The Henson Journals

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Saturday, May 29th, 1920.

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A tremendous crash of thunder about 5 a.m. inaugurated a deluge which pierced the roof in many places, and poured streams of dirty water through the ceilings. My dressing room, and the drawing room below it were quickly transformed into lagoons in spite of the accumulation of baths, basins, & cans of every kind which are disposed about them.

I read through "Salve Mater" by Frederick Joseph Kinsman. This is another, & an unusually important, account of an Anglican clergyman's secession to Rome. The author had been for 11 years Bishop of Delaware. He had "sat at the feet" of the Anglo–Catholick Gamaliels at Oxford, had accepted their version of Anglicanism, & had found that it could not be justified either by the history of the Reformed Church, or by the experience of the Church today.

"The day of my consecration as Bishop sealed my doom as an Anglican. Eleven years in the episcopate convinced me against my will and in spite of knowledge that other like–minded Bishops did not agree with me, that the work with which I was identified was merely the propagation of a form of Protestantism: that belief in it as Liberal Catholicism was but an amiable delusion. Abandonment of work did not signify in my case repudiation of Protestant principles, for these I had never held: but the loss of belief in the Catholic interpretation of the Anglican position" ……. "I think now that Episcopalians who know themselves to be Protestants are the ones who rightly interpret their position."

So far I cordially endorse both his reading of Anglican history, and his interpretation of Anglican experience.

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It is curious to find that I contributed to the process of the Bishop's disillusionment: for my consecration demonstrated the helplessness of Anglicanism before doctrinal error:–

"Henson is a capital instance of the irrepressible issue. As a mere sin he would be quite tolerable; as a consistent illustration, he is quite unsettling. The trouble is not that his consecration was wrong, but that it was probably right. An unwise or even unfaithful Archbishop, or batch of Bishops, would be merely a challenge to the rest of us to be wise & loyal. The sting in this matter is that you or I in the Archbishop's place would have felt bound to do as he has done, & that in our respective dioceses we are all the time forced to do things of the same kind. Henson has denied the authority of episcopate & priesthood, the sacramental principle generally; & he defends, if he does not make, denials of certain articles of the Creed. His flimsy assertion of loyalty does not alter the essential facts. Only explicit retractions & expressions of penitence could put him out of the category of repudiators of the historic ministry, sacraments, & creeds."

I attended a meeting of the Football Association, & was elected President. The young men impressed me well, though rather shy & lubberly in their carriage.

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