Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali reflects on his path from Anglican bishop to Catholic priest and his vision for unity under the See of Peter.
Newsroom (14/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali’s pilgrimage from the Anglican Communion into full communion with the See of Peter represents far more than a personal journey of faith. It is also a lens through which to view five decades of dialogue, hope, and heartbreak in the story of ecumenism.
His reflections reach back to the epochal moments that shaped Anglican–Catholic relations: the 1966 Common Declaration of Pope Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey, and the Malta Report of 1968. Together, these set the foundation for the Anglican–Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), aiming for nothing less than full communion in faith and sacramental life. Nazir-Ali, long a participant in both ARCIC and its successor body IARCCUM, would spend much of his ecclesial life in pursuit of that vision.
The Promise and Strain of Dialogue
ARCIC’s achievements were remarkable. Its consensus documents on Eucharist, Ministry, Authority, and moral teaching appeared to bridge once-impassable divides. Yet, as Nazir-Ali observed, “each time there was an ‘agreement’… some part of the Anglican Communion would take unilateral action which cast doubt on the strength of these agreements.” The most destabilizing example came with the ordination of women—first to the presbyterate, then to the episcopate—despite pleas from Rome that such moves endangered unity and undermined shared theology of apostolic ministry.
As cultural and doctrinal liberalization accelerated, new ruptures emerged. The 2003 consecration of an openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church of the United States struck at the heart of ARCIC’s fragile coherence. Nazir-Ali recalls “stormy” meetings where Catholic and Anglican colleagues were left wondering how a church could affirm one moral vision in dialogue and enact another in practice. “The disagreement threatened the future of ARCIC,” he writes, “and it has never fully recovered its original mission.”
Seeking a Church of Coherence
For Nazir-Ali, these developments exposed more than a lack of discipline; they revealed a deficiency in Anglican ecclesiology itself. Churches could act autonomously on matters touching faith and order without any mechanism to resolve disputes. “Surely,” he concluded, “what is needed is an adequate teaching authority which… can declare the Church’s position on the matters in dispute.”
He came to believe that only a Church both universal in authority and continuous in apostolic faith could meet the moral crises of modernity. The Catholic Church, guided by Scripture and the living tradition, offered such a structure. The Augustinian vision—securus judicat orbis terrarum, “the secure judgment of the whole world”—became for him not a nostalgic claim but an ecclesial imperative.
Reconciling Scripture, Tradition, and Development
Nazir-Ali’s intellectual pilgrimage led him deep into Catholic theology of revelation. The Reformers’ insistence on sola scriptura had, in his view, opened the path to atomized interpretation. Liberal revisionism, by contrast, abandoned fidelity to Scripture altogether. The challenge, he writes, “is how Scripture and apostolic teaching are to relate to claims of new knowledge.” In this task, the thought of St. John Henry Newman proved decisive. True doctrinal development, Nazir-Ali emphasizes, must preserve continuity with apostolic truth and guard the moral integrity of the Gospel.
The Catholic synthesis of Scripture, tradition, and Magisterium thus appeared to him not as mere hierarchy, but as an organic means of safeguarding revelation. The dual principles of the Vincentian Canon—semper, ubique et ab omnibus—and the Church’s teaching authority together ensure unity amid diversity and protect the faith from collapsing into cultural relativism.
Inculturation and Universal Communion
Drawing on the insights of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II, Nazir-Ali reflects on the necessity of genuine inculturation—where the Gospel engages each culture without surrendering to it. Here again, he found Anglicanism faltering. In its eagerness to accommodate modern Western mores, it risked losing the universality that allows Christians across cultures to recognize one another’s faith. “Nothing can be done,” he writes, “which makes it difficult for churches and Christians from other cultures to recognise the Church of Christ.”
For him, the Catholic understanding of inculturation—rooted in fidelity to the Gospel and unity among the churches—provided the balance between cultural engagement and doctrinal stability that he sought throughout his ministry.
Rediscovering the Sacramental Life
Nazir-Ali’s reflections on ministry and sacrament reveal another key step in his journey. He came to view the Anglican limitation of “two sacraments only” as a theological impoverishment. Drawing on Scripture and tradition, he reaffirms the sacramental nature of ordination, marriage, and anointing of the sick. For him, these are not human constructs but visible signs instituted by Christ for the life of the Church.
His Eucharistic faith deepened in continuity with Catholic doctrine. Quoting ARCIC’s own words, he affirms the “real change in the inner reality of the elements” by which bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ. Through anamnesis, he writes, “Christ’s one and unrepeatable sacrifice is made present to believers so that they may feed on him.” In this, he finds a perfect synthesis of his Anglican heritage and Catholic belief—summed up in the beloved Prayer of Humble Access, now preserved in the Ordinariate liturgy.
Saints, Mary, and the Communion of the Faithful
In his mature theology, Nazir-Ali embraces the Catholic understanding of the communion of saints, intercession of Mary, and prayers for the departed as natural extensions of biblical and historic faith. He traces Mary’s graced vocation from the Annunciation to the proclamation of her as Theotokos at Ephesus, seeing her as both exemplar and intercessor. “All generations will call me blessed,” he notes from Luke’s Gospel, affirming that her honors always point to her Son.
Prayer for the faithful departed, he argues, arises from charity and hope, expressing belief in God’s continued work of purification and restoration.
Faith, Justification, and Catholic Convergence
Nazir-Ali does not repudiate his Reformation roots but reinterprets them through a Catholic lens. Reflecting on the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and the teaching of Trent, he finds shared ground in the understanding that justification and sanctification are two aspects of one divine act. Faith, though primary, does not stand alone; it works through love. The ancient controversy between “imputed” and “infused” righteousness becomes, in his reading, a difference of emphasis rather than opposition.
The Gifts of Anglicanism and the Hope of the Ordinariate
If his critique of Anglican ecclesiology is unsparing, his gratitude for its gifts is equally heartfelt. Nazir-Ali praises Anglicanism’s devotion to biblical scholarship, liturgical beauty, and social witness. Its pastoral creativity and vernacular spirituality, he believes, remain treasures for the wider Church.
For this reason, his entry into the Catholic Church through the Ordinariate was, as he writes, a fulfillment rather than a rejection. “I could not turn my back on the whole of Anglican spirituality and tradition,” he explains. “It is my hope that those of Anglican tradition benefit from belonging to a Church that is truly Catholic, and that they may also bring to it gifts nurtured even in separation.”
A Pilgrim’s Arrival
Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali’s journey is thus not one of conversion in the narrow sense, but of completion—of finding in the See of Peter the fullness of the Church’s unity, authority, and sacramental life. His story stands as a testament to a lifelong fidelity to truth, forged through dialogue, controversy, and prayer. The task, as he sees it, continues: for the Anglican and Catholic worlds, reconciliation remains both the challenge and the promise of the Gospel.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholic Herald
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