Oxford Movement - Receptions Into The Roman Catholic Church

Receptions Into The Roman Catholic Church

One of the principal writers and proponents of the Tractarian Movement was John Henry Newman, a popular Oxford priest who, after writing his final tract, Tract 90, became convinced that the Branch Theory was inadequate and was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. He was ordained a priest in that church in the same year and later became a cardinal. He was one of a number of Anglican clergy who became Roman Catholics during the 1840s who were either members of, or were influenced by, the Tractarian Movement. Some opponents of the Oxford Movement viewed this as proof that the movement had sought to "Romanise" the church.

Other major figures influenced by the movement who became Roman Catholics included:

• Thomas William Allies, Church historian and former Anglican priest
• Edward Lowth Badeley, ecclesiastical lawyer
• Robert Hugh Benson, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, novelist and monsignor
• John Chapman OSB, patristic scholar and Roman Catholic priest
• Augusta Theodosia Drane, writer and Dominican prioress
• Frederick William Faber, theologian, hymn writer, Oratorian and Roman Catholic priest
• Gerard Manley Hopkins, poet and Jesuit priest
• Robert Stephen Hawker, poet and Anglican priest, received on his deathbed
• James Hope-Scott, barrister and Tractarian, received with Manning
• Ronald Knox, Biblical texts translator and formerly an Anglican priest
• Henry Edward Manning, later Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster
• George Jackson Mivart, biologist, later excommunicated by Cardinal Herbert Vaughan
• John Brande Morris, Orientalist, eccentric and Roman Catholic priest
• Augustus Pugin, architect
• William George Ward, theologian
• Benjamin Williams Whitcher, American Episcopal priest