Preview: The Restoration of the Hierarchy/the Gorham Judgment/Anglican Difficulties: 1850

One hundred and seventy five years ago, three events in England now offer some context to the history of religion in England for us to consider: 

1. On September 29, 1850 Blessed Pope Pius IX restored the Catholic hierarchy in England, an act of "Papal Aggression" according to the Queen and her Parliament;

2. The Gorham Judgment on March 8, 1850 led several more Tractarians to "Cross the Tiber";

3. Oratorian Father John Henry Newman reached out to those Tractarians with his public Lectures on Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Submitting to the Catholic Church, starting in July 1850.

So on Monday, September 29, the feast of the Archangels, we'll consider these 2025 Anniversaries in our Son Rise Morning Show series by focusing on the Gorham Judgment, which, like later decisions in the Church of England, led some on the edge of conversion to "submit" to the Catholic Church. I'll be on the air at my usual time around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central to discuss this anniversary and its importance. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

The Reverend George Cornelius Gorham (1787-1857) was appointed to a "living" (a pastoral position) at the vicarage in Bramford Speke in Exeter. The Anglican bishop of that diocese--the appointment was made by the Lord Chancellor, Charles Christopher Pepys, 1st Earl of Cottenham--Henry Phillpotts, refused to install Gorham in the living because Gorham's views on Baptism weren't orthodox according to Church of England doctrine. He did not believe in the Sacramental Grace of Baptism to be salvific but as conditional. Gorham appealed to the Anglican Bishops Court of Arches and lost on appeal. So Gorham took his cause to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, a secular authority, who overruled the Bishops Court.

To those who'd remained in the Tractarian/Oxford Movement, this was a real blow. Henry Manning, the Archdeacon particularly felt the blow. Newman's "defection" and the bishops' action against the Movement had been bad enough, but here was more proof that the Church of England was an Erastian church, under the control of the secular state which presumed to determine what the Church believed. The Privy Council, not the Court of Arches, had interpreted the Thirty-Nine Articles--this was a real crisis.

Manning and others, including William Gladstone, made an appeal to the bishops to undo this Privy Council action. When that was ignored, Manning and others--but not Gladstone--made the great decision to convert to Catholicism. Among those who joined Manning: Thomas William Allies, William Wilberforce, Jr. and his brothers Robert and Henry Wilberforce, sons of "The Great Emancipator", William Wilberforce, Sr.; John Hungerford Pollen, William Dodsworth, James Hope-Scott, and Edward Badeley.

The context of those conversions, taking place even as Queen Victoria and Parliament felt threatened by Pope Pius IX appointing Catholic bishops to organize Catholic dioceses in England, was momentous. Newman saw the opportunity to reach out to Manning and others, using arguments to answer the kind of difficulties he'd encountered along the way to his conversion, and therefore offered a lecture series in London on those Anglican Difficulties. 

In the wake of the Gorham Judgment, he emphasized the Erastian nature of the Established Church. In the first lecture "On the Relation of the National Church to the Nation" he warned them:

I have said all this, my brethren, not in declamation, but to bring out clearly to you, why I cannot feel interest of any kind in the National Church, nor put any trust in it at all from its past history, as if it were, in however narrow a sense, a guardian of orthodoxy. It is as little bound by what it said or did formerly, as this morning's newspaper by its former numbers, except as it is bound by the Law; and while it is upheld by the Law, it will not be weakened by the subtraction of individuals, nor fortified by their continuance. Its life is an Act of Parliament. It will not be able to resist the Arian, Sabellian, or Unitarian heresies now, because Bull or Waterland resisted them a century or two before; nor on the other hand would it be unable to resist them, though its more orthodox theologians were presently to leave it. It will be able to resist them while the State gives the word; it would be unable, when the State forbids it. Elizabeth boasted that she "tuned her pulpits;" Charles forbade discussions on predestination; George on the Holy Trinity; Victoria allows differences on Holy Baptism. While the nation wishes an Establishment, it will remain, whatever individuals are for it or against it; and that which determines its existence will determine its voice. Of course {9} the presence or departure of individuals will be one out of various disturbing causes, which may delay or accelerate by a certain number of years a change in its teaching: but, after all, the change itself depends on events broader and deeper than these; it depends on changes in the nation. As the nation changes its political, so may it change its religious views; the causes which carried the Reform Bill and Free Trade may make short work with orthodoxy.

He was warning them that the Erastian Church of England would follow the spirit of the age and the interests of the establishment and that "changes in the nation" would be the source of church teaching, not those "Truths divinely revealed, developed, and explained by men of genius in the past . . ."

After 1850, there have been other decisions made in the Church of England that have incited Anglican pastors and laymen to become Catholic, like ordaining women as priests and bishops. Pope Saint John Paul II, with the Pastoral Provision, and Pope Benedict XVI, with the creation of the Anglican Ordinariate, acknowledged the impact of such decisions by welcoming Episcopalian and Anglican clergy to the Catholic priesthood, even if married after their conversions, if they felt the call.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Blessed Pius IX, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Portrait of the Reverend George Cornelius Gorham 

The Church of the Immaculate Conception, Derbyshire, in 1846

I just wanted to draw your attention to a post on the New Liturgical Movement website about the dedication of a new Catholic Church in 1846--thus after Emancipation/Catholic Relief but before the Restoration of the Hierarchy. The lengthy, excellent post was contributed by Sharon Kabel:

In the fall of 1846, construction finished for Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Spinkhill, Derbyshire, England. The event merited a nearly 2,500 word, 4-column write-up in the Catholic Telegraph.

Spinkhill, almost exactly in the middle of England, is a not-insignificant region for students of English Catholic history. It was a Jesuit mission, and a hotbed of resistance during the country’s anti-Catholic attacks. Some of the land was owned by the Pole family (of the great Cardinal Reginald Pole), and one of the teachers at the nearby Mount St. Mary’s College was Gerard Manley Hopkins.

A magnificently detailed history of Immaculate Conception Church has fortunately already been written by Paul D. Walker (Church of the Immaculate Conception, Spinkhill; 1990), and there are numerous shorter histories of the church. It will suffice here to concentrate on a few details of Immaculate Conception’s opening (September 21) and consecration (September 22), that survive because of a thorough 19th century journalist.

In attendance were at least two bishops: Nicholas Wiseman (later Cardinal), and Thomas Walsh. Wiseman, who was to fill Walsh’s episcopal sandals in a few short years, needs little introduction. Walsh lived a fascinating span of years, being jailed as a college student in 1793 during the French Revolution, witnessing Pope Pius VII’s restoration of the Jesuits in 1814 (a particularly important event for Spinkhill), and dying 1 year after the 1848 Revolutions.

Please read the rest there.

Note that both Nicholas Wiseman and Thomas Walsh were serving as Vicars Apostolic in England. Bishop Thomas Walsh was the Vicar Apostolic of the Central District and was called the Titular Bishop of Cambysopolis. Bishop Nicholas Wiseman, the Titular Bishop of Milopotamus, was the coadjutor Vicar Apostolic of the Central District. That's why he succeeded Bishop Walsh. Eventually he would become the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster with the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850.

Image credit: the entrance to the church. Used through a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license 2.0.

Newman's Second Spring on the Son Rise Morning Show

Father John Henry Newman of the Oratory gave his famous "Second Spring" sermon at the Mass of the Holy Spirit at the close of the first Westminster Synod held after the restoration of the hierarchy in England on July 13, 1852. In anticipation of the 166th anniversary of this event, Anna Mitchell will discuss it this morning on the Son Rise Morning Show around 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. During the EWTN hour on Friday, the interview will repeat.

Please listen live here.

In this eloquent sermon, Newman celebrated the revival and renewal of the Catholic Church in England:

But what is it, my Fathers, my Brothers, what is it that has happened in England just at this time? Something strange is passing over this land, by the very surprise, by the very commotion, which it excites. Were we not near enough the scene of action to be able to say what is going on,—were we the inhabitants of some sister planet possessed of a more perfect mechanism than this earth has discovered for surveying the transactions of another globe,—and did we turn our eyes thence towards England just at this season, we should be arrested by a political phenomenon as wonderful as any which the astronomer notes down from his physical field of view. It would be the occurrence of a national commotion, almost without parallel, more violent than has happened here for centuries,—at least in the judgments and intentions of men, if not in act and deed. We should note it down, that soon after St. Michael's day, 1850, a storm arose in the moral world, so furious as to demand some great explanation, and to rouse in us an intense desire to gain it. We should observe it increasing from day to day, and spreading from place to place, without remission, almost without lull, up to this very hour, when perhaps it threatens worse still, or at least gives no sure prospect of alleviation. Every party in the body politic undergoes its influence,—from the Queen upon her throne, down to the little ones in the infant or day school. The ten thousands of the constituency, the sum-total of Protestant sects, the aggregate of religious societies and associations, the great body of established clergy in town and country, the bar, even the medical profession, nay, even literary and scientific circles, every class, every interest, every fireside, gives tokens of this ubiquitous storm. This would be our report of it, seeing it from the distance, and we should speculate on the cause. What is it all about? against what is it directed? what wonder has happened upon earth? what prodigious, what preternatural event is adequate to the burden of so vast an effect?

We should judge rightly in our curiosity about a phenomenon like this; it must be a portentous event, and it is. It is an innovation, a miracle, I may say, in the course of human events. The physical world revolves year by year, and begins again; but the political order of things does not renew itself, does not return; it continues, but it proceeds; there is no retrogression. This is so well understood by men of the day, that with them progress is idolized as another name for good. The past never returns—it is never good;—if we are to escape existing ills, it must be by going forward. The past is out of date; the past is dead. As well may the dead live to us, well may the dead profit us, as the past return. This, then, is the cause of this national transport, this national cry, which encompasses us. The past has returned, the dead lives. Thrones are overturned, and are never restored; States live and die, and then are matter only for history. Babylon was great, and Tyre, and Egypt, and Nineve, and shall never be great again. The English Church was, and the English Church was not, and the English Church is once again. This is the portent, worthy of a cry. It is the coming in of a Second Spring; it is a restoration in the moral world, such as that which yearly takes place in the physical.

Anna and I will talk about how this sermon came just a month after Newman had been tried and convicted of libel--and had experienced the animosity of anti-Catholicism personally in the courtroom and from the judge.

The Ides of March in Scotland, 1878

Pope Leo XIII--one of my favorite popes--was elected to the  Chair of St. Peter on February 20, 1878. One of his first acts was to restore the Catholic hierarchy of Scotland on March 15, 1878, just as Pope Pius IX had restored the Catholic hierarchy of England in 1850. As in England, so in Scotland, Vicars Apostolic had been appointed after James Beaton, Cardinal Archbishop of Glasgow, died on April 24, 1603. The first new Archbishop of Glasgow was Charles Eyre; in St. Andrews and Edinburgh, John Strain became Archbishop; the sees of Aberdeen (Bishop John MacDonald), Argyll and The Isles (Bishop Angus MacDonald), Dunkeld (Bishop George Rigg), and Galloway (Bishop John McLachlen) were also established.

Twenty years later, Pope Leo reflected on this restoration in the encyclical Caritatis studium issued on July 25, 1898 (one of 85 he wrote during his 25 year papacy!):

To Our Venerable Brethren, the Archbishops, and Bishops of Scotland.

Venerable Brethren, Health and Apostolic Blessing.

The ardent charity which renders Us solicitous of Our separated brethren, in nowise permits Us to cease Our efforts to bring back to the embrace of the Good Shepherd those whom manifold error causes to stand aloof from the one Fold of Christ. Day after day We deplore more deeply the unhappy lot of those who are deprived of the fullness of the Christian Faith. Wherefore moved by the sense of the responsibility which Our most sacred office entails, and by the spirit and grace of the most loving Saviour of men, Whom We unworthily represent, We are constantly imploring them to agree at last to restore together with Us the communion of the one and the same faith. A momentous work, and of all human works the most difficult to be accomplished; one which God's almighty power alone can effect. But for this very reason We do not lose heart, nor are We deterred from Our purpose by the magnitude of the difficulties which cannot be overcome by human power alone. "We preach Christ crucified . . . and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor. i. 23-25). In the midst of so many errors and of so many evils with which We are afflicted or threatened, We continue to point out whence salvation should be sought,exhorting and admonishing all nations to lift up "their eyes to the mountains whence help shall come" (Ps. cxx.). For indeed that which Isaias spoke in prophecy has been fulfilled, and the Church of God stands forth so conspicuously by its Divine origin and authority that it can be distinguished by all beholders: "And in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be prepared on the top of mountains and shall be exalted above the hills" (Is. ii. 2).

2. Scotland, so dear to the Holy See, and in a special manner to Us, has its place in Our care and solicitude. We love to recall the fact that over twenty years ago the first act of Our Apostolic Ministry was performed in favour of Scotland, for on the second day of our Pontificate We gave back to the Scottish people their Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. From that day forward, with your efficient co-operation, Venerable Brethren, and that of your clergy, We have constantly sought to promote the welfare of your nation, which is naturally inclined to embrace the truth. And now that We are so far advanced in years that the end cannot be delayed much longer, We have thought it meet to address you,Venerable Brethren, and thus give your nation a further proof of Our Apostolic affection.

3. The terrible storm which swept over the Church in the sixteenth century,deprived the vast majority of the Scottish people, as well as many other peoples of Europe, of that Catholic Faith which they had gloriously held for over one thousand years. It is most pleasing to Us to revert to the great achievements of your forefathers on behalf of Catholicism, and also to allude to some of those,and they are many, to whose virtue and illustrious deeds Scotland owes so much of her renown. Surely your fellow-countrymen will not take it ill that We should again remind them of what they owe to the Catholic Church and to the Apostolic See. We speak of what you already know. As your ancient Annals relate, St. Ninian, a countryman of yours, was so inflamed with the desire of greater spiritual progress by the reading of Holy Writ, that he exclaimed: "I shall rise and go over sea and land, seeking that truth which my soul loveth. But is so much trouble needful? Was it not said to Peter: `Thou are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it?' Therefore in the faith of Peter there is nothing wanting, nothing obscure,nothing imperfect, nothing against which evil doctrines and pernicious views can prevail, after the manner of the gates of hell. And where is the faith of Peter,but in the See of Peter? Thither, thither I must repair, that going forth from my country, from my kindred, and from my father's house, I may see in the land of the Vision the will of the Lord and be protected by His Temple." (Ex Hist. Vitae S. Niniani a S. Aelredo Ab. cons.) Hence, full of reverence he hastened to Rome, and when at the Tomb of the Apostles he had imbibed in abundance Catholic truth at its very source and fountainhead, by command of the Supreme Pontiff he returned home, preached the true Roman faith to his fellow-countrymen, and founded the Church of Galloway about two hundred years before St. Augustine landed in England. This was the faith of St. Columba; this was the faith kept so religiously and preached so zealously by the monks of old,whose chief centre, Iona, was rendered famous by their eminent virtues. Need We mention Queen Margaret, a light and ornament not only of Scotland, but of the whole of Christendom, who, though she occupied the most exalted position in point of worldly dignity,sought only in her whole life things eternal and divine, and thus spread throughout the Church

the luster of her virtues? There can be no doubt she owed this her eminent sanctity to the influence and guidance of the Catholic Faith. And did not the power and constancy of the Catholic faith give to Wallace and Bruce, the two great heroes of your race, their indomitable courage in defence of their country? We say nothing of the immense number of those who achieved so much for the commonwealth, and who belong to that progeny which the Catholic Church has never ceased to bring forth. We say nothing of the advantages which your nation has derived from her influence. It is undeniable that it was through her wisdom and authority that those famous seats of learning were opened at St. Andrews, Glasgow, and Aberdeen, and that your judicial system was drawn up and adopted. Hence We can well understand why Scotland has been honoured by the title of "Special Daughter of the Holy See."

St. Ninian, pray for us!
St. Columba, pray for us!
St. Margaret of Scotland, pray for us!
St. John Ogilvie, pray for us!

Image credit: St. Ninian, ora pro nobis!

September 29, 1850: Universalis Ecclesiae

"Am I the Queen of England or am I not?" So said Queen Victoria when news of the Restoration of the English Catholic hierarchy was announced in 1850. Pope Pius IX issued the Papal Bull "Universalis Ecclesiae" on September 29th that year. The first Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman issued a pastoral letter to English Catholics, "Out of the Flaminian Gate," on October 7, 1850. His tone of exultation offended the Queen and her government, especially in its praise of the Pope.

As Cardinal Wiseman progressed on the Continent toward the British Isles he heard about the anger expressed in the British papers. Queen Victoria expressed herself in the strongest terms and the Cardinal responded by publishing a pamphlet and giving lectures that indicated the Catholic Church had no intention of opposing Her Majesty's Government in any way.

Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, introduced a bill in Parliament which passed making it illegal for the new Catholic Bishops to be physically present in their new dioceses--a law which was never enforced by the next government under Gladstone. There were still flare ups of anti-Catholic rioting and violence, but the Cardinal Archbishop had toned down his rather triumphalistic rhetoric and settled down to the restoration of simple things, like schools, chapels, seminaries, and churches. Because of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851, the hierarchy did not restore the pre-Reformation sees. 

The illustration above, from Punch, represents the anti-Papal reaction to the Restoration of the Hierarchy. Indeed, effigies of Cardinal Wiseman were added to the festivities on Guy Fawkes Night that year.

In 1950, Pope Pius XII broadcast a radio message to English Catholics, celebrating the centenary of the Restoration of the Hierarchy:

That ancient Hierarchy was first established by Our august Predecessor St. Gregory the Great, and for nearly a thousand years it was linked to this Holy See by the bonds of filial obedience: a thou-sand years, during which a glorious legion of saints honoured your country and a wholesouled devotion to the Mother of God made it worthy to be called  "the dowry of Mary". 

When those bonds were severed and by a mysterious providence of heaven the blackness of night settled down on the Church of Augustine and Thomas and Edmund, of Wilfrid of York and Hugh of Lincoln, then it was, God raised up that generation of amazing heroes, trained in the school of a crucified Leader to fear neither rack nor rope, who came to sustain the flickering light of Faith that would not die. With what veneration and hallowed memories one prays before the painting of the King of Martyrs in the Venerable English College chapel, while before the mind's eye there pass a Sherwin, a Campion, a Southwell and a host of others cleric and lay. They died, and the Faith in England lived on. 

Almost three centuries passed, and Our predecessor Pius IX of blessed memory decided the time had come for the Catholic Church in England to resume its proper place in the normal constitution of the Church, and by the Apostolic Letter "Universalis Ecclesiae" he re-established in England and Wales the Hierarchy of Bishops Ordinary, each to rule the Catholics in his own diocese.

Pope Pius XVII mentioned the progress Catholics had made in England and highlighted the achievement of Newman and Manning, while also mentioning two more martyrs:

It were too long to call the roster of all those who deserve a grateful remembrance today; but We cannot pass over in silence two names that add particular lustre to the pages of your nineteenth century history: John Henry Newman, most human, most eloquent expositor of the word of God, whose immortal sermon keeps fresh the memory of the First Synod of the restored Hierarchy; and Henry Edward Manning, champion of the working-man, herald and apostle of an age of increasing social justice and harmony. 

We know full well, Venerable Brethren, that this progress has not been achieved without difficulties and trials. Our heart goes out in sympathy especially to the bishops and priests of Wales, where Catholics are few and scattered, and where poverty and loneliness must so often be the companions of those valiant apostles who would enlarge the kingdom of Christ on earth. To them We say : look to your illustrious martyrs, Blessed Richard Gwyn and Blessed David Lewis, and go forward with courage and good cheer.

In 33 years, they'll celebrate the bicentennial!

Dawson on Victiorians and Catholicism

After posting on the History Today book review yesterday, I found this essay by Christopher Dawson on ENGLISH CATHOLICISM AND VICTORIAN LIBERALISM in the EWTN Library:

The hundred years that have elapsed since the restoration of the English Hierarchy [in 1850] have been a time of slow but uninterrupted progress for English Catholicism [Dawson thus was writing in 1950]. There have been no spectacular triumphs and no catastrophic defeats, but step by step the Church has been gradually recovering her lost position in the life of the nation. And this is no small achievement when one considers how completely the face of the world has changed during the last century: how the old European order and the new liberal order that aspired to take its place have both alike been swept away by new forces that were hardly perceptible in 1850, so that Europe itself and the millennial tradition of Western civilization are now in process of dissolution.

In 1850 English Liberalism, having surmounted the crisis of Chartism, was settling down to enjoy the fruits of the new order that it had created. The collapse of the old regime on the Continent in 1848 and the failure of the revolutionary movements to establish a stable democratic order had combined to strengthen the prestige of English institutions and ideals, not only in our own eyes but in those of Europe. Consequently, it is not surprising that the restoration of the Hierarchy and the reappearance of Catholicism as a living power in nineteenth-century England should have been regarded as a challenge to the spirit of the age, an act of "papal aggression." For the liberal rationalist and the conservative Protestant alike, the Papacy seemed the embodiment of those forces of reaction against which the modern world was in revolt.

The Great Exhibition of 1851 marked the final achievement of the Victorian compromise in which all the leading elements of English society found their place. High Tories like the Duke of Wellington, cosmopolitan pacifists like John Bright, Christian idealists and scientific rationalists, artisans and capitalists, all came together under the leadership of the Queen and the Prince Consort to celebrate the triumphs of science and industry and the dawn of a new era of universal peace and enlightenment. But there was no place for the English Catholics in this festival of national and international unity. The unpopularity of the Oxford conversions combined with that of Irish Nationalism and that of the Papal Government caused Catholics to be regarded with hostility and suspicion by Liberals and Conservatives alike. In their attitude to Catholicism there was nothing to choose between Liberals like Lord John Russell and Tory extremists of the type of Newdegate and Sir Robert Inglis.

Yet in spite of all this, the deeper intellectual tendencies of the age were far less hostile to Catholicism than one would suppose from the expression of popular opinion in Press and parliament. The great writers of the Victorian age, such as Carlyle and Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, were as a rule highly critical of the optimism and selfcomplacency of Victorian liberalism.

Dawson goes on to cite cultural influences like the Romantic and Victorian interest in the Middle Ages, and of course the rise of Catholic intellectual converts like Newman and Manning.

But even as he comments on this rise and influence of Catholics in English Society, Dawson notes that it proceeded along the lines of Victorian liberalism and secularization:

Yet throughout this period the secularization of English culture has proceeded almost without a check, so that our position today is no longer that of a Catholic minority in a Protestant society, but that of a religious minority in a secular or neo-pagan civilization. We have become so accustomed to this change that we are apt to forget its tremendous implications. During the last hundred years English Catholicism has developed under the protection ofthe Victorian compromise. We have accepted the Victorian principles of individual freedom, religious toleration and the limited character of the State as elementary conditions of existence which hardly needed to be defended. But, in proportion as civilization becomes secularized, all these principles and rights lose their political expression in totalitarian States.

Dawson's argument reminds me of Russell Shaw's American Church and recalls Owen Chadwick's classic study of the rise of secularism in the nineteenth century. The Catholic Church in both the United States and in Britain accepted the values of the modern democratic state as the means of increasing influence and effectiveness. The great pitfall of this process is that those values wane as secularism waxes:

Today all the basic liberties which were formerly regarded as essential conditions of modern civilization are everywhere questioned and often completely abolished, and the new secularist ideologies are establishing themselves as exclusive dogmatic anti-religions which demand the total surrender of the mind and will. It is true that this country is still relatively immune. A feeble gas-jet of freedom still flickers in the dilapidated Victorian basement. But it is obvious that English Catholicism cannot rely on the continuance of the conditions which prevailed during the first century of its restored existence. Sooner or later it must come up against the same forces that prevail in the rest of the world. No doubt this will involve great changes in our apologetic, which, like so much else, is an inheritance from the Victorian age, and which has been dominated for a century by the long- drawn-out controversy with Anglicanism. Today these familiar controversies are overshadowed by the world debate between Christianity and atheism, and we have to deal not with the validity of Anglican orders but with the existence of the human soul and the ultimate foundations of the moral order.

The ever prophetic Christoper Dawson!!

Blessed Pius IX and England

Today is the feast of Blessed Pope Pius IX (Pio Nono), the second longest reigning Pope in the history of the Catholic Church--St. Peter is the longest. He came to the Papacy at a crucial time in the 19th century and contributed a great deal to the transformation of the Papacy--bowing to the loss of the Papal States in the wake of Italian nationalism--into a more spiritual and moral guide for the world. His long reign is controversial, of course, as he began in a more "liberal" spirit and ended in a most "conservative" position regarding the interaction between the Church and the modern spirit of democracy, etc. He battled the Kulterkampf of Bismarck's Germany and established many dioceses and archdioceses in the United States of America.

During his reign, he proclaimed the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1854 and the First Vatican Council proclaimed the Doctrine of Papal Infallibility in 1870. In 1850, Pope Pius IX issued the Papal Bull "Universalis Ecclesiae" on September 29, restoring the English Catholic hierarchy, much to the displeasure of Queen Victoria and her government. This was a real test of the toleration of Catholics just established in 1829 with Catholic Emancipation, and the English government failed the test.

More on Blessed Pope Pius IX here.

The Penultimate Episode of The English Reformation Today!

Today's topic is the Nineteenth Century and Emancipation at last! It's so appropriate that it comes in the same week as Blessed John Henry Newman's feast day, October 9.

I've divided this broadcast into four parts, one for each momentous date:

I. 1829--Emancipation for Catholics at last--meant the removal of all penal and recusancy laws, now really religious freedom as a human or even civil right, but a legal measure of toleration. I'll examine the reasons for this policy change and some reaction.

II. 1845--Anglican minister and Tractarian/Oxford Movement leader John Henry Newman becomes a Catholic on October 9, 1845. This date gives me the opportunity to make a few comments about the Oxford Movement and then about Newman's contributions to the Catholic community and Church in England as an Oratorian, teacher, and writer.

III. 1850--the Restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy by Pope Pio Nono; this provoked some violent reaction from Queen Victoria, the Prime Minister and some rioters! But it meant that the Catholic Church could start building again: cathedrals, churches, schools, convents, monasteries, etc. I'll highlight the great architect of the Catholic revival, A.W.G. Pugin.

IV. 1870--the First Vatican Council defines the dogma of Papal Infallibility. William Gladstone, former Prime Minister, takes offense and publishes a pamphlet warning that Catholics just cannot be loyal English citizens when the Pope is Infallible. Father John Henry Newman wrote his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk to prove that Gladstone was wrong--because he did not understand either the rights and duties of conscience or the reality of Papal Infallibility in faith and morals:

There are two more crucial points Blessed John Henry Newman makes about conscience: first, that we must follow our conscience but second, that we must take care to form our conscience: “Conscience has rights because it has duties”. Since conscience reflects not on individual judgment and consistency but on God’s Law, we have to work to understand God’s Law. This is where Newman again addresses the authority of the Church and Christ’s Vicar on Earth, the Pope, who are God’s representatives alluded to above.

Jesus left us the Church and He established the Papacy because “the sense of right and wrong, which is the first element in religion, is so delicate, so fitful, so easily puzzled, obscured, perverted, so subtle in its argumentative methods, so impressible by education, so biased by pride and passion, so unsteady in its course, that, in the struggle for existence amid the various exercises and triumphs of the human intellect, this sense is at once the highest of all teachers, yet the least luminous; and the Church, the Pope, the Hierarchy are, in the Divine purpose, the supply of an urgent demand.” Therefore, Newman notes that every Catholic owes the teaching authority of the Church at the very least the benefit of the doubt and further observes that the burden of proof is upon the individual, not the Church. Newman warns us that the individual “must have no willful determination to exercise a right of thinking, saying, doing just what he pleases”. . . .

Newman’s Letter to the Duke of Norfolk addressed contemporary concerns but his discussion of conscience has been timeless: it is quoted in the Catechism in paragraph 1778 and Pope Benedict XVI has reflected upon it. Speaking in December 2010 on the beatification of Newman during his visit to Scotland and England that September, Pope Benedict highlighted it as one of Newman’s great contributions. For Newman, he said, “conscience means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart.”

And I suppose I could add one more date if there is time (if not, at least you have some information about it here and can meditate upon it at your leisure):

V. 1879--Pope Leo XIII makes Newman a Cardinal and Newman warns against liberalism, the great danger to religion and truth:

“Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.”

 I welcome all listeners of Radio Maria US to my blog, whether you're listening on one of their radio stations or on line or through one of their apps. I invite you to call in with questions and comments toll-free at 866-333-MARY(6279). Just a reminder, too, that podcasts of previous episodes of The English Reformation Today are available on the Radio Maria US website. Next week: Catholic Revivial and Converts--Two Popes visit the British Isles and the Personal Ordinariate!

Remember the Blaine! Amendment, That Is

PLEASE NOTE: I will be on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday Morning, February 13 at 7:45 a.m. Eastern; 6:45 a.m. Central to discuss the connections commentators are seeing between the HHS Mandate and what I call the "Tudor Mandates" (Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Elizabeth I's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity). Listen live here.

This September 27, 2004 article from America magazine even has an appropriate title for our current situation in the USA: "A Mandate for Anti-Catholicism: The Blaine Amendment". The issue now is health care; the issue in the 1870s was public education. (Of course, the underlying issue was and is freedom of religion.) Thomas E. Buckley provides an excellent survey of post-Civil War America, facing issues of unity and diversity:

The advancement of public schools represented a key element in that program as well as an important part of the Republican drive for cultural homogeneity in post-Civil War America. The schools would lift up Southern blacks and Americanize newly arrived immigrants, especially Irish and German Catholics. Following the program laid out by Horace Mann in the 1840’s, public education would inculcate a nondenominational Protestant morality through Bible reading, hymn singing and the use of the McGuffey readers. The result would be a law-abiding, hard-working, broadly based middle-class society that embodied the values of capitalism embedded in Republican ideology.

Some Republican politicians, like President Ulysses S. Grant, James Gillespie Blaine, Judge Elisha Hurlbut of New York, and future President Rutherford B. Hayes began to believe that the Catholic Church and Catholic schools stood in the way of those goals. Thus they began to use language much like Queen Victoria's government, headed by Lord John Russell did when after Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Catholic Church re-established a hierarchy in 1850.

Judge Elisha Hurlbut, for example, proposed a new Constitutional amendment:

It would empower Congress to ban “any foreign hierarchical power...founded on principles or dogmas antagonistic to republican institutions.” Some read in Hurlbut’s proposal the opening salvo of an anti-Catholic, nationalistic campaign akin to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, which was gathering steam in Germany. Moreover, the campaign to identify the United States as a Christian Protestant nation, which had begun during the Civil War, now revived with the efforts of Supreme Court Justice William Strong and the National Reform Association to amend the U.S. Constitution’s preamble to read: “Recognizing Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, and...the Lord Jesus Christ as the Governor among the nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government,” we the People, etc.

President Grant concurred with these sentiments and Blaine followed up on them:

the president proposed that Congress approve a constitutional amendment formally separating church and state, provide for the taxation of church property and forbid the states from allocating public funds to any schools that taught “sectarian tenets.” Sectarian meant Catholic. A week later Blaine offered his amendment on the floor of the House. It included the most popular of the Grant proposals. After extending the language of the First Amendment to the states, it provided that “no money raised by taxation in any state for the support of public schools, or derived from any public fund thereof, nor any public lands devoted thereto, shall ever be under the control of any religious sect, nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations.”

As the University of Chicago law professor Philip Hamburger has demonstrated in his superb study, Separation of Church and State (Harvard Univ. Press, 2002), Blaine’s proposal directly challenged Catholic efforts for school funding while leaving nondenominational Protestantism securely entrenched in public education.

Although the amendment passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives, it failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary in the Senate. Nevertheless, state legislatures began to adopt Blaine amendment type clauses in their constitutions. Meir Katz of The Beckett Fund provides detail about them in this report.

Again, I am not drawing absolute comparisons between the USA in the nineteenth century and today. This history, like the conflicts between the Catholic Church and Queen Victoria's government in nineteenth century England, represents another phase in the ongoing "dialogue" between Church and State. I don't think anyone in the executive or legislative branches of our government is speaking this kind of language, but you can clearly see, if you read even a few comments on any news website covering or commenting on the HHS Mandate, the old nativist anti-Catholic attacks. Unfortunately, they are now combined with mentions of the priest sex-abuse crisis of the last decade.

St. Vincent Pallotti's London Connection

Today would be the memorial of St. Vincent Pallotti if t'were not Sunday (I once applied for a position with the Pallotines here in Wichita; the order was setting up an office of their Society of the Catholic Apostolate--I had to write a long essay in which I waxed eloquent, to no avail, on the correspondences between Newman's Oratory and Pallotti's Society), the nineteenth century founder of the Pallotines. He died on January 22, 1850 and was canonized in 1963 by Blessed Pope John XXIII. His London connection?--St. Peter's Italian Church on Clerkenwell Road. According to the parish website:

In the early 19th century the Saffron Hill area of London was a poor neighbourhood of densely populated slum-ridden alleys. By 1850, nearly 2000 Italian immigrants had settled there, chiefly employed as itinerant workers - street musicians, organ-grinders, street vendors or as artisans producing plaster figures, picture-frames, looking-glasses, barometers and other scientific instruments. They worshipped at the Royal Sardinian Chapel, Lincoln's Inn Fields, because they had no church of their own.

In 1845 St. Vincent Pallotti, a RC priest and founder of the S.A.C. (Pallottine Fathers), thought of constructing a church in London for Italian immigrants.
The Irish architect, Sir John Miller-Bryson, modelled the church on the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome.

Originally it was meant to hold 3,400 people, but the plans were scaled down. It was consecrated as "The Church of St. Peter of all Nations" on 16 April 1863 and, at that time, it was the only church in Britain in the Roman Basilica style.

and

St Vincent Pallotti, the priest asked by Cardinal Wiseman to establish St Peter's, was born in Rome in 1795. His parents Pietro Paolo and Magdalena were the decisive religious influence during his youth. He was ordained priest on the 16th of May 1818. After his ordination, he committed himself to keep alive the Christian faith of the people of Rome. His pastoral presence on all fronts urged him on to become an animator of collaboration among clergy, religious and laity. He held very strongly a belief in the then new concept that every Christian, not just those in the holy orders, has from Jesus a mission for the Church and for the world.

To put this concept into action he founded in 1835 the Union of Catholic Apostolate. This movement brought together priests, monks, nuns and lay people as a community for the common purpose of living and spreading awareness of the Good News to all of the world.

St. Vincent died on the 22nd of January 1850 at the centre of his new community, the church of San Salvatore in Onda, Rome. He was beatified by Pope Pius XII on 22 January 1950, and proclaimed a Saint by Pope John XXIII in January 1963.

Another Papal Bull Irritates Another English Queen

"Am I the Queen of England or am I not?" So said Queen Victoria when news of the Restoration of the English Catholic hierarchy was announced in 1850. Pope Pius IX issued the Papal Bull "Universalis Ecclesiae" on September 29th that year. The first Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Nicholas Wiseman issued a pastoral letter to English Catholics, "Out of the Flaminian Gate," on October 7, 1850. His tone of exultation offended the Queen and her government, especially in its praise of the Pope:

And in nothing will it be fairer or brighter than in this, that the glow of more fervent love will be upon it. Whatever our sincere attachment and unflinching devotion to the Holy see till now, there is a new ingredient cast into these feelings; a warmer gratitude, a tenderer affection, a profounder admiration, a boundless and endless sense of obligation, for so new, so great, so sublime a gift, will be added to past sentiments of loyalty and fidelity to the supreme see of Peter. Our venerable Pontiff has shown himself a true shepherd, a true father; and we cannot but express our gratitude to him in our most fervent language, in the language of prayer. For when we raise our voices, as is meet, in loud and fervent thanksgiving to the Almighty, for the precious gifts bestowed upon our portion of Christ’s vineyard, we will also implore every choice blessing on him who has been so signally the divine instrument in procuring it. We will pray that his rule over the Church may be prolonged to many years, for its welfare; that health and strength may be preserved to him for the discharge of his arduous duties; that light and grace may be granted to him proportioned to the sublimity of his office; and that consolations, temporal and spiritual, may be poured out upon him abundantly, in compensation for past sorrows and past ingratitude. And of these consolations may one of the most sweet to his paternal heart be the propagation of holy religion in our country, the advancement of his spiritual children there in true piety and devotion, and our ever-increasing affection and attachment to the see of St. Peter.

As Cardinal Wiseman progressed on the Continent toward the British Isles he heard about the anger expressed in the British papers. Queen Victoria expressed herself in the strongest terms and the Cardinal responded by publishing a pamphlet and giving lectures that indicated the Catholic Church had no intention of opposing Her Majesty's Government in any way.

Queen Victoria's Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, introduced a bill in Parliament which passed making it illegal for the new Catholic Bishops to be physically present in their new dioceses--a law which was never enforced by the next government under Gladstone. There were still flare ups of anti-Catholic rioting and violence, but the Cardinal Archibishop had toned down his rather triumphalistic rhetoric and settled down to the restoration of simple things, like schools, chapels, seminaries, and churches. Because of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1851, the hierarchy did not restore the pre-Reformation sees.

Lord John Russell, Future Prime Minister

John Russell, a younger son of John Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford, was born on 18 August 1792. He would serve twice as Prime Minister during the reign of Queen Victoria, from 30 June 1846 to 23 February 1852 and from 29 October 1865 to 28 June 1866. He was a Whig, as was his father and his father before him. Lord John Russell received the title Earl Russell in 1861--he was the grandfather of Bertrand Russell, Nobel Prize winner and 3rd Earl Russell.

The Russell family estates, which John would not inherit as younger son, include Woburn Abbey, which is on the site of a Cistercian Abbey built in 1145. The last abbot of Woburn Abbey was Robert Hobbes, founded guilty of treason and executed. More about Robert Hobbes here.

The abbey was suppressed in 1538. There had been an Eleanor Cross at Woburn Abbey, built at the command of King Edward I to mark the procession of her body from Lincoln to London after she died in November, 1290--it was destroyed probably as the abbey was. Edward VI granted Woburn Abbey to Sir John Russell in 1547, but it did not become a family home until 1619.

During his first term of office, Lord John Russell had to deal with the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850 by Pope Pius IX. When Nicholas Wiseman's celebratory letter was distributed, Russell termed the action "Papal Aggression". More about that crisis here.

In the House of Commons before he became Prime Minister, Lord Russell was instrumental in the passage of the great Reform Act of 1832, extending the franchise. He had also been in favor of Catholic Relief in 1829.

Restoration and Rioting

On June 29, 1852, Anti-Catholic riots disturbed the peace of the new diocese of Shrewsbury, created by Pope Pius IX in September, 1850. The diocese extended past the border of Wales, including Shropshire and Cheshire in England, and Carnarvon, Flint, Denbigh, Merioneth, Montgomery, and Anglesey in Wales. There were no more than 20,000 Catholics in the diocese during the reign of its first Bishop, James Brown.

News of the restoration of the hierarchy by Pope Pius XI had not been well received in 1850 and the anger had evidently not been entirely placated by the first Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman's attempts to assure the English people that the bishops were coming to England only to minister to the Catholics of England, not to invade and establish temporal power.

In Stockport, on June 29 a large mob attacked the Church of Sts. Philip and James; the parish priest managed to escape after hiding the Blessed Sacrament. The mobs piled up vestments, service books, and furniture in the street to burn. At another church, St. Michael's, the Host was desecrated.

Remember that the Gordon Riots occurred two years after the Catholic Relief Act of 1778--the threat of what the English people considered Papal Aggression continued to provoke fear and hatred two years after the minority group of Catholics in western England and eastern Wales opened chapels and practiced their faith. Anger at Irish Catholic immigrants in England fleeing the potato famine contributed to this violence, too.