ANGLOCATHOLICS

Anglo • or Catholic?
SIR,-It is with deep interest that I have followed the articles on the subject of Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholics.
As one who left the above party to enter the Catholic Church some 40 years ago, I feel that d can appreciate their position, which is most complex, and. to the average cradle Catholic, quite incomprehensible. But without wishing to add to the usual criticisms of the AngloCatholic movement, it does seem, on looking back, that more stress is laid by their supporters on the Anglo rather than the Catholic.
No amount of disassociation from Protestant or Prayer Book traditions, nu further development of Liturgy and Office and Doctrine on Roman lines, will ever convince Rome that these good people are Catholic. The crux of the question will always be "Who is the Custos of this Anglo-Catholicism ?" and "Why does a body that proclaims itself Catholic remain in communion 'in sacris' with Anglican Bishops and Clergy and through them with others outside the Anglican Communion-whose catholicity is suspect or denied by the Anglo-Catholic body ?" Claiming, as they do, to be an integral part of the Church Catholic founded by Christ on St. Peter. who is their normal Patriach and from whose authority are derived the various and varied Liturgies used by Anglo-Catholics, from the complete Roman Rite of the Vlissale Romanum down to the Communion Office of the Church of England implemented by various Rites and Ceremonies common to the Roman Patriarchate ?
Again who is the Custos of all this ? It most Certainly is not the Pope: nor is it the Archbishop of Canterbury as the leading Metropolitan of the Established Church.
The vexed question of the validity of Anglo-Catholic orders-that is to say the power to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass for the living and the dead and for the remission of pain and guilt, must have lapsed quite as late as the Episcopacy of the early George's, who by no possible stretch of imagination can have intended to make Mass Sacrificing Priests at their ordinations. More than this, the Anglican Bishops of the 60's announced formally that they had no intention of doing so. As the vast majority of present AngIo-Catholics derive their orders from these sources. where is their validity ?
Again they are in open and formal communion with those Bishops and Clergy who deny the Mass and make no claim whatsoever to be priests in the sense accepted by Rome and advanced Anglo-Catholics. Were there any doubt about this-quite apart from the Bull of 1896 the official answer of the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church of England to Apostolicae Clime must make this abundantly clear. How many Anglo-Catholic clergy today can maintain that after their ordination by an Anglican Bishop and as part of the Rite of Ordination, they concelebrated Mass with the ordaining Bishop ?
It seems so vain to decry Anglican Bishops who deny the very fundamentals of Christianity, and who carry out such extraordinary offices, as the blessing of a cemetery for dogs, whilst remaining in communion with them, quite apart from the fact that the Anglican Episcopate as a whole is committed to erastianism.
This country owes a great debt of gratitude to Anglo-Catholicism. Their course since 1848 has been a hard and stormy one, and the beautiful and dignified services to be seen today in most Anglican Cathedrals are due almost entirely to the original determination to stand by the Ornaments Rubric. Thus has the Anglo triumphed. Thus far and no further, including of course those doctrines that are covered in must cases by the standard of the above Rubric.
If Anglo-Catholicism as a movement wishes to obtain a better understanding in Roman circles, and one feels sure a wholehearted ssnipathy with them in their good faith, they will at once separate themselves as a body, once and for all, from that erastian parent stem from which they claim to receive valid Order, and make their via crucis into the arms of Peter per the wilderness from which point they will then be able to realize that acclamations of the Sovereign Pontiff from behind the iron curtain of the erastian establishment must give place to submission to his Sovereign Authority in the Catholic Church.
STEPHEN C. BARBER.
10 Osney Crescent, Paignton, S. Devon.