Sad Closure

Fr Christopher Basden remembers St John’s Seminary, Wonersh, and one of its great characters, Fr Freddy Broomfield

Not long before the rupture of lockdown we marked the centenary of the birth of Fr Frederick Broomfield, one of the great characters of the staff at St John’s Seminary Wonersh, Surrey, teaching History and Liturgy from 1959-1982. As last summer saw the sad closure of Wonersh, I feel it opportune to write this tribute to the seminary itself and to some of the characters who made it such a special place.

One might wonder why on earth Freddy Broomfield was one of the most popular and loved Profs at the Seminary. After all he was the oldest member of staff: shy, stiff, stuffy, irredeemably English, politically incorrect and maddeningly inflexible. On the other hand, he devoted his life to the formation of future priests. He alone of the staff would dutifully come down nightly to the Dive; the only place after Compline where talking was allowed. He put up with our adolescent nonsense and gave as good as he got, turning his big guns on any heresy or stupidity, much to our amusement.

What an unbelievable tsunami of radical change he lived through! Our Rector, Mgr James McConnon, cruelly disabled by polio, had taught philosophy since Ordination in 1950. In the tumult of 1968, he took on the reins of the Rectorship, summarily seeing the backs of dozens of seminarians on what came to be known as Black Thursday. Bravely standing up against the whinging of The Tablet about Wonersh Seminary ‘bypassing the Aggiornamento’, the update of Vatican II, he bravely attempted to restore order in a situation of unparalleled chaos. I vividly remember on one St John’s Day, a bevy of Canons encircled him. ‘What is it like being Rector, Jim?’ asked one. He responded: ‘In the old days it was like driving a train but today you cannot even see the tracks!’ This reveals the utter uncertainly of where the Church was heading.

Both Fr Broomfield and our Rector had seen life, serving in the forces in World War II, but they were gentlemen of restraint, only gradually realising how the shifting mores of the permissive society had in fact considerably poisoned the life of the Seminary and the Priesthood.

Freddy’s dicta were famous and memorable. To this day they flood back into my mind with the challenges of pastoral quagmires. Here are just a few: ‘Liturgically some call it spontaneity, I call it sloppiness;’ ‘A presbytery without a woman’s touch will soon become a barracks;’ ‘Mysticism often begins in mist and ends in schism;’ ‘A mitre is an artificial extension of a Natural Vacuum;’ ‘The genus student never changes;’ ‘… and he was NOT Ordained;’ ‘Pontifical Degrees? – Roman ‘O’ Levels;’ ‘Do you read French? … the best things ARE in French;’ ‘My dear Bernard (Longley) the day you become a Bishop is the last day you will hear the truth;’ ‘My dear Christopher you are incurably baroque;’ ‘A gentleman is he who uses a butter knife even when alone;’ ‘Prejudice is a state of mind induced by experience;’ ‘Nothing goes out of style so quickly as fashion;’ ‘Lacy Albs? – that famous Rubrician finds them more fitting in a bordello than in the sanctuary;’ and my favourite - ‘When there is nothing left to conserve, it is time to react!’

Freddy couldn’t lecture, his speaking voice, even liturgically, was so stilted it was imitated by all. Every year when he would get to Henry VIII he would say ‘… Anne Boleyn – gentlemen … (and before he could continue, they chimed in, having been primed) ‘she was a slut.’ ‘Precisely!’ he concurred.

Where he really excelled was in the seminar. In Church history he enthused about the development of Papal power and the East West Schism. He was passionate about the principles underlying the liturgy and shared his discoveries of the tradition of the East (‘A priest is an Icon of Christ, leading the people in worship’). He left us with a real appreciation of the spiritual sense of Scripture, Typology and he loved the Carmelite Mystics. (‘The Little St Teresa is John of the Cross for the man in the street.’) At my first ever seminar he asked how many of us had read C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles, saying we could get no better theology. At least I had begun!

Freddy was a most popular Spiritual Director. He enjoined us to grasp the basics of the spiritual life and the foundation of what it is to be a priest. He steered us away from ‘feelings’ and charismatic ‘spiritual gluttony’. God knows how many good men fell by the wayside before or after Ordination, victims of a toxic zeitgeist, for which despite his warnings they had little other protection. In the recent banter from on high about ‘clericalism’ we hear little about genuine ‘priestliness’. This Freddy had, wearing always the immemorial cassock (‘The cassock is the dress of this house.’). Most of the staff had adopted the bourgeois clerical suit and others the proletarian grey or else dispensing with clerical dress altogether.

Freddy was kind and generous to those in crisis, sick or needy. He banged on about physical fitness, enjoying exercise and swimming. Many turned their nose up that he was not ‘pastoral’ while in fact he had lived in a parish longer than any other of the staff, only coming to live full time at Wonersh in 1971.

He left Fr Gerard Bradley (whom he had Baptised) to carry the torch of this priestly vision at Wonersh 2001-2017, along with Fr Martin Thompson of the National Seminary in Albania and several of us who have endeavoured to accompany young men grappling with a vocation.

At only 63, Freddy was ‘retired’. He did not fit in to the new regime, whose novelties have proved ultimately shallow and sterile. The preceding desperate plunge into psychological counselling was to some extent deplored by Freddy if substituted for a genuine immersion in the spiritual life.

Mgr McConnon ended his days dejected and depressed by the downward trajectory of the English Church, its utter decline and the collapse of the priesthood. Mercifully he and Freddy did not live to see the end of Wonersh, for which they had given their lives. Freddy on the other hand used to joke: ‘The study of Church history is a most consoling subject.’

Towards the end of his life Freddy reconsidered the Liturgical ‘Reforms’. Before, while teaching, they had been deemed sacrosanct. (‘Mystery is not Mystification!’) witheringly disapproving of some of the liturgical changes, Martin Thompson squealed, ‘But that is not what you taught US!’ ‘No, I’ve changed my mind.’ was the answer. For any liturgical academic to change his mind can only be a rare example of humility.

Before the end, he volunteered to help the LMS although confessing to me he found kneeling as a Deacon or Subdeacon quite an effort. I will never forget the last time I saw Freddy – it was late Advent 1999 – and he had come to see us sing Traditional Sunday Vespers at St Bede’s, helped by the then St Austin’s Press, (‘Those bows are completely exaggerated!’) Afterwards there were drinks followed by a hearty supper for the lads. Freddy could stand endlessly nursing his glass, gently pontificating with all. Fr Leszek Kłos (now also with me in Ramsgate) asked, ‘You like Pope John Paul II?’ The response: ‘I am not a Papolater’ and to me, ‘I don’t like Pop Popes!’

We thought the timing of his passing entirely appropriate. On the morning of December 31 1999 he did not appear for Mass, his breviary was marked having completed Compline the night before. He died just before the dawn of the Millennium, the hype of which he didn’t approve (‘They got the date wrong.’) He left a generous financial legacy to the LMS and he left to so many of us an anchor of traditional wisdom, wit and witness forever valid in a whirlpool of ‘modernity’ and anarchy!