Damien Thompson reports that the Church of England's leading traditionalist bishop is accusing liberals of planning to 'steal churches.' The Bishop of Fulham said,"The other thing that strikes me quite hard is that most of the assets of the Church of England in terms of buildings, schools and other property either come from the pre-Reformation Catholic Church or as a direct result of the Tractarian and Catholic Revival. This property is very much our heritage and inheritance and to suggest that many wish to steal it from us in a very unpleasant form of legalised theft would not be an understatement. I know that many people will be looking at the legal implications lying behind both these matters."What the good bishop seems not to understand is that many British have a decidedly nebulous understanding of church history in England, while exceedingly astute in other realms of study and professionalism. All this "pre-Reformation Catholic Church" business sounds to them like a ruse or con game of some sort, sadly, so deeply has suspicion of Mother Church been engrained by pro-Reformation "historians". For example, one whom I admire in his efforts to fight the Lisbon Treasy astonishingly equated the ramming through of the EU treaty ratification with the Catholic Church trying to keep England in her fold as the Dowry of Mary in the 13th century!
The disestablishment of the monasteries and the martyrdom of Saint Thomas More led to one of the worst conflagrations and manifestations of the primitive Sacred in the West. It also begat what is today the neo-pagan revival in the beautiful isle that is England.
If the traditionalist Anglicans do in actuality become one-with Mother Church once more, it would only be decent for the dying Church of England to allow them their erstwhile beauteous places of worship.
The alternative, otherwise, would be to watch them become restaurants or mosques. And one might ask oneself: Will there be little British (or American) flags in Heaven? Probably not.
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