**‘ANGLICANISM IS GOING TO TIP INTO THE SEA’ — CANON EDWARD NORMAN LEAVES FOR ROME**

Canon Edward Norman has written a scathing attack on the Church of England and is converting to Catholicism. A former Reith lecturer and Dean of Peterhouse, and currently Chancellor of York Minster, Norman is an ecclesiastical historian with the long face and high cheekbones of a Tudor churchman. He speaks fast and quietly, polishing his dry words as he speaks, so that his prose and conversation are almost indistinguishable.

In his book *Anglican Difficulties: A New Syllabus of Errors*, Norman delivers a ferocious assault on the Church of England—not from a traditionalist perspective, but from that of a leading Church intellectual. He writes: “There is a big hole at the centre of Anglicanism — its authority. I don’t think it’s a Church; it’s more of a religious society.”

Of the General Synod: “Every disagreement, in seemingly every board or committee, proceeds by avoidance of principled debate. Ordinary moral cowardice is represented as wise judgment; equivocation in the construction of compromise formulae is second nature to leaders.”

He also critiques evangelical bishops, suggesting they compromise principle for preferment: “Discreetly, behind the twitching curtains of the evangelical bishops’ houses, the playing pieces are being set out on the board.”

Canon Norman will retire from York Minster’s chapter in May 2004 and will be received into the Roman Catholic Church later that year by Fr Dermot Fenlon at the Birmingham Oratory. He has already begun attending Mass discreetly, in collar and tie. Nevertheless, he stresses that his retirement and conversion are “quite independent developments.”

His conversation is laced with aquatic metaphors: “Just because the Anglican tub is leaking is not in itself an argument for jumping into another one.” Over lunch in an Italian restaurant near the Minster, he announces: “Anglicanism is going to tip into the sea.” Then, with a thin smile: “But it will all come out in the wash.”

Norman was originally in favor of women’s ordination, but has reversed his position: “We were told that a whole dimension to humanity was missing from the ministry, but that enrichment hasn’t happened.” He adds: “Women emphasise caring, relationships, suffering, healing and love. Men are interested in truth, ideas, conflict, sin, wickedness and virtue. Those are caricatures, but there was wisdom in Our Lord entrusting the office of the priesthood to men.”

Though once labeled Margaret Thatcher’s favorite clergyman, Norman insists he has “no politics. My only ideology is classical Christianity, without reservation.”

He remains intellectually unpredictable — even quoting gay atheist filmmaker Derek Jarman in a Minster lecture, including Jarman’s barbed critique of Dr George Carey: “Moon-faced and pudgy, a clerical Bunter, the school bully in a lurex mitre.”

Touring the cathedral, he dismisses York Minster’s famed nave as “a very poor example of the late-Gothic style… put up on the cheap — the decorative devices are straight out of a stonemason’s catalogue.” Cathedrals, he says, “can be a hindrance as well as an aid to faith… They can lead people to luxuriate in emotion. I’d rather they were convicted of their sins.”

Soon, Canon Norman will leave what he calls “the ideological chaos of Anglicanism” and enter into full communion with the successor of Peter. He plans to retire in Brighton — “And I shall be properly retired,” he says.

When asked about his departure, he replies: “Catholicism is what I have always believed, though I did not have the wit to realise it. You might call it a shaft of light before the sun sets.”