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Madeleine Beard

REDISCOVERING CATHOLIC CULTURE

Talk given to the Catholic Cultural Group 7th October 1998

(published by Mass of Ages, August 1999)

I believe that the history of the Church, Roman Catholicism, Christianity, is about particular people in a particular place, at a particular time. We are particular people who have chosen to be here this evening, on what happens to be the penultimate Feast of the Most Holy Rosary of Our Blessed Lady in this twentieth century. This powerful devotion of the rosary dates from the thirteenth century when Our Lady appeared to St. Dominic and urged him to preach everywhere the importance of reciting her Rosary as a most efficacious means for averting danger to souls. The devotion, its 150 prayers meditating on mysteries reflecting the 150 psalms recited by the monastic Orders, spread rapidly throughout Christendom. The Rosary was the form of public prayer used to implore God's help when, after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1452, the danger of their over-running the West was then very real. The decisive victories of Lepanto in 1571 and Belgrade in 1716 were regarded as having occurred specifically in answer to the prayers of the Rosary, after which this Feast Day was extended to the Universal Church. In England today, with a few months left of 1998, we too like St. Dominic who was fighting the Albigensian heresy, which claimed that all flesh was in itself evil and the spirit good, are fighting what almost amounts to a heresy where the opposite is deemed true; that the body is all that matters and that spiritual matters are irrelevant. And that anyone who takes spiritual matters seriously must not be taken seriously at all. The Albigensians rejected the Sacraments, particularly marriage. Not very different from Britain today, albeit for somewhat different reasons. So like St. Dominic we are called to fight a battle on behalf of the Church, trusting once again in the mysterious and powerful Rosary as a most efficacious weapon. Our mission today as Catholics, ever-thankful for our gift of Faith, is to bring souls back to God at a time when very few people in this country practise or even know about Catholicism, the One True Church. No other religion or denomination even dares to make that claim. But with this God-given love of Truth we know that great things can be achieved by even a small number of like-minded people. And we are not the only such gathering this evening. Tonight is the first meeting of a group of young Catholics like us who wish to meet every month to hear speakers and discuss the Faith. Where are they? In the Pimlico Wine Vaults in Upper Tachbrook Street! Somewhat mysteriously, the Holy Spirit has chosen Pimlico as the place to be on this most important Feast.

When the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary appeared at Fatima in 1917 she again exhorted the Faithful to pray the Rosary, seeing the turbulent century that lay ahead. In that same year, 1917, here in Pimlico, the former Wesleyan chapel in Claverton Street was acquired and consecrated as a Catholic church. In 1941 it was destroyed by an air raid. Thereafter, Mass was said variously in a studio, a basement garage and in a pre-fabricated building on the same site. The site of the present church of the Holy Apostles in Winchester Street was purchased by a priest called Father Edmund Hadfield, and his family firm of architects designed the present church. This information is thanks to the work of the Catholic architectural historian Dr. Denis Evinson, whose book Catholic Churches in London was published this year by Sheffield University Press. Dr. Evinson, whom Pevsner often referred and deferred to, was a fellow pilgrim of mine in Poland in 1993 on a pilgrimage to Czestochowa organised and led by the late Father Michael Napier of the London Oratory and in whose memory my book is dedicated. The son of a general, Father Napier once said when taking over as Provost of the Oratory: "I know what needs to be done and I intend to do it." And as any general will tell you, it is one of the first rules of any battle that time needs to be spent in reconnaissance. And time spent in reconnaissance is never time wasted.

For the last 460 years, members of the True Church in England have been and still are a very small minority. About one in ten. The people who appear in my book, Faith and Fortune, attempted to reverse that. Up until about 1969 their efforts seemed to be bearing fruit. The last thirty years appear to have been the reverse of all the progress they made. But there are certain facts from which we must take heart. As we prepare to celebrate two thousand years of history since the birth of Christ, it is worth remembering that it so happens that Time itself is measured from England, a few miles down the river at Greenwich. Infinitely more importantly, further north and some thirty miles to the east of that line, we have at Walsingham not only one of the oldest shrines in the world, but the only one dedicated to the Mother of God. And a few miles south of Walsingham a devotion which has been universal for seven and a half centuries was bequeathed in Cambridge when Our Lady of Mount Carmel gave St. Simon Stock the Scapular in Cambridge, not Aylesford, in 1251. I say this to stand us in good heart for the coming century. The Scapular, first given in England and worn by Catholics throughout the world, was incorporated into all monastic habits, as a testimony to our need for divine protection, again foreseen by Our Lady. And such material protection is not to be worn lightly, as it were. As ever, Our Lady understands our needs. Indeed, what we choose to wear today has never been more important. Appearances do matter. And you can judge a society very quickly by the way it dresses. Just look around you when walking anywhere.

I was born in a year which now sounds ridiculously or gloriously old fashioned: 1959. Then, women dressed like women and men dressed like men. And it is historically accurate to say that both men and women, without realising it, adhered to one of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit which was the first to depart in the great so-called cultural revolution we have witnessed in the West in the past thirty years. Modesty. What are the other eleven fruits? I was lucky enough to spend a short time at a convent where the nuns taught the Faith when I was being prepared for Confirmation and we learnt the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit off by heart. "Love, Joy, PeaceÉ" (all three suddenly became heady slogans in 1967 before they were so tragically distorted) "Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Benignity, Longanimity, Faith, Hope and Charity." The last three are also known as the Three Theological Virtues. All three, Faith, Hope and Charity, need to be worked on every hour and every day of our lives. The Sacraments of Confession and Communion nurture these virtues in each of us, and frequent reception of the Sacraments should be central to our existence as Catholics. Because if you actually want to see the revival of the Church in this country don't worry about things over which you have no control. Just concentrate on your own Soul. Don't waste time endlessly discussing the evils of today while neglecting the one most important and infinitely precious thing over which, with the grace of Almighty God, you can have control. Perhaps when people ask us what we do, as they do, we should simply say, "I am a Catholic." Because nurturing the Faith, in whatever way we are called, requires giving our body, our mind and our will to God in whatever circumstances Almighty God has chosen for us. It is the Soul which animates, motivates, moves, decides, discerns, thinks its way through the body. Don't put your Soul in danger. It is the most precious thing you possess and is nourished, fed and sustained by the Sacraments.

I believe that if today you wish to rediscover Catholic culture in this country, which for centuries has inspired artists, writers, architects, composers, sculptors and poets, which formed the basis of a God-fearing culture throughout Christendom for centuries, you need to go back to its very source. And in order to do that I suggest you go to the Savoy. Then walk out of the Savoy, cross The Strand, walk up the street in front of you, turn left and you shall find yourself in the Church of Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane. If you arrive there on any Monday evening at half past six, you shall see Mass as it was celebrated for fourteen hundred years. From the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great until about 1969. Think of any saint, think of any country, think of any century and that is how the Mass would have been celebrated throughout the world. And still is celebrated in one or two parishes, such as Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane. If you have never been to such a Mass before, you probably won't at first feel part of it. The congregation will be absorbed in their missals. They'll say little, look up occasionally. Their time at Mass will be mostly spent on their knees and in silence. The choir will sing the Gregorian chant while you can just hear the voice of the priest reading Latin. In the silence that follows you shall recognise the sound of the bell held by the server, and you shall then see the server lift the hem of the priest's chasuble. You'll see the priest genuflect and then hold high the Sacred Host. And after the elevation a sacred silence shall pervade the church. It is beyond explanation. It is a mystery. But something glorious happens. In such silence and veneration this is the way the Church for centuries drew our failing human attention to this glorious and timeless moment. When we take leave of time and are actually present at Calvary. That is the mystery of Faith. And so if you go back to this Mass universally celebrated throughout the centuries you'll come to love your Catholic heritage, which has almost been snuffed out. And by nurturing that flickering flame, which is nurtured by prayer and by love, you shall live to see the revival of Catholic culture in this country.

The absolutely tragic abandonment of the Faith throughout the West, and which we have been called as Catholics to witness, is that after about 1969, when priests turned their back on God, then so did their congregations. When priests turned their back on the Tabernacle, that Holy of Holies which contains the Blessed Sacrament, Christ truly present in our world, when priests turned their back on Almighty God, then so did the people. They walked straight out of the churches and they didn't come back again. And they married non-Catholics or non-practising Catholics and brought up one or two non-Catholic or non-practising children. That is the reality of what happened. And in the West, the only parishes where Mass-goers have kept up their numbers, the only seminaries which are attracting vocations, are those where Catholic culture has not been abandoned, which means not only silent churches but beautiful churches where the Tabernacle is reserved on the altar, where the sanctuary is literally a sanctuary, where there is beautiful music, beautiful treasures, statues and paintings and the Mass celebrated which Faber famously described as the most beautiful thing this side of heaven. Faber's Oratory on the Brompton Road was and is a majestic witness to the rediscovery of the One True Church in this country. It is not a monument or a museum. It attracts thousands from all over the world every Sunday. And it was built thanks to some nineteenth-century converts who, by the mysterious workings of Divine Grace, were guided towards the full knowledge of the True Faith.

But isn't the Oratory rather old-fashioned? A reminder of what the Church was rather than is? Today, to be fashionable means to be modern. And the word modern immediately makes one think of modern architecture, modern art, modern music, modern sculpture, modern poetry, modern literature. Nothing there to delight the soul, to raise the spirit towards God, to remind one of heavenly things. In fact I believe that whenever you use the word modern in a cultural context, it always means pagan. I am not talking abut the extraordinary advances that have been made in technology and science. I am talking about modern so-called culture. I am also talking about modern society, the modern family. Modern Britain. And - dare I say it, and I do - modern women. I believe feminism to be one of the most insidious of evils in the Western world and in the Church today. The demand for ever wider access to chemical contraceptives, abortions and easy divorce - there are in this country five hundred abortions every day and five hundred divorces every day - all of these great 'liberators', these great sources of human happiness have been applauded, lobbied and fought for by feminists. And the last thing feminists would ever do would be to take Our Lady, who freely chose to co-operate with God, as their role model. And as a result of all that for which the feminists continue to campaign, very few women are having very few children, and European society, European culture, the Church in Europe and the West is dying out. I am going to say something even more depressing. That while the converts about whom I have written in the nineteenth century did so much to revive the Church in their country, certain converts of the twentieth century did a great deal of damage to the Church they had joined. Trying to make the Catholic Church into the Church of England, which in itself and by its very nature has not long to last, was a recipe for disaster. But we are aware of our mysterious destiny as Our Lady's Dowry and we know that she who has seen her children depart for so long from the Faith that was theirs shall return to the One True Faith again.

Part of the reason is this. It is because of particular people living in Rome in the sixth century and particular people living in England in the nineteenth century and the heritage of the Faith which they left us. Monsignor Miles described this so well in May last year in the sermon he preached at the Mass at St. James's Spanish Place celebrating 1,400 years since the arrival of St. Augustine. It was a High Mass of the Ember Saturday within the Octave of Pentecost. He said: "When the young monk, Gregory, saw those young Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman market place, he was so impressed by their noble features and dignified bearing, so shocked to discover that they and their fellow countrymen were pagan, that he was consumed by a passion to go to Britain to win these wonderful people for Christ. Fifteen years later St. Gregory was elected Pope and soon he decided that if the people of England were to be won for Christ, it would have to be by monks of his own monastery of St. Andrew on the Ceolian Hill. It was a place of prayer, fasting and holy discipline - a power house of spirituality, the kind of holiness that moves hearts and inspires faith. The Prior, Augustine, was chosen to lead the group of monks to England. After a series of setbacks they arrived at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet in May 597." Monsignor Miles went on to say: "We have so much to take pride in - to take courage from the history of Catholic England. Not least the glorious band of martyrs who went to their execution radiant and light-hearted. It is no wonder that when our nation as a whole seceded from the Pope in the sixteenth century, this Italian Mission was revived. In Italy in the nineteenth century men like Father Rosmini lamented the loss to the Church of this jewel in her crown. Rosmini sent the saintly Father Gentili to work in this mission, later came the Blessed Dominic Barberi, who received Cardinal Newman into the Church." Faith and Fortune is precisely about that Italian mission of Rosminians and Passionists.

In 1835, two years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, Father Luigi Gentili and two companions set out for England. And before they did so Pope Gregory XVI came on board the steamship and blessed them, a privilege not even granted to St. Augustine and his companions by St. Gregory the Great. Moreover, it so happened that the Mother House of the Passionist Order in Rome was also on the Ceolian Hill. Faith and Fortune is also about the English who themselves travelled to Rome, some of whom crossed the Tiber. Here on the Thames I referred to Time itself being measured throughout the world from Greenwich. Further down the Thames at Windsor I would like to read to you the thoughts of one Etonian gazing out of his room. "There rose Windsor in the majesty of morning, against the unclouded sky, mantled as it were, with the dissolving mist of all the chronicle of English Catholicism. To the west loomed the glory of perpendicular architecture, St. George's Chapel, and I could realise that it was at once a shrine and a ruin, for within the walls lay the bones of the two Henrys - the Good and the Infamous. Here were the two terrible powers associated with material memorials, with bones and dust - powers which are in utmost antagonism even to this day, and will be until days are no more; the rebelling Human Will. And the calmness of the prospect to which every leaf of the forest and the every eddy in the Thames gave tranquil consent was consonant to the spirit of quiet Anglicanism in our land - our England." Rising early, "when all the mighty heart of the school was lying still in the summer dawn" the Hon. Alfred Verney-Cave pursued his quest for Truth in prayers, lighting candles in front of a triptych in his room. After a June sunset the Round Tower of the castle assumed an extra halo of romance when the Royal Standard was hauled down and lay in profuse folds. Later, as a Catholic, Alfred Verney-Cave introduced to Queen Victoria the idea that she, in the papal tradition, should celebrate her Jubilee. Let us pray that through the intercession of the Queen of Heaven the papal tradition in all its glory shall return to England, the Dowry of Mary.