Saturday, July 10, 2010

The Death of the Oxford Movement

The time of death was July 10, 2010. In 1833 John Keble started a movement with his Assize sermon "National Apostasy" defending the Church of England as a part of the Catholic Church.

Since then, the Anglican Church has allowed contraception, divorce, liberalism, women priests, and now women bishops (and arguably it tacitly supports Homosexual 'marriage').

It was a great dream. There is much to love about Anglicanism, alot of English Catholicism that it revived and preserved which the Roman Church in England had lost. But now it seems that the legacy of the Oxford Movement will be a Roman Catholic one, much like the legacy of C.S. Lewis is now largely R.C.

As a side note, I went to a beautiful and very Traditional Catholic Church in northern Ontario. If it wasn't 3 hours away, I'd go there. It is beautiful to see real latin-rite Catholicism functioning the way it should. So much of it was shared by the Oxford Movement and I think it quite true that Cardinal Newman was considered the absent father of the Second Vatican Council. If English-speaking Roman Catholicism nowadays could be what High Anglicanism was in 1833 (or 1928 for that matter), we'd be in business. The Spirit knows what he's doing though.

St. Augustine of Canterbury, pray for England and the Church of England. May the truth shine through for those currently searching amidst the fog of controversy and confusion. May the sceptered Isle once more become 'the most faithful child of the See of Peter'.

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