If the Church of England is serious about its commitment to pay reparations in atonement for past wrongs, there is an obvious community it should attend to: British and Irish Catholics. After all, the Anglican Church was founded precisely to suppress and replace the Catholic Church, first in England and later in Ireland.
While the Church of England has widely publicised its regret over past links to the slave trade, Anglican leaders have not mentioned the Catholic community. In an acute piece of analysis for this publication, Joseph Shaw raised the question of the moral seriousness of the reparations debate – it is hard to take seriously if the Church of England does not consider its obligations to right the wrongs perpetrated against Catholics. Without ignoring Shaw’s rebuttal of those arguing for reparations for links to slavery, based on the Church of England’s own reasoning the most obvious case for reparations is to the Catholic faithful.
