The History of the 1980 Anglican Pastoral Provision

An account informed by contemporary archival records and oral history of the events leading up to the 1980 establishment of canonical permissions to receive married Anglican priests into the Catholic priesthood presents a different perspective than extant media reports and participant memoirs. In this decision can be discerned the confluence of five developments: the sixteenth century English Reformation, which uniquely separated the Catholic and English Churches; the futile attempt to rejoin the two communions in the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement; the Second Vatican Council, which introduced Catholics to a more open stance toward Protestants, and Anglicans in particular, and to a married deaconate; the failure of Anglican-Catholic ecumenical engagement during the 1970s; and the particular interest and force of Bishop Bernard Law. Often considered a liberalizing development, the new policy was actually advanced by some of the most conservative forces in the American Church. The Society of the Holy Cross was more central, while the Pro-Diocese of Saint Augustine of Canterbury was more marginal, to the decision than has heretofore been acknowledged.