A New Direction

There were a couple of surprises in the recent edition of New Directions, the magazine of Forward in Faith.  Many of the articles were interesting and good (the famous Davage writing style is always a treat to read), a hallmark of New Directions over many years, but there was some of the magazine that took me rather aback.

In the magazine, a prominent Anglo-Catholic was asked who his favourite historic figure was.  The reply: "Dr Pusey".  Anyone with an Anglo-Catholic background and/or a connection with Pusey House will be able to reflect thoughtfully on that, indeed I have prints of Dr Pusey and Blessed John Henry Newman side by side on my wall at home.  However, the reason for his choice was rather striking.  It was "Because he stayed in the Church of England".  I suppose we can take it that the interviewee is not a great devotee of Blessed John Henry Newman.

Has the mask of the modern Anglo-Catholic slipped?  Is there not even the slightest pretence any more of a shared goal of corporate reunion, something that seemed so important when Blessed John Paul II knelt beside Robert Runcie, then Archbishop of Canterbury, in Canterbury Cathedral?  Is the goal to remain in the Church of England, come what may, and if so, what on earth has all the fuss in General Synod been about, why not just sit quietly in a congregationalist bubble and let everyone else get on with what they wish to do?

Even Dr Pusey himself, in Eirenicon, a publication in which he outlined many of what he perceived to be faults and errors of the Catholic Church, was in fact arguing for a reunion of Catholic Christendom.  His old friend Blessed John Henry Newman, whom shortly before publication Pusey had met for the first time in 20 years, acknowledged as much in a letter to Pusey, in spite of Eirenicon's criticisms :

you discharge your olive branch as from a catapult.

Of course, I am being terribly unfair.  I should put my own Puseyite catapult away.  It was probably a rather tongue-in-cheek comment, in the context of a friendly and jovial discussion at which none of us was present.  We cannot assume that this means we should translate "Better Together" as meaning "Better Together away from the Catholic Church".  Still, I wonder if there is not some small kernel of truth in the analysis as it at first seems to be.   Dr Geoffrey Kirk, a former regular contributor to New Directions in his days as Secretary of Forward in Faith, and one of the newest members of the Ordinariate, put it rather more eloquently than I have, and perhaps rather more bluntly too, talking of Anglo-Catholic leaders who, notwithstanding all that is happening around them, carry on regardless, thereby allowing others to believe all is well :

This ignominious ending to a long and hard-fought campaign is properly a cause of grief and shame. Shame, because it is a betrayal of the entire Catholic movement – of Keble as well as Newman, of Pusey as well as Froude. Grief, because it has exposed a fault-line which, in our generous optimism, many of us supposed not to be there. When Benedict XVI called their bluff, men whose rallying cry had been ‘Look to the Rock from which we are hewn!’ looked the other way. When the life-boat was launched, they complained about its colour. They claimed to act out of affection for the Church of their baptism and ordination. Tragically that is a demonstration of loyalty which, in the course of time, the Church of England will discover that it can well do without.

It may simply be that there is, even among Anglo-Catholics, a residual, irrational, atavistic anti-Romanism which the passage of time has not been able to erode. But I think there is a deeper and more disturbing explanation for this sorry state of affairs.

A characteristic of modern Anglicanism, of all parties and opinions, has been creeping indifferentism. In increasing numbers people have concluded that doctrine does not matter – that it is merely ‘theological’, in the Harold Wilson sense of abstruse and irrelevant. How vividly I remember Dennis Nineham celebrating in the college chapel in a chasuble bought by Austin Farrer, behaving for all the world as though he believed in the Real Presence, when he did not even believe in the Incarnation. And I wondered what John Keble would have made of that.

The old argument was that the Church of England maintained the same historic teachings and traditions as the wider Church.  It was said that there were no differences, even if some work was necessary to make sure that all in the Church of England might come to share this understanding.  As Cardinal Kaspar suggested, since the latter half of the twentieth century, the Church of England has changed its approach from a period just after the second world war when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, could say

The Church of England has no doctrine of its own, save that of the one Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.

to a time when Holy Order can be redefined with no reference to the Churches of the first millenium.

The Church of England is of course perfectly entitled to take this approach, and people are perfectly entitled to remain in the Church of England whatever its decisions might be.  Nobody argues the contrary.  There are those who say that the Church of England, as part of the Church Catholic (note the order of the words used), should not take such decisions alone, but the fact is that it does.  A leading proponent of the ordination of women to the Anglican episcopacy, Erika Baker, has said :

I still don't understand why those who are deliberately members of the CoE suddenly claim that it isn't the church ...... when they don't like its decisions. Yes, there are those who believe that the CoE doesn't have the power to make this decision.  But the CoE disagrees and it has made that decision and it has had women as priests for a long long time now.

She's right.  If you believe that the Church of England is the Church, and that it does not need to have its decisions approved by Rome or Constantinople, then it doesn't make sense to say that the Church of England isn't the Church on the occasions it reaches a conclusion other than one that matches your own opinion.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with those who are Anglicans wishing to remain Anglicans.  It is their choice, and we as former Anglicans who remained in the Church of England for many years are in no position to criticise that decision.  However, the pretence that nothing has changed (or that nothing is about to change) is wilful blindness.  The line that Dr Fisher took (and we all know that he was not exacly ablaze with Roman Fever) cannot now be uttered other than in wistful nostalgia.

What has happened (or is in the process of happening) is not Catholic at all.  It is not even what one might call Anglo-Catholic.  Part of the great argument for Anglo-Catholicism, for the branch theory, for the Church of England being part of the one universal Church, separated by mere accident of history (ie Tudor politics and Dr Cranmer's subservience), was that the absence of full unity with the wider Church of East and West, while something to be resolved one day in the future (preferably by someone else), did not diminish the Church of England’s self sufficiency. Each individual diocese was the Church in that area, and the resultant disparate nature of the wider entity was not perceived as a problem sufficient to alter the Church of England's historic role as the Catholic Church in this land, a Church that held on to the Catholic Faith as it always had done (even if that last part required considerable intellectual gymnastics to prove it to any degree).

In Tract 90, Blessed John Henry Newman, while still an Anglican (although Tract 90 became a turning point in his process of seeking reception into the Catholic Church), expressed it as follows

The Anglican view of the church has ever been this: that its portions need not otherwise have been united together for their essential completeness, than as being descended from one original. . . . Each church is independent of all the rest. . . . Each diocese is a perfect independent church, is sufficient for itself.

[the]….Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic world……. is not the centre of unity

[the Anglican church is]….. essentially complete without Rome

Newman, as we all know, came to realise the error of his ways and to see that this image of a fractured, broken, dismantled Church is not the one to which we should seek to aspire, and is the vision neither of the Gospel nor of the Fathers of the Church. By the time Newman wrote the Apologia, not only had he very much changed his views on the Bishop of Rome, but he also now attached the most tremendous importance to unity (he perhaps realised that to agonise about the accidence and essence of the status of the Petrine Ministry, as he had in Tract 90, was as a mote to the plank of ignoring the Gospel imperative of Unity) :

The Anglican disputant took his stand upon antiquity or apostolicity, the Roman upon catholicity. The Anglican said to the Roman: “There is but One Faith, the ancient, and you have not kept to it”; the Roman retorted: “There is but one Church, the Catholic, and you are out of it.”

How strange it now seems that nineteenth-century Anglo-Catholic arguments were that Rome innovated whereas Anglicanism held firm to the Faith.   Newman himself commented on this in May 1843:

At present I fear, as far as I can analyze my own convictions, I consider the Roman Catholic Communion to be the Church of the Apostles, and that what grace is among us (which, through God's mercy, is not little) is extraordinary, and from the overflowings of His dispensation. I am very far more sure that England is in schism, than that the Roman additions to the Primitive Creed may not be developments, arising out of a keen and vivid realizing of the Divine Depositum of Faith.

Well, General Synod no longer takes its stand upon antiquity or apostolicity.  Even Newman's Tract 90 arguments cannot now be used : Newman's Tract 90 views as an Anglican depended on a shared

possession of the Succession, their Episcopal form, their Apostolical faith, and the use of the Sacraments.

When that has gone, what is left may be wonderful, it may do huge amounts of good, it may be treasured and loved, it may be run by the most kindly and charitable of people, it may even, through the overflowings of His dispensation be filled with not little grace, but it pays no heed to Christ's prayer for Unity.  What's more, this isolationist strategy is adopted for the sake of "second order issues".

In a stunning sermon given during the celebrations held to mark the 125th Anniversary of Pusey House, Canon Robin Ward, the Principal of St Stephen's House, reminded us that Blessed Pius IX had told Dr Pusey that he was like a bell summoning people to church but never entering it himself; Dr Ward went on to wonder whether Anglo-Catholicism might not be able to hope for a better future than that, now that the Church of England with its two integrities was coming to an end. 

What Dr Pusey sought was a recovery of the Catholic nature of the Church of England.  It was the Catholicism of the Church of England that interested him, not primarily its Anglicanism.  If he had lived to see a day when the Church of England's Anglicanism led it to harm what he argued was its Catholic nature, one has to wonder if he really would have "stayed in the Church of England".

As a matter of fact of course, Dr Pusey did stay in the Church of England, but it is very bold to take a nineteenth-century decision made in a nineteenth-century context as being conclusive proof of what he might have thought today.  As we have argued before in an article on Dr Eric Mascall, it is impossible to conclude what the heroes of Anglo-Catholicism might have done had they found themselves facing the current situation. 

The other surprise for me in New Directions was an article by Dr Philip North.  In it, he talked of explaining to some evangelical Anglican clergy (who have taken over the running of a beautiful Anglo-Catholic parish church that has fallen on hard times) what his understanding was of the Mass, of Eucharistic theology, of the Real Presence.  He reported that some of the evangelical clergy had started to "say mass" and had been immensely moved by his no doubt utterly sound descriptions.  It reminded me of the diametrically opposed and mutually incompatible views that can be held in the Church of England, and I'm afraid it rather brought to mind the Nineham phenomenon to which Dr Kirk refers above.

I thought further on this on Sunday, during an excellent homily on the Real Presence, the Bread of Life, from Fr Colven at Mass in St James's.  During the homily, he recounted an anecdote he feared he might have told before (I don't recall it) about an elderly nun that he visits once a month. 

This nun was raised in the West Country, with no religious upbringing whatsoever.  At the age of 16, she and a friend decided that it would be the right thing to seek confirmation, so off they went to the Anglican Vicar.  This holy, kindly and erudite man taught them much.  Before one confirmation class, the future nun's friend urged her companion to ask if they would be required to believe in transubstantiation.  The nun-to-be, having no idea what this was, willingly asked the Vicar. 

This learned cleric proceeded to give her a clear and indeed utterly sound explanation of transubstantiation, of the Real Presence, of what happens during the Mass.  It was impressive and affecting.

He then said that as Anglicans they were entirely free to believe that or not.

His explanation had been so lucid and so powerful that the young woman was very moved by what she had learned.  However, it struck her that, quite simply, what she had been told was either true or it was not, and if it was true, it was a most tremendous truth and of the utmost importance.  She became a Catholic.

Some would perhaps argue that those discussions with the Evangelicals were about catholicising the Church of England, carrying on the work of the Oxford Movement.  If anyone were to argue that, then it would seem, to me at least, to display a rather extraordinary degree of optimism on their part.

Among the musical offerings at St James's on Sunday, we had Esquivel's beautiful Ego Sum Panis Vivus, which was often heard at Bourne St, as well as Tallis O Nata Lux, a fine piece of English Catholic music (we cannot claim it as Anglican patrimony). 



The setting of the ordinary of the Mass was new to me, being the Missa Fac Bonum by the German baroque composer Valentin Rathgeber (the Agnus Dei of which reminded me very much of the theme music from the television series of Brideshead Revisited).  The Gloria of the mass setting is shown below, accompanied by some very improving images. 



As the post-Mass hymn we had a true favourite of the Marylebone Ordinariate Group, O Bread of Heaven, eminently suitable to accompany the readings at Mass and Fr Colven's homily.  Although this hymn has featured many times on this blog before, including in our article Catholic Treasure, Anglican Patrimony, we make no apology for its reappearance, because we share the view of that elderly nun that what St Alphonsus Liguori's hymn speaks of is indeed a most tremendous truth. 

The Sacrament of Unity indeed.  O may we all one bread, one body be.  Let us hope, as Dr Ward dared to do, for a better future for the vision of Dr Pusey and of the Oxford Movement than one limited by a test of whether its inheritors can hold fast to the Church of England, come what may. 

Even Wilfred Knox, a prominent Anglo-Catholic in the early twentieth century, and who unlike his more famous brother Monsignor Ronald Knox did not become a Catholic, included a sentence in the preface to his book The Catholic Movement in the Church of England that seems far from a goal of holding fast, come what may :

It is possible that I shall be accused of a lack of loyalty to the distinctive position of the Church of England. But if in being loyal to the teaching of the Church Catholic I am disloyal to the Church of England, I fear that I shall bear the reproach with equanimity.

We leave the final word to the famous Fr Davage, whom we mentioned at the beginning of this post.  Here is his conclusion from a lecture he gave in Bristol in 2009, entitled "Edward Bouverie Pusey : Post Reformation Saint?" :

........we are invited in this series to consider Dr Pusey as a Post-Reformation Saint. John Henry Newman is poised for beatification and possibly canonisation. Even if we forget about the process and the miracles for a moment, there is something right about that because Newman spent half his life as an Anglican and half as a Roman Catholic. He represents one vital strain of Anglo-Catholicism. Keble and Pusey represent another strain, and [in] the recent papal offer of an Ordinariate that respects and values an Anglican, and more specifically, an Anglo-Catholic patrimony, they would be candidates for admission to the saintly band and could share with Newman a patronage and saintly oversight, joined in heaven as they were in the life of the Oxford Movement. Until that day dawns, perhaps our last image should be of those three profoundly great and holy men dining alone in Hursley Vicarage on the one occasion that they met after Newman’s conversion: Keble at seventy-three, Pusey at sixty-five, Newman at sixty-four, not quite all passion spent. Three elderly clerical gentlemen who had met at Oxford, "the fulcrum from which [they] … hoped to move the Church," together after twenty years. Keble had only one more year to live, Pusey seventeen, Newman twenty-five. The shadows are lengthening, the candles are guttering, the tempest and turmoil of the battle has stilled for a moment as they talk and reminisce quietly and easily. We can only hear the murmuring of voices as we back silently out of the room and quietly close the door: ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (out of the shadows and images into truth).

O Bread of Heaven, beneath this veil
Thou dost my very God conceal:
My Jesus, dearest treasure, hail!
I love Thee and, adoring, kneel;
Each loving soul by Thee is fed
With Thine own Self in form of Bread.

O food of life, Thou Who dost give
The pledge of immortality;
I live, no 'tis not I that live;
God gives me life, God lives in me:
He feeds my soul, He guides my ways,
And every grief with joy repays.

O Bond of love that dost unite
The servant to his living Lord;
Could I dare live and not requite
Such love - then death were meet reward:
I cannot live unless to prove
Some love for such unmeasured love.

Beloved Lord, in Heaven above
There, Jesus, Thou awaitest me,
To gaze on Thee with endless love;
Yes, thus I hope, thus shall it be:
For how can He deny me Heaven,
Who here on earth Himself hath given?

A Wider Fellowship and Communion

The weekend before last, some of our Ordinariate group had the great pleasure to attend a wedding at St Mary's, Bourne St, the Anglican parish that for so long had been our home.  Here is a picture of two of our group waiting in that familiar place.

It was a joy to see so many old friends again, and to be surrounded by faces previously seen frequently but now only rarely.  Most of all, it was a delight and a privilege to share in the happy couple's big day, and we take this opportunity to assure them of our prayers for a long and happy life together.

It would not be appropriate to include any photos giving away too much of what was not our event, but we think we can just about get away with the picture above, which is of Marylebone Ordinariate Group members, and also this rather striking picture below, surely worthy of a caption competition.  In it, you see a former Head Server of St Mary's, now an Orthodox religious; key members of the current St Mary's serving team (the Vicar acted as the only server at this BCP Solemnization of Holy Matrimony), and a member of the regular St Mary's congregation, dressed in a very stylish morning coat.  Pictures do indeed speak a thousand words.

Most of us had been back to St Mary's at least once for one function or another since our departure, but this particular return took place almost exactly a year to the day since the weekend when we attended our final services as Anglicans.  As we explained in this earlier post, the anniversary of the dedication of St Mary's is held on the first Sunday of July, commemorating the day in 1874 when this small brick mission chapel behind Sloane Square was formally opened.  Forgive the digression, but I have long loved this extract from the Church Times reporting that on 2 July 1874 :

...being the festival of the Visitation of the BVM, a mission chapel in Graham Street, Pimlico, a portion of the parish of St Paul's Knightsbridge, far distant from the church in Wilton Place, was opened for service under the licence of the Bishop of London. The service at eleven o'clock was well attended by people from the neighbourhood, and we were glad to notice a good sprinkling of poor women. Mr Eyton, the Curate-in-Charge, was the celebrant, and an unconscionably long sermon was preached by Mr Knox-Little [curate of St Thomas, Regent Street], which, considering the broiling weather, was little better than cruelty.

Still today, that weekend built around the first Sunday of July involves a series of events at Bourne St.  Saturday's worship takes the shape of a Requiem Mass, and the set piece Sunday service includes not only the usual spectacular fare but also a Marian procession around the parish and a rite of Benediction.

The Saturday event was originally to have been our last service, it being agreed that a Founders' and Benefactors' Requiem was the perfect opportunity to give thanks for and to pray for the souls of those who played their part in creating the St Mary's that had been an important part of lives.  The ashes of a previous Vicar, the much loved John Gilling, who directly and indirectly had been the cause of the arrival of two of our group at Bourne St in the first place, were to be placed in the church's Colombarium at the end of proceedings, and so it really did seem the right day to say our goodbyes.

The Vicar had very kindly asked if we would like a visiting preacher on the Saturday, perhaps someone well known to us who had been important in our lives as Anglo-Catholics.  Our instinctive response was to ask for Fr William Davage, then Custodian of the Library at Pusey House.  The invitation was issued and accepted, and how right we were to have asked for him.  He preached an excellent sermon on how protestantism had played a very large role in making death something awkward and not talked about, turning it into the ultimate English social faux pas.  However, towards the end, he included an extra paragraph, which while it did not deviate from his theme, worked into the discourse some references to our imminent departure.

All Masses of Requiem, all masses, said or sung, offered pro defunctis, are bittersweet occasions. Because we are human, they taste of the bitter herbs of loss, they speak of longing and yearning, of tears and sorrow at the parting of friends, the loss of their regular society, the dislocation of familiar ties of friendship, the inevitable rupture of relationships. Yet in the Requiem Mass is the sweet savour and consolation of Our Lord’s Resurrection from the dead that promises us gain not loss, consummation and fulfillment, joy and eternal felicity, the reunion and reconciliation of friends in a new and greater social harmony, in a wider fellowship and communion, the restoration of relationships. It is the new Jerusalem to which this church is only a gateway: and if this is but a gateway, think how wonderful must be the House of God, the new Jerusalem to which we are bound: "Jerusalem the golden … What social joys are there, what radiancy of glory, what light beyond compare."

We have now been through that parting of friends, and yet although we miss the loss of the regular society of so many friends, it is indeed Loss but also Gain, for now we most certainly do find ourselves in a wider fellowship and communion.  We must always give thanks for what St Mary's was to us, for it was indeed a gateway into a wider communion, and for us most definitely fulfilled the promise of the reputation in which it had so long rejoiced, of being a "bridge between Canterbury and Rome".

After the Saturday service, the PCC very kindly threw us a party, short but friendly speeches were given, fond words of farewell spoken, and then we all moved on.  We returned the next day, as there had been some talk of a formal farewell during the service, but to everyone's relief, this plan was abandoned.  As the congregation left to process around the parish, we donned our serving cassocks one last time, cleared the altar, set it up for Benediction, and slipped out quietly and unobtrusively into our new lives.  You can see below the results of our final setting up of the Martin Travers baroque masterpiece.

This blog contains frequent fond references to our past at St Mary's and to our friends there.  This is only right, it is precisely the history and tradition of that church that brought us to where we are now.  We most certainly neither regret nor deny our past, quite the opposite, and no-one has ever asked us to do so.  Yet the references carry a small risk of misinterpretation, one that cropped up recently.

I know that the person who asked this question will not mind if I report it (on a no-names basis, of course: discretion is my middle name).  Amid the joys of that happy wedding day, we were asked if we did not miss St Mary's, if we did not regret our decision.  The answer is that although we miss our old friends, we do not regret our decision : we are sure that, given our understanding of what Anglo-Catholicism was and is, we have done the right thing.

In his sermon at the Ordinariate Anniversary Evensong and Benediction in January, Monsignor Newton cited Blessed John Henry Newman's response to Cardinal Bourne's father, who had written to him following rumours that Newman was unhappy with having becoming a Catholic.

I can only say, if it is necessary to say it, that from the moment I became a Catholic, I have never had, through God’s grace, a single doubt or misgiving on my mind that I did wrong in becoming one. I have not had any feeling whatever but one of joy and gratitude that God called me out of an insecure state into one which is sure and safe, out of the war of tongues and into the realm of peace and assurance. This is my state of mind, and I would it could be brought home to all and every one, who, in default of real arguments for remaining Anglicans, amuse themselves with dreams and fancies.

There is a lot more that Newman had to say on precisely this, some of which you will find below.  One could spin this negatively and say that he had to say so much because Anglican detractors were keen to sow seeds of doubt amongst those who might have followed Newman (I leave aside the rather ludicrous argument that he said so much about being happy as a Catholic in order to hide some deep regret at leaving Anglicanism).  Being more constructive, and I would argue being far more of relevance to the situation in which some find themselves today, one can say that he had to express his happiness so often because those who have not yet made the move fear,  mistakenly if understandably, that it is a huge and difficult step.  In this approach, we take heart from Monsignor Jamieson's encouragement that Catholics define themselves as a positive people, being "for" things, whereas antitheists (defining themselves as being against God, or the idea of God) and protestants (defining themselves as being against Catholicism and/or Catholic teaching) do not share that joy of hope and optimism.

Of course, seen from this side of the Tiber, all we can say is that looking back, the step seems miniscule.  It seems utterly logical, totally inevitable, unquestionably right.  The things we thought we might find difficult quite simply have not been.   If this blog ever gives the impression of regret, then it is of regret at not seeing so many friends as often as we used to, but not in any way the slightest of regrets at our decision to become Catholics.

In the Church Times extract above, a certain Mr Knox-Little is mentioned.  Shortly after Newman's death in 1890, the Tablet carried an article called "The Outline" by Dr W Barry, which also mentions this rather distinctive name.  Dr Barry made a rather important point rather well, correcting a misunderstanding that continues from Mr Knox-Little's time to the present.

Beautiful were the tributes which Newman's death elicited from the conspicuous pulpits of Anglicanism, and most affecting to Catholics; but some of the preachers strangely misunderstood their man when they hinted, as Canon Knox-Little did, that Newman would never have left Anglicanism in 1845, had he foreseen how many Roman collars would be worn, how many beards be shaved off, how many "celebrations" be talked about, and confessions heard in the Establishment in 1890. Why, the Arians in their day had Bishops, and Masses, and organisation as perfect us that of the orthodox; but it was with Athanasius, that Newman ranged himself while still an Anglican, and it was precisely the parallel he found between Anglicans and Arians, or Donatists, that brought him at last from Oxford to Birmingham.

It was, in truth, to the Canon Knox-Littles that he addressed himself when he said: "Look into the matter more steadily; it is very pleasant to decorate your chapels, oratories, and studies now, but you cannot be doing this for ever. It is pleasant to adopt a habit or a vestment; to use your office-book or your beads; but it is like feeding on flowers, unless you have that objective vision in your faith, and that satisfaction in your reason, of which devotional exercises and ecclesiastical appointment are the suitable expression. They will not last in the long run, unless commanded and rewarded on Divine authority; they cannot be made to rest on the influence of individuals. It is well to have rich architecture, curious works of art, and splendid vestments, when you have a present God; but, oh! what a mockery if you have not. If your externals surpass what is within, you are so far as hollow as your Evangelical opponents, who baptise, yet expect no grace. Thus your Church becomes not a home, but a sepulchre; like those high cathedrals once Catholic, which you not know what to do with, which you shut up, and make monuments of, sacred to the memory of what has passed away."

Just as today, many did not see the need for Newman to have done what he did.  At the risk of being ever so slightly flippant, the Knox-Little line was that if only Newman had known that he could have decorated his church in a more attractive manner, he might not have gone to Rome, and must surely regret that he did.  Turning that argument around on itself demonstrates that its basis is insulting even to the highest of high anglo-catholicism, suggesting that if the Church of England deprived the modern day Knox-Littles of their lace, they might then have to become Catholics.  Insulting as it is, as illogical as it is, it has a certain endurance in the complaints of some even now : "Why did you need to do that?  It's awfully nice here."

Newman went further, and stated clearly in the Apologia what was so evidently true (and doesn't the last sentence just ring a few bells even today?):

I have not had one moment's wavering of trust in the Catholic Church ever since I was received into her fold. I hold, and ever have held, a supreme satisfaction in her worship, discipline, and teaching; and an eager longing, and a hope against hope, that the many dear friends whom I have left in Protestantism may be partakers in my happiness. And I do hereby profess that Protestantism is the dreariest of possible religions; that the thought of the Anglican service makes me shiver, and the thought of the Thirty-nine Articles makes me shudder. Return to the Church of England! No! "The net is broken, and we are delivered." I should be a consummate fool (to use a mild term) if, in my old age I left "the land flowing with milk and honey" for the city of confusion and the house of bondage.

A process that Newman began, and which with each twist and turn of synodical voting comes to our minds again, is the reminding the people of these islands that the claim of Rome is that it brings the teachings of Christianity with it, that it is the Church that safeguards and presents the Truth.  Dr Barry's Outlook again :

One thing he did, with such triumphant success that it need not be done again. He showed that the question of Rome is the question of Christianity. Taking Bishop Butler's great work for his foundation, he applied to the Catholic Church that "Analogy" which had proved in the Bishop's hands an irrefragable argument. As, if we hold the course of Nature to be in accordance with reason, we cannot but allow that natural and revealed religion, proceeding as they do on similar laws and by like methods, are founded on reasons too—so, if once we admit that in the Bible there is a revelation from on high, we must come down by sure steps to Rome and the Papacy as inheriting what the Bible contains. To demonstrate this was to make an end of the Reformation, so far as it claimed authority from Scripture or kindred with Christ and His Apostles. When John Henry Newman arrived at that conclusion and followed it up by submitting to Rome, he undid, intellectually speaking, the mischief of the last three centuries. And he planted in the mind of his countrymen a suspicion which every day seems ripening towards certitude, that if they wish to remain Christians they must go back to the rock from which they were hewn, and become once again the sheep of the Apostolic Shepherd. Cardinal Newman has done this great thing; and its achievement will be his lasting memorial.

If today's lengthy blogpost has included rather starker words than usual (hardly: look at here, here and here, but let us account for all readers), we would not want to leave anyone with the impression that we have no fondness or love for the Church of England, and for the part it played in our lives.  This sentiment is not to be confused with any kind of regret, but in no way do we look back in anger or bitterness.  Newman felt the same way, notwithstanding all that is in the quotations above.  His friend and fellow convert Fr William Lockhart, who left Newman's Littlemore community to join the Catholic Church before Newman did, after having perceived that Newman himself had doubts about his membership of the Church of England (even his ability to absolve after confession), said this :

We left the Church of England with grief. All the good we knew, we had learned there; we had been led step by step by God's grace, but we left, because we could not close our eyes to the fact that the Church of England was no part of a Visible Church; rather than separate from which Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, and hundreds of others have laid down their lives in martyrdom.

A word of warning in conclusion.  One of our most read posts is This is the Appropriate Moment, in which those thinking of entering the Catholic Church are encouraged to do so without delay.  The Dublin Review of October 1890 includes the following text, referring to an 1871 correspondence in which Newman made perfectly clear his acceptance of what he believed to be his vocation to become a Catholic, and of the importance he attached to having done so promptly.

"As to your question," he wrote to a lady correspondent, "whether if I had stayed in the Anglican Church till now, I should have joined the Catholic Church at all, at any time now or hereafter, I think that most probably I should not; but observe, for this reason, because God gives grace, and if it is not accepted He withdraws His grace; and since of His free mercy, and from no merits of mine, He then offered me the grace of conversion, if I had not acted upon it, it was to be expected that I should be left, a worthless stump, to cumber the ground, and to remain where I was till I died."

The appropriate moment is indeed now.  Let the act of Blessed John Henry Newman, in following the Divine Will and coming into the full communion of the Catholic Church, inspire others to do so in his footsteps, and may he intercede for all those currently contemplating the same.