From Lizst to the Carmelites in Kensington: Father Hermann Cohen

Blessed Dominic Barberi, whom we celebrated earlier this week, was not the only nineteenth century missionary sent to England to help bring converts to the Church. David Oldroyd-Bolt writes in The Catholic Herald about Hermann Cohen, "Jewish child prodigy of the piano and gambling addict turned champion of the Eucharist and promoter of nocturnal Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament." He was convert to Catholicism because of the Real Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament at Benediction and Holy Mass:

It was while taking time to discern his vocation that Cohen popularised the practice of nocturnal devotions to the exposed Blessed Sacrament. Having taken advice from several priests Cohen decided to become a Discalced Carmelite. He served his novitiate at the convent of Le Broussey, near Bordeaux, receiving the habit on October 6, 1849 (the feast of the Holy Rosary) and making his religious profession on October 7, 1850.

Cohen, now Fr Augustin-Marie du Très Saint Sacrament, then spent a decade preaching around western Europe, often to crowds of thousands. Liszt and Cohen were reconciled in 1862 during a visit to Rome and remained close thereafter. At Cardinal Wiseman’s request, Pope Pius IX sent Fr Cohen “to convert England, as one of my predecessors sent the monk Augustine”. On October 15, 1863 he, along with several French Carmelites, moved into a house in Kensington. That year, for the first time since the Reformation, an English novice took the habit.

During the Franco-Prussian War, Fr Augustin-Marie went to Spandau prison to minister to the 5,000 French soldiers being held there. Smallpox was rife, and it was while administering Extreme Unction without a spatula to two men that he himself caught the disease. On January 19, 1871, he made his last Confession, received Holy Communion and said his last words: “Now, O my God, I place my soul into Your hands.” He died peacefully the next day.

Fr Cohen’s Cause for beatification was put forward on January 19, 2016 by Archbishop Jean-Pierre Ricard of Bordeaux and Bazas.

In researching this Carmelite foundation in Kensington, I realized that this was the Carmelite church we attended every day for Mass when Mark and I visited London with Monsignor William Carr from May 7 to 14, 2003, Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Simon Stock. What a providential coincidence:

Cardinal Wiseman asked Fr Hermann Cohen, a former professional musician, protégé of Liszt and convert from Judaism, to found a Carmelite monastery in London. In 1862, Fr Hermann came to London and temporarily based himself with the Sisters of the Assumption in Kensington Square. In 1863 he rented a large house in Kensington Church Street with extensive grounds to the south which later became the site of the church. A disused school was converted for use as a chapel. In 1864, the property was bought for £3,500. In July 1865 the construction of a permanent church began, from designs by E. W. Pugin. Built predominantly in the Early English style, the church opened on 16 July 1866. In 1875–76, the community also bought the copyhold of the remaining land along the north side of Duke’s Lane for approximately £4,600 and built there the priory, from designs by Goldie, Child & Goldie (1886–89, photo top right).

During the Second World War, Pugin’s church was severely damaged. A new church was built from designs by Sir Giles Scott, Son & Partners, who had been appointed in 1954.

More about the Carmelite Priory at Kensington here. More about Fr Augustin-Marie du Très Saint Sacrament here. The prayer for his beatification is here (English translation here).

Monsignor Carr, who concelebrated our wedding Mass on April 6, 1991, concelebrated Mass every weekday at Our Lady of Mount Carmel and St. Simon Stock, always proclaiming the Gospel. For Sunday Mass during that visit Mark and I went to the Brompton Oratory because the Oratorians would not, according to the Carmelites, allow Monsignor Carr to concelebrate Mass. He wanted to experience the choir at the Oratory and of course to revel in the connection to Cardinal Newman!

Newman and the Blessed Sacrament

Catholics use different terms for our responses to what the great Dietrich von Hildebrand would refer to as the hierarchy of values, especially in response to Almighty God in the Holy Trinity, and his angels and saints. Most properly: we worship and adore God; we venerate the saints and offer greater devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph. When we participate in the Holy Mass, our response is worship through the sacrifice taking place on the Altar: we offer our sacrifices in union with Jesus Christ's. When we "make a visit" to the Blessed Sacrament in the Tabernacle, or pray before the Host exposed in a monstrance, we adore His Real Presence and demonstrate our devotion. In The Catholic Herald, Father Ian Ker, the great Newman biographer writes about how Blessed John Henry Newman's devotion to Jesus as an Anglican led him to love His Real Presence in Catholic churches:

It is remarkable how it was the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament in Catholic churches that more than anything else impressed and moved Newman, even more than the Mass itself. And it tells us something very important not only about Newman but also about a central aspect of the impact of Catholicism on the imagination of the 19th-century English Protestant convert. Thus Newman is not only making a devotional and spiritual point when he writes to an Anglican friend:

I am writing next room to the Chapel – It is such an incomprehensible blessing to have Christ in bodily presence in one’s house, within one’s walls, as swallows up all other privileges … To know that He is close by – to be able again and again through the day to go in to Him …

Newman is saying something very significant about objectivity and reality. For it was that concrete presence of Jesus in a material tabernacle which, for Newman, above all produced that “deep impression of religion as an objective fact” and which so impressed him about Catholicism. He admired “every where the signs of an awful and real system”. . . .

His almost obsessive preoccupation with this “Real Presence” was more than simply devotional: “It is really most wonderful to see this Divine Presence looking out almost into the open streets from the various Churches … I never knew what worship was, as an objective fact, till I entered the Catholic Church.” . . . 

Newman’s fascination with the reservation of the Sacrament reflects his celebrated philosophical distinction between the notional and real, notions being intellectual abstractions and the real what we personally and concretely experience. Catholics, he insisted, worshipped not dogmatic definitions but “Christ Himself”, believing in the “[Real] Presence in the sacred Tabernacle not as a form of words”, or “as a notion, but as an Object as real as we are real”.

In his Meditations and Devotions, Newman offers this prayer for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament:

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I place myself in the presence of Him, in whose Incarnate Presence I am before I place myself there.

I adore Thee, O my Saviour, present here as God and man, in soul and body, in true flesh and blood.

I acknowledge and confess that I kneel before that Sacred Humanity, which was conceived in Mary's womb, and lay in Mary's bosom; which grew up to man's estate, and by the Sea of Galilee called the Twelve, wrought miracles, and spoke words of wisdom and peace; which in due season hung on the cross, lay in the tomb, rose from the dead, and now reigns in heaven.

I praise, and bless, and give myself wholly to Him, who is the true Bread of my soul, and my everlasting joy.

Newman mentions a visit to the Blessed Sacrament as part of "the round of the day" in his "A Short Road to Perfection":

If you ask me what you are to do in order to be perfect, I say, first—Do not lie in bed beyond the due time of rising; give your first thoughts to God; make a good visit to the Blessed Sacrament; say the Angelus devoutly; eat and drink to God’s glory; say the Rosary well; be recollected; keep out bad thoughts; make your evening meditation well; examine yourself daily; go to bed in good time, and you are already perfect.

The Paris Commune Rises Again! or--Paris is Well Worth a Mass!

This story isn't receiving that much notice, but vandals spray painted various anti-Catholic and anti-establishment phrases at the entrance of that shrine of Eucharistic Adoration in Paris in Montmartre: the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. I've linked to the page that gives more detail about what the slogans said here but won't post them because they are so vulgar. One that caught my eye was translated "1871, long live the commune!"

The cleaner version of the story is here:

France's interior minister says unknown vandals have spray-painted graffiti on Sacre Coeur basilica in Paris.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls condemned the anti-church and anti-state vandalism on the entrance door, walls and floor. Clean-up crews were deployed to erase the words.

The Sacre Coeur, or Sacred Heart, basilica offers eye-popping views of Paris atop the trendy Montmartre neighbourhood. Millions of visitors trek there each year.

Consecrated in 1919, Sacre Coeur was approved as a project by the government decades earlier in an effort to restore moral values following the ill-fated Paris Commune revolt of 1871 in which thousands died.

Mr Valls says authorities are working to identify and arrest the vandals.

When we visited Sacre Coeur in 2012, the Basilica had celebrated a Jubilee of 125 years of Perpetual Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, including through two World Wars--some silly vandals certainly aren't going to make any impact! The vandals did know something about history since they correctly identified the Paris Commune as in opposition to the prayers of reparation and for healing that have been lifted up on the hill of Montmartre since August 1885.

One more less related note--at least two Catholic churches were targeted for an attack by a radicalized Algerian national. The Prime Minister of France noted:

To attack a church is to attack “a symbol of France," the premier said. "The terrorists probably still wanted to hit the heart to divide and destroy. The answer is the gathering, is unity. That's democracy, it's the living together and that is the ability to respond as the French have done on January 11.

"The faithful of the Catholic religion,” he continued, “must be able to worship, go to Mass in perfect serenity. Moreover, it is the most beautiful and strongest of the answers we need to terrorism, which targets France to divide... . France has a great Christian heritage. Cathedrals, churches, chapels, attract tourists, pilgrims, thousands of the faithful around the world. This heritage must be protected, but must remain open, accessible.”

And this in the land of laïcité! 

Bon dimanche! Paris is well worth a Mass!