Why have relations between the independent Catholic churches and the Anglican and Roman churches been so unhappy over the years?
A. This is a complex matter and has to do both with the theology and ecclesiology of the Anglican and Roman churches and with the perceived threat that the independent Catholic churches have posed to both, particularly through the conditional re-ordination of Anglicans by independent Catholics in the twentieth-century that constituted a serious disruption to Anglican governance. It should be stressed that on a personal level, such relations have often been close and remain so. However, at times the response of the Anglican church in particular to independent clergy has gone beyond mere misunderstanding and amounted to persecution of a very real kind. Nor is such persecution entirely a thing of the past. The image that clergy of the mainstream churches tend to have of the independent Catholic churches is usually based on two polemical books by Henry Brandreth and Peter Anson written over forty years ago from hostile Anglican and Roman perspectives respectively. Anson himself, like a num