As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the death of C.S.Lewis be prepared for a slew of articles on the famous writer.

The author of this article claims that Walter Hooper–C.S.Lewis secretary (who is now a Catholic himself) believes Lewis was on the way to the Catholic faith.

 while Lewis never completed the journey from Anglican to Catholic, he was well on the way; according to his last secretary Walter Hooper – whom am I proud to call a good friend – it was inevitably and only a matter of time.

Although evangelicals have adopted him as one of their own, this sacramental, liturgical Christian who smoked and drank was always a Catholic at heart.

I’m not so sure myself. Lewis had a pretty strong streak of Northern Irish Anti-Catholicism in him, and more than that, he held the deeply Protestant view that all denominations were provisional. The Roman Catholic Church for him was just another denomination, and all of them were necessary evils. He had a highly Protestant, individualistic understanding of his faith. While he practiced an Anglicanism which was increasingly ‘high’ and believed in Purgatory and prayers to the saints–his seeming Catholicism was really never more than a high Anglicanism. I think he had a long way to go.

The best book on the subject is Joseph Pearce’s C. S. Lewis & The Catholic Church–a new edition which has just come out –to which I’ve contributed the foreword.