Anglican clergy

“ With regard to the Anglican clergy, it may be observed that the state church of England is almost entirely for the benefit of the aristocracy, which sees its younger sons enter her “orders” all the more gladly because their subsistence is thus provided for without the patrimony of the head of the family being much diminished—the children of the aristocracy thus aiding to maintain an institution to which in a great measure its influence is owing. As to the German Protestant clergy, they are neither so influential nor so respected as the Anglican. ”

“ The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. ”

“ Compare the amount of higher literature which proceeds from clergymen of the Established Church with the amount which proceeds from the vastly greater body of Catholic priests scattered over the world; compare the place which the English clergy, or laymen deeply imbued with the teaching of the Church, hold in English literature with the place which Catholic priests, or sincere Catholic laymen, hold in the literature of France,—and the contrast will appear sufficiently evident. There is hardly a branch of serious English literature in which Anglican clergy are not conspicuous. ”

“ The Puritans wanted to impose their form of discipline on the Church of England, and with this end in view they adopted the simple plan of turning churchwardens and sidesmen into Presbyterian elders, with the power of exercising discipline on the parishioners and of nominating to the patron the man whom he should appoint to a living. Their next move was a bold attempt to oust the Anglican clergy. ”

“ The clergy naturally are most positive in the assertion that their orders are valid; as the nature and the necessity of jurisdiction are alike unknown to the ordinary Anglican mind, the matter seems pretty clear. The laity in the Anglican body are not in any very definite manner bound by the Prayer-book or by any of the authorized documents of that body; there is nothing anomalous in the idea of Anglican lay people, especially women, going to confession without even asking themselves whether the practice is in accordance with the mind of the communion to which they belong. ”

“ This is the land of sects. An Englishman is a free man, and goes to Heaven by any road he pleases.
But although anybody may serve God after his own fashion, their true religion, the one in which fortunes are made, is the Episcopal sect, called the Anglican Church, or, simply and pre-eminently, the Church. No office can be held in England or Ireland except by faithful Anglicans; a circumstance which has led to the conversion of many Noncomformists.
The Anglican clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, 278 above all that of receiving tithes with a most scrupulous attention. ”

“ From those various causes a High Church spirit is showing itself far beyond both sections of the clergy who have identified themselves with Anglican movements, and, in fact, is more or less affecting all parties. ”

“ Whatever men’s opinions as to the policy of Establishment, no one can hesitate to admit that the clergy of the Church are men of pure life and conversation, zealous in the discharge of their duties; and, at present, apparently, more bent on prosecuting one another than on meddling with Dissenters. Theology itself has broadened so much, that Anglican divines put forward doctrines more liberal than those of Priestley ”

“ There were indeed among the clergy men of brighter genius and men of wider attainments: but during a long period there was none who more completely represented the order, none who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the Anglican priesthood, without any taint of Latitudinarianism, of Puritanism, or of Popery. He had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, when the power of the dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country, written strongly against the sin of nonconformity. ”

“ But in refusing to yield to the pressure of any section, in regarding the opinion of the laity rather than that of the clergy, in keeping close to the law yet giving it the widest possible interpretation, he laid down the lines on which the Anglican Established Church can best be defended and upheld. That she will last, as an Establishment, for any very long time, will hardly be expected by those who mark the direction in which thought tends to move all over the civilised world. ”

“ Still, there they are, mindful, at least, of “Sabbath worship,” when the majority of their co-religionists see no necessity for remembering it.
Crowds of Anglican clergymen were also found travelling, on their own account, in the Protestant cantons. Five-and-twenty were together one day at Mürren, of all shades and hues, too; from my Lord Bishop, with his wife and daughters, to the young Ritualist curate, in his Roman collar and otherwise Catholic dress, the highest ambition of whose heart is to be taken—or rather mistaken—for a true Catholic priest. ”

“ Many of the best part of our clergy are tainted with the popular opinions of the worst. They do not preach like our pious forefathers, urging [459] the people to repent and believe in Christ. They magnify the Church of England at the perfection of ecclesiastical order and beauty, and direct their vituperations against their fellow-Protestants who differ from them on the comparatively unimportant questions of Episcopacy and Episcopal ordination. The only points of importance on which the evangelical clergy differ from their Tractarian brethren, relate to the efficacy of the sacraments. ”

“ If the Catholic faith be the perfect revelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of heresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the Anglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of divine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was founded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments, without absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its altars. ”

“ They are models of the most perfect English style, and, as such, of great value to Catholic preachers. Their circulation among Protestants to as great an extent as possible is something most devoutly to be wished, and likely to do an extraordinary amount of good. No doubt the Protestant clergy here, whatever may be the case in England, will discourage their being read; yet the younger clergy of all denominations will undoubtedly read them themselves, and will not be able to hinder great numbers of the most cultivated among the laity from doing the same. ”

“ The homogeneous body of “the bishops and clergy” are the only representatives of a clergy in the eyes of modern English society; the relative position of the secular clergy in the eyes of the mediæval world was less exclusive and far inferior. The seculars were only one order of the clergy, sharing the title with monks and friars, and they were commonly held as inferior to the one in wealth and learning, and to the other in holiness and zeal.
Another difference between the mediæval seculars and the modern clergy is in the superior independence of the latter. ”

“ It is certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the mind. ”

“ We have no wish to speak ill of the Protestant clergy. Most of them are certainly honorable men, estimable husbands and good fathers; but we cannot help observing that they lack the sacerdotal character so conspicuous in the Catholic priest. Their ministry and their teaching cannot fully satisfy the soul; and whenever a calm and unprejudiced comparison is drawn between them and the Catholic clergy, it is strange if the former do not suffer by the contrast, and behold their flocks, little by little, passing over to the side of the Church. ”

“ But it really does seem to me that the Church of England has gone so very wrong in this matter, that it is not right to keep things smooth any longer. The administration of the Communion is one of the very few religious duties now performed by the clergy for which Ordination has ever been considered necessary. Preaching, and reading the Scriptures, is what a layman can do as well as a clergyman. ”

“ The priests influence the people to an extent Englishmen can never understand. The Protestant clergy do not intervene in mundane matters, but the Catholic clergy consider it their duty to guide the people in politics as well as in religion. ”

“ Now, if the clergy did indeed constitute the church, then it would very much resemble the condition of the universities: for it would then be indeed a society very important to the welfare of the whole country, but yet one that was completely distinct, and which had its members, laws, and government quite apart: for men in general do not belong to the clergy, nor are they concerned directly in such canons as relate to the peculiar business of the clergy, nor does the bishop's superintendence, as commonly exercised, extend at all to them. ”

“ When the novel worship that replaced the Holy Sacrifice built new tabernacles for its meagre and unmeaning rites, it invented the singing-gallery and the modern choir, all-sufficing, we acknowledge, for the Anglican "common prayer," and "worship" after the Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and other such modes, but wholly out of place in a Catholic church, and totally inadequate for the holy offices of our religion.
Surely there is no one who will not heartily agree with us that we need a thorough reform, in this respect, in our church architecture. We build chapels, but not churches. ”

“ But against what has been said the objection is brought, that, if the pope and cardinals are not the true and manifest successors of the apostles, then for the same reason others are not, inasmuch as the power of discrimination cannot be based upon the fact that they may be clad in sheep's clothing, and yet may be inwardly ravening wolves, as stated, Matt. 7:15. Here it becomes us to consider the two sects of the clergy, namely, the clergy of Christ and the clergy of antichrist. Christ's clergy rests in its head, Christ, and in his laws ”

“ That was not what he required, He wanted nothing but his human title; and this he obtained by the election of the people and the approbation of the learned. Is the man now a clergyman as contradistinguished from a layman? We may call him so for convenience' sake; but it is a distinction without a difference. In the Romish church the clergy were separated from the laymen by the whole diameter which lies between the human and the divine. In their ordination the priests received a divine commission which the laity did not possess. ”

“ Many persons have become seriously religious, who had been in the habit of considering that the service of God was only a fitting employment for Sunday. In fine, the spirit of God which breathed on the waters at the commencement is now passing over the British nation and impelling it towards Catholic truth.”
Not a few of those who were once distinguished ministers of the Anglican church are now officiating, with great [pg 122] acceptance, as Catholic priests. Of the 264 priests of the diocese of Westminster, there are 40 who were members of the official or law church. ”

“ The Monasteries, of which there were many in England, gradually became defiled, and the clergy were given over to licentious living. The monastic clergy, who were called the regular clergy, and the parish priests, who were called the secular clergy—because they often were married men, and sometimes followed a secular craft to gain a livelihood—were very frequently engaged in disgraceful feuds. The secular and the regular clergy of Canterbury were notorious for their disagreements especially when the subject of dispute was the election of an Archbishop to their See. ”

“ The archbishop’s canons, together with the pastoral letter which accompanied them, bear evidence alike of his zeal and his learning. But something more than a paper reform was required to heal the terrible wounds of the English Church. The [215] only real hope of remedy lay in the formation of an entirely new body of clergy, who should from their youth have been trained in sacred letters, holy living, and ecclesiastical discipline. Church seminaries were needed; and where could these be established save in the newly-founded abbeys now springing up under the government of St. Dunstan? ”

“ The town clergy are, for the most part, too utterly overworked to follow the example of their country brethren. But I have reason to know that they regard such societies, and Natural History in general, with no unfriendly eyes; and that there is less fear than ever that the clergy of the Church of England should have to relinquish their ancient boast—that since the formation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century, they have done more for sound physical science than any other priesthood or ministry in the world. ”

“ There is nothing sacramental in Anglican orders, and there never was, since England broke away from the Church, and, consistently enough, orders were expunged from the Protestant catalogue of sacraments in the very infancy of the Reformation. They still keep up a semblance of orders: they have what they call the diaconate, the priesthood, and the consecration of bishops. A deacon is ordained much in the same way as our own deacons, and he can perform all the duties of the parish, with the exception of the Communion Service. ”