The term was coined in the early 19th century,[3] although movements emphasising the Catholic nature of Anglicanism already existed.[4][5] Particularly influential in the history of Anglo-Catholicism were the Caroline Divines of the 17th century, the JacobiteNonjuring schism of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the Oxford Movement, which began at the University of Oxford in 1833 and ushered in a period of Anglican history known as the "Catholic Revival".[6]
History
Following the passing of the
Mass for the dead.[11][12] The King's Book, the official article of religion written by Henry in 1543, likewise expressed Catholic sacramental theology and encouraged prayer for the dead.[13]
A major shift in Anglican doctrine came in the reign of Henry's son, Edward VI, who repealed the Six Articles[14] and under whose rule the Church of England became more identifiably Protestant. Though the Church's practices and approach to the sacraments became strongly influenced by those of continental reformers,[15] it nevertheless retained episcopal church structure.[16] The Church of England was then briefly reunited with the Roman Catholic Church under Mary, before separating again under Elizabeth I. The Elizabethan Religious Settlement was an attempt to end the religious divisions among Christians in England, and is often seen as an important event in Anglican history, ultimately laying the foundations for the "via media" concept of Anglicanism.[17]
The nature of early Anglicanism was to be of great importance to the Anglo-Catholics of the 19th century, who would argue that their beliefs and practices were common during this period and were inoffensive to the earliest members of the Church of England.[18]
sacraments.[20][21] The Caroline Divines also favoured elaborate liturgy (in some cases favouring the liturgy of the pre-Reformation church[22]) and aesthetics. Their influence saw a revival in the use of images and statues in churches.[23]
The leaders of the Anglo-Catholic revival in the 19th century would draw heavily from the works of the Caroline Divines.[24]
The modern Anglo-Catholic movement began with the Oxford Movement in the Victorian era, sometimes termed "Tractarianism".
In the early 19th century, various factors caused misgivings among English church people, including the decline of church life and the spread of unconventional practices in the Church of England. The British government's action in 1833 of beginning a reduction in the number of Church of Ireland bishoprics and archbishoprics inspired a sermon from John Keble in the University Church in Oxford on the subject of "National Apostasy". This sermon marked the inception of what became known as the Oxford Movement.
The principal objective of the Oxford Movement was the defence of the Church of England as a divinely founded institution, of the doctrine of
Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches.[25] It was argued that Anglicanism had preserved the historical apostolic succession of priests and bishops and thus the Catholic sacraments. These ideas were promoted in a series of ninety "Tracts for the Times
", but were rejected both by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches.
The principal leaders of the Oxford Movement were
Ideal Ward". The year 1850 saw the victory of the Evangelical cleric George Cornelius Gorham in a celebrated legal action against church authorities. Consequently, some Anglicans of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship were received into the Roman Catholic Church, while others, such as Mark Pattison, embraced Latitudinarian Anglicanism, and yet others, such as James Anthony Froude, became sceptics.[26]
The majority of adherents of the movement, however, remained in the Church of England and, despite hostility in the press and in government, the movement spread. Its liturgical practices were influential, as were its social achievements (including its slum settlements) and its revival of male and female monasticism within Anglicanism.
Recent developments
Since at least the 1970s, Anglo-Catholicism has been dividing into two distinct camps, along a fault line which can perhaps be traced back to Bishop Charles Gore's work in the 19th century.
The Oxford Movement had been inspired in the first place by a rejection of
latitudinarianism in favour of the traditional faith of the "Church Catholic", defined by the teachings of the Church Fathers and the common doctrines of the historical eastern and western Christian churches
.
Because of the emphasis on upholding traditions, until the 1970s most Anglo-Catholics rejected liberalising development such as the conferral of
evangelical Anglicans to defend traditional teachings on sexual morality and women's roles in the Church. The main organisation in the Church of England that opposes the ordination of women, Forward in Faith
, is largely composed of Anglo-Catholics.
higher criticism, paved the way for an alternative form of Anglo-Catholicism influenced by liberal theology. Thus in recent years, many Anglo-Catholics have accepted the ordination of women, the use of inclusive language in Bible translations and the liturgy, and progressive attitudes towards homosexuality and the blessing of same sex unions. Such Anglicans often refer to themselves as "Liberal Catholics". This more "progressive" style of Anglo-Catholicism is represented by Affirming Catholicism and the Society of Catholic Priests
, although, unlike Forward in Faith, this organisation is not as visible with the laity.
A third strand of Anglican Catholicism criticises elements of both liberalism and conservatism, drawing instead on the 20th-century Catholic
Neo-Scholasticism in Catholic theology, and advocated instead for a "return to the sources" of the Christian faith – scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers –, while remaining open to dialogue with the contemporary world on issues of theology. John Milbank and others within this strand have been instrumental in the creation of the ecumenical (though predominantly Anglican and Roman Catholic) movement known as radical orthodoxy
.
Since the 1970s, some traditionalist Anglo-Catholics have left official Anglicanism to form "
continuing Anglican churches
" whereas others have left Anglicanism altogether for the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches, in the belief that liberal doctrinal changes in the Anglican churches have gone too far.
In late 2009, in response to requests from various groups of Anglicans around the world who were dissatisfied with liberalizing movements within the Anglican Communion,
ordinary" (i.e. a bishop or priest[note 2]) appointed by Rome to oversee the community. While being in a country or region which is part of the Latin Church
of the Roman Catholic Church, these ordinaries will nonetheless retain aspects of the Anglican patrimony, such as married priests and traditional English choral music and liturgy. Because apostolic constitutions are the highest level of papal legislation and are not time-limited, the invitation is open into the indefinite future.
The first personal ordinariate, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, was established on 15 January 2011 in the United Kingdom.[27] The second Anglican ordinariate, known as the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter, was established on 1 January 2012 in the United States.[28] The already existing Anglican Use parishes in the United States, which have existed since the 1980s, formed a portion of the first American personal ordinariate.[29] These parishes were already in communion with Rome and use modified Anglican liturgies approved by the Holy See. They were joined by other groups and parishes of Episcopalians and some other Anglicans. A third Anglican ordinariate, known as the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross, was established on 15 June 2012 in Australia.[30] The "Catechism of the Catholic Church is the authoritative expression of the Catholic faith professed by members" of the personal ordinariates.[31]
Practices and beliefs
Theology
Historically, Anglo-Catholics have valued "highly the tradition of the early, undivided Church, they saw its authority as co-extensive with Scripture. They re-emphasized the Church's institutional history and form. Anglo-Catholicism was emotionally intense, and yet drawn to aspects of the pre-Reformation Church, including the revival of religious orders, the reintroduction of the language and symbolism of the eucharistic sacrifice," and "the revival of private confession. Its spirituality was Evangelical, but
: "What everywhere, what always, and what by all has been believed, that is truly and properly Catholic."
The Anglican Thirty-nine Articles make distinctions between Anglican and Catholic understandings of doctrine; in the eyes of Anglo-Catholics, the Thirty-Nine Articles are catholic, containing statements that profess the universal faith of the early church.[40] As the Articles were intentionally written in such a way as to be open to a range of interpretations,[41] Anglo-Catholics have defended their practices and beliefs as being consistent with the Thirty-nine Articles, for example in Newman's Tract 90 of 1841.[2] Since the late 20th century, Anglo-Catholic thought related to the Thirty-nine Articles has included the New Perspective on Paul.
Anglo-Catholic priests often hear private
anoint the sick, regarding these practices as sacraments. Anglo-Catholics also offer prayers for the departed and the intercession of the saints; C. S. Lewis
, often considered an Anglo-Catholic in his theological sensibilities, writes:
Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter me. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age, the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?
— Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, pp. 107–109
Anglo-Catholics reject all these claims except that of Primacy on the following grounds: (i) There is no evidence in Scripture or anywhere else that Christ conferred these powers upon St. Peter; (2) there is no evidence that St. Peter claimed them for himself or his successors; (3) there is strong contrary evidence that St. Peter erred in
Blessed Virgin Mary, but not all Anglo-Catholics adhere to a high doctrine of Mariology; in England, her title of Our Lady of Walsingham is popular.[46]
Liturgical practices
Anglo-Catholics are often identified by their liturgical practices and ornaments. These have traditionally been characterised by the "six points" of the later Catholic Revival's eucharistic practice:
, which is broadly similar to the Tridentine Mass, in English or Latin.
Preferences for
Elizabethan English
and modern English texts vary within the movement.
In the United States, a group of Anglo-Catholics at the Episcopal
Anglican Service Book as "a traditional-language adaptation of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer together with the Psalter or Psalms of David and additional devotions." This book is based on the 1979 Book of Common Prayer but includes offices and devotions in the traditional language of the 1928 Prayer Book that are not in the 1979 edition. The book also draws from sources such as the Anglican Missal
.
In many Anglo-Catholic churches, clergy are referred to as Father, and in places where the priestly ministry of women is accepted, Mother.
^Article 10 states: "but forasmuch as the place where they be, the name thereof, and kind of pains there, also be to us uncertain by Scripture; therefore this with all other things we remit to Almighty God, unto whose mercy it is meet and convenient for us to commend them, trusting that God accepteth our prayers for them"
^In the Roman Catholic Church in general, ordinaries are supposed to be bishops, or at least episcopal vicars, but this condition was relaxed for personal ordinariates so as to allow married former Anglican bishops to become ordinaries: while priests in personal ordinariates may be married, bishops may not, as this is the general rule in both Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Therefore, married Anglican bishops or priests converting to Roman Catholicism receive the priestly ordination, and may not become Roman Catholic bishops afterwards.
. In the 20th century, useful and scholarly books on the Articles have included E.J. Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles (1925), and W.H. Griffith Thomas, The Principles of Theology: An Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles (1930)--Bicknell from an Anglo-Catholic standpoint, Thomas from an evangelical one.
^"Anglo-Catholic, adj. and n.", OED (online ed.), Oxford University Press, December 2011, retrieved 11 February 2012.
^Kinsman, Frederick Joseph (1924). Americanism and Catholicism. Longman. p. 203. The one most talked about is the "Branch Theory," which assumes that the basis of unity is a valid priesthood. Given the priesthood, it is held that valid Sacraments unite in spite of schisms. Those who hold it assume that the Church is composed of Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, eastern heretics possessing undisputed Orders, and Old Catholics, Anglicans, Swedish Lutherans, Moravians, and any others who might be able to demonstrate that they had perpetuated a valid hierarchy. This is chiefly identified with High Church Anglicans and represents the survival of a seventeenth-century contention against Puritans, that Anglicans were not to be classed with Continental Protestants.
^Stowe, Walter Herbert (1932). "Anglo-Catholicism: What It Is Not and What It Is". London: Church Literature Association. Retrieved 12 June 2015. Newman and several of his inner circle went to Rome, but the vast majority of the Tractarians, including Keble and Pusey, never did. Another group of Tractarians, such as Mark Pattison and James Anthony Froude, lapsed into latitudinarianism or scepticism.
^Bassett, Allen Lee (1863). The Northern Monthly Magazine, Volume 2. The Anglo-Catholic asserts that the Roman Catholic has corrupted the original ritualism; and she claims that the ritualism which she presents in a revival in purity of the original ritualism of the Church.
. Retrieved 28 March 2014. In 1572 Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, published his important work De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae, in which he argued that the early British Church differed from Catholicism in key points and thus provided an alternative model for patristic Christianity, in which the newly established Anglican tradition could see its own ancient roots. James Ussher, the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, was promoted by a similar motivation in his A Discourse of the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish and the British of 1631.
^Charles Chapman Grafton (1911). The Lineage from Apostolic Times of the American Catholic Church: Commonly Called the Episcopal Church. Young Churchman. p. 69. Thus in doctrine and worship, we see that the Celtic Church in Britain conformed in all essentials to Holy Scripture and the teaching of Apostolic times, which in several respects it varied from Roman practice. The Celtic Church was poor and not aggressive. It had been drive into a state of isolation. It had suffered from cruel wars. it had, however, kept the Faith, the Apostolic government, the Priesthood, and it offered a true worship and was kept alive in God's great Providence. We may well look to her as our spiritual Mother, with a grateful heart, and be thankful that we have inherited so much from her whose daughters we are.
. Anglo-Catholics' concern to defend the catholicity and apostolicity of the Anglican churches has led them to emphasize the conviction that priority in the formation and shaping of Christian discipleship is to be given to disciplined membership of the Christian community.
. It has placed considerable emphasis upon the Holy Eucharist, and the apostolic succession of the episcopate. Anglo-catholics were concerned not with doctrine but with restoring the liturgical and devotional expression of doctrine in the life of the Anglican Church.
. The central theme was "apostolic succession" and the authority and divine commission of the threefold orders retained by the Church of England at the Reformation, thus providing for a secure pattern of the sacraments.
^Albion, Gordon (1935). Charles I and the Court of Rome: A Study in 17th Century Diplomacy. Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Limited. p. 169. The " Catholic" articles are N°" 1–5, 7–8, 9 (first half), 10, 12, 15 (first half), 16–18, 19 (first half), 20 (first half), 23, 25 (half), 26, 27, 33, 34, 38, 39.
^Herbert Stowe, Walter (1932). "Anglo-Catholicism: What It Is Not and What It Is". Church Literature Association. How the bread and wine of the Eucharist become the Body and Blood of Christ after a special, sacramental and heavenly manner and still remain bread and wine, and how our Lord is really present (real as being the presence of a reality), is a mystery which no human mind can satisfactorily explain. It is a mystery of the same order as how the divine Logos could take upon himself human nature and become man without ceasing to be divine. It is a mystery of the Faith, and we were never promised that all the mysteries would be solved in this life. The plain man (and some not so plain) is wisest in sticking to the oft-quoted lines ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, but probably written by John Donne: "Christ was the Word that spake it; He took the bread and brake it; And what the Word did make it, That I believe and take it." The mysteries of the Eucharist are three: The mystery of identification, the mystery of conversion, the mystery of presence. The first and primary mystery is that of identification; the other two are inferences from it. The ancient Fathers were free from Eucharistic controversy because they took their stand on the first and primary mystery—that of identification—and accepted our Lord's words, " This is my Body," " This is my Blood," as the pledge of the blessings which this Sacrament conveys. We have since the early Middle Ages lost their peace because we have insisted on trying to explain unexplainable mysteries. But let it be repeated, Anglo-Catholics are not committed to the doctrine of Transubstantiation; they are committed to the doctrine of the Real Presence.
. Many folk tale enthusiasts remained vicarious participants in a vague supernaturalism; Anglo-Catholics wanted not Wonderland but heaven, and they sought it through their sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Though they stopped short of transubstantiation, Anglo-Catholics insisted that the consecrated bread and wine contained the "Real Objective Presence" of God.
^Stowe, Walter Herbert (1932). "Anglo-Catholicism: What It Is Not and What It Is". London: Church Literature Association. Retrieved 12 June 2015. The primary issue between Anglo- and Roman Catholicism is authority and the basis thereof. This fundamental issue centres in the Papacy and its authority, land from this conflict flow all other differences of faith, worship, discipline and atmosphere. The four key phrases which make up the Papal claims are primacy, spiritual supremacy, temporal supremacy, and infallibility in faith and morals.
. Anglo-Catholics interpret the silence of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion to allow for belief in some or all of the Mariological doctrines affirmed by Catholics.
Pavlac, Brian Alexander (2011). A Concise Survey of Western Civilization: Supremacies and Diversities Throughout History. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
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