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Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
Extract
A recent meeting, at which, with a Cardinal presiding, several Anglicans agreed to talk over with Catholics possibilities of reconciliation between the Church of England and the Church of Rome, brought me the great honour of being asked to examine Bishop Gore’s pamphlet, Catholicism and Roman Catholicism, Three Addresses delivered in Grosvenor Chapel in Advent, 1922 (London, Mowbray, 1923). This pamphlet was chosen because it provides a basis for discussion by reason of its clearly defining the position of Anglicanism with regard both to the Church of Rome and Continental Protestantism, and also because it sets out with clearness and moderation the complaints brought against us.
An Oxford man, and until recently Bishop of Oxford, but now living in London in order to devote himself exclusively to theology, Dr. Gore has a personality which exercises great attraction in England. In Anglicanism we may distinguish a Right, a Left and a Centre Party; Dr. Gore belongs to the Right by the relative completeness of his dogmatic beliefs, by his ‘Catholicism’ (in the sense in which that term has been widely used in the Church of England since the Oxford movement), but he does not belong to the extreme Right whose taste for Roman practices is well known, and he has not failed on many occasions to say perfectly clearly that the path he is following does not lead to Rome. He says so again in the present moment a man becomes a Christian, he is incorporated into a community, and is under the obligations that such an incorporation involves. A new covenant is established, not between God and individuals, but between God and a visible Church.
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- Copyright © 1923 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 See F. J. Kinsman's remembrance of him, Salve Mater (1920), pp. 30–32. It is needless to add that Mr. Kinsman, formerly Episcopalian Bishop of Delaware, United States, now belongs to the Church of Rome; his book, Salve Mater, is the Story of his conversion.
2 Cf. his Roman Catholic Claims, 11th ed. (1920).
4 It is curious to compare this account of Dr. Gore's with F. Kattenbusch's paper, Der Quellort der Kirchenidee, published in the Festgabe (1921) which Harnack's friends dedicated to him for his seventieth birthday. Kattenbusch asks where the idea of the Church arose, and he connects it with the scene at Cæsarea Philippi, when our Lord addresses to Peter the saying referred to. Not only does Kattenbusch defend the authenticity of the saying, against Harnack who would see in it a Roman interpolation of the beginning of the second century, but moreover he finds in it Christ's purpose of securing after His death, which He knows to be near, the cohesion and fidelity of the Apostles through the idea of a Church, and of a Church built on Peter. (Op. cit. p. 166.).
5 On the unique position of Peter among the Twelve, see Kattenbusch, pp. 167–168, an important note.
6 See W. Bousset, The Faith of a Modern Protestant (1909), translated from the German by F. B. Low.
7 A. theme beloved of Harnack—cf. for instance, What is Christianity (Eng. transl. p. 255.).
8 Dr. Gore is of the same opinion (p. 45) when he deplores the fact of the Church of England's having merged its spiritual authority in that of the State and abandoned its liberty of action into the hands of the State, and of now finding itself, when the State has become impartial or indifferent in matters of religion, a scene of undiscipline which would be discreditable to any society. Cf. Harnack, What is Christianity, p. 250: ‘[The Roman Church] upheld the idea of religious and ecclesiastical independence in Western Europe in the face of tendencies towards State omnipotence in the spiritual domain … This we owe in the main to the Roman Church.’.
9 There is here a seeming antagonism which I can find no where well treated. See, however, D'Herbigny, Theologla, de Ecclesia, T. II (1921), p. 296.
10 A. Harnack, Entstehung und Entwickelung der Kirchen-verfassung (1910), p. 6. For the same view cf. C. Weizsäcker, Dos apostolische Zeitalter (1920), pp. 465–467. Kattenbusch, op. cit. p. 168.
11 F. Prat, Théologie de saint Paul, t. II (1912), p. 429.
12 Ibid., p. 432.
13 Weizsäcker, p. 275.
14 Ibid., p. 276.
15 Eng. trans., Vol. II, p. 521.
16 Engl. trans, pp. 103–104.
17 See the whole of Chap. VIII in my book, La paix constantinienne et le catholicisme (1914).
18 Duchesne, Churches separated from Rome, p. 109.
19 Inter S. Leonis Epistul. CXXXII, 4.
20 Inter S. Leonis Epistul. XCVIII.
21 The Christian East, July, 1922, p. 62. It is but just to add that this Declaratio fidei was not well received by the Anglicans. See criticisms by Dr. Headlam, now Bishop of Gloucester, in a letter to the Guardian, July 14, 1922.
22 C. Mirbt, Quellen zur Geschichte des Pupsttums (1901), p. 71.
23 History of Dogma, Vol. II, p. 168 (Engl. trans.).
24 See P. Bernardakis, ‘Les appels au Pape dans l'Eglise grecque jusqu’à Photius. ‘Echos d’ Orient, 1903, pp. 30–42, 118–126, 248–257.
25 L., Bréhier: ‘Normal Relations between Rome and the Churches of the East before the Schism of the Eleventh Century.’Constructive Quarterly, 1916, p. 665.
25 See L. de Grandmaison, ‘Qu'est ce qu'un dogme?’ Bulletin de litt. ecclésiastique, 1905, pp. 187–221.
26 P. Thureau-Dangin, Newman Catholique (1912), pp. 202 and 213.