Defection is a comment on Cof E’s liberal drift. Conservatives feel their loyalty has been tested

We weren’t supposed to know that Bishop Dr Michael Nazir-ali had become a Catholic just yet: it was meant to be a big secret but someone leaked it. Even the religious can’t resist a little gossip. Dr Nazir-ali is well-known, highly respected, once a candidate for Archbishop of Canterbury, and his journey will be taken as a comment on the liberal drift of the Church of England. It’ll ruffle feathers in Rome, too, where public conversions are not encouraged, even seen as embarrassing.

Dr Nazir-ali has been at the centre of recent debates about the Cofe’s handling of sex-abuse cases, bureaucracy and the rise of woke, described by the Bishop as “jumping on to every faddish bandwagon about identity politics, cultural correctness and mea culpas about Britain’s imperial past”. His friends tell me that he feels there has been a long-term decline in the Church’s seriousness about theology. He has chosen instead, in his words, “clear teaching for the faithful”.

Previous waves of Anglican converts tended to belong to the high church or Anglo-catholic tradition: in the Nineties, a tipping point for many was the ordination of women. Dr Nazir-ali, on the other hand, was often associated with evangelicals. He represents a group of Anglicans who are jumping ship not because they feel the Cofe is too Protestant but because they see it as departing too far from scriptural authority, particularly on moral matters. Dr Nazir-ali was one of the last prominent social conservatives in the Anglican firmament.

The irony is that he joins the Catholic Church at the very moment when Pope Francis seems determined to make Rome look a bit more like Canterbury, having launched an open-ended Synod process that conservative Catholics fear will lead to the process of liberalisation that Dr Nazir-ali has just “escaped”.

He is joining the Ordinariate, a group for ex-anglicans that has its own liturgy. This is a coup for them: it shows they can attract more talent while trying to develop a distinctly English brand of Catholicism, and they are widely regarded as intellectually highpowered. But, again, parts of the Church hierarchy are uncomfortable with the Ordinariate’s very existence, because many of their priests are married, or else because the hierarchy under Pope

Francis does not see itself in competition with the Cofe – and isn’t keen to be seen to be “stealing” its priests.

Justin Welby will now come under renewed pressure. His own theology leans liberal, but he feels a personal responsibility to hold the Communion together, and this becomes harder as the fundamental questions – gender, sexuality and the purpose of the parish church – come under scrutiny.

Conservatives of the stamp of Dr Nazir-ali clearly feel their loyalty has been tested.