Ward, William George (1812–1882)

English theologian and philosopher, who was ordained as a priest in the Church of England but soon converted to Roman Catholicism. His work Ideal of a Christian Church, 1844, proposed that the Church of England should submit itself to Rome once more. Stripped of his Oxford fellowship, he spent the rest of his life promoting Catholic doctrine. He was a firm believer in papal infallibility, promulgated by the First Vatican Council in 1870.

Ward was educated at Winchester and Lincoln College, Oxford, and was a fellow of Balliol College, 1834–45. He became an Anglican priest in 1840, and in the following year strongly defended John Henry Newman's Tract 90, which envisaged reunification of the Anglican Church with Rome. Like Newman, he became a Catholic in 1845. He lectured in moral philosophy at St Edmund's College, Ware, 1851–58, and was granted a PhD in philosophy by Pope Pius IX in 1854. He edited The Dublin Review, 1863–78.