5/3/05

The egotistical habit adopted by Anglicans of using a plus sign (cross) before a bishop's name (some priests use it after their name) is an old practice which died out a long time ago, but is now once again common usage. As far as I am aware Michael Ramsey didn't use it (ref. "Which Cassock" - 18/2/05) - he certainly didn't in an old licence which I have signed by him. Does anyone know who re-introduced it and when?s there a particular way of laying out the chalice etc. on the credence table before the service?

REPLIES

Fr. David Cawley - 7/3/05

Most certainly Michael Ramsey normally used the + before his episcopal signature in the majority of cases. I was an ordinand in Canterbury Diocese and well remember his coming to the Diocese - his first diocesan Letter was subscribed + Michael Cantuar: and when he left fifteen years later it was still the same. I have a number of circular letters etc with his name printed with the +, and one treasured personal one (in his own hand) and there is the +. 

He was, however, a very sensitive man, and would omit it when writing for evangelical parishes - forewords to Stewardship Brochures, service Registers and the like.

Geoffrey Fisher did not use it; nor usually did Donald Coggan - though it was sometimes slipped in the Register when he visited a Catholic parish. Robert Runcie, George Carey and the present Primate seem usually to have used it. 

"Colonial" Bishops - of the Frank Weston variety - had long used it, but I think that the first Diocesan to use it regularly in this country was William Wand, Bishop of London from 1945. I may be wrong on that, but not about Michael Ramsey; and a less egotistical man than he it would be hard to name.

Fr David Cawley
St Mary de Castro, Leicester