Free Republic

I have little to add to my colleague Damian Thompson’s analysis of Pope Benedict XVI’s bold initiative to offer Anglo-Catholics a home under Roman Catholic jurisdiction, without losing their Anglican liturgical identity. All I would add is that this is marvellous news for the Church of England’s prospects for making up women priests to bishops, without creating an Anglican schismatic bloodbath. Traditional Anglo-Catholics, many of whom do not want to relinquish their Anglican identity, have had nowhere to go on this issue, other than conversion to Rome with a complete abandonment of Anglicanism. Pope Benedict has thrown them a timely...

Anglo-Catholicism or "High" Church Anglicanism is facing extreme isolation and demonization, as the movement finds itself marginalized by the American Episcopal Church on the one hand and the Roman Catholic Church on the other. The term "High Church" was first applied in the late seventeenth century to those individuals who were opposed to the Puritan wing of the Church of England. It is also called the "Oxford Movement." Later, in the nineteenth century, it was applied to the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian movement in England from 1833 going forward. The best-known members of the High Church/Anglo-Catholic Movement were John Henry Newman,...