Cotswold vicar who inspired ecumenism

FOR 70 YEARS more and more people have got into the way of praying for Christian unity. The now universal habit, without which what is called ecumenism would never have become so important a feature of this century, began in a very small way.
Two Anglican clergymen on either side of the Atlantic were in correspondence over a book called "The Prince of the Apostles", of which they were the joint authors. This was so Catholic in outlook that the late Fr Vincent McNabb, OP, reviewing it, wrote: "It has the ring of true Catholic dogma, yet it is not by a professor at Oscott or Stonyhurst but by an Anglican vicar in the Cotswolds and the head of an Anglican brotherhood in the United States."
These were the Rev Spencer Jones, then and for long afterwards the vicar of Moreton-in-Marsh, and the Rev Lewis Thomas Wattson of Greymoor, New York, the founder of the Friars of the Atonement, spread all over the world.
In the course of correspondence, towards the end of 1907, Wattson received from Jones a letter proposing that sermons should be preached in Anglican churches on June 29, the feast of St Peter, a day he thought appropriate for preaching on Christian unity. Wattson liked the idea, which he was later to call a "seed thought", but immediately went on to suggest a whole week of prayer, between the then feast of St Peter's Chair and the Conversion of St Paul — between January 18 and 25.
He thought the two great Apostles would support the intention even more effectively. In reply, the country clergyman said he thought it an excellent idea.
The story of the Atonement Friars is well known, not only because they have a great record for ecumenical work, but because they have spread all over America, North and South, and are in Japan, Australia and the West Indies.
They have an English house, close to Westminster Cathedral, and run the well-stocked library, at once Catholic and ecumenical, which distributes books by post in all directions to scholars and others.
What of the vicar of Moreton? Because he stuck to his country parish for 45 years this staunch Anglican pioneer of ecumenism is well-nigh forgotten, though he deserves better of history, and no doubt will obtain his due one day.
The fact that he was ahead of his time meant that he went gently about advocating reunion, but he did not shout it from the house tops: indeed, his parishioners scarcely heard a sermon from him on the subject. He was a man of the pen. An Oxford man, related to John Keble, he had known Pusey and visited Newman; but his great joy was catechising children. His book on this subject ran to seven editions, but it was his "England and the Holy See" which he published in 1902 that made him famous.
it became the textbook for pro-Roman Anglicans. It had a preface from Lord Halifax, and still turns up on old bookstalls. It was translated into many languages and, as is the way of things, better known abroad than at home.
Not content with writing on the still tricky questions several other books, Spencer Jones supported the Society of St Peter and Paul, founded in 1910, and the Catholic League, which promoted the Unity Octave among Anglicans. More interestingly — in the light of subsequent history — he launched a learned body in 1903, the Society of St Thomas of Canterbury "for the study of the Church in the West".
This was the first step towards serious theological dialogue such as is taken for granted today. Limited to Anglicans, but enjoying the co-operation of Catholic scholars such as Gasquet, Chapman, Moyes, Benson, Pope, Fortescue and Belloc, this group spanned the years between Apostolicae Cara* and the Malines Conversations.
Jones and Wattson kept in touch, and there is a proof of this in a photograph, published in the Catholic Herald, of the two pioneers talking together while Paul Wattson was visiting England.
Another shows Spencer Jones with the Abbe Couturier, whom he encouraged in the broadening of the scope of the week, in 1937.
By this time Taunton had been exchanged for Moreton, but the pen was still busy, as articles and letters which survive prove. He died just after the end of the Unity Week, on January 28, 1943,
In The Pilot, Fr McNabb expressed the view that Jones' contention that the breach with Rome was the act of the Crown and not the Church "may one day become the legal question of the century. In that day Spencer Jones may be seen not only as somewhat of a martyr, but as somewhat of a prophet."
Herbert Keldany