Sit,—Janus asks: "It is convenient ... to have a word
which describes Christians in this country who are not Roman Catholics. What other word is there than Protestant ? "
The answer is that there is no other word, provided that we use it in antithesis to "Roman" and not to "Catholic." The thoughtless use of Protestant in the latter sense gives aid and comfort to Roman Catholics in that (a) we thereby forfeit the claim of the Church of England to be the rightful Catholic Church of this country; and (b) we concede the Roman claim to be the only Catholic and therefore the only true Church of this or of any other country in the world The Bishop of Monmouth has done the Church of England a great service by his clear and uncompromising sermon in the Abbey on this matter.
No doubt someone will have written to you, Sir, that the "other word" is Anglo-Catholic or English Catholic. The former unfortu- nately suggests to most people an extremist party in the Church rather than the nature of the Church itself; the latter is less open to objec- tion, and one wishes that it might be widely used, as a true antithesis to Roman Catholic.
But may I plead that, in face of the atheist hosts of Midian which prowl and prowl around .these days, we should be content to call ourselves quite simply "Christians," the truly operative word; and that, when we need to distinguish between the allegiances of Canter- bury, Constantinople or Rome, we should take care to use words in
their proper meaning.—Yours faithfully, HOWARD DOBSON. Huntingfield Rectory, Halesworth.
Previous page
