Could England Be Catholic Again?

At its core, even the monarchy remains Catholic. The entire Coronation Service is based on the ceremony devised by St Dunstan for King Edgar's coronation in 973 AD at Bath Abbey.

From Crisis

By Kevin T. DiCamillo

The true Catholic Faith never really left England.

Despite the fact that the King of England¹ is the Supreme Head of the Church of England—if you can say that title without laughing, since King Charles III has, long before his accession to the throne, shown absolutely no interest in running a once-worldwide religion—it is good to keep in mind that for almost a solid millennium, England (and for that matter, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, and the Isle of Man) were solidly Catholic.

While Thomas Cahill rightfully credited England’s neighbors to the West with saving—and spreading—civilization in his eminently readable 1996 tome How the Irish Saved Civilization, and Kenneth Clark, in both his book Civilisation and his 13-part television series of the same name began with the same premise (on Skellig Michael, the almost unapproachable island in the Aran Isles where the Celtic monks kept Christianity alive while the rest of Europe was being ravaged by every sort of barbarian), the English were no spiritual slouches, either. True: they were being converted from both the West, by St. Columba in 543 when he established the holy site of Iona, and from Rome by St. Gregory the Great’s sending of St. Augustine of Canterbury later that same century. But this synergetic effect seemed to really take root, and produce in a relatively short time, a stronghold of Christianity on Europe’s far-western flank.

Today, when the Church of England/Episcopalian Ecclesial Community is in shards and splinters and basically bleeding to death in its own front yard, one could reasonably wonder if Catholicism could again take root in the land that produced so many famous saints that Butler’s Lives almost apologizes for the sheer number of them in the preface.

First, looking back to the fin de siècle and first half of the past century, we should recall the boatloads of English writers, artists, and poets who converted to Catholicism: St. John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson, David Jones, Eric Gill, Ford Madox Ford, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, G.K. Chesterton, Aubrey Beardsley, Baron Corvo, Muriel Spark, Oscar Wilde, Francis Thompson, and Wyndham Lewis, many of whom can be found in the new book by Melanie McDonagh, Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, Why So Many Became Catholic in the 20th Century. And those who came as close as possible: T.S. Eliot, Kenneth Clark, and C.S. Lewis. (J.R.R. Tolkien’s mother had converted to Catholicism and made certain her children were raised Catholic.)       

So despite the fact that at least for the first half of the 20th century Great Britain was still staunchly “Church of England,” a mass exodus of some of the best and brightest from their own “church” to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Rome is impossible to ignore.

Next, it’s hard to find a parallel to this from the other side: few, if any, intellectuals, philosophers, musicians, and/or writers converted to the C.O.E. Aside from Eliot and Lewis, almost no one was joining the faith as set forth by King Henry VIII. As seen from the above, many—most—were leaving it for Rome.

Further, for all of the seemingly endless penal laws, martyrdoms, and general misery the British government imposed upon Catholics for the better part of half a millennium, still there were standout Catholics like Alexander Pope and John Dryden and Richard Crashaw (the last two were converts) who, despite the fact that they couldn’t legally live in London and were left outside the great “Augustan” (read: “Protestant”) canon of English literature, refused to take part in such a charade. And churchmen like the indefatigable Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781), whose vast “diocese” reached from London to Pennsylvania, Maryland to the West Indies, had the time to revise the Douay-Rheims Catholic version of the Bible, all the while literally running from the British authorities.

Despite the fact that at least for the first half of the 20th century Great Britain was still staunchly Church of England, a mass exodus of some of the best and brightest from their own “church” to the Church of Rome is impossible to ignore.As if the Church of England wasn’t having enough trouble keeping the Catholics in line, and the Jesuits out from Douai, there was the problem of Scotland. The Scots, who certainly didn’t see themselves as in any way English—and definitely not British—embraced John Knox’s version of Calvinism, which was quickly renamed “Presbyterianism” and became the established Church of Scotland. Unlike Catholicism, however, which bred converts, it seems to have been a reaction to the English State religion rather than a faith-based answer. 

All of which is to say: Did the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland ever really stop being Catholic? Certainly, a government can impose any religion on its citizens and hope that terroristic threats, Kafkaesque laws, oaths of allegiance, and stealing their property—while, at the same time, producing almost the same liturgy, church architecture, and nomenclature (while playing down the roles of Mary and, of course, the pope)—will keep everyone in line. But as any confirmation teacher will tell you: you can’t force people to pray, and no one but God alone can read the hearts and souls of the faithful.

Even after the Great Fire of London in 1666, when Christopher Wren was given more or less a free hand in redesigning the capital of the British Empire, the result was sort of a poor man’s version of Rome, with the Cathedral of St. Paul’s standing in for St. Peter’s. Indeed, the resemblance is such that one wonders if Wren traced it by strength of memory or simply copying Bramante and Michelangelo’s original drawings.

And one of the greatest English contributions to Catholic Christianity, Fr. Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints (1759), remains the reference work in the English language on hagiography in spite of—or perhaps because of—its rococo prose style. Even in the 1990 American edition of the text, the editor, Michael Walsh, notes in his preface that: “The choice [of saints in the one-volume edition] has been world-wide, but if there is a slight bias in favour of Anglo-Saxon saints, that is also in fidelity to Butler.” Thus, one finds not only the usual panoply of the blessed British—Thomas à Becket to Thomas More, St. Augustine of Canterbury to St. John Fisher—but, also, St. Gildas the Wise (d. 570), St. Gilbert of Sempringham (founder of the only Medieval English religious order), St. Stephen Harding (co-founder of the Cistercians at Citeaux), and St. Anne Line and all the other of the Forty Holy Martyrs.

I am loath to predict the future. So, looking at the present, where the Anglican faith is in the hands of a monarch whose interest in being the “Spiritual Leader” of this late-to-the-party faith “system” is at best slight, and whose heir apparent’s interest appears to be even less, one might look north to the Transalpine Redemptorists on Papa Stronsay Island. This group of religious men, who have spread as far as Christchurch, New Zealand, and, amazingly, Montana, see themselves squarely in the tradition of St. Columba, that is, of the Roman Catholic Church. Nothing would surprise me less than if the rest of Britain winds up following them. After all: the true faith never really left.

¹ There is no "King of England". The title has not existed since the Acts of Union, 1707. Since then, the title has been "King of Great Britain" and, after the Acts of Union, 1800, has been "King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & (Northern, after 1922) Ireland.

Pictured: King St Edward the Confessor, from the Bayeux Tapestry.