The English Catholic
By Dwight Longenecker
English Catholicism sometimes seems like the English weather—cold, damp and a little moldy. Seminaries are closing, mass numbers are dwindling. The once thriving women’s religious orders are nearly defunct and priests are increasingly scarce. Where social clubs, sodalities, and local charities once maintained a vibrant parish life, a few old people struggle to keep things going. Faced with a decline of the old ways, the English bishops have been slow to see the potential of the new movements in the Church. In some cases English bishops have not only ignored the new ecclesial movements but have actually suppressed their activities.
It has not always been so. Just one hundred and fifty years ago the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was finally re-established after three hundred years of state organized oppression. For a hundred years the faith grew rapidly. By the nineteen fifties there was a quiet Catholic triumphalism in England. The faith had not only been restored, but it had grown beyond anyone’s highest hopes. Vatican II brought a new wave of optimism. With the thawing of relations with the Anglicans, English Catholics hoped and prayed for a formal rapprochement between the two historic churches. Since the seventies things seem to have taken a downward plunge. But English weather if famous for changing quickly. With a closer analysis, I believe there are signs for even greater potential in the English Catholic Church.
While things seem to be on the decline, an underlying problem is that the Catholic Church in England is actually moving into a new phase of her life. She has achieved much, but she has yet to discover the confident warmth and enthusiasm that goes with her new status. Instead she seems locked into an unfortunate gray-sky attitude.
This seeming coldness in British Catholicism has deeper reasons than the famous English reserve. Historically, there have been three types of Catholics in England. The aristocratic recusant families are those made famous by Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Re-Visited. These were the handful of old Catholic families who had the land, money and connections to keep the faith despite three hundred years of persecution. Like Br’er Rabbit, the recusant families had learned to ‘lie low’. They practiced the faith in secret, and were trained for generations not to speak out lest they lose what small privileges they had. The second category of Catholics in England were the immigrants. For the first hundred years after the restoration of English Catholicism in 1851 most Catholics were members of an ethnic minority. The common snooty taunt amongst Anglicans was that the Catholic Church was the ‘Irish and Italian mission’. In other words, it was only for Irish laborers and Italian waiters. As poor immigrants the foreign born Catholics were at the bottom of the social order. They didn’t speak the language and had no real voice. The third category of English Catholics were the converts. A few like Cardinals Vaughn and Newman spoke out, but for the most part converts felt that they too had to keep their head below the parapet. As converts other Englishmen viewed them as traitors to queen and country. Within the church they were often expected to take the newcomers’ silent place. As a result of these factors the English Catholic Church existed within a ghetto.
Within the last thirty years, however, things have been changing. The late Cardinal Basil Hume symbolized the changing mentality towards Catholics in England. Hume was very much from the English ruling classes. Although his mother was French, he didn’t seem like a foreigner. He helped the English Catholic Church to be much more a part of the establishment—so much so that Queen Elizabeth referred to him as ‘my cardinal’ and granted him one of the highest English honors, the OBE (Order of the British Empire). At the same time the constituency of the Catholic Church in England was changing. In his book Catholics Denis Sewell points out how Catholics quietly began to take their place in politics, broadcasting, journalism, the military and the arts. Now a much-respected member of the Royal family is a Catholic. So it the leader of the parliamentary opposition, the Prime Minister’s wife and children as well as a long list of entertainers, politicians, writers and academics.
At the same time the ‘immigrant’ families have been assimilated into English society. While the Catholic Church has been quietly rising to respectability, the Church of England finds its influence waning. It is widely perceived to be awash in a flood of agnosticism, moral uncertainty and doctrinal drift. If the media want a Christian opinion of current events they turn more often to the Catholic bishops than the bishops of the Church of England. As a result of all these social factors the Catholic Church finds itself to be a part of the establishment, and like a pauper who discovers a diamond, we are surprised and not sure quite what to do with the newfound treasure.
The English Church certainly has problems, but the seeming malaise in the English Catholic Church may be more a case of adolescent identity crisis than a genuine crisis. English Catholics are learning how to live outside the ghetto. They are discovering how to be the leading voice of Christianity where they had been marginalised and excluded for hundreds of years. As a result the English Catholic leadership are actually facing a huge and unprecedented opportunity. Will they step out and take the quiet and confident lead which the English expect and want? Will they have the vision to see the opportunity and the courage to grasp it?
One of the ways for the Church to grasp this opportunity is to embrace and empower the new ecclesial movements. Through them the laity and clergy are helping the church move into fresh expressions of mission, community and worship. The bishops need to see the opportunities, not the problems which the new movements present. If they do, they will be able to help the English church grow out of its current state of uncertainty and move into a future that is far more sunny than the current gray skies portend. Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, the leader of British Catholics, said in his enthronement address that this is not a time of doom and gloom, but a time of ‘joy and hope’ for the church. With that sort of attitude we can hope for a strong lead to grasp the challenges and opportunities which the new millennium offers for England.
Dwight Longenecker is the editor of The Path to Rome—a collection of British conversion stories.
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