No jurisdiction
Sir: Paul Johnson (And another thing, 1 May) fears that the Catholic bishops may miss 'a historical opportunity to end the 450-year schism in English Catholicism'. Whatever does he mean?
Mary Tudor died on 17 November 1558. Elizabeth's first parliament opened on 25 January, and on 8 May she gave the royal assent to a new Act of Supremacy and its companion Act of Uniformity. The former made her 'Supreme Governor of this realm . . . as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal'. The latter re- imposed the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, in which the doctrines of the Real Presence and Transubstantiation were denied and the Mass proscribed. The Church of England, as by law established, had come into existence and it was Protes- tant — not in schism from the Catholic Church but heretical. For Catholics in Eng- land there followed not 450 years of schism but 270 years of persecution and penal laws, until the Irishman Daniel O'Connell won their emancipation in 1829. Through all those years no one in the Church of England claimed to share the name Catholic with them.
According to the Oxford English Dictio- nary, the word Anglo-Catholic first appears in 1841, when the Tractarians began to publish their Library of Anglo-Catholic The- ology, and in 1842 comes Anglo-Catholi- cism, defined as 'Catholicism of the Angli- can type; the doctrine of the Anglican Church as a branch of the Church Catholic'. With these new words and this new theory, devout and scholarly Anglicans convinced themselves that they were Catholics (though not, of course, recusants or papists), deriving valid Orders from the Edwardian Ordinal of 1552. For 150 years since, Anglo-Catholics have sincerely pro- fessed some Catholic doctrines, and strong- ly pursued Catholic spirituality. But they have remained part of an Erastian estab- lished Church, by their own Branch Theory independent from any external control.
'Apparently, vets are going to refuse to treat us. . They have ignored the total rejection of this theory by both the other supposed branch- es, the Greek and the Roman, and have themselves rejected Pope Leo XIII's judg- ment in 1896 against the validity of Angli- can Orders.
Many individuals, from Newman on, see- ing the falsity of this position, have submit- ted to Rome, often at great cost to them- selves. If thousands now want out from the State Church to escape women priests, why should Pope or Catholic bishop make any fuss about it, much less take Johnson's advice to welcome `all Anglicans (sic)' and greet them 'as true Catholics who have a positive right to take their places in our community'? Not in my backyard, they don't — unless they leave behind erroneous ideas of national churches, of Branch Theo- ry, and of valid Orders derived from Protes- tant Reformers. And in that case they need only ring the bell at the nearest Catholic presbytery and ask to be received like any other convert.
K G. D. Cave
4 Arundale Avenue, Whalley Range, Manchester
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