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F e a t u r e A r t i c l e
END OF THE OXFORD MOVEMENT
By BOBBY JINDAL
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This Rock
Volume 5, Number 1
 January 1994 
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THE first Oxford (Tractarian) Movement tract
was published in 1833; it marked the birth of the Anglo-Catholic party.
Last year, 160 years later, the Movement came to an end. After months
of quiet negotiation and much deliberation, Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop
of Westminster, invited those Anglican clergy and laity opposed to
the ordination of women to join the Roman Catholic Church. Many notables,
ranging from government ministers to former Anglican bishops, have
already decided to enter into full communion with the Church.
Spokesmen for the Catholic bishops of England and Wales have been
quick to point out that it takes more than an opposition to female
priests to join the Catholic Church; significant doctrinal obstacles,
such as the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, may remain for certain
individuals. Most Anglo-Catholics who opposed the General Synod's
vote to allow ordination of women did so on deeper issues of authority.
They felt the Anglican Church had an obligation to remain "one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic" and was none of these as it acted
unilaterally on this controversial issue.
Many in the Anglo-Catholic party would have no objection to the vote
had it been coordinated with the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox
Churches. The significant issue for them concerns more the authority
of the Synod to act alone rather than the actual content of the decision.
Cardinal John Henry Newman was familiar with such questions of authority
when he helped start the Oxford Movement. Times were different then
for both the Anglican and Catholic Churches. Newman lived in a time
when members of Parliament helped form the Synod of the Church of
England and the Church's official status was more explicitly affirmed.
Indeed, Newman himself campaigned against Sir Robert Peel, M.P. for
Oxford, for supporting the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, an indirect
result of the protests of the Catholic Irish who refused to tithe
to support the establishment of an Irish Anglican Church. While Anglicans
enjoyed the privileges of an established faith, Catholics suffered
the punishments of a persecuted faith. Although some amelioration
of the penal laws was evident as early as the end of the seventeenth
century, Catholics were forbidden to hold public office, attend universities,
and exercise other common rights for the next two centuries.
Abuses continue in this supposedly enlightened age: It is still University
policy that the chairs in theology at Oxford must be held by Anglican
clergy, a preacher at Pembroke College was recently heard comparing
the Pope to the likes of David Koresh, and the reigning monarch of
Great Britain may marry anyone but a Catholic. In Newman's time the
English often viewed Catholicism as subversive, and the term "Jesuitical"
was associated with "deceptive." Against this background,
Newman and a few of other Oxford fellows started a movement to return
the Anglican Church to its early roots.
Newman, John Keble, Edward Pusey, and others like them attempted to
chart a via media between "Popery" and Protestantism
by appealing to the early Church and to seventeenth-century Anglican
divines. Although affirming notions such as apostolic succession,
baptismal regeneration, Eucharistic sacrifice, "that which is
believed by all at all times in all places," the "prophetical
office of the Church," and other seemingly Catholic beliefs,
Newman and his compatriots sincerely believed the Anglican Church
would prove truer than would Rome to the legacy of early Christianity.
It was important for Newman to find continuity with the early Church,
for he rejected the Evangelical notion of individual interpretation
of the Bible as being internally inconsistent: "The Protestant
insistence on `the Bible as the only standard of appeal in doctrinal
inquiries' inevitably leads to the conclusion that `truth is but a
matter of opinion,' for `the Bible is not so written as to force its
meaning upon the reader,' nor does it `carry with it its own interpretation.'.
. .
"None of the various denominations which claim to derive the
Christian faith from the Bible alone actually `embraces the whole
Bible, none of them is able to interpret the whole.' . . . `We [Anglo-Catholics]
rely on Antiquity to strengthen such intimations of doctrine as are
but faintly, though really, given in Scripture.' . . . Roman Catholics
. . . appeal to Tradition as well as Scripture, maintaining that it
was impossible to commit to writing all that Apostles taught.
"`No one you fall in with on the highway, can tell your mind
all at once; much less could the Apostles ... digest in one
Epistle or Treatise a systematic view of the Revelation made to them.'
. . . `Tradition in fullness is necessarily unwritten.' . . . `We
receive through Tradition both the Bible itself, and the doctrine
that it is divinely inspired,' as do most Protestants, who `believe
in the divinity of Scripture precisely on the ground on which the
Roman Catholics take their stand on behalf of their own system of
doctrine, viz. because they have been taught it'" [Ian Ker,
John Henry Newman (1990), pp. 141-142].
Although Newman realized that a sola scriptura argument was
internally inconsistent, he was wary of accepting the contemporary
Catholic Church as the true heir to the inspired traditions of the
early Church. Nevertheless, the concept of apostolic succession would
prove difficult to reconcile with Newman's Protestant disposition.
The opposition Newman and his compatriots generated arose from prejudice
against the Roman Church and the Protestant need to deny certain Catholic
doctrines to justify the Reformation. Newman's attempts to link a
modern Christian faith with the early Church threatened to affirm
many of the very doctrines rejected in the aftermath of the Reformation.
Accepting sacred Tradition, sacraments, and apostolic succession all
threatened to turn Luther, Calvin, and the other fathers of Protestantism
into crusaders against corrupt practices (the sins of individuals),
not against institutional heresy.
This danger was especially felt by Anglicans, since the origin of
their church is rooted not in any significant theological debate,
but in the desire of a secular ruler to obtain a divorce and to exercise
direct ecclesiastical control. (It is no accident that the prime minister
still nominates episcopal candidates or that Parliament must vote
on any act proposed by the General Synod.)
This Protestant opposition manifested itself when a group of Anglican
bishops joined Oxford fellows in 1839 to propose the adoption of a
Protestant "memorial" that would force Newman and other
Anglo-Catholics to state their loyalties. The Martyrs' Memorial and
the expansion of a local church were to be done in memory of Cranmer,
Ridley, and Latimer, Protestant leaders burned while Queen Mary was
in power. Although these three men were indeed killed as heretics,
the memorial conveniently neglected the many Catholics tortured and
executed for their beliefs under Queen Elizabeth. (Ironically, the
excess funds were spent to expand a church which now is a center of
Anglo-Catholicism and which routinely loses many of its priests to
the Catholic Church.)
In the end Newman refused to support the memorial and was driven by
the writings of the Church Fathers to join the Catholic Church. He
was convinced that the first Christians professed the same beliefs
practiced by the modern Catholic Church and that the Catholic Church
taught with divine authority. Newman could not resist the arguments
of Ignatius of Antioch, who explicitly defended the Eucharist being
linked to the sacramental office of the bishop and who detailed the
authority of the apostolic hierarchy. Newman was also swayed by Clement,
the fourth bishop of Rome, and his use of authority over the Corinthian
Church through appeals to his office and position as Peter's successor.
The impact of the writings of Origen and Clement on the gradual discernment
of revelation--revelation being made better understood through
the Holy Spirit working in the Church--would later be evidenced
in Newman's classic work, An Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine. It was while delivering the sermons which later appeared
in the book that Newman began seriously doubting the claims of the
Reformers. He could no longer see any clear criteria for accepting
the early Church and yet rejecting the Council of Trent.
Newman eventually concluded that the Church of England, along with
all other Protestant churches, was in schism and that Rome was the
only valid successor to the historical and ecclesiastical claims of
the early Church. Newman, who as an Evangelical had believed the pope
was the Antichrist and had accepted many Calvinistic doctrines concerning
predestination, submitted to the doctrinal authority of the Roman
Catholic Church and was accepted into full communion on October 8,
1845. The two English Thomases, Becket and More, who had been martyred
for their fidelity to the Church and Rome over the state and the Anglican
Church, would have been pleased.
Cardinal Hume's recent invitation to Anglican clergy and laity is
a response to Graham Leonard, former Anglican Bishop of London, and
other Anglo-Catholics who believe the Anglican Church can no longer
claim to be the Catholic Church in England as it has claimed in its
"title-deeds, Book of Common Prayer, the Ordinal, and the 39
Articles" (as Graham put it in the London Times).
The invitation, which includes a provision allowing portions of the
Anglican Prayer Book to be incorporated into the Catholic liturgy,
does not establish a separate rite or uniate church, as allowed in
canon 372 and practiced in certain Eastern countries, and it requires
that each individual make a commitment to the full teachings of the
Catholic Church. Both Anglo-Catholics and the Anglican Church have
reacted favorably to Cardinal Hume's statement, and most believe the
Catholic Church has acted sensitively and wisely by integrating, not
absorbing, the Anglo-Catholic partisans.
Anne Roche Muggeridge documents the "Protestant principle"
of authority, held by certain Catholics as well as Protestants, which
states that the Church has no ordained mission from God to defend
the faith, but rather that all authority is based within the individual.
Writing in The Desolate City Muggeridge argues that allowing
each member to judge doctrines by individual conscience results in
anarchy, new denominations, and new authority structures. She traces
these consequences to the impact of original sin.
The Reformers insisted on individual interpretation of Scripture,
but Muggeridge claims that the successful Protestant body might be
said to have exercised this principle only once, in its section from
its parent communion. "It is the perception of this hypocrisy
which has forced many Anglo-Catholics to seek communion with the Catholic
Church."
The Anglican Church contains disparate elements due to its status
as the established church. The major constituencies, Anglo-Catholics,
Evangelicals, and liberals, have managed to preserve unity in recent
years through silence on many issues and equivocation on others. It
is no wonder that the Anglican Church has not issued any cohesive
policy statement on the issues of homosexuality or abortion. In America
certain Anglican churches administer Communion with the words "Bread
of Life or Body of God" to appease parishioners on both sides
of the Real Presence debate. Similarly, the Synod's recent decision
to permit the ordination of women also allows individual bishops and
their congregations to consider the ordinations null and void.
This precarious balancing act has failed to placate Anglo-Catholics,
who insist that the Synod's unilateral action has relegated the Church
of England to the status of a sect and who demand that the Synod at
least attempt to justify its decision with Scripture, rather than
relying on "contemporary fashion" and "secular support."
In response to the Archbishop of Canterbury's claim that the "ordination
of women to the priesthood alters not a word of the Scriptures, the
Creeds, or the faith of our Church," Bishop Leonard compared
the Archbishop's attitude to that of Humpty Dumpty, who insisted,
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither
more nor less."
As Newman himself was frustrated in attempting to link the early Church
to an orthodox Anglicanism or Reformed Catholicism, modern Anglo-Catholics
are realizing the impossibility of a via media between Rome
and the Reformers. Fr. Ian Ker, the authoritative biographer of Newman,
comments that the Synod's recent decision is a victory for the liberals
and may mark the end of the Anglican Church's unity. He wonders how
long Evangelicals will remain in harmony with liberals now that the
Anglo-Catholics are leaving or are marginalized.
Fr. Ker repeats Newman's warning that the Church might become so "radically
liberalized . . . as to become a simple enemy of the Truth."
To him it seems "only a matter of time, how long the Anglican
Church retains any part of the faith." At least one thing is
clear: The Oxford Movement has served its purpose and has now come
to an end.
Bobby Jindal, a convert from Hinduism, is studying
at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, is active in the Catholic Chaplaincy,
and leads the University's Catholic Bible Study.
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