The report

Before the 2017 Symposium, one of our trustees came across a reference, in an old copy of Theology, to a substantial Report commissioned in 1946 by Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher and published the following year: CATHOLICITY: A Study in the Conflict of Christian Traditions in the West.

The full text of this report appears here courtesy of Mr Wayne Kempton, Archivist and Historiographer of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, who had made it available on line, and has graciously given us permission to include it here. The Report was published in 1947 by the Dacre Press, long extinct. We have been unable to trace anyone who might have a copyright interest in it.

It falls into five chapters:
Foreword and Preface
Introductory
Ch. 1. The primitive unity
Ch. 2. The background of the Western schisms
Ch. 3a. Orthodox Protestantism
Ch. 3b. The Renaissance and Liberalism
Ch. 3c. The post-Tridentine Papal Communion
Ch. 4. Fragmentation and synthesis
Ch. 5. The Anglican Communion

We also include a synopsis of the Report.

The group that produced the report was chaired by Dr Michael Ramsey, then van Mildert Professor of Divinity in Durham. Dom Gregory Dix, of Nashdom Abbey, and the Revd Fr A. G. Hebert, SSM, acted as secretaries. The other participants were the Revd E. S. Abbott, Dean of King’s College, London; the Revd H. J. Carpenter, Warden of Keble College, Oxford (and later Bishop of Oxford); the Revd Dr V. A. Demant, Canon and Chancellor of S. Paul’s Cathedral; T. S. Eliot; the Revd Dr A. M. Farrer, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford (and later Warden of Keble); the Revd Canon F. W. Green, Vice-Dean of Norwich Cathedral; the Rt Revd E. R. Morgan, Bishop of Southampton; the Revd R. C. Mortimer, Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology in the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church (later Bishop of Exeter); the Revd A. Reeves, Rector of Liverpool and Canon Diocesan of Liverpool; the Revd C. H. Smyth, Canon of Westminster, Rector of S. Margaret’s and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; and the Revd Dr L. S. Thornton, Community of the Resurrection.