This is the week when the Church of England really shines. Candlelit carols in the most beautiful building in the town or village. A sublime language of worship — if you’re lucky in your parish — that has scarcely dated in four centuries. The sense, even now, of taking part in a genuine national event, otherwise unknown outside big sporting, royal and electoral occasions. A profound theological and spiritual tradition, put to the service of the whole nation: it’s a lot, you would imagine, for a CofE clergyman to give up.

And yet, it turns out, a striking number are taking the plunge. According to a new report — commissioned by the St Barnabas Society, a Catholic charity which helps out converted clergy — roughly “700 former clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales, or Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992.” What’s more, almost 500 have become Catholic priests.

Converts’ stories, as the report observes, are highly varied. But common themes do often emerge. For many, the financial strain of being an Anglican priest is too great. “Suddenly,” one former Anglican comments, “you haven’t got a stipend. You haven’t got a place to live, and you’ll be given a date in a month’s time ‘when we need the house back’. Suddenly, you’re just basically on your own now.” The job market isn’t always friendly to those with a theology degree and experience in a very specialised field.

Elsewhere, the strengths of Anglicanism begin to look more like weaknesses: tolerant broad-mindedness comes to be seen as incoherent ambiguity; the status of national church becomes less a privilege than a temptation towards compromise with social norms. As a result, the Catholic Church turns from a rival into a spiritual home and the foundation of truth. It helps that in 2011 Pope Benedict XVI founded the Ordinariate, an official structure for ex-Anglicans to become Catholic, while keeping much of their heritage and tradition. Not all converts take that route, but it has helped to bridge the gap and streamline what can be a bureaucratic and drawn-out process.

The trend of conversions seems likely to continue. According to the report, at any one time there is “a certain pool” of Anglican clergy who occasionally wonder if they should or will become Catholic, of whom, every year, “a very small proportion” actually do. And future doctrinal controversies — same-sex relationships are the current headache — may bring some clergy’s vague unease to the point of crisis.

Still, this week’s Telegraph headline asking whether the Church of England is therefore now “doomed” should, like so many current stories of religious collapse or revival, be taken with a pinch of salt. From an Anglican perspective, the numbers are nugatory: about one in a thousand Anglican clergy become Catholic priests every year, as the Church Times’s Madeleine Davies observes.

For Catholics, by contrast, the impact is massive: since 1992, 35% of new priests, outside the religious orders of monks and friars, used to be clergy in the Church of England. Those of us going to a Catholic Mass this Christmas may well be receiving Communion from a former Anglican. And if Catholicism has experienced some signs of revival recently, the convert clergy deserve much of the credit. They often arrive with years of parish experience, and they tend to have a dedication and sincerity which are inspiring. People who’ve made great sacrifices are worth listening to.

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Dan Hitchens is Senior Editor of First Things and co-author of the forthcoming Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Johnson.

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