The Henson Journals

[45]

7th Sunday after Trinity, July 18th, 1926.

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I celebrated in the Chapel at 8 a.m.: & was far less fatigued than on the last occasion. We numbered 10 comts, including our American guests, Mrs Toland & her daughter Mrs Bacon. The latter takes her departure for Paris today.

These self–styled "Anglo–Catholics" seem to think that the question at issue is, the intrinsic reasonableness of the "Anglo–Catholicism" which they profess: whereas the practical question is, Whether or not it is sufficiently harmonious with the version of Christianity set forth in the Anglican standards to be tolerated in clergymen who have subscribed to the said standards, & are commissioned to set forth that version in the parishes. "Anglo–Catholic" is a word, nowhere employed in the authorized forms of the Church of England, which contains "Catholic" and "Protestant". It was employed by the Tractarians, who professed to mean by it the authorised religion as set out in the Prayer Book, Articles, Homilies, & Literature of the Church of England. "The Library of Anglo–Catholick Theology" is a collection of the 17th century divines, Laudian & Caroline, who would certainly have repudiated with indignation such a version of Anglican Christianity as Sir H. Slesser expresses. The earliest reference to the term "Anglo–Catholic" in Murray's Dictionary is to the title of this series, 1841. "Anglo–Catholicism" is defined as "Catholicism of Anglican type, or according to English ideas: the doctrine or constitution of the Anglican Church as a branch of the Church Catholic". This is sustained by a reference to Pusey, Crisis in Eng. Ch. 141 "When Greek Catholicism … becomes well–disposed to Anglo–Catholicism". Wilfred Knox, (v. The Catholic movement in the C. of E. Pref.) expresses dislike of the term as misleading. He prefers "English Catholics". "It is possible that I shall be accused of a lack of loyalty to the distinctive position of the C. of E. But if in being loyal to the teaching of the Church Catholic I am disloyal to the C. of E., I fear that I shall bear the reproach with equanimity." This is well enough, but perhaps something should be allowed for subscription to the Anglican formularies very explicitly, & made in the most solemn circumstances viz. at Ordination & Institution.

[46]

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["]It is curious to reflect – or would be if it were not shocking – that if the population had not been opposed, in all probability the massacre of Paris would have been acted over again by Protestants, as the massacre of London! No: Christianity, my dear friend, does not give any sort of encouragement to the cutting one another's throat at all: but I know this, that the Papist who cuts throats upon religious principle, bad & mistaken as it is, has less to answer for than the Protestant who does it in direct repudiation of all principle, religious & moral.["]

Revd Thomas Twining to Dr Burney. July 14th, 1780. (v. Recreations & Studies of a Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth Century. p. 89. (London 1882))

The Lord George Gordon riots in 1780 disclosed in a very startling fasion the brutal intolerance of the common Englishman, and brought back to the thought of an educated clergyman the historical precedent of S. Bartholomew's massacre in Paris in 1572. The latter sprang directly from the beliefs of the Parisian fanaticks, & was both encouraged and justified by the ecclesiastical authorities. The former filled English Churchmen with humiliation & disgust. None the less, both the Roman Catholic and his unrecognized twin the Anglo–Catholic commonly pose as the mild exponents of toleration confronted by the harsh severities of Protestant bigotry! "Finally, I would say" – writes Sir Henry Slesser, "that while the Protestant often attacks the Anglo–Catholic, the Catholic has no such feeling of hostility to the Protestants!" How long would Evangelicals or Liberal Churchmen be tolerated in an Anglo–Catholicised Church of England?

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