ANGLO-CATHOLICS. — This designation comprises those members of the Anglican Church who, without forming part of the Roman Catholic Church and without officially separating themselves from their own Church, intend to return to the usages and practices of the ancient English Church before the Reformation. Heirs and epigones of the “Oxford Movement” of the first half of the nineteenth century, which created ritualism, they now aim at the revival, in the Anglican sense, of faith in the Real Presence and in the Eucharistic sacrifice, of confession, of celibacy, and of the ascetic and monastic ideal.
From the time when, in 1850, the Anglican vicar W. J. E. Bennet began to attract attention to himself through certain ritual innovations of his, such as the use of candles on the altar and of the cross, down to the present day, great strides have been made in this direction, despite its opponents—who formed themselves into the “Ecclesiastical Association” (Church Association) precisely for the purpose of opposing such innovations—and who described it as “papists,” “ultra rubricists,” “romanists,” “abusive,” or “Romanly aggressive.” Despite every veiled, open, and even legal opposition, the A.-C. gradually adopted incense, vestments and liturgical books, altar linens, chalices, patens, altar frontals, candlesticks, the use of the “Roman collar” and of the host instead of ordinary bread, the practice whereby the celebrant, at the moment of consecration, turns his back to the people, ablutions, the singing of the Agnus Dei, the practice of Eucharistic consecration, the Mass of the Presanctified, the Corpus Christi procession with the Sacrament, the celebration of the Eucharist even when there are no faithful to receive Communion, the adoption of hymns invoking Mary and the saints, the observance of the feasts of the Assumption and of the Sacred Heart, the practice of the rosary, that of Benediction, the use of Latin, at least for the canon of the Mass, and, among a still smaller minority, even belief in papal infallibility. It should be recalled here that the A.-C. are divided into moderates and extremists.
In 1901, in 1,525 churches belonging to the two Anglican dioceses of York and Canterbury alone, liturgical vestments were being used, and this practice may be said to be constant and normal in private churches and in the chapels of the increasingly numerous monastic communities, Anglican in name but adopting the rules of the most distinguished Orders of Catholicism. Thus far nothing has been able to prevent these A.-C. from putting into effect their intention of adopting almost all the external practices and, insofar as possible, also the spirit of Catholicism: neither the threats of the ecclesiastical disciplinary regulation (Church Discipline Bill) of 1899, nor the judicial persecutions under the act regulating public worship (Public Worship Regulation Act). Not even the Anglican bishops have succeeded in arresting the tendency of so many clergy and laity toward Rome. As regards the authority of the Anglican episcopate, Lord Halifax said that he was prepared to submit to it if it were exercised by virtue of apostolic power and not as the interpreter of a parliamentary act or of a decision by a court of justice. Dr. Wace, Dean of Canterbury, proposed the criterion of an appeal to the first six centuries of the Church. Not yet satisfied with this, the A.-C. claim for themselves the continuity of the Church of the twentieth century with that which immediately preceded the Reformation of the sixteenth century. And if anyone threatens to remove them, through renewed persecution or coercion, they hint at their withdrawal from what is the established Anglican Church, that is, from the institution which was compared to an “old ship, which lasts only on condition that it not be touched.”
The learned Jesuit H. Thurston considers that the “real strength and secret of the constant growth of such ritualists lies in their sacramental doctrine, in true devotion, and in personal sacrifice.”