Charles Davis (theologian)

Charles Alfred Davis (12 February 1923 – 28 January 1999) was an English theologian and priest, and Professor of Theology at St Edmund's College, Ware, later Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alberta. In 1966, he caused considerable controversy in both the Catholic and Anglican communities by publicly leaving the Roman Catholic Church on the basis of an "intellectual rejection of the Papacy."

Davis was born in Swindon to Charles Lionel Davis (1893–1968), a sign painter, and Agatha Ellen Lapham (1893–1979). He was raised as a Catholic and went to school at St. Brendan's Grammar School in Bristol (now St. Brendan's Sixth Form College).

Davis was ordained in 1946 and then had two years of graduate studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He taught at the seminary in St Edmund's Seminary, Ware from 1952 to 1965 and was the first Catholic to give the F. D. Maurice Lectures at King's College London, which were published in 1966 as God's Grace in History. He was also editor of Clergy Review (now The Pastoral Review). He received an appointment to Heythrop College, University of London, in 1965, where he remained for only 16 months.

Davis announced that he was leaving the Roman Catholic Church on 21 December 1966. The decision was widely publicised and caused the Observer to describe his actions as leaving a "crisis of authority" in the Church. The Catholic Herald described his defection from the Church as "a cause for sadness, not only for the church, the man himself, and those who admired him and his work, but because of the inevitable bitterness that invariably follows such a step," before suggesting that it would have been preferable if Davis had been quieter in his exit.

...
Wikipedia