ANGLO-CATHOLICS. — Under this designation are included those members of the Anglican Church who, while not forming part of the Roman Catholic Church and without officially separating from their own Church, seek to return to the usages and practices of the ancient English Church prior to the Reformation. Heirs and successors of the "Oxford Movement" of the first half of the 19th century, which gave rise to ritualism, they now aim at the revival, in the sense of Anglicanism, of belief in the real presence and in the eucharistic sacrifice, of confession, of celibacy, and of the ascetic and monastic ideal.
Since 1850, when the Anglican vicar W. J. E. Bennet began to attract attention to himself for certain ritual innovations, such as the use of candles on the altar and of the cross, considerable progress has been made in this direction. Those opposed to such changes, organized in the "Church Association" for the purpose of resisting them, have labeled them "popish," "ultra-rubrical," "Romanizing," "abusive," or "aggressively Roman." Despite all covert and open opposition, and even legal coercion, Anglo-Catholics have gradually adopted incense, vestments and liturgical books, altar linens, chalices, patens, palls, candlesticks, the use of the "Roman collar" and of wafers instead of common bread, the practice of the celebrant turning his back to the people during the consecration, ablutions, the singing of the Agnus Dei, the reservation of the Eucharist, the Mass of the Presanctified, processions of Corpus Christi with the Blessed Sacrament, the celebration of the Eucharist even when no communicants are present, the adoption of hymns invoking Mary and the saints, the observance of the Assumption and of the Sacred Heart, the practice of the rosary, of benediction, the use of Latin—at least for the Canon of the Mass—and, in a still minority, even belief in papal infallibility. It should be noted that Anglo-Catholics are divided into moderates and extremists.
By 1901, in 1,525 churches of the two Anglican dioceses of York and Canterbury alone, liturgical vestments were in use, and this practice may be regarded as constant and normal in private churches and in the chapels of the increasingly numerous monastic communities that, though Anglican in name, follow the rules of some of the most distinguished Orders of Catholicism. Hitherto nothing has been able to deter these Anglo-Catholics from putting into effect their intention of adopting almost all the external practices and, as far as possible, the spirit of Catholicism: neither the threats of the 1899 Church Discipline Bill nor the legal persecutions under the Public Worship Regulation Act. Nor have the Anglican bishops succeeded in stemming the tide of so many clergy and laity drifting toward Rome. Lord Halifax, speaking of the authority of the Anglican episcopate, declared himself ready to submit if it were exercised by apostolic power and not as the interpreter of a parliamentary act or a court decision. Dr. Wace, Dean of Canterbury, proposed the criterion of an appeal to the first six centuries of the Church. Not content with this, the Anglo-Catholics claim for themselves the continuity of the 20th-century Church with that immediately preceding the 16th-century Reformation. And if anyone threatens to remove them by renewed persecution or coercion, they hint at withdrawal from what is the established Anglican Church, which has been compared to "an old ship that holds together only so long as it is not touched."
The learned Jesuit H. Thurston holds that "the real strength and the secret of the constant growth of such ritualists lies in their sacramental doctrine, in true devotion, and in personal sacrifice."