The moment when I realised that I could not become a Roman Catholic took place in a restaurant in Islington, when we were arguing about the Roman view of Anglican orders being ‘null and void’. It shot in upon me, with terrible force, that I could not join a church that taught that George Herbert was no true priest.1‘RC v CofE: One marriage, two churches’ The Spectator 31st October 2009.
The words are those of Caroline Moore, in debate with her journalist husband Charles Moore (now Baron Moore of Etchingham), when the latter crossed the Tiber following the Church of England’s ordination of women to the priesthood in 1992. Caroline Moore’s words capture the significance of George Herbert for many of us. Herbert exemplifies something that is to be particularly cherished in the Anglican way.
Ronald Blythe hints at what might lie at the heart of this in his perceptive comment: ‘Lent was Herbert’s season. He was born in Lent, married in Lent, and died in Lent’.