By Michael Nazir-Ali, from Anglican Ink.
There are as many reasons as there are people as to why Anglican clergy are being received into the Catholic Church. The report by Professor Bullivant and others shows that about a third of all Catholic priests ordained between 1992 and 2024 had previously been Anglican priests. This is a quite remarkable figure and it also raises questions about how adequate priestly and pastoral provision is being made within the Catholic Church itself. Nor is this phenomenon restricted to England and Wales. Similar accessions to Catholicism are taking place in Scotland, the United States, Canada and elsewhere.
One of the underlying reasons is disenchantment with the Anglican claim to be ‘catholic’ without the papacy. Anglicans were taught that their church did not require them to believe anything that the Church of the Creeds and the Fathers did not believe. This is a very wide claim and can be tested in a number of ways. The Anglican appetite for doctrinal, moral and ecclesial innovation in recent years has raised sharp questions about its sustainability.
The dialogue with the Catholic Church, which began after the historic meeting between Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, was at first very positive. The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, of which I became a long standing member, produced agreements on the Eucharist and on ministerial priesthood that were eventually endorsed by both communions as consonant with their faith and teaching. There was also important convergence on questions of authority in the Church, on the role of the Blessed Virgin Mary and even on pressing moral issues, such as the nature of marriage and family, abortion and human sexuality.
So far so good, one might say. The problem that reared its ugly head almost immediately was the novel doctrine of ‘provincial autonomy’ promoted by certain provinces in the West, despite the teaching of the Lambeth Conferences regarding the restraints of truth and love on such autonomy.