I WAS not entirely surprised to hear that Canon Robin Ward had been received into the Roman Catholic Church. When he was Principal of St Stephen’s House, and I was at Christ Church, Oxford, I had several conversations in which he made it clear that he thought the future of the C of E was pretty bleak, and that the survival of Christian faith in this country would largely depend on Catholicism, whether Roman or Anglican.

Like many of those who “cross the Tiber” from the C of E to Rome, Canon Ward’s chief inspiration was the example of John Henry Newman, whose secession in 1845 rocked the nation. Newman had been a leading figure of the Oxford Movement, and his departure signalled the end of its notoriety, although its influence continued to shape the Church of England into the 20th century. Newman was canonised in 2019 (News, 5 July 2019) and was declared a Doctor of the Church at the end of last year (News, 7 November 2025), a sign of how much his theology has come to be esteemed in the Roman Church. It was not always so.

At the time of his secession, some RCs were suspicious of Newman’s motives. It didn’t help that he had reservations about papal infallibility, although he loyally accepted this when it was declared dogma in 1870.

But his theological instincts were always dynamic rather than static. He did not believe that Christian doctrine should be understood as a once-for-all given; nor did he think that it evolved in any kind of random process, like natural selection. Instead, in An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, he described a process by which aspects of revelation which were implicit, but not necessarily expressed, came to be explicit and recognised as part of the deposit of faith. Examples would be belief in the intercessory power of the saints, and the doctrine of purgatory.

I have always been impressed with this aspect of Newman’s thought. His Essay is still greatly worth reading for its clarity and wisdom, and it is a text that could help anyone considering where they belong in the Church of God.

While it may lead some to join the RC Church, I have sometimes wondered whether Newman’s original RC detractors were right, and his true legacy is to have brought aspects of Anglicanism into RC thinking. After all, the C of E is a strange hybrid, a product of reformed, Calvinist, theology with a conservative approach to liturgy and ministerial practice, and a claim to be “part of” the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. It also shows a capacity for development, which, so far, has gone beyond Rome’s, and all ordained women owe their ministry to that.

I wish Robin Ward well in his onward journey of faith, but, speaking for myself, I would say that Newman provides good reasons for staying where I am.