An age of faith

Homily preached by Mgr Antony Conlon in St Augustine’s, Snave

Almost to the day and hour, exactly 460 years ago, two clerics made a special visit to the church of St Mary in the Marsh, Kent. They had been sent by Cardinal Pole, who was Archbishop of Canterbury at that time. Their task, to carry out a routine visit of the church, checking the extent of recovery and replacement within the building of the various articles required for Catholic worship, as well as the overall state of the parish and its community of faith. This was in the reign of Queen Mary, which lasted from 1553 to 1558. In the previous six years, under her half-brother Edward, churches throughout the kingdom were systematically despoiled and stripped down to what the government decided was adequate. In every case, it wasn’t much. Research into the period reveals that millions of pounds’ worth of books and manuscripts, stone altars, sculpture, stained glass, stonework, plate and statuary were destroyed, or alienated away. Within a very short space of time the entire patrimony of an age of faith, previously paid for and maintained by the parishioners themselves, was lost forever.

Immediately following the coronation of Mary in October 1553, government policy changed. Though reunion with Rome was delayed, Catholic worship was restored by parliament. Parishes were now required to make every effort to repair or replace according to their means, and within a certain time frame, all the essential equipment for the Mass and the sacraments. Visitations of parishes were the method by which the progress, or lack of it, could be verified. Preserved for posterity is the manuscript record of what the visitors found during one such visit around Kent in September 1557. The returns for the church, called then Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae in Marisco, indicate that there were then sixteen families in the parish, with no curate to serve them. The Rector lived elsewhere. No figure for Easter communion is available and it was recommended that the parishioners should attend church at Warehorne and certify by Christmas that they were doing so until they got a curate. Several things considered necessary for the Catholic rites were still not provided. They included a sanctuary lamp; furniture for the side-altar; an altar-frontal; an extra vestment and Lenten veils and brass candlesticks. The chancel and church generally was in a state of disrepair and the parsonage barns were falling down. Deadlines for the implementation of suggested replacements and improvements vary from three to nine months. As the main requirements for Mass, such as stone altar, chalice and paten are not mentioned; the assumption must be that they had been met by the parish. Entries for a few other parishes in Kent show that some still lack stone altars, fonts and even silver chalices.

The record of the state of St Mary’s gives us a kind of snapshot of just how it appeared two years before the Elizabethan change. It also reveals in part the efforts of people to recover a way of life and a routine of worship gradually, then drastically, obliterated over a period of 20 years. But the true quality of their belief after so much change is difficult to assess. We cannot say with certainty in every case that fervour matched the response to the legislation to restore Catholicism. Those in their teens would have been schooled strongly in the new religion and would have found it difficult to adjust to Catholic revival. The majority of the elderly would have welcomed the return to the faith of their youth. But there must have been lots of confusion and uncertainty too in general. What can be argued from the accumulation of churchwardens’ accounts, reports, diplomatic correspondence and diaries of that time is that the country still remained largely attached to the old religion. The optimum number of those firmly committed to the new was never more than 10 percent and in most cases much less than that, and only in a number of places where trade and commerce brought both immigrants as well as religious ideas from the continent.

It is useful at times to reflect to some extent on past experience and received wisdom or information regarding it. At one time –and it probably still happens in many places of education - the historic change from Catholicism to the established Church was taught as both popular and therefore inevitable. The evidence suggests something much less clear cut. Drastic change is, as a rule, unwelcome to most people. The English had been second to none in their devotion to the Mass and the cult of the saints. Religious change had effectively destroyed customs and social occasion giving shape and coherence to the community. Change then was something divisive, imposed and foreign. Something similar in execution if not in degree has occurred within our lifetime. As a pastor charged with offering the Mass and teaching the principle doctrines of the Mass and interpreting scripture to the faithful according to the received wisdom of the Church, I often find myself deeply disturbed by the conflicting energies that have affected it in the decades of my life. Chief among them has been the liturgical revolution that removed one form of the Mass and replaced it by another. Apologists for this change advance arguments in favour of accessibility, simplicity, modernity and interactive character. But the consequent loss of a cultural coherence and continuity stretching back into antiquity seems not to disturb them at all. The ability of antique forms and rituals to define reality and convey true meaning is an invaluable inheritance of human society. Within those forms there are degrees of success: some better than others. Pageantry and pomp appeal to the senses and convey in accessible visual terms powerful realities. Even with political change, care is taken to preserve the rituals of state because they have served well in the past. The age-old symbols and signposts of state ceremonial reveal the otherwise unseen realities of government and express continuity as well as authority.

The Mass, as the Catholic Church has always understood it, is a mystery centred around an action of God himself intervening decisively in human history. It is essentially something done by God, in and through the mediation of the crucified humanity of His Son benefitting the whole human race. The old liturgy evolved from apostolic times absorbed the essence of this concept. In the new it is much less evident. That is why it is such a blessing that we can have the alternative form of the Mass to re-focus our attention on the agency of divine mercy, rather than the almost ceaseless activity of the congregation. Offering Mass today links us to the folk of the early 16th century, who in the same language and with some variations in the rite but an identical canon, united in worship of the Most Holy Trinity. As the title of St Mary in the Marsh and many others throughout the kingdom proves, Our Lady was always a primal figure of devotion in those far off days. Leading us to her Son, may she never be far from our devotion, and may her prayers aid our efforts and bring consolation and comfort to all who invoke her name.

St Augustine's, Snave is a redundant church in the care of The Romney Marsh Historic Churches Trust, who kindly give permission for Mass to be celebrated there each year.