An Open Letter to An Anglo-Catholic

Extract

The long, almost life-long, friendship between us will dear this letter from the charge of impertinence. At the outset of our friendship we recognised that though we did not see eye to eye in matters of revealed truth, yet no statement of what either of us regarded as true could endanger our friendship.

It was a very friendly gesture of yours to send me the manifesto which your wing of the Anglo-Catholic Movement has drawn up. Your name does not appear amongst those that have officially given the manifesto their signature. But I know that among the many who will champion the manifesto none will outrun your whole-heartedness.

The Centenary of the Anglo-Catholic, or Tractarian, Movement begets almost a whirlwind of thought. Were it kept, as it will not be kept, by an absolutely united body of believers it would make an old Catholic like myself recall the dramatic story of a movement which, after an almost contemptible beginning in an Oxford common-room (like so many other lost and forgotten causes), went on to give the Catholic Church two cardinals, many bishops and priests, and a flock of lay converts perhaps unparalleled in the history of West or East. Amidst the regrets we still feel that Froude, Keble, Pusey were not given to us, yet we thank God for Newman, Manning, Ward, Wilberforce and a host of others. But our mingled thoughts of thanksgiving and'regret are not as simple as a unanimous Centenary might arouse. Your manifesto has further complicated our emotions. Let me approach this complication by an authentic incident. Some years ago a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, a devoted Anglo-Catholic, consulted me about his duty to his conscience.