WARD, WILLIAM GEORGE. — A theologian converted from Anglicanism, b. in London on 21 March 1812, d. at Hampstead on 6 July 1882.
In 1838 he took part in the Oxford Movement, coming under Newman’s influence and fully approving the famous tract XC. From that moment he became a convinced defender of Tractarian principles. The university authorities themselves became concerned about him, and in 1841 he was deprived of his teaching post at Balliol College.
From 1841 to 1843, in a series of articles in the British critic, he maintained the necessity of a progressive assimilation of Catholic doctrine by the Anglican Church; and in The Ideal of a christian Church considered in comparison with existing practice (Oxford 1844) he presented the Catholic Church as the embodiment of the true Christian idea. Invited to retract the book, he refused and on 13 Feb. 1845 was deprived of his university degrees; on 5 Sept. he entered the Catholic Church together with his wife.
He taught ethics for a year at Old Hall and, from 1852 to 1858, dogmatic theology at St. Edmund's College. From this period dates an extensive treatise on theology entitled On Nature and Grace, of which only the first book was published. In 1858, after leaving the chair of theology, he wrote for the Dublin review, of which he also became editor in 1863. He was a strong opponent of liberalism, represented in England at that time by Sir John Acton, in Germany by Döllinger, and in France by Montalembert, Lacordaire, and Lamennais. With regard to the question of papal infallibility, he defended extreme views with excessive vehemence and thus repelled rather than attracted people to Catholicism. After the death of Card. Wiseman, he exerted all his influence in Rome to have Manning appointed to the see of Westminster. Yet while his theological positions were as narrow as his philosophical positions were broad and moderate, he demonstrated the latter qualities above all as a co-founder, together with James Knowles (1869), and subsequently as president (1870) of the Metaphysical Society. He therefore defended the philosophical foundations of the faith better than the faith itself. He spent his final years at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight, where Tennyson was his neighbour and intimate friend.
He wrote extensively; principal works: The relation of intellectual power to man's true perfection (London 1858), reprinted in Essay on religion and literature (ibid. 1867); The authority of doctrinal decisions which are not definitions of faith (ibid. 1866); De infallibilitatis extensione theses quasdam et quaestiones theologorum iudicio subict G. G. W. (ibid. 1869); The condemnation of Pope Honorius: an essay (ibid. 1879); Essay in the Church's doctrinal authority (ibid. 1880).
Giacomo de Bivort de La Saudée