St Thomas of Canterbury

Today is the feast of the martyrdom of St Thomas of Canterbury in 1170.

A late medieval depiction of the martyrdom of St Thomas

Image: anatheimp.blogspot

St Thomas was a complex man - indeed a difficult man for his friends as well as his opponants - and King Henry II was, of course, both. These complexities are brought out splendidly in Prof. Frank Barlow's Thomas Becket.

Over the years I have become more sympathetic to St Thomas than I perhaps once was - which says something about my progress in faith - and when I worshipped at St Thomas the Martyr here in Oxford my devotion to him increased. As in the twelfth century the issues he rasied do not always have easy answers, but the underlying issue of the freedom of the Church is a crucial one to any Catholic, then or now.

St Thomas the Martyr Oxford
Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes

I had the great privilege of being Churchwarden at St Thomas from 2002 until a few days before my reception at the Oratory in 2005, and in 2003 wrote and published a history of the church. The contribution it made to the Anglo-Catholic revival in the mid-nineteenth century was a remarkable one under the great Thomas Chamberlain, vicar from 1842 until his death in 1892. Chamberlain's current successor, Fr Hunwicke, is in the best traditions of the parish, and his blog, Fr Hunwicke's Liturgical Notes, has helped put it back on the map. I am sure if the internet had been available in the nineteenth century Thomas Chamberlain would have been using it.

I still live within sight of the church and keep it and its people in my prayers, especially today.

May St Thomas continue to pray for them and for the Church in England.

More thoughts on Canon Thomas Chamberlain

After I had posted my piece about my article on Canon Chamberlain yesterday it occurred to me that I really ought to say a little more about my sense of obligation to him and his ilk amongst the pioneers and sustainers of Anglo-Catholicism. When doing research on him I realised the extent of my admiration for this tough and determined man who set out to do what he believed to be right in his parish and achieved so much. In a sense I wanted to be battling alongside him in those far-off episodes of nineteenth century church history.

It was thanks to what he and others achieved up and down the country that I was able as an Anglican to grow into the Catholic faith. I owe a great deal not only to the likes of Chamberlain, and their successors, but also to faithful clergy who ministered in my own time and home area. The journey beginning at St Giles Pontefract and taking in en route St Thomas at Purston, St Mary at South Elmsall, St Cecilia Parson Cross and the Bilham group of parishes, and the shrine at Walsingham and the Glastonbury Pilgrimage, drew me on to Pusey House and St Thomas in Oxford. Without them I would not have so well placed to make the final transition to the fullness of that faith in full peace and communion with Rome. For all that I am immensely grateful.

Many other Anglo-Catholics have followed similar paths, and would, I am sure, agree as to the debts they too owe.

This is not just a personal matter, it has a wider significance. At the present time there is the real possibility and hope of other Anglo-Catholics making that final move. I appreciate their apprehension - above all perhaps over possibly losing their churches, as Valle Adurni highlighted last week - but as Ancient Richborough and others have indicated the risks of staying are ultimately worse. I am tempted to say that if I could do it, so can they.

Chamberlain may not have been a 'Romaniser', but then he was not faced with the threats to the integrity of orthodox belief and practice within Anglicanism which confront people today. The choices made by Chamberlain and others, led by Pusey were, in their own way, as difficult as those made by Newman and his companions. The former group chose to stay, in the hope of better things. For a while that hope seemed justified. It looks much less so now than a century or seventy odd years ago.

To cradle Catholics, who so often appear to know or understand little of the Anglo-Catholic expereince, I would say that beyond the charity of welcoming converts there is the deeper charity of making welcome people who think almost exactly as they do, and who have often been through journeys in faith that can augment the whole Church. There is a need to learn more about what Anglo-Catholics believe, and that it is not just 'dressing up' and 'playing at Church'. Those of us who have completed the crossing of the Tiber, and those paddling, wading or swimming across now, and those still tentatively putting a toe in the water have brought and can bring much to the life of the entire Body. It may be the 'Anglican Patrimony', it may just be ourselves, but it is something, and something that ultimately is called forth by God.

St Thomas Oxford and Thomas Chamberlain

This weekend is the patronal feast of St Thomas the Martyr Oxford, the Anglo-Catholic church near the railway station in Oxford, and where from 2002 -5 I had the privilege of being Churchwarden.

St Thomas' keeps the feast of the Translation of the relics of St Thomas on July 7 as its principal patronal, a tradition going back there to the late nineteenth century. Indeed St Thomas was one of the few post-apostolic saints to have two feast days - those of his death and translation - in 1170 and 1220 respectively. Another to have such a double commemoration is St Cuthbert.

I retain enormous affection and regard for St Thomas', for its faithful parishioners, and for its redoubtable p-i-c and blogger, Fr Hunwicke. Living just across the churchyard from it I see it everyday and keep it and all associated with it in my prayers.

In 2003 I published a history of the church and parish as a festschrift to the last Vicar, Robert Sweeney, and in so doing realised what a special place St Thomas has in the history of the Catholic revival in the Church of England.

I still have a place there as Archivist, and by a happy coincidence Forward Plus, the free newspaper produced by Forward in Faith, has in its latest edition an article about Thomas Chamberlain, the great and remarkable vicar who established St Thomas' as one of the very first Anglo-Catholic parishes in the country. Chamberlain's fifty year ministry there from 1842 to 1892 links the era of the Tractarians to that of the Lincoln Judgment. Modesty almost forbids me to name the author of the article, but I think being a blogger is not that modest, so I will own up to having written it. You can find the article online at the website of Forward Plus by scrolling down to the article, or you can, no doubt, pick up a copy in right thinking Anglican churches.

© National Portrait Gallery, London

This photograph of Chamberlain which illustrates the article was taken in the early 1860s by one of his colleagues from Christ Church here in Oxford - the Rev. Charles Dodgson - Lewis Carroll.

Please pray for all at St Thomas' and for its future both as a community and as a place of worship.

Anyone interested in obtaining copies of my book on the church should contact me at jrwhitehead2000@yahoo.co.uk