Christopher John Lane

Writer, Professor, Student of Christian Cultures

Catholicism and the Anglican Patrimony


(cross-listed in Theology)


In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI began establishing ordinariates (special dioceses) for the purpose of receiving Anglicans into full communion with the Catholic Church, while corporately preserving “the Anglican patrimony,” including Anglican “liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions.” He called such traditions “a precious gift nourishing the faith” of ordinariate members and “a treasure to be shared” with the entire Church. This course explores the concept and sources of Anglican patrimony, as well as the history of Anglican-Catholic reconciliation efforts. We will focus especially the seventeenth-century Caroline Divines and the nineteenth-century Oxford Movement and its aftermath, though we also will attend to the medieval Church and to more recent developments.