CARDINAL MANNING:

In reply to one paragraph in the letter printed in your last issue from ‘H.A.B.’… Personally, I have received, at the very least, over fifty letters of inquiry and ‘Goodspeed’ from eminent Roman Catholic priests and members of Religious Orders, and well-known Roman Catholic laymen. I was lately shown a letter addressed by his Eminence Cardinal Manning to an Anglican layman, who had requested the Cardinal’s opinion of the O.C.R., in which his Eminence, whilst insisting on the fact that individual secession was the rule of his Church in England, utterly refused to condemn the aims and objects of the O.C.R., stating that every organization which tended to a restoration of unity was to be respected.

William Grant, Registrar of the Order of Corporate Reunion,
Church Times, August 22nd 1879

We have heard just lately that there are now eight hundred clergymen of the Church of England who have been validly ordained by Dr. Lee and his co-Bishops of the Order of Corporate Reunion. If so, Dr. Lee’s dream of providing a body with which the Pope could deal seems likely to be realized.

Catholic Standard and Ransomer, November 22nd 1894

CARDINAL NEWMAN (from a hostile witness):

Personal considerations used to weigh with him, unduly I used to think from the Catholic point of view, when it was a question of condemning the ecclesiastical position of those whom he, like many other good Catholics, shrank from calling heretics. I recollect that in a note to the book which I wrote, I had criticised sharply the proceedings of a somewhat grotesque fraternity, now probably forgotten, called the "Order of Corporate Reunion."

To my surprise he was determined not to let my criticisms appear; and on my standing by them the contention grew so hot, that I felt bound to agree to some modifications, else I saw the book would not be published at all. He explained to me afterwards that one of the chief movers in the "order" was a friend and a connexion of his."

Arthur Hutton, in Personal Reminiscences of Cardinal Newman, p338