A few months ago I linked to an article discussing the decision of several bishops in the Church of England discouraged by that body’s abandoning of orthodoxy to join the Roman Catholic church. The bishops predicted that significant numbers of Anglican priests and parishioners would be following them within a year or two.
It looks like we’re seeing the partial fulfillment of that prediction already. On Ash Wednesday some Anglican parishes lost a large percentage of their members, as well as their clergy, to Rome. The linked article says that one parish lost its minister and 70 of its 85 members! Naturally, the Church of England refused overtures from the minister for help with the expenses of the church building in exchange for allowing the new Catholics to continue using it.
As I’ve said before, there are many things I admire and appreciate about the Church of England’s heritage, and it’s very discouraging to see modern Britons squander it. I’ve read that on any given week you will find more people in mosques than in churches now in Britain. Heaven help them.
I read 3-4 years ago that there were more witches in Britain now than practicing Anglicans.
Modernism hit the Anglican Church long before the 60s. My own Ronald Knox (I say that because I am the President of the Ronald Knox Society) was fighting it, as an Anglican, in the 1910s, and he was by no means the first. But the Anglican Church really condemned itself to death (or irrelevence) at the 1930 Conference at Lambeth.
As an Anglican convert to RCism, one of the most moving events of my life was watching the Holy Father, last September, in Westminster Abbey. To say that it was an historical occasion would be the understatement of the century!
Pingback: 1566 Mass on the Pop Charts | The Western Tradition