The story of the Catholic Revival continues when a meeting of clergy was held in a town in England called Hadleigh. The Priests who gathered there agreed to teach the Catholic Faith and to show what the real teaching of the English Church is. To do this, a series of popular little books or tracts was put out at Oxford with the title of Tracts for the Times. Our four leaders, Keble, Newman, Pusey and Froude, were among the first authors. The teaching of the Prayer Book and of the Anglican Fathers of the 1500s was put forward. These men also published a series of books called The Library of the Anglo-Catholic Fathers. This series showed that the Anglicans of the 1500s and 1600s taught the same beliefs that were taught in the ancient Church of the 300s and 400s. The Church's teaching is always the same. Anglicans should always be proud to call themselves Anglo-Catholics.
In 1841, John Henry Newman wrote a tract called Tract 90. This Tract, the last one in the Tracts for the Times, taught Anglicans that the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, found at the back of the Prayer Book, do not reject any Catholic doctrine or any part of Catholic worship. Many people did not understand the meaning of John's tract because for so long they had understood the Faith of the Church wrongly. Many people hated this little book because their ideas about the Church were wrong - nevertheless, Tract 90 helps us even today to understand what the Articles of Religion really mean.
The Catholic Revival did not invent anything new; it only kept the Faith as it has always been believed and practiced in the Church of England. Unfortunately, because so many people were confused by the little book of John Henry Newman, he felt he could no longer stay in the Anglican Church, and so he left in 1845. The leadership of the Oxford Movement passed to Doctor Edward Pusey. Father John Keble went to become a country Priest. As the most respected man in Oxford, Dr Pusey rose to defend and teach the Truth in a very powerful way. He was the greatest scholar of his age. Pusey brought back the Sacrament of Penance, or Confession, to the Church of England. He helped many young men become Priests. He was a Saint; he had a deep life of prayer, and helped others to pray. He built a great parish and gave away his money to help the poor. The Anglican Province of America, with the whole Anglican Church, is what it is today because of men like Dr Pusey and the other leaders of the Catholic Revival.
But the Oxford Movement wasn't just in Oxford: it spread like a wildfire all over England... and then America. Another great Anglo-Catholic Priest and leader was Father John Mason Neale. A Priest, husband and father, Father John helped bring back Religious Life, monks and nuns, to the Anglican Church. Yes! That's right, the Anglican Church has monks and nuns - they are called Religious or monastics. Fr Neale was an expert on liturgy and worship and wrote-out most of the hymns now found in our Hymnal 1940. With Dr Pusey's help, in 1841, the first Anglican nun since the Reformation took her vows. In 1849, the first Religious Order for women was created at Oxford, the Society of the Holy and Undivided Trinity. The first convent in the Anglican Church since the Reformation was formed in 1845. The first Mother Superior was Priscilla Lydia Sellon. The first Religious Order for men, the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, was formed by Father Richard Meux Benson in 1866.
The Catholic Revival began as a Movement of the mind and heart - it first wanted to teach and instruct people about the Faith. It taught two main ideas that we should hold very dear today:
1. The Church is the Body of Jesus Christ, not made by man but by God. The Church is the Home of the Holy Spirit.
2. The Sacraments are God's means of grace. God conveys His Grace, His Life, in the Sacraments.
The Oxford Movement held to the importance of the Church and Sacraments. But, the Movement also wanted prayer and devotion. Spiritual life, fed by prayer and Sacrament, was returned to the Church. The Oxford Movement then restored beautiful ritual and ceremonial to the Church, to show in outward ways, by sight, touch, taste, smell and sound, the mystery of God's presence in His Church. Catholic life was taken into parishes. People who had no education or could not read were taught the Faith by outward signs and symbols. The people were shown in dramatic ways the Real Presence of Our Lord's Body and Blood in the Holy Eucharist. This could only be done by treating the Most Blessed Sacrament with amazing reverence, adoration and love. It is the Mass that matters.
The Catholic Revival also gave birth to new missionary work. Monks and nuns preached to pagan people who had never heard the Gospel before. Several groups were created to do missions. The greatest missionary of the Catholic Revival was Bishop Frank Weston (1871-1924) of Zanzibar, Africa. He built up a strong Diocese and served as a defender of the orthodox Faith.
1 comment:
What we miss as Americans was that the movement actually began in this country. When American churchmen confronted, as the Revolution and its aftermath forced upon them, the question of who they really were and what they believed they were forced back upon what the prayer book (1662) and the Authorized Version really said. That was what the most spiritually awake of them realized and the use of tracts were the means which they used to place the teaching of the Church before the public.
When they were to England to beg for money to found schools and seminaries, they took the examples of what they were doing with them and showed them to their English contemporaries. This was the origin of the idea of the tracts.
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