Not an inkling of Anglicanism

From the Londodn Telegraph-

Last week I was in a thunderstorm in Medina del Campo when I read about Pope Benedict’s offer to accommodate some Anglican practices of those who wanted to join the Roman Catholic Church. I don’t want now to go on about the substance of the affair. What still intrigues me is the cultural incomprehension I found.

A parallel is Hallowe’en, which falls today. Anyone over 20 must wonder how the day has been overwhelmed so fast by cultural imports – pumpkin lanterns and spooks and the dreadful trick-or-treat.

If Hallowe’en puzzles older English people, why should we be surprised if Spaniards have not the first idea what an Anglican is? To them the prose of Cranmer means nothing. They may say Mea maxima culpa, or the Spanish equivalent, por mi gran culpa, but have never said: “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” Choral evensong on Radio Three is as unknown as Test Match Special. These things matter.

Of course, they are not the essence of Anglicanism, nor is Anglicanism confined to the Church of England. On that, I am sorry to say, many a Spaniard simply cannot credit that an Englishman could honestly believe that his was the “one Catholick and Apostolick Church”.

The Pope is a fan of John Henry Newman, but for most Spaniards it is hard to see what all the fuss was about. They may have stood in the High at Oxford on holiday and dodged the diesel buses, but of Holy Communion in a college chapel, and what it meant for Newman to banish himself from Oxford they have no inkling.

More here-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherhowse/6507008/Not-an-inkling-of-Anglicanism.html