By Brad Miner The Anglo-American poet, T.S. Eliot (born in St. Louis), wrote "The Hollow Men" in 1925. The poem concludes with this haunting quatrain: This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. The poem appeared two years before Eliot joined the Church of England. (He had grown up in Unitarianism.) Eliot had a kind of conversion experience in Rome, falling to his knees in front of Michelangelo's 'Pietà, but despite his love for the Italian language and Dante, Catholicism seemed. . .foreign to him. Having settled into England and Englishness, the established religion there made sense to him, albeit in its "High church" version, often called Anglo-Catholicism or Anglicanism. What would Eliot think of the Church of England today? By the time he died in 1965, he had become deeply concerned about the leftward drift in British culture. Eliot's major prose works – The Idea of a Christian Society (1939) and Notes Towards the Definition of Culture (1948) – are extended laments that England was ceasing to be Christian. And it's just this downward and escalating slide from orthodoxy that seems to be driving so many English young people, men especially, toward Catholicism in 2026. Something similar is going on in the U.S. Some are calling it a "quiet revival," although that may be because liberal Anglicans don't want to hear about it. Here are some facts that speak loudly about what's happening: According to the Catholic Herald, among churchgoers aged 18–34, Catholics now make up 41percent compared to just 20 percent Anglican – an astonishing turnaround from just 2018, when Anglicans made up 30 percent of that group and Catholics only 22 percent. Attendance at Mass continues its upward trajectory, and the numbers would likely be higher were it not for COVID shutdowns that, in Great Britain as in the United States, broke patterns of religious practice – for Catholics, Anglicans, and everyone else. In my view, the Anglican Communion was dead on arrival 492 years ago. But let me say straight away that there have been, still are, and likely will be many great and holy adherents of the Church of England. C.S. Lewis is a notable example. The problem is the Church of England's genesis. It all begins with a divorce, of course – of Henry VIII, who was hardly a holy man, from his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, an exemplary woman. The daughter of the Spanish monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, Katherine had come to England in 1501 to marry Henry VII's oldest son, Arthur. She was 16, and he was 14. Five months later, Arthur died. Katherine stayed in England, effectively becoming the Spanish ambassador – among the first female ambassadors in European history. Then, in 1509, she married her brother-in-law, the 18-year-old Henry VIII. They were amicably joined, although Henry had a roving eye, as monarchs often do. In 1510, Katherine miscarried (a daughter). In 1511, their son, Henry, was born but died 52 days later. This was followed by two more stillbirths, both sons, in 1513 and 1514. Their only other child, the future Mary I, was born in 1516. "Bloody Mary" the Protestants would call her, although she never outdid her father's anti-Catholic atrocities. Finally, Katherine gave birth again, but this infant was also stillborn. Henry wanted a son, not a daughter, as his heir. Thus: the "King's Great Matter." Henry sought an annulment from Pope Clement VII in 1527. The pope refused, and the religious crisis ensued. Henry had received the title "Defender of the Faith" from Pope Leo X in 1521 for his written defense of the Seven Sacraments, Assertio Septem Sacramentorum, a broadside against Martin Luther and a robust defense of papal authority. At the start of the annulment controversy, the king argued that Leviticus forbade his marriage to Katherine: "Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother's wife" (18:16) and called such a union "an unlawful thing." (20:21) ...
