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THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS CONFERENCE

29th JUNE 2002

Westminster Central Hall, London

THE URGENT NEED

FOR LEADERSHIP AND LOYALTY

Madeleine Beard

(published by Mass of Ages, November 2002, February 2003)

For English Catholics this Feast Day of St Peter and St Paul is a glorious commemoration of the enduring Truth and strength of the Catholic Church. Because on this Feast we are celebrating the rock-like tradition of St Peter and the brilliant evangelisation of St Paul. It is that combination, that tension, between unity and growth, between sound doctrine and its effective communication, which unites us above all in our joyous proclamation of the One True Faith as Catholics in England today. But we Catholics are now a voice in the wilderness. Like St John the Baptist, we in this country are preaching in a desert and our numbers are very few. It is as if we are having to start again. That is why this Faith of Our Fathers conference has been reconvened. And I congratulate Daphne and her team for having the courage, through the grace of Almighty God, to carry on and not give up and not give in.

I am honoured to have been asked to add my voice to this day of warning for Catholics in this the Dowry of Mary. And we must pray on this day that Westminster Abbey, dedicated to St Peter, will one day return to Catholic hands. What a tragedy it is that one immediately has to qualify that statement. Because those who claim to be Catholic must be seen to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the See of Peter. What a tragedy it is that today the Church should be faced with the unprecedented phenomenon of the enemy within. For there are Catholics and there are Catholics. This conference is a Catholic conference. We are loyal to the Holy See, but we in this country are in desperate need of strong leadership. We are in need of saintly leadership. Leadership such as that of St Edward the Confessor, who dedicated the Abbey at Westminster to St Peter and where, it was said, the Apostle himself appeared to a fisherman on the Thames and entered the Abbey church itself. How uplifting it was to accompany my godson on a boat on that same river and hear him, aged nine, recite the Creed in Latin. A Chorister at Westminster Cathedral, he knows the Credo from singing the timeless Gregorian chant brought to these shores thanks to the same Pope who sent St Augustine to England. It was that simple combination of loyalty to the Holy See and leadership in 597, of which we are in urgent need today, which over the centuries allowed the Catholic Faith to enter these islands and survive here.

Some years ago I had an encounter with someone widely recognised as a strong leader, both in this country and throughout the Western world. The encounter occurred not far from this Hall, across St James's Park at a Club on Pall Mall. This particular leader, Prime Minister for eleven years, had just delivered a speech. It was at the Reception afterwards that I found myself quite unexpectedly standing directly in front of her. I decided that the best way to get her attention was to imitate her. So I said: "I was very, very interested in what you had to say about justice, freedom and liberty." She said, "Yes." I went on, "But you cannot talk about any of these things without mentioning the unborn." She started to say, "Well we do know that after six weeksÉ" I immediately stated that life begins at the moment of conception. She said, "Well, there is the theological approach and the biological approachÉ" I said, "They both contain the word logical. And it is logical to say that life begins at the moment of conception." She said, "Look. If you or I or my daughter were to discover that we were going to have a child that would be handicapped we would not want to have that child." I said, "You are discriminating against all handicapped people. And people can become disabled through illness or accident at any time. What is more, we cannot afford to lose five hundred children every day. This country, Europe, is dying out." She said, "No, it isn't." I said, "Yes, it is." She said, "No, it isn't." I said, "Yes, it is." You see, progress cannot be made in this country unless we are like St Paul and willing to engage in a frank exchange of views. And I firmly believe that the reason why the Anglican heresy has survived for so long in this country is because no-one says anything. "They're Anglicans, so don't say anything." "They're Roman Catholics, so don't say anything." How many Catholics like you and me have walked away from uncomfortable situations and not said anything? And as a result, the dreary stalemate lingers on. Catholic schools are not prepared to hand on the Faith for fear of upsetting non-Catholic parents and pupils. Catholic children cannot defend themselves and so grow into adults who really do not care, believing falsely that everything is the same, that it is all a matter of opinion, that Catholics are just like everyone else, with no idea that through our Baptism, through our recourse to the Sacraments, we are a people set apart. And as a result of this apparent same-ness, life becomes deadly dull.

The Protestant religion is a false, dull and very, very boring religion. It deadens the soul, the mind, and the imagination. By its very nature it is anti-Catholic, born out of protest, wallowing in the negative, countering all that is best and glorious and true. Founded on rebellion against Papal authority, founded on the denial of the Sacraments, cruelly casting aside the intercession of Our Lady and the intercession of the saints. Tragically, we English Catholics can recognise these same deadly symptoms in our churches today. And so we must go back to authority. We must go back to handing on the Faith within the home, and we must go back to making every effort to attend the same Mass for which the martyrs died, before the Revolution of 1969 when, on the first Sunday in Advent, priests celebrating the Mass all literally turned their backs on Almighty God. And the stripping of the altars within the Catholic Church began.

Here in this country loyal Catholics are just about clinging on. And perhaps, through the grace of Almighty God, in our own lifetime we shall see the gradual unravelling and demise of what Pope Gregory XVI described as the nets of Anglicanism and, through the continuing intercession of Our Lady and the English martyrs, the restoration of the One True Church. Such a retreat, such a victory for the One True Church can only occur through strong leadership. And for any such success to occur then the time spent in reconnaissance is never time wasted. So we need time to think, to "mentally re-group" as the Americans say. And as ever we have the true and sure answer to what we are about. Our eventual victory is centred on two things: devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and devotion to Our Lady. But, in order to spread these soul-saving devotions, we need leadership which is strong and which is true. And the principles of leadership are taught in the home from an early age. Leadership is learnt from the hierarchical nature of the family, where fathers are revered figures of wise authority. Needless to say, with five hundred divorces every day in this country, authority in the home simply cannot exist. As a child I can remember the accusing tone with which I used to be addressed by adults. "Ah, Madeleine, you are a Catholic. You don't believe in divorce, do you?" "Well, no, actually, I don't." This was just before the liberalisation of the divorce laws. Thirty years later we can see the tragic consequences in this country, particularly for children. Because when you abandon the Law of God, when you by-pass and modify the Commandments, then chaos is unleashed. Loneliness, betrayal, suicides, abortions, addictions, abuse, man-made misery. That is what happens when you abandon the Law of God. And if you make such an utterance publicly, you are accused of being a Catholic. And it is precisely that of which our leaders in the Church today are so afraid. They are quite simply terrified of being labelled as Catholics. Compromise leads nowhere, and we are retreating from all that was gained in this country with the revival of the Church from the 1830s until the 1960s, when the number of converts dropped and went on falling. This abandonment of the very claim to be the One True Holy and Apostolic Church - in case it upsets people - such cowardice by weak men is the cause of our downfall. But, and here is the Christian paradox, we must never lose Hope, today a discarded virtue, mentioned little, and not part of everyday vocabulary in the Catholic Church. The reason is that the crisis in the Church is simply not acknowledged.

Hope is the fundamental source of strength for any leader. It is the principle that underlies the motivation of any leader in any battle. For all of us, all of us English Catholics, are engaged in a spiritual battle, a battle of seemingly insurmountable proportions. Hope is knowing what needs to be done and having the determination to do it. (It was a wartime General who said: "That which is possible we shall do immediately. The impossible will take a little longer.") Hope is having an infectious optimism and the absolute determination to persevere in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties. Hope in a leader radiates confidence. Hope relies on moral and spiritual principles which are just and which are True. Hope is making your message absolutely clear, discarding all that hinders your purpose, holding fast to that which is good, as St Paul says, and leading your flock with a clear conscience. It means leading your flock with courage. And in this quest Our Blessed Lord Himself often disappeared and was often alone. Strong leadership draws its strength from silence and reflection. Strong leadership draws its strength from solitude, meditation and prayer. Just simply thinking, like Our Blessed Lady, pondering these things in our hearts.

So we must pray for courageous, prayerful Catholic leaders. They already exist in parishes and presbyteries in Britain, but have not been appointed to the positions of authority which they, and we, deserve. Prayerful, devout, loyal Catholic priests, many of whom have survived the psychological tortures of training in a modern seminary. Prayerful, devout, loyal Catholic priests who, given the authority, could swing the country round. Priests devoted to celebrating the Mass with reverence, which was suppressed in 1969. It is this Mass which gives them the courage and the strength to carry on, firmly rooted as the rubrics are in the authority of the Roman Rite. Because those meticulous and loving rules and regulations central to the celebration of the Mass allow the priest, undistracted by the congregation, to enter into ever more the glorious mystery of transubstantiation. That Mass, meticulously celebrated is, to quote Faber, the most beautiful thing this side of heaven. These priests, so often isolated, so often reviled, in presbyteries and parishes up and down the country, live out their vocation in a Mass centred on silent prayer, a silence which modern Catholics, when introduced to it for the first time, often find deeply disturbing. Because we know now from experience that a Mass that encourages dialogue in our own language encourages dialogue within the congregation both before and after the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The appetite for conversation is thus unleashed in our churches and the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle is forgotten. And those who pray after Mass and before, who are conscious of the presence of the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, and can only pray in silence, are ignored.

This speech therefore is a heartfelt plea for all Catholics, particularly Catholic women, to cover their heads and remain silent in our chapels, cathedrals and churches. May our voices never be heard in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament. We must pray for silence. We must pray for peace and quiet. So let us pray for England and pray for the conversion of Catholics who, like lost sheep, have been led astray, taught false doctrine in their schools, encouraged to believe that what is wrong is right, and what is right is wrong. And yet, it was St Peter whom Our Blessed Lord chose to be our first Pope. St Peter, who denied Our Blessed Lord three times, St Peter who walked on the water, lost his Faith and fell in. Like St Peter, at the crucial moment of departure from the Faith, we Catholics in this country appear to be sinking fast. But what I really wish to say is this. That there is, and always has been, something remarkable about the British people. And this goes back long into history. It goes back to St Gregory, seeing the English slaves in Rome: "Non Angli, Sed Angeli." Not Angles, but Angels. And when His Holiness Pope John Paul II led the Angelus Prayer in Latin at St Peter's in Rome on that heavenly October morning in the Jubilee Year, of the thousands in the wide Piazza from all over the world, the only pilgrims who, with one voice, were able to respond in Latin to that universal prayer led in the universal language of the Church, were pilgrims with the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. We were the only pilgrims to understand the universal language of that prayer, and respond to it. We, of all the thousands in the Piazza, we British Catholics, were the only pilgrims to kneel at the words "Et Verbum Caro Factum Est". That was loyalty. And that, on the part of the Holy Father, was leadership. Leading us in a universal prayer dedicated to Our Lady in the authoritative language of Latin, a language free of all ambiguity. The accuracy, the precision, the beauty of Latin united us English, Scots, Welsh, Irish pilgrims with a Polish Pope reciting a prayer in the middle of Italy, close to the tomb of the apostle St Peter. Each of us were united in one language in response to one voice, that of the One True Holy Apostolic Church, in the voice of the Holy Father.

I paint what I call watercolour icons. During the Latin Mass Society pilgrimage to Rome in October 2000 I was asked by one of our Priests, Dom Andrew Southwell, a Benedictine from the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, a Fraternity established not long ago, loyal to the Holy Father, whose priests exclusively celebrate the traditional Roman Rite, I was asked by Dom Andrew to present a print of one of my watercolour paintings of Our Lady of Walsingham to His Eminence Cardinal Ratzinger. It was an extraordinary privilege. The day before the presentation, Dom Andrew asked me to address the Cardinal. I asked what I should say. Dom Andrew said: "Just lay it on with a trowel." So when the moment came to present the painting I reminded His Eminence of the long tradition of pilgrimages to Walsingham from all over Europe since the eleventh century, that Walsingham was as popular a place of pilgrimage as Rome, Santiago and Jerusalem. I told His Eminence of the little Slipper Chapel where nothing but the Mass has ever been celebrated, where pilgrims leave their shoes before walking barefoot on the final Holy Mile to the shrine. I told Cardinal Ratzinger that the Slipper Chapel at Walsingham is dedicated to St Catharine of Alexandria. I reminded Cardinal Ratzinger that St Catharine of Alexandria was cruelly dropped from the Calendar in 1969.

Why was it that the most powerful, the most revered, the most popular martyrs and saints, such as St Christopher, St Catharine and St Philomena, were dropped from the Calendar in 1969? And why was it that more recent and equally popular and powerful saints, the Curé d'Ars and St Thérèse of Lisieux, why was it that their statues were discovered buried at the shrine of Our Lady of Consolation at West Grinstead in Sussex, a recently restored and resurrected shrine where that great defender of the Faith in this country, Hilaire Belloc, himself lies buried?

Under the guidance of the priest custodian of the shrine at West Grinstead, which I would urge every Catholic to visit, ten miles south of Horsham, under the guidance of Father David Goddard, himself a convert from the Anglican heresy, those beautiful buried statues have been re-painted and restored and look towards the magnificent sanctuary where Solemn High Mass is now, every so often, celebrated. This shrine of Our Lady of Consolation is, for beleaguered and loyal Catholics today, an extraordinary testimony of how loyalty to the Holy See and leadership in a parish can, today, now, transform a church and bring a congregation back. In this lovingly restored church the sanctuary lamp flickers in front of the tabernacle, beneath the rich warm colours of the crowned statue of Our Lady of Consolation, the first shrine in England dedicated to the Mother of God since the Reformation. In a church which, until a few years ago, was derelict and forlorn, thanks to the wise and practical decision-making of Father David Goddard both the church and the secret chapel in the very old Priest's house, have been cleaned and repainted. Light has been restored and the miraculous painting of Our Lady of Consolation, a copy of the fourth century icon in Turin, venerated then as a protection against the Arian heresy, venerated now as a protection against the Anglican heresy, this oil painting has itself been made new again and its canopy restored. Because when a priest behaves like a Catholic, showing loyalty to the Holy Father and leadership within his own parish, he brings Catholics back into the Church.

As ever, like Father David Goddard, we must turn with gladness to our past for inspiration. We are not a Catholic country and as a nation our strong national leaders have not been Catholics. But if our leaders in the Church could show just a small amount of the strength in the face of adversity that those who have guided the nation in the past have shown, we would see the recovery in the Church we so desperately need. Winston Churchill himself recognised these qualities in his cousin, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, who was received into the Church in 1927, not far from here in the Archbishop's House at Westminster, who spent the last seven years of his life as a Catholic. If you visit Blenheim today no mention is made of this holy Duke, a Brother of the Little Oratory in London, who wanted to end his days as a Lay Brother in a Carmelite Priory in Spain. Churchill observed of his Catholic cousin: "The need for contact with the sublime and supernatural of which he was profoundly conscious, led him to the Church of Rome. He asked for sanctuary within that august and seemingly indestructible communion, against which his ancestor had warred with considerable strength."

I was fascinated to discover such sensitivity on the part of Churchill when researching my book Faith and Fortune. And it was another wartime leader, General Montgomery, who said: "Some people talk of war as if it were an act of God. But war is not an act of God. War grows directly out of things which individuals, statesmen and nations do or fail to do. And once the nation's destiny is submitted to the terrible decisions of war, victory or defeat likewise ensues from what we do or fail to do." In a spiritual context, we who are engaged in fighting a spiritual battle, can draw from these words. Because, quite simply, the crisis in the Church today came about from the wrong decisions being made by those in authority and by those who meekly went along with those wrong decisions. As a result the Catholic Church in this country is no longer recognisably Catholic, both in its teaching and its liturgy. And it does not all hinge on personal preference. The Truth is the Truth, however hard or difficult or uncomfortable it might be. That is why the martyrs spent hard, difficult and uncomfortable years defending that very same Truth. Because as Catholics we believe in Sacrifice. We believe in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, celebrated on altars - not on Communion tables but on altars. We believe in the sacrificial nature of the priesthood, in priests who act in the person of Christ, who behave in a Christ-like way, who administer the Sacraments with prayerful reverence, and who dress at all times like priests. And they do this to remind themselves and others constantly of their heavenly calling. And we believe in authority. We believe that those in authority should act with authority, defending the Truth in an increasingly Godless country that is the Dowry of Mary.

Through the grace of Almighty God I recently witnessed such leadership. I was a pilgrim when the Bishop of Namur in Belgium, Bishop Leonard, led a pilgrimage of hundreds of men, women and children from the banks of the River Meuse at Dinant in Belgium, nine miles across the countryside, winding through the pine woods. The Bishop of Namur shared a meagre meal with the pilgrims before carrying on through the open fields, down hills, through more woods, across the muddy tracks to the little-known shrine of Notre Dame de Foy, a shrine which dates from 1609 with the miraculous discovery of a quartz statue of Our Lady hidden inside an oak tree. I was present when the Bishop of Namur celebrated the traditional Mass for 450 people at the church at Foy. And in that corner of a Belgian field, that one pilgrimage, an annual pilgrimage that grows in numbers each year, that one pilgrimage when a Bishop led his international flock, provides us with a flicker of hope. It gives us hope that firm pastoral leadership can exist in northern Europe. So we must trust in divine intervention to come to our aid in the spiritual battle on which every day we embark. Because over the fields and woods through which we walked, such a miraculous intervention occurred. In what was called the Battle of the Ardennes in 1944 the final German attempt to divide the Allies and reach the coast at Antwerp, reached only as far as the little hamlet of Foy. Unaccountably, a multitude of problems set in. The weather broke, fuel ran out, supplies ran out, and the enemy's attention was diverted. And on this pilgrimage were American members of NATO and their families who themselves had battled against the military authorities simply in order to worship as Catholics.

On the edge of Brussels there is a small NATO chapel where Colonel David Sonnier had led an attempt to have the traditional Roman Rite celebrated. Similar requests in America had been repeatedly turned down by the Chaplain at America's largest Army base, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, so Colonel Sonnier requested a transfer to Europe, hoping for a more sympathetic response. Colonel Sonnier soon discovered that the priest who was American Army Chaplain in Europe had given his permission for witchcraft ceremonies to take place in the chapel at the American Army Base at Mannheim in Germany, but repeatedly refused permission for the traditional Roman Rite of Mass. It was a spiritual battle fought by Colonel Sonnier, himself a trained leader of men, who found himself battling with those in authority who brought their own military authority to bear to block his request. For the sake of his Soul and the Souls of his wife and six young children, Colonel David Sonnier opted for a tactical withdrawal. Rather than accept promotion in the United States Army — an Army which openly tolerates witchcraft ceremonies in its chapels, but not the Mass for which the martyrs died — a year ago today, on the Feast of SS. Peter and Paul, Colonel David Sonnier resigned from the United States Army. He wrote this letter to his military superiors. "This is the Mass of my family, the Mass I have opted to return to upon hearing that our Sovereign Pontiff had authorised it. If it is not welcome in military chapels, then my family is not welcome in the military... We have been given very few tools with which to work for the restoration of the Traditional Mass. So we must work with the tools we have, and much prayer."

As an island race, our battles go back long into history. And on the edge of Brussels there is a large statue of General Montgomery. I do believe that we Catholics in search of effective leadership can learn much from the positive outlook of this wartime General, with his ability to look ahead, his clear mental outline of the future and his talent for simplification. And it was Montgomery's ancestor, Roger de Montgomerie, who was William the Conqueror's chief army commander. William the Conqueror had been thought mad when he set sail for England in 1066 without a favourable wind and was forced to shelter at the mouth of the River Somme. Prayers were offered to St Valery. The storm moderated and William set sail. In June 1944, after many days of bad weather, the Channel storms abated and the invasion of Normandy began. Both commanders, in 1066 and in 1944, were isolated in their warships from the rest of their invasion fleets. Both were forced to anchor in mid-Channel. Neither commander was deterred. They both achieved their objectives. Inspired leadership can change the course of history. And what of Roger de Montgomerie? After winning many battles and a successful military career, he found solace in his Catholic Faith, spending the last years of his life, until his death in 1094, in the monastery which he himself had founded, the Abbey in Shrewsbury dedicated to St Peter and St Paul.

Daphne McLeod knew Maisie Ward. Maisie Ward was a colleague of G.K. Chesterton. And it was G.K. Chesterton who said: "We are the people of England that have never spoken yet."