch. He regarded the move as releasing him from the earlier inhibition and was reappointed as Assistant Superior. He almost immediately set up a new community for women, which was also integrated with the work of the League. This was the Community of Our Lady of Victory. This was not to prove his most successful venture, and, after a period of wandering, in 1928 the two sisters who persisted had a bungalow built in the grounds of the convent of St. Mary of Nazareth at Edgware. It ceased to exist with the death of the original sister, Mother Mary St. John Watson, in 1961.

The COLV was responsible for the Apostleship of Prayer, which involved daily decades of the Rosary known as the Living Crown of Our Lady of Victory. It also organised the Tabernacle Treasury to raise funds for the provision of monstrances for poor churches.

Father Scott resigned in 1916 and was replaced by an anonymous group, from which Father Fynes shortly emerged as sole Priest Director. The League was thereafter run for many years essentially in accordance with his views.

In addition to the groups already mentioned, the structure of the League was complicated by a number of sub-groups, the product of Fynes-Clinton’s fertile brain. There was a Spiritual Treasury, the Women’s and Men’s respective Retreat Organisations, the Guard of Honour of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Chantry Fund, and probably others. Some were short lived, whereas others, such as the Tabernacle Treasury, lasted for many years.

In 1920 the League for the first time held its festa at the Convent of the Paraclete at Woodside, Croydon, which had been founded by the imprisoned ritualist, Father Tooth, who after his release was unable to find a living.  During the day, Father Fynes-Clinton received the profession of a brother of the Society of St. Augustine (later the Servitors of St. Mary and St. Austin), a Community founded by him in 1911, which rather like that of the exotic Father Nugée in the Nineteenth Century, took in men who worked in the world but transformed themselves into monks when they left the office each night. It had a priory in Walthamstow for some years, but failed to prosper. In 1925 the annual function moved to Otford School, which was also a foundation associated with Father Tooth, and continued there for many years.

On 23 October 1920 yet another sub-group of the League was founded, when at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, the Rosary Confraternity was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary: the sisters of the Community of Our Lady of Victory were living in the parish at that time.

Two other significant developments in the progress of the Catholic League took place in the same year. The first was the adoption by it of the Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent. In its explanatory booklet the League said:

“Our present circumstances, then, in these two provinces of Canterbury and York, are very similar to those of the Western Church as a whole before the Council of Trent, only that it is with a very much more advanced and virulent form of the disease that we are beset...So the Catholic League adopts as its profession of faith THE CREED OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.”

The second such development was the formation of the Church Unity Octave Committee, which was at that stage another sub-committee of the League. From 1918 onwards the Church Unity Octave had been supported and here we see early moves by the League towards unity: it was the first organisation in the Church of England to promote the Octave. The Committee was chaired by Fynes-Clinton It then absorbed the pioneering Association for the Promotion of the Reunion of Christendom, which was apparently wound up by Athelstan Riley at a meeting on 27 January 1921, on the grounds of the absence of Roman Catholic involvement, but without, apparently, any consultation with the wider membership.

As these developments were occurring, Fynes-Clinton finally acquired a living of his own, and after his institution in 1921 St. Magnus the Martyr, Lower Thames Street, where we are today, became the centre of the League’s spiritual activities: from 1923 until the Second World War it also had an administrative centre in Finsbury from which correspondence came. In 1924 Leslie Fisher, already mentioned, became general secretary, a post he held for many decades. He was efficient and well organised although the subject of some mirth because he travelled in ladies’ underwear- as an occupation not a fetish. In 100 years, the League has only had four General Secretaries.

In 1922 Fynes-Clinton revived the Fraternity of Our Lady de Salve Regina, which dated originally from 1343, and which held devotions at midday every day, and in 1924 he aggregated it to the League, thus providing yet another associated and interlocked group.

In 1926 pilgrimages to Walsingham began and were held annually.

On All Saints’ Day 1926 a completely new body, the Confraternity of Unity, was founded by four priests at St. Mary the Virgin, New York. Its aims were similar to the Catholic League, although the emphasis was almost exclusively on reunion.

On 5 November 1928 Father T. Bowyer Campbell, one of the four, who was later to become Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, addressed the Sodality of the Precious Blood at St. Magnus, and it was agreed that a secretariat should be opened in England to promote the Confraternity. On 3 February 1929 this opened at the presbytery of the church of St. Saviour, Hoxton, with Father Basil Joblin, then a curate at the church, as its representative in this country. The Confraternity was correlated with the Catholic League.

Fynes-Clinton joined the new body, but was never very enthusiastic about organisations which he was not himself running. On the feast of St. Matthew, 1925, the Council for Observance of the Church Unity Octave was formed, with Spencer Jones as its President, and on 14 June 1926 this seems to have become transformed into the Executive Committee of the Church Unity Octave. In order to bring together the various groups, in 1930 Father Fynes-Clinton formed the Council for Promoting Catholic Unity, on which were represented the Catholic League, the Sodality of the Precious Blood, the Confraternity of Unity, the Association of St. Thomas of Canterbury and the Catholic Propaganda Society, which had been run by Father Alban Baverstock.

Father Fynes was also less than enthusiastic about some of those responsible for the 1933 Oxford Movement Centenary- he regarded many of them as being the contemporary equivalent of Affirming Catholicism, or in other words not being sufficiently committed to the true principles of the Catholic Revival and to reunion in particular. It was to counter what were seen as these liberal tendencies within the wider Anglo-Catholic movement that the leaders of the Papalist Movement issued their Centenary Manifesto (dated 1 October 1932) and then the League arranged for the publication of a series of Oxford Movement Centenary Tractates, entitled The Church of England and the Holy See.

The eighth was the work of Father Fynes-Clinton (Part I) and Father W.R. Corbould, vicar of Carshalton, (Part II). Entitled What are we to say? it gave an unequivocal answer, namely that the Church of England should accept the claims of Rome and move towards union as soon as possible. Father Fynes-Clinton declared confidently:

“We have to insist, against all the insular prejudices carefully fostered by an interested officialdom, that the Church of England has no legitimate existence except as part of the Catholic world and therefore dependant on the Holy See.”

The main activity of the League in 1933 was the organisation of a pilgrimage to Rome to celebrate the Holy Year. The pilgrims first went to Turin, where they attended the Solemn Exposition of the Holy Shroud, and then went on to Rome where they followed the prescribed course of visiting the four major basilicas: they then had a special audience with Pope Pius XI during which they presented him with a copy of the Tractates, elaborately bound. On 22 January 1934 there was a meeting at the Caxton Hall under the slogan: “Modernism the Enemy: Rome the Remedy.”

In 1934 Father Maltby died and was replaced as Director of the Sodality by Father Wilmot Phillips, rector of Plaxtol, but he died a year later and was replaced by Father Fynes himself.

1935 was also notable for the publication, albeit not under the auspices of the League but of yet another group, the Society for Catholic Reunion, of Catholic Reunion: an Anglican Plea for a Uniate Patriarchate and for an Anglican Ultramontanism, written by Father Clement (J.T. Plowden-Wardlaw). He argued for the recognition by Rome of an English Uniate Patriarchate, probably with a celibate priesthood, and probably also leaving behind “modernists, irreconcilable protestants, and those obsessed by the state connection.” The book is interesting in that the author, who was a prolific pamphleteer and vicar of St. Clement, Cambridge (calling his letters Clementine Tracts), envisaged that reunion with Rome might envisage a split in the Church of England, a prospect many did not feel able to contemplate. Do we see in that the beginnings of an idea which has led in more recent times to the establishment of the Ordinariate?  

In 1936 there was a further reorganisation among the reunion Societies. The Council for Promoting Catholic Unity set up the Society for Promoting Catholic Unity which thereafter published The Pilot. The SPCU was responsible also for the Council of the Church Unity Octave, which was particularly appropriate since the new Society had been set up during the Octave of 1936. Father Corbould became the President of the SPCU, the many-hatted (perhaps many-birettad?) Fynes-Clinton the Treasurer.

Although the leaders of the Catholic League had taken no direct part in the Malines Conversations in the mid 1930s the leaders of the Papalist party began to correspond with Abbé Paul Couturier in France: he was in touch with Father Jones, Father Fynes-Clinton, and Abbot Martin Collett of Nashdom. In 1936 Dom Benedict Ley, the novice master of Nashdom, visited the Abbé in Lyons and then went to Ars and to Paray-le-Mondial, the scene of the apparitions to St. Margaret Marie Alacoque; four months later Fynes-Clinton himself went over to France together with Dom Gregory Dix of Nashdom, and they were able to speak in French at various meetings they attended. The following year Couturier returned the visit, and was met in London by Fynes-Clinton, who acted as his host throughout. Fynes-Clinton asked the elderly and infirm Father Spencer Jones to lunch at St. Ermin’s, Westminster, where he lived in a service flat, and the Abbé was delighted to meet him. Couturier came again to England in 1938, and on this occasion broadened his contacts into those who were not wholly committed to the Roman cause.

These contacts appear retrospectively to be rather unimportant in the life both of the Church of England of the Roman Catholic Church but their significance is that they happened.

In 1937 the Shrine Church at Walsingham was extended. The League was short of money, as it had been throughout is existence, until left a generous legacy shortly after the War by a founder member, Miss Evelyn Few (known as “The Faithful Few”). Father Fynes-Clinton therefore suggested that the chantry chapel he was endowing should also be the chapel of the League and in turn it was decided that a statue of Our Lady of Victory, patroness of the League, be erected in it: however this did not take effect until 1949.

Bombing in the war destroyed a number of League centres and St. Magnus itself was badly damaged. However the witness of the League continued much as before, and finances were much eased by Miss Few’s legacy.

In 1950 the Holy Year was celebrated with a pilgrimage to Rome by Fathers Fynes-Clinton and Ivan Young, accompanied by Mr. Fisher. The two priests were received in private audience by Pope Pius XII, who blessed the work of the Council for the Church Unity Octave. It is not clear how influential visits such as this were in Rome: it is however apparent that in that year there were very few other contacts with the Church of England.

It now seems clear that there was a lack of impetus behind the movement for union under the Pope in the years following 1950, and before the mood in Rome began to change. After the South India controversy, which took up a great deal of time to little avail, Anglo-Catholicism was on the back foot, responding to initiatives from others with which its adherents disagreed, but not setting forward a positive programme which would attract new support.

Father Fynes-Clinton was getting older. He resigned as director of the Sodality in 1953 in favour of Father Joblin, as director of the Apostleship of Prayer in 1955 in favour of Father Peter Sanderson of Poundstock, Cornwall, and as chairman of the Church Unity Octave Council in January 1958 in favour of Father Mervyn Pendleton of Wollaston, Northamptonshire. Then on 4 December 1959 he died: an era had ended.

Although an age had come to an end, there was an unpleasant episode shortly before that, following the death of Father Corbould and then a spat between Bishop Mervyn Stockwood of Southwark and one of the League’s longest serving members, Father Rice Alforth Evelyn Harris, whose views were such that he had never held a living in the Church of England. This embittered many.  

Father Fynes-Clinton was replaced by Father Clive Beresford, a man for whom the word eccentric seems an understatement. I am indebted to one of his successors, Father Philip Gray, for telling how when processing on a very hot day, the glue with which he had attached various decorations to his cope began to lose its hold and the ornamentation began to curl. He did however devote a great deal of time to the League (to the detriment of his parish) and in particular raised its profile outside London. He also used his printing press to great effect, starting a strongly worded newsletter entitled Crux.

By this time the Church Unity Octave, with its uncompromisingly Papalist position, was being overtaken by the much more widely-based Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which had been backed by Abbé Couturier and more surprisingly by Gregory Dix. The annual Call to Prayer for Unity, which was issued to coincide with the Octave, was made for the last time in 1964.

It is ironic however that in 1960, the year after Fynes-Clinton’s death, Pope John and Archbishop Fisher finally met face to face. The propaganda of the Catholic League had almost certainly had more effect on the former than the latter, as it was reported that the Holy Father knew all about the revival of the Walsingham pilgrimage, an interest which Fisher did not share.

In 1962 Father Beresford and 11 other priests of the League and Sodality met Pope John in private audience in 1962 then Fisher’s more sympathetic successor Michael Ramsey met the Pope in 1966, and was received warmly. In 1970 Pope Paul VI said at the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales: “There will be no seeking to lessen the legitimate prestige and usage proper to the Anglican church when the Roman church...is able to embrace firmly her ever-loved sister in the authentic communion of the family of Christ.” Then in 1982 Pope John Paul II came to England and was received by Archbishop Runcie at Canterbury.

Those events would have seemed inconceivable to Father Fynes and those who with him had laboured so long and with so few tangible results for reunion between Rome and Canterbury. The two churches have never appeared closer than at the time of the Papal visit in 1982, but this proved to be a missed opportunity. The Anglican episcopate had a lack of vision and no willingness to take bold steps: rather their reaction was constantly to retreat into the suffocating committee structure of the Church of England.

The reform of the liturgy by Rome also left many Anglicans, including initially perhaps the League, lacking direction. In due course however the tradition of following precedents set down by the Pope prevailed in the Catholic League and the new forms were adopted after an initiative by Father Raymond Avent, who became priest director in 1974 and was one of a new generation.

I have deliberately not dealt with some of the more recent developments within the League but the most far reaching has been the transformation of the Society from an Anglican Papalist pressure group into an ecumenical group.

 

The League was one of many organisations which offered strong resistance to the deeply flawed proposals for union between the Anglican and Methodist churches. However once that dragon had been slain, far more worrying proposals began to be aired. The ordination of women, which was irregular by standards of orthodoxy, meant that in the foreseeable future corporate reunion of the Church of England with Rome became impossible. While the Catholic League’s witness remains, it is now only possible to do that which Father Plowden-Wardlaw suggested so many years ago: in other words to persuade only those who have continued to hold, in the face of great pressure, the historic discipline of Christianity, that the Unity of all Christians is an important, indeed vital, objective.

 

Centenary - Priest Director's Address to the Annual General Meeting

No True Ecumenism without Unity with the Successor of Peter - No True Catholicism without the Unity of Christians

 

In 1900, four years after Apostolicae Curae dealt a blow to Anglican hopes for reunion with the Catholic Church, the vicar of Moreton-in-Marsh, Spencer Jones, preached a sermon at St Matthew’s, Westminster. England and the Holy See insisted that – nonetheless - there could be no lasting future for the mission to England of the two provinces of Canterbury and York, without restoring their unity with the Catholic Church, the rock whence they were hewn. Furthermore, an Anglican vision of Catholicity cannot exclude, but inescapably relies on, the communion of all Christians with the Apostolic See at Rome. To this end, in 1908, together with Paul Wattson (an American friar whose Episcopalian Franciscan community would shortly afterwards enter full communion with the Catholic Church and, as the Society of the Atonement, continues its work towards unity to this day), Jones co-founded the Church Unity Octave, fore-runner of the present Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, promoting this very objective. After the 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference (an attempt to coordinate Anglican, Protestant and Reformed efforts in overseas mission, often seen as the founding moment of the modern ecumenical movement), a small group led by the Revd Henry Joy Fynes Clinton, later the long-serving rector of St Magnus the Martyr by London Bridge, founded the Catholic League. Its aim was to maintain the driving principle of recovering communion with the Successor of Peter and to seek the corporate reunion of the Church of England and the Apostolic See of Rome.

The meeting that formally established the League took place 100 years ago today, on July 2nd 1913 at St Mark’s, Bush Hill Park in Enfield. On July 5th at St Mary’s, Corringham in Essex, it was publicly inaugurated with the enrolment of the first members. Although never large in numbers, the “Papalist” agenda it set has been widespread, even mainstream. Thus could Archbishop Randall Davidson lend support to fellow Anglicans (mostly mainstream Prayer Book Catholics) as they conducted the unofficial Malines Conversations with Cardinal Mercier in Belgium. The Conversations’ most famous idea, coming from Dom Lambert Beauduin - “united, not absorbed” - continues to animate Anglican aspirations for unity with the Catholic Church.

It was the League that made the first organised pilgrimage to the restored Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. The Shrine was founded by Fr Fynes Clinton’s friend and collaborator, Alfred Hope Patten, on firmly Papalist principles, to be a place and a body that insistently pointed to Catholic unity in faith, devotion and communion – as the famous “Rock of Offence”, the foundation stone of the Holy House, showed in recording the episcopate of the local Anglican Bishop of Norwich and the reigning Roman Pontiff of the day. This foundational vision of Catholic communion is one that urgently needs to be re-captured, if Walsingham, with its several denominational places of pilgrimage, is to be true to its aspiration to be not just ecumenically cordial, but a driving force through the prayers of the Mother of God to reintegrate the unity of the One Body of her Son. The League has constantly been ready to help, according to its means, so that at Walsingham, perhaps more than anywhere else in the Church-world we know, the prayer “that they all may be one”, “one flock with one shepherd”, can be manifest.

The Catholic League throughout has also promoted the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, now an official part of so many of the Churches. It was Fr Fynes Clinton – a successful missionary for Catholic faith and living practice as an effective parish priest - who invited to England the Week’s re-creator, Fr Paul Couturier of the Catholic primatial archdiocese of Lyon, to see the Anglican Church on home ground, especially those Papalist Catholic building blocks that offered some projection, even some portent, of the potential if reunion could come to pass. He took Couturier to see a number of the Anglican religious communities, showing living proof of union in the Church’s spirit and mind that Couturier had been saying was the sure path to union in the Church’s body. These close links with the Anglican papalist communities (notably Nashdom Abbey) - links that understood the religious life as a means towards realising corporate reunion – animated and incarnated the direction and objectives of the League, and the way it was able to present simply and clearly its cause for the necessity of the Papacy. Outstanding among those links is Dom Gregory Dix of Nashdom, the most influential of all English-speaking liturgical scholars, and the most penetrating of apologists for the Church’s need for what we would now call the Petrine ministry, or a universal pastorate. Together with the future Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, he convened the group of “Anglicans of the Catholic school” whose landmark report in 1947, Catholicity, set the stage for renewed Anglican hope for post-war reconciliation led by the churches of Europe and, at the heart of that, unity with the Catholic Church. The Bishop of Ripon, John Moorman, no “Romaniser” but a convinced Papalist, was appointed official Anglican observer at Vatican II; and soon Archbishop Ramsey would make the first official visit by an Anglican Primate to Pope Paul VI. The story is well known, but bears repeating, of how the Papal Curia was gathered to greet him in the Apostolic Palace, which contains a fresco depicting Archbishop William Warham (Archbishop of Canterbury 1503-1532), and drew astonished breath when Archbishop Michael Ramsey arrived dressed in exactly the same way – the standard “walking out” attire of the sixteenth century English Catholic hierarchy: rochet, chimere and square-cap. Still worn by the Anglican episcopate, it caused the Cardinals to see that a rupture of four centuries’ permanence might be repaired as if it were yesterday.

As the Catholic League promoted the unity of Anglican Catholics around the pastoral, theological and liturgical renewal of Vatican II, it also recognised the Council’s ecumenical potential for achieving its long cherished object of the reunion of all Christians in communion with Apostolic See of Rome, especially in light of the Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio. Accordingly, it has supported the Anglican Centre in Rome, as well as the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, now in its third phase of dialogue.

The visit of Blessed Pope John II to Britain in 1982, including the encounter with Archbishop Robert Runcie in united prayer and blessing at Canterbury, encouraged the League to renew its call to Catholic unity in One Step More, by the current President, Michael Rear, who is present with us today. Although subsequent events marked steps away from the unity that looked imminent in 1982, the League, by now a society open more widely to all who believe in Catholic ecumenism, has continued to promote Catholic teaching and spirituality wherever opportunity presented itself, towards the Church’s unity in communion with the successor of Peter for all Christians. Efforts led by members of the League in the late 1980s and early 1990s towards the realisation of a form of “corporate reunion, united not absorbed” came to nothing at the time, but in 2009 the seeds grew and bore fruit. With the Church of England’s decision that its episcopate would no longer maintain identity with the Catholic and Orthodox episcopate, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity’s Cardinal Kasper declared the previous endeavour towards unity based on re-convergence to be “definitively” concluded, and the recognition of orders no longer possible. Thus, having exhausted all other options for the corporate reunion of the Anglican Church, Pope Benedict XVI resolved to create at least one manifestation of how the rich tradition and historic mission of Anglican Christianity might achieve fullness of communion with the Catholic Church as “a treasure to be shared.”

As in 2009 the Catholic League approached its centenary, it recognised in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus a tangible fulfilment of its founding witness to corporate reunion. Yet, at the same time as its direct support for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, it persists, too, in the unfinished work of 1913, the unity of the Catholic Church and the “Church of England entire”, as well as the communion of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome. After all, we are all united in a bond of loving our Anglican life, formation, memory and heritage. Moreover, a good number of our members are devoted members of the Church of England in good conscience and are no less devoted to help it rediscover its essential unity with the Catholic Church in fullness of communion with Peter. This may seem impossible at the moment; as earlier visions of reunion and ecumenism pass away; but it is the Catholic League’s unwavering faith that unity not only will come, but must come, because the Lord willed that we may be one, “so that the world may believe.”

Since our last Annual General Meeting in 2012, your officers have continued to meet and work towards the realisation of our much loved Catholic League’s unswerving fidelity to the wholeness of Christian Unity, pursuing which is the only ecumenism that will bring about the unity of the Church in the apostolic faith.

In March 2013 the League, the first body to have made an organised pilgrimage to the restored Shrine, made its Centenary Pilgrimage to Walsingham, led by Archdeacon Luke Miller, talking about the unanimity in the spirit of the Anglican Father Congreve SSJE and the Catholic doctor of the Church, St Thérèse of Lisieux. We were able to celebrate mass in thanksgiving and for the repose of the soul of our founders in the Fynes Clinton Chantry, very close to the Holy House. We arrived just following the election of Pope Francis and were able to devote our thoughts and prayers to his new Petrine ministry of bringing about and binding the unity of the churches, among which Rome presides in love.

We heard shortly afterwards that the Anglican leader in Argentina, Archbishop Gregory Venables - a close friend of Pope Francis’ when he was Archbishop of Buenos Aries - had remarked that the new pope had told him that the Ordinariates had not been necessary and that he wanted to see the unity of the Catholic Church and the Anglican communion as a whole. I am going to surprise you – for a moment - by saying that I agree with him. By that I mean that the corporate reunion of the two is the League’s founding vision; and also that, if the Anglican Communion had been the Church it was, when Bishop John Moorman represented it at Vatican II and Archbishop Michael Ramsey visited Pope Paul VI - setting up the Anglican Centre in Rome and establishing the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission, on the principle of convergence in an ever deeper appreciation of our shared apostolic faith in the Risen Christ (something that Pope Paul attributed to our “communion of origins” to which both needed to return more completely) - then of course there would be no need for Ordinariates. Perhaps the Anglican Church in South America maintains the apostolic faith and perhaps its orthodoxy is why Pope Francis has felt such a warm and close bond to it. Elsewhere, however, the sad fact is that the Anglican world has steadily led itself away from those communions of origin and of apostolic faith and order. It reminds me that Blessed Pope John Paul II is said to have upbraided some Lutheran theologians once, at the height of the ultimately successful discussions to achieve an agreement on the question of Justification by Faith (one of the great causes for division at the Reformation), saying, “If you were really Lutherans, we could have been united now”. Something similar applies in this land – “If Anglicans were really Anglicans”, indeed there may not have been the need for Ordinariates and we could indeed all have been one. How right our President Fr Michael Rear was in 1982 – indeed it did look as though all it would take was “one step more”.

Thirty years on, the League’s prophetical call to Anglicanism to be orthodox and apostolic, and to place itself at the service of the gospel and our nation by finding its fulfilment in communion with the whole of the Catholic Church, has been answered in a way that we did not expect, our having almost given up on praying for it as unrealistic.   Yet here the Ordinariate is finding its way to bring a part of English religious culture, through a living body in the Church, to be part of the life and culture of all the Catholic Church. We support it without hesitation because, even though its appearance symbolises in some way a failure of the larger hope for an entirety of communion for all Anglicans and all Catholics, nonetheless it is a tangible materialisation of another tradition expressing what is distinctive and precious about it, not in separation but through perfected communion. It gives to us other Catholics an appreciation and greater understanding of the significant Anglican tradition and its riches as something now planted within our own Church. It ought to be a symbol that unity is possible when difference is embraced and diversity stimulates the creation of unity and indeed extends the Catholic Church’s very universality. It ought also to make us better in reaching out in respect and fraternity towards another community with which we desire to be one but with which there remains much more work to undo obstacles so that, as Metropolitan Kallistos puts it, we are found faithful when the Lord comes at last to bestow the miracle of unity. We are delighted that His Excellency the Ordinary, Mgr Keith Newton, is with us today with some of his clergy and people. We warmly congratulate them on what has been achieved so far and know it will be successful and a blessing to all our Churches.

So, even though we find ourselves in a very changed setting for Catholic-Anglican unity from when we had such high hopes in 1982, we press on. Just as we wish to see the Ordinariate reach its highest potential for Christian Unity, not just for itself but for all who hold the apostolic faith, we are no less resolutely committed to support Anglican-Catholic unity in all forms, not least in the sphere of official engagement. We have been particularly concerned to maintain our longstanding support for the Anglican Centre in Rome, whose sentiments to us in our Centenary have been warmer than ever. Our recent grant enables it to serve the promotion of the long-standing ARCIC dialogue. It is interesting to note that a leading English Anglican member of ARCIC III, the evangelical theologian Professor Nicholas Sagovsky, has said that but for the Apostolic Constitution, Anglicanorum Coetibus, and its appreciation of Anglican Patrimony, ARCIC may never have thought to reflect on what it is that the Anglican Communion is offering to the Catholic Church in their common quest for Church reintegration, and, for that matter, what it is contributing to bringing about the unity of all Christians. Thus are Anglicans constructively now engaging with this question that was once used to pour no little scorn on the Ordinariate’s entire basis – “What is this ‘Anglican Patrimony’?” The answer is – and I am so proud that it was the League that was the first to prophesy this from the outset in 2009, even before the Ordinariate was established and received its first members – as the peerless Fr Jack Hackett once observed, “That would be an ecumenical matter”.

During the year we have made several other grants of great significance in terms of the object of the League to promote the Catholic spiritual life towards the recovery of unity. One, to the Anglican Shrine at Walsingham, will enhance the Marian Library in St Augustine’s, which we hope will be a resource and blessing to pilgrims from all Churches to England’s Nazareth. Another is to Corpus Christi Church, Maiden Lane, in central London, a Catholic Church which is being restored as the National Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament. In line with an old tradition of the League’s, we are giving a splendid historic Monstrance that beautifully matches the art and architecture of the building. It will be used for an enhanced programme of sustained adoration and Benediction. Even though we Christians are divided at the point of receiving Holy Communion, nonetheless we can be united in devotion, honour and worship for our One Lord Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.

 

 

Mark Woodruff, Golden Square Rectory Hall

Catholic Church of the Assumption & St Gregory, Warwick Street, Soho, London

 

 

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 18-25 January Every Year

It is not always remembered that the one-hundred-and-two-year-old Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is thoroughly Catholic in origin and conception. Even its antecedents in the 19th century were inspired by a shared vision of the integrity of Christ's one Church and the desire for fulness of communion in the Spirit, proclamation of the Word of God, the order of the Church which serves and embodies that, and in sacramental and eucharistic life.

It began its existence as the Church Unity Octave in 1908, founded by Anglicans after a decade of despondency about the adverse judgment of the Roman See about Anglican Orders, just as Anglican leaders were beginning to look more to closer links with Christians in Reformed and Evangelical churches. Fr Paul Wattson, an American Epsicopalian Franciscan friar, and the Revd Spencer Jones, vicar of Moreton-in-Marsh and the author of the book, England and the Holy See, which caused a great national debate, combined to set up the Octave with  a reminder to their fellow Anglicans that Church unity could never be piecemeal or simply be a partial union between the like-minded, but had to start from the first principle of the integrity of the whole of Christ's Church as already one. Thus the reunion of all Christians with the Apostolic See of Rome and the successor of Peter, its Bishop, the Pope, was not merely a distant aspiration because of present difficulties and disagreements, the last step in ecumenism, but actually its first step. Unless the step was made in this direction from the outset, no one could ever arrive at it as the last.

The famous 1910 Edinburgh Mission Conference, to which the Catholic Church was invited to send representatives but declined to attend because the Conference seemed to promote the belief that there could be many parallel churches rather than one in which all could find unity, seemed to encourage the idea of an all-embracing fellowship of churches arising from the Reformation tradition, but maintaining their different theologies and systems. Jones felt that this movement was driving the Church of England from its Catholic self-understanding and the principle of reunion and reconciliation in one Church. He was central to the circle of figures that brought about the foundation of the Catholic League in 1913 to work for the union of all Christians in the Catholic faith and in union with the Apostolic See of Rome.

In 1908, Fr Wattson and his fellow friars were received as a community into the Catholic Church as the Society of the Atonement, which is still active in north America as a force promoting Catholic ecumenism. Wattson and Jones remained in contact as friends, both working and hoping for the same ideal of unity in Catholic faith and order. Meanwhile, the Church Unity Octave was sanctioned by Pope Pius X in 1909 and in 1916 extended to the whole Catholic Church by Pope Benedict XV as an aid for prayer and reconciliation among the nations at the height of the disastrous World War I. This was on top of a long-standing convention of praying between Ascension and Pentecost for the Reunion of Christians,  especially between Anglicans and Catholics, established in 1894 by Archbishop Edward Benson of Canterbury and by Pope Leo XIII in 1897.

The Church Unity Octave itself, as a Roman Catholic devotion, was not widely adopted beyond certain Roman Catholic and pro-papal Anglican circles. Yet a growing understanding of shared Christian identity, dogmatic belief and unitedness in the Scriptures that followed the Great War, together with the renewal from the Litrugical Movement and growing western awareness of Eastern Christianity on account of the many thousands of Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic refugees from communist and famine-struck Soviet Russia, revealed that Orthodox, Protestant and Anglican Christians continued, after all, to share a hope for unity in the one Body of Christ. Dom Lambert Beauduin, founder of the monastery that is now at Chevetogne in Belgium, was a pioneer in an ecumenically-aware monasticism that continues to this day to pray for unity through study, dialogue and the celebration of the Church's litrugy from both east and west. This in turn had a profound influence on Fr Paul Couturier, a teacher-priest from Lyon who thereafter devoted his every spare waking moment to enabling encounter between Christians of all traditions, and even people of other faiths, in what he called the "invisible monastery" of heaven, high beyond the walls of earthly separation, united there, if not on earth, in prayer for the unity and sanctification of all humanity in the charity and truth of Christ. Thus he added on to the Church Unity Octave the means for other Christians to unite themselves with the prayers of Catholics for the same hope of unity, "according to Christ's will, according to his means". The "spiritual ecumenism" which he commended became a cornerstone of the Vatican II Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio.

The renewal of the Church Unity Octave so as to make it possible for Orthodox, Protestants and Anglicans to offer prayers in the same week for Christian Unity, without any hint of urging anyone to be disloyal to their Church or Communion's teaching or to compromise on their theological principle, was motivated from beginning to end with prayer for one's own and one another's ever greater holiness and faithfulness in Christ. The spiritual principle was that the more closely one came to union with Christ, the closer one draws to fellow Christians on their own, similar journey; and thus can the churches draw closer to one another through entering more deeply into the truth, repenting of past mutual wrongdoing and rivalry, returning to theological and spiritual sources so as to retrace steps side by side on a common journey towards reconciliation in the same faith. Couturier called this common spiritual endeavour augmenting what was now named the Chair of Unity Octave (to stress the abiding centrality of the communion of all the churches with the See of Peter - it is noteworthy that that the new American Ordinariate for Catholics with an Anglican patrimony is established as the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, making clear its fundamentally ecumenical mission), "the Week of Universal Prayer for the Unity of Christians".

The spiritual involvement in the Octave, the Week of Prayer, became very widespread. It took on a new lease of life as the World Council of Churches was established as a new world order took shape after the Second World War and Christians were looked to for promoting principles of justice, peace and unity in humanity. The Faith and Order Commission is nowadays a principal agency by which the World Council of Churches and the Catholic Church internationally collaborate towards unity. From the 1950s it was producing spiritual resources for prayer for unity as commended by Fr Paul Couturier. In 1966 the two Catholic approaches - the Wattson's Chair of Unity Octave and Couturier's supplemental Week of Prayer - were formally united and from the following year the WCC and the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity (now a Pontifical Council) have produced annual materials for the Week of Prayer jointly through Faith & Order.

In 2003, the League arranged a celebration to mark the 70th Anniversary of the Refounding of the Week of Prayer and the 50th Anniversary of Fr Paul Couturier's death. In 2008 a great celebration of the Centenary of the Week of Prayer from its foundation as the Church Unity Octave was held in Westminster Abbey, led by Archbishop Rowan Williams and Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor. More details on the history and significance of the Week of Prayer can be found on the League's dedicated websites:

• Paul Couturier, Apostle of Unity
• The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity

The League also issues a Leaflet of prayers for each day of the Week of Prayer, especially designed to assist those who offer the intercessions at Lauds and Vespers, and the Universal Prayer of the Faithful at Mass. It is available for download here, from the League's Members' Secretary and Priest Director of the Apostleship of Prayer (email here) or from St Paul's Bookshop by Westminster Cathedral.

For the Record: Anglican Papalism, by Fr Brooke Lunn

January 2006

Anglican Papalism is a movement, from schism to unity, with a clear idea of our starting point, and a definite sense of direction. The movement’s antecedents go back to the schism, and its future goes forward to its destiny - full communion with the Roman Apostolic See. It is the expression, in a particular historical and geographical context, of the desire for unity in accordance with the expressed will of Our Lord Jesus Christ [John 17].

The usage - Anglican Papalism - goes back scarcely a century, though what it indicates, namely, efforts to heal the break with Rome, go back to the break itself. Because of widespread misunderstanding of it, it is necessary to be clear about its precise meaning.

My dictionary gives:

• Anglican…(Anglicana ecclesia in Magna Carta)…Of or pertaining to the reformed Church of England or any Church in communion with it.
• papalism n., papalist n. & a. (a) n. a supporter of the Pope or the papacy; (b) adj. Of or pertaining to papalism or papalists.
• Romanizer n. a person, esp. an Anglican, who favours or adopts practices of the Roman Catholic Church M19.

From the above we may see Anglican Papalism as a movement of members of the Church of England or any Church in communion with it in support of the Pope or the papacy.

Thus Anglican Papalism is not to be confused with Romanizers. The former belongs in the realm of ideas, the latter in the realm of phenomena. The phenomena of Romanizers are relatively easy to perceive. The idea of Anglican Papalism requires much more application in order to begin to comprehend it.


Anglican Papalism - essential points

1. Christian unity
Unity is a fundamental concept running through the Holy Scriptures.
a) The story of Adam and Eve illustrates the essential unity of the whole human race.
b) We are created in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, the perfect society, the model of unity in diversity.
c) The story of Cain and Abel illustrates the social responsibility aspect of the essential unity of the whole human race.
d) The struggle to establish Jerusalem as the centre of unity of God’s people over against the high places, and the focussing of this unity on the Temple, is a central theme of the Old Testament; and is still very much present today.
e) Along with this goes the emergence of ethical monotheism in God’s revelation.
f) Jesus’s concern for the unity of God’s people is expressed in various ways, particularly in John 17: ‘that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.’
g) Ephesians 1:9-10 reads: ‘For he (God) has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.’
h) From this follows the need for Christian unity. The French catholic priest Paul Couturier, who has become known as the Apostle of Unity, saw in the prayer of Jesus in John 17 the basis of his own understanding of prayer for unity, so he produced for his Week of Prayer the formula that the visible unity of the Kingdom of God may be such as Christ wills and achieved by whatever means he wills.
j) God’s will, as Ephesians says, is to unite all things in heaven and on earth, so unity also means the unity of the whole human race, through, amongst other needs, inter-religious dialogue.
k) It also means the unity of the whole creation…ecology, the ‘green movement’, and so on.

Unity is the primary motivation of Anglican Papalism. The understanding of what unity means continues to develop, but the basic motivation remains.


2. Rome
Anglican papalists are convinced that the fulness of the Church is to be found both in the local Church, the bishop and his people, and in the universal Church, the communion of all the Churches with the Church of Rome, the Apostolic See. It is not a case of either/or, but of both/and. Thus full communion with Rome is not just some optional extra, which might be helpful, but is essential for the fulness of the Church. Rome holds a unique place in the unity of the Church, over and beyond the fact that unity necessarily involves all Churches and ecclesial communities and, indeed, everyone of good will who professes the Christian faith.

Section 23 of the ARCIC Agreed Statement Authority in the Church I reads:

If God’s will for the unity in love and truth of the whole Christian community is to be fulfilled, this general pattern of the complementary primatial and conciliar aspects of episcope serving the koinonia of the churches needs to be realized at the universal level. The only see which makes any claim to universal primacy and which has exercised and still exercises such episcope is the see of Rome, the city where Peter and Paul died.
It seems appropriate that in any future union a universal primacy such as has been described should be held by that see.

3. Prayer
 Prayer is very much to the fore in Anglican Papalist work for unity. The Church Unity Octave, first observed in 1908, originated with two Anglican papalists. The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity developed from this. Couturier, the ‘Apostle of Unity’ was first brought to England through the efforts of Anglican papalists. Today the Catholic League is active in promoting prayer for unity. A special edition of The Messenger of The Catholic League, no. 280 October 2003 – February 2004 was dedicated to the vision of Paul Couturier as part of the observance of the fiftieth anniversary of his death. Also from the Catholic League comes the Christian Unity Prayerbook.


4. Doctrine
It is fundamental to Anglican Papalism that an essential prerequisite for full unity is agreement in the essentials of Christian doctrine. Until Vatican II this was identified in the Creed of the Council of Trent. Today the touchstone is the Catechism of the Catholic Church  of 1994. The work of ARCIC is recognised as of great importance in the search for unity.


5. Liturgy
 Lex orandi - lex credendi - lex vivendi…worship, faith, life…Christianity is all of a piece, and all the parts belong together in its wholeness. The catholic Church, as distinct from many ecclesial communities which express themselves primarily through ‘Confessions’ [Augsburg, Westminster, etc.] expresses herself primarily through liturgy. Thus Anglican Papalists give due significance to their convictions through liturgy. This is not the same as saying that Anglican Papalism is primarily about liturgy. It is not. There are many Romanizers who are most definitely not papalists; and there are Anglican Papalists who would scarcely merit the description of Romanizer. The difference between papalist and Romanizer is fundamental, yet there remains much confusion. Yet indeed many Anglican Papalists are Romanizers. Issues raised by this are dealt with in a Catholic League publication, Liturgy and Unity.


6. Loyalty
Anglican Papalists have been on the receiving end of much unjust criticism - that their position is irrational, hypocritical, disloyal, etc. Where such criticism has been just, and this seems to be very rare, the object of such criticism has been exceptional and untypical of Anglican Papalism. Geoffrey Curtis CR, not a papalist himself, in Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ [p. 163] gave a fair appreciation which questioned the charge of disloyalty. This is considered further below.

One of the most frequent grounds for the allegation of disloyalty is the adoption of practices of the Roman Catholic Church. This ground is refuted in Liturgy and Unity, already mentioned above. Another ground is that Anglican Papalists stress the importance of bishops but then don’t do what their bishops tell them to do. There is more than an element of truth in the waggish observation - unlike most Anglicans, I have a high doctrine of episcopacy, but low expectations; whereas most Anglicans seem to have a low doctrine, but high expectations; and I am the one who is least often disappointed! Put another way, I do not subscribe to a doctrine of the infallibility of individual bishops!

Pope Paul VI, who succeeded John XXIII, and had the task of seeing the Second Vatican Council through to its completion, is almost definitely the Pope with the best knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of Anglicans since the ferment of the sixteenth century. He said, at the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970, that on the day when the Church of Rome would embrace firmly her ever-beloved Anglican sister in the one authentic communion of the family of Christ ‘no offence will be afflicted [sic] on the honour and sovereignty of a great country such as England. There will be no seeking to lessen the prestige and usage proper to the Anglican Church’ [Rome and Canterbury Through Four Centuries, Bernard and Margaret Pawley, pages 341-342]. Anglican Papalists, loyal to all that is of good value in our Anglican heritage, say a heartfelt ‘Amen’ to that.

I now live in retirement in the London Charterhouse. The very first of those Forty Martyrs canonised in 1970 was Saint John Houghton, Carthusian Prior of the London Charterhouse. He was martyred, viciously, on 4th May 1535, because he refused to accept Henry VIII as head of the Church in England. To accuse Saint John Houghton of disloyalty to the Church in England because he supported the papacy would be a manifest travesty. 'Anglican' and 'Papalist' are terms that came into usage later, but Anglican Papalists today look to Saint John Houghton, along with many of his contemporaries, as true witnesses, even unto death, to the conviction which we share with him.


7. England
Anglican Papalists recognise both the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church in England as rightfully claiming descent from the undivided Church in England before the sixteenth century schism. We do not accept derogatory epithets such as 'the Italian Mission' or 'the immigrant Irish Church' to describe the Roman Catholic Church in England.

One of the powerful motivations of Anglican Papalism is the Christian mission to the people of England, of whatever racial, religious or cultural background. We perceive the present disunity among Christians in England as a scandal, a stumbling block to the mission of the Church in our land. It is not just some historic scandal [Henry VIII and all that], but a continuing scandal, an actual scandal, here and now, in which the Churches and ecclesial communities in England today participate. Reunion and unity, for us, mean one visible Church in England, with a common identity, not a stifling uniformity but unity in an acceptable diversity. What that means for us has been explored in, for example, Liturgy and Unity, already mentioned above, and Reuniting Anglicans and Rome - a special issue of The Messenger of the Catholic League  from October 1994.


8. Individual reception
Recognising Newman’s dictum about the primacy of conscience, Anglican Papalists see this as applying not least to those Anglicans who enter individually into full communion with Rome. The Catholic League, in recognising this, logically opened membership to all who agree with the four objects of The League and with the doctrinal basis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.


9. Ecclesial communities and corporate reunion
Those Anglican churches, including the Church of England, which have formally moved away from the catholic teaching and practice of apostolic succession in holy orders [as taught in the Ordinal with its Preface accompanying the BCP 1662] are now Ecclesial Communities rather than Churches in the proper sense. This leads to a substantial change in the basis for seeking corporate reunion with the Roman Apostolic See. In no way does it diminish the need for reunion. In so far as Rome recognises ecclesial communities, then this reunion will properly be corporate.


10. Unity of creation
Unity includes Christian unity, unity with other religions and life stances, and the unity and harmony of the whole creation. This is added in as a reminder that our own particular motivations need to be seen in the overall context of God’s will for the unity of the whole creation, to unite all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.


Two Classic Texts
I elaborated the above ten essential points from my own personal experience and understanding of Anglican Papalism over more than half a century. It is an understanding at the beginning of the third millennium. Basic to it are two classic texts of Anglican Papalism - England and the Holy See, by Spencer Jones in 1902; and The Church of England and the Holy See (the 1933 Centenary Tractates of the Council for Promoting Catholic Unity).

I take a glance at these two texts below, as they are critical evidence for the true nature of Anglican Papalism. A recent book and the reviews of it reveal the extensive ignorance of the true nature of Anglican Papalism, and the prejudice, misrepresentation, misunderstanding and false judgements deriving from this ignorance. The reason why so many commentators on Anglican Papalism who are not themselves Anglican Papalists are so hostile is complex. This is a challenge to Anglican Papalists. This present article merely attempts to throw some light on what Anglican Papalists themselves understand it to be.


Anglican Papalists’ true home in mainstream Christianity
Anglican Papalism is a movement from schism to unity, from the margins to the centre, from a backwater into the mainstream of Christianity. As such it is the very opposite of extreme. So how is it that it is so frequently misrepresented as extreme ? Extreme depends on what one identifies as the norm. If you perceive the Church of England to be The Norm of Christianity, with Dissent wandering off from this norm in one direction, and catholics refusing to come into line with the norm in the other direction, then clearly Anglican Papalists are out of line with this norm. The term nonconformist makes the point, having been used to describe both Dissent and catholics.


The evidence does not support the view that the Church of England is the norm of Christianity. It does support the view that the catholic Church is the norm. This is not so much because she is overwhelmingly the largest body of Christians, but more because of her faithful witness to God’s revelation down the ages. That there is a gap between the faithful teaching of the Church and all too much of the actual practice, not just of individual members but also of the members corporately, is recognised in the teaching by the model of the Church as the pilgrim people of God rather than as the perfect society.


This proper norm was recognised by the English Church down the ages until the state imposed an alternative norm in the sixteenth century. Yet the arms of the Archbishop of Canterbury to this day incorporate the Pallium, the symbol of authority conferred by the Pope, thus indicating the proper norm. The Gospels of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, probably brought to England by Saint Augustine himself when sent by Pope Gregory, being used at the enthronement of Archbishops of Canterbury, including our present Archbishop, likewise indicate the proper norm. The ARCIC process has helped to acknowledge the proper norm [e.g. Authority I.23]. The second half of the twentieth century has seen much progress in acknowledging the proper norm of Christianity, though there is still much more to be done here.


A key principle in Spencer Jones’s England and the Holy See is that of proportion. Thus, to treat the Church of England as the norm of Christianity is to get things seriously out of proportion. To treat the catholic Church as the norm is to restore a sense of proportion. Anglican Papalism, with its conscious desire and commitment to pursue the expressed will of Our Lord Jesus Christ for unity, and our recognition that this necessarily involves full communion with the Roman Apostolic See, places our true home right at the heart of mainstream Christianity.


Loyal Anglicans
The loyalty of Anglican Papalists to our Anglican heritage is second to none. Spencer Jones’s England and the Holy See is a classic Anglican text, written for Anglicans by an Anglican. The overriding purpose of the Centenary Tractates of 1933 is to demonstrate that the true home of the Church of England is full union with the Holy See - which they demonstrate most effectively. The title of the series is - The Church of England and the Holy See.

The loyalty of Anglican Papalists to our Anglican roots is seen in many ways, of which the following are some:

1. Anglican Papalists have a good knowledge, understanding and appreciation of our Anglican heritage; usually better than that of fellow Anglicans. The two texts referred to above demonstrate this very clearly.

2. Anglican Papalist clergy and laity have a fine record of devoted work, often in the pastorally tougher parts of The Lord’s Vineyard. I note in The Catholic Herald of November 11, 2005, "H.J.Fynes-Clinton, one of the prime movers [of Anglican Papalism], rarely had a good congregation at St. Magnus the Martyr."

I was a server at St Magnus from 1951 to 1959, when I went off as a student to Trinity College, Dublin, months before Father Fynes died. Latterly, I served the 8am weekday Mass, occasionally attended by local office workers, as well as the lunchtime services. I myself worked in Barclays Chief Foreign Branch just up the road. For the 8am Mass Fr Fynes would catch the underground from St James Park, near where he lived, to Monument, close by St Magnus. He was in his eighties. His GP had told him that this was too much for him, and when Fr Fynes carried on nonetheless, his GP said: ‘Well, you’re on your own.’

A good congregation? City of London parishes were viewed by many as sinecures. Fr Fynes viewed the parish of St Magnus as the very opposite, a most demanding ‘cure’ of souls. Far from being sinecures, City of London parishes are seen by diligent pastors as among the toughest pastoral assignments. Fr Fynes led the way in weekday services in the City. Our community of worshippers in the 1950s at St Magnus had a powerful influence on me, for good, as I believe; and the inspiration for this was Fr Fynes. I wish to say much more on this, but now discipline myself; except to say that the comment which provoked my response I consider to be unworthy, and ignorance is a poor excuse.

3. Our recognition that we are in schism is an honest self-appraisal, not disloyalty. Were St John Houghton and his fellow Carthusian martyrs being disloyal to the Church in England when they took their stand against the tyrant Henry VIII ? Was St Thomas More likewise being disloyal? Was St John Fisher also being disloyal? They were not Anglicans in schism. We are. But the issue is the same.

4. A true, thorough, critical evaluation of all that is good and worthwhile in our Anglican heritage is a necessary exercise of the principle of proportion.

5. The willingness to persevere in the face of misunderstanding, unfair treatment and misrepresentation is a test which demonstrated the loyalty of our forebears who were actively persecuted; and continues to be a test for us today.

6. Anglican Papalists, notably Spencer Jones and Fr Fynes-Clinton, expressed themselves very clearly
about the responsibility of bishops to exercise a ministry of unity in witnessing faithfully to God’s revelation. They were absolutely clear that the mind of the Church took precedence over the vagaries of individual bishops. For this they have been criticised as inconsistent, disloyal and undisciplined. Yelton, in Anglican Papalism puts it thus: ‘This was a fairly typical attitude to bishops by those who on the other hand sought to uphold church order, displaying one of the ambiguities which has plagued the Catholic Revival throughout its existence.’ Which prompts the question: 'Was Athanasius wrong to confront the Arian bishops?' Was Athanasius ambiguous? What nonsense!

When it comes to charges of disloyalty, those who have in our times changed the fundamental nature of our Anglican heritage should become aware that they are in a very vulnerable glass house.


How others see us
About thirty years ago the local council of churches decided to hold the Week of Prayer service in our church. It was their first visit. The secretary of the council came around to arrange things, and I shewed her the church. ‘The council won’t like this’, she said, as her nose twitched at a suspicion of incense in the air. ‘Shrines, candles…’ - the usual list of aids to worship in catholic churches which so upset the anti-catholic prejudice nurtured in the English since the sixteenth century. ‘But’, said I, ‘the local catholic Church is an active member of the council of churches, and you have held services there?’ ‘Yes’, she replied, ‘but then we expect such things of them. We expect you to know better.’

Even to this day we should be well aware of just how deep-seated is anti-catholic prejudice and ignorance. In so far as this has declined, this has coincided with a decline in the place of religion as a whole in our society. So, Anglo-Catholics, and Anglican Papalists even more so, are criticised because we ought to know better.

An appreciation is given by Geoffrey Curtis CR in his Paul Couturier and Unity in Christ, 1964 [p.163]:

We are beginning to see that Anglican Papalists have been unfairly judged. Abbe Couturier saw this very clearly. They are accused by English Roman Catholics of failure in logic and by many of their fellow Anglicans of disloyalty. There may be Anglican Papalists who are a law unto themselves and who ignore the force of the ordination pledges and are thus disloyal to our Church and to its bishops. There may well be an Anglo-Roman underworld as there have been Protestant and Modernist underworlds and, for all I know, an Inferno of ‘Moderation’. But the true Anglican Papalists are not of this calibre. They are a small group with a long lineage in our Church, and many are of the salt of the earth. Their particular standpoint many of them have recognized as involving a call to a life of reparation. Contrary to average opinion this small group is notable for its intellectual power as well as for its holiness. Perhaps the books of Anglican theology of this century that have been most widely read abroad have been books by Papalists - Spencer Jones’ England and the Holy See and Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy; Dr S.H.Scott’s great work, Eastern Churches and the Papacy, is used by scholars in most parts of the world. 

To other Anglicans their position seems neither disloyal to our Church nor, given their convictions, contrary to the logic of charity, but rather sadly disproportioned. We believe that our own Anglican heritage possesses certain Christian values in trust and that these would be jeopardized if we were to submit to Rome as she now is.

That is a gracious appreciation, but I am greatly puzzled that Fr Curtis sees Anglican Papalists as willing ‘to submit to Rome as she now is’ [his book was published in 1964], and so jeopardize our own good Anglican heritage. Submission is the Roman Catholic approach to Anglicans wishing to enter into full communion with the Roman Apostolic See. It is difficult indeed to see how this is compatible with the Anglican Papalist principle of corporate reunion. In number eight of the Centenary Tractates of 1933, Fr Fynes-Clinton has a section headed ‘Corporate Return’. In this he emphasizes: ‘Our schism from Rome was Corporate: the remedy must be Corporate’. Fr Corbould, in the same tractate [pages 25-26…quoted later and see previous post] lists eight Anglican aspects which might be agreeable to Rome in the cause of reunion.


Fr Curtis was clearly sympathetic to the cause of unity with Rome. This is seen in his biography of Paul Couturier. Also, Fr Curtis was a prime mover in the recognition at the London Charterhouse of the Carthusian Martyrs. What is it about Anglican Papalists that Fr Curtis found to be ‘rather sadly disproportioned’ ? He is not alone among those of goodwill who seem to misunderstand us. Does some of the problem lie with us, and our possible failure to communicate clearly what our principles are ? I remain genuinely puzzled. This is not because I believe that our movement is above criticism. Yet I suspect that some of our critics are more familiar with the fringe elements rather than with the essence - not a sound basis for fair judgement.


There is also the phenomenon, still very much with us today, of anti-papalism amongst strongly traditional Anglo-Catholics. Amongst these would be found those content to be called Continuing Anglicans.


A more bizarre hostility is found in a Jesuit reviewing Yelton’s book. His review takes up so much space with abuse of Anglican Papalism that he leaves himself with no room at all to substantiate his false accusations. Briefly damning with faint praise - ‘occasional intellectual brilliance’ - to heaping abuse - misconceived, travesty, dishonest, parasitic, pastorally disastrous…what is it about Anglican Papalism that draws out such unfairness? But one point above all in that review suggests that time should not be wasted on it. ‘For Catholics, papalism is a position which few will understand.’ Recall the dictionary definition of papalism - ‘a supporter of the Pope or the papacy’. A Jesuit, whose fourth vow is one of special obedience to the Holy Father in the matter of accepting missions, not understanding papalism ? Let’s move on quickly.


A completely opposite and very positive view of us is seen by many Roman Catholics. Witness, for example, the warm relations we have enjoyed for many years with our contacts in the monasteries and diocese of Bruges where we visit annually in the hope of and furtherance of Anglican-Roman Catholic unity. A key ingredient of such good relations is friendship.

Fair minded Roman Catholics acknowledge that Anglican Papalism has drawn some of the anti-catholic prejudice away from Roman Catholics. A fair number of Roman Catholics learnt their catholic faith and life in the Church of England. Amongst these only a few ‘kick the ladder away’ or ‘bite the hand that fed them’. The Catholic League, once exclusively Anglican Papalist, now has Roman Catholic members, including Officers and Council members. We are in good heart.


Anglican Papalism since 1960
 I take the date 1960 from Yelton’s Anglican Papalism - A History 1900-1960 [p.16]: ‘The real undermining of the Papalist tradition came in the period after 1960, which is not dealt with in detail in this study.’ This judgement is supported by reviewers of Yelton’s book: ‘He has written a study in failure’; ‘A lost cause’; ‘the coup de grace’; and so on. So, given the precise meaning of ‘Anglican Papalism as a movement of members of the Church of England or any Church in communion with it in support of the Pope or the papacy’, consider the evidence.

On 3rd December 1960 Dr Geoffrey Fisher visited the Pope. This was the first ever visit of an Archbishop of Canterbury to the Pope since the sixteenth century schism. Subsequent Archbishops of Canterbury, including our present one, have visited the Pope. Since 1960 the Second Vatican Council led to great improvement in Anglican-Roman Catholic relations. The Vatican 2 Decree on Ecumenism said [13]: ‘Among those in which Catholic traditions and institutions in part continue to exist, the Anglican communion occupies a special place.’ Since 1960 ARCIC was set up, and continues to do valuable work towards unity. Pope Paul VI, from a position of considerable knowledge and understanding, expressed a most gracious and generous appreciation of our Anglican heritage.

 The Catholic League took Vatican II totally on board, and subsequently took the Catechism of the Catholic Church [1994] as our touchstone of orthodoxy. The League’s publications, including The Messenger, continue to promote the papalist cause. Notable here are two special issues - Reuniting Anglicans and Rome in October 1994; and The Unity of Christians: The Vision of Paul Couturier in February 2004.

The Congregation of the English Mission was an initiative of The League regarding corporate reunion, whose explorations for three years to 1990 are briefly described in Reuniting Anglicans and Rome. Much of the work and prayer for unity goes on at the grassroots level and doesn’t make the headlines. A good example is the inauguration of the Emmanuel Chapel in the Begijnhof guesthouse in Brugge, for which the League provided the monstrance and the icon of the Mother of God. The years since 1960 have seen some of the most positive gains in the search for unity. Sadly, the last few years have seen a significant turning away from unity with Rome on the part of the Church of England.

For several centuries the religious life of England was largely to be identified with the Church of England, hence Anglican Papalism. The continuing marginalisation of the Church of England in English society raises questions concerning the Anglican dimension of papalism. We may be moving towards a situation where the need would be better expressed as English Papalism. The 1933 text was The Church of England and the Holy See. The 1902 text, England and the Holy See, may now more accurately reflect the situation.

Whether it be Anglican or English Papalism, the movement remains as necessary as ever, new challenges notwithstanding. Seeking the will of Our Lord Jesus Christ is not a lost cause. Failure is not an option. The coup de grace ? A tradition undermined ? Inevitable flaws ? A lost cause ? Failure? Shades of Mark Twain: Reports of our death are an exaggeration.