What Have 'ex-Anglicans' Done for us?

Just as the Church of England's identity has been shaped by its Roman roots, so the English Catholic Church has drawn some of its lifeblood from Anglican converts. Indeed, at times they have come close to providing its life-support system.

LONDON (The Catholic Herald) - Last week, The Catholic Herald revealed that the Anglican Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, wants to lead his traditionalist flock into full communion with Rome. The reaction of some Catholics was indignant. "The last thing we need is more ex-Anglicans," they groaned.

Such a response is not only un-Catholic; it also betrays depressing ignorance about the history of the post-Reformation Catholic Church in England.

Just as the Church of England's identity has been shaped by its Roman roots, so the English Catholic Church has drawn some of its lifeblood from Anglican converts. Indeed, at times they have come close to providing its life-support system.

Just think how impoverished the whole Church would be if the Rev J H Newman of St Mary's, Oxford, had not converted. And do not forget the widowed Archdeacon of Chichester, Dr H E Manning, without whom Catholicism would never have become such a formidable presence in the late Victorian era.

In the 20th century, Knox, Chesterton and Waugh contributed more than any cradle Catholic to the cultural self-confidence of the English Church. And, from the 1970s onwards, the growing crisis of authority in Anglicanism led some of the brightest and holiest clergy of the established Church to seek union with Rome.

At the time, just as now, some Catholics were suspicious. Yet those suspicions quickly disappeared as our new friends - many, but not all, of whom were re-ordained - found indispensable roles for themselves.

In most cases, ex-Anglican clergy have adapted to the pastoral demands of the Catholic priesthood so successfully that, unless they are married, it can be difficult to tell whether they are converts at all.

For example, I first encountered Canon Stuart Wilson, Rector of St Mary's, Cadogan Street, Chelsea, when he was a leading politician in the General Synod. Yet these days he is so quintessentially Catholic that even I forget that he had a previous incarnation.

Westminster diocese would be lost without ex-Anglicans, one of whom, the former Rev Alan Hopes, is now a bishop. The splendid new administrator of the Cathedral, Canon Christopher Tuckwell, was received into the Church in 1994; the diocesan director of vocations, Fr Chris Vipers, is also an ex-Anglican. Meanwhile, one of Britain's most distinguished architectural historians, Anthony Symondson, is now a Jesuit priest, having left his Anglican ministry in the mid-1980s.

As for the London Oratory - the centre of an exciting traditionalist revival among young Catholics - it is hard to imagine how it could survive without its ex-Anglican priests. Fr Ignatius Harrison, the Provost, is a convert; so is the charismatic figure of Fr Julian Large, whose knowledge of classical rubric and vestments is second only to that of Mgr Guido Marini, the papal Master of Ceremonies (a job he may one day hold).

Some former Anglican priests are now married Catholic priests. Some are parish priests in all but name; others have made first-rate university and school chaplains. Fr Peter Geldard, chaplain to the University of Kent at Canterbury, has evangelised a whole generation of students; he truly is a phenomenon.

It would be silly to pretend that every convert has brought tremendous gifts to the Church; a few priests have, sadly, made their way back to the C of E (and are now, I suspect, wondering where on earth to go next). But, on the whole, the reception of so many clergy, writers, musicians and other devout lay people has reinvigorated the Church at a crucial time.

One of the blessings of the arrival of former Anglo-Catholics is that they bring with them precisely the skills needed to implement Pope Benedict XVI's liturgical reforms. The best Anglo-Catholic liturgies - and by this I do not mean the most ornate - are performed with an attention to detail and a devotional intensity that arises partly out of the movement's need to prove a point - that they are true Catholics. Once received into the Church, the former Anglicans do not need to prove anything; but the intensity remains.

Many Anglo-Catholics "get" Pope Benedict's theology of worship in a way that some cradle Catholics do not. The next wave of Anglican conversions, if it comes, could be the most important of all.