Charles Lindley Wood, 2nd Viscount Halifax (7 June 1839 – 19 January 1934), was a British Anglo-Catholic ecumenist who served as president of the English Church Union from 1868 to 1919,[1] and from 1927 to 1934.

As a student at Eton he was the favourite of William Johnson Cory, his master, who dedicated his book of Uranian verse, Ionica, to him.

Due to disagreement from Canterbury and Westminster, no constructive dialogue ever came about, however, and the unhoped result of Halifax's actions was the condemnation of Anglican orders as "absolutely null and utterly void" in the papal encyclical Apostolicae curae.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, can be accused of letting this early attempt at rapprochement fall away due to the narrow-minded vision of each other's place in the English church during that era.

Benson, like most Anglican clergy in the power structure viewed any Roman Catholic involvement in England as the "Italian Mission", with not even a toehold worth acknowledging in English Society.