A friend recently shared with me an article from the Catholic journal The Lamp written by Dr Robin Ward who was until last year Principal of the Anglican clergy training college St Stephen’s House in Oxford, and who, earlier this year, was received as a Catholic.
I have known Dr Ward slightly for several years, having met him in my years at Pusey House. His article is, in effect, as he references in it, a short homage to St John Henry Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua and to Newman’s last months as an Anglican in the College he had established for himself and his friends at Littlemore. It was there that he was received into the Catholic Church in 1845.
Whilst only a summary of his spiritual journey it is also an insightful commentary on what has happened to the Church of England and Anglicanism in the past two generations. Thereby it also explains Dr Ward’s path to Rome. That is one that has been trodden, each in their individual way, by many others, including myself. He does along the way make a number of telling points about the current state of Anglicanism, including as it is found to be in contemporary Oxford. As a piece of writing it says a great deal in a small compass, and opens up new insights.
The article can be read online at Robin Ward*
Newman’s College,
Littlemore, Oxford
Image: Wikimedia
* I do know of another Anglo-Catholic church with a shrine to the infant of Prague - in the ‘biretta belt’ of the southern West Riding
No comments:
Post a Comment