Oxford Movement - Early movement, Converts to Roman Catholicism

A movement within the Church of England, beginning in 1833 at Oxford, which sought the revival of high doctrine and ceremonial; also known as Tractarianism. Initiated by ‘tracts’ written by Keble, Newman, and Pusey, it opposed liberal tendencies in the Church and certain Reformation emphases. It led to Anglo-Catholicism and ritualism, and has remained influential in certain quarters of Anglicanism.

The Oxford Movement was a loose affiliation of High Church Anglicans, most of them members of the University of Oxford, who sought to demonstrate that the Church of England was a direct descendant of the Christian church established by the Apostles. the Tractarians were also called Puseyites (usually disparagingly) after one of their leaders, Edward Bouverie Pusey, Regius Professor of Hebrew at Christ Church, Oxford. Other prominent Tractarians included John Henry Newman, a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford and vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, John Keble, Archdeacon Henry Edward Manning, Richard Hurrell Froude, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Robert Wilberforce, Isaac Williams and Sir William Palmer.

Early movement

The immediate impetus for the Movement was the secularisation of the Church, focused particularly on the decision by the Government to reduce by ten the number of Irish bishoprics in the Church of Ireland following the 1832 Reform Act. Its leaders attacked liberalism in theology, and more positively took an interest in Christian origins which led them to reconsider the relationship of the Church of England with the Roman Catholic Church. The movement postulated the Branch Theory which states that Anglicanism along with Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism form three "branches" of the one "Catholic Church." In the ninetieth and final Tract, Newman argued that the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, as defined by the Council of Trent, were compatible with the Thirty-Nine Articles of the sixteenth-century Church of England. In particular it brought the insights of the Liturgical Movement into the life of the Church.

Converts to Roman Catholicism

As mentioned above, the principal writer and proponent of the Tractarian Movement was John Henry Newman, who after writing his final tract, Tract 90 became convinced that the Branch Theory was inadequate and that in conscience he had to convert to the Catholic Church. His conversion set off a series of similar conversions to the Catholic Church among Anglican clergy, and intellectuals throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which to a lesser extent continues to the the present.

Other major figures who became Catholic as a result of the movement were:

Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jesuit priest and renowned poet Henry Edward Manning, later created a Cardinal of the Catholic Church John Chapman OSB, became a Benedictine scripture scholar John Dobree Dalgairns, along with John Henry Newman, entered the Congregation of the Oratory and was ordained a Catholic priest. Thomas William Allies, Church historian and former Anglican minister. theologian, hymn writer, Oratorian and Catholic priest Lady Georgiana Fullerton, English novelist Robert Stephen Hawker, former Anglican priest of Catholic leanings, deathbed Catholic convert James Hope-Scott, English lawyer, influential Tractarian, converted with Manning George Jackson Mivart, English biologist banned from Oxford University for entering the Catholic Church Henry Nutcombe Oxenham, former Anglican minister; Catholic Church historian.