FEATURE
Rebuilding the Faith Jeremy Boot on the Catholic Revival in England in the 19th Century
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found a long-neglected book on my bookshelf, Lord Shrewsbury, Pugin and the Catholic Revival by Denis Gwynn, published in 1946. It had survived its neglect very well and I was astonished at its content, not so much the architectural element, but the picture that unfolded of Catholicism and its sudden revival from about 1830 onwards. Augustus Welby Pugin was a convert to Catholicism, a very talented architect, outspoken, eccentric in his dress and manner and a man who believed passionately that the only true architecture was the Gothic style and anything else – especially the classical – was an abomination. He sincerely believed that its revival in 19th century England, would bring about a wonderful revival of the Old Faith, faded and forgotten in England since penal times. In 1836 he had published Contrasts promoting his ideas and lambasting as much the state of the Church of England for the neglect of its architecture as for its state of religion. His views won him many supporters and, predictably, enemies. The state of Catholic England around 1830 was lamentable: a disheartened people, barely visible within society, not well tolerated, and restricted in their civil and religious rights and practice until the Catholic Relief Acts of 1799 and the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which removed most restrictions, even allowing Catholics to sit in Parliament. Most of the faithful worshipped – if they could at all – in Mass centres served by a few fixed or roaming clergy. In London it was easier, with some embassies allowing a small number to attend their chapels and centres for Mass tolerated provided they did not unduly draw attention to themselves. Great houses elsewhere in the country might have chapels at which those within travelling distance could hear Mass from time to time or regularly if there was a resident chaplain. Other areas, for example in Yorkshire and the north west, the faithful fared better and even devotions or processions on feast days were not unheard of, but this was exceptional and isolated.
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Not all the aristocracy had abandoned the Faith. John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury, in particular was one who had not. Pugin and he found they were kindred spirits and were to work together successfully for many years to become major players in Catholic revival. Pugin had added much of his own design and extension to his residence at Alton Towers. Shrewsbury saw that the lack of Catholic churches throughout the country was a serious obstacle to the revival of the Church. He set about funding a considerable number of new buildings. Ambrose Phillips, another convert and landowner of Grace Dieu manor and Garendon Park, joined them to become another influential player in the team of Shrewsbury and Pugin. He had, incidentally, also been influential in the conversion of Lord Spencer’s son, George, of Althorp, Northamptonshire. Much of this new enthusiasm took place at first not in London but in the Midlands. Nottingham (St Barnabas), Derby (St Mary), Birmingham (St Chads) and Oscott, near Birmingham, Cheadle (St Giles), Mount St Bernard’s Monastery, (Cistercians) and Grace Dieu, Leicestershire. Elsewhere, St Edmund’s College chapel, Ware, plans for Balliol at Oxford and St George’s Southwark come to mind, to name just a few. There were to be countless others. Best known to the public was Pugin’s contribution to the rebuilding the Palace of Westminster. Charles Barry, the architect, had won the open competition but, having worked with Pugin, admired his work and engaged him to collaborate with him. The detail in that building makes plain what a huge influence Pugin had on the designs. Pugin received not much above £400 for his efforts however. The presence of new churches certainly put new heart into the downtrodden Catholic communities. For the old religion, not only were the bricks and mortar of Catholic life missing, but all that went with it: liturgy was sparce, sloppily exercised, vestments ragged or dirty. On his travels around the country, Pugin commented that even the Blessed Sacrament was to be found at times in no more than a box; even in noble houses, altars were barely
more than planks with a cover, fittings missing or improvised. Music was usually non-existent, plainsong unknown (the revival had to wait for Solesmes at the end of the century). All the old ways and former dignity of the old Church was lost, Rome another world apart to most Catholics. There were district Bishops at that time but the re-establishment of the hierarchy did not take place until Pius IXth’s encyclical Universalis Ecclesiae of 1850, to considerable political and national protest, when Wiseman became Cardinal. He had been Vicar Apostolic in Westminster, and before that Bishop in Birmingham. Co-incidental with this, and equally important, was the growing movement in the 1830s and 40s in the Anglican Church at Oxford. The Tractarians and the Oxford Movement, in brief, was a group of scholars and churchmen who more and more had become convinced of the need for Reunion with Rome and truly believed that the right way to achieve it was by edging towards union, not by any immediate conversion to Rome, since, as they saw it, abandoning the Church of England, they feared, would simply allow it to drift more and more towards an extreme Protestantism. Fr Frederick William Faber (Blessed) and (Saint) John Henry Newman, among the famous names of these years, shared this opinion with much support from their co-religionists. There was even some sympathy with this idea on the Catholic side since Reunion did seem credible. Newman struggled much with this concept before his submission to Rome. His eventual move in 1845 was to prove a bombshell both to the Church of England and the Establishment in general, but it set the seal as the greatest possible gift of the Holy Ghost to the English Catholic Church at last to re-build something vibrant and strong after years of stagnation. Of equal importance at this time were lesser known figures: Fr Luigi Gentili, a Rosminian, and Fr Dominic Barberi, a Passionist. Both Italian, they brought their (not always well-received) customs with them. Between them, these two clerics alone received many thousands of converts, even from the most unpromising areas.
SPRING 2022
