The Catholics of Great Britain

by ARNOLD LUNN

1

BRITISH Catholics—that is, the Catholics of England, Scotland, and Wales — form about 7 per cent of the total population, whereas 20 per cent of the population of the United States are members of the Church of Rome. It is therefore not surprising that the influence of the British Catholics is in many respects, but not in every respect, far less than that of their co-religionists on the other side of the Atlantic. We read with envy and surprise of the indignant reactions of the New York state legislature to the attack on the Vatican which was published in Pravda. No such reaction would be conceivable in any public body in this country. Again, it would be difficult for the Hierarchy of this country to organize a campaign as effective as that which the American Hierarchy conducted against a certain type of film.

But the advantages are not wholly with the American Catholic. English Catholicism has its roots in more than a thousand years of English history, whereas American Catholicism has its roots in Europe. The greater part of the North American continent, with certain obvious exceptions such as Quebec and Maryland, passed from heathendom to Protestantism without the intervening period of Catholicism. The American ethos is a Protestant ethos. The country was founded by and shaped by Protestants. England, on the other hand, was Catholic for a thousand years. The great cathedrals were built by Catholics. The King still uses a title bestowed upon Henry VIII by the Pope, “Defender of the Faith,” and is crowned by a ritual that is Catholic in origin and still Catholic in sentiment.

The Church of England herself has always steered a middle course between what an eighteenth-century divine calls “the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles.” The Englishman is essentially conservative. He builds on the past. Nowhere, for instance, was the Reformation so conservative as in England. The English respect for tradition is merely an extension of the democratic principle to the dead, for, as Burke says, “the State is a partnership not only between those who are living, but also between those who are dead and those who are about to be born.” There is an increasing readiness to recognize English Catholicism as an integral element in the English way of life. Significant in this respect were the tributes paid to Chesterton, as a typical Englishman, on the appearance of Maisie Ward’s excellent biography. There is an ever increasing awareness of the fact that our law, our Parliamentary system, and our higher education have their roots in our Catholic past.

No English are more invincibly national, even insular, in their outlook than those who can trace their descent through an unbroken line of Catholic ancestors, too conservative to tolerate innovations in religion, too English to have any truck with adaptations of Lutheran or Calvinistic creeds. The hereditary Catholic, descended from an unbroken line of Catholics, exists in every social stratum, but it was the constancy of those of the landed gentry who maintained and hid the missionary priests during the penal times which prevented the extermination of the Church in England.

Even so, the Catholic minority had to suffer from their faith, not only in civil disabilities but also in the knowledge that their loyalty was regarded as qualified by their allegiance to the Pope. Their reaction to this accusation was to become more English than the English. They disliked specifically Roman devotions and did not share that enthusiasm for all things Italian which was so common among many of the Oxford converts who followed Newman into the Church. They were, as Manning complained, “nine times English,” “They seem,” he added, “to be always eating leeks to prove their loyalty,” whereas the converts from Anglo-Catholicism tended to disown their English background “out of shame of English ErastianiSm.”

2

BRITISH Catholics may be divided into four classes: a small minority who belong to families which have never ceased to be Catholics, a large class descended from Irish Catholics, the descendants of converts, and recent converts. It would be difficult to exaggerate the debt which the Catholic Church in the English-speaking world owes to the fidelity of the Irish.

The First World War, so we were assured, would make the world safe for democracy. The Second World War, so many people believe, will inaugurate a new age in which social distinctions will gradually wither away. It may be so, or it may not, but in the unregenerate world into which I was born, it was no asset for a Church or a religious movement to be identified exclusively with any particular class, as was Nonconformity in England or Catholicism in nineteenth-century Ireland. “To think that my son should go to church with the cook” was Mrs. Tyrrell’s complaint when her brilliant son left the Church of the Ascendancy for the Church of the Irish.

In England Catholicism is well represented in every social stratum. The Premier Duke, the Duke of Norfolk, is a Catholic, and Newman was followed into the Church of Rome not only by a steady stream of dons and Anglican clergy but also by a not inconsiderable number of converts from the aristocracy; but the Church in England owed far less to these fashionable converts than, as David Mathew says, to “the free uncovenanted generosity of the poor [which] had built up their churches and schools week by week. They were determined and loyal; ready to defend themselves; forthright. The churches had been paid for stone by stone out of the small wages of the faithful and this in part accounted for their eager attachment to the parish unit which remained their spiritual hearth. The old dominating priests of the fine Irish tradition received reverence and affection from a people who looked for strong leadership and handling. At the same time the Ushaw clergy led the ancestral northern congregations throughout the era of an industrialism whose grimness was not perceived by the sheltered classes.”

There are no Catholic universities in the United Kingdom, and consequently Catholics go to the same universities as Protestants, but every effort is made to induce Catholic parents to send their children to Catholic schools. The Catholic public schools (a misnomer, for the “public” schools are recruited from the upper and middle classes) have considerable prestige, and the alumni of the Jesuit schools, Stonyhurst and Beaumont, or the Benedictine schools, Downside and Ampleforth, suffer from no defense complex when they meet Etonians or Harrovians. Beaumont, so the story goes, once challenged Eton to a cricket match. “Harrow we know,” replied the Etonians, “and Rugby we know. But who are you?” This query provoked the retort, “Beaumont is what Eton was, a school for Catholic gentlemen.”

British Catholics are, at the moment, engaged in a battle for their schools. We claim that our contributions to the taxes which support the state schools should be returned to us in the form of schools under Catholic control. We have been far more successful than American Catholics in our demand for educational justice, mainly because we have hitherto enjoyed the powerful support of the Anglicans, engaged in a similar campaign for the Anglican schools. In the present struggle the Archbishop of Canterbury, to the sorrow of many High Anglicans, has declared himself satisfied with the government proposals and has left the Catholics as the sole representatives of those who are fighting the battle for a specifically Christian education.

The Catholic demand for Catholic schools is prompted not only by religious motives but also by a dislike of the by-products of secularism, the sloppy internationalism which, in the period between the wars, undermined the traditional loyalty to King and country. The transference of education in France from the religious orders to secularists was one of the contributory causes of the debacle of 1940. “Teachers with their irreligious and unpatriotic trend of teaching have a lot to answer for,” wrote Peter de Polnay, who witnessed the fall of France. And Professor D. W. Brogan in his preface to The Twilight of France writes of the French teachers: “Not until it was too late did the profession that regarded itself as, in a special sense, the guardians of the Republic realize that it had helped to destroy its own work.”

The same tendencies were at work in British education. The Oxford Union passed its notorious motion “ that this House will in no circumstances fight for King and country.” The London County Council abolished Swedish drill in the schools on the ground that Swedish drill was militaristic. Ten Cambridge scientists attempted to prevent the University from accepting an offer of £10,000 for the purpose of helping to develop aeronautical research, and an eminent headmaster announced that in his considered opinion the British Navy was the one remaining menace to world peace.

Catholic schools were uninfected by this hazy escapism from the world of fact, for Catholics have a clear-cut teaching on the duty which we owe not only to God but to Caesar. The Church which has canonized many soldiers has never canonized a conscientious objector to a just war. Though exact statistics are unavailable, it is beyond dispute that Catholics are represented out of all proportion to their numbers in the Armed Forces.

It would be ungenerous in this connection to omit a tribute to the Irish Catholics. Proportionately more volunteers from Eire are fighting in the British Armed Forces than from the Six Counties. I have visited Eire three times during this war and have discovered that there are two solecisms which one must avoid at all costs; the first, is to criticize Irish neutrality, and the second is to assume that the Irish are really neutral. The Irish volunteers are well represented in the awards for gallantry, as are also the English Catholics. The first Army officer and the first Air Force pilot to receive the most coveted of all decorations, the Victoria Cross, were Catholics, as were also the first D.S.O. of the war, the first Army chaplain to be decorated, the first Army chaplain to be decorated for landing with parachute troops, the first Naval Knighthood, the first George’s Medal for Civilian Gallantry.

On the other hand Catholics are under-represented in Parliament and in public life, for there is only one aspect of national life, front-line service in time of war, in which a disproportionate representation of Catholics does not attract hostile comment. It is far less easy for a Catholic than for a non-Catholic to be adopted as a Parliamentary candidate, and the chances of a Catholic’s being elected to some such position as the mayor of a town vary inversely with the number of Catholics in that town.

3

I DO not, however, wish to give the impression that Catholics are a persecuted minority. This is very far from being the case. It is as true of the Catholics as of any other compact minority, such as the Jews, that outsiders exaggerate our influence, and those within tend to exaggerate the hostility of those without. Again, as in the case of the Jews, outsiders greatly exaggerate Catholic solidarity. “Catholics,” as Father Martindale remarked, “use up all their available unity on points of defined doctrine and have nothing left over for ordinary life.” Every phase of political opinion is represented among Catholics, from extreme conservatism to a socialism far more to the left than the communism of modern Moscow.

Catholics have been exposed, like their countrymen, to the disillusion about democracy which is one of the most marked political symptoms of the age. Today the most dangerous attack on democracy comes from the extreme left. George Orwell, who fought against Franco in Spain, and whose book Homage to Catalonia is one of the most honest, and objective books that the Civil War has produced, dismisses with contempt the popular view of the Spanish war as a struggle between fascism and democracy, and makes it clear that he sympathized with the Spaniards who believed that “bourgeois democracy is only another name for capitalism.” Now, whereas the anti-democratic Jew tends to sympathize with communism, the anti-democratic Catholic was likely to be uncritical in his enthusiasm for the “corporate state” and Italian Fascism.

Choice of political creed is inspired usually by self-interest. Politics is the struggle between rival pressure groups; and all groups, religious, racial, or social, prefer political systems which increase their power to political systems which persecute them. Early in the war I spent an evening with a Jew in Budapest who had lived for years in Russia under the communist regime. Russian Jews, he assured me, had been all but unanimous in their support of a system which enabled them to attain the highest positions in the land and, of course, wholly unanimous in their detestation of the Tsarist regime, under which they had been persecuted. He added regretfully that the period in which Jews had dominated Russia had come to an end.

Though a religious or racial minority may secure virtual control for a brief period under a dictatorship, minorities enjoy far more enduring protection under democracy than under any form of totalitarianism. No democratic government can alford to outrage the feelings of any minority sufficiently numerous to influence the results of closely contested elections — as indeed the overwhelming majority of British Catholics fully realize.

The Catholic, of course, if faced with the choice between two systems — one that tolerates and another that persecutes the Church — reacts precisely as a Jew would react in similar circumstances. Yet whereas nobody expects a Jew to support Hitler, many people were surprised (and pained) by the fact that few Catholics could pump up much enthusiasm for the Republican government in Spain, in whose territory thousands of priests had been murdered. “In six months in Spain,” writes George Orwell, “I only saw two undamaged churches.”

Cardinal Hinsley confided to a friend of mine that he would have joined the Labor Party had he been a layman. He attacked fascism long before the outbreak of the war, but he hoped for the victory of Franco, in spite of his alliance with Hitler — just as he hoped for the victory of England in spite of our alliance with Russia. Catholics who were accused of fascist sympathies merely because of their anti-Red antipathies were not surprised that the Nazis should have attacked this great anti-fascist as a Bolshevik. “A memorial service will be held in Moscow,” they announced on March 13, 1943, “for this proved protagonist of the Soviet Union. . . . The Soviet Union has appreciated the Cardinal’s repeated appeals for Bolshevism. . . .”

A liberal might be defined as a man who objects to the persecution of conservatives. The Cardinal was a great liberal. He had no patience with the selective indignation which is only aroused when those of one’s own race or faith or political party are being persecuted. He hated anti-Semitism and was proud to be described by the Nazis as “a friend of the Jewish people.” His death, which elicited such wonderful tributes from all strata of the British people, was deeply mourned by the Jews, many of whom had written letters of deep concern and sympathy to his secretary during his last illness. But though he deeply sympathized with persecuted Jews, “he judged it unfortunate” — in the interests of the Jews themselves—“that the world press, cinema and radio should so continually call attention to Jewish persecution while the martyrdom of Christians in Russia, Mexico, Spain, and Germanoccupied Europe had received such rare and meagre attention. . . . Unlike most Englishmen he could not forget that there are more priests than Rabbis in the concentration camps of Germany, Russia and Poland. For them no World Congress organises protests.” (Cardinal Hinsley by John C. Heenan.)

4

THE Spanish War was a critical point in the history of English Catholicism. Conversions, which had been on the increase, began to decline, but today there are signs of yet another of those forward movements which occur from time to time. Certainly the prestige of the Church is far higher than when I was a boy, and this advance is partly due to the conversions of a succession of well-known men of letters, notably G. K. Chesterton, and partly to the collapse of rival philosophies. When I was a boy, the naïve optimism of the liberal believers in inevitable progress was uneroded by doubt. There was no Catholic historian who commanded such general respect as Christopher Dawson does today. The Church provoked less hostility because in enlightened circles her days were believed to be numbered. You do not hate what you despise.

“In times of shallow optimism,” wrote Leslie Stephen, “the profounder natures are pessimistic.” “If any there be,” wrote Leo XIII in 1891, “who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble . . . they delude the people and their lying promises will one day bring forth evils worse than the present. Nothing is more useful than to look at the world as it really is.” And nothing is more unwelcome. Leo XIII’s warnings were ignored, but there was a ready public for Utopians, such as Professor Bury, who assured his readers in 1913 “that the struggle of reason against authority has ended in what appears now to be a decisive and permanent victory for liberty. In the most civilized and progressive countries freedom of discussion is now recognised as a fundamental principle.”

This prediction appeared a year after Hilaire Belloc’s The Servile State, a book which, as F. A. von Hayek remarks in The Road to Serfdom, explains “more of what has happened since in Germany, than most books written after the event.” Nobody now quotes Bury, the Victorian optimist, except in derision, but Hilaire Belloc’s book is being reread with anxiety by those who wonder uneasily whether his predictions, which have come true in Germany, are in the process of being fulfilled in England. That, at least, is the thesis of Hayek’s book, which, appearing toward the end of the Second World War, has produced a sensation even greater than that of Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace, which appeared shortly after the end of the First World War.

The Catholic philosophy, of which Belloc’s book is a by-product, satisfies the most exacting of tests, — prediction value, — and it is perhaps for this reason that so many non-Catholics today are reading the Tablet. The editor, Douglas Woodruff, after a brilliant career at Oxford, served his journalistic apprenticeship on the staff of the Times. His weekly comments on the European situation are considered by many non-Catholics to be the best in any English paper.

In the nineteenth century English Catholics were attacked as too conservative by the liberals. Today the Tablet, which anticipated Hayek’s thesis, defends, as he does, all that was most valuable in the liberal tradition. There is, Hayek insists, the same contempt in England today as in the Germany of the last war “for nineteenth century liberalism, the same spurious ‘realism.’ . . . and at least nine out of every ten of the lessons which our most vociferous reformers are so anxious that we should learn from this war are precisely the lessons which the Germans did learn from the last war and which have done much to produce the Nazi system.”

But the reaction has already begun, and in the defense of our liberties against the new totalitarianism English Catholics will find themselves once again in line with those older traditions of England.

There has been a great change for the better, since my boyhood, in the relations of Catholics and Protestants. Cardinal Bourne was far less ready than Manning to recognize the workings of grace outside the Catholic Church. “I embrace you in the soul of the Church,” wrote Mainning to my father, the late Sir Henry Lunn, a well-known Methodist, “and rejoice in all your good works.” Cardinal Bourne had a rigidity of mind which rendered easy intercourse with Anglicans impossible. He did not approve of more than the essential minimum of coöperation between the Churches. He believed, mistakenly, that he could by-pass the Church of England and yet establish cordial relations with the official English world, of which the Church of England is an integral part; and though he earned the respect of successive Governments, he did not win their confidence. Asquith, in particular, seems to have disliked him very much.

Cardinal Hinsley, on the other hand, not only became a great national figure during the war, but encouraged the widest possible coöperation between the Churches. He founded the Sword of the Spirit to provide, among other things, a common platform from which Catholics, Anglicans, and Free Churchmen could work out a joint social and international policy based on Christian principles. “Without in any way abating his belief,” wrote the Times, “in the significance of those differences of doctrine and observance by which his Church is divided from other denominations, he held strongly that there is a righteousness that can be perceived by all who bear the name of Christians and through his steadfastness and loyalty to all who would extend a hand to him as a fellow-soldier for that cause he leaves a happier relation between his communion and the national church than has been known since the reformation.”