Authority and the Anglican Mind

The purpose and scope of this paper may be conveniently formulated in the following two questions: what are the obstacles which prevent our fellow countrymen, who are Christian believers, and men and women of good will, from recognizing the Catholic Church for what it is, the visible society in the world, which alone is Christ's Mystical Body and which alone speaks his word with the fullness of his authority; and, how far are these obstacles in the minds of the non-Catholics in question, and how far are they to be looked for in our presentation to them of the Gospel?You will observe that I am prescinding altogether from any discussion of the mystery of the bestowal or non-bestowal of the gift of faith, which, however else we differ about it, we all agree to be a sheerly gratuitous gift of God, given by him when and to whom he wills. I am treating faith, in the context of this discussion, as divine faith in the authority of the Catholic and Roman Church, which seems to me to be very often an extension of faith in those who already possess it on a narrower, but at the same time very real, field. I am proposing to deal only with obstacles in the mind, obstacles, that is, in the non-Catholic mind which, we must presume, make it incapable of having this gift of faith bestowed; or obstacles in our own minds, which lead to the presentation by us of that faith in a form which is in fact incapable, psychologically speaking, of penetrating the non-Catholic receiving mind, and preparing it for the bestowal of the gift

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