Rebuilding the Faith

Jeremy Boot on the Catholic Revival in England in the 19th Century

I 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.

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. The growing number of vocations too was having its impact. New churches were being built – many, but not all, by Pugin and his friends – and moribund Catholic communities revived. Fine and solemn liturgies were reintroduced, retreats and the sacraments, in a way unheard of for centuries. Priests in public had generally worn lay, not clerical, clothes, but Fr Gentili now wore the Roman collar, never seen in England, and Fr Barberi his striking Passionist habit: clear signs of the Catholic priesthood which they did not seek to hide.

Father Antonio Francesco Davide Ambrogio Rosmini-Serbati had created the Institute of Charity (Rosminians) in 1828, a society which could serve any bishop who might invite them to serve. Fr Gentili had long had an interest in England and in its Catholic revival and was approached by Bishop Baines of the Western District. He arrived in England in 1835. There were plans for a Catholic university at Prior Park School. Although this did not come about, his enthusiasm and activity there brought back many converts and long-forgotten practices – holy medals, religious emblems, processions and devotions to Our Lady. But he was recalled to Italy, briefly, then brought back by George Spencer and put to work at Loughborough. There is a plaque with Fr Gentili’s name on it in the church of Our Lady of the Annunciation. He went on to do much work elsewhere: Bath, Bristol and finally Dublin, where he died of fever during his mission to the poor in 1848.

Fr Dominic Barberi’s story is even stranger. He had known in his heart from an early age that he was destined to convert England, although it seemed an absurd and impossible idea since he did not know England, he was no orator, and never spoke English particularly well. Yet it was he who was to receive the future St John Henry Newman into the Church. He suffered much personally. He had been mocked for his appearance, even been stoned and insulted publicly in the streets. After Mass one day he wept and said he could take no more, but within a year (1843), he had single-handedly received no less than 75 converts. His reputation grew and he went on to receive many more into the Church, including Newman’s closest allies, the trickle of converts from Oxford sympathisers quickly becoming a flood.

Bishop Wiseman had longed to make contact with Oxford and Newman and his friends but had never succeeded. Newman by now had very much isolated himself from meetings and resided now at Littlemore College near Oxford. He continued to dissuade any to convert yet to Rome, but increasingly his friends were drawn to do just this. Fr Barberi however had business at Littlemore in 1845 and to his great surprise, as he was drying his wet clothing by the fireside, he was astonished suddenly to encounter Newman and two close friends, who fell to their knees and begged to be received into the Church.

Meanwhile, shortly after Newman’s conversion, Fr Faber, who was at Ambleside, moving more and more towards Catholic practices, was received in 1845 by Bishop Wareing, Vicar-Apostolic of the Eastern District. With him came many others who went on to form the Brethren of the Will of God, a community in Birmingham. Lord Shrewsbury offered them a centre at Alton and then Cotton Hall, which he had acquired in addition to land near Cheadle. The expanding community was mainly for convert Anglican clergy who had lost their livings.

Newman, on his return from Rome, founded the Oratories of Birmingham and London (under Fr Faber’s care). He was to move to Cotton Hall but did not do so. The Passionists, who by now had grown considerably in numbers, were to take it over as a House of Studies for their English Province. Lord Shrewsbury had once said disapprovingly, “No Englishman would ever become a Passionist” had been proved wrong.

Pugin built churches from one end of the country to the other, and in Ireland. His health collapsed, in 1847, through overwork; deciding to go abroad to recuperate, he at last found himself in Rome, and unimpressed, saw St Peter’s and wrote of it – “Ugly and vilely constructed – bad taste seems to have run riot here.” Unsurprisingly his Continental tour reinforced his own absolute view on “True, Christian architecture,” by which he meant Gothic, and thanked God no such style would ever take root in English churches.

The Oratory in London, under Fr Faber, however was to be built in the classical style and this brought Pugin immediately into conflict with them. Pugin’s criticism and objections were not made quietly. Cardinal Wiseman did not share Pugin’s prejudices or architectural beliefs. There was much correspondence between Shrewsbury and his friend Ambrose Phillips, who, although invited, declined to sit on the Oratory board of advisors, probably mainly out of loyalty to his friend Pugin. The protests came to nothing and although a thorn in their side, Pugin was still much admired and respected. Newman too praised Pugin’s diligence and work but labelled his views as intolerant, which was hardly an understatement.

Pugin’s health deteriorated through overwork and he was even confined briefly to an asylum, as his mental health had suffered too, before returning to his home in 1852 in Ramsgate where he died and was buried near the house he had built himself. Tributes were widespread and Queen Victoria, no less, granted his widow a pension out of the civil list from her admiration of Pugin’s work.

The idea that the restoration of true Christian architecture alone would restore Catholic England from its centuries of stagnation seems, from our modern perspective, idealistic and bordering on the absurd. Yet it was an example of the right man at the right time and the right place. Pugin’s enthusiasm and energy; the backing of the Earl of Shrewsbury; the new vocations and converts in their thousands, and the Oxford Movement, and particularly St John Henry Newman, Fr Faber, and the Oratorians. How could it fail? Those inspirational men along with such co-workers as Fr Barberi and Fr Gentili and their followers were God-given and wrought such marvellous results.

What are we to learn from all this at a time of the undeniable present decline in the Church in this country and worldwide? We need a new Catholic Revival, particularly as people predict many will not return to the Church after the current pandemic. We need good and holy souls with energy and enthusiasm on a scale we have not seen for many years. The 19th century Second Spring not only reversed a seemingly hopeless decline, but did so on a grand scale and quickly. Now we seem preoccupied with containing decline, accepting it, or excusing it. Only God knows how and when the next true renewal will come, but come it will. We should be ready, keep the Faith and not lose heart meanwhile.