RC v CofE

Charles Moore

I wish the Pope’s new offer to Anglicans had been available when I became a Catholic 15 years ago. It would have helped avoid many misunderstandings.

In modern times, most Anglicans converting to Roman Catholicism are not trying to repudiate their existing beliefs. Instead, they are recognising that the logic of those beliefs leads them to become Catholics.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult for those close to them to see this. They can feel rejected. Conversion, a word now frowned on by the authorities, sounds sudden and absolute, when in fact the process is neither. The old phrase about ‘the parting of friends’ has a baleful ring. Parents, in particular, often imagine an implicit criticism of them, and ask, as they do when their children become drug addicts, ‘Where did we go wrong?’

None of these problems can be entirely abolished, particularly so long as the non-Catholic world persists in the illusion that becoming a Catholic means sacrificing your freedom to make up your own mind.