Anglo-Catholicism

“ The life of Catholicism in England is evinced by its numerous associations. In every place where it has taken root, Catholics enrol themselves in societies, confraternities, or institutes for social, intellectual, and religious purposes. In no diocese do these flourish more than in that of Westminster. ”

“ Such transformations are unthinkable, yet the fact remains that the English nobility and gentry did once go over en masse to the new communion, and that they have been as conservative of it ever since as if it were still the faith of [Pg 125] their ancestors. Anglicanism is every whit as strong in England as the older Church is in France, though Roman Catholicism is a natural growth formed by the evolution of the religious sentiment through ages. ”

“ There is no likelihood of the English people ever again accepting 'Catholicism,' if Catholicism is the thing which history calls by that name. The movement which the Bishop hopes to lead to victory will remain, as it has been hitherto, a theory of the ministry rather than of the Church, and its strength will be confined, as it is now, mainly to clerical circles. ”

“ It would not be a national Church; for his belief that Catholicism 'responds to the moral needs of our race' is contradicted by the whole history of modern England. The laity of England may not be quite 'as Protestant as ever they were, though we often hear that they are so; but they show no disposition to become Catholics. Catholicism as we know it is Latin Christianity, and even in the Latin countries it is now a hothouse plant, dependent on a special education in Catholic schools and seminaries, with an index librorum prohibitorum. ”

“ It is a no less interesting symptom that the State Church seems more and more anxious to repudiate all complicity with the principles of the Protestant Reformation and to call itself "Anglo-Catholic." ”

“ In the Netherlands, in France, in Spain, and at Rome, those seminaries were still flourishing, from which in former times young and zealous priests had been sent to England. At that time there might be counted in England five hundred secular priests, about three hundred ecclesiastics belonging to the great orders, and about a hundred and sixty Jesuits. Most of them were entertained in the principal families in the country, who secretly or even openly professed Catholicism, and in the houses of the rich proprietors, nobles, and gentry. ”

“ The Anglican Church, a fabric of policy compounded of Catholicism without a Pope and Biblical Protestantism, was in the throes of a struggle between those two elements, largely antiquarian and of little importance compared with the vital question as to the evidences of revelation and the divinity of Christ. ”

“ The religion that civilized England, and consecrated every remarkable spot in it to the service of God, had become a thing of the past, and the relics of Catholic piety that studded the land were looked upon as the gravestones of its corse, or the trophies of vanquishing Protestantism. Not only was Catholicity supposed to be dead in England, but its memory was in execration; nurses frightened the children with phantoms of monks, and mountebank preachers took their inspiration from the prejudices they had imbibed in childhood. ”

“ It is certain that the poor children of Catholics have in the English bishops most able and tender-hearted advocates, and that numerous monastic bodies of men and women are ready to second their efforts with devotion truly heroic. It is on the lambs of the flock that the hopes of Catholic England depend, and just in proportion as they are educated or uneducated, will they be ornaments or disgraces to the religion they profess. Nothing but superstition and vice can be built on ignorance; and the clergy in England are everywhere earnest in promoting the culture of the mind. ”

“ In this particular the claim of the English Reformers of the sixteenth century was the same as that of Luther and Calvin, or of Cartwright and Travers, and the whole question about what is to be recognised as 'primitive' or 'catholic' is one of interpretation and historical theory. The history of the Church in England was continuous from the Mission of Augustine—or, if we prefer it, from the Synod of Whitby—to the time when Henry VIII., upon a disagreement with the Pope about his divorce, cast off his allegiance to the Papacy. ”

“ England is Protestantism, Protestantism is England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism is eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... There is something even Chinese about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she ceases to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have clung to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. ”

“ Let no one assert, then, now that the Church of England was born at the Reformation. The very phrase "Church of England" was used in Magna Charta. Let no one assert that the Church of England is only a thing boasting of three centuries' creation, and that its creation came through an immoral king. The movement which we have considered to-night only purged our Church of its mediæval corruptions, gave us a new and valued liturgy, and it told finally and effectually the Pope of Rome to consider this fact, that he was not wanted in our country. ”

“ It happened that in those days, as now, the government and people of France were of the Catholic religion. England, on the other hand, was Protestant. There is a great difference between the Catholic and the Protestant systems. The Catholic Church, though it extends nearly all over the world, is banded together, as the reader is aware, under one man—the pope—who is the great head of the Church, and who lives in state at Rome. The Catholics have, in all countries, many large and splendid churches, which are ornamented with paintings and images of the Virgin Mary and of Christ. ”

“ Can any one doubt that the British power is not considered a Church power by any country whatever into which it comes? and if so, is it possible that the English Church, which is so closely connected with that power, can be said in any true sense to exert a Catholic influence, or to deserve the Catholic name? How can any Church be called Catholic, which does not act beyond its own territory? ”

“ You cannot be ignorant of the many Protestant clergyman, who, are either returning in many respects to the Catholic faith, or who have already, publicly renounced the Protestant, and embraced the Catholic faith. Now, with all these venerable examples before you, ought not you laity, to begin to think, that you also, have a right, nay, that it is your duty, to examine how religious affairs, stand in England? ”

“ The noble universities, the gorgeous cathedrals, and the splendid ruins scattered over the surface of the country, are witnesses of its departed power; but it is itself effectually blotted out from the hearts of the people. Though the most noble kings and princes of the land had delighted in honouring Catholicity, though England had sent her apostles and her saints into many a clime, though her hills and valleys had re-echoed for centuries with the sweet songs of Catholic devotion, her people now know nothing more hateful than the faith under the auspices of which their fathers were civilized. ”

“ But I cannot pursue any further the railing and raillery continually poured forth in England against the religion which all England professed for eight centuries; which those who converted our Saxon ancestors found to be the same as that professed by the ancient Britons in all points, except the time of the celebration of Easter; a conformity, which proves the faith of the church to have been, through the early ages, perpetual, not in respect to the Eucharist only, but in the whole body of its doctrine. ”

“ To us it seems that unless one chooses to fight about words, and fancifully to put into the word Catholic some occult quality, one must allow that the changes made in the Church of England at the Reformation impaired its Catholicity. The word Catholic was meant to describe the common or general profession and worship of Christendom at the time when the word arose. ”

“ The Church of England is a compromise between the old theology and the new. The Bishops have the apostolical succession, but many of them disbelieve that they derive any virtue from it. The clergyman is either a priest who can absolve men from sins, or he is a minister as in other Protestant communions. The sacraments are either means of grace, or mere outward signs. A Christian is either saved by baptism, or saved by faith, as he pleases to believe. ”

“ The unreasonableness of the catholic faith exists only in the imagination of the protestants, who, in general, know nothing about it. One of them asked me why the prayers were translated into Latin: I answered, that the pope had ordered them to be subtracted in this manner from the curiosity of the good people of ——, naming the town nearest the country residence of my interrogator. Another, a little perplexed on the subject of unity, asked, "What is the catholic church?" as an answer, I asked, "What is the church of England?" An Anglican clergyman put the question, "What is the mass?" ”

“ The action of the university, both in what is taught, and in the spirit of the place, is directed more on producing an English gentleman, than a saint or a psychologist. It ripens a bishop, and extrudes a philosopher. I do not know that there is more cabalism in the Anglican, than in other churches, but the Anglican clergy are identified with the aristocracy. ”

“ For many an age to come, Catholics will read with astonishment that so inoffensive an act of the Holy See, done at the request of the Catholic bishops of England, and in the interest of the Catholic people, at the time some seven millions in number, should have excited the anger of so great a portion of the English nation. ”

“ How widely the movement is extending in Europe is seen by what is passing in England, where choice has been made of a ministry disinclined to further concessions to the demands of the Catholic hierarchy, and where the archbishops of the Anglican Church are proposing measures to drive all Romanizing tendencies out of the forms of public worship in the Establishment. ”

“ The Church of England has been supernaturally recognised as a true portion of the Catholic Church, and her Sacraments acknowledged by a miracle.
The monastic revival, long persecuted [23] because of the two special points above alluded to, viz., the restoration of the reserved Sacrament, and the cultus of the mother of our Lord, have now received a sanction from on High, by these marvellous manifestations.
English Churchmen have received from God a special approval for their ancient Church, in spite of her sadly isolated position. ”

“ England herself, from which the Catholic name was thought to have been almost blotted out, has been deeply affected by this exodus of Irish Catholics. In her cities, and towns, and hamlets, the Cross has been raised from the dust. At the side of the ancient monuments which remind England of her apostacy, humble spires rise in every part of the land, and tell that nation that the faith which they thought destroyed still lives, and is ready to admit them again to its wonted blessings. ”

“ The so-called High Church people emphatically insist that there is no break in the continuity of the Church of England, and that the modern Anglicanism is a direct descendant of the old British Church. ”

“ But, looking at Italian and English Catholics externally and in their length and breadth, I may leave any Protestant to decide, in which of the two there is at this moment a more demonstrative faith, a more impressive religiousness, a more generous piety, a more steady adherence to the cause of the Holy Father. The English are multiplying religious buildings, decorating churches, endowing monasteries, educating, preaching, and converting, and carrying off in the current of their enthusiasm numbers even of those who are external to the church ”

“ The Protestant religion is more practical and better adapted to modern life than the [Pg 147] Catholic one; but if the Protestant faith may help you to live, I believe the Catholic faith may better help you to die.
Whereas the materialization practiced by the Roman Church attracts the lower classes, the spiritualization of the Anglican Church tends to estrange them. The great unwashed of England would not understand the service of the Anglican Church. This is partly why cornets and drums are being resorted to, to draw them out of their slums.
Everyone takes his religion where he finds it. ”

“ It is difficult to study the actual facts of sixteenth-century history, putting apart preconceived ecclesiastical theories, without arriving at the conclusion that the English National Church was as completely the creation of Henry VIII., Edward's Council, and Elizabeth, as Saxon Protestantism was of Luther, or Swiss of Calvin or of Zwingle, Obviously no man who sets forth a distinctive form of Christianity can proclaim himself the founder of a new religion or a new Church as such. ”

“ Notwithstanding all the faults of England, the Catholic heart throughout the world has never lost its interest in that land, once so faithful. Other nations, once as Catholic, have been lost, and they are almost forgotten. ”