The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914-2021 019884431X, 9780198844310

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THE OXFORD HISTORY OF BRITISH AND IRISH CATHOLICISM, VOLUME V

THE OXFORD HISTORY OF BRITISH AND IRISH CATHOLICISM General Editors: James E. Kelly and John McCafferty The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume I Endings and New Beginnings, 1530–1640 Edited by James E. Kelly and John McCafferty The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume II Uncertainty and Change, 1641–1745 Edited by John Morrill and Liam Temple The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume III Relief, Revolution, and Revival, 1746–1829 Edited by Liam Chambers The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume IV Building Identity, 1830–1913 Edited by Carmen M. Mangion and Susan O’Brien The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021 Edited by Alana Harris

The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021 Edited by

ALANA HARRIS General Editors

J A M E S E . K E L L Y A N D J O H N M CC A F F E R T Y

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2023 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023931647 ISBN 978–0–19–884431–0 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgements At a time when international travel and in-person conversations—at close quarters and accompanied by convivial university catering—were still taken for granted occurrences, most of the contributors to this volume gathered at King’s College London in September 2019 to share their expertise and plan our intersecting chapter contributions. I would like to thank the Department of History and the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London for funding these initial conversations. These exchanges proved invaluable in laying firm foundations for this shared intellectual enterprise and the creation of new working friendships on which I have drawn deeply over the last four years. Further funding to commission statistical research for the Appendices was provided by King’s College London, the Catholic Record Society, Catholic Family History Society, and the English Catholic History Association. A global pandemic and public health emergency do not provide the most auspicious circumstances in which to embark on a multi-authored, pathbreaking, and complicated comparative undertaking—especially when archives remain closed and necessary research repositories are not digitized. The COVID-19 lockdowns have presented the editor and most contributors with unexpected challenges—illness, bereavement, financial strains, changes in personal circumstances, and home schooling. All authors have demonstrated patience, forbearance, perseverance, and intellectual stamina throughout, and this volume is a testament to their hard work, continued good cheer, and overwhelming collegiality. I would like to pay particular thanks to the Series Editors (Dr James Kelly and Professor John McCafferty) for their unflagging support and sage advice. Warm and grateful thanks are also offered to Dr Susan O’Brien and Dr Carmen Mangion who have been lively conversation partners from the beginning (and an invaluable sounding board since)—from brainstorming our respective volume coverage over coffee and cake at Somerset House, to sharing chapter drafts, and providing feedback on work-in-progress. During the editorial process, I have drawn upon an extensive network of friends and colleagues for comments and suggestions, informal peer review, research assistance, or intellectual and emotional solace, including: Professor Colin Barr, Professor Stephen Bullivant, Dr Brian Casey, Very Revd Dr Niall Coll, Dr Helen Costigane, SHCJ, Professor Mary E. Daly (on multiple counts!), Professor Francis Davis, Dr Hannah Elias, Professor Massimo Faggioli, Professor Mary Heimann,

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Dr Alex Hutton (for compiling the Index), Timothy Kinnear, Dr John Maiden, Dr Daithí Ó Corráin, Dr Robert Proctor, Naomi Rich, Isabel Ryan, Professor Salvador Ryan, Peter Stanford, and Professor Michael Walsh. For their unconditional love, wonderful distractions, and unfailing (if ultimately unsuccessful) attempts to improve my work-life balance, I dedicate this volume to Timothy Folkard and Sebastian Harris-Folkard.

Contents List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations List of Contributors Series Introduction James E. Kelly and John McCafferty

Introduction Alana Harris

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1. Ireland Before and After the Second Vatican Council Mary E. Daly

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2. The Church in England and Wales: An Historical Overview Stephen Bullivant

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3. Twentieth-Century Scottish Catholicism: Poverty, Affluence, and Freedom Paul Gilfillan 4. Catholics, War, and Britain’s Armed Forces Michael Snape

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5. Marriage, the Family, and Sexual Ethics David Geiringer and Laura Kelly

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6. Catholic Education in Britain and Ireland Stephen G. Parker

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7. Saints and Devotional Cultures Mary Heimann and Cara Delay

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8. The Architecture and Art of British and Irish Catholicism Robert Proctor

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9. Liturgy and Music Christopher McElroy

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10. British and Irish Novels and the Catholic Imagination Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros

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11. Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations Maria Power

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12. Ireland’s Missions and Missionaries in the Twentieth Century Fiona Bateman

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13. Women Religious, Charitable Ministries, and the Welfare State Carmen M. Mangion

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14. Migration, Migrant Chaplaincy, and Multi-Ethnic Britain Breda Gray and Louise Ryan

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15. Clerical Abuse Mary E. Daly and Marcus Pound

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16. The Travails of Contemporary Irish Catholicism from John Paul II to Pope Francis Daithí Ó Corráin Statistical Appendices Timothy Kinnear Index

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List of Illustrations 1.1 Eucharistic Congress souvenir postcard (1932)

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2.1 ‘Typical Sunday’ Mass attendance graph

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2.2 Cartoonist John Ryan’s humorous take on the National Pastoral Congress

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3.1 Memorial for the Declaration of Abroath

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4.1 ‘The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois’ by Fortunino Matania

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4.2 Mural memorial to James Magennis, VC

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6.1 Confession book of Alison Kane (aged 6)

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7.1 Annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cardiff

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7.2 Dubliners watching the annual Corpus Christi procession, 1985

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8.1 Church of the Miraculous Medal, Clonskeagh, Dublin

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8.2 Christ the King, Turner’s Cross, Cork

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8.3 Our Lady of Fatima, Harlow

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8.4 Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, Clifton, Bristol

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12.1 ‘Africa is Awaiting Ireland’s Message!’

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16.1 Waving crowd as Pope John Paul II flies over Phoenix Park, Dublin, 1979

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List of Abbreviations Anstruther, Seminary Priests

ARSI CRS OCart ODNB OFM OSB SCH SJ WWTN

Godfrey Anstruther, The Seminary Priests: A Dictionary of the Secular Clergy of England and Wales 1558–1850, 4 vols. (Ware, Durham, and Great Wakering, [1968]–1977) Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu Catholic Record Society Carthusian Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): https://www.oxforddnb.com/ Franciscan Minor Benedictine Studies in Church History Jesuit Who Were the Nuns? database: https://wwtn.history.qmul. ac.uk/

List of Contributors Fiona Bateman is a Lecturer in English and Film at the University of Galway. Her main research focus is Ireland’s modern missionary movement (the foreign missions) in the twentieth century and its associated texts, including post-colonial studies and particularly the relationship between Ireland and Africa. Her post-doctoral research concerns Ireland and Biafra, and she has published on this and other missionary-related topics including Clarke Studios’ stained glass windows in Africa, Irish fiction and the Nigeria-Biafra war, and Tom Gavan Duffy’s The Catechist of Kil-Arni. She co-edited Studies in Settler Colonialism: Politics, Identity and Culture (2011). Stephen Bullivant is Professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at St Mary’s University, London, and Professorial Research Fellow in Theology and Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Sydney. His most recent books include Contemporary Catholics in Contemporary Britain: Faith, Society, Politics (Oxford, 2022; with Ben Clements), Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (New York, 2022), and Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2023; with Shaun Blanchard). Mary E. Daly is Professor Emerita in Irish History at University College Dublin. She served as President of the Royal Irish Academy (2014–17), the first woman to hold that office. Her recent publications include Sixties Ireland: Reshaping, the Economy, Society and the State, 1957–73 (Cambridge, 2016), and The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland (2017), co-edited with Eugenio Biagini. She was a member of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (2021), and since 2012 has served as a member of the Irish government’s Expert Advisory Group on the Decade of Centenaries. Cara Delay is Professor of History at the College of Charleston and specializes in the history of women, gender, and culture in Ireland, the American south, and the Atlantic world. She is the author of Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism, 1850–1950 (Manchester, 2019) and a new book (co-authored with Beth Sundstrom), Catching Fire: Women’s Health Activism in Ireland and the Global Movement for Reproductive Justice (Oxford, 2023). David Geiringer is a Lecturer in Public History and Heritage at Queen Mary University of London. He is interested in the social and cultural histories of modern Britain. His first book, The Pope and the Pill (Manchester, 2019), explored the sexual and religious experiences of Catholic women in post-war England, and elsewhere, he has written on the histories of urban religion, the home computer, the 1990s, and love. Paul Gilfillan is currently a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (Budapest) and is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Queen Margaret University (Edinburgh). A liberation sociologist, he is the author of A Sociological Phenomenology of

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Christian Redemption (London, 2014) and is currently writing an ethnographic study of post-1970s Scottish Catholicism. Breda Gray is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Limerick. She has a long-standing research interest in gender, migration, and diaspora as lived experience, and the ways in which these are governed. Having completed a project on how the relationship between work and life is reshaped in knowledge-based economies, her most recent research addresses the role of the Catholic Church in the government of migration. Breda has published widely on these themes and was a member of the Irish government’s Dion Committee for Irish Emigrant Welfare in Britain at the Embassy of Ireland in London for ten years. Alana Harris is a Reader in Modern British Social, Cultural, and Gender History at King’s College London, having previously acted as the Director of Liberal Arts and taught at Lincoln College, University of Oxford. She has authored seven books, including Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism 1945–1982 (Manchester, 2013), Love and Romance in Britain, 1918–1970 (London 2014; edited with Timothy W. Jones), and The Schism of ’68: Catholics, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–75 (London, 2018). Her research specialisms, advanced in numerous chapter and journal articles, encompass the histories of gender and sexuality; ethnicity, and migration; devotional cultures; pilgrimage; urban religiosity and material religion. Mary Heimann is Chair of Modern History at Cardiff University. She has published widely on Christianity in Britain and Europe from the enlightenment to the present day, with a particular focus on Catholic spirituality, thought, and practice. She is the author of Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, 1995) and was for many years Associate Editor responsible for Catholic subjects in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Her current research interests lie in Cold War Christianity on both sides of the Iron Curtain, especially Czechoslovakia. Laura Kelly is a Senior Lecturer in the history of health and medicine at the University of Strathclyde and co-director of the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (CSHHH). She has published three monographs as well as numerous articles and book chapters related to the social history of medicine in modern Ireland. She recently held a Wellcome Trust research fellowship to explore the history of contraception in modern Ireland. This is the subject of her most recent book, Contraception and Modern Ireland: A Social History c.1922‒92 (Cambridge, 2023). Timothy Kinnear is a PhD candidate at St Mary’s University, London. His research focuses on computer coding to analyse cohesion and conflict in large datasets of historical online interactions relating to religion. He has also contributed to Explaining Atheism, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, helping research the role of the internet in secularization. Bonnie Lander Johnson is Fellow and Director of Studies at Downing College, Cambridge. She has written numerous academic articles and literary essays on fiction and the history of religion, gender, and culture. Her academic books on early modern literature are Chastity in Early Stuart Literature and Culture (Cambridge, 2015); Blood Matters (Philadelphia, 2018); and The Cambridge Handbook to Literature and Plants (Cambridge, 2023). With Julia

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Meszaros she edits Catholic Women Writers, the Catholic University of America Press multi-volume series of novels by women of the Catholic Literary Revival. Carmen M. Mangion teaches modern British history at Birkbeck, University of London. Her research examines the cultural and social history of gender and religion in nineteenthand twentieth-century Britain focusing on the formation and rethinking of religious identities during times of social change. She is the author of Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age, Britain 1945–1990 (Manchester, 2020) and Contested Identities: Catholic Women Religious in nineteenth-century England and Wales (Manchester, 2008), and numerous publications on gender and religion in Britain’s nineteenth-century medical marketplace. Christopher McElroy is the Director of Music at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. He holds music degrees from Huddersfield and Liverpool Universities, and a PhD from Liverpool Hope University on the musical reception of Vatican II. Julia Meszaros teaches theology at St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth. She is the author of Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch (Oxford, 2016) and editor of Sacrifice and Modern Thought (with Johannes Zachhuber, Oxford, 2013); and has written numerous articles in the field of theological anthropology and theology and literature. With Bonnie Lander Johnson she edits Catholic Women Writers, the Catholic University of America Press multi-volume series of novels by women of the Catholic Literary Revival. Daithí Ó Corráin is Associate Professor in the School of History and Geography at Dublin City University. He has published widely on Catholicism and is the author of Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–73 (Manchester, 2006) and contributions to the Cambridge History of Ireland (Cambridge, 2018), Oxford Handbook of Religion in Modern Ireland and journal articles in British Catholic History. An expert on the Irish Revolution, he is co-author of The Dead of the Irish Revolution (Yale, 2020) and Cathal Brugha: ‘An indomitable Spirit’ (Dublin, 2022), and co-editor of The Irish Revolution, 1912–23 series (Four Courts Press). Stephen G. Parker is Professor of Education and Religious History and Director of the Centre for Catholic Education, Research and Religious Literacy at St. Mary’s University, London. He has published widely in religious educational history in the nineteenth and twentieth century, focusing particularly upon the interface between Church and State at the policy level, key figures and contexts in curriculum and pedagogical reform, RE teacher professionalisation and religious education on radio and television. His books include the co-edited and authored Bloomsbury Reader in Religion and Childhood (London, 2017) and History, Remembrance and Religious Education (Oxford, 2015). Stephen is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Beliefs and Values. Marcus Pound is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theology and Religion, Durham University. He has written a trilogy of monographs exploring the relation between psychoanalysis and theology, the most recent of which was Theology, Comedy, and Politics (Fortress Press, 2019). He is the Principal Investigator for the Durham University-based

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project, Boundary Breaking: the ecclesial-cultural implications of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Maria Power is a Senior Research Fellow in Human Dignity at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. She is the author of Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland: Cardinal Cahal Daly and the Pursuit of the Peaceable Kingdom, The Bible and the Conflict in Northern Ireland (London, 2023), and two edited collections: Violence and Peace in Sacred Texts (London, 2023) and Catholic Lay Societies in Britain (Woodbridge, 2023). Robert Proctor is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the University of Bath. He studied at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge, and previously taught at the Glasgow School of Art for twelve years. With interests in architecture’s relationships to social, political and religious change, he has published widely on twentieth-century British architecture, especially churches, most importantly in his book, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (London, 2014). Louise Ryan is Senior Professor of Sociology and Director of the Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre at London Metropolitan University. She has been researching migration for over 20 years with a particular focus on intra-EU migrants. Louise has also researched post-war migration from the Caribbean and is currently developing a new project with Afghan refugees in London. She is also working on ‘Irish Nurses in the NHS: an oral history project’. Louise’s contribution to migration studies was awarded with a Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2015. Her latest book is Social Networks and Migration (Bristol, 2022). Michael Snape is the inaugural Michael Ramsey Professor of Anglican Studies at Durham University and is an ecumenical lay canon of Durham Cathedral. He has published extensively on religion and armed conflict in the English-speaking world, and his books include God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the First and Second World Wars (London, 2005), God and Uncle Sam: Religion and America’s Armed Forces in World War II (Woodbridge, 2015), and A Church Militant: Anglicans and the Armed Forces from Queen Victoria to the Vietnam War (Oxford, 2022).

Note: When two or more contributors have co-authored a chapter, their names are recorded in normal list fashion. When two or more contributors have authored separate parts of a chapter, their names are divided by a forward slash and listed in order of appearance of their contribution.

Series Introduction James E. Kelly and John McCafferty

During the 1530s Henry VIII broke with Rome, initiating a series of events that would become known as the British and Irish Reformations. In England and Wales, Tudor reform was given impetus by Edward VI and Elizabeth I, while in Scotland civil war led to a split from Rome in 1560. Ireland, meanwhile, was subject to English reform. In each of the kingdoms there were those who chose to remain loyal to the papacy. Hand in hand with emergent official State Protestantism and deliberate fomenting of anti-Catholic prejudice went the birth of a United Kingdom through the events of 1603, 1707, and 1801. Shortly after the completion of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, civil disabilities against those who had remained in communion with Rome were lifted by the 1829 Emancipation Act. By the start of the twenty-first century, according to some statistics, weekly attendance at Catholic services was set to overtake attendance at Anglican and Presbyterian services in Britain. At the same time, the Catholic population of Northern Ireland was nearing parity with that of the Protestant, and in the Republic of Ireland the vast majority identified themselves as Catholic in census returns. In other words, despite its own rhetoric and the resulting dominant historiographical view of several centuries, Tudor reform did not consign Catholicism to historical oblivion. Instead, perceptions of papists and the enduring presence of British and Irish Catholics turned out to be a serious engine of identity and State formation across both islands from 1534 to the Good Friday Agreement. Catholics and Catholicism—directly or indirectly—affected the lives of every single inhabitant of both islands from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. This multi-volume series charts, analyses, and interprets this story, covering the whole period of post-Reformation Catholicism from the sixteenth-century reformations to the present day. The series’ volumes are ordered chronologically, in order to trace the movement from official proscription and persecution, to toleration, to strong public presence. The opening volume explores the period 1530–1640, from the start of the Reformation to the outbreak of the civil wars. It analyses the efforts to create a Catholic community after the officially implemented change in religion, as well as the start of initiatives that would set the course of British and Irish Catholicism, such as the beginning of the missionary enterprise and the formation of institutions in exile. The second volume covers the period 1641–1745, incorporating the civil wars, the restoration of the monarchy, the Glorious Revolution, and the final attempt at a Jacobite restoration. It

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examines the experience of Catholics in Britain and Ireland during this period of national conflict, the hopes for toleration under the later Stuarts, as well as the religious interpretation of potential Jacobite regime change. This is followed by a volume dedicated to the period 1746–1829, which marks the end of a serious Catholic threat to the established Protestant State of Britain and Ireland. Taking in international factors, particularly the French Revolution and the subsequent wars with France, the volume explores the move towards Catholic emancipation and its final achievement through legal rather than insurrectionary means. The fourth volume, looking at the period 1830–1913, examines the methods adopted to rebuild a church and lead a community emerging from 300 years of official State proscription. It considers how these visions could frequently be at odds, embodying as they did positions then engulfing the global Catholic Church through debates over, for example, papal infallibility and accommodation to modernity. The series ends with a volume that covers 1914 to the present day. It opens with the impact of World War I and the growth of nationalism, taking account of the creation of a Free State in Ireland dominated by the Church, as well as the construction of a sectarianized Northern Ireland. Including the Second World War, the volume also interprets the effect of the major changes wrought by Vatican II on British and Irish Catholicism, exploring how the impact of this monumental international moment affected the local Church into the new millennium. Before outlining the motivations for such a series and the themes that run through the volumes, it is necessary to explain definitions and to set some parameters. Perhaps the most pressing of these is the decision to use the term ‘Catholic’ rather than ‘Roman Catholic’. By Catholic, the editors of the volumes and the contributors have understood the term to indicate those individuals who saw themselves as in communion with the pope, and were understood to be so by those based in Rome. This communion or spiritual loyalty was, to varying degrees of strength, a fundamental demarcation across the centuries covered in this series, something of a bare minimum requirement for classification as Catholic. This was at least partly recognized by their contemporaries in their being given the deliberately othering term ‘papist’ in the early modern period, as battles over the word Catholic ensued in the wake of Henry VIII’s separation from the papacy.¹ Moreover, Catholics were fully aware what was being implied by the use of such terms: as one English Catholic writer noted in the eighteenth century, ‘I am no Papist, nor is my religion Popery. [Whereas] Catholic is an old family name, which we have never forfeited, the word Roman has been given to us to indicate some undue attachment to the See of Rome.’² Additionally, all editors were

¹ Peter Marshall, ‘Is the Pope Catholic? Henry VIII and the Semantics of Schism’, in Ethan Shagan (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2005), pp. 22–48. ² Quoted in volume 3 of this series, p. 281.

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unanimous in their opposition to the term ‘Roman Catholic’ for some more nuanced, historiographical reasons. Apart from meaning little outside a very specific Anglocentric world, and itself being a continuation of that othering that sought to portray Catholics as foreign or not fully English, Scottish, or Welsh, the term also causes problems in terms of understanding within a wider Catholic context. If Catholics are removed from the Anglosphere that is the immediate context of these volumes and placed into a wider, transnational Catholic one, then the term ‘Roman Catholic’ implies and even denotes something very different, conjuring notions of a strong papalist or ultramontane Catholicism as opposed to a Gallican or conciliar one. In other words, it implies something about the Catholics of Britain and Ireland that is not necessarily true, or at least certainly is not true for all of them across the whole chronological period covered. Of course, the emergence, or arguable rediscovery, of Anglo-Catholicism in the nineteenth century by members of the Church of England, features in the relevant volume but, out of communion with the papacy, it does not fall within the parameters of this series. Another point to stress regarding terminology: the application of modern secular terms, such as conservative and liberal, make little sense when applied to much of the history of Catholicism. One example will suffice of the inadequacy of such terms: in the nineteenth century, Cardinal Manning of England and Wales was amongst the most traditional in terms of morality, liturgy, and theology, yet amongst the most ground-breaking in his social justice ideas and agenda, even advocating working with other Christian denominations to promote and protect certain Christian values in society. Modern secular terms serve no purpose apart from to mislead when applied to such an individual. Another issue concerning terminology is the growing use of the term ‘post-Tridentine’ by historians and literary scholars to denote the period immediately following the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century. Yet from a theological or liturgical aspect, the term means something very different: after all, with adaptation, the Tridentine rite of the Mass remained the ordinary form until well into the twentieth century. In reality, a more accurate term to help universal understanding across the different disciplines would be ‘post-Trent’ or something along those lines. This may sound like nit-picking, but such slippage in terminology has masked a phenomenon that is evident across all five volumes of the History: following emancipation in 1829, British and Irish Catholics sought to fully implement the Tridentine reforms, as they now had the notional freedom and structures to do so. This was in no sense a ‘post-Tridentine’ church or century. Such attempts were witnessed in, for example, the music of the Mass or the founding of seminaries for particular dioceses. The latter may have been an unrealistic goal, as evidenced by the closures in the twentieth century and, in Scotland, the collapse of clerical training in the country, but it did bring things full circle: Scottish Catholic clerical training once more happened abroad, in mainland Europe, as in penal times.

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This brings us to geographical boundaries. The series is about British and Irish Catholicism, but this creates challenges brought about by the region’s history and the different trajectories of the constituent parts. Most pertinently, there is the issue of Empire, and British and Irish Catholic involvement in this enterprise. The decision has been taken to include British and Irish Catholic presence in, for example, America or Australia, but only to cover such regions as long as they were jurisdictionally allied to the English Church, which is in line with the policy of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. In other words, once they are operating with their own, independent, ecclesiastical hierarchy, then, despite the presence of numerous lay and clerical Catholics from Britain and Ireland, their continuing story is not included here. For all that, the History deliberately seeks to analyse the countries together, at first through a three kingdoms approach, which by the end of the final volume has become the five jurisdictions. Too frequently in general historiography, Britain and Ireland are treated completely separately, ignoring the influences and impacts they had on each other. This issue becomes, arguably, even more pointed in the study of Catholicism within these islands. By its very nature, Catholicism is transnational and pays little heed to geographical boundaries. That is not to say it is the same everywhere—quite the opposite is in fact the case—but it is a vital and oft-neglected fact about these islands that not only, for periods, shared similar political systems, but also witnessed the movement of people between them quite freely. This raises complicated questions throughout the volumes over the ‘Britishness’ or ‘Irishness’ of Catholicism across these islands and in the diasporas. Moreover, it is a tricky task to give due attention to the ‘four nations’ – England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales—as well as their various languages, cultures, and aspirations, especially as some areas have been far more heavily researched than others. It is certainly evident where more research needs to be done, with Scottish and Welsh Catholicism deserving of much more work. Nevertheless, each volume and each individual author has a different take on these questions. This, in turn, leads to the reason for why such a series is not just possible but also needed. For too long, the study of Catholicism in Britain operated in a ghetto or silo, by something of a mutual understanding. As indicated above, there was a strong historiographical tradition that held that Catholics simply disappeared at the Reformation, only popping up every now and again to be executed, before re-appearing in the nineteenth century because of migration from elsewhere, to become, by the mid-twentieth century, a distinct but peculiar branch on the weird fringes of life that it was still safe to mock, albeit not in quite so strong terms as previously. On the other side, at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth century, confessionally motivated Catholics began digging away at their history, content for it to be separate from the mainstream in their ghettoized ‘recusant’ approach. In contrast, the opposite holds true for Irish historiography. Catholicism is so mainstream

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to Irish history-writing that its specificities and dynamics have often been lost or occluded. The separating off of the history of Catholicism in Britain, or its being swallowed-up in Ireland, are exactly what these volumes wish to avoid. This approach ties to scholarly trends that increasingly recognize the importance of Catholicism to British and Irish history as a whole, and these volumes bring about fresh and critical thinking to the Catholic experience since 1530. Though popular perceptions of Catholicism’s premature death may still endure, the last decades have seen major upheavals in the academic study of Catholicism in these islands, as a growing number of scholars have recognized the importance of the subject to both national and global history. This burgeoning interest is indicated by the renaming of the journal Recusant History as British Catholic History, and the start of the biennial Early Modern British and Irish Catholicism Conference organized by Durham University and the University of Notre Dame. Moreover, the archival riches of Church bodies, especially religious orders, have stimulated multiple research projects based on Catholic sources written in a non-confessional manner.³ This means that, whereas towards the start of the millennium Ethan Shagan could lament that early modern English Catholicism remained marginalized as ‘a historiographical sub-field or occasionally a ghetto’, only a decade later, Alexandra Walsham could note that ‘Catholicism in the British Isles has emerged from the shadows and become one of the liveliest arenas of scholarly enquiry at the current time’.⁴ The History builds on these recent historiographical trends, but also extends them, pointing to areas where there has been a lack of research. As well as some more specific themes, there are four main factors that run throughout the volumes. The first of these is the relevance of Catholicism within different spheres of national and international life, particularly its political significance. This is not to downplay other approaches to the topic: this series seeks to cover the full gamut of research that has been, and is being, undertaken, including those working on musicology and material culture. Indeed, the shift from institutional history ³ For example, two digital projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the Who Were the Nuns? (https://wwtn.history.qmul.ac.uk/) and the Monks in Motion (https://www.dur.ac.uk/ mim/) projects, as well as the Visible Divinity: Money and Irish Catholicism, 1850–1921 project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The AHRC-funded Cwm Jesuit Library project was a joint venture between Hereford Cathedral and Swansea University, which recreated a Jesuit mission library in Wales. In Ireland, the Clericus digital project seeks to track Irish-born clergy (https://clericus.ie), while the Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550–1700 project featured women religious as one of the main research strands (https://recirc.nuigalway.ie). Further afield, at Tischner European University in Krakow, the Subversive Publishing in Modern England and Poland: A Comparative Study Project, funded by the National Science Center of Poland, unearthed significant findings about the influence of English Jesuits in central Europe. ⁴ Ethan Shagan, ‘Introduction: English Catholic History in Context,’ in Ethan Shagan (ed.), Catholics and the ‘Protestant Nation’: Religious Politics and Identity in Early Modern England (Manchester, 2005), p. 1; Alexandra Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Farnham, 2015), p. 2.

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towards greater awareness of gender, cultural, social, and economic factors are vital constituents of the story tracked across the volumes. Moreover, it would be remiss not to recognize that literary scholars have been at the forefront of pioneering research into at least early modern British and Irish Catholicism. In short, scholarship on the topic has been truly interdisciplinary. However, there is a danger that a dominant cultural approach could, and sometimes has, led to a slight undervaluing of the political. Thus, the volumes consider the role of British and Irish Catholicism from the perspective of each of the changing polities of the two islands, recognizing similarities of experience across Britain and Ireland, as well as differences. The History examines how Catholicism interacted with the growth of the nation state but also how international Catholicism was translated in, and transferred to, Britain and Ireland. Mirroring that, it places British and Irish Catholicism within a European and global context, whether that be the Catholic Reformation in the earlier volumes, or Empire and mission in the later volumes. The second factor is very much intwined with the first: the importance of Catholicism within the wider narratives of Britain and Ireland. This is somewhat self-explanatory but to give one example: populist suspicion of popery and the enduring presence of Catholics acted as serious engines of identity and State formation in England⁵ during the time of the faith’s official proscription, from the reign of Elizabeth I to Catholic emancipation in 1829. Equally, as mentioned earlier, Catholicism’s role within the wider narrative of Irish history in the nineteenth and, especially, twentieth century, is so obvious that any distinction has been lost. Put simply, the history of Catholicism in Britain and Ireland does not belong in its own distinct silo. The third factor running throughout the volumes is the internationality of British and Irish Catholicism. There has been a tendency to look inwards as far as British and Irish Catholicism is concerned and, even when mentioned, to neglect the importance of the role played by the various nations’ Catholic diasporas. Until the French Revolution it was here, at these institutions in mainland Europe, that Catholic children were educated, where women religious lived their lives, where the clergy were formed. That international element is no less prevalent in the modern period; from debates about ultramontanism in the nineteenth century, to the impact of Vatican II in the twentieth century, British and Irish Catholicism did not exist in a void, separated from the rest of the world, whether Catholic or secular. It fitted into, and was influenced by, global trends, whether that be the missionary impulse or global expansionism starting in the early modern period, or the ‘second spring’ of the nineteenth century that was part of ⁵ See, for example, Peter Lake, ‘Anti-Popery: The Structure of a Prejudice’, in Richard Cust and Ann Hughes (eds.), Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, 1603‒1642 (London, 1989), pp. 72‒106.

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a wider movement of Christian revivalism throughout Europe, and saw increased religious volunteerism and preaching missions by male orders not far removed from initiatives more commonly associated with Protestant evangelicals. As well as the outward, exile movement in the early modern period, a constant feature throughout is migration between and into the islands, not only in terms of Irish movement, but, in more recent times, Polish immigration and even the creation of a Syro-Malibar rite cathedral influencing the Church in these islands. Equally, as a global Church, Catholicism has increasingly become a pathway to assimilation for migrants in the modern period and an important cog within community cohesion. This very much links to the fourth major factor running through the volumes. It may seem a somewhat strange element to highlight, but these volumes stress the importance of bearing in mind the theological, spiritual, and juridical underpinnings of Catholicism as a Christian denomination. Picking up on the examples given above, those individuals—both male and female—at the exile foundations in mainland Europe were fully exposed to Catholic Reformation ideas and, by the eighteenth century, the growing Catholic Enlightenment, not to mention in particular exile pockets the influence of Jansenism. In other words, these people were not only English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh exiles; they were members of the global Church Militant, exposed to the ideas circulating in those arenas. This is no less true in the modern period: the impact of Vatican II, as wide-ranging as it was, was ultimately rooted in broader Catholic theological and spiritual currents. In an earlier period, the ultramontane movement—that placed emphasis on a strong papalist and Roman authority—meant the loyalty of English, Welsh, and Scottish Catholics was judged as suspect, raising once again the anti-Catholic idea of their split loyalties. Meanwhile, British and Irish Catholics were themselves caught-up in the global Church’s modernism crisis, with some leading Catholics in the islands chafing against what they saw as being driven back into the Catholic segregated ghetto from which they had just been given secular permission to leave following emancipation in 1829. Yet, the centrality of an Englishman in the form of Merry del Val to the Church’s stance against modernism cannot be underplayed. In addition to the four overarching, broader themes, this last point is a gateway to one of the more specific ones running throughout the volumes, in this case the cyclical relationship between the global Church and Britain and Ireland. It was not simply a case of British and Irish Catholics receiving dictation from a centralized body, but they too fed into it, whether it be Reginald Pole co-chairing the first session of the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, martyrs from the islands being held up as exemplars for the seventeenth-century global Church, nineteenth-century Marian devotions such as at Knock in Ireland or hymns from Britain spreading elsewhere, or Irish Franciscans playing a vital role in the promotion of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception—given formal approval during the ultramontane years of the later period—Catholics in these islands were

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helping shape the global Church as much as they were shaped by it. Such agency often counters popular narratives that have sprung-up. As is made clear in Volume IV, despite current popular wisdom, the Irish bishops in the nineteenth century were serial ignorers of advice or rulings from Rome. This put them in complete opposition to, for example, positions adopted in England and Wales by the likes of Cardinal Manning in his support for universal education. Apart from underlining how, post-emancipation, British Catholics sought a wider impact on society towards a common improvement while, if anything, the Irish bishops looked inwards, it also laid the foundations for the serious repercussions within the Irish Church in the twentieth century. Having noted that hierarchical role, the frequently limited influence of bishops is apparent across the volumes. Where a traditional, liberal historiographical approach to history led confessionalized historians tended to follow, leading to emphasis being placed on important figures and their impact. Yet for all those bishops frequently get blamed for everything, it is clear that they were just as regularly not listened to, whether that be Richard Smith trying to stamp his authority on England’s Catholics in the first half of the seventeenth century or religious orders ignoring the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Ireland. The often-fraught relationship between bishops and religious orders is a constant feature across the volumes. It also links to the growing scholarly recognition of the importance of those very orders, whether that be in the immediate post-Reformation period when many were active Tridentine reformers and, in the Observant Franciscans, sources of major resistance, particularly in Ireland to Henrician and Edwardian policies, to their prominence in education in the nineteenth century, or in social justice matters in the twentieth century. Moreover, what becomes clear across the five volumes is that the strong clericalist presence of the nineteenth century was in fact an aberration. Just as the influence of what is frequently referred to as the Victorian period still impacts traditions or cultural assumptions more widely, the same is true in assumptions about the Catholic Church. Clear in these volumes is that before—and increasingly after—that period, the laity had a far more significant role than is usually assumed. Another very notable feature is the prominent role of women throughout. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women played a vital part in the survival of Catholicism, running safe houses for missionary clergy, turning the authorities’ misogyny to their advantage as they practised recusancy and raised their children secretly Catholic. Moreover, further up society’s class hierarchy, there was a series of female Catholic regents throughout the seventeenth century. Into the nineteenth and then the twentieth century, women led popular devotional trends and, frequently, played an increasingly important role in the running of parishes. Indeed, the importance of this domestic environment is another theme running through the volumes, whether it be in the enforced domestic setting of the penal period or the devotional learning of the modern era. In itself, this domesticity links

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to ideas of inculturation and accommodation, more commonly associated with global Catholic enterprises in, for example, Asia, but just as evident here. Once again, this brings us back to the connection between the local, national, and global identities at play, and the pull between international influences and local needs, contexts, and reality. This is even evident where least assumed, such as the Gothic revival movement in architecture during the nineteenth century. As much as it was about reclaiming the past and what was deemed broken at the Reformation, it also had a global influence, the likes of Augustus Welby Pugin designing churches in, for example, Australia. Equally, in this neo-gothic revivalism can be seen the religious and the secular influencing and pushing each other. That is not to say that the two realms mixed easily throughout: as is already obvious from what has been outlined, the sparring between the secular and the spiritual is a constant theme, each regularly accusing the other of venturing into a sphere of influence upon which it had no claim. The mention of the neo-Gothic movement also raises another specific theme; Catholic grappling with ideas of continuity and discontinuity. This is not simply in terms of looking for links to the pre-Reformation period or a recovery of the Catholic past, but is evident in the events that define each chronological period covered in the volumes. So, as well as pre- and post-Reformation, it becomes clear there are other markers in the British and Irish Catholic mindset, such as pre- and post-civil war and Glorious Revolution; pre- and post-French Revolution; preand post-creation of the Irish Free State in 1922; pre- and post-Vatican II. This is just a sample of the defining markers that become clear across the History and it is notable how many could also apply to the non-Catholic story. In other words, it underlines just how entangled Catholicism was with wider events in Britain and Ireland. The history of Catholicism in these islands was not, and never has been, alone in a hermetically sealed silo. Even taking something as wide-reaching as national identity, it is evident that for much of the period under consideration here, Catholicism was seen as anathema to true national identity in England, Scotland, and Wales, while the reverse was true in Ireland from as early as the seventeenth century. Despite that difference, what remains true is the role played by Catholicism in those nation’s psyches. Having said all that, there is one almost reassuring continuity. Whatever period may now be reminisced about as the golden time for Catholics in Britain and Ireland, those living through it never saw it as such. If there is one constant throughout the volumes, it is that, even at the heights of nineteenth-century second spring rhetoric and twentieth-century outward signs of growth, Catholics still complained and worried about non- or low Mass attendance and knowledge of the faith. Plus ça change.

Introduction Alana Harris

The twentieth century is often described by historians as an ‘age of extremes’¹—a time of tumultuous change, global warfare and genocidal violence, polarizing ideological conflicts, and mass migration. Far from being quarantined from these events and belying historiographical conjuring of the self-contained ‘Catholic ghetto’,² the Church in Britain and Ireland reacted, adapted, and was often highly proactive in reading these ‘signs of the times’.³ Laywomen and -men looked to Rome, and closer to home to their bishops, priests, and religious for reassurance, prophetic leadership, material support, and intellectual resources to navigate the profound transformations in gendered and class-based relations, Church-State reconfigurations, and intra-ecclesial innovations across the century. The laity also responded to these challenges with ‘widespread diffusion and great activity of the apostolate’ through diverse initiatives sometimes unhelpfully grouped under Pope Pius XI’s umbrella term of ‘Catholic Action’. Across Britain and Ireland—decades before the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) gave fresh theological impetus to the ‘apostolate of the laity’—new organizations were established to address pressing moral issues, ameliorate challenging social conditions, and work for the ‘rechristianization’ of society. Speaking to concerns spanning the ‘Catholic family’, politics and economics, working-class unrest and middle-class movement into the professions, as well as perennial issues of charity and welfare, organizations as distinctive as the Catholic Women’s League (London, 1906), Catholic Socialist Society (Glasgow, 1906), Catholic Federation (Manchester, 1906), Catholic Doctors’ Guild of SS Luke, Cosmas and Damian (London, 1911), the Legion of Mary (Dublin, 1922), and Muintir na Tíre (Tipperary, 1931)⁴ were established. The range and diversity of confraternities

¹ Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London, 1995). ² Kester Aspden, Fortress Church: The English Roman Catholic Bishops and Politics, 1903–1963 (Leominster, 2002); cf. Bernard Aspinwall, ‘Baptisms, Marriages and Lithuanians; or, “Ghetto? What Ghetto?” Some Reflections on Modern Catholic Historical Assumptions’, Innes Review, 51 (2000), pp. 55–67. ³ Gaudium et Spes, 1965, §4, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html (accessed 23 February 2022). See James Chappel, Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church (Cambridge, MA, 2018). ⁴ Mark Tierney, The Story of Muintir na Tíre (Tipperary, 2004). Alana Harris, Introduction In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0001

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and faith-based organizations that characterized the Church of the twentieth century demonstrates the energy, inventiveness, and activism of Catholic women and men who, far from pliant and passive, were increasingly claiming a greater representative voice and institutional accountability from their Church as well as other governing institutions. These broader trends—unpacked in the chapters that follow—are epitomized in the address of Patrick Keegan (1916–90): a ‘piecer’ in a Wigan cotton mill and son of an Irish miner from Lancashire who co-founded an offshoot of Joseph Leo Cardijn’s Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne in Britain. Keegan had the distinction of attending the final two sessions of Vatican II in his capacity as president of the World Movement of Catholic Workers,⁵ and was the first layman to address a General Council since the fourth century. His historic speech on 17 October 1964 responded to ‘De Ecclesia’ and articulated some of the core thematic preoccupations of this edited collection: The schema is the natural outcome of the Church’s new awareness of Herself . . . . . . proof that the apostolate of the laity is no luxury nor passing fashion. It means that this apostolate is incorporated into the new dynamism of the Church, seeking new ways to implement the message of the Gospel, seeking new means better adapted to the different social, economic and cultural situations of modern [people] . . . It is for us as lay people to bring to our Pastors our experience of the needs of the world in which we live, and to seek from them guidance in our endeavour to respond to these needs.⁶

This volume—covering the period from the Great War, through the Second World War and the Second Vatican Council—charts a transformed ecclesial landscape between the papacies of Benedict XV and Pope Francis. It explores ‘the Church’s new awareness of herself ’ with a focus on the efforts of bishops, priests, and people in Ireland and Scotland, Wales and England to respond to modern needs and reintegrate the experiences of the laity into the ministry of the Church. Alongside the twentieth century’s designation as an era of technological innovation, war, peace, globalization, and liberation (through feminism, decolonization, and democratization), this period has also been designated as ‘the People’s Century’.⁷ Viewed through the lens of the Catholic Church, this same grassroots dynamic is present through the contributions which follow. As a century characterized by the rise (or more precisely, the renewal) of the apostolate of the laity, it ⁵ ‘New Men and Women Auditors’, The Tablet, 26 September 1964, p. 1095. Frank Duff, founder of the Legion of Mary, would be invited to the Council in 1965. ⁶ The Tablet, 17 October 1964, p. 1183. ⁷ As popularly coined by the twenty-six-part BBC/PBS series, 1995–7.

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traces these struggles to reconcile tradition, re-evaluate hierarchical authority, adapt to social and educational mobility, as well as adjudicate serious challenges from outside (and within) to the legitimacy of the Church as an institution.

Setting the Historiographical Scene In his 1950 collection of essays to mark the centenary of the restoration of the hierarchy of England and Wales, George Andrew Beck identified his volume’s overarching theme as institutional ‘growth’ and the ‘attainment of maturity’, whilst acknowledging a lack of ‘colour and vividness’ through his omission of the ‘outstanding [lay] personalities, parish priests, diocesan administrators and pioneer missionaries’ within its pages.⁸ Looking past its episcopal editorship and all male contributors, there are nevertheless some broad thematic parallels between Beck’s nineteen chapters and the present assemblage: for example ‘the Struggle for Schools’ (authored by A. C. F. Beales), ‘the Care of the Poor’ (Canon John Bennett), and ‘Catholic English Literature’ (Edward Hutton). Fifty years later, two further synoptic histories of English and Welsh Catholicism—this time compiled by laymen—nodded to Beck’s collection and continued the analysis beyond the post-war period and through the Second Vatican Council. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts’ edited collection included chapters exploring ‘Who are the Laity?’ (James Pereiro; referencing Newman) and a specific chapter on ‘Wales’ (Daniel J. Mullins), and managed one female contributor (Susan O’Brien; writing on women religious) while widening out discussion to include marriage, material culture, and priestly formation.⁹ In contrast, Michael Hornsby-Smith’s compendium assembled a more genderrepresentative author base but made no pretence to Welsh coverage, and pivoted around a methodological distinction between ‘historical’ and ‘sociological’ perspectives to suggest cautious but not wholly pessimistic ‘prospects for the new millennium’.¹⁰ The centenary of the restoration of the Scottish hierarchy also prompted the clerical keeper of the Scottish Catholic Archives to curate (for posthumous publication) an edited collection that placed more weight on the past than the present.¹¹ In all these collections—as indeed my own—the complicated and shifting relationship between Church and State on these islands provides an organizational pivot.

⁸ George Andrew Beck (ed.), The English Catholics 1850–1950 (London, 1950), p. viii. ⁹ V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts (eds.), From without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales 1850–2000 (London, 1999). ¹⁰ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith (ed.), Catholics in England 1950–2000: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (London: 1999), pp. 304–6. ¹¹ David McRoberts (ed.), Modern Scottish Catholicism, 1878–1978 (Glasgow, 1979), pp. v, 29.

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The pronounced ‘national’ imbalance signalled by this brief discussion of comparable volumes speaks eloquently to the challenges surrounding this edited collection, but also its imperative contribution through its uniquely comparative focus reaching across the ‘Irish sea’ gulf in post-1922 histories and taking its analytical chronology right up to ‘the present’. For Scotland and Wales, but even Ireland, there is a marked historiographical absence of classic synoptic texts to map a twentieth-century religious terrain similar to that offered for England by the erudite priest-scholar Adrian Hastings.¹² As Keith Robbins has reflected in the only other comparable study of the Christian Churches reaching up to the ‘millennial moment’ across ‘one century, and in two islands and four complicated “territories” (at least)’,¹³ modern Catholicism after the partition of Ireland tends to be viewed through exclusively nationalist (even nationalistic) lenses as highly discrete and distinctive, reflecting also the presence of three separate hierarchies and a continuing propensity to study ‘Church history’ through the prism of these prelates.¹⁴ While the jurisdiction of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales may acknowledge two distinct nations, Wales’ rural demographic regularly slips out of focus in studies dominated by Westminster,¹⁵ and much of the literature on Welsh Catholicism is dated and preoccupied with institution building.¹⁶ Until recently, the study of Wales had been wholly reliant on the research efforts of Trystan Owain Hughes to chart the precarious fortunes of the Church and its relationship to non-conformity and national identity.¹⁷ Modern Scottish Catholicism too is underresearched and the existing historiography is often survey-like and regional,¹⁸ patchily concentrated on the early decades of the twentieth century, or unduly preoccupied with sectarianism to the detriment of

¹² Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920–2000, 4th edn (London, 2001). ¹³ Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church, 1900–2000 (Oxford, 2008), p. 1. ¹⁴ E.g. Vivienne Bett, Cardinal Thomas Winning: An Authorised Biography (Dublin, 2000); John E. Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (Dublin, 1999); Mark Vickers, By the Thames Divided. Cardinal Bourne in Southwark and Westminster (Leominster, 2013); and James Hagerty’s excellent episcopal biographies, including Cardinal John Carmel Heenan. Priest of the People, Prince of the Church (Leominster, 2012). ¹⁵ Cf., Manchester: Stephen Fielding, Class and Ethnicity: Irish Catholics in England, 1880–1939 (Buckingham, 1993); Birmingham: Desmond Ryan, The Catholic Parish: Institutional Discipline, Tribal Identity and Religious Development in the English Church (London, 1996); Liverpool: Peter Doyle, Mitres and Missions in Lancashire: The Roman Catholic Diocese of Liverpool, 1850–2000 (Liverpool, 2005); and Middlesbrough: Margaret H. Turnham, Catholic Faith and Practice in England, 1779–1992: The Role of Revivalism and Renewal (Rochester, 2015). ¹⁶ Donald Attwater, The Catholic Church in Modern Wales: A Record of the Past Century (London, 1935). ¹⁷ Trystan Owain Hughes, ‘Continuity and Conversion: The Concept of a National Church in Twentieth-Century Wales and its Relations to “the Celtic Church” ’, in Robert Pope (ed.), Religion and National Identity: Wales and Scotland 1700–2000 (Cardiff, 2001), pp. 123–38; see now D. Densil Morgan, The Span of the Cross: Christian Religion and Society in Wales, 1914–2000 (Cardiff, 2011). ¹⁸ Alison Gray, Circle of Light: The History of the Catholic Church in Orkney since 1560 (Edinburgh, 2000).

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more ‘British’ or transnational expressions of faith.¹⁹ It fell to Preston-born but Glasgow-based historian Bernard Aspinwall to redirect concerted academic attention to the revival of Catholicism in industrial Britain,²⁰ with much of his output disseminated through the Scottish Catholic Historical Association (SCHA)’s flagship journal Innes Review.²¹ Curiously, the seemingly scanty historiography specifically on modern Irish Catholicism belies the fundamental importance of the Church to all aspects of twentieth-century life on the island of Ireland. Until recently, Catholicism had been so ubiquitous and near synonymous with Irishness (asserted or contested) as to be an underexamined constituent of most contemporary histories.²² For those seeking to disentangle the specific role of institutional religion and faith on Irish life, researchers often returned to the foundational but not uncontroversial scholarship of Patrick Corish, David W. Miller, and Emmet Larkin.²³ Conflict and Church-State relations continue to feature heavily in discussions of the inter- and post-war period,²⁴ yet recent scholarship has pushed consideration of twentiethcentury Catholicism beyond yet more studies of revolutionary violence and militant Irish nationalism,²⁵ to contemplate the expression and experience of belief in modern Irish life and the place of religion in resourcing Catholic identities.²⁶ This has prompted not only a multi-faceted re-examination of landmark centenaries,²⁷ but also the consolidation of earlier research chronicling the unravelling ¹⁹ See Irene Maver, ‘The Catholic Community’, in Thomas M. Devine and Richard J. Finlay (eds.), Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 269–71. ²⁰ Bernard Aspinwall, ‘Perennial Problems of Scottish Catholicism: Morale, Resources and Divisions 1820–2000’, in Tony Schmitz (ed.), A Garland of Silver: A Jubilee Anthology in Honour of Archbishop Mario Conti (Aberdeen, 2002), pp. 192–216. ²¹ E.g. Bernard Aspinwall, ‘Catholic Realities and Pastoral Strategies: Another Look at the Historiography of Scottish Catholicism, 1878–1920’, Innes Review, 59 (2008), pp. 77–112. On the SCHA, see Clifford Williamson, The History of Catholic Intellectual Life in Scotland, 1918–1965 (London, 2016), pp. 199–217. ²² E.g. merely one chapter in a mammoth volume: Marianne Elliott, ‘Faith in Ireland 1600–2000’, in Alvin Jackson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford, 2014), pp. 168–92, esp. pp. 185–6. ²³ See R. V. Comerford, Mary Cullen, Jacqueline R. Hill and Colm Lennon (eds.), Religion, Conflict and Coexistence in Ireland: Essays Presented to Monsignor Patrick J. Corish (London, 1990), pp. 1–5; and Steward J. Brown and David W. Miller (eds.), Power and Piety in Ireland 1760–1960: Essays in Honour of Emmet Larkin (Notre Dame, 2000), pp. 1–15. ²⁴ J. H. Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923–1979 (Dublin, 1980); Mary Harris, The Catholic Church and the Foundation of Northern Ireland (Cork, 1993); Oliver P. Raffety, Catholicism in Ulster, 1603–1983: An Interpretative History (Columbia, 1994), pp. 222–82; Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland 1900–2000 (London, 2004). ²⁵ E.g. Mary E. Daly, Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–1973 (Cambridge, 2016); Oliver Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Irish Studies’, in Mike Cronin, Renée Fox, and Brian Ó Conchubhair (eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies (London, 2020) pp. 260–70. ²⁶ Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: the Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2004); Oliver Rafferty (ed.), Irish Catholic Identities (Manchester, 2013), pp. 307–76; Síle de Cléir, Popular Catholicism in 20th Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017). ²⁷ Richard Bourke and Ian McBride (eds.), The Princeton History of Modern Ireland (New Jersey, 2016), 292–319.

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of a particular Catholic culture,²⁸ alongside powerful new assessments—often using memoirs²⁹—of the impact of abuse on the Irish Church’s moral standing and social legitimacy.³⁰

Contested Chronologies and Chapter Coverage As the twentieth century might be considered (to varying degrees across Britain and Ireland) a century of the laity, it has also been dominated in ecclesiological terms by a watershed ‘event’—which has, in turn, been reified into a description of process and an interpretative fault-line—namely the Second Vatican Council.³¹ The ‘conciliar moment’ and its aftermath in Britain and Ireland, raising questions about a ‘hermeneutic of continuity’ and laudatory or disparaging descriptions of the changes that followed, has garnered its historians, theologians, and sociologists in a British³² and, increasingly, an Irish context.³³ Chief amongst those scholars of post-conciliar English Catholicism is Michael Hornsby-Smith whose magisterial publications over thirty years have surveyed Vatican II’s unprecedented implications for social structures, expressive beliefs, and parochial life.³⁴ While all contributors to this volume are unequivocally convinced that ‘something’ happened at the Council, the decision was taken to move beyond an ecclesial-focused structure which might reinforce pre- and post-conciliar binaries. ²⁸ Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1998); Mary Kenny, Goodbye to Catholic Ireland (Dublin, 2000); Roy Foster, Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970–2000 (London, 2007); Daithí Ó Corráin, ‘Catholicism in Ireland, 1880–2015: Rise, Ascendency and Retreat’, in Thomas Bartlett (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland, vol. 4: 1880 to the Present (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 726–64. ²⁹ Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools (Dublin, 2009). ³⁰ D. Vincent Twomey, The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin, 2002); Bruce Arnold, Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed Its Children (Dublin, 2009); Eamon Maher and Eugene O’Brien (eds.), Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism: From Galway to Cloyne and Beyond (Dublin, 2017); Caelainn Hogan, Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘Fallen Women’ and their Children (London, 2019); Derek Scally, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (London, 2021). ³¹ John W. O’Malley, Joseph Komonchak, Neil J. Omerod, Stephen Schloesser, and David G. Schultenover (ed.), Vatican II: Did Anything Happen? (London, 2007). ³² E.g. Antony Archer, The Two Catholic Churches: A Study in Oppression (London, 1986); Adrian Hastings (ed.), Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After (London, 1991); Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Progressives in England after Vatican II (Notre Dame, 2013). ³³ Oliver Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II in Historical Perspective’, in Niall Coll (ed.), Ireland and Vatican II. Essays Theological, Pastoral and Educational (Dublin, 2015); Dermot Lane (ed.), Vatican II in Ireland, Fifty Years On (Oxford, 2015); Gary Carville, Ireland and Vatican II: Aspects of Episcopal Engagement with and Reception of a Church Council, 1959–1977 (PhD dissertation, DCU 2018); Niall Coll and Alana Harris, ‘Reception of Vatican II in Britain and Ireland’, in Joachim Schmiedl, Peter Hünermann, Margit Eckholt, and Klaus Vellguth (eds.), Vatican II—Legacy and Mandate, Intercontinental Commentary: Reception and Orientations for the Life of the Church (Leuven, 2024). ³⁴ E.g. Michael Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and Transformations in Religious Authority (Cambridge, 1991).

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This was deemed necessary not only to avoid reductive and indeed obscurant language around ‘traditionalists’ and ‘progressives’, but also to side-step the unhelpful conceptual baggage—often imported from sociology and secular histories—which conflates discussion of the Council with debates about ‘permissiveness’, ‘modernity’, ‘decline’, ‘dechristianization’, and ‘secularization’. Each of these weighty conceptual terms, intersecting with broader debates on gender and sexuality, affluence, and the impact of war on British and Irish society, has generated a voluminous literature.³⁵ Yet exploration of these interpretive thickets and intricate arguments would divert attention here, and detract from a necessarily differentiated account in the chapters themselves, of a more pressing examination of the ‘reception’ of conciliar impulses. There is, therefore, quite deliberately no specific chapter on the Second Vatican Council in this collection. Rather, its constitutions and decrees, short- and longer term ramifications, precursor debates and implementation difficulties are—in the main—integrated throughout the thematic discussions. The three opening outline chapters, which explore Ireland (Daly, Chapter 1; see Ó Corráin’s Chapter 16 for 1979–present), England and Wales (Bullivant, Chapter 2), and Scotland (Gilfillan, Chapter 3), survey the twentieth century and two decades of the twenty-first century; and provide the general reader with broad orientation points—an overview of the vast transformations across more than one hundred years in each national setting. This volume also differs from its chronological predecessors in this series in declining to commission a chapter expressly on ‘anti-Catholicism’. This decision was, in part, determined by the discussions germane to the period itself, when Catholics felt they were increasingly inhabiting an ‘ecumenical century’ which prized freedom of religion. Reflecting for example on the path travelled from Catholic emancipation to the centenary celebrations in 1929, popular novelist and broadcaster Father Ronald Knox assured his large audience: 100 years ago Catholics were despised, but to-day . . . [t]he Protestant agitation has grown weak . . . We ought not to have any official sparring partner. We do better to satisfy the curiosity and allay the prejudice of the ordinary man who is not a Protestant in the ordinary sense of the word, nor a Rationalist nor an Anglo-Catholic.³⁶

This discussion is taken up more forcefully in Chapter 11 on ecumenism (Power) and interwoven elsewhere throughout this volume, exploring how the meaning ³⁵ E.g. Jane Garnett et al. (eds.), Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 Perspectives (London, 2007); Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford, 2007); S. J. D. Green, The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change c.1920–1960 (Cambridge, 2012); Callum Brown, The Battle for Christian Britain: Sex, Humanists and Secularisation 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 2019); Steve Bruce, British Gods: Religion in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2020). ³⁶ Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 17 September 1929, p. 5.

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and expressions of sectarianism—or, less sharply, anti-Catholic prejudice—have profoundly differing histories and longevities across the territories.³⁷ In England, the Edwardian period marked the death throes of overt bigotry, but perhaps denominational suspicion has merely become more muted³⁸—displaced by a new (Muslim) ‘other’ or metamorphized into atheistic critiques of faith schools and media sensationalism about hordes of paedophile priests.³⁹ However, Ireland—and what would become Northern Ireland—presents a marked contrast. The interplay of (sometimes violent) denominational suspicion and hatred is explored in chapters discussing ‘the Irish Question’, interfaith dialogue, sexual mores, and ‘the Troubles’ (Ó Corráin, Chapter 16). Moreover, it is perhaps in the devolved British territories—as another dimension of Scottish⁴⁰ and Welsh⁴¹ exceptionalism—where attitudinal distrust of individual Catholics, rather than more abstract suspicion of the institution itself, may persist.⁴² As the eminent English Catholic historian Christopher Dawson famously reflected in his 1947–8 Gifford Lectures, religion remains the key to history and has a unique place in human culture, encompassing art and architecture, literature and music, religious experience and the practice of piety, as well as interactions with society and politics.⁴³ The thematic chapters collected in this volume take up this leitmotif, which deploys a mostly comparative, cross-territorial framework to explore Catholic identities and their public expression through church buildings and religious art (Proctor, Chapter 8); liturgical settings and hymnody (McElroy, Chapter 9); Catholic literature and novels (Lander Johnson and Meszaros, Chapter 10); and devotional cultures (Heimann and Delay, Chapter 7). Missing from this assemblage—though touched upon in Chapter 15 on child sexual abuse in religious settings—is a sustained discussion of Catholic media that surveys print journalism in Britain and Ireland,⁴⁴ and synthesizes emerging forms of

³⁷ John Wolffe, ‘Change and Continuity in British Anti-Catholicism, 1829–92’, in Frank Tallett and Nicholas Atkin (eds.), Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 (London, 1996), pp. 67–86. ³⁸ E.g. George Scott, The R.C.s: A Report on Roman Catholics in Britain Today (London, 1967), pp. 14–35; cf. Dennis Sewell, Catholics: Britain’s Largest Minority (London, 2001), pp. 1–10. ³⁹ Clive D. Field, ‘No Popery’s Ghost: Does Popular Anti-Catholicism Survive in Contemporary Britain?’, Journal of Religion in Europe, 7 (2014), p. 119. ⁴⁰ Stewart J. Brown, ‘Presbyterians and Catholics in Twentieth-Century Scotland’, in Steward J. Brown and George Newlands (eds.), Scottish Christianity in the Modern World (London, 2001), pp. 255–81. ⁴¹ Paul O’Leary, ‘When Was Anti-Catholicism? The Case of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Wales’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 56 (2005), pp. 308–25. ⁴² Field, ‘No Popery’s Ghost’, p. 146. ⁴³ Christopher Dawson, Religion and Culture (London, 1950), pp. 3–19. ⁴⁴ J. J. Dwyer, ‘The Catholic Press, 1850–1950’, in Beck, The English Catholics, pp. 442–74; Peter Murray, ‘Censoring the Spirit of Vatican II in Ireland: The Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin and Reality Magazine 1965–71’, Media History, 27 (2021), pp. 350–63; Niall Coll and Alana Harris, ‘The Path to Rome: Characteristics and Contours of Theology in Britain and Ireland before the Council’, in Schmiedl, Hünermann, Eckholt, and Vellguth, Vatican II—Legacy and Mandate.

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communications media.⁴⁵ To take this story into the twenty-first century would require detailed consideration of diversified televised broadcasting and streaming, online religious forums, and the Catholic social media / blogosphere. Media and digital humanities scholarship on religion remains in its infancy, and greater historical distance will be needed to interpret the impact of newer global communication cultures on British and Irish Catholic life. Alongside these discursive and sometimes material expressions of British and Irish Catholicism, other chapters within this volume explore the institutional and structural expressions of the Church—across several scales moving from the transnational and national through to the parochial and familial. Many of these contributors have been required to venture into vastly underexplored territory to offer some striking and original analysis—not only by integrating national literatures held discrete but also through commissioned archival, ethnographic, or sociological enquiries filling startling lacunas and bringing historiographical debates up to the present. One such contribution—which offers an invaluable legacy—is the Statistical Appendices (Kinnear) which provides comparative tables and graphs to present, often for the first time, granular demographic profiles of church personnel and sacramental life across each jurisdiction.⁴⁶ These quantitative findings—a ‘British and Irish Catholicism in Numbers’⁴⁷—provide customized data sets drawn upon by all authors. This more microscopic picture is juxtaposed with chapters exploring the impact of global and civil wars (Snape, Chapter 4); missionary expansion and the collapse of the British (and Irish spiritual) Empire (Bateman, Chapter 12); rapid educational transformations (Parker, Chapter 6); the role of women religious in the advent of the Welfare State (Mangion, Chapter 13); and changes in sex and family life (Geringer and Kelly, Chapter 5). Alongside these social and structural dynamics, other chapters explore the increasing ethnic and religious pluralism consolidated in Britain and, to a lesser extent, Ireland (Gray and Ryan, Chapter 14); and document an ecumenical rapprochement which offers some optimism—when contrasted with the scourge of abuse separately surveyed (Daly and Pound, Chapter 15). All chapters highlight areas in urgent need of more sustained research, particularly: male religious and priestly formation; rural (alongside urban and suburban) ‘parochial’ Catholicism; Catholic childhoods and religious education across the life-cycle; and British and Irish contributions to internationalism (including international development, making visible the contribution of women like Barbara Ward, Mildred Nevile,

⁴⁵ Gladys Ganiel, ‘Clerical Modernisers and the Media in Ireland: The Journalism of Fr Gerry Reynolds’, Contemporary British History, 34 (2020), pp. 629–51; Caitriona Noonan, ‘Piety and Professionalism: The BBC’s Changing Religious Mission (1960–1979)’, Media History, 19 (2013), pp. 196–212. ⁴⁶ Clive D. Field, Secularization in the Long 1960s: Numerating Religion in Britain (Oxford, 2017); Peter Brierley (ed.), UK Church Statistics No.4: 2021 (Tonbridge, 2020). ⁴⁷ See also ‘British Religion in Numbers’, http://www.brin.ac.uk/ (accessed 23 February 2022).

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and organizations like CIIR / Progressio, CAFOD, Trocaire and SCIAF),⁴⁸ which will open out new vistas on the global British and Irish Church.

Looking Ahead In 1961, the architectural firm Burles, Newton & Partners designed the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Hayes (outer suburban north London) which was built to accommodate over 1,000 worshippers and originally served a mostly Irish working-class community. The updated structure was added to the parochial infrastructure lain by the Spanish Claretian Order in 1912. Casting ahead to the present, the Church’s congregation today is largely South Asian and Latin American.⁴⁹ A global community from its foundations to its current articulations, the stained-glass windows installed by Goddard and Gibbs Studio in 1972 reflected this ethnic diversity—including the striking representation of ‘Christ and the Communion of Saints’ which graces the front cover of this volume. Designed and crafted by the stained-glass artist Arthur Buss⁵⁰—whose work over a career spanning more than fifty years included mosaics for Guy’s Hospital Chapel (London) and church windows across the former colonies (including a David Livingstone window in Malawi)⁵¹—this kaleidoscope of vibrant modernist abstraction and painted coloured glass offers a composite picture of the People of God. Kneeling adoringly by the stigmata-baring Good Shepherd are a blond girl and dark-skinned boy, with more timid younger children drawing near. This earthly ‘pilgrim church’ is depicted in its everyday, prosaic variety—a boilersuited worker and a doctor carry their respective tools of the trade (wrench and stethoscope); a bookish young woman—perhaps a teacher—gazes at Jesus, while a weary-looking mother carries her baby. Integrated amongst the laity—and by no means foremost in this rendering—are a mitred bishop, a priest in clericals, and a nun with a simple veil and an updated habit. In the background, the modernist church building (in whose Lady Chapel this window is located) is delicately rendered. Here the ‘Church Universal’ is depicted in all its divine immanence and local manifestations, and this technicolour vision of the earthly kingdom abjures confinement to institutional walls to follow the resurrected Christ into the ⁴⁸ Jean Gartlan, ‘Barbara Ward: Lay Woman Extraordinaire’, U.S. Catholic Historian, 29 (2011), pp. 9–16. ⁴⁹ Robert Drake and Robert Proctor, ‘A Tour of Roman Catholic Post-War Churches in West and North West London, 25 April 2015’, pp. 13–5, https://ashgatepublishing.files.wordpress.com/2015/ 09/rc-church-day-notes.pdf (accessed 23 February 2022). ⁵⁰ James A. Weatherley, ‘Obituary, Arthur E. Buss, 1905–1999’, Journal of Stained Glass, 23 (1999), pp. 98–9; John Lawson, ‘Faith Craft Works and Goddard & Gibbs Studio Ltd.’, Journal of Stained Glass, 23(1999), 55–61. I am grateful to Simon Knight and Caroline Swash for their expertise on attribution and interpretation here. ⁵¹ Dick Hobson, ‘The Livingstone Window at Livingstonia Mission’, Society of Malawi Journal, 55 (2002), pp. 62–6.

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world. Women, as well as men, take their ordained place in this idealized image of Christians assembled and on the move. This fifth volume of the Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism formally finishes in 2021 and has been compiled in the context of the differentiated— and destabilizing—political, economic, but also religious fall-out of Brexit on Ireland and Britain,⁵² and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and national lockdowns on forms of worship, patterns of piety (such as virtual pilgrimages to Walsingham),⁵³ and precarious ecclesial finances.⁵⁴ Global and transnational initiatives, with potentially profound consequences for the everyday faith lives of British and Irish Catholics, have also commenced—such as Pope Francis’ ‘Synodal Process’ for the worldwide Church. What does all this contemporaneous change mean for Catholicism as the twenty-first century unfolds? And what consequences will it have for believing and belonging in Wales and Scotland, England, and Ireland? The impulse of the historian when confronted with such questions is to bypass prognostication and to look instead to the past for analogies and insight. We might therefore recall the much-quoted aphorism of the most recently canonized saint from these islands—an ecumenical poet-priest claimed on both sides of the Irish Sea—who in 1870 cast back to the patristic period to assure a disconcerted correspondent that ‘there has seldom been a Council without great confusion after it’.⁵⁵ Drawing inspiration from John Henry Newman’s foundational article ‘Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine’ (1859),⁵⁶ but most especially laywoman Maude Petre’s neglected scholarship,⁵⁷ including her essay ‘The Church in Its Relation to Religion’ (1923),⁵⁸ the chapters that follow offer to the reader a panoramic, developmental path from the fallout of the First Vatican Council (1868–70), through Vatican II (1962–5), to the Synod on Synodality (2021–3). The pilgrimage of an Easter People continues.

⁵² Ekaterina Kolpinskaya and Stuart Fox, ‘Praying on Brexit? Unpicking the Effect of Religion on Support for European Union Integration and Membership’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 57 (2019), pp. 580–98; and Gladys Ganiel and Martin Steven, ‘Ireland and the United Kingdom’, in Grace Davies and Lucian N. Leustean (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe (Oxford, 2021), ch. 37. ⁵³ https://www.walsingham.org.uk/rededication/ and, for the Church of England analogue, https:// www.walsinghamanglican.org.uk/blog/2019-pilgrimage-loreto-subiaco-rome-2/ (accessed 23 February 2022). ⁵⁴ Stephen Bullivant, Catholicism in the Time of Coronavirus (Des Plaines, 2020); and https://www. yorksj.ac.uk/coronavirus-church-and-you/ (accessed 24 February 2022). ⁵⁵ Wilfred Ward, Life of Cardinal Newman (London, 1912), p. 310. ⁵⁶ John Henry Newman, On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, ed. John Coulson (Glasgow, 1986). ⁵⁷ Charles J. Healey, ‘Maude Petre: Her Life and Significance’, British Catholic History, 15 (1979), pp. 23–42. ⁵⁸ Maude Petre, ‘The Church in Its Relation to Religion’, The Modern Churchman, 13 (1923), pp. 288–93.

1 Ireland Before and After the Second Vatican Council Mary E. Daly

In June 1932 Dublin hosted the thirty-first Eucharistic Congress, which became a celebration of the 1,500th anniversary of St Patrick coming to Ireland. The address by Pope Pius XI, which was read at the opening ceremony, highlighted the contribution of Irish emigrants and missionaries to spreading Catholicism throughout the world, and the centuries of persecution that Irish Catholicism had endured. Many of the clergy who travelled to the Congress from Africa, Australia, North America, and Britain were of Irish birth or descent. The papal address included a reference to the ‘Mass Rock’, a recurring image of Irish Catholicism during penal times, and it expressed the hope that the people of Ireland ‘will receive abundant proofs, not only for the welfare of the Catholic religion, but also for the civic progress and the glory of their illustrious country’.¹ The Eucharistic Congress took place a decade after the foundation of the Irish Free State and a bitter civil war. However, a general election in February 1932 was followed by a peaceful transition of government to Fianna Fáil, the political party representing the defeated republican side. The Congress celebrated a Catholic people and a Catholic nation. It provided a platform where the republicans who had been excoriated by the Hierarchy for taking arms against the State could demonstrate their fidelity to Catholicism; evidence that political divisions had not resulted in the emergence of an anti-clerical party.² An estimated 100,000 children, 200,000 women, and 250,000 men from all parts of Ireland attended ceremonies during the Congress week, and one million were present at the closing Mass in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, or as spectators of the solemn procession through the streets of Dublin. G. K. Chesterton was struck by the ‘quite indescribable and unique character of the popular decoration . . . in the poorest quarters of the city. It is here that we find the presence of something without parallel on earth’; The author wishes to thank staff at the Central Catholic Library for access during lockdown in 2020, which proved vital to the production of her chapter. ¹ ‘Record of Irish Ecclesiastical Events for the Year 1932’, Irish Catholic Directory 1933 (Dublin, 1934), pp. 611–13. ² Patrick Murray, Oracles of God: The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922–37 (Dublin, 2000), pp. 262–3. Mary E. Daly, Ireland Before and After the Second Vatican Council In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0002

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‘the poorer were the streets, the richer were the street decorations’, he felt that he was ‘passing through a sort of supernatural toyshop’; ‘an endless series of sacred Punch and Judy shows or angelic toy theatres’. He noted that ‘Anybody who will say henceforth that the Irish cannot organise, or cannot rule or are not practical enough for practical politics, will certainly have the laugh against him forever’.³ The 1932 Eucharistic Congress encapsulates key aspects of Catholicism in twentieth-century Ireland (Figure 1.1). At a time of growing concern about religious practice among the poor, Ireland was a notable exception. The Congress highlighted Ireland’s ‘spiritual empire’—the large number of Irish-born and Irisheducated religious in distant countries. This phrase was commonly used to draw a contrast with the British Empire. The ceremonies emphasized the close identification between Catholicism and the State that transcended party politics. The formation of the Irish Free State, where Catholics constituted 92.6 per cent of the population, and a devolved government in Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom, with a Catholic population of 33.5 per cent (1926 censuses) created a new political dynamic between Catholicism and the State(s), but there was considerable continuity with Ireland under the Union. The Catholic Church continued to function on an all-Ireland basis; four of the twenty-six Irish

Figure 1.1 Eucharistic Congress souvenir postcard (1932) in which a monstrance and altar candles ‘illuminate’ O’Connell Street, Dublin. Photograph courtesy of Alana Harris (in private possession). ³ G. K. Chesterton, Christendom in Dublin: Essays in Memory of the Eucharistic Congress (London, 1932), pp. 12, 15, 16, 43.

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dioceses straddled the border, and only two were wholly within Northern Ireland. Ecclesiastically Ireland remained united, though there were occasional concerns that the apostolic delegation in the UK would assume responsibility for Northern Ireland.⁴ There is a strong case for seeing the 150 years from the granting of Catholic emancipation in 1829 to the visit of Pope John Paul II in 1979 as a distinct period, when Catholicism regained a prominent position in Irish society. That era was ending at the end of the century. The turning point came in the 1960s, with the papacy of John XXIII, Vatican II, a more prosperous economy, the coming of television, a major expansion in the number of educated Catholics throughout Ireland, and the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland.

Church and State: Faith and Fatherland One of the distinctive features of Catholicism in nineteenth-century Ireland was the prominent role that the clergy played in nationalist campaigns, sometimes in defiance of papal wishes. This continued in the early twentieth century, though events such as the 1916 Rising and the Anglo-Irish war (1919–21) presented serious challenges for the Hierarchy. Murray argues that ‘moral considerations were central to episcopal pronouncements on the political issues of the day’. They were concerned at the ‘moral degeneration’ consequent on the Anglo-Irish war, so it is not surprising that they expressed strong support for the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. When civil war broke out in 1922, they issued a pastoral letter, condemning those who had taken up arms against the provisional government. Similar warnings were issued in 1931 against the ‘Red Scare’ that was prompted by the emergence of a left-wing republican group,⁵ and in 1956 when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) launched attacks on Northern Ireland.⁶ Most of those who engaged in republican campaigns remained committed to Catholicism and there were always priests, both diocesan and regular, who sympathized with republican campaigns. Priests participated at IRA funerals, visited hunger strikers, and continued to do so throughout the Northern Ireland conflict, while members of the Hierarchy issued pastoral letters condemning violence. Catholic clergy remained active in electoral politics during the first decade after independence. However, it has been claimed that ‘By 1937 the Church had disengaged itself from active participation in the electoral process in the South; priests featured only to a minimal extent as platform speakers or public supporters of candidates’.⁷

⁴ Daithí Ó Corráin, Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–73 (Manchester, 2006), pp. 57–61. ⁵ Murray, Oracles of God, pp. 34–81, 330–1. ⁶ Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, pp. 43–51. ⁷ Murray, Oracles of God, p. 426.

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The future of Irish democracy was assured, and no mainstream political party threatened the position of the Catholic Church. As the Irish Free State tried to heal the divisions of civil war, Catholicism played a major role in creating a shared identity, though the representation of independent Ireland as a Catholic State jarred with aspirations for a united Ireland.⁸ The plight of northern Catholics, who were characterized as awaiting emancipation, was a major theme in ceremonies celebrating the centenary of Catholic emancipation in 1929.⁹ The anniversary was marked by formal ceremonies in Dublin, and by Masses celebrated at ruined sites of former monasteries/friaries. When the first High Mass since penal times was said in the ruins of Muckross Abbey, an estimated 2,800 Franciscan tertiaries marched in procession from Killarney to the abbey grounds.¹⁰ Politicians and clergy evoked the glories of early Christian Ireland—before the Viking and Norman invasions—as emblematic of the potential of the independent State. In September 1923, W. T. Cosgrave, president of the Executive Council led a procession in Bobbio, commemorating the Irish monk Columbanus.¹¹ In 1940 the Cistercians founded New Mellifont, some miles from the medieval foundation. The Irish Franciscan College of St Anthony in Louvain, a major centre of Gaelic scholarship which closed during the Napoleonic wars, reopened in 1927, and in 1946 the Irish Franciscans announced plans for a friary at Rossnowlagh in Donegal, close to a former foundation where they had compiled the Annals of the Four Masters, a seventeenth-century chronicle of Ireland’s history from the arrival of St Patrick.¹² The Irish Free State was the only English-speaking country with a Catholic majority; one question that arose was whether it would become a Catholic State. In 1932 an editorial in the English Jesuit periodical, The Month, suggested that it would be interesting ‘to see how a nation ninety-three percent Catholic has succeeded in embodying in its Government and its political conduct the principles of Christian civil social and industrial life as taught by the Catholic Church’. It asked whether the country is resolutely determined to recover its full Catholic heritage, whether those who through education, station or office, are the leaders of the people know in what directions they should lead, and are making reasonable progress. Never before in the world’s history has there been a people so united in their Catholic belief.

⁸ Margaret O’Callaghan, ‘Language, Nationality and Cultural Identity in the Irish Free State. 1922–7’, Irish Historical Studies, 24 (1984), pp. 226–45. ⁹ Irish Independent, 29 May 1929 and 3 July 1929. ¹⁰ Irish Catholic Directory 1930, 26 May 1929, p. 604. ¹¹ Irish Independent, 5 September 1923. ¹² Mary E. Daly, ‘A Second Golden Age: The Irish Franciscans 1918–1963’, in Edel Bhreathnach, Joseph McMahon, and John McCafferty (eds.), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1990 (Dublin, 2009), pp. 132–52.

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They suggested that the Irish Free State should ‘try harder’ to achieve a truly Catholic State and society: Much remained to be done before the Saorstat can claim to represent, as it ought the political mind of a Catholic people—much in the way of suppressing excessive gambling, of purifying stage and cinema, of banning the propaganda of birth-prevents, of thoroughly Catholicizing its University education, and, in the economic sphere, of developing Irish industries and agriculture . . . The conclusion is that it will be an uphill struggle to create a truly Catholic state.¹³

Most histories of independent Ireland highlight the impact of Catholic teaching on legislation introduced in the 1920s and 1930s relating to divorce, contraception, and the censorship of films and publications.¹⁴ Catholic action groups such as the Catholic Truth Society of Ireland and clergy such as Richard Devane, SJ, and Edmund Cahill, SJ, campaigned assiduously for these measures.¹⁵ Restricting access to foreign films and publications, and undesirable ‘foreign’ practices such as contraception became symbols of Irish distinctiveness and self-determination. Any description of independent Ireland as a Catholic State must be highly qualified. The 1937 constitution trod a careful path, recognizing the ‘special position’ of the Catholic Church—but not designating it as the Established Church, much to the Vatican’s disappointment.¹⁶ While historians have highlighted the role of John Charles McQuaid (a future archbishop of Dublin), and the Society of Jesus in drafting the constitution, a detailed study suggests that the constitution of Weimar Germany had a greater influence on clauses relating to individual rights.¹⁷ Nevertheless, Article 41, which refers to the role of women in the home, and Article 45 on the ‘directive principles of social policy’, which was designed for the ‘general guidance of the Oireachtas’ (but had no legal standing) are faithful summaries of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). References to CST pepper political speeches, most notably in de Valera’s use of the phrase ‘frugal comfort’ (referencing Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum) in a much-quoted speech that expressed his aspirations for Ireland and its people. A similar balancing act is evident in the government’s neutrality during the Spanish Civil War. Irishmen fought on both sides; Basque priests who had been tortured for their faith toured Irish schools and attracted significant support from ¹³ The Month, January 1932, p. 1. ¹⁴ J. J. Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 158–68. ¹⁵ Maurice Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2010). ¹⁶ David McCullough, De Valera, vol. II: Rule 1932–1975 (Dublin, 2018), pp. 126–30. ¹⁷ Gerard Hogan, The Origins of the Irish Constitution, 1928–41 (Dublin, 2012); Sean Faughnan, ‘The Jesuits and the Drafting of the Irish Constitution of 1937’, Irish Historical Studies, 26 (1988), pp. 79–102; Dermot Keogh and Andrew McCarthy, The Making of the Irish Constitution 1937: Bunreacht na hÉireann (Cork, 2007).

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Catholic clergy and the wider community.¹⁸ This was in marked contrast to the stance across the Irish Sea, where ‘almost all vocal English Catholics, clerical and lay, [were] emphatically on Franco’s side’ and those who were pro-republican or just undecided were a notable minority.¹⁹ Ireland had no Catholic trade unions, unlike many European countries. British trade unions continued to represent Irish workers, though the 1940s were marked by a split in the Irish Trade Union Congress (ITUC) when several Irish-based unions established the Congress of Irish Unions (CIU). In 1946 the ITUC launched the People’s College, offering courses that were based on the British Workers Educational Association programmes. In 1948 Edward Coyne, SJ, opened the Catholic Workers’ College, renamed the College of Industrial Relations—as an equivalent to the Oxford experiment founded in 1922 by Leo O’Hea, SJ, and itself renamed Plater College—to promote CST among trade unionists. The Dublin Institute of Catholic Sociology (1950), run by the archdiocese had a similar goal, though it targeted a more general attendance.²⁰ A wellattended sodality in the Franciscan church at Merchant’s Quay was drawn from workers in Coras Iompar Éireann (CIÉ), the national transport service and another sodality consisted of hotel and catering workers. In 1954 workers at the Donnybrook bus depot erected a shrine to mark the Marian year, and the Catholic Stage Guild arranged for the rosary to be recited daily in Dublin theatres.²¹ There was considerable continuity in the Church’s role in education, health, and welfare. By 1900 Ireland had what Brendan O’Leary has described as ‘unofficially developed parallel denominational education systems, in which Catholics and Protestants, through geography and choice went to schools run by their own clergy, mostly funded from taxation.’²² Religious sisters were employed as matrons and nurses in workhouses and Catholic religious orders ran State-funded industrial schools. The publication of a separate Irish volume in the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws 1910, whose principal author was Dr Denis Kelly, the bishop of Ross, can be seen as tacit acknowledgement that future provisions in Ireland might differ from those in Britain.²³ Dr McNeely, the bishop of Raphoe and a member of the Commission of Inquiry into Banking, Currency and Credit, which reported in 1938, cooperated with University College Dublin (UCD) economics professor, George O’Brien, in drafting an appendix that examined relevant aspects of papal encyclicals. Both men signed the majority report which one economist described as

¹⁸ McCullough, De Valera, pp. 227–9, 99–101. ¹⁹ Adrian Hastings, ‘Some Reflexions on the English Catholicism of the Late 1930s’, in Adrian Hastings (ed.), Bishops and Writers (Wheathampstead, 1977), p. 118. ²⁰ Emmet O’Connor, A Labour History of Ireland 1824–1960 (Dublin, 1992), p. 160. ²¹ Daly, ‘A Second Golden Age’, pp. 132–51. ²² Brendan O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland (Oxford, 2019), 2, p. 55. ²³ Royal Commission on the Poor Laws, 1905–9, report on Ireland 1909 (Cd.6153).

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‘a recommendation to leave things as they were’.²⁴ Two minority reports that supported a more radical approach, including measures to promote full employment, drew extensively on CST. The O’Loghlen report claimed that it was ‘right and necessary . . . in a country in which over 92% of the people profess the Catholic faith’, that economic and financial policy should reflect the teachings in papal encyclicals. This argument was reiterated on repeated occasions in the 1940s and 1950s, most prominently by Seán MacBride, leader of the Clann na Poblachta Party. As the Banking Commission showed, papal pronouncements could be deployed to support both the status quo and radical reforms. CST prevailed when it chimed with Irish political and cultural aspirations, but when it came to major economic and financial issues, the British legacy and continuing ties with Britain proved stronger.²⁵ The most ambitious attempt to align Irish political and administrative systems with CST was the Commission on Vocational Organisation (CVO; 1939–44), which was chaired by Dr Michael Browne, the bishop of Galway. The 500-page report documented the grievances of business, professional, and worker organizations in their dealings with government departments, and it formulated a complex scheme for a national vocational assembly. In 1944 the bishop of Clonfert, Dr Dignan, who chaired the National Health Insurance Society, published a pamphlet outlining plans for the re-organization of health and social security services on vocational lines, which can be seen as a pre-emptive attempt to avert a Beveridge-style plan for Ireland. Whyte suggests that while the CVO and the Dignan plan succeeded in documenting the shortcomings of the existing systems, their proposals were impractical. The proposed national vocational assembly was incompatible with the powers of the Oireachtas, and Dignan did not cost his proposal. Whyte claims that in the contest between vocationalism, deriving from CST, and bureaucracy—which Ireland had inherited from Britain— bureaucracy won.²⁶ A British-style social insurance system was ultimately inoperable because the farmers and small businessmen, who dominated Irish society, were unwilling to pay social contributions. Subsidiarity, a key aspect of CST which held that primary responsibility rested with the family or the vocational group, and that the State only intervened where this failed, remained a central principle in welfare and health services. This approach also conformed to the values of key sections of the electorate; it was cheaper, protected the interests of influential groups such as the Irish medical profession, and it absolved politicians and public servants from pressure to devise more comprehensive programmes. While Noel Browne’s

²⁴ James Meenan, The Irish Economy since 1922 (Liverpool, 1970), p. 222. ²⁵ Ronan Fanning, The Irish Department of Finance, 1922–58 (Dublin 1979), pp. 358–63. ²⁶ J. H. Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923–1979 (Dublin, 1980), pp. 96–119. Oireachtas is the term used to describe Ireland’s bicameral legislative.

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Mother and Child scheme is often cited as evidence that the Catholic Church was the de facto ruler of Ireland, historians highlight the power of the medical profession, and the failure of an inexperienced politician to secure the support of his fellow ministers.²⁷ However the modified Mother and Child scheme, implemented by a Fianna Fáil government in 1953, was the outcome of talks between Catholic bishops and the government, brokered by the president of Ireland—an unprecedented intervention.²⁸ Senior officials and government ministers were deferential to, and occasionally wary of the Catholic Hierarchy and their views. Irish bishops embraced the anticommunism of the Cold War, and their opposition to an expanding State persisted until at least the late 1950s. In 1958, a senior civil servant T. K. Whitaker quoted the bishop of Clonfert, Dr Philbin, in Economic Development—his blueprint for transforming the Irish economy—to provide assurance that his programme was ‘a contribution in the spirit advocated by the Bishop of Clonfert, towards the working out of the national good in the economic sphere’. Dr Philbin had suggested that ‘Although our enterprise in purely spiritual fields has never been greater, we have shown little initiative or organizational ability in agriculture and industry and commerce. There is here the widest and most varied field for the play of the vital force that our religion contains’.²⁹ Church and State agreed about the importance of farming and sustaining rural communities, but government policy was tempered by the difficulties of earning an adequate income on small holdings. Leo XIII suggested that the ideal socioeconomic system was one based around family farms and other family businesses. Canon John Hayes founder of Muintir na Tíre claimed that ‘Rural Ireland is real Ireland and rural Ireland is Ireland true to Christ’. He sought to make the parish the central social and political unit, and de Valera’s government looked at the possibility of establishing parish councils, but as there were three different parish boundaries, civil, Protestant, and Catholic, the idea was abandoned.³⁰ Edward Cahill, SJ, author of The Framework of the Christian State (1932), the most comprehensive guide to CST published in Ireland, claimed that the rural population constituted the ‘core and strength of the nation’. This represented a fusion between CST and a dominant strand of nationalist thought that juxtaposed an urban industrial England with a rural, agrarian Ireland. Cahill made brief references to Belloc’s The Servile State (1912), but cited the writings of the English Catholic economist, C. S. Devas (1848–1906), much more extensively. ²⁷ Eamonn McKee, ‘Church-State Relations and the Development of Irish Health Policy: The Mother and Child Scheme, 1944–53’, Irish Historical Studies, 25 (1986) pp. 159–94. ²⁸ Ronan Fanning’s article in the Irish Times, 13 and 14 February 1985; Whyte, Church and State, pp. 273–302. ²⁹ Department of Finance, Economic Development (Dublin 1958) para. 21. Philbin’s quotation is from ‘A City on a Hill’, Studies, 46:183 (Autumn 1957), pp. 265–70. ³⁰ Mary E. Daly, The Buffer State: The Historical Roots of the Department of the Environment (Dublin, 1997), pp. 305–11.

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His biographer in the ODNB concluded that Devas ‘was concerned to find an alternative to both socialism and individual laissez-faire’.³¹ When the American sociologist Alexander Humphreys, SJ, interviewed Dublin families in the years 1949–51 to examine the impact of outside influences, such as ‘rationalist secularism’, he determined that Dubliners retained a strong commitment to Catholicism and to their family. Nevertheless, he concluded that even devout Catholics could not avoid the adverse influences of urban life.³² Cornelius Lucey, the bishop of Cork devoted many confirmation sermons to criticizing the ‘catastrophic’ decline in the rural population, denouncing rural mechanization, and criticizing the government’s refusal to subdivide farms into ever smaller holdings. He was one of many bishops and priests to champion the merits of small farms.³³ The Catholic Church retained a prominent role in health and welfare services for most of the twentieth century. In 1929 the minister for local government and public health outlined his ambition to transfer the county homes—once former workhouses, these provided long-term care for the elderly, incapacitated, and others—to religious orders, with the local authority paying a capitation fee, but withdrawing from management.³⁴ Although that did not happen, most long-term care for children and adults with intellectual and physical disabilities was provided in institutions that were owned and run by religious. Voluntary hospitals, under religious control, pioneered advances in medical care, such as open-heart surgery.³⁵ Dr McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin (1940–71), with the assistance of professionals from Catholic child guidance clinics in Liverpool and Glasgow, oversaw the introduction of child guidance services in Ireland—the first was run by the St John of God Order.³⁶ The continuing expansion of voluntary hospitals and specialist institutions was possible because the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake provided funding for capital investment and equipment and underwrote the deficits of voluntary institutions.³⁷ However, this devolved model reduced the State’s capacity to plan these services; any expansion (or contraction) had to

³¹ Mary E. Daly, ‘The Economic Ideals of Irish Nationalism: Frugal Comfort or Lavish Austerity?’, Eire-Ireland, 29 (1994), pp. 77–100; Mary E. Daly, The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920–1973 (Madison, WI, 2006), pp. 21–30; Belgium was often seen as the ideal role model. Peter Doyle, ‘Devas, Charles Stanton (1848–1906), political economist’, ODNB. ³² Alexander Humphreys, New Dubliners: Urbanization and the Irish Family (London, 1966), pp. 27–33. ³³ Michael Sheehy, Is Ireland Dying? Culture and the Church in Modern Ireland (London 1968), pp. 184–98. ³⁴ Dáil Debates, 18 November 1931, cols. 1633–4. ³⁵ Dublin Diocesan Archives (hereafter DDA), Mc Quaid, Hospital files L 20/14. ³⁶ Tom Feeney, ‘Church, State and Family: The Advent of Child Guidance Clinics in Independent Ireland’, Social History of Medicine, 25 (2012), pp. 848–62. ³⁷ Marie Coleman, The Irish Sweep: A History of the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake, 1930–1987 (Dublin, 2009).

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be negotiated with the religious orders and the bishop in whose dioceses the institution was located. Denominational competition was one motivation for these initiatives. Dr McQuaid emphasized the need to establish child guidance clinics before ‘the others’—a Protestant-ethos voluntary hospital—did so.³⁸ In 1941, he established the Catholic Social Service Conference, a federation of thirty-nine charities providing a wide range of supports such as free meals for the poor and a special feeding programme for expectant and nursing mothers. The feeding programme for expectant mothers was partly prompted by the existence of a similar scheme run by the non-denominational St John’s Ambulance Association; he was also determined to pre-empt the introduction of local authority food kitchens.³⁹ Many of these voluntary schemes were grant-aided by central or local government. In 1942 the Dublin Vocational Education Committee established An Comhairle le Leas Oige (a youth welfare organization), which provided financial support to youth clubs that were run by the Society of St Vincent de Paul (SVP), the Catholic Young Men’s Society, the Legion of Mary, and past-pupils unions.⁴⁰

Northern Ireland The slow pace of change in independent Ireland; the dominance of a conservative farming class, and the fact that most politicians and officials were practicing, even devout, Catholics, made it unlikely that the Church’s dominance of education and social services would face a serious challenge. In Northern Ireland local and national politics were under Protestant/Unionist control, and few Catholics held senior positions in the judiciary or public service. Catholics were generally regarded as disloyal to the northern State.⁴¹ The priority for northern bishops was to retain clerical control over Catholic schools. They rejected a 1925 proposal that voluntary schools would be managed by a committee of six, four Church appointees and two appointed by the local authority, in return for substantial State funding, which was the funding model for Catholic schools in England and Wales. In 1930 they secured a grant of 50 per cent of the cost of building and equipment costs and the government continued to pay teachers’ salaries. The bishops also ensured that teachers would be trained in Catholic teacher training colleges for men and women.⁴²

³⁸ DDA LII 1/5 Child guidance clinics. ³⁹ Lindsey Earner Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922–1960 (Manchester, 2007), pp. 90–100. ⁴⁰ Carole Holohan, Reframing Irish Youth in the ’Sixties (Liverpool, 2018), pp. 185–6. ⁴¹ O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, pp. 42, 48. ⁴² Oliver Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983 (London, 1994) pp. 222–4.

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Rafferty claims that by the late 1920s, ‘the catholic community seemed almost content to play the part of a hard-pressed and powerless minority, which had willy nilly been forced to look inward and draw on its own religious and cultural strengths as a means of survival’. Clergy commonly presided at political meetings of anti-partitionist/nationalist groups, ‘a position not surrendered well into the 1960s’, though Ó Corráin suggests that the leadership of Mayo-born Cardinal D’Alton, archbishop of Armagh, ‘contributed in a very significant way to a reevaluation of the national question’.⁴³ In 1971, Richard Rose, described the Catholic Church as ‘the central institution in its community’, suggesting that for northern Catholics ‘religion is sufficient to provide them with a network of social contacts’.⁴⁴ This has led some historians to conclude that Catholicism in Northern Ireland ‘frequently organised its life in parallel to the society around it, thus giving the impression of being “a state within a state” ’,⁴⁵ with separate schools, and sports and leisure clubs. This bears some resemblance to pillarization in the Netherlands and Belgium, where separate Catholic, Protestant, and socialist institutions existed; in Northern Ireland the distinction was between Catholic institutions and State institutions, the latter almost exclusively catering to Protestants. This ‘state within a state’ took full advantage of the post-war expansion in UK educational and health and welfare services. The Church continued to run children’s homes and homes for the elderly and disabled with public support; a parallel network of local authority homes catered for the Protestant majority. The main controversy associated with the National Health Service (NHS) related to Belfast’s Mater Infirmorum hospital, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy: 25 per cent of the in-patients and 85 per cent of the hospital’s out-patients were Protestant. In England, Wales, and Scotland, hospitals could opt out of the NHS, while continuing to receive State grants. This provision did not apply in Northern Ireland, and repeated attempts to address this were blocked by Unionist politicians. The Mater did not secure public funding until 1971.⁴⁶ In the meantime, the northern bishops demanded that it be permitted to apply for funding from the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake. The request was rejected, but as a concession they were permitted to run football pools in the Republic.⁴⁷ Under the Butler Education Act (1944) Catholic schools received 65 per cent grants for new intermediate schools, which was less than for State schools. However, it is widely acknowledged that the Act produced an educated Catholic

⁴³ Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, p. 227; Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, p. 43. ⁴⁴ Richard Rose, Governing without Consensus, as quoted by Gerald McElroy, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Crisis, 1968–86 (Dublin, 1991), p. 10. ⁴⁵ Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, p. 221. ⁴⁶ Marc Mulholland, Northern Ireland at the Crossroads: Ulster Unionism in the O’Neill Years 1960–9 (Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 148–50. ⁴⁷ National Archives Ireland, TSCH3/S15159/B/63.

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community, which played a leading role in the civil rights movement and helped to craft a new style of nationalist politics. Seamus Mallon, a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and the first deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly who had passed the 11-plus examination in first year it was run (1948), claimed that it ‘opened the door to Catholic children who previously would never have dreamed of going on to higher education’.⁴⁸ Austin Currie, a young teacher who led the first civil rights march in 1968 was also a member ‘of the lucky generation, the first to benefit from free second- and thirdlevel education’.⁴⁹

Institutional Expansion and Popular Piety In 1918 the ratio of diocesan priests to Catholics was under 1:2,000 in all dioceses. By the mid-1960s most dioceses had one priest per 1,000 Catholics. In Clogher, Kilmore, and Elphin—rural dioceses with falling populations, the ratio was one to 600.⁵⁰ In the years 1956–60, 13 per cent of boys who attended secondary school, and just under one-quarter of students in diocesan seminaries in the Republic went on to study for the priesthood. Bishops could be selective about their choice of nominees to attend the national seminary at Maynooth; those from poorer backgrounds, the less able academically, and those who had not attended a diocesan seminary were generally excluded. The Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans recruited from their schools, and from towns where they were longestablished. Irish families were large, and it was common for successive generations to have a son or daughter in a particular religious congregation. In 1946, reviewing the list of new Franciscan postulants, Canice Mooney could remark upon the prevalence of a number of ‘old Franciscan names’.⁵¹ The map of Catholic religious houses in 1918 was not dissimilar to one that might have been drawn on the eve of the Reformation. The regular congregations and convents were concentrated in towns and cities in the more prosperous east and south. Ulster and the western seaboard had fewer foundations. Rafferty suggests that ‘the north was to remain something of a backwater where the regular clergy were concerned’ and that there was ‘enormous prejudice at least in northeast Ulster against religious orders’.⁵² However two nineteenth-century Belfast foundations, the Passionist monastery in the Ardoyne and the Redemptorist monastery in Clonard, played a central role in the religious and community life ⁴⁸ Seamus Mallon with Andy Pollak, A Shared Home Place (Dublin, 2019), p. 16. ⁴⁹ Austin Currie, All Hell Will Break Loose (Dublin, 2004), p. 37. ⁵⁰ See Kinnear’s Statistical Appendices, ‘Numbers of Priests’ table, col. A3.3, in this volume. ⁵¹ Pat Conlan, ‘Franciscan Ireland’, in Edel Breathnach, Joseph McMahon, and John McCafferty (eds.), The Irish Franciscans, 1534–1900 (Dublin 2008), pp. 67–8. ⁵² Rafferty, Catholicism in Ulster, p. 141.

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of that city. By the mid-1960s, when the number of Irish male and female religious peaked, the number of religious foundations in more peripheral areas had expanded. The Norbertine order opened a house at Kilnacrott, Cavan, in 1924. In 1948 the American province of the Sacred Heart opened a seminary in Tannagh (Cavan) to educate chaplains for the US forces. The Society of African Missions opened a house at Drumantine (Newry) in 1926; the Cistercians came to Portglenone in 1948, and the Servites established a house at Benburb in 1949. Incontrovertibly though, there were fewer religious houses in northern dioceses because northern bishops feared that male congregations would deplete the number of future diocesan priests. Foreign religious orders too were attracted to Ireland by the prospect of recruiting priests, lay brothers, and religious sisters for missionary work. Several new Irish-based religious foundations, such as the Maynooth Mission to China in 1916, the Holy Rosary Sisters 1924, and the Medical Missionaries of Mary (founded in 1937) concentrated on missionary work. The two latter congregations were among the pioneer Catholic religious orders providing nursing and midwifery services in Africa,⁵³ as explored in Chapter 12 by Bateman, in this volume. The post-Famine wave of church-building continued to meet the needs of a growing urban/suburban population and replaced many modest preemancipation churches. Dr Coholan, the bishop of Cork, oversaw the construction of a ‘necklace of churches’; several in prominent locations on the city’s hills. The 1920s plans for a Haussman-style reconstruction of Dublin included a ‘via Sacra’ terminating in a Catholic cathedral. This did not materialize and later plans to construct a cathedral in Merrion Square were also abandoned.⁵⁴ However during the McQuaid era, the building of architecturally undistinguished parochial churches, the largest with a capacity for 2,000 worshippers, kept pace with the Dublin’s urban clearance and suburban development. In the early 1960s in the Dublin parish of Cabra West, Sunday Mass was celebrated every thirty minutes from 7 a.m. until noon, but the assembly-line services left little scope for reflection or anything other than a token sermon.⁵⁵ Galway cathedral which was consecrated in 1965 on the site of the former jail, opened towards the end of this churchbuilding boom. Construction costs were generally financed by weekly collections in the community, which appear to have been carried out by women and fundraising efforts in the United States. There are no statistics about religious observance before the 1970s, but evidence suggests that it was near-universal, and that religious practice extended well beyond Sunday Mass and Easter duties, though it was also common to see groups

⁵³ Irish Catholic Directory 1950 (Dublin, 1951). ⁵⁴ Patrick Abercrombie, Dublin of the Future: The New Town Plan (Liverpool, 1922). ⁵⁵ Anthony Gaughan, At the Coal Face: Recollections of a City and Country Priest (Dublin, 2000), pp. 50–4.

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of men ‘huddled outside church buildings while their wives and children performed their liturgical duties’.⁵⁶ Limerick city, with a 1926 population of almost 38,000, was over 95 per cent Catholic and had five parishes and five communities of regular clergy—Franciscans, Dominican, Jesuit, Redemptorist, and Augustinian. The Archconfraternity of the Holy Family, reputed to be the largest confraternity in the world, met in the Redemptorist church on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights; each night catered for men from a different part of the city. Thursday and Friday nights were for younger boys and teenagers.⁵⁷ In 1943 the Sodality of Our Lady, which was led by the Jesuits, had an estimated 250,000 members in 800 branches, almost equally divided between parishes and convent schools, and reached its peak in 1958. The Society of Jesus also organized the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. In 1944 an estimated 40,000–50,000 devotees attended the annual blessing of throats on the feast of St Blaise (3 February) at Dublin’s Merchants Quay, and in 1956 the numbers were estimated at 100,000.⁵⁸ Pre-conciliar devotional activities were varied and immensely popular. Catholics in smaller towns and rural parishes had fewer opportunities to join sodalities, but most parishes ran regular missions—segregated by gender—and Sunday evening devotions were common. Popular devotion among the laity centred on Mariology. The Marian Year (1954), followed in 1958 by the centenary of the Lourdes apparition, led to the construction of many Lourdes’-style grottoes, dotted along major roads or in church grounds. Mayo-born, but US-based Fr Patrick Peyton attracted a crowd of 20,000 when his family rosary crusade visited Knock shrine in 1954. This was one in a series of mass rallies in the west of Ireland that were modelled on rallies by US Protestant evangelist Billy Graham.⁵⁹ The Marian Year brought a resurgence of pilgrimages to Knock, generally by train, and the rosary was broadcast during the journey. The national carrier Aer Lingus began regular flights to Lourdes in 1952, where it became the largest carrier, with onward flights to Rome.⁶⁰ Diocesan pilgrimages to Lourdes were often the first foreign travel destination for many people. Irish travel agents often began as organizers of pilgrimages to Lourdes and Rome. In towns lacking communities of regulars, the SVP was the most prominent lay organization; it was well established in northern towns. Many prominent politicians, including at least two presidents of Ireland and several Taoisigh were ⁵⁶ Oliver Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II in Historical Perspective’, in Niall Coll (ed.), Ireland and Vatican II: Essays Theological, Pastoral and Educational (Dublin, 2015), p. 15. ⁵⁷ Síle De Cléir, Popular Catholicism in 20th-Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017), pp. 29–30. ⁵⁸ Franciscan House of Studies Killiney, Chronicle II, 3 February 1956. ⁵⁹ De Cléir, Popular Catholicism, p. 90; Alana Harris and Martin Spence, ‘ “Disturbing the Complacency of Religion”? The Evangelical Crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in England, 1951–54’, Twentieth Century British History, 18 (2007), pp. 481–513. ⁶⁰ Garret FitzGerald, All in a Life: An Autobiography (Dublin, 1992), p. 44.

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members, as were prominent public servants and businessmen. Ireland’s most significant contribution to lay Catholic activism was the Legion of Mary, which was founded in 1925 by Frank Duff—a senior official in the Department of Finance. He was an active member of the SVP and the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association (PTAA), and the Legion of Mary was founded from these organizations with a mission to provide spiritual and material assistance to the poor. Membership included men and women, without social distinction. As the SVP excluded women, many of them joined the Legion. It ran hostels for the homeless and rescue homes for prostitutes. Until the 1970s it was the only Irish organization that supported unmarried mothers who wished to keep their child, and took a special interest in emigrants. In 1928 the Legion expanded into Scotland; by the 1960s it was active in fifty-five countries including many parts of Africa. Duff died in 1980 and was proposed for canonization in 1998.⁶¹ During the 1960s, the minutes of Irish Cabinet meetings regularly report the granting of a leave of absence to civil servants, male and female, who wished to spend one or two years as a missionary with the Viatores Christi (founded 1960) or the Legion of Mary. The Patrician Year of 1961, celebrating the 1,500th anniversary of the death of St Patrick, marked a peak in Irish Catholic triumphal complacency. President de Valera attended Mass in the cathedral in Armagh on St Patrick’s Day. In his sermon Dr William Conway, then auxiliary archbishop of Armagh, said that this ‘symbolised the spiritual unity of Ireland’.⁶² The official ceremonies in June were attended by nine cardinals including the papal legate Cardinal Agaginian, and Taoiseach Seán Lemass was among the speakers in a series of talks that accompanied the ceremonies. The dominant theme was Ireland’s historic and current missionary activities and numerous exhibitions celebrated the work of missionary orders. Cardinal Agaginian ‘recalled the apostolic zeal of its [Ireland’s] spiritual children, who have through the centuries voyaged to the ends of the earth to bring the light of Faith to other peoples’. He told the 90,000 people who attended the closing Mass in the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) stadium at Croke Park, that ‘having felt the pulse of Catholic Ireland’ during his week-long visit, he was aware of ‘the great depth of country’s faith’.⁶³ Although the cardinal travelled to Cork, he did not visit Northern Ireland. The ceremonies at Downpatrick, burial place of St Patrick, were organized by the northern bishops.⁶⁴ Many parishes ran excursions to sites associated with St Patrick and for some it would have been their first visit to Northern Ireland.

⁶¹ Finola Kennedy, Frank Duff: A Life Story (London, 2011). ⁶² Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, p. 43. ⁶³ Irish Press, 26 June 1961; PATHE NEWS, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOjYxwyV9MA (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁶⁴ Irish Press, 12 and 19 June 1961.

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The 1960s and 1970s In his comparative assessment of the nexus between gender and religion in the 1960s, Callum Brown concluded that ‘the sixties did not have the same resonance in Ireland’ as elsewhere.⁶⁵ That is open to debate. The economy began to grow, a century of population decline was reversed, and the country became more industrialized and more urban. Educational opportunities expanded and a national television service opened in 1961. These changes threatened to disrupt the equilibrium of Church/State relations at a time when the Catholic Church internationally was undergoing rapid change. For many Irish people the election of Pope John XXIII in 1958 marked a new era. It was common in the mid- to late 1960s for gift shops to display a plate featuring images of John F. Kennedy and John XXIII, side by side. As Brian Fallon surmised ‘It was not until 1961, with the saintly and benevolent John XXII’s Mater et Magistra, that the great Thaw genuinely began’.⁶⁶ Mater et Magistra chimed with Irish debates about economic growth and rural development in deploring migration from farms to cities and the fact that agriculture was ‘a depressed occupation’. Lemass quoted it extensively in an address to Muintir na Tire rural week and he is reputed to have told cabinet ministers to keep a copy on their desks ‘for guidance’.⁶⁷ Some clergy abandoned their long-standing opposition to ‘bureaucracy’, demanding increased government assistance—albeit on programmes that met their wishes, such as measures to assist rural Ireland. Fr James McDyer organized a vegetable growing cooperative in his remote Donegal parish of Glencolumkille and in 1963 he sought to extend this project to similar small-farm areas in western counties. He enlisted the support of local priests and the western bishops, addressing mass meetings in western towns. His initiative prompted the government to establish a western development unit in the Department of Agriculture with targeted funding for special projects in these areas. This focus on the symbiotic nexus between Irish Catholicism and its rural setting was explained in 1964 by the bishop of Achonry, Dr Fergus, who told Lemass that: the people of the small western farms are in a special way representative of the nation. . . . Moreover their homes have always been nurseries of religious vocations, thus contributing to the building up of Ireland’s spiritual empire. We believe it would be an irreparable loss to the nation and to the Church if they were left to thin themselves out under the merciless operation of economic laws.⁶⁸ ⁶⁵ Callum Brown, Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since the 1960s (Woodbridge, 2012), p. 37. ⁶⁶ Brian Fallon, An Age of Innocence: Irish Culture, 1930–1960 (Dublin, 1998), p. 199. ⁶⁷ John Horgan, Sean Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot (Dublin, 1997) p. 322. ⁶⁸ Mary E. Daly, The First Department: A History of the Department of Agriculture (Dublin, 2002), pp. 428–41.

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By the 1960s, it was no longer politically or economically acceptable to leave it to the Catholic Church to determine the supply of secondary school places. The 1965 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report ‘Investment in Education’ highlighted major geographical disparities in access: north of a line drawn from Dublin to Galway, the number of secondary school places for girls was 50 per cent higher than for boys, and the number of girls in secondary school was 38 per cent higher. The prospect of a Catholic child in Donegal, Ireland’s most northern county, attending secondary school was onethird that of children in Cork, Kerry, and Clare.⁶⁹ The Department of Education proposed the establishment of co-educational, multi-denominational comprehensive schools in areas with insufficient secondary school places. Negotiations began over the composition of boards of management, and the roles of Catholic and Protestant clergy, but proposals that the schools should be controlled by a government department were anathema to the Hierarchy. This was one in a series of clashes relating to education: others involved Church efforts to transfer a national school with a lay principal to a religious community, and proposals to amalgamate one-teacher schools under clerical management, where educational outcomes were poor. Many school buildings were dilapidated and lacked modern sanitation and running water. In 1966 the minister for education announced the introduction of free secondary schooling and school transport; the additional places would, where possible, be provided in existing voluntary schools. Catholic secondary schools rallied to the challenge; enrolment rose by 40 per cent between 1965 and 1970, though schools, because of expansion, became increasingly reliant on lay teachers. In areas with insufficient school places, community schools offering a combined academic and vocational syllabus were established, initially without an agreed governance model.⁷⁰ It was eventually determined that they would come under parochial control. The outcome secured not just continuing Catholic Church control, but arguably an extension and transformation; many former vocational schools (controlled by local authorities) were absorbed into community schools, and the balance of educational power shifted from religious orders to diocesan clergy. Catholic schools were transformed through the strategic withdrawal of male and female religious from classrooms, while the Church retained overall control of the schools.⁷¹ By the late 1960s the survival of voluntary hospitals and Catholic residential institutions was threatened by the restructuring of health services and falling revenue from the Irish Hospitals Sweepstake. The initial plan would have brought voluntary and public hospitals under a common financial and governance regime, ⁶⁹ Tim Pat Coogan, Ireland since the Rising (Dublin 1966), p. 218. ⁷⁰ Mary E. Daly, Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–73 (Cambridge, 2016), pp. 222–7; John Walsh, The Politics of Expansion: The Transformation of Educational Policy in the Republic of Ireland, 1957–72 (Manchester, 2009). ⁷¹ Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002), pp. 155–62.

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but the revised version adopted a two-tier approach, with a separate funding stream for voluntary hospitals provided by the Department of Health.⁷² That structure, with some compromises relating to the appointment of medical professionals, ensured that the larger voluntary hospitals (which tended to be Catholic) flourished. By the 1950s, Catholic Church control of institutions caring for children and adults with special needs was being challenged by nondenominational organizations established by parents and/or medical professionals, such as the Cork Post-Polio Society, St Michael’s House (children with Down’s syndrome), and Cerebral Palsy Ireland.⁷³ There was pressure to reduce the numbers of adults and children in long-term institutional care (often run by religious orders) in favour of community-based support. The Kilkenny Social Services established by the bishop of Ossory, Peter Birch, provided a template for community services, which was modelled on the Flanders one and adopted in other areas.⁷⁴ Initially these services relied almost entirely on voluntary effort and fund-raising, but in the 1970s they secured substantial funding from the new regional health boards—yet another example of the Church’s capacity to adapt to changing circumstances.

The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) Rafferty suggests that before Vatican II, journals such as The Furrow (founded 1950) and the Dominican publication Doctrine and Life, ‘were filtering into Ireland some of the new theological speculation that was giving a breath of new life to Continental and American Catholicism’.⁷⁵ The Furrow provided regular dispatches on Vatican II by the Redemptorist Sean O’Riordan and it published articles by lay and religious women. One of its aims was to promote an interest among the clergy in ecclesiastical art.⁷⁶ Although The Furrow was published in Maynooth (Dublin archdiocese), it deftly avoided Archbishop McQuaid’s intervention by securing an imprimatur from the bishop of Kildare and Leighlin.⁷⁷ It is widely acknowledged that the leaders of the Irish Church were ‘utterly unprepared’ for Vatican II. According to Michael Smith, bishop of Meath (1990–2018), ‘the contribution made by the staff of Maynooth and in the other ⁷² Daly, Sixties Ireland, pp. 241–2. ⁷³ Mary E. Daly, ‘ “The Primary and Natural Educator”? The Role of Parents in the Education of their Children in Independent Ireland’, in Maria Luddy and James Smith (eds.) Children, Childhood and Irish Society 1500 to the Present (Dublin, 2014), pp. 65–81. ⁷⁴ Stanislaus Kennedy, The Development of Kilkenny Social Services 1963–198: Who Should Care? (Dublin, 1981); Michael Ryan (ed.), The Church and the Nation: The Vision of Peter Birch, Bishop of Ossory 1964–1981 (Dublin, 1993). ⁷⁵ Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II’, p. 16; John Horgan, ‘The Furrow: Navigating the Rapids, 1950–1977’, in Mark O’Brien and Felix Larkin (eds.), Periodicals and Journalism in Twentieth Century Ireland (Dublin, 2014), pp. 173–86. ⁷⁶ Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950, pp. 83–6. ⁷⁷ Horgan, ‘The Furrow’, p. 174.

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centres of theology in Ireland to the preparatory period is best consigned to history’. The Dominican theologian Austin Flannery claimed that ‘There was very little theological discussion in Ireland, very little. And the result was that when the bishops went to Rome they were ill-prepared. . . . And some of the things that were said came as a hell of a shock’.⁷⁸ The Irish ambassador to the Holy See commented that ‘their whole attitude to the Council itself has been the reverse of exuberant’ and predicted that ‘their first reaction to any given problem will be supremely conservative’.⁷⁹ However Rafferty highlighted the contributions made by Cardinal William Conway and the bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Philbin. Conway’s intervention resulted in a separate document on the role of the priesthood. Dr Philbin warned the Second Session of the Council that ‘charity to the poor must not overshadow Christian duty to eliminate poverty and injustice’; he also cautioned against condemning artificial birth control without offering married couples an alternative.⁸⁰ Dr McQuaid defended the Latin Mass, and Irishborn Cardinal Michael Browne, a former master general of the Dominicans, ‘tended to reflect the most conservative strain of opinion in the Curia’; he feared that the new emphasis on collegiality would undermine the doctrine of papal infallibility.⁸¹ With three decades’ hindsight, Enda McDonagh claimed that ‘the gates of fortress Maynooth were [also] blown open’ by Vatican II and that the Council resulted in a ‘fractious risen people’—a phrase that appears to echo a play about the 1913 Dublin Lockout.⁸² During the 1960s a number of priests were to the fore in challenging Ireland’s social and intellectual conservatism. Peter Connolly, professor of English at Maynooth, championed the writings of Enda O’Brien, whose novels had been banned. When the minister for justice relaxed the draconian system of film censorship, he appointed a Jesuit priest, John Kelly, to chair the appeal board; another Jesuit, Donal O’Sullivan, a champion of contemporary art, chaired the Arts Council.⁸³ Award-winning documentaries made by Radharc, a production unit run by priests, explored the treatment of young offenders and the downside of Irish emigration to England. Eamonn Casey, a future bishop of Kerry and Galway, was active in London housing campaigns, and a member of the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child. Priests took part in protests against the Vietnam War, following the example of US counterparts; Austin Flannery, OP, and Michael Sweetman, SJ, publicized the Dublin housing crisis and UCD lecturer, Fergal O’Connor, OP, made regular appearances on television, advocating ⁷⁸ F. X. Carty, Hold Firm: John Charles McQuaid and the Second Vatican Council (Dublin, 2007), p. 49. ⁷⁹ Carty, Hold Firm. ⁸⁰ Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II’, p. 20. ⁸¹ Rafferty, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II’, p. 21; Carty, Hold Firm, pp. 47–9, 56–71. ⁸² Enda McDonagh, ‘And the Stone was Made Flesh: A Bicentenary Meditation on Maynooth’, The Furrow, 46 (1995), p. 352. ⁸³ Coogan, Ireland since the Rising, p. 172.

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social change and the merits of social democracy.⁸⁴ Vatican II had a major impact on communities of nuns; their style of dress changed, and they were free to move beyond the convent. When Archbishop McQuaid was alerted to the sale of records of lectures by prominent theologians such as Charles Curran and Bernard Haring, on topics such as penance, natural law, and abortion, he discovered that most of the orders had come from convents.⁸⁵ The appointment of a Dominican sister, Margaret McCurtain (Sr Benevenuta), as a history lecturer at UCD, was a milestone for Irish religious sisters; Dr McQuaid asked to see her lecture notes but was rebuffed.⁸⁶ Pre-Vatican II Irish Catholicism consigned the laity to a passive role. Although the Jesuit periodical Studies published articles and reviews by Catholic laity, and was read by educated Catholics, few lay people challenged the authority of the clergy. In 1960, Tony Spencer, an English Catholic sociologist and member of the Newman Group, claimed that the rural Irishman accepted ‘his faith without attempting to apply his intellect to it and appreciate its reasonableness’; Irish priests did not encourage debate about religion.⁸⁷ Research carried out in Dublin and surrounding areas in the early 1960s by the US sociologist and Catholic priest, Bruce Biever, suggested that there was no great difference between city and country. He described the ‘obedience syndrome’ as a key characteristic of Irish Catholic laity: Despite the articulate intellectual minority, there is still in the Irish laity the deeply-held conviction that his prime function in the church is to obey and do what he is told, no matter whether this makes much sense to him or not. He has become used to the idea that he really does not have to think out many of his problems for himself, but rather the church will provide him with an answer for them, and all he has to do is follow the directions he is given.⁸⁸

He concluded that ‘the laity are not at the present time really integrated into Catholicism in any significant way’. Biever’s and Spencer’s comments were not made public at this time and Spencer’s report was suppressed by joint agreement of the archdioceses of Westminster and Dublin. Sociology was poorly developed in Ireland and no Irish-based scholars examined these questions, but articles in The Guardian by Irish journalist Peter Lennon provoked controversy. Lennon identified two contrasting groups of Irish Catholic laity: one group ‘looking eagerly to the very reassuring developments’ taking place at the Council, but ⁸⁴ Daly, Sixties Ireland, pp. 203–4. ⁸⁵ DDA, Humanae Vitae Public Affairs. ⁸⁶ As reported to the author by Dr Margaret MacCurtain (1929–2020). ⁸⁷ A. E. C. W. Spencer, Arrangements for the Integration of Irish immigrants in England and Wales (Dublin, 2012), p. 17. ⁸⁸ Bruce Biever, Religion, Culture and Values: A Cross-cultural Analysis of Motivational Factors in Native Irish and American Irish Catholicism (New York, 1976), pp. 495–7.

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not confident that they would benefit from them; and a second cohort who were ‘harassed confused and unnecessarily guilt-ridden’ by Catholic teaching on sexuality.⁸⁹ The 1908 University Act stipulated that theology would not be taught in the colleges of the National University of Ireland, which meant that an educated laity had little access to the subject. In 1960 the Jesuit house of study at Milltown Park introduced theology lectures for the laity which attracted a large audience, as did the annual Glenstal liturgical congress.⁹⁰ ‘Paperback theology’ flourished; in 1966 one of the best-selling books in Dublin was by the French theologian, Teilhard de Chardin.⁹¹ The Student Christian Movement, an interfaith group drawn from students at UCD and Trinity, championed left-wing causes such as the Dublin housing campaign and Grille, a left-wing Christian student group that was involved in protests against the Vietnam War picketed the headquarters of the Dublin archdiocese to protest against their hiring of American fund-raisers.⁹² Pope John XXIII’s promotion of ecumenism was extremely significant in Ireland, given the association between religion and national identities. Fears of proselytization or Protestant control over key medical and educational services continued to preoccupy clergy and lay activists until the 1950s, long after such threats had disappeared, and the Irish hierarchy adopted a hostile attitude towards mixed marriages. Ecumenism forced a rethink. In Northern Ireland, ecumenism and John XXIII’s papacy brought an improvement in relations between northern Catholics and the State, and between Church leaders of different denominations. However, ecumenism assisted the rise of Ian Paisley as a political force; in 1964 he led a protest against the ‘Romanising policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Ramsey, and his moves towards Christian unity’.⁹³ Margaret O’Callaghan describes Paisley’s newspaper the Protestant Telegraph, founded in 1966, as ‘a lurid exercise in anti-ecumenism, anti-Catholicism and anti-nationalism’.⁹⁴ The Milltown Park lectures provided a forum for interdenominational dialogue, as did the Greenhills Ecumenical Conference of 1966. In January 1966 over 700 people attended a meeting to mark Christian Unity Week, including President de Valera, Fine Gael leader James Dillon, the chief justice, and both archbishops of Dublin, though press coverage focused on the fact that Dr Simms, the Church of Ireland archbishop was not seated on the podium, unlike Dr McQuaid.⁹⁵

⁸⁹ Hibernia, March 1963 and February 1964. ⁹⁰ Carty, Hold Firm, pp. 49–50. ⁹¹ Coogan, Ireland since the Rising, p. 247. ⁹² Hibernia, October 1968. ⁹³ Irish Times, 20 April 1964. ⁹⁴ Margaret O’Callaghan, ‘Commemorating the Rising in Northern Ireland in 1966’, in Mary E. Daly and Margaret O’Callaghan (eds.), 1916 in 1966: Commemorating the Easter Rising (Dublin, 2007), p. 98; Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, pp. 103–5. ⁹⁵ Carty, Hold Firm, pp. 112–18.

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Prohibitions on Catholics attending Protestant services eased in 1966, but interChurch marriages remained contentious. In 1970, responsibility for ensuring that a child was raised as a Catholic was placed on the Catholic partner. In the same year the Irish Council of Churches and the Catholic Church established a ‘Joint Committee on Social Problems’, but efforts to establish a non-denominational council for unmarried mothers and their children prompted opposition within the Dublin archdiocese. The first formal inter-Church meeting was not held until 1973. Symbolically, it took place at Ballymascanlon on the border with Northern Ireland; the outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland proved a major challenge for inter-Church relations, but it also created an urgency to promote inter-Church dialogue⁹⁶ as explored in this volume, Chapter 11 by Power. The 1968 publication of the papal encyclical, Humanae Vitae, reiterating traditional teaching on contraception, was welcomed by McQuaid and many senior clergy. In Ireland, despite evidence that a growing number of women were using the pill, the storm was contained more effectively than elsewhere. The most prominent clerical dissenter was Cork theologian, Fr James Good, who described Humanae Vitae as ‘A major tragedy for the Church’.⁹⁷ Humanae Vitae received extensive coverage in Irish media, including many letters from women and men disputing its teaching. An encyclical issued a decade earlier would have received much more respectful treatment. Humanae Vitae was of immense importance in Ireland, given that the contraceptive pill was the first reliable form of contraception available to Irish couples. However, in contrast to England, opposition largely took the form of silence or quiet dissent.⁹⁸ Maynooth theologians Enda McDonagh and Denis O’Callaghan had been prominent in developing a new theology of marriage which was relevant to the question of contraception, and they persisted for a time with lectures and publications, as did classics professor, Fr Gerry Watson.⁹⁹ In September 1968 there was a two-day meeting of concerned laity and clergy to discuss the encyclical at Bargy Castle; there is no evidence that it had any long-term impact.¹⁰⁰ There was a short-term decline in the number of women taking the pill that was soon reversed. By 1973, an estimated 19,000 women were using the pill.¹⁰¹

⁹⁶ Geraldine Smyth, ‘Ecumenism and Interchurch Relations’, in James Donnelly et al. (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Irish History and Culture (Detroit, MI, 2004), I, pp. 182–4. ⁹⁷ Irish Press, 30 July 1968. ⁹⁸ Peter Murray, ‘The Best News Ireland Ever Got? Humanae Vitae’s Reception on the Pope’s Green Island’, in Alana Harris (ed.), The Schism of 68: Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–1975 (Cham, 2018), pp. 275–302. ⁹⁹ See articles by Enda McDonagh and Denis O’Callaghan in Clergy Review, November 1966, pp. 838–9; O’Callaghan, ‘After the Encyclical’, The Furrow, November 1968; by Fr Gerry Watson, Irish Times, 10 September 1968; and by Enda McDonagh in the Journal of the Irish Medical Association, 62:382 (April 1969). ¹⁰⁰ Fitzgerald, All in a Life, pp. 83–4. ¹⁰¹ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 149.

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Conclusion When Archbishop McQuaid retired in January 1972, the future of Irish Catholicism was becoming less certain. Between 1965 and 1970 the number of women joining religious orders had fallen by two-thirds; 104 professed brothers, seventy-two priests, and 297 sisters left religious life; thirty-seven of 107 female congregations recruited no new postulants in that time. Despite a decline in the number of seminarians, the number of priests ordained in 1971 was identical to that in 1961.¹⁰² There was a comparable decline in membership of sodalities, confraternities, the Legion of Mary, and the PTAA. However, over 90 per cent of the population attended Sunday Mass in 1973/4,¹⁰³ though religious belief and practice was declining among the younger and better educated. The liturgical changes following Vatican II were accepted, though Mass in the vernacular, with responses from the laity, forced many attendees to abandon their practice of reciting the rosary during Mass. Conservative Irish Catholics lamented the loss of rituals such as Sunday evening devotions, and the collapse of the family rosary (which was widely blamed on the arrival of television). During the 1970s they rallied, though in smaller numbers, championing the Public Rosary Movement— saying the rosary in public places, such as Dublin’s O’Connell Street. There was renewed interest in the Blue Army of Fatima, and an emerging charismatic movement peaked in the late 1970s. Knock Shrine became a centre for such movements—this role was enhanced by the papal visit in 1979. While some priests were involved in these movements, much of the leadership came from the laity, including many women.¹⁰⁴ Devout Irish Catholics responded to the emphasis that Vatican II placed on the people of God. These individuals and groups were prominent in campaigns to prevent the legalization of contraception, maintain the constitutional ban on divorce, and in swelling the ranks of the Pro-Life Movement, which resulted in a constitutional amendment in 1983. The outbreak of violence in Northern Ireland in 1969, as explored in this volume in Chapter 16 by Ó Corráin, prompted some politicians and writers to reassess the relationship of independent Ireland with Catholicism. In 1972 a constitutional referendum to delete Article 44, which referred to the ‘special position’ of the Catholic Church, was supported by over 84 per cent of those who voted. However the referendum happened without a serious debate over the respective roles of Church and State; perhaps it came too early, and the outcome was resented by the conservative

¹⁰² Revd James Lennon (director), Revd Liam Ryan, Revd Micheál MacGréil and Carmel Perara, ‘Survey of Catholic Clergy and Religious Personnel 1971’, Social Studies, Report no. 3, pp. 195–7; Tom Inglis, ‘Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 22 (2007), pp. 205–20. ¹⁰³ See Kinnear’s Statistical Appendices, ‘Mass Attendance Estimates’ table, col. A1.3, in this volume. ¹⁰⁴ James S. Donnelly, ‘Opposing the Modern World: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965–1985’, Éire-Ireland, 40 (2005), pp. 183–245.

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Catholic groups, described above.¹⁰⁵ The referendum had no practical impact; the continuing influence of the Catholic Church on politics and society is evident in the delay in legislating on contraception and the constitutional prohibition on divorce, despite a sharp rise in extra-marital births and widespread use of contraception. There was no serious challenge to the Church’s governance and ownership of large swathes of Irish education, health, and welfare institutions, despite the fact that they were increasingly State-funded and staffed by laity. Priests and bishops continued to exercise an impact on government policy on social issues such as rural decline and third-world development. The debate over the respective roles of Church and State in Irish society has yet to be resolved.

Select Bibliography Carty, Francis Xavier, Hold Firm: John Charles McQuaid and the Second Vatican Council (Dublin, 2007). Curtis, Maurice, A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Modern Ireland (Dublin, 2010). De Cléir, Síle, Popular Catholicism in 20th-Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017). Earner Byrne, Lindsey Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin, 1922–1960 (Manchester, 2007). Fuller, Louise, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002). Murray, Patrick, Oracles of God: The Roman Catholic Church and Irish Politics, 1922–37 (Dublin, 2000). Ó Corráin, Daithí Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–73 (Manchester, 2006). Rafferty, Oliver, Catholicism in Ulster 1603–1983 (London, 1994). Rafferty, Oliver, ‘The Catholic Church in Ireland and Vatican II in Historical Perspective’, in Niall Coll (ed.), Ireland and Vatican II: Essays Theological, Pastoral and Educational (Dublin, 2015). Whyte, J. H., Church and State in Modern Ireland 1923–1979 (Dublin, 1980).

¹⁰⁵ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 377.

2 The Church in England and Wales: An Historical Overview Stephen Bullivant

‘I don’t want thumbscrews or the rack . . . but there always seems to be something of Johnny Foreigner about the Catholics.’ This casual remark, spoken by the earl of Grantham during a post-dinner chit-chat with the archbishop of York, occurred in May 1920. Though seemingly a throw-away line, apropos of nothing, its full significance would soon become clear. The earl’s daughter—having married Tom Branson, the family’s working-class, socialist Irish chauffeur the previous year—dies in childbirth. Her widower’s desire to have their daughter baptized Catholic sparks a family argument. Lord Grantham shares the local vicar’s disdain for ‘bells and incense, and all the rest of their pagan fol-de-rol’ while his mother deflects claims of her own anti-Catholicism (‘the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk is a dear friend, and she’s more Catholic than the Pope’). Harmony is ultimately restored, however, and baby Sybil is indeed baptized Catholic, with all family members in more-or-less contented attendance. The earl even consents to be photographed with ‘Father Dominic’, if a little awkwardly, prompting his wife to tease in the final words of the episode—for this is, of course, the world of the wildly popular ‘costume soap opera’ Downton Abbey—‘What’s the matter, Robert? Are you afraid you’ll be converted when you’re not looking?’ While hardly of the socio-historical documentary value of a Pathé newsreel or a convert memoir, this recent creative imagining of interwar England and the classed and contested place of Catholicism within it rings true at a thematic level.¹ Indeed, the series creator Julian Fellowes drew on his own post-war experience of that casual, almost unconscious anti-Catholicism that was found among the upper classes, which lasted well into my growing up years . . . Most people had reached the point where they were happy for you to come to their dances or shoot their pheasants, but there were plenty who did not want you to marry their daughters and risk Catholic grandchildren.² ¹ The story arc described above occurs in series 3, episodes 4–7, first broadcast in 2012. ² Tim Walker, ‘Downton Abbey’s Anti-Catholic Plot’, Daily Telegraph, 22 October 2012. Stephen Bullivant, The Church in England and Wales: An Historical Overview In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0003

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The power of this thematic epigraph is further underlined by the juxtaposition of England and Ireland through the character of Tom Branson—representing working-class Irish immigration, the uncomfortable intertwining of Catholicism with the ‘Irish question’, a cipher for the abiding Catholic fondness for left-ofcentre politics and economics,³ and a vehicle for tacit reflections on ecumenical relations, social mobility, and the movement of Catholicism ‘into the mainstream’. Encapsulated here are many of the dominant themes for thinking about the changing fortunes of English (and Welsh) Catholicism across the twentieth century, including sociological framings of Catholic identity through the lens of ‘cultural’ or ‘customary’ ritual practice and ‘tribal’ identity.⁴ In this chapter, my aim is a simple one: to provide an overview of the significant changes within the Catholic Church in England and Wales over the past hundred years in which three interrelated themes dominate—immigration, subcultural ‘otherness’ and its gradual dissipation, and changing patterns of religious practice. While all three lines of analysis are obviously influenced and conditioned by much wider trends affecting (majority non-Catholic) English and Welsh society, the Catholic experience will, naturally, be centred and foregrounded here. In fact, there is a great deal of value to be derived in seeing how large scale, societal experiences and trends—everything from wartime upheavals, to shifts in immigration policy, to secularization—are mediated via such meso-level actors to individuals. The value is all the greater, I would argue, when the particular ‘meso-level actor’ doing the mediating is so large and historically significant a religious denomination as the Catholic Church. Needless to say, much of the detail necessary to flesh out (and illuminate the limits, loose ends, caveats, and exceptions from which such a summary overview must inevitably suffer) should be sought in the chapters that follow. This very much includes the parallel synoptic surveys of Scotland and Ireland in this volume offered in Chapters 1, 3, and 16 by Daly, Gilfillan, and Ó Corráin, respectively. While in Catholic terms it makes complete sense, for reasons of secular politics and history as much as of Church polity, to treat these constituencies separately, it is also clear that none of these nations can truly be understood in isolation. This is most obviously true in the case of Ireland, since Scottish and Anglo-Welsh Catholicism—much like other frontiers surveyed as part of the global Catholic Hibernosphere, or ‘Greater Ireland’⁵—could each be characterized as subplots of the Irish story.

³ Peter Doyle, ‘Religion, Politics and the Catholic Working Class’, New Blackfriars, 54 (1972), pp. 218–25. ⁴ For example, Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and the Transformation of Religious Authority (Cambridge, 1991). ⁵ Hilary M. Carey and Colin Barr, ‘Religion and Greater Ireland’, in Hilary M. Carey and Colin Barr (eds.), Religion and Greater Ireland: Christianity and Irish Global Networks, 1750–1950 (Montreal, 2015), pp. 3–29.

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From War to War By most accounts Catholics had—insofar as anyone did in a conflict taking the lives of around three-quarters of a million UK soldiers—‘a good War’ between 1914 and 1918.⁶ Catholic men, urged on by their bishops (if not their pope), joined up in large numbers—staking their very lives on Newman’s conviction that one can indeed be a good Catholic and a good Englishman (or Welshman, by extension).⁷ It certainly helped that a large proportion of the fighting occurred in the Catholicism-steeped countryside of Belgium and France, against largely Protestant Germans, and offered daily such horrors as Rome had spent the past half-century promising that the pernicious errors of the modern world would inevitably reap. Certainly, numbers of converts rose steadily during the war years, and remained between 10,000 and 12,000 a year throughout the interwar period.⁸ In many cases, these were directly ascribable to experiences during military service. Hence for the Anglo-Welsh poet and artist David Jones, who was received in 1921, unintentionally spying a Mass through ‘a chink in the wall’ while out gathering firewood in front-line Flanders: it ‘made a big impression on me . . . I felt immediately that oneness between the Offerant and those toughs [i.e. Jones’ fellow-soldiers] that clustered round him in the dim-lit byre—a thing I had never felt remotely as a Protestant at the Office of Holy Communion’.⁹ The Church’s good showing in the war fed into a wider ‘Catholic moment’, widely noted at the time.¹⁰ Jones was not, of course, the Church’s only creative or intellectual convert in these years: Christopher Dawson (1914), Ronald Knox (1917), G. K. Chesterton (1922), Graham Greene (1926), Alfred Noyes (1927), Evelyn Waugh (1930), Elizabeth Anscombe (1937), and Peter Geach (1938) joining the rather smaller ranks of cradle Catholics of similar distinction. (J. R. R. Tolkien and Edward Elgar—the latter appointed master of the king’s musick in 1924; another sign of the times—both had convert mothers. So too did Hilaire Belloc, though his father was of French Catholic stock). Such ‘catches’ attracted a great deal of attention,¹¹ then and thereafter, and they no doubt contributed to the Church’s growing prestige and self-assuredness. They surely helped counteract lingering prejudices regarding the irrationality, narrowness, ⁶ Michael Snape, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26 (2002), pp. 314–58. ⁷ John Henry Newman, A Letter Addressed to His Grace, the Duke of Norfolk, on Occasion of Mr. Gladstone’s Recent Expostulation (New York, 1875), p. 5. ⁸ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Conversions’ table, A8.1. ⁹ David Jones, Dai Greatcoat: A Self-Portrait of Dai Jones in his Letters, ed. René Hague (London, 1980), pp. 248–9. ¹⁰ Dennis Sewell, Catholics: Britain’s Largest Minority (London, 2001), pp. 37–82; Roy Hattersley, The Catholics: The Church and its People in Britain and Ireland, from the Reformation to the Present Day (London, 2017), pp. 471–90. ¹¹ For example, James R. Lothian, The Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community, 1910–1950 (Notre Dame, IN, 2009).

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and superstition of popery (well on show, for example, in Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, published in 1918).¹² Likewise, whatever else one might say about Chesterton, there was assuredly little of the ‘Johnny Foreigner’ about him. But the significance of an elite few ought not to overshadow the sheer numbers of converts to Catholicism in this period: some 293,000 in the twenty-six years from 1914 to 1939 inclusive, not all of whom—one presumes—were wise by human standards, powerful, and/or of noble birth (cf. 1 Corinthians 1.26). In becoming Catholic, these converts where entering a thriving religious subculture—or rather, a patchwork of different subcultures—each contributing to the formation of a substantial ‘sacred canopy’.¹³ This is a point that is often missed. The set-apart world of Catholic otherness inhabited by, say, the characters of Brideshead Revisited was hardly the same one as that of the first- or secondgeneration Irish labourers in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, or London’s East End. But they, too, tended to take their faith seriously, and both socialized and married among their own. Different again were the longstanding ‘indigenous’ communities of ordinary working- and middle-class Catholics, who had quietly held fast to ‘The Faith of Our Fathers’, up and down the country since the Reformation. The sometime strength of these is perhaps most obvious now in villages, such as those throughout Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire, where the graveyards of old (perhaps pre-emancipation) Catholic churches feature surnames still well-known in the local area. Elsewhere, similar enclave communities are more scattered, dependent on wherever Catholic landowners built chapels for themselves and (their traditionally co-religionist) staff. Such communities were present in towns and cities too, of course—as in Bath, for instance, or the Worcester of Elgar’s upbringing—though by the twenties and thirties these had typically been overlain and expanded by large numbers of Irish immigrants. Hence, perhaps, the lingering perception of English and Welsh Catholicism in this period as containing just three main categories: toffs, converts, and Irish. To be sure, these different Catholic camps didn’t always see eye to eye: ‘cradles versus converts’ is a classic source of tension in any period, as is ‘natives versus immigrants’, or indeed—as was no doubt the case between successive waves of Irish—‘recent immigrants versus even more recent ones’. The nation’s Catholics were, moreover, not so set apart from wider society as to render overriding class and regional stratifications irrelevant (e.g. ‘the baronet might be a left-footer, but he is at least our sort of left-footer—and a jolly good shot at that’). Nevertheless, this was by and large a sibling rivalry, and it does indeed make sense—with due qualification—to think of Catholics as constituting a single group. They not only thought of themselves that way, but also appeared to others as such too.

¹² Lytton Strachey, ‘Cardinal Manning’, Eminent Victorians (New York, [1918] 1969), pp. 1–131. ¹³ Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York, 1967).

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That they collectively constituted a thriving religious minority is not in doubt.¹⁴ The interwar years were a time of building up, on the basis of firm foundations. Over 300 parish churches were built between 1918 and 1939, along with an extra 200-odd chapels (helped by the growing religious orders, male and female). Ordinations rose swiftly, from 137 in 1924 (itself a return to pre-War levels) to over 200 in each year from 1932 to 1942 (with 240 in 1938, the second highest single year in the whole period since the Catholic Directory began publishing figures in 1847—and thus presumably since the Reformation).¹⁵ With all these priests baptizing an average of 67,000 babies each year from 1920 to 1939, school provision was a major priority too, as it would continue to be for some time. On the eve of Vatican II, by which time the annual baptism rate had roughly doubled, Liverpool’s Archbishop Heenan (just before his transfer to Westminster) told L’Osservatore Romano: ‘our greatest preoccupation is school building’.¹⁶ This concern for infrastructure was just one part of Catholics creating (or rather, continuing to create: the war had simply interrupted a process long in progress) their own religious, social, and civic spaces. This included all manner of groups and organizations, usually parish-centred though these were often ‘branches’ of some national body, some directly religious in nature (rosary, sodalities, etc.), others indirectly but nonetheless important for all that.¹⁷ There has been a great deal of research on the importance of social networks in both instilling group identity, and moderating conformity of belief and practice.¹⁸ Going out for a pint with one’s local darts or football team mates might not seem an obvious example of ‘doing religion’, but doing so—as was very common in the north, for example— at one’s parish’s own club, with a social circle comprised primarily of one’s fellow parishioners, to discuss the upcoming grudge match against the local Anglican team, can have subtle but important long-term effects. It is common to ascribe this desire for ‘(sub)world building’, which was still in evidence in the forties and fifties, to Catholics’ insularity, narrowness, and indeed arrogance towards outsiders. This ‘intransigent separateness from the world that seemed to define British Catholics’,¹⁹ on this reading, encouraged a kind of selfghettoization within the walls of the infamous ‘fortress church’.²⁰ Catholics did indeed see theirs as the one true Church, with superior doctrines, morals, and ¹⁴ See George Scott, The R.C.s: A Report on Catholics in Britain Today (London, 1967). ¹⁵ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Places of Worship’ table, A4.1; ‘Religious Communities of Women’ table, A5.1; and ‘Ordinations’ table, A7.1. ¹⁶ Quoted in Edward Norman, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council (Oxford, 1985), p. 121. ¹⁷ June Rockett, Held in Trust: Catholic Parishes in England and Wales 1900–1950 (London, 2001), pp. 24–31. ¹⁸ For example, Sean F. Everton, Networks and Religion: Ties that Bind, Loose, Build-up, and Tear Down (Cambridge, 2018). ¹⁹ Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Progressives in England after Vatican II (Notre Dame, IN, 2013), p. 14. ²⁰ Kester Aspden, Fortress Church: The English Roman Catholic Bishops and Politics, 1903–63 (Leominster, 2002).

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people to match. To be a Catholic marked one out as special and distinctive²¹—but it brought with it special responsibilities, trials, and crosses to bear (a major theme of Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, as well as, in Greene’s Brighton Rock and The End of the Affair). But it was also a perfectly natural reaction in a wider society with a long track record of hostility towards Catholics. The memory of the English and Welsh Martyrs remained remarkably fresh. Devotion to them increased in the interwar years, helped along by the beatification of an ‘impressive company of 136 martyrs’ in 1929, and the canonizations of More and Fisher in 1935.²² Compared to the era of ‘thumb screws and the rack’, or even the various antiCatholic/anti-Irish (the mobs didn’t discriminate) riots of the previous century,²³ it is clear just how far acceptance of Catholics had progressed by the end of the First World War. But old prejudices die hard. And so too do the defensive mechanisms built up to protect against them. Discrimination, tacit or otherwise, around the hiring of Catholics was a real fear for Depression-era working classes, as it was for those hoping to ‘get on’ in many other spheres (including medicine and the military). One can hardly fault the growing ranks of middle-class Catholic professionals from seeking the same kinds of fraternal camaraderie, networking, and other mutual benefits by joining the Catenian Association (founded in 1908) that their non-Catholics peers had long-enjoyed in such groups as the Masons.²⁴ The gradual giving way of ‘blatant acts of hostility . . . to subtler forms of intolerance . . . to a wary though reluctant acceptance’²⁵ did also not proceed in a uniform manner, taking rather longer in parts of Wales and the north-west of England, for different reasons.²⁶ Various Pathé newsreels from this era underline just how different a world all this was—both from the prevailing mainstream of the time, and, critically here, from how English and Welsh Catholicism would look just a few decades hence. These ‘Scenes of impressive splendour’,²⁷ as the subtitle to a 1929 film of a ‘White Friday’ (i.e. the Friday after Pentecost, or ‘Whitsun’) procession in Manchester

²¹ Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (London, [1970] 1996), pp. 37–53. ²² ‘English Martyrs Beatified’, The Times, 9 December 1929, p. 11; William Sheils, ‘1535 in 1935: Catholic Saints and English Identity: The Canonization of Thomas More and John Fisher’, in David J. Crankshaw and George W. C. Gross (eds.), Reformation Reputations: The Power of the Individual in English Reformation History (London, 2021), pp. 159–88. ²³ Jonathan Bush, Papists and Prejudice: Anti-Catholicism and Anglo-Irish Conflict in the North East of England, 1845–70 (Newcastle, 2013). ²⁴ James Hagerty, The Catenian Association: A Centenary History 1908–2008 (London, 2008), pp. 7–15; Alana Harris, ‘ “The People of God Dressed for Dinner and Dancing”? English Catholic Masculinity, Religious Sociability and the Catenian Association’, in Lucy Delap and Sue Morgan (eds.), Men, Masculinities and Religious Change in Twentieth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 54–89. ²⁵ Rockett, Held in Trust, p. 11. ²⁶ Trystan Owain Hughes, ‘Anti-Catholicism in Wales, 1900–1960’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 53 (2002), pp. 312–25. ²⁷ British Pathé, ‘Religion: Catholic White Friday Procession In Manchester 1929’, https://www. britishpathe.com/video/VLVA74AR14TIR8Q63LXW0XJNYZXMD-RELIGION-CATHOLICWHITE-FRIDAY-PROCESSION-IN-MANCHESTER (accessed 20 December 2021).

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aptly puts it, seem scarcely imaginable today. The same year, a Mass in Liverpool’s Thingwall Park to celebrate the centenary of Catholic emancipation attracted an estimated crowd of 300,000 (‘hundreds collapsed in the heat!’).²⁸ In June 1933, Liverpool hosted the same number again: for the blessing and laying of the foundation stone for the city’s new cathedral, designed by Edwin Lutyens, and set to be the world’s second biggest church.²⁹ That it would so ostentatiously dwarf the large Anglican cathedral being built down the road was, one can only assume, a regrettable coincidence. At the time, there seemed to be pastoral need for such ‘lifting of great domes pointing their way to destiny’,³⁰ as Chesterton described the occasion. Alas, this need did not last—and nor did Lutyens’ vision.³¹ Most poignant, however, is a 1924 newsreel from Manchester whose opening titles read ‘40,000 YOUNG CATHOLICS / take 3½ hours to pass / Annual WhitFriday Procession’.³² The four-minute film shows vast numbers of primary-age children, in gleaming white clothes and carrying flowers and crosses, processing through the streets, accompanied by banners and Marian statues. Even larger numbers of Sunday-best clad adults look proudly on, thronging the pavements. All kneel as the Blessed Sacrament, carried aloft in a golden monstrance underneath a pure white canopy, passes by, as little girls strew flower petals in its path. These 40,000 young Catholics would in fifteen short years’ time be heading off, in their differently gendered ways, to fight another war. And for the survivors, their own children would come of age in a very different social, cultural, and religious world indeed.

Boom Given the fillip its fortunes received from the previous war, one might have predicted the Church to emerge from the Second World War even stronger than it had entered it. And the immediate post-war years would, to almost all appearances, have vindicated this forecast. First marriages, then—after a short but respectable time lapse—the figures around baptisms, spiked sharply right after war ended, as expected to meet pent-up demand, before settling down a little (though at a level significantly higher than the pre-war norm). But then, from the ²⁸ British Pathé, ‘300,000 Worshippers 1929’, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/300-000-worship pers (accessed 20 December 2021). ²⁹ British Pathé, ‘Solemn Blessing 1933’, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/solemn-blessing (accessed 20 December 2021). ³⁰ G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Church and Agoraphobia’ (1933), G.K. Chesterton: Collected Works (San Francisco, CA, 1990), III, p. 453. ³¹ Paul D. Walker, ‘Prophetic or Premature? The Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, Liverpool’, Theology, 105 (2002), pp. 185–93. ³² British Pathé, ‘40,000 Young Catholics AKA 40k Young Catholics 1924’, https://www. britishpathe.com/video/40-000-young-catholics-aka-40k-young-catholics (accessed 14 December 2020).

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early to mid-fifties, both then kept rising for another decade or so, in absolute terms and, critically, as a proportion of the national average. In 1947, for example, Catholic marriages accounted for 9 per cent of English and Welsh weddings, and Catholic baptisms for 11 per cent of all live births. By 1960, Catholic marriages hit a twentieth-century peak of 14 per cent, while baptisms were also at a century high of 16 per cent (though in this case rather more a ridge than a peak: the percentage was there or thereabouts in every year from 1959 to 1967).³³ In a decade in which marriage was ‘furiously popular’,³⁴ Catholic numbers led the way. Adult receptions also grew, returning to interwar levels of 11,000 to 12,000 per year by the late-forties, before jumping again from the mid-fifties, hitting 15,794 in 1959. That this was substantially helped along by the Church’s norm that non-Catholics wishing to marry Catholics should convert before doing so—a norm probably as much enforced by family expectations as by canonical strictures—is not in dispute. While undoubtedly only done ‘for form’s sake’ in many cases, the retrospective fashion for dismissing all such receptions as mere conversions of convenience is needlessly cynical. Even from the purely sociological perspective, it is inconceivable that many of these spouses, newly folded into Catholic families and communities, would not have genuinely gone native, especially given the intensely domestic nature of much Catholic piety and practice in this period.³⁵ Vocations also bounced back well following World War II, though not quite so swiftly (even allowing for the obvious delay before vocations show up in ordination statistics) or impressively as other pastoral indicators. Plausibly, since entering seminary in this period was typically not so much a young man’s game as an old boy’s, substantial numbers of those who would have become priests had they not gone off to war, ended up finding reasons to remain in the world. The years from 1954 to 1964, averaging 216 new priests per year, essentially reflect a return to interwar vocation rates, averaging 219 between 1932 and 1942: that is, also very high in the grand scheme of things, just not (unlike other pastoral indicators) even higher. Evidently, the pastoral infrastructure laid down in the prior decades had been money well spent. Seemingly onto a winning formula, the bishops were keen both to protect it from the perceived incursions of the Welfare State,³⁶ and seeming threats to the autonomy of Catholic schools,³⁷ alongside plans to expand it much

³³ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Marriages’ table, A9.1; ‘Baptisms’ table, 10.1. ³⁴ See Claire Langhammer, The English in Love: The Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford, 2013), pp. 149–76. ³⁵ Alana Harris, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945–82 (Manchester, 2013). ³⁶ Joan Keating, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholics Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility, 1945–62’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), pp. 86–108. ³⁷ Corrin, Catholic Progressives, pp. 53–6.

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further. To keep pace with growing demand, and then (as the tide began to turn in the 1960s) out of habit as much as hope for the future, Catholics threw their resources into building schools and churches. The parish of the Immaculate Conception in Bicester, Oxfordshire, for example, is known locally as the ‘Bingo Church’ by the town’s long-time residents, due to its financing model. It was opened in 1962, four years after the parish’s new primary school was finished: a very typical order of priorities at the time. All in all, British Catholics built ‘probably well over a thousand’ new churches between the mid-fifties and the mid-seventies, weighted towards the earlier half of that time span.³⁸ Perhaps 600 new churches were built in England and Wales in the 1960s alone, roughly one for every four parishes. Comparatively few of them, it’s fair to say, would have been recognizable to those serried ranks of ‘White Friday’ processors in the 1920s as churches at all. This was partly due to the scarcity and expense of traditional building materials, with new architectural trends adapting to match. But it was partly due also to visions of what was thought ‘fitting’ for an excitedly future (and soon enough, altar) facing Catholic community. For example, breathless reports during the building of Liverpool’s new cathedral, much smaller, though (in its own way) just as jaw-droppingly memorable as Lutyens’ original, speak of how ‘In the design, a cathedral in the round, religion accepts the challenge of the twentieth century, while planning to exist in this edifice for at least five hundred years.’³⁹ Much of the Church’s exceptional growth in the 1940s and 1950s rested on immigration. In itself, of course, this was not a wholly novel development. The contribution of the Irish diaspora to Catholicism in England and Wales over the previous century is, of course, well-known—so much so, that it has rather tended to eclipse the existence of other ethnic groups. Indeed, throughout the 1920s, the Church could boast two London-born cardinals with names that most certainly had ‘something of Johnny Foreigner’ about them: Rafael Merry del Val (the son of a Spanish diplomat, he lived in England until he was 13, returned to attend seminary in County Durham, and ever after considered himself ‘English to all intents and purposes’),⁴⁰ and Francis Aidan Gasquet, OSB (whose paternal grandfather was among the tens of thousands who sought refuge in Britain after the French Revolution).⁴¹ Nevertheless, even while continuing a long-established trend, levels of post-war Catholic immigration, from Ireland and a wide range

³⁸ Robert Proctor, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955–1975 (London, 2014), pp. 3–4. ³⁹ British Pathé, ‘Liverpool Cathedral Progress 1966’, https://www.britishpathe.com/video/ cathedral-progress/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁴⁰ Derek J. Holmes, ‘Cardinal Raphael Merry del Val: An Uncompromising Ultramontane: Gleanings from his Correspondence with England’, Catholic Historical Review, 60 (1976), pp. 55–64. ⁴¹ Juliette Reboul, ‘French Emigration in Great-Britain in Response to the French Revolution: Memories, Integrations, Cultural Transfers’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Leeds, 2014), pp. 18–24.

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of other countries including former colonies with the collapse of the empire, were genuinely remarkable and had an incalculable effect on all aspects of pastoral life. According to Census figures, between 1931 and 1951 the Irish-born population of England and Wales grew 29 per cent, from 381,000 to 492,000. By 1961, it had risen by a further 191,000 to 683, 000—fully 179 per cent of the 1931 figure.⁴² Given just how Catholic Ireland was in these decades, such numbers obviously swelled the churches in their adopted—or for many, foster—home. The embers of anti-Catholicism, long-entwined with anti-Irish feeling, also received a new lease of life, no doubt cementing many other Catholics in their own ‘insularity’ especially given the new strands of this anti-Catholicism and newly evolving characteristics and conflations of ‘suspect communities’.⁴³ This new Irish influx was not, however, quite the boon for (and/or strain on) parishes as it might have been. There was a great deal of concern, on both sides of the Irish Sea, regarding ‘leakage’ (as lower-than-normative religious practice was uniformly termed in this era) among Irish immigrants, with informed estimates suggesting that perhaps 50 per cent didn’t attend Mass regularly.⁴⁴ That this was viewed as a very serious pastoral crisis reveals much about what was then considered an ‘acceptable’ rate of non-practice, and just how very far Catholic religiosity has fallen since in both countries. Nor, even in these happy golden years, was growing lapsation an exclusively Irish problem: already in the early 1950s, Brentwood’s Bishop Beck could estimate that perhaps 30 per cent of English and Welsh Catholics no longer practised.⁴⁵ Such informed ‘guesstimates’ would only rise as the decade progressed. At the end of the war, 100,000 ‘Free Polish’ Allied servicemen took up the offer to settle in the UK, along with a further 30,000 family members. Some 85,000 other central and eastern Europeans joined them, including Allied servicemen and displaced persons unwilling or unable to return to their now-communist homelands. These included, for example, around 35,000 Ukrainians, along with Lithuanians, Slovakians, and Hungarians (with a further 14,000 admitted after the failure of the 1956 Uprising), all including high proportions of Catholics.⁴⁶ These immigrants were not, of course, distributed evenly throughout the country. ⁴² Sean Glynn, ‘Irish Immigration to Britain, 1911–1951: Patterns and Policy’, Irish Economic and Social History, 8 (1981), pp. 50–69, at p. 56; Office of National Statistics, ‘Immigration Patterns of NonUK Born Populations in England and Wales in 2011’ (London, 2013), p. 6. ⁴³ Henri C. Nickels, Lyn Thomas, Mary J. Hickman, and Sara Silvestri, ‘A Comparative Study of the Representations of “Suspect” Communities in Multi-Ethnic Britain and their Impact on Irish Communities and Muslim Communities: Mapping Newspaper Content’, ISET Working Papers, 13 (London, 2009). ⁴⁴ Edna Delaney, The Irish in Post-War Britain (Oxford, 2007), pp. 160–9. ⁴⁵ E. I. Watkin, Roman Catholicism in England from the Reformation to 1950 (Oxford, 1957), p. 229. On Welsh leakage, see Trystan Owain Hughes, Winds of Change: The Roman Catholic Church and Society in Wales, 1916–1962 (Cardiff, 1999), pp. 21–38. ⁴⁶ David Conway, A Nation of Immigrants? A Brief Demographic History of Britain (London, 2007), pp. 68–9.

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Where they settled was largely determined by three factors: the presence of existing émigré communities, the location of the resettlement camps themselves, and above all work opportunities. In practice, these were not independent: earlier immigrants had themselves followed jobs, and being able to tap into existing kithand-kin networks was itself a bonus when looking for work; plus, local governments’ willingness to host camps was itself motivated by a desire for good workers. The present-day locations of Polish ‘mission’ churches and parishes of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, mostly built in this period, serve as a permanent record of where the largest concentrations ended up—London, the Midlands, and the north-west. The Church, too, was often keen to welcome them: Cardinal Griffin specifically lobbied for Polish camps to be sited in rural Wales—an intriguing case of sending reinforcements to the ‘Western Front’, widely regarded in the interwar years as a very promising mission territory—with nine ultimately established in Menevia, and four in the archdiocese of Cardiff.⁴⁷ Perhaps more surprising, and a testament as much to economic need as to tolerance was the British willingness to rehome thousands of Germans and Italians, mostly prisoners of war and their families. Lingering awkwardness about the ‘recent unpleasantness’ notwithstanding, these too often became a valued and integral part of their new towns and parishes. The Italians especially, helped along by the longstanding soft-power diplomacy of ice cream, pizza, and ‘spag bol’,⁴⁸ thrived enough to lure many more of their countrymen—numbering around 100,000 across Britain as a whole in 1971. Scotland had large numbers too.⁴⁹ As also in America, these managed to remain fiercely proud of their origin identity, while integrating seamlessly into their new surroundings. These major additions to Catholic numbers were further, and continually, boosted by large numbers from many other countries. The hospitals around Epsom in Surrey, for example, employed enough ‘European Voluntary Workers’ from Spain for local parishes to advertise Masses and Confessions ‘En Español’.⁵⁰ Incidentally, this mental hospital cluster also employed at least one cradle Catholic from Des Moines, Iowa—a helpful reminder of the often-overlooked North Americans, many though not all in the armed forces, who were still ‘over here’ after the war. Again, while in theory temporary residents, plenty ended up marrying and settling down, famously including that Iowan, the author Bill Bryson.⁵¹ Britain’s expat Maltese community, to give another, numbered 40,000 by 1971.⁵² Also often overlooked is the large number of Catholics coming over ⁴⁷ Hughes, Winds of Change, p. 19. ⁴⁸ Cf. Wendy Ugolini, ‘Spaghetti Lengths in a Bowl?’ Recovering Narratives of Not “Belonging” Amongst the Italian Scots’, Immigrants & Minorities, 31 (2013), pp. 214–34. ⁴⁹ R. King, ‘Italian Migration to Britain’, Geography, 62 (1977), pp. 176–86. ⁵⁰ I am grateful to Fernanda Mee and Canon Bill Davern for access to the parish ‘notice books’ of St Joseph’s, Epsom, in January 2016. ⁵¹ Bill Bryson, Notes from a Small Island (London, 1995), pp. 80–92. ⁵² Conway, Nation of Immigrants?, p. 77.

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from the Commonwealth. Even after centuries of Anglican hegemony, significant numbers of Catholics existed throughout the former empire, bolstered by Irish missionary activity. There were Catholics aboard HMV Empire Windrush’s 1948 voyage from Kingston to Tilbury, to give a suitably iconic example.⁵³ Perhaps most notable in terms of numbers, though, were the immigrant Catholic communities of India, whether directly or via East Africa (especially Kenya). These included several distinct groups, both linguistically (principally Malayalam, Konkani, and Tamil) and liturgically (i.e. Latin-riters from formerly Portuguese regions, plus the Eastern Catholic Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara Churches).⁵⁴ Importantly, Catholic mobility in this period was not only international. The steadily growing ranks of the middle classes had been a notable feature of the Church in England and Wales since the early decades of the century. Amusingly, this provoked the rather sniffily off-brand observation from The Guardian in 1965 that ‘No Old Etonians or Harrovians figure in the Hierarchy . . . [which] is of uncompromisingly middle-class origins, and not by any means always from the upper middle-class.’⁵⁵ Immigration contributed here as well, and while individual entrepreneurship no doubt played a role, the rapid ‘middle-class-ization’ of English and Welsh Catholics in the post-war decades reflected wider societal trends. The mass clearing of slums, building of council houses, and planning of suburbs and new towns all benefited the social and material prospects of Catholics, even as they eroded the close-knit urban parish units and thus ultimately weakened the strong Catholic identities they had created and sustained. The large numbers of Catholic Baby Boomers were thus significantly more likely than their parents to grow up in ‘mixed’ neighbourhoods, further away from their parish church (or ‘Mass centre’ in the new school hall, as the church was still being built one bingo night at a time), and even with a non-Catholic parent.⁵⁶ Growing prosperity, and an enhanced ‘social safety net’, also meant that parishes both became less critically important in times of hardship and had their erstwhile quasi-monopolies over people’s social lives now competing for leisure time with such novelties as television and car ownership. Finally, as the Baby Boomers began coming of age they were already, thanks to their large numbers and their very different upbringings and experiences, ‘set apart’ from their parents’ and grandparents’ outlook and expectations. Thanks to ⁵³ E.g. ‘From the SS Windrush to Croydon: The Life of Alex Elden’, Windrush Day 2020, https:// www.windrushday.org.uk/featured/from-the-ss-windrush-to-croydon-the-life-of-alex-elden/ (accessed 20 December 2021)/ ⁵⁴ Eleanor Nesbitt, ‘South Asian Christians in the UK’, in Knut A. Jacobsen and Selva J. Raj (eds.), South Asian Christian Diaspora: Invisible Diaspora in Europe and North America (Farnham, 2008), pp. 17–38. ⁵⁵ Quoted in Hugh Somerville Knapman (ed.), A Limerickal Commentary on the Second Vatican Council (Waterloo, 2020), p. 34. ⁵⁶ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Kathryn A. Turcan, and Lynda T. Rajan, ‘Patterns of Religious Commitment, Intermarriage and Marital Break-down among English Catholics’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 64 (1987), pp. 137–55.

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new legislation and financial support, a significant proportion of them were able to go to university. For a whole generation of bright Catholic ‘grammar school’ students from working-class backgrounds, they were the first in their families ever to do so—a source of pride to them, and (above all) to their parents.⁵⁷ Still, the very act of moving away to university, with the more varied intellectual, social, cultural, and indeed romantic opportunities it afforded, added further distance—physical and metaphorical—between them and their roots. Relatively few graduates, of course, returned to live in the same working-class Catholic neighbourhoods in which they were brought up, further weakening the (religious) bonds of home, and ensuring that their own children would be brought up at a further remove again.

The Swingeing Sixties? As detailed above, deep, structural changes were already afoot long before the ‘Catholic sixties’⁵⁸ hit Britain. Though largely masked by immigration, ‘leakage’ had been a growing post-war problem, with increasing and increasingly creative— including Capuchins donning Vespas to reach isolated Welsh Catholics⁵⁹— attempts to stem it. And as the Baby Boomers began coming of age, and moreover to an independence from parental oversight whereby they could stop going to Mass should they wish to, it was always likely that leakage would grow into the 1960s and 1970s. All this is important to bear in mind. Nevertheless, there were plenty of reasons for English and Welsh Catholics to feel a large sense of accomplishment and to have strong hopes of more good to come. Furthermore, any troubles on the horizon were already in the process of being authoritatively dealt with. After all, that was precisely what the new Council, devoted precisely to pastoral matters, was for: to bring some ‘timely changes’ to help the Church ‘keep up to date with the changing conditions of this modern world, and of modern living’, while reassuringly, ‘never for an instant los[ing] sight of that sacred patrimony of truth inherited from the Fathers’.⁶⁰ In any case, the English and Welsh bishops seemed not to be overly anxious. Perhaps preoccupied with school and church building activities, they, albeit with some notable exceptions (e.g. regarding the apostolate of the laity), took little direct role in the proceedings. A collection of limericks they, together with a few other Anglophone ⁵⁷ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Reflections on a Catholic Life: From the Depression Years and Second World War to Fears of Global Meltdown and Recession (Peterborough, 2010), p. 50; Terry Eagleton, The Gatekeeper: A Memoir (London, 2001), pp. 47–57. ⁵⁸ Mark S. Massa, The American Catholic Revolution: How the Sixties Changed the Church Forever (New York, 2010). ⁵⁹ Hughes, Winds of Change, p. 27. ⁶⁰ John XXIII, ‘Opening Address to the Council’, 11 October 1962, https://www.catholicculture.org/ culture/library/view.cfm?RecNum=3233 (accessed 20 December 2021).

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England and Wales: % change compared to 1960 level

0% –20% –40% –60%

–100%

1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972 1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 2018

–80%

Mass attendace

Ordinations

Receptions

Marriages

Baptisms

Figure 2.1 ‘Typical Sunday’ Mass attendance, ordinations, adult receptions, sacramental marriages, and baptisms in England and Wales. Compiled by Stephen Bullivant, with data derived from Kinnear’s ‘Statistical Appendices’ in this volume.

bishops, penned testifies eloquently and entertainingly to their rather detached view of the whole affair—and indeed, of how they chose to while away their time during the long floor debates.⁶¹ That they went to the trouble of translating this vernacular collection into Latin arguably also suggests how very far they were from understanding the way things were heading when the liturgical changes hit parishes. The full magnitude of the crisis that, within a few short years, would engulf the Church in England and Wales is conveyed rather starkly in Figure 2.1. Based on official figures, it shows the overall percentage change in five key indicators— overall Mass attendance on a ‘typical Sunday’; ordinations (secular and religious combined); adult receptions (i.e. conversions); sacramental marriages; and baptisms—from a notional base level of 1960, down to a given year between 2010 and 2019, depending on data availability. In 2019, for example, there were thirty-two ordinations across England and Wales: a significant improvement on the record low in 2009 of just fourteen, but still a fall of 85 per cent from the 1960s. Meanwhile, Mass attendance went from 1.95 million in 1960 to 0.71 million in 2018: a fall of 63 per cent, in the same period as the total population of England and Wales grew by a quarter.

⁶¹ Somerville Knapman (ed.), Limerickal History (Waterloo, 2020).

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So, what changed? In short, seemingly everything, with one stubborn exception, and in a very short space of time.⁶² The Mass itself underwent a series of rapid and far-reaching reforms, including: the promulgation of not one but two new Missals (in 1965 and 1969); the introduction of English; a profusion of musical (and other) experimentation; communion under ‘both kinds’; the priest facing the people (or away from ‘liturgical East’, depending on one’s perspective); greater lay participation in readings, responses, and bidding prayers. The traditional prohibition of meat on Fridays was, for all intents and purposes, revoked. Longstanding boundaries, symbolic and otherwise, between Catholic and Protestants were dismantled: praying and worshipping with ‘our separated brethren’ was now actively encouraged; Anglican and Methodist hymns became staples in Catholic parishes; the strictures around mixed marriages were significantly liberalized; the Martyrs of England and Wales, so long a totemic focus of Catholic identity against the prevailing Protestant culture, were rather hopefully rebranded ‘ideal Patrons of the Ecumenical Movement’ and ‘standard-bearers of the Christian unity movement’.⁶³ The liturgical calendar of saints was substantially revised, resulting in the (perceived) demotion—‘Paul’s Purge’, as the Spectator dubbed it⁶⁴—of favourites such as Christopher, George, and Barbara. Church art, architecture, and furnishings were reordered and reimagined: tabernacles moved, altars brought forward (or replaced with wooden tables), altar rails removed, plaster statues and traditional imagery gave way to felt banners and abstract art, reliquaries relegated to sacristy cupboards, and vestments ‘customized’. Priests and nuns walked the streets in jeans and T-shirts; soon large numbers skipped, often handin-hand, out of priestly and/or religious life altogether. Any one of these developments, good or bad, positive or negative, liberating or catastrophic—and in practice, one person’s ‘joy and hope’ was another’s ‘fear and anxiety’, to quote the suitably prophetic words of Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes (1965)—warrants a more nuanced treatment than it is possible to give here but is taken up more fully in the chapters that follows. My primary concern is not to highlight any one area, but rather to emphasize the collective effect—all coming, or at least commencing, in the space of six years following from ‘Vernacular Sunday’ at the start of Advent 1964. The pastoral results of each, taken in isolation, can be debated but the overriding impact was, surely, a cumulative one. This was further magnified by happening both at ‘a time when British society and culture were in a constant state of flux [when t]raditional certainties were challenged, new ways of conceptualising individual identity became apparent, and social relations

⁶² For further detail, see Stephen Bullivant, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (Oxford, 2019), pp. 147–61. ⁶³ Andrew Atherstone, ‘The Canonisation of the Forty English Martyrs: An Ecumenical Dilemma’, Recusant History 30 (2011), pp. 573–87. ⁶⁴ Denis Brogan, ‘Paul’s Purge’, Spectator, 23 May (1969), p. 13.

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were in some respect transformed’,⁶⁵ and the moment in which a large group of early Baby Boomers hit the critical developmental stage now known as ‘emerging adulthood’.⁶⁶ Of all age cohorts, these were the least likely to be rooted in a single parish during this period, and thereby to acclimatize gradually, one Sunday at a time, to the ‘new normal’ that eventually emerged by the mid-1970s. So much of what had previously seemed unchanging and unchangeable was transformed in a very short span of time. This is critical for understanding the fallout to Pope Paul VI’s decision, contrary to much expectation, to leave unmodified the Church’s opposition to artificial contraception with the Humanae Vitae encyclical (1968). This was arguably the one thing a significant proportion of the laity had actively wanted to be changed. What’s more, they had been primed by both the media and their own priests to expect it. The Daily Mail’s front page no doubt captured a general, though not universal, mood: ‘The Pope’s Bitter Pill’.⁶⁷ That the 1960s was a disorienting decade for English and Welsh Catholics is clear from the titles of several books published contemporaneously: Frank Sheed’s Is It the Same Church? (1968), John Eppstein’s Has the Catholic Church Gone Mad? (1971), Peter Hebblethwaite’s The Runaway Church (1975), and Anthony Archer’s The Two Catholic Churches: A Study in Oppression (1986). Tellingly, these came from authors who both were broadly supportive of ‘the changes’ as a whole and those who were trenchantly critical of many of them. To a large extent, the sheer range of views, and resulting ‘camps’, is itself worth noting. It is particularly well captured in perhaps the classic expression of this tumultuous period, David Lodge’s 1980 novel How Far Can You Go?, which follows the wildly diverse personal and religious trajectories of a group of (just-pre-Boomer, like Lodge himself) practising Catholic university students, from the late 1950s to the 1970s.⁶⁸ The title refers, most obviously, to Catholics’ attitudes and anxieties around sin and sex. But it surely also posed a wider, deeper question about the Church as a whole.⁶⁹

Crimes and Cover-Ups Though hidden, mostly unsuspected, and—on the rare occasions it did come to light—swiftly ignored, denied, and/or covered up, no retrospective of English and ⁶⁵ Mark Donnelly, Sixties Britain: Culture, Society and Politics (Abingdon, 2013), p. xiii. ⁶⁶ Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, ‘Emerging Adulthood: A Theory of Development from the Late Teens through the Twenties’, American Psychologist, 55 (2000), pp. 469–80. ⁶⁷ Rhona Churchill, ‘The Pope’s Bitter Pill’, Daily Mail, 30 July (1968), p. 1; Alana Harris, ‘ “A Galileo-Crisis Not a Luther-Crisis”? English Catholics’ Attitudes to Contraception’, in Alana Harris (ed.), The Schism of ‘68: Catholicism, Contraception and ‘Humanae Vitae’ in Europe, 1945–1975 (Basingstoke, 2018), pp. 73–96; David Geiringer, The Pope and the Pill: Sex, Catholicism and Women in Post-War England (Manchester, 2019). ⁶⁸ David Lodge, How Far Can You Go? (London, 1980). ⁶⁹ See Gerald Parsons, ‘Paradigm or Period Piece? David Lodge’s How Far Can You Go? in Perspective’, Literature and Theology, 6 (1992), pp. 171–90.

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Welsh Catholicism across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first can now ignore the topic of child sexual abuse. In truth, this is still difficult to write about with confidence: much more research is needed, especially in the context of the British Isles, and the chapter within this volume seeks to make a start on this process. But based on a statistical summary of allegations received by dioceses and religious congregations between 1970 and 2015, prepared for the Catholic Safeguarding Advisory Service (CSAS), some very tentative observations can be made.⁷⁰ In total, 931 separate complaints are recorded, alleging over 3,000 incidences of abuse (the vast majority of complaints cited a single instance of abuse; a small number cited several hundreds), perpetrated by an alleged 936 subjects. Of these complaints, 37 per cent relate to dioceses; 63 per cent to religious congregations. The vast majority of these complaints were received from the 1990s onwards, and increased significantly in the 2000s: a function of several factors, including growing media attention on Catholic abuse, more robust reporting procedures instituted by the Church itself (following the 2001 Nolan Report, and the 2007 recommendations of the Cumberlege Commission), and much wider public recognition of the importance of ‘coming forward’ in light of other high-profile cases (e.g. Jimmy Savile). There is likely also a time-lag effect at work. It is well established in the literature that most cases of child sexual abuse go unreported at the time that they happen.⁷¹ Thus, if incidences of abuse really did spike in the 1960s and 1970s—as appears likely—then one would expect many of these crimes only to be reported decades later. That is not to say, however, that it was not also a major problem both before and after that. The nature and patterns of sexual abusing within the Church, while of the utmost importance, is only a part of the bigger historical picture. Ecclesiastical failings in dealing with it in a sufficiently robust manner, through sins (and sometimes crimes) of both commission and omission, have in recent years received sustained scrutiny: ‘The evidence from actual cases . . . is that bishops generally handled allegations informally, pressurising victims into silence and, if necessary, dispatching priests elsewhere with barely anything in the way of a written record’.⁷² It is too early to assess the full contribution of the ‘abuse crisis’ to the history of the Church in England and Wales (or elsewhere), or properly to integrate the relatively little we now know into wider narrative sweeps. But it cannot but ‘colour’ the overall perception of modern Catholicism both by the ⁷⁰ Stephen Bullivant, ‘Allegations of Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church in England and Wales between 1970 and 2015: A Statistical Summary’ (CSAS, 2019). ⁷¹ Kevin Lalor and Rosaleen McElvaney, ‘Overview of the Nature and Extent of Child Sexual Abuse in Europe’, in Council of Europe (ed.), Protecting Children from Sexual Violence: A Comprehensive Approach (Strasbourg, 2010), pp. 13–43; Ilan Katz, ‘Child Sexual Abuse in England’, in Corinne MayChahal and Maria Herczog (eds.), Child Sexual Abuse in Europe (Strasbourg, 2003), pp. 115–30. ⁷² Richard Scorer, Betrayed: The English Catholic Church and the Sex Abuse Crisis (London, 2014), ch. 3.

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public at large and by Catholics themselves. It is, for example, surely one factor in the rising numbers of Catholic disaffiliates. Whereas previous generations of nonpractising, semi-believing cradle Catholics might retain an abiding sense of identity for family, cultural, and/or ethnic reasons, the ‘brand’ is certainly now significantly tainted. At the very least, it is one more reason to stop even ‘ticking the box’ on surveys. According to data pooled across 2012–16 from the British Social Attitudes Survey, fully 44 per cent of British cradle Catholics now no longer identify as such. Of these, ‘the overwhelming majority, accounting for nearly twoin-five of all cradle Catholics, now identify as having no religion at all.’⁷³

The End of (Catholic) History? It would, evidently, be absurd to proclaim ‘the end’ of English and Welsh Catholic history in the wake of the 1960s. Much has happened since then, including several events of genuine significance. For instance, the National Pastoral Congress held in Liverpool in 1980 drew 2,000 delegates from across the country. Intended to be an exercise in shared responsibility between hierarchy and laity, its wide-ranging remit and synod-style structure generated genuine excitement among participants. ‘The four days of the Congress were among the most exhilarating of my life’,⁷⁴ as one participant recalled three decades later. The hierarchy’s unwillingness to affirm all of the Congress’s more ‘progressive’ proposals, and indeed the recognition that Congress delegates perhaps did not fully represent the spectrum of opinion within the Church as a whole, meant that ‘most delegates felt afterwards that the promise of the Congress had not been fully realized’⁷⁵ (Figure 2.2). Tellingly, it was never repeated—though its memory may be reanimated for older English Catholics through Pope Francis’ inauguration of a new Synodal process (2021–23). Around the same time, the 1982 papal visit of John Paul II, which was almost derailed by sensitivities surrounding the Falklands War, was important for a number of reasons. As the first visit of a reigning pope to the UK, it aptly symbolized the strides Catholics had made in terms of social and political acceptance, and it testified to the rapid warming of relations between Catholics and Anglicans. Indeed, the latter provided the visit with several of its most memorable moments, including ecumenical services at two Anglican cathedrals, Canterbury and Liverpool. Genuine hopes for ultimate ecclesial reunion, which had been fanned by successive waves of high-level theological dialogue by the AnglicanRoman Catholic International Commission (known as ARCIC) founded in 1969, were greatly dented the following decade, however, by the Church of England’s ⁷³ Bullivant, Mass Exodus, p. 30. ⁷⁴ Hornsby-Smith, Reflections, p. 155. ⁷⁵ Hornsby-Smith, Reflections, p. 155.

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Figure 2.2 Cartoonist John Ryan’s humorous take on objectives and outcomes of the National Pastoral Congress held in Liverpool from 4 to 6 May 1980, with Archbishop Derek Worlock directing proceedings. Image with permission of Isabel Ryan.

unilateral decision to permit the ordination of women to its priesthood. This triggered hundreds of Anglican clergy to leave Canterbury for Rome, with a significant proportion then seeking Catholic ordination as Catholic clergy. A second large wave of Anglican clergy followed in 2011, prompted by the

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creation of the ‘Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham’ (a kind of quasi-diocese) by Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict’s own papal (and full State) visit in September 2010 was remarkable in itself, for several reasons.⁷⁶ These included drawing good crowds, despite low expectations of popular and media interest, to its centrepiece event with the Beatification of John Henry Newman (later canonized by Pope Francis in 2019), and the historic occasion of a Successor of Peter lecturing British politicians in Westminster Hall, mere feet away from the plaque commemorating the place of St Thomas More’s condemnation to death in 1535. Such events notwithstanding, there is a sense in which a significant proportion of the remaining story is indeed the outworking of things laid down in earlier decades. Above all, the ongoing decline of Catholic practice, the steady ‘mainstreaming’ of Catholics’ hitherto-distinctive ‘otherness’, and the rise of the ‘nones’, has been primarily a generational affair.⁷⁷ Rates of Mass attendance seem to confirm this. Over the past two decades, the decline seems to have settled down to such a level that one may reasonably predict a 1–2 per cent reduction on the previous year’s ‘typical Sunday’ count.⁷⁸ This regularity, stubbornly resistant to ‘Benedict Bounces’ or ‘Francis Effects’,⁷⁹ is most easily explained by assuming that each year a certain proportion of the older, more-Mass-going Catholics reach the end of their lives and are subsequently not quite replaced either by those more recently born into practising Catholic families or by regularly practising immigrants newly arriving in the country. There are other factors too, of course: people lapsing partially or totally on one side of the ledger, new converts (or reverts) on the other side. By 2016, the proportion of UK Catholic 16–29-year-olds—including a significant proportion of the previously discussed immigrants’ grandchildren—attending Mass weekly stood at just 18 per cent (a statistic which excludes the likely high proportion of cradle-Catholic young adults who no longer identify as such on surveys).⁸⁰ ‘Present trends’ do not, of course, continue forever. There are in fact already signs, underneath and obscured by the top-level trends, of interesting things afoot. Immigrant groups, as in previous centuries, are playing an important role here. Two of the country’s largest parishes—based on attendance, they’d easily count as ‘megachurches’ if they were protestant—are comprised of first- and secondgeneration Polish and Keralan immigrants, in London and Swindon respectively. Preston, at the very heart of northern Catholicism’s much-waned heartlands, now boasts a Catholic cathedral—in the care of a thriving Syro-Malabar eparchy. ⁷⁶ Stephen Bullivant, ‘The Thames Flows into the Tiber: Benedict XVI, Performative Ecumenism, and the Place of Christians in a Secular Society’, in Emery De Gaál and Matthew Levering (eds.), Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions (Steubenville, OH, 2019), pp. 77–91. ⁷⁷ Bullivant, Mass Exodus, pp. 238–50. ⁷⁸ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Mass Attendance Estimates’ table, A1.1. ⁷⁹ Bullivant, Mass Exodus, p. 232. ⁸⁰ Stephen Bullivant, Europe’s Young Adults and Religion: Findings from the European Social Survey (2014–16) to inform the 2018 Synod of Bishops (London and Paris, 2018).

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England and Wales’ other eastern eparchy, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, has an oft-packed cathedral of its own, tucked away off Oxford Street, in one of London’s ritziest shopping districts.⁸¹ Thousands upon thousands of Tamils descend on Walsingham each summer.⁸² Such examples could be multiplied many times over. Also showing signs of renewal are Catholic young adults— those who are left, towards the tail end of a decades-long decline, must of necessity be there for a reason. Gathering together at university chaplaincies or CathSocs, in groups such as Youth 2000, Evangelium, Juventutem, or the Faith Movement, on mass pilgrimages to Lourdes,⁸³ Chartres, or World Youth Day, and/or simply online with like-minded, counter-cultural others, one sees the same kind of ‘minority effect’ at work as one also does with, say, young British Evangelicals at Hillsong or Holy Trinity Brompton. History only rarely repeats itself, but it sometimes rhymes and does at least have a habit of resuming.

Select Bibliography Bruce, Steve, British Gods: Religion in Modern Britain (Oxford, 2020). Bullivant, Stephen, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (Oxford, 2019). Harris, Alana, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945–1982 (Manchester, 2013). Hornsby-Smith, Michael P. (ed.), Catholics in England 1950–2000: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (London, 1999). Hornsby-Smith, Michael P., Reflections on a Catholic Life: From the Depression Years and Second World War to Fears of Global Meltdown and Recession (Peterborough, 2010). Hughes, Trystan Owain, Winds of Change: The Roman Catholic Church and Society in Wales, 1916–1962 (Cardiff, 1999). Rockett, June, Held in Trust: Catholic Parishes in England and Wales, 1900–1950 (London, 2001). Sewell, Dennis, Catholics: Britain’s Largest Minority (London, 2001). Turnham, Margaret H., Catholic Faith and Practice in England, 1779–1992: The Role of Revivalism and Renewal (Woodbridge, 2015).

⁸¹ My thanks to Athanasius McVay for sharing with me his forthcoming work on Ukrainian Catholics. ⁸² See Richard Antony, ‘British-Born Tamils: A Study of Young Tamil Londoners’ (University of Surrey PhD thesis, 2012), pp. 127–30. ⁸³ Alana Harris, ‘ “A Place to Grow Spiritually and Socially”: The Experience of Young Pilgrims to Lourdes’, in Sylvia Collins-Mayo and Ben Pink Dandelion (eds.), Religion and Youth (Farnham, 2010), pp. 149–58.

3 Twentieth-Century Scottish Catholicism: Poverty, Affluence, and Freedom Paul Gilfillan

For much of the twentieth century the story of Scottish Catholicism is one of spectacular demographic and infrastructural growth until as late as the early 1980s, involving the long march to socio-economic and civil equality which culminated in a cultural ‘coming of age’ with the hugely successful visit of Pope John Paul II in June 1982. According to the latest available census figures, there are 841,053 Catholics in Scotland,¹ served by over 600 priests,² which may well mean there are more Catholics in Scotland today than at any time in its history.³ Also, data from the 2016 Scottish Church Census indicates that Catholics are already likely to be the largest social group in Scottish society for the first time since the Reformation of 1560.⁴ Beneath such headline figures, however, is another latter-twentieth-century story of decline which can be dated from the 1970s. In 1970, for example, Catholics comprised 22 per cent of Scotland’s primary school population; a figure that declined to 19.6 per cent in 1977. Similarly, in 1971 Catholics comprised 21.3 per cent of Scotland’s secondary school population, but this figure has declined ever since this high point.⁵ Indeed, such is the decline in Church going among Catholics from this period that there has been something of a ‘second reformation’ as a result of ‘an estimated 120,000 adherents drifting away from the Church’⁶ The author expresses his gratitude to the laity and clergy who shared their knowledge and time, and especially Professor Gerard Carruthers. ¹ Scottish Government, 2011 Census: Key Results on Population, Ethnicity, Identity, Language, Religion, Health, Housing and Accommodation in Scotland—Release 2A, https://www. scotlandscensus.gov.uk/news/census-2011-release-2a (accessed 20 December 2021). ² In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Number of Priests’ table, A3.2. ³ James Darragh calculated a theoretical Catholic population of 880,000 for 1961 based on the number of Catholic baptisms and marriages in that year: see James Darragh, ‘The Catholic Population of Scotland, 1878–1977’, Innes Review 29 (1978), pp. 211–47. ⁴ Peter Brierley, Growth Amidst Decline: What the 2016 Scottish Church Census Reveals (Tonbridge, 2017), table 2.4 at p. 39. ⁵ Darragh, ‘The Catholic Population of Scotland’, p. 216. For numbers of schools and pupils in Catholics schools, see this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’ table, A11.3–5. ⁶ Irene Maver, ‘The Catholic Community’, in Tom Devine and Richard J. Finlay (eds.), Scotland in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 269–84. Paul Gilfillan, Twentieth-Century Scottish Catholicism: Poverty, Affluence, and Freedom In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0004

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from the 1970s onwards. While the timing and reasons for this dramatic change are complex, I propose a ‘sociological frame’ comprised of three factors upon which I will hang an explanation of this change: first, the advent of material affluence and freedom of choice have led to a sharp decline in the coercive nature of ‘society’ in the lives of late modern populations. Second, new post-industrial conditions of social existence have released the possibility and problem of ‘subjectivity’, which (third) has in turn exposed long-term pastoral deficiencies in the Scottish Church: primarily the lack of adult faith formation among the laity tailored to taking full advantage of these new conditions in order to not only renew their faith, but to work out in ‘conditions of freedom’ their vocation to be a leaven in political and cultural life.⁷ In new conditions of social existence characterized by material affluence and existential freedom of choice, reproducing a particular social identity produces a new dilemma as it constantly requires its bearer to select and choose that identity. As a result, whatever the identity, it cannot be purely habitual or nominal, as socio-cultural conditions now demand that it be the result of personal commitment and choice over time. Today, then, every adult Catholic not only freely chooses to be Catholic, but must freely choose it, because it is no longer possible to be a Catholic as before, as a default position or impersonal matter of unchosen fate. A consequence of this coercive freedom, then, is that it is objectively impossible for (Catholic) subjectivity to offer the pleasure of immersion in an ‘unthinking’ convention or tribal affiliation, meaning that nominal Catholics are fated to lapse (or become ‘nones’) since previous articulations of cultural Catholicism in conditions of coercive free choice are no longer possible. If the Church has been cleared of nominal Catholics from the 1970s and 1980s, it is because liberty has become existential and personal, and the expression of this freedom has meant profound shifts in faith, culture, and politics. Scottish Catholics in the new millennium have attained socio-economic equality and unprecedented opportunities for what I will later describe as a ‘Catholic modernity’. Over the course of this chapter, I will argue that it is difficult to state the enormity of the cultural volte face that has occurred in the Scottish context over the last two generations. A period that has seen the overthrow and collapse of a once hegemonic understanding of ‘being modern’ in which historical progress was imagined to be a linear movement from the Reformation to enlightened Whig liberalism, culminating in some form of secular humanism. This understanding has been replaced by what could be termed institutional Catholicism or a new national (Catholic) habitus insofar as the many disparate identities and positions (Presbyterians, Whigs, socialists, Marxists, secularists) which had previously imbibed this linear myth have integrated Scotland’s Catholic heritage into their ⁷ See James L. Heft (ed.), A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award Lecture (Oxford, 1999), p. 19.

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Figure 3.1 Memorial for the Declaration of Abroath (1320), designed by David Annand and erected in 2001 in Angus, Scotland. Image with permission of David Robertson.

understanding of the ‘nation’ represented at Holyrood. While doctrinal Catholicism still has its enemies, every organized political grouping which previously imagined Catholicism to be modernity’s ‘Other’ now accepts that parliaments, language(s), and national identity are essential elements to being modern, and they are in no mood to repeat the mistake of imagining a Scottish modernity without the cultural and institutional patrimony put in place during Scotland’s Catholic era. Something of this integration of the political community of the Scots and their Catholic past is captured by David Annand’s striking 2001 sculpture of Robert the Bruce and Bernard de Linton holding aloft the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath (Figure 3.1).

1918–1980: The Long March to Equality Despite its criminalization by an Act of the Scottish parliament in 1560, Catholicism survived in large areas of Scotland such as Aberdeenshire, Banffshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Dumfriesshire, and the western highlands and islands. While there had been a Catholic Emancipation Act in 1778 in response to the outbreak of the American War of Independence for the purpose of recruiting Catholic men into the British army, it was following the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which repealed most anti-Catholic legislation, that an explosion of Catholic activity came about with the building of churches,

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presbyteries, and schools.⁸ Along with the establishment of new missions came a new public visibility of Catholicism, which increased dramatically as a result of Irish migration to the industrial central belt from the 1840s. To this day the highest concentration of Catholics in Scotland are to be found in Clyde valley locations such as Coatbridge, Port Glasgow, Dumbarton, Clydebank, and Greenock. With the restoration of the Scottish Church hierarchy in 1878, a revolution in terms of the development of a Catholic associational subculture—thanks to a dramatic rise in the number of devotional and self-help organizations— transformed Scottish society. ‘In 1838 there were reputedly none [Catholic organizations] but fifty-one by 1880. By 1914 1,010 parochial organisations were up and running including 463 (45.8%) in the Glasgow archdiocese.’⁹ McBride describes how lay Catholics of Irish background were determined to participate in politics and cultivate a Catholic interactional order geared towards self-help.¹⁰ Lay organizations such as the Knights of St Columba, founded in Glasgow in 1919, aimed to support the spiritual and material needs of members and their families, and engage with politics as they saw fit. This determination to forge a place in mainstream Scottish society could at times elicit condemnation by bishops and clergy, who suspected recruitment among poor Catholics for the causes of socialism or Irish nationalism. In inner cities with large Catholic populations like Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee, ‘the Catholic Irish were actively discouraged from Labour movement participation until after World War I.’¹¹ Similarly, Kehoe describes ‘the protracted efforts undertaken by the Scottish-born clergy to suppress radicalism among Irish Catholics in Scotland’,¹² including paranoia that the Catholic Young Men’s Society or the Gaelic Catholic Association might represent fronts for subversive activities, given their active support of Irish Home Rule. After Irish independence, Scottish Catholics of Irish extraction shifted their political allegiance towards the Labour Party, albeit carefully calibrating this so as not to jeopardize their social respectability. Well into the 1940s, the Church hierarchy remained suspicious of political radicalism among the laity, with Archbishop McDonald of St Andrews and Edinburgh, for example, pursuing a policy of having priests trained in the social sciences in order to combat the lure of communism among the laity.¹³

⁸ Peter F. Anson, The Catholic Church and Modern Scotland 1560–1937 (London, 1937), pp. 159–98. ⁹ Bernard Aspinwall, ‘Catholic Realities and Pastoral Strategies: Another Look at the Historiography of Scottish Catholicism 1878–1920’, Innes Review, 59 (2008), p. 88. ¹⁰ Terence McBride, ‘The Secular and the Radical in Irish Associational Culture of Mid-Victorian Glasgow’, Immigrants and Minorities, 28 (2010), pp. 31–41. ¹¹ Maver, ‘The Catholic Community’, p. 272. ¹² S. Karly Kehoe, ‘Unionism, Nationalism and the Scottish Catholic Periphery 1850–1930’, Britain and the World, 4 (2011), p. 69. ¹³ Michael Turnbull, Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray. A Biography (Edinburgh, 1994), p. 45.

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The interwar period of 1918–39 saw the creation of the basic infrastructure (an education system; associational culture; political representation) to secure survival, growth, and eventual integration into Scottish society on their own terms, as this remained an era when Catholics felt themselves to be ‘shunned as a foreign and alien religious group’.¹⁴ This judgement was verified in the 1920s and 1930s which saw the overt politicization of anti-Catholicism. In 1923 the Church of Scotland published its inflammatory report The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality, replete with both anti-Catholic and anti-Irish prejudice, and the rise in grassroots sectarianism was palpable and durable.¹⁵ In June 1935 a diocesan Eucharistic Congress held in Edinburgh was preceded by months of anti-Catholic vandalism and violence, with the event itself marked by two days of sectarian demonstrations and chaotic scenes of street fighting and riots. While there were religiously framed protests in 1926, 1933, and 1935, it was only the outbreak of war in 1939 that ended this period of overt and poisonous anti-Catholic political activism. In response to this social stigma, a powerful class of energetic and educated convert Catholics with deep pockets forged a close collaboration with the Church hierarchy, and this meant that an ‘official’ Catholic ethos was Unionist and socially conservative. The hierarchy’s concern for social acceptance by wider Scottish society meant an ongoing preoccupation with classed respectability and expressions of loyalty. The exercise of overseeing the orthodox politicization of the laity bequeathed a history of lay-clerical tension vis-à-vis Irish nationalism and socialism/communism pre-dating the enfranchisement of the working class in 1918. This struggle played itself out in the life of Edinburgh-born James Connolly who was executed in 1916 after the Irish Easter Rising, and that of socialist John Wheatley who in 1912 was burned in effigy by fellow Catholics while singing Faith of Our Fathers as a result of a priest’s sermon against Wheatley’s politics.¹⁶ If the hope was that Catholics would imitate the likes of Margaret Sinclair, French polisher, trade unionist, factory worker, and Carmelite nun who was declared Venerable by Paul VI in 1978, the fears animating the higher echelons of the Catholic clergy were equally incarnated in Margaret Skinnider: a Coatbridge-born mathematics teacher, devout Catholic, women’s rights activist, member of the Cumann na mBan, bomb-smuggler, and sniper who killed British soldiers in Ireland during the Easter Rising of 1916¹⁷ and was the only female combat casualty in the Irish Rebellion of 1916.¹⁸ ¹⁴ Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 5. ¹⁵ Alana Harris, ‘Astonishing Scenes at the Scottish Lourdes: Masculinity, the Miraculous and Sectarian Strife at Carfin, 1922–1945’, Innes Review, 66 (2015), pp. 102–29. ¹⁶ John Hannan, The Life of John Whealtey (Nottingham, 1988), p. 32. ¹⁷ Margaret Skinnider, Doing my Bit for Ireland: A First-hand Account of the Easter Rising (Edinburgh, 2016 [1917]), p. 116. ¹⁸ Thomas Tormey, ‘Scotland’s Easter Rising Veterans and the Irish Revolution’, Studi Irlandesi, A Journal of Irish Studies, 9 (2019), p. 283.

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In the view of Aspinwall, ‘influential clergy and laity promoted a conservative ideology of religious respectability’ and ‘a British Ultramontane identity’¹⁹ as they set about funding Catholic institutions that paralleled non-Catholic institutions (schools, orphanages, hospitals, teacher training colleges, seminaries, professional associations, newspapers) in creating a mini-Catholic welfare State. This ‘pillarization’ or Catholic way of ‘doing modernity’, however, had self-imposed limits. No Catholic university was founded, and proposals to form a Catholic political party in the 1920s came to nothing,²⁰ while efforts to combine a new national senior seminary and male teacher training institution in St Andrews in the 1940s failed due to divisions among the bishops.²¹ In the nineteenth century, ‘two thirds of the Scottish jail population was Catholic’,²² so the journey of Scotland’s Catholics to socio-economic equality has been protracted, with a central plank in this upward mobility the Herculean efforts to build and maintain a separate Catholic education system. The first monastic foundation in Scotland since the Reformation was the Benedictine Abbey at Fort Augustus in 1878, and the school established there for boys meant a first-class Catholic education and the means to secular success for those whose parents could afford the fees. For Catholics more generally, the passing of the 1918 Education Act meant the schools which the Church had built and financed outside the State system established in 1872 could opt into the State system and be fully maintained without any loss of their Catholic ethos, thanks to the Church securing the right to determine the religious education of pupils. This meant a State-funded means of social mobility was now available to all Catholics and the lifting of a great financial burden and overweening policy preoccupation from the Catholic community. It is therefore unsurprising that historians of Catholic Scotland have hailed the 1918 Act as ‘the crowning achievement of Catholic resistance to Protestant education’²³ as well as a ‘step towards giving Catholics their full privileges as citizens.’²⁴ Yet despite these structural ameliorations, in the view of Paterson the ‘social disadvantage [of Catholics] persisted until at least the 1960s’²⁵ while Denis Canavan recalls being advised in 1974 by well-meaning Labour Party activists ‘that West Stirlingshire was not ready for a Catholic MP’.²⁶ Similarly, former first minster of Scotland Alex Salmond has also

¹⁹ Bernard Aspinwall, ‘The Catholic Minority Experience in Scotland: The Poorhouse View 1850–1914’, Immigrants and Minorities, 31 (2013), p. 127. ²⁰ Steve Bruce, ‘Out of the Ghetto: The Ironies of Acceptance’, Innes Review, 40 (1992), p. 148. ²¹ Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 51. ²² Christopher Harvie, No Gods and Precious Few Heroes: Scotland 1914–1980 (London, 1981), p. 80. ²³ Cloitilde Prunier, Anti-Catholic Strategies in 18th Century Scotland (London, 2004), p. 178. ²⁴ Anson, The Catholic Church, p. 196. ²⁵ Lindsay Paterson, ‘The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 163 (2000), p. 363. ²⁶ Dennis Canavan, Let the People Decide (Edinburgh, 2010), p. 110.

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described how ‘back in the 1980s when I worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland . . . there were still some lingering, unspoken but real barriers for Catholics.’²⁷ However, using data from the 1997 Scottish Election Survey, Paterson divided Catholic and non-Catholic respondents into two age cohorts (18–44-year-olds and 45 and over) and found that 56 per cent of the older non-Catholic cohort were in non-manual occupations, while only 28 per cent of Catholics in the older cohort were in a non-manual occupation. In the younger cohort, however, Paterson found that 59 per cent of non-Catholics were in non-manual occupations and 60 per cent of the younger Catholics were in non-manual occupations. These findings indicate that younger Catholics have experienced significant social mobility and the movement into white collar professional employment, so that by the close of the twentieth century ‘Catholics appear to have improved their relative social position to a greater extent than non-Catholics.’²⁸ In Paterson’s assessment, this was in no small measure due to the fact that Catholic schools have been consistently more effective than non-denominational schools in enabling their working-class pupils to gain good qualifications.²⁹ The autobiography of the altar boy, school Dux, seminarian, mathematics teacher, MP, and MSP, Denis Canavan, is exemplary of a Catholic ‘liberation via education’ route and the intergenerational relationship of the working class to highly prized educational aspiration and attainment. His life story illustrates the cooperative practices of working-class family members needed to send a family member to a Catholic high school prior to comprehensivization in the early to mid-1960s.³⁰ If clever and ambitious Catholics had been disadvantaged by their Catholicism before the Second World War as a result of anti-Catholic prejudice, the movement to comprehensive schooling from 1965 onwards helped to further their attainment of secular parity, as this guaranteed all Catholics access to a full academic curriculum. Previously, only 5 per cent of academic secondary schools were Catholic while Catholics comprised 19 per cent of the secondary school population.³¹ In addition to Catholic schools delivering educated and qualified young people into society, the shift to a post-industrial economy has also been good news for Catholics in Scotland (and Northern Ireland) as growth in ‘demand-side’ capacity has meant Catholic upward mobility into an expanding middle class. In 1951 ‘only one in ten were in professional or managerial occupations’,³² but changes in economic sectors across the UK meant a new occupational landscape emerged,

²⁷ See Mark Boyle, Metropolitan Anxieties: On the Meaning of the Irish Catholic Adventure in Scotland (Abingdon, 2011), p. 55. ²⁸ Paterson, ‘The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland’, p. 373. ²⁹ Lindsay Paterson, ‘Salvation through Education?’, in Tom Devine (ed.), Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000), p. 154. ³⁰ Canavan, Let the People, p. 29. ³¹ Paterson, ‘The Social Class of Catholics’, p. 363. ³² Peter Saunders, Social Mobility Truths (London, 2019), p. 28.

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and employment in the manufacturing sector declined from 39 per cent of the working population in 1951 to 18 per cent in 1997, while service sector employment grew to 76 per cent by 1997.³³ Today, then, Scotland is a middle-class country in terms of its occupational structure, as 45 per cent per cent of all jobs in the workplace are classified as professional or managerial level, and ‘no fewer than 34 per cent of the people doing them had been born into working class families.’³⁴ If Catholics were poised to experience above-average levels of upward social mobility thanks to the boom in middle-class employment opportunities in the post-war period, this secular success came at the cost (to the Church) of young Catholics also having a much greater range of occupations available to them to secure higher social status than had been available with the previous staples of teacher, priest, nun, nurse, or manual worker. As Archbishop Gray wrote to the Sacred Congregation for Seminaries in the mid-1960s: ‘Growing materialism and opportunities for success in secular professions militate against vocations of a good intellectual calibre. Also the new emphasis on the Lay Apostolate suggests to some young men that they can work more effectively as laymen than as priests.’³⁵ In the course of the 1960s, then, Catholics were moving into the mainstream of Scottish society as a result of profound changes in the economy and education which were to transform even further the lives of the generations, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, born from the 1960s onwards. Their integration into Scottish culture could perhaps be signalled by the national response in 1967 when Celtic Football Club—founded by a Marist brother and integrally linked to Glasgow’s Catholic population—became the first (and only) Scottish team to win the European Cup in Lisbon, with seven of the members of the winning team identifying as Catholic. However, one area of further revolutionary change affecting Catholics alone from the 1960s onwards was the momentous changes brought about within Catholicism itself when the world’s bishops gathered in Rome for the Second Vatican Council.

Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) On 25 January 1959, Pope John XXIII announced to an unsuspecting Catholic world that there would be an ecumenical Council at a time when the Scottish Church was a class-conscious minority characterized by hierarchical, socioeconomic, and ethnic inequalities, and rigid social and ecclesiastical mores more

³³ Trevor Noble, ‘The Mobility Transition: Social Mobility trends in the First Half of the TwentyFirst Century’, Sociology, 34 (2000), p. 42. ³⁴ Noble, ‘The Mobility Transition’, p. 11. ³⁵ Scottish Catholic Archives (Edinburgh, hereafter SCA), DE6/94.

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or less reflective of the wider reality of western societies. In 1958, for example, a Sister of Mercy nun studying French literature at Edinburgh University was obliged to write to Archbishop Gray for permission to read books prohibited by the Church.³⁶ In preparation for the Council, Archbishop Donald Campbell of Glasgow, as president of the Scottish Episcopal Conference, was appointed to the preparatory commission set up to prepare documents for consideration. According to Archbishop Gray, Campbell neither consulted nor reported back to his fellow bishops³⁷ and on the recollections of Fr John Fitzsimmons never spoke of the Council, asked for advice, nor in any way showed enthusiasm or lack of enthusiasm for this epoch-shaping gathering.³⁸ In the published,³⁹ ‘unpublishable’ (John Fitzsimmons), and not-yet-published (Jock Dalrymple)⁴⁰ memoirs of priests who lived through Vatican II and its aftermath, it is clear that the fundamental changes contemplated resulted in the emergence in Scotland, much like south of the border in England and Wales, of two factions. These could be characterized as those keen to embrace and implement the Conciliar documents and those indifferent to or opposed to embracing this ‘New Pentecost’ called for by John XXIII. With the exception of Edinburghborn convert Cardinal William Heard, Dean of the Sacred Rota, who made significant contributions to the preparatory stages such as the setting up of conciliar commissions, and Bishop McGee of Galloway and Bishop Hart of Dunkeld who asked for the introduction of the vernacular, the picture that emerges from these memoirs paints a portrait of the Scottish bishops as more or less failures at the Second Vatican Council. The Council exposed the Scottish Church’s lack of theologians and the absence of a ‘centre of gravity’ in terms of personnel and institutions which could lead the reception and implementation of Vatican II. In the east coast seminary of Drygrange (in the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh), John Barry and Jock Dalrymple were appointed rector and spiritual director respectively in 1960. Both were conscious of the need for change in the training of priests and critical of the then-rector Canon Roger Gallagher. As rector until 1977, Barry is remembered as a man ‘ahead of his time’, and in twenty-firstcentury critiques of ‘clericalism’, some of his criticisms of the 1960s Church have been seen as prophetic: for example, ‘the ancient ecclesiastical attitude which can best be described as the eighth sacrament—secrecy’.⁴¹ Similarly, Dalrymple criticized the semi-monastic spirituality that seminarians were trained in as offering ³⁶ SCA DE170/375/21. ³⁷ SCA DE163/97/2. ³⁸ John Fitzsimmons, A Vision Betrayed (n.p., 2005), p. 37. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the author with kind thanks to Michael T. R. B. Turnbull. ³⁹ Willy Slavin, Life Is Not a Long Quiet River: A Memoir (Edinburgh, 2019). ⁴⁰ Jock Dalrymple, From Rome to Galilee—The Life and Times of Fr Jock Dalrymple 1928–85. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the author with kind thanks to his nephew Fr Jock Dalrymple. ⁴¹ Barry in John Dalrymple (ed.) Authority in a Changing Church (London, 1968), p. 167.

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an inadequate preparation for their future lives as secular priests. As a result, the first new rite Mass in Scotland where the priest faced the people took place at Drygrange on 10 October 1963—considerably in advance of this change taking place elsewhere in Scotland, as discussed in this volume in McElroy’s Chapter 9. In the course of the 1960s, Barry and Dalrymple transformed the traditional seminary regime and oversaw the introduction of a new system which included no fixed study times; the abolition of rules preventing students going into one another’s rooms; and the abolition of the regulation that students could only go out in groups of at least three. Other reforms included the abolition of the Grand Silence, the introduction of ordinary secular dress for students, and the abolition of communal Compline, which meant students were more or less entirely free to spend their evenings as they saw fit.⁴² In 1965 a new wing was built at Drygrange to accommodate the rising number of seminarians,⁴³ and by the early 1970s it had established a reputation for being the most radical of the Scottish or English seminaries.⁴⁴ Outside the seminary, however, the implementation of change was seen as painfully slow by Dalrymple, who in 1970 was confiding to his diary how: ‘The Cardinal is leading the Diocese without leadership, full of fears, uncritically and unintelligently traditional. There is general demoralization in the diocese, especially among priests.’⁴⁵ Meanwhile, across the country in the west coast seminary of St Peter’s at Cardross, the lived reception of Vatican II was similarly marked by tensions, with splits erupting between staff and students. Staff members such as James Foley and John Fitzsimmons were biblical scholars trained in Jerusalem and Rome respectively, and in an unpublished manuscript entitled A Vision Betrayed (2005), Fitzsimmons who was rector of the Scots College in Rome from 1986 to 1989, recalls how the apostolic delegate to Great Britain Igino Cardinale visited Cardross in the mid-1960s. Seminarians and members of the seminary staff mistook him for a ‘liberal’⁴⁶ and showed him a ‘manifesto’ that had been written by certain staff members and students. Somewhat inevitably, Cardinale reported to Archbishop Scanlan (1899–1976) on his vision and this ‘tract for the times’. With Fitzsimmons concluding: ‘The result was entirely predictable: as soon as Cardinale had gone down the college driveway, so they (priests and students alike) found themselves going down the same way.’⁴⁷

⁴² John Barry, ‘A Small Seminary’, The Clergy Review, 50 (1965), pp. 739–52. ⁴³ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Numbers of Priests’ table, A3.2. ⁴⁴ Dalrymple, From Rome to Galilee, p. 215. ⁴⁵ Dalrymple, From Rome to Galilee, p. 481. Reflecting some years later on his participation in the Vatican Council, Cardinal Gray candidly reflected: ‘I got cold feet and told Cardinal John Krol . . . that I would hand in my script, but would not speak. He was annoyed and twice came back to me in the aula (hall) to insist that I should. I still refused . . . I was out of my depth’ (in Turnbull, Cardinal, pp. 63–4). ⁴⁶ See Daithí Ó Corráin, ‘The Pope’s Man in London: Anglo-Vatican Relations, the Nuncio Question and Irish Concerns, 1938–82’, British Catholic History, 35 (2020), pp. 71–2. ⁴⁷ Fitzsimmons, A Vision Betrayed, p. 35.

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This turmoil, with echoes in Catholic seminaries across the Anglophone Catholic world, continued into the early 1970s. The rector from 1963 to 1972 was Michael Connolly whose term was characterized by discontent across the student body. Causes for dissatisfaction included the new seminary building being so cold that students had to go to bed to keep warm, and the standard of the food being deemed so poor that the order of nuns who prepared it refused to continue, while the students staged a protest against the quality of food by sitting en masse in silence through meal times. A major issue was the lack of staff-student interaction, perhaps as a result of students living in the new building while staff members lived in the adjacent Kilmahew House. This meant students would often not see staff members apart from in class, at liturgical events, and at meal times (where staff sat and ate separately). Fundamentally, students were unhappy at their lack of personal freedom and the hierarchical, monastic style of their training. Maurice Taylor who was a member of staff at St Peters from 1955 to 1965 recalls vividly an incident towards the end of his tenure: One morning, our students had been refused the day off which they wanted and, as I waited to go into the lecture hall to give a class, they began to sing loudly ‘We shall overcome.’ In retrospect, the incident was trivial and somewhat ludicrous, but it was serious for us then and menacing.⁴⁸

Generational discontent and the rhetoric of civil rights and counter-culture also resonated within seminary settings. In the academic year 1971–2 things came to a head when the students submitted a petition to the staff. Staff responded to these complaints by telling a number of students at their annual scrutinium not to return the following academic year; while the local bishop acted by replacing Connolly along with other staff members. Beyond the hothouse atmosphere of the seminary, the archdiocese of Glasgow at the time of the Vatican II reforms was characterized by splits among the clergy. Many priests and bishops had not felt the need for a Council and so, naturally, had little enthusiasm for embracing the new theology. Auxiliary bishop of Glasgow James Ward was a conservative who stopped reports from the Second Vatican Council being published in the local Church newspaper,⁴⁹ and while the Archdiocesan Council of Priests wanted minimum change, a group of younger priests met together to discuss the new Continental theology.⁵⁰ More generally, Fitzsimmons complained that ‘very little effort seems to have been made by the clergy to inform their parishioners of the decisions of Vatican II.’⁵¹ However, not ⁴⁸ Maurice Taylor, Gratefully Yours (n.p., n.d.), p. 76. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the author with kind thanks to Bishop Taylor. ⁴⁹ Slavin, Life is Not, p. 161. ⁵⁰ Slavin, Life is Not, p. 29. ⁵¹ John Fitzsimmons, ‘Has the Dialogue Begun?’, in Dalrymple (ed.) Authority in a Changing Church, pp. 162–202.

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all Scottish laity needed clerical encouragement. Inspired by the Council, lay Catholics in Glasgow met to discuss developments in Catholic Social Teaching,⁵² and in 1967 a teach-in was held at the McLellan Galleries on the topic of ‘Authority and Conscience—Crisis in the Church’.⁵³ In December 1968 the Scottish Lay Action Movement (SLAM) was founded by Glasgow lawyer James Armstrong at a public meeting organized to discuss the encyclical Humanae Vitae.⁵⁴ Some bishops viewed this lay initiative with more or less unthinking hostility.⁵⁵ In 1969 SLAM changed its name to SCRM (Scottish Catholic Renewal Movement) and in October 1971, Archbishop Scanlon of Glasgow wrote to parish priests advising that SCRM had no authority to use the word Catholic, and so the group changed its name once more to become the Renewal Movement. While this group was very successful in providing a platform for leading theologians (Rahner, Häring, Küng, etc.) to meet with educated, middle-class Scottish Catholics to discuss the faith, the wider reality and legacy from the mid-1970s onwards was one of failure to erect new structures facilitating dialogue between laity, clergy, and bishops.⁵⁶ If by 1975 Archbishop Winning wanted to introduce Vatican II renewal programmes into the Church in Glasgow, by 1992 ‘[he] regarded many of the clergy, correctly but to their dismay, as an obstacle to his plans to renew the Church in Glasgow’.⁵⁷ This lack of a concerted response to Vatican II emerges clearly in McGinty’s biography of Cardinal Winning, who struggled to articulate a plan for the Church in Glasgow to implement a catechetical and faith formation programme aimed at renewal. This blatant lack of pastoral provision can be traced back to the bishops and the seminaries. While conciliar documents such as Optatum Totius (1965, §20) called for the introduction of secular disciplines to enhance priestly formation and recommended that students for the priesthood be ‘taught to use the aids which the disciplines of pedagogy, psychology, and sociology can provide’, Fitzsimmons bewailed a continuing ghettoization of ‘secular’ learning and the maintenance of rigid priestly/lay apostolates: ‘Theologians and philosophers are on one side, social scientists and workers on the other. Between them there is often an iron curtain.’⁵⁸ Indeed, it was not until the 1980s that the bishops allowed Scottish secular universities to have any role in priestly formation, but even then not in a way that reflected long-term strategic thinking, despite prelates being quick to describe Scotland’s ancient universities as being born ex corde ecclesiae.⁵⁹

⁵² Stephen McGinty, This Turbulent Priest: A Life of Cardinal Winning (London, 2003), p. 153. ⁵³ Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 88. ⁵⁴ On clerical voices contesting Humanae Vitae, see Jesuit and Glasgow University Chaplain Gerard W. Hughes, In Search of a Way (Rome, 1978), p. 26. ⁵⁵ See Cardinal Gray’s dismissive comments in Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 88. ⁵⁶ See Fitzsimmons, ‘Has the Dialogue Begun?’, pp. 162–202. ⁵⁷ Slavin, Life is Not, p. 46. ⁵⁸ Fitzsimmons, ‘Has the Dialogue Begun?’, pp. 191–2. ⁵⁹ Mario Conti, Oh Help! The Making of an Archbishop (Edinburgh, 2003), p. 63.

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The seminary situation in Scotland can be described as illustrative of a wider historic problem, stretching back to the nineteenth century, of the Scottish bishops failure to establish leadership at a national level.⁶⁰ This failure is further evidenced by the closure of every home seminary of the twentieth century—Partickhill, Bearsden, Cardross, Newlands, Langbank, Drygrange, Chesters, Gillis, and Scotus. In this regard, the notorious failure of Cardross seminary is illustrative. Rather than collaborate in establishing a national seminary, the Glasgow archdiocese opened a new seminary at Cardross in 1966 to much acclaim, only for this to close in 1980. The architectural failure of what was deemed a brutal Corbusierian ‘crime in concrete’ as a living space for its inhabitants was also a theological disaster too as its remote countryside location—far removed from national secular life and the people to whom these priests were to minister—was the very antithesis of Conciliar thinking.⁶¹

The Possibilities and Perils of Equality What comes after freedom?⁶² With the benefit of hindsight, many people in leadership positions within the Church felt no need for change and Catholics in the post-war period had every right to feel confident about the future. Alongside rapid socio-economic progress, there was growth in the infrastructure to cope with the demographic increase in numbers which saw over a hundred new parishes created between 1945 and 1970 in the west of Scotland alone. As a result of such growth, the post-war Church was able to assume many purely social functions and extend its influence via the evergrowing matrix of Catholic associational life. A Scottish Office survey of youth services and organizations, for example, found in 1988 ‘192,500 members of youth clubs, more than half of them in Catholic Youth Clubs.’⁶³ This was an era when a ‘serene and confident image’ was presented by the Church hierarchy’,⁶⁴ culminating in the visit of John Paul II in June 1982 which represented a watershed moment. For Cardinal Gray who had become Scotland’s first resident cardinal

⁶⁰ In 1884 the Scottish bishops petitioned Rome to have the Scottish hierarchy restructured under the rule of one archbishop who would act as the metropolitan over all Scotland and ensure cohesive and efficient leadership, but the proposal was rejected: see SCA ED14/134/5; ED4/94/15 Fr J. ⁶¹ Robert Proctor, ‘Churches for a Changing Liturgy: Gillespie, Kidd and Coia and the Second Vatican Council’, Architectural History, 48 (2005), 291–322. ⁶² Hans-Peter Müller, Alessandro Cavalli, and Alessandro Ferrara, ‘How is Individuality Possible? Georg Simmel’s Philosophy and Sociology of Individualism’, Simmel Studies, 22 (2018), p. 23. ⁶³ Callum G. Brown, ‘Popular Culture and the Continuing Struggle for Rational Recreation’, in Devine and Finlay (eds.), Scotland, p. 215. ⁶⁴ Maver, ‘The Catholic Community’, p. 276.

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since the Reformation in 1968, the papal visit was hailed as ‘only the beginning of what would be a renaissance for Catholics in Scotland’.⁶⁵ Yet in many ways, the papal visit—much as it was in Ireland—may be viewed as the end of an era. Contemporaneous with the visit, Cardinal Gray issued a pastoral letter urging Catholics in Edinburgh to send their children to Catholic schools,⁶⁶ and in the following year it was estimated that just over a third of Catholics attended Sunday Mass, where two-thirds of Catholics had done so at the start of the 1960s.⁶⁷ Further unmistakable signs of decline came when Craiglockhart College for the training of Catholic teachers closed in 1984 because of falling numbers, while the national junior seminary at Blairs College in Aberdeenshire closed in 1986. In 1992 the east coast seminary of Gillis College closed and was amalgamated with Chesters College in Glasgow, which become Scotus College; only to itself close in 2009, so that for the first time in nearly three centuries there is no Catholic seminary in Scotland. To account for these changes is to explain how the advent of material affluence from the 1970s onwards has been just as determining of Scottish Catholicism as material deprivation and poverty conditioned the experience of most Catholics until the 1960s. In a free market society, the absence of economic independence means ‘liberty is only nominal’,⁶⁸ so that one of the benign consequences of affluence is the greater independence and freedom from dependency it affords to working- and middle-class Catholics from the 1980s. While this advancement in the material life of Catholics is to be celebrated, the ending of relative poverty and a reliance on Church-auspiced welfare and leisure reshaped the domineering role of ‘society’ upon individuals. When social existence was characterized by the ‘dictatorship of scarcity’⁶⁹ and dependency on the voluntarist structures that ameliorated it, this was also the era of populations immersed in the coercive grip of social organizations with the strength and scale to socialize members and reproduce belonging to the Church. While liberation from material hardship has been an immense struggle and blessing insofar as a new set of social conditions has allowed for ‘extending individualism beyond the elites’,⁷⁰ the price that has had to be paid is the lessening of the pressure to associate for material or secular improvement, so that association must henceforth be done in conditions of freedom or not done at all. It is now obligatory ‘to come to God on one’s own’⁷¹ via the use of one’s freedom. This ‘burden of liberty’⁷² signals the arrival of ⁶⁵ Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 117. ⁶⁶ Turnbull, Cardinal, p. 119. ⁶⁷ Bruce, ‘Out of the Ghetto’, p. 152. ⁶⁸ Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (Basingstoke, 2013), p. 22. ⁶⁹ Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London, 1992), p. 20. ⁷⁰ Ralph Fevre, Individualism and Inequality: The Future of Work and Politics (Cheltenham, 2016), p. 8. ⁷¹ Charles Taylor, in Julian Bourg, ‘The Enduring Tensions between Catholicism and Modernity’, Integritas, 6 (2015), p. 12. ⁷² Nikolas Rose, Governing the Soul: Shaping of the Private Self (London, 1999), p. x.

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‘psychological modernity’⁷³ and the necessity of ‘the individualization of believing’⁷⁴ and are not advances in theology but demands made by social conditions. Among the three generations born since the 1960s, a conventional Catholicism is no longer possible, and Catholicism can no longer be reproduced through the generations as a group-level phenomenon as it requires a purely personal commitment if it is to survive. This explains why the transition to these new conditions of social existence has meant heavy casualties, as nominal Catholics have been more or less coerced into lapsing as a result of the new demands made on them by these new conditions. The number of Catholics to have abandoned the practice of their faith is estimated by Darragh to be around 52,000 between 1931 and 1951, and 120,000 in the period 1951–76, with the biggest number of Catholics apostatizing coming in the quinquennial 1966–71 when an estimated 42,000 Catholics lapsed.⁷⁵ In the archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, for example, it was estimated in 2016 that 77 per cent of baptized Catholics in this archdiocese no longer attend church.⁷⁶ The faithful who remain, then, can only be ignored at some peril insofar as compliance and membership can no longer be accomplished by ‘authority’⁷⁷ but rather by a largely uneducated freedom henceforth, because of the failure to catechize lay Catholic adults. From this point onwards, then, what anthropologist Lévi-Strauss disparagingly referred to as ‘the shopgirl’s web of subjectivity’⁷⁸ assumes an unprecedented importance in the thinking of all major social institutions (religious, political, commercial) that have traditionally enjoyed mass participation. If those of unevangelized subjectivity are more or less fated to walk out of the Church on reaching adulthood—given the failure of the leadership to help ordinary Catholics manage a transition from nominal to personal Catholicism— this is compounded by the inertia of an ageing and ill-equipped clergy who are unable to make parishes personable spaces which might incubate and nourish a new form of Catholicism. To this structural stasis can be added the profound institutional damage caused by Cardinal Keith O’Brien’s admission in 2013 of predatory sexual misconduct with priests and seminarians under his jurisdiction.⁷⁹ If the demands placed upon the Catholic individual are greater than before, the opportunities are likewise greater and so the next section describes how new social and economic conditions have also led to new developments within Catholicism

⁷³ Jean Baudrillard, cited in Danièle Hervieu-Léger, ‘The Transmission and Formation of Socioreligious Identities in Modernity: An Analytical Essay on the Trajectories of Identification’, International Sociology 13 (1998), pp. 213–28. ⁷⁴ Hervieu-Léger, The Transmission, p. 217. ⁷⁵ Darragh, ‘The Catholic Population of Scotland’, pp. 216, 226. ⁷⁶ Figure given by Archbishop Leo Cushley in April 2016 at St Patrick’s church, Lochgelly. ⁷⁷ Barry, ‘A Small Seminary’, p. 742. ⁷⁸ Cited in Paul Rabinow, Essays on the Anthropology of Reason (Princeton, NJ, 1996), p. 11. ⁷⁹ Brian Devlin, Cardinal Sin: Challenging Power Abuse in the Catholic Church (Dublin, 2021).

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in the Scottish context. Emerging from the conflictual years of Thatcherite Britain, the ‘Hanovarian’ project of the United Kingdom has entered ‘crisis management’ and its accompanying idea of modernity has come to feel like a ‘period costume’ no longer ‘fit for purpose’. Likewise, the merely ‘social’, materialist politics of the Labour Party have been outgrown—with the result that Catholics have now grasped the social and political opportunities ‘to determine their own fates’⁸⁰ via nationalism and their Catholic cultural patrimony.⁸¹

A Catholic Modernity As the oldest institution in western societies, the Catholic Church has a long internal history, but is also routinely and decisively informed by external events and social conditions, as Paul VI recognized in his first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam (1964, §42). In this dialogue between the secular context and the sacred, I propose that Scottish Catholicism (and indeed Northern Irish Catholicism) is building a new modernity, and is coerced into this development through new external social conditions. To press home this argument, however, requires some ‘heavy lifting’ as both contexts, until recently, were self-consciously Protestant and even antiCatholic⁸² and had the tide of secular ideas firmly against it. An earlier generation of sociologists of religion, enthralled by the master narrative of secularization, ignored the reality of subaltern Catholic modernities in places such as Scotland and Northern Ireland insofar as most recognized only one ‘cluster of ideas’ as properly modern and identified only a single path to modernity in which breaking with Christianity was a prerequisite.⁸³ Catholicism in Scotland is a minority Catholicism that has a long history of being persecuted or at least antagonized by an array of powerful anti-Catholic Protestant forces. Remarkably, however, such is the extent of de-Protestantization since the 1960s that Catholicism has emerged as the most popularly practiced religion in the country today.⁸⁴ This historic turnaround comes in the aftermath of Scotland’s political ‘resurrection’ from 292 years of ‘invisibility’ thanks to the restored Scottish parliament. Interestingly, if Scotland had a larger Catholic population it is likely that a majority in favour of independence would have

⁸⁰ Fevre, Individualism and Inequality, p. 9. ⁸¹ For an ethnographic account of these intergenerational changes, see Paul Gilfillan, A Sociological Phenomenology of Christian Redemption (Guildford, 2014). ⁸² See Graham Walker, ‘From Darlings to Pariahs: Rangers and Scottish National Pride’, in Alan Bissett and Alasdair McKillop (eds.), Born Under a Union Flag: Rangers, Britain and Scottish Independence (Edinburgh, 2014), pp. 31–40. ⁸³ For a sustained discussion, see John Carter Wood, ‘Christian Modernities in Britain and Ireland in the Twentieth Century’, Contemporary British History 34 (2020), pp. 495–509. ⁸⁴ See Brierley, Growth Amidst Decline, p. 16.

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been achieved in 2014,⁸⁵ as analysis found that 58 per cent of Catholics voted in favour of independence, compared to 54 per cent of those of no religion; 41 per cent of members of the Church of Scotland; and 39 per cent of ‘other’ religions. Revisionist scholarship analysing the active part played by Scots-Irish in the Home Rule campaigns of the early twentieth century view this as something of a dry run for the Scottish Home Rule movement that emerged in the 1970s.⁸⁶ Indeed, one might go so far as to say that the Scots-Irish Catholic community has been championing the right to national self-determination (and dealing with attacks by Scottish Unionists and their friends in the media) for longer than any other social group. This long-standing concern with cultural-political matters is highlighted by Boyle’s investigation of the Irish Catholic experience in Scotland,⁸⁷ which argues that during the long march to socio-economic equality, Irish Catholics had to bear a high price, insofar as they openly and publicly celebrated their heritage, and so were often unable to inhabit their true Irish selves. However, if being culturally ‘alter’ was just as much an existential burden as being economically and socially ‘other’, the fact is that having achieved socio-economic parity and in light of the wider shift to a politics of national identity throughout Scottish society, Irishdescended Catholics in Scotland are now able to embrace what was once a source of alterity and alienation as ‘a new form of Scottishness’ that has become a means to liberation, celebration, and even leadership. The long march to equality, then, has always included cultural development and the achievement of a specifically cultural parity of esteem. Even prior to the resurrection of the hierarchy in 1878, a central motif of Scottish Catholicism was the restoration of Scotland’s Catholic cultural heritage clustered around a network of Catholic converts who were hereditary leaders in Scottish society. Chief of these was Robert James Hope-Scott (converting in 1851) who had inherited Abbotsford through marriage and set about appropriating Walter Scott’s literary heritage by aligning Scott’s legacy with the Catholic Church. This cadre of converts were defined by a hunger for authenticity and liturgical ressourcement,⁸⁸ and ‘from 1900 the Scottish Catholic Church participated in a resurgence of literature, music, historical research and the study of folklore’⁸⁹ thanks to convert writers such as Compton Mackenzie, Bruce Marshall, Moray McLaren, George Scott-Moncrieff, Tom Macdonald, Muriel Spark, and George Mackay Brown. A rebirth in Catholic historiography followed, from the formation of the ⁸⁵ Ailsa Henderson, Scottish Election Study (2014), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= bAC42VUwjXU (accessed 20 December 2021) and http://scottishelections.ac.uk/2016/09/06/scottishreferendum-study-preliminary-results/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁸⁶ Boyle, Metropolitan Anxieties, p. 165. ⁸⁷ Boyle, Metropolitan Anxieties, p. 262. ⁸⁸ Bernard Aspinwall, ‘The Second Spring in Scotland’, Clergy Review, 66 (1981), pp. 281–90. ⁸⁹ Michael Turnbull, Catholics in a Changing Scotland: The Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh 1878–1965 (2005), pp. 258–9. Unpublished manuscript in possession of the author with kind thanks to Michael Turnbull.

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Scottish Catholic Historical Association in 1949 and the appearance of the Innes Review in 1950. In 1951 Edinburgh University’s School of Scottish Studies was founded by convert Calum Maclean, helping not only to further reintegrate Catholicism into Scottish culture but to prepare the ground for a future cultural-political resurrection from the 1970s. Nationalist writers and ‘producers of culture’, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, then, have mobilized Scotland’s (Catholic) past cultural production as a source of inspiration and an ‘updated’ Scottish cultural modernity. Scottish literary renaissance writers in the interwar period advocated the need for a new cultural direction, and foundational to the views of Compton Mackenzie⁹⁰ and George Scott-Moncrieff⁹¹ was an assessment that the Protestant Reformation was not only a theological tragedy but equally a cultural and political disaster, as Scotland was only truly whole when it was Catholic. Archbishop McDonald in the 1940s adverted to ‘the great renaissance of Catholic literature and culture in the past twenty years’⁹² which brought Catholic thought and culture most effectively into the public arena, while Hugh MacDiarmid, Edwin Muir, and William Power, for example, argued that Presbyterianism was irredeemably un-Scottish, and that national regeneration could only come about when Scotland became a once more Catholic and Celtic nation.⁹³ Indeed, for most of the twentieth century it was converts and nonCatholics who mobilized Scotland’s Catholic cultural legacy with writers such as Fionn MacColla,⁹⁴ George Mackay Brown, and Tom Scott looking to Catholic Scotland as the time when Scotland was last whole rather than culturally ‘split’, insofar as while Scottish artists felt and thought in their native Scots, but had to express themselves in the second language of English. Hence MacDiarmid’s slogan: ‘Not Burns, Dunbar!’ and Edwin Muir’s condemnation of Whig-era poets Walter Scott and Robert Burns as ‘sham bards for a sham nation’.⁹⁵ These trends can also be found in other forms of cultural production, and examples of a Catholic cultural heritage being ‘resurrected’ including the unveiling in 2013 of a statue of Bishop Wardlaw to mark the 600th anniversary of the founding of St Andrew’s university; the erection in 2015 of the first public statue of Mary, Queen of Scots based on a maquette by the Catholic sculptor Anne Davidson; and the campaign launched in 2017 to establish a public memorial to the martyr St John Ogilvie at Glasgow Cross. As a final example we have the composer James MacMillan wishing to restore ‘the potency of a [Scottish] culture with Christ ⁹⁰ Compton Mackenzie, Scotland and Catholicism (London, 1936). ⁹¹ George Scott-Moncrieff, The Mirror and the Cross: Scotland and the Catholic Faith (London, 1960). ⁹² Turnbull, Catholics, p. 252. ⁹³ See Liam Mcilvanney, ‘Literature that Upped the Ante’ Sunday Herald, 9 April 2000. ⁹⁴ Fionn MacColla, At the Sign of the Clenched Fist (Edinburgh, 1967). ⁹⁵ Douglas Gifford, ‘Sham Bards of a Sham Nation?’ E. Muir and the Failure of Scottish Literature’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 35 (2007), pp. 339–61.

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very much at its origin and centre.’⁹⁶ This politicization of culture and national identity signals an affluence-based cultural turn and Scots Catholics are not only at the forefront of a new politics, but at the heart of a wider and longstanding project of cultural renewal that involves re-imagining national life, personal individuation, and a Catholic modernity.

Conclusion: All Catholics Now? At the start of the twentieth century, most Catholics lived lives characterized by poverty and relative material deprivation until the advent of post-war affluence. From the 1960s the perils and privileges of freedom arrived for seminarians and laity alike, with the generations born since often lapsing from the faith espoused by their ancestors. A mise en scène illustrating the progression of Catholicism is the reception held in the Great Hall of Edinburgh Castle, marking the arrival of Pope Benedict XVI on his State visit in 2010. First Minister Alex Salmond in his welcoming address to the pontiff outlined the peerless place of the Catholic Church in Scotland’s long history; how the Catholic Church pre-dated the emergence of the Scottish nation and had campaigned diplomatically and militarily to safeguard not only the Scottish Church’s independence but that of the nation as well. This prompted the first minister to conclude: ‘Indeed without the Church, there would have been no Scotland as a country in its own right.’⁹⁷ If ‘we are all nationalists now’⁹⁸ then the Scots are perhaps all Catholics now insofar as no serious body of opinion today proposes some great collective good (enlightenment or modernity) at the price of rejecting the Catholic legacy of nationhood, parliament, and sovereignty. Insofar as the Scots have resurrected and now abide by this ‘framing’ for their collective political existence, they have returned home to their Catholic heritage. A question going forward, then, is how conditions of affluence and freedom will shape practising Catholics’ lives in the still unfolding reception of Vatican II and whether Catholics within their families, parishes, and wider society will successfully live the tension of ‘being secular’ and ‘being Catholic’ in the ongoing experiment of faith and freedom.

Select Bibliography Boyle, Mark, Metropolitan Anxieties: On the Meaning of the Irish Catholic Adventure in Scotland (Abingdon, 2011). ⁹⁶ James MacMillan, A Scots Song: A Life of Music (Edinburgh, 2019), p. 59. ⁹⁷ Newsnet, 12 September 2010, https://newsnet.scot/archive/first-minister-acknowledges-role-ofcatholic-church-in-shaping-scotland/ (accessed 16 November 2020). ⁹⁸ David McCrone, The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow’s Ancestors (London, 1998), p. ix.

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Brierley, Peter, Growth Amidst Decline: What the 2016 Scottish Church Census Revealed (Tonbridge, 2017). Devine, Tom (ed.), Scotland’s Shame? Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland (Edinburgh, 2000). Gilfillan, Paul, A Sociological Phenomenology of Christian Redemption (Guildford, 2014). Kehoe, S. Karly, ‘Unionism, Nationalism and the Scottish Catholic Periphery, 1850–1930’, Britain and the World, 4 (2011), pp. 65–83. McCrone, David. The Sociology of Nationalism: Tomorrow’s Ancestors (London, 1998). McGinty, Stephen, This Turbulent Priest: A Life of Cardinal Winning (London, 2003). Paterson, Lindsay, ‘The Social Class of Catholics in Scotland’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 163 (2000), pp. 363–79. Rosie, Michael, The Sectarian Myth in Scotland: Of Bitter Memory and Bigotry (Basingstoke, 2004). Turnbull, Michael, Cardinal Gordon Joseph Gray: A Biography (Edinburgh, 1994).

4 Catholics, War, and Britain’s Armed Forces Michael Snape

The twentieth century was not only the bloodiest in global history, it was (in absolute terms) the bloodiest in the history of the British Isles. Not since the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century had the British archipelago seen so much bloodshed and destruction. Inevitably, this century of conflict did much to shape the fortunes of Catholicism in Great Britain and Ireland. In human terms, it saw an influx of Catholic refugees from elsewhere—from Belgium in 1914, from Spain during the Civil War of 1936–9, from Poland during and after the Second World War, and from Hungary, Nigeria, and South Vietnam in the Cold War period. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, further conflicts in the Balkans and Middle East saw Croats and Iraqis join this inflow of Catholic refugees, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine adding to their number from February 2022. However, to these must be added an influx of war workers from Ireland from 1939 to 1945, and military migrations which featured the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Catholics from the United States, Canada, Poland, France, Holland, and Belgium, as well as prisoners of war from Italy and Germany. The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm in the Orkneys—cobbled together from a pair of Nissen huts—still stands as a beautiful if slightly incongruous reminder of the presence of the former during the Second World War. In terms of the Church’s infrastructure, the intense bombing of the urban centres of British Catholicism between 1940 and 1945 (Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, London, Newcastle, Glasgow, to say nothing of Belfast) caused extensive damage to churches and schools built over the previous century, and St George’s Cathedral, Southwark, one of Augustus Pugin’s most significant creations, shared the dubious distinction—along with Coventry Cathedral—of being gutted by German bombing. The effects of war, or the threat of war in the Cold War era, were felt in many other ways—in the prolonged displacement of clergy and laity; the wholesale disruption of Catholic education and parish and family life; the suffering and anxiety of the wounded, bereaved, and separated; and, in diplomatic terms, the establishment of formal British

The author would like to thank Reverend Andrew Totten for his assistance with his chapter. Michael Snape, Catholics, War, and Britain’s Armed Forces In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0005

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relations with the Holy See in December 1914. War also served as a major catalyst for Catholic cultural creativity, helping to inform and inspire some of the greatest English literature of the twentieth century. While most of these effects were hardly unique to British Catholics, their experience was singular in at least three important respects. First, the structure and distinctiveness of Catholic life, especially in its urban strongholds, thrived on stability, a quality that war—and especially the total wars of the twentieth century—gravely compromised. Second, and given the structure of the Church and the comparatively cosmopolitan character of British Catholicism, war raised awkward questions for British Catholics in a historically Protestant (and often culturally hostile) society. Third, and in light of the uniquely well-developed Catholic moral tradition of the just war, the changing nature of twentieth-century military technology, and in particular the advent of nuclear weapons, had the potential to strain Catholic relations with an otherwise benign British State, whose defence from the 1950s was predicated on a strategy of nuclear deterrence. Yet, and in contrast to the abundant scholarly interest that has been shown in Catholicism during the Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, and in the social and ecclesiastical history of British and Irish Catholicism in the twentieth century, the wide-ranging effects of war seem oddly extrinsic to the history of Catholicism in the British Isles. It is, furthermore, a testimonial to both the deep cultural memory of the First World War in British society and the nature of a highly clericalized and fiercely propagandist Church that its best-known aspect is the vaunted record of Catholic army chaplains during the First World War—a breed whose distinction rests as much on literary and folkloric critiques of the Church of England as it does on the objective merits of Catholic priests in uniform, many of whom (as the Rawlinson papers at Downside Abbey reveal) hardly covered themselves in glory. In terms of the Second World War, only Britain’s relations with the Vatican and the rise of the Sword of the Spirit movement have evoked any significant scholarly interest. This chapter aims to illuminate the British and Irish Catholic experience of war in the twentieth century, and to rescue it from the margins of Catholic historiography, by tracing the role and experience of Catholics in the British armed forces from c.1900 to c.2020. Such a focus serves the fivefold purpose of illustrating the distinctiveness and development of Catholic attitudes to war and peace; the position of Catholics in relation to the British State and British society; the political and ethnic tensions inherent among Catholics in the British Isles; the impact of war on Catholic religious life and cultural expression; and the changing character and status of the Catholic Church in the British archipelago. The focus of this essay is on the armed forces of Great Britain rather than on the paramilitary forces of the Crown (such as the Royal Irish Constabulary or the Royal Ulster Constabulary), the post-independence Irish Defence Forces, or the foot-soldiers of militant Irish republicanism. Although Ireland’s Defence Forces

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(and their progenitor in the Free State’s National Army) have always played an important internal security role, were greatly expanded during ‘The Emergency’ of the Second World War, and have made a significant contribution to United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations since 1955 (most notably in the Congo in the early 1960s), in terms of their scale and significance they have always been dwarfed by the armed forces of the United Kingdom. Indeed, and reflecting Ireland’s customary neutrality, the Irish Army has been described as a perennially ‘under-equipped infantry force just large enough to meet any likely internal security threat and to perpetuate the public illusion that the state is seriously committed to independent external defence’.¹ In contrast, not only have Britain’s armed forces continued to recruit from southern Ireland since independence in 1922, but ‘The Emergency’ saw tens of thousands of Irish citizens enlist in the British Army, the Royal Air Force (RAF), and the Royal Navy, including thousands of deserters from the Irish Army who were only pardoned in 2013. Moreover, and in addition to the continuing existence of the Irish Guards in particular, the formation of an ‘Irish Brigade’ in the British Army in 1942 (despite the objections of the government of Northern Ireland) was emblematic of the continuing military ties of Catholic Ireland to the British Crown, seemingly

Figure 4.1 ‘The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue du Bois’ by Fortunino Matania. Copyright Illustrated London News. Image with permission of Mary Evans Picture Library.

¹ S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford Companion to Irish History (Oxford, 1998), p. 30.

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regardless of neutrality or independence. Furthermore, the military history of post-independence Ireland was always interwoven with that of Great Britain. Inevitably, hundreds of Irish Catholic veterans of the First World War served— on both sides—in the Anglo-Irish War of 1919–21 and in the Civil War of 1922–3. Among them was Father Francis Gleeson, the iconic—even ‘pin-up’—Catholic chaplain of the First World War, who featured as the focal point of Fortunino Matania’s hugely popular depiction of ‘The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue Du Bois’, first published in November 1916 (Figure 4.1). From his celebrated ministry on the Western Front, Gleeson went on to serve the National Army as its senior chaplain in the Dublin area during the Irish Civil War.

War and Military Service in Catholic Moral Theology While the political and military loyalties of Irish Catholics could prove remarkably tangled, Catholic overrepresentation in Britain’s armed forces remained apparent well into the twenty-first century. In 2011, Catholics represented 7.7 per cent of the overall population of Great Britain. However, in 2013, and despite their largely young and overwhelmingly male demographic, over 10 per cent of the full-time members of Britain’s armed forces identified as Catholic. And there were, moreover, historic differences between the three services: Catholics comprised 11.9 per cent of the British Army, 11.3 per cent of the Royal Navy, and 10.6 per cent of the RAF.² Although religious statistics for the RAF were not centrally compiled until the 1960s, such figures show that Catholic representation in the army—for more than two centuries, the preferred armed service for Catholics—had stayed buoyant since the Second World War (when it stood at around 10 per cent—much higher, in relative terms, than the Catholic population of Great Britain, which was then just over 6 per cent)³ and had grown significantly in the Royal Navy since 1913, when it was around 9 per cent.⁴ Though formed as late as April 1918, the RAF seems to have been attractive to Irish Catholics from its inception, as it did not carry the same historical stigma (in the eyes of radical nationalists at least) as the British Army, and nor was it as culturally English—and Anglican—as the Royal Navy. Nevertheless, all these figures illustrate that Catholics have been consistently and disproportionately predisposed to volunteer for military service—even in the forces of another nation—and it is important to consider the nature and significance of this conspicuous attraction. ² Ministry of Defence, ‘UK Regular Personnel, by Declared Religion’ (London, 2014). ³ The National Archives (hereafter TNA) WO 365/39; Clive D. Field, ‘Puzzled People Revisited: Religious Believing and Belonging in Wartime Britain, 1939–45’, Twentiety Century British History, 19 (2008), pp. 446–79. ⁴ The Guardian, 20 August 1914, p. 1011.

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Although not necessarily uppermost in the minds of most recruits, Catholic moral theology and, more recently, Catholic Social Teaching (CST) strongly endorsed legitimate forms of military service. Uniquely, Catholic service men and women came from a Church in which the tradition of the just war was firmly entrenched, widely comprehended, and explicitly discussed. Significantly, this was not true of other Churches, and even the Established Church of England. Whereas, for most of the twentieth century, Anglican bishops usually drew on international law or more general Christian precepts for their commentaries on Britain’s wars, the language, calculations, and calibrations of the just war tradition were readily rehearsed in Catholic circles—by the clergy and educated laity alike. Although not the stuff of the penny catechism (which simply specified that the Fifth Commandment ‘forbids all wilful murder, fighting, quarrelling, and injurious words’), according to the catechism of the Council of Trent (itself replete with military imagery) ‘They are not guilty of Murder who slay the Enemy in a just War . . . neither do they sin who, actuated not by motives of cupidity or cruelty, but by the sole desire of promoting the public good, take away the life of the enemy’.⁵ As the prominent politician and laywoman Shirley Williams recalled (in contrast to her famous mother, Vera Brittain, who was an Anglican and a pacifist) it was her Catholic father, a veteran of the Second World War, who taught her ‘the Catholic just war theory where war has to be morally justifiable with a series of guidelines’.⁶ In recognition of the colossal power and indiscriminate nature of nuclear weapons, and the compelling legitimacy of conscientious objection in contexts ranging from Hitler’s Reich to the Vietnam War, the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church was remarkably clear about such parameters. Nevertheless, though it sanctioned conscientious objection and condemned weapons of mass destruction, the arms race, and the arms trade, it still maintained that ‘Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honourably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace’. While just war theory dated back to Ambrose and Augustine (via Vitoria, Suarez, and Thomas Aquinas), and posed existential moral questions in the nuclear era, at the turn of the twentieth century, military service on behalf of the State was strongly endorsed by CST. With conscription widely enforced in Continental European societies, Rerum Novarum (1891) pronounced that in order ‘that peace and good order should be maintained . . . the members of the commonwealth should grow up to man’s estate strong and robust, and capable, if need be, of guarding and defending their country’. In the absence of conscription in pre-war Britain and Ireland, such sentiments informed Cardinal Bourne’s ⁵ J. Donovan (ed.), Catechism of the Council of Trent (Dublin, 1908), p. 364. ⁶ Tony Padman, ‘Shirley Williams: My Family Values’, 15 May 2012, https://www.theguardian.com/ lifeandstyle/2015/may/15/shirley-williams-my-family-values (accessed 20 December 2021).

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strident advocacy of cadet corps in British schools—even for his own junior seminarians at St Edmund’s College, Ware. Under the weight of the Church’s moral and social teaching, in 1916, when conscription was finally introduced in Great Britain (but not in Ireland), a pamphlet entitled Catholics of the British Empire and the War not only rejoiced that ‘the instincts of patriotism are so deeply inrooted in all who bear the Catholic name’, but took deliberate aim at the waywardness of conscientious objectors: the profession of arms has ever been an honourable one, and the Christian soldier has been and still is the beau ideal of a chivalry which no modern theories have been able to destroy. The conscientious objector has no place in the Catholic Church, and, as its authorities have recently enjoined, ‘A Catholic, in the formation of his conscience, has no right to guide himself by all the freaks and vagaries of individual opinions, but should conform himself to the settled principles of Catholic ethics.’⁷

Centuries of history and tradition also framed British and Irish Catholic attitudes towards military service. Volunteers from the British Isles had served in the pontifical forces during the Italian Wars of Unification (1848–70), many of them in the elite Papal Zouaves, and, though very much against the grain of public opinion in mid-Victorian Britain, such soldiering for Catholic States and causes in Europe had a long and distinguished pedigree in post-Reformation British and Irish Catholicism. Furthermore, and due to the acute manpower demands of the American and French Revolutionary Wars, Catholic recruitment into the British Army increased exponentially from the late eighteenth century, rising from a theoretical base of zero (under the restrictions of the penal laws) to a point around 1830 when Catholics comprised more than 40 per cent of the army’s rank and file—in itself a compelling reason for Catholic emancipation in 1829.⁸ Overwhelmingly driven by recruitment in rural Ireland, the military dividends of rural overpopulation diminished after the Famine, the strapping Irish peasant soldier becoming a rarer and even valorized commodity, especially in comparison with the recruits to be found in the burgeoning slums of industrial Britain. If, in the aftermath of the Crimean War of 1854–6 and the Indian Uprising of 1857–9, the loyal if turbulent Catholic Irish came to be endowed with the status of a martial race—much like Scotland’s Highlanders and the Gurkhas and Sikhs of Britain’s Indian Army—this helped to promote an institutional culture in the British Army that was highly accommodating of Catholic demands and interests. From the late 1850s, Catholics had more than their proportionate share of ⁷ Catholics of the British Empire and the War (London, 1917), pp. 4–6. ⁸ Peter Karsten, ‘Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 1792–1922: Suborned or Subordinate?’, Journal of Social History, 17 (1983), pp. 31–64, esp. p. 36.

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commissioned army chaplains, a roster of Irish regiments that were treated as culturally ‘Catholic’, and the inauguration by Royal Warrant of the Victoria Cross (VC) in 1856 (which placed ‘all persons on a perfectly equal footing in relation to eligibility’)⁹ soon created dozens of Catholic recipients of Britain’s highest military honour. Buttressed by Rudyard Kipling’s conjurations of soldiering for the raj (notably the characters of Terence Mulvaney, the ‘Mavericks’ and Father Victor), such was the stature of the Irish Catholic soldier by the turn of the twentieth century that the Irish Guards were created at the height of the South African War in 1900, a striking augmentation of the household troops of Britain’s avowedly Protestant monarchy. While recruitment in Ireland may have been depressed by the anti-enlistment activity of radical nationalists, Catholic representation remained more buoyant as Catholics of Irish extraction were recruited from the slums of Great Britain, with Liverpool and London especially helping to sustain a steady flow of Catholic recruits. Reflected in Hopkins’ poem ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’ (1879), which invoked its subject’s ‘Irish Mother’ and ‘English sire’, the long-term resilience of Catholic numbers in the British Army can in part be ascribed to the fact that areas of historic Catholic strength—and post-industrial deprivation—such as north-west and north-east England and the west of Scotland, have remained prime recruiting grounds well into the twenty-first century. The Army Careers Office at Tunbridge Wells, for example, supplied twenty-seven recruits in 2008–9, in comparison with Blackpool’s ninety-five and Sunderland’s 118.¹⁰ For gentlemen soldiers of the officer class, the route to and from emancipation also gave plenty of opportunity to vindicate centuries old claims of loyalty to the British Crown, often building on a historic legacy of commissioned military service to the Catholic monarchies of Europe (and, in the case of the Scottish soldier of fortune, Patrick Gordon, the army and navy of Peter the Great). While this tradition found its most famous manifestation in the legendary ‘Wild Geese’ (who included such colourful characters as the Austrian General Johann Sigismund Macquire von Inniskillin), the Janus-like loyalties of this Catholic elite, and especially its Irish component, were reflected in the military history of Stonyhurst College. Before 1914, this renowned Jesuit school strongly promoted its Officers’ Training Corps and became something of a nursery for soldiers of distinction: in time, it would generate more recipients of the VC than Winchester, Uppingham, or Sherborne. However, its cadet corps also trained Joseph Mary Plunkett, a future leader and republican martyr of the Easter Rising. Stonyhurst alumni also showed how resistant, in comparison with the British Army, the Royal Navy was to Catholics, even at the turn of the twentieth century.

⁹ Graham Wilson, Bully Beef and Balderdash: Some Myths of the AIF Examined and Debunked, Kindle edn (London, 2012), loc. 7754. ¹⁰ ‘Recruitment Statistics by Regional Centres’, https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/recruit ment_statistics_by_region (accessed 20 December 2021).

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George Archer-Shee, an old boy and the inspiration behind The Winslow Boy, Terence Rattigan’s eponymous play, was at the epicentre of a famous trial at the High Court of Justice in 1910 in which Sir Edward Carson exposed the injustice— and apparent prejudice—of the Admiralty in expelling the accused from the Royal Naval College for the alleged theft of a 5-shilling postal order.

The First World War Though Catholicism in the British Isles already could lay claim to a rich military heritage by the turn of the twentieth century (even to the point that the term ‘LeftFooter’ may well have derived from the routine order for Catholics to fall-out ‘to the left’ before mandatory weekly worship),¹¹ the role of military service as both driver and emblem of emancipation was also reflected in the existence of culturally Catholic Volunteer battalions such as the Liverpool Irish and the London Irish, which were incorporated into the new Territorial Force in 1908; in the rapid growth of the Catholic Boys’ Brigade from 1896 (another manifestation of the spirit of Rerum Novarum); and even in the composition of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales. Whereas the Anglican clergy who joined the Army Chaplains’ Department cut themselves adrift from the civilian Church and never reappeared as diocesan bishops in the Church of England, the opposite seems to have been true of their Catholic counterparts. At the end of their lengthy careers as army chaplains, Bishop John Butt of Southwark, Bishop John Vertue of Portsmouth, and Bishop Robert Brindle of Nottingham not only had ample pensions on which to draw but had accrued important friendships and contacts at the heart of the British establishment, not least through their role in shepherding and policing the army’s Irish regiments. In contrast, the Irish Catholic hierarchy insisted on their own priests ministering to troops in Ireland, and the army remained leery of potentially seditious Irish chaplains. On the strength of his record as an army chaplain, especially in the Sudan campaigns of 1884–5 and 1898, in 1906 Brindle was recommended by Edward VII to help receive his niece into the Catholic Church on her marriage to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. This was an invidious role, inevitably, but eased by the fact that Brindle was an Englishman, a soldier, and a hero of the campaigns fought to rescue, and then avenge, Gordon of Khartoum. On his death in 1916, Brindle, who had been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1898, had the privilege of being ‘buried with military honours’, an occasion which led the Bishop of Clifton, George Burton, to ruminate:

¹¹ Roy Ramsay (ed.), Hell, Hope and Heroes: Life in the Field Ambulance in World War I (Dural, NSW, 2012), p. 184.

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To the Catholic the soldier’s profession must ever be one that calls forth his respect, and even his affection. In the Catholic Church the peace-monger is more or less out of his element. What would St. Louis of France, or the Blessed Maid of Orleans, have thought of conscientious objectors? Did not a pope that is a canonised saint, Leo IX, put himself at the head of his troops and give battle?¹²

While the defeat and capture of St Leo IX by the Normans of southern Italy in 1053 may not have been the most auspicious precedent to have cited, the religious and cultural milieu of Catholicism in mainland Britain all but guaranteed an enthusiastic response to Lord Kitchener’s famous appeal for volunteers to fill the ranks of his ‘New Army’ in 1914. Unimpeded by any tradition of pacifism (chiefly associated with the Society of Friends), by puritanical qualms about the moral character of service life (very common among Britain’s Free Churches), or by the utopian appeal exerted by the pre-war peace movement among more liberal Protestants, the incidence of volunteering among Catholics was such that it was soon being trumpeted—in Scotland as well as in England—that Catholics were disproportionately represented in the ranks of a vastly expanded British Army. With their hierarchies firmly convinced of the justice of the Allied cause (despite the neutrality of Benedict XV, but especially given Germany’s spoliation of Catholic Belgium) Catholic bishops could be remarkably strident in their call to arms. For example, and with the Kaiser’s iniquity compounded by his alliance with the Ottoman Turks, the ancient bane of Christian Europe, the archbishop of Glasgow, John Maguire, pronounced in February 1915 that the war amounted to ‘Christianity against Paganism, the Cross and its civilisation against the Crescent and its barbarism—against the even worse, because deliberate and calculated, barbarism of the War Lord.’¹³ Boosted by moderate Irish nationalist support for the imperial war effort, and by the enlistment of many of the pre-war, paramilitary Irish Volunteers in mainland Britain as well as in Ireland, the early stages of the war gave rise to concentrations of Catholics never seen before (or since) in the history of the British Army. In addition to regular and Territorial units such as the Irish Guards and the London Irish, recruitment for the New Army produced the 16th (Irish) Division and the Tyneside Irish Brigade, the latter raised with the support of the bishop of Hexham and Newcastle (Richard Collins) and the bishop of Middlesbrough (Richard Lacy). Not only was an appeal for recruits read from Catholic pulpits across north-east England, but Catholic institutes doubled as recruiting offices. Although the Irish hierarchy was much less univocal (and, indeed, became hostile with the burgeoning threat of conscription for Ireland later in the war), under these circumstances the crusading trope—though

¹² Catholics of the British Empire, p. 18.

¹³ Catholics of the British Empire, p. 64.

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common enough in the First World War—tripped very readily off Catholic lips. There were, almost certainly, self-conscious echoes of Peter the Hermit and St Bernard of Clairvaux in the recruitment sermons of Bernard Vaughan, ‘England’s leading Catholic orator’.¹⁴ His persuasive powers meant that, on his death in 1922, Vaughan was credited not only with ‘a magic gift of eloquence’ but with having ‘convinced the honest English public that a Jesuit could be simple and sincere, and a Catholic of the most Roman type a patriot’.¹⁵ It was indicative of the promptitude and extent of the Catholic response to the war that, amidst the greatest military mobilization in the history of the British Isles which saw 5.7 million men pass through the British Army, its Catholic constituency declined in the latter half of the war, as Ireland became more recalcitrant in the wake of the Easter Rising and the dragnet of conscription tightened, thereby sharing the burden of military service more equally throughout British (if not Irish) society.¹⁶ However, and despite Benedict XV’s constant efforts to secure a negotiated peace, and the inauguration of a Guild of the Pope’s Peace early in 1916 (which even a sympathetic historian has acknowledged was ‘ignored by most Catholics and at worst excoriated’),¹⁷ there were very few Catholic conscientious objectors. This remained the case even after Benedict’s Peace Note of August 1917 expressed new misgivings about the war-inducing nature of conscription. A centenary estimate by Pax Christi put the Catholic total at around a hundred, including those who accepted non-combatant military service, and others whose motives were as much socialist and/or Irish republican as they were Christian and humanitarian.¹⁸ In June 1917, and of 307 ‘absolutists’ imprisoned in British gaols, only seven were Catholics, while there were 109 Quakers, six Jehovah’s Witnesses, and twenty-seven atheists or agnostics.¹⁹ However, even this tiny handful proved a source of scandal and reproach, with the question being raised in the Jesuit journal The Month of whether they were eligible to receive the sacraments. By this time, the direction of Irish politics, the irksome peace diplomacy of the Pope, and the resistance of French Canadian and Irish Australian Catholics towards the threat of conscription had all become major causes for concern, especially given the febrile atmosphere of wartime Britain and its impressive (if fading) history of antiCatholicism. While sections of the press—and John Bull above all—could and did rage at the posture of the Vatican, a critique echoed by extreme Protestants,

¹⁴ Stuart P. Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit: A Catholic Cultural Crusade of 1940’, in William J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and War, SCH, 20 (1983), pp. 409–30, esp. p. 414. ¹⁵ The Tablet, 11 November 1922, p. 635. ¹⁶ Michael Snape, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26 (2002), pp. 314–58. ¹⁷ Youssef Taouk, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War’, Recusant History, 29 (2008), p. 258. ¹⁸ ‘Remembering the Catholic Objectors of the First World War’, https://paxchristi.org.uk/product/ catholic-conscientious-objectors-of-the-first-world-war/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ¹⁹ Margaret Hobhouse, I Appeal unto Cæsar (London, 1917), pp. 16–17.

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old suspicions could still be aired in the very highest quarters. In October 1917, for example, and in the face of his stalled offensive in Flanders (known to posterity as the Battle of Passchendaele), Sir Douglas Haig expressed his exasperation at the discouraging reports he was receiving from Sir George Macdonogh, director of military intelligence at the War Office and a convert to Catholicism: ‘I cannot think why the War Office Intelligence Dept. gives such a wrong picture of the situation except than Gen. Macdonogh . . . is a Roman Catholic and is (unconsciously) influenced by information which doubtless reaches him from tainted (i.e. Catholic) sources.’²⁰ Given domestic and imperial tensions and the scale of the war’s attendant sacrifices, the figure of the Catholic martial hero—a useful propaganda device for several generations—assumed even greater importance and appeared in wholly new guises. In the comparatively hostile milieu of the Royal Navy, a significant breakthrough occurred when Father Anthony Pollen, an elderly Oratorian, was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his conduct on 31 May 1916. One of the first generation of sea-going Catholic naval chaplains, he had met with a frosty reception when he reported to the battleship HMS Warspite in 1915. However, when a 6-inch turret caught fire during the Battle of Jutland, Pollen entered the casemate and rescued two sailors ‘who would soon have perished, like Nero’s Christian victims wrapped in pitchy shirts’, being badly burned in the process.²¹ Until 1918, this made Pollen the war’s most highly decorated Royal Navy chaplain. His feat provided the backdrop to the archbishop of Westminster’s three-day visit to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow in August 1916, in which Cardinal Bourne became the first Catholic prelate to board a Royal Navy vessel since Cardinal York visited Nelson’s Agamemnon at Naples in 1798. As for the war in the air, when the RAF was created in April 1918—an amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service—its leading ‘ace’ was 23-year-old James McCudden, VC, the most decorated British airman of the war. Born in England into an army family, McCudden’s devout father, the Carlow-born William McCudden, was a warrant officer in the Royal Engineers and a member of the choir at the church of Our Lady of Gillingham. One of three McCudden brothers—all fliers—to die in the First World War, their mother was selected from among all the mothers of the empire’s VC winners to lay Britain’s wreath on the tomb of America’s Unknown Soldier at its dedication on Armistice Day 1921. ‘The choice of a Catholic lady as our deputy’ was deemed especially appropriate by The Tablet, as Catholics now comprised America’s largest denomination.²² The war’s lengthy rollcall of Catholic paladins was diligently tallied and reported by the Catholic press and—tracking receptions at Buckingham

²⁰ Gary Sheffield and John Bourne (eds.), Douglas Haig: War Diaries and Letters, 1914–1918 (London, 2005), pp. 336–7. ²¹ Catholics of the British Empire, p. 54. ²² The Tablet, 12 November 1921, p. 634.

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Palace—they were often formally received by Cardinal Bourne. Besides McCudden, among the many Catholic recipients of the VC were Sergeant ‘Mick’ O’Leary of the Irish Guards; the half-Belgian Lieutenant-Colonel Adrian Carton De Wiart (husband of an Austrian countess and later the inspiration for Evelyn Waugh’s hyper-belligerent Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in his Sword of Honour trilogy); and (more prosaically) Birmingham-born Sergeant Alfred Joseph Knight of the Post Office Rifles. Given this litany of awards, the renown of Francis Gleeson, and the fact that the first British Army chaplain to be killed in action (in April 1915) was Father William Finn of the diocese of Middlesbrough, it was a source of considerable rancour that no Catholic chaplain was awarded the VC, while three went to Anglicans. This resentment seems to have crystallized around the Jesuit chaplain Willie Doyle, who was killed near Ypres in August 1917 while serving with the 16th (Irish) Division. Widely perceived as a saint in the interwar Catholic world (a 1931 pamphlet ascribed more than 6,000 favours to his intercession), Doyle was allegedly denied the award—according to a best-selling biography by Alfred O’Rahilly, a Sinn Fein activist interned during the AngloIrish War—due to a ‘triple disqualification of being an Irishman, a Catholic and a Jesuit’.²³ More likely a case of republican misinformation than army discrimination, this conceit blossomed in the sectarian climate of interwar Australia, where (amidst the distribution of Willie Doyle prayer cards and relics) it morphed into a wider claim that the VC was withheld from Australian Catholics due to an ‘establishment’ (i.e. Anglican) plot. In fact, fifteen awards were made, a number that matched the Catholic proportion of the Australian Imperial Force.²⁴ Despite the controversy around Doyle’s secular accolades, the fact that the cult of a putative saint emerged from the trenches of the Western Front underlines the spiritual dividends reaped by British and Irish Catholicism in consequence of the First World War. Although heavily qualified by Father Charles Plater’s Catholic Soldiers (1919)—a pioneering survey of lay Catholic piety and morals in the British and Dominion armies, ‘By Sixty Chaplains and Many Others’, which revealed glaring regional disparities in the religious knowledge and practice of British and Irish Catholics, a high incidence of ‘Moral Falls’ among those in uniform, and the lack of initiative that characterized ‘the impressive bovinity of the faithful’²⁵—the perceived strengths of Catholicism were apt to be hailed by progressive Anglo-Catholics in particular. Though they deplored Roman obscurantism and authoritarianism, chaplains of this ilk, who were now at the forefront of a rising and reformist movement within the Church of England, could not but admire some key aspects of contemporary Catholicism. These included its character as a sacramental and united faith, free of the irksome constraints of

²³ Alfred O’Rahilly, Father William Doyle SJ (London, 1922), p. 330. ²⁴ Wilson, Bully Beef, locs. 7714–8327. ²⁵ Charles Plater, Catholic Soldiers (London, 1919), p. 136.

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establishment, and commanding the loyalty of a mainly working-class but comparatively well-instructed following. While commentary from this quarter therefore emphasized the sacramental role of the Anglican priest, deplored the class and doctrinal divisions of the Church of England, and the perceived deficiencies of its theology and liturgy under the manifold pressures of war, Catholic pundits were also keen to affirm this impression of Catholic stability and assurance. Philip Gibbs, the premier war correspondent of his day, wrote eloquently of the resilience of army Catholicism in his Realities of War (1920), asserting that ‘Catholic soldiers had a simpler, stronger, faith than men of Protestant denominations’, especially those who relied ‘more on ethical arguments and intellectual reasonings’, and that ‘Catholic chaplains’ consequently had ‘an easier task’.²⁶ While Lady Elizabeth Butler, the convert wife of the Catholic general, Sir William Butler, had produced the most distinguished artistic representations of the Victorian military experience (including a lament for the passing of the Irish peasant soldier in her 1878 ‘Listed for the Connaught Rangers’), in the First World War this baton passed to Fortunino Matania of the illustrated weekly The Sphere. Phenomenally talented and prolific, this Catholic, Neapolitan-born illustrator produced not only ‘The Last General Absolution of the Munsters at Rue Du Bois’ (Figure 4.1) but peppered his vivid portrayals of the war on the Western Front with allusions to the Catholic milieu of Belgium and northern France, rounding off the war with a painting entitled ‘The Cross Bearers’, which featured a British soldier salvaging a figure of Christ from a scarred and deserted battlefield. And Matania’s depictions of calvaries, crucifixes, and curés emphasized an important fact: never had so many Protestant Britons been so immersed in a Catholic culture. Furthermore, this exposure—especially when combined with a pragmatic eclecticism born of the unpredictable dangers of war—made the appropriation of crosses, rosaries, scapulars, and miraculous medals endemic among Protestant soldiers. At a wartime meeting of the Westminster Catholic Federation, Charles Plater, SJ, even claimed that travelling in the south of England, he met in the train some soldiers of the Ulster Division, all Orangemen, and instead of consigning the holy father to other realms, as they probably would have done in other times and other circumstances, they actually asked him to bless their miraculous medals.²⁷

The Catholicizing effect of the war on British religious culture was clear and far from transitory, loosening Protestant inhibitions on praying for the dead, especially in the Church of England, and seeing countless war memorials erected in

²⁶ P. Gibbs, Realities of War (London, 1920), p. 440. ²⁷ Michael MacDonagh, The Irish on the Somme (London, 1917), p. 98.

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churches and civic spaces that reflected a new susceptibility towards key features of Catholic iconography. But, whereas in England, Ireland, and even Wales (where the Church of England was newly disestablished), Anglican parish churches were often flooded with war memorials—and major churches and cathedrals with ‘retired’ regimental colours—this was seldom the case in Catholic churches across Great Britain. Although many parishes were keen to advertise through their memorials the sacrifices made by Catholics for king and country, and to invite prayers for the fallen, this early impetus soon ran into difficulties beyond the hardy perennials of cost and aesthetics. Though memorials, Masses for the dead (especially in November, the traditional month of the Holy Souls), and even family vocations reflected the piety and grief of the faithful, the years following the war soon exposed peculiarly Catholic problems with the evolving cult of Remembrance at the civic and national level. As such, it underlined how much Catholics were still ‘felt, and felt themselves, to stand extraordinarily apart’.²⁸ Though inevitably attended by individual Catholics, the united religious services so widely associated with national and local acts of Remembrance posed fundamental problems for pre-conciliar Catholicism—as, in fact, did the religiously non-specific Cenotaph at Whitehall, denounced by the Catholic Herald in 1921 as ‘a disgrace in a so called Christian land’.²⁹ If, in view of the Church’s traditional prohibition on taking part in non-Catholic services, the default position was to hold Requiem Masses for the fallen around ‘Armisticetide’—and even on such high-profile occasions as the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey in 1920 and the opening of the Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle in 1927—Catholic distinctiveness and even disengagement was increasingly fuelled by political and demographic factors. The Anglo-Irish War, Irish independence, and the disbandment of five of the army’s culturally Catholic infantry regiments (including the Connaught Rangers and the Royal Munster Fusiliers) served to complicate and marginalize the collective memory of tens of thousands of Catholic war dead. Until his cause for canonization was formally revived by the bishop of Meath in November 2022, it even helped to curtail the cult of Willie Doyle who, after all, had committed the cardinal (secular) sin of dying in British Army khaki. The suppression of this memory was further assisted by the continuing inflow of clergy and laity from postindependence Ireland, by the ongoing sub-division of Catholic parishes and the accompanying multiplication of Catholic churches, and by the modest growth of Catholic pacifism in the wake of the Second World War. The ethno-cultural dynamics at work in the Catholic process of remembering (and forgetting) have been highlighted and challenged by Darren Tierney in the case of interwar

²⁸ Adrian Hastings, A History of English Christianity 1920–2000 (London, 2001), p. 131. ²⁹ Adrian Gregory, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (Oxford, 1994), p. 149.

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Scotland,³⁰ but they were no doubt present in England as well. A planned Catholic War Memorial Church at Aldershot failed to materialize (unlike a Wesleyan Methodist equivalent at Catterick) and, in certain cases, liturgical change and interior alterations associated with the Second Vatican Council aided the removal of existing war memorials, as was the case at St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham, whose shrine to 200 dead of the parish—dedicated on Armistice Day 1921—was only restored with the aid of a government grant in 2014.³¹

The Second World War Despite its longer duration, its greater global cost, and its impact on the Church’s infrastructure in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Second World War was a very different experience for Catholics in the British Isles. If English Catholicism was more suburbanized by the outbreak of the Second World War, especially in the Midlands and south-east, almost half of British and Irish Catholics lived in neutral Ireland, a neutral State, and the further development of aerial bombing served to narrow the previous gulf between the military and civilian experience of war. If even the Imperial War Graves Commission wondered whether Britain’s civilian dead should not be honoured with ‘war graves’ like its soldiers, sailors, and airmen, the configuration of Britain’s armed forces—dictated by changing military technologies, the sobering lessons of 1914–18, and different theatres of war—also diverged from the First World War. With conscription introduced even before war was declared in September 1939, and personnel policies in place which sought to ensure that recruits filled roles that best suited their aptitudes and civilian occupations, there was very little scope or appetite for the re-creation of such units as the Tyneside Irish Brigade. Furthermore, given the disbandment of the army’s southern Irish regiments in 1922, there was a much narrower organizational base from which to expand. If it was left to the Irish Guards and, to a lesser extent, the 38th (Irish) Brigade, to be the army’s culturally Catholic formations (as late as 1943 the Anglican commander of the First Battalion Irish Guards pronounced that ‘I command a Catholic Regiment and on St. Patrick’s Day we all go to Mass’),³² a significant consequence of a smaller and more technical army, a larger navy, and a vastly expanded air force was to greatly diffuse the Catholic contribution to the war. As John Broom has observed, even in comparison with the First World War, Catholic ‘immersion into military life’ between 1939 and 1945 is ‘an ³⁰ Darren Tierney, ‘Catholics and Great War Memorialisation in Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 37 (2017), pp. 19–51. ³¹ The Catholic Church, https://www.cbcew.org.uk/st-chads-cathedral-birmingham-awarded227000-from-ww1-centenary-cathedral-repairs-fund/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ³² Rudesind Brookes, Father Dolly: The Guardsman Monk (London, 1983), p. 126.

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underexplored area’.³³ While there were never any ‘Catholic’ ships in the Royal Navy, or ‘Catholic’ squadrons in the RAF (despite Churchill’s quixotic proposal to form a ‘Shamrock Squadron’), Spike Milligan’s picaresque memoirs of his service in the Royal Artillery hint at the comparatively isolated situation of the typical Catholic soldier at this time, with the bulk of army recruits serving (like the irrepressible Milligan) in more technical corps ‘where national identity was generally not represented’.³⁴ The son of a regular soldier who had retired to the suburbs of south London, Milligan was monitored from afar by a pious mother (a ready source of miraculous medals) and sometimes reproved by more devout comrades. Of his early war service on the south coast of England, Milligan remembered that ‘Catholics had occasional visits from Father Holything who seemed horrified at the thought of any soldier having sexual intercourse.’³⁵ However, if there was much less scope for the re-creation of such iconic vignettes as ‘The Last General Absolution of the Munsters’, there were still some scenes that evoked the highwater mark of Catholic mobilization a generation earlier. Remembering his service as chaplain to its First Battalion in Tunisia, Dom Rudesind Brookes, who had served as an officer with the Irish Guards in the trenches of the Western Front, recalled the prelude to one attack: [A]s I stood there, first one soldier, then another, and then another slipped out of the ranks and knelt in front of me for my blessing before quietly returning to their places. Very many of these brave Irish lads were to die in the battle so soon to come; and for me it was one of the most moving experiences of the whole War, reminding me of what I had heard of the Regiment kneeling to be blessed before battle in 1914.³⁶

While the Catholic media could still acclaim The Priest Among the Soldiers (now in a much greater variety of roles and locations, ranging from service with the Irish Guards in Norway to a lines of communication ministry in the Indian Ocean), other aspects of the Catholic experience were more consistent with the First World War. Despite the continuing neutrality of the Vatican and the mushroom growth of British pacifism in the mid- to late 1930s, Catholic conscientious objectors (including single women after 1941) remained remarkably few and far between. Conscripted in 1944, Maurice Taylor, a future bishop of Galloway, recalled that the thought of becoming a ‘C.O.’ never even occurred to him.³⁷ In 1942, it was reported from the south-west of England that, of 4,056 ³³ John Broom, ‘Faith in the Furnace: British Christians in the Armed Services, 1939–1945’ (Durham University PhD thesis, 2018), p. 42. ³⁴ Steven O’Connor, Irish Officers in the British Forces, 1922–45 (Basingstoke, 2014), p. 118. ³⁵ Spike Milligan, Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall (London, 2012), pp. 48–9. ³⁶ Brookes, Father Dolly, pp. 132–3. ³⁷ Maurice Taylor, Gratefully Yours (Galloway, 2021), p. 57.

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conscientious objectors from the region, only 1.6 per cent had identified as Catholics.³⁸ Although hardly a region of Catholic strength, the fact that a minuscule proportion of a small minority should have been Catholic is nonetheless telling. Despite the formation of Pax in 1936 (a small, largely Catholic organization which merged with Pax Christi in 1971), the English hierarchy strongly disapproved of its pacifist stance, and it was largely ignored by the Catholic press. If firmly anchored in Catholic moral theology, such hostility was also related to prudential and perennial concerns over suspicions of Catholic loyalty, as the tribulations of the Great War only seemed to confirm the conviction that ‘there was danger in any deviation from the path of super-patriotism’.³⁹ Having usually taken a pro-nationalist stance in the Spanish Civil War, and widely perceived as being close to Mussolini’s regime in Italy (and, after the fall of France in June 1940, to the Vichy regime in France), the Catholic Church could be readily portrayed as no friend of Great Britain and as a fellow traveller with authoritarianism and fascism. These impressions were hardly mitigated by the predictable neutrality of the Vatican, the usual obstreperousness of French Canada and, as the only Dominion which did not join the war against Hitler, the perceived treachery of Ireland. For the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Arthur Hinsley, who ‘could see how vulnerable the church would be to accusations that it was a potential “Fifth Column” ’,⁴⁰ repudiating Catholic conscientious objectors was as politic as his inauguration of the Catholic, democratic, and antifascist Sword of the Spirit movement (in this volume, see Chapter 11 by Power) in August 1940. The wartime presence and combustibility of anti-Catholic feeling should not be underplayed, despite the steadfastness of Catholic Malta, one of the most bombed corners of the earth, which was awarded the George Cross by King George VI in April 1942. The war years witnessed spontaneous attacks on Scotland’s Italian community and in March 1943, the month of Cardinal Hinsley’s death and long after the existential crisis of the Battle of Britain had passed, the left-wing social survey organization Mass-Observation posed the question, ‘How do you feel about Roman Catholics?’ Significantly, this question found 24 per cent of respondents favourable, but—notwithstanding the archbishop of Westminster’s efforts—17 per cent unfavourable, with comments ranging from ‘Always found them devout and loyal, and quite as amiable as other people’ to ‘They’re so different to any of us’.⁴¹ In addition to Sword of the Spirit, whose ‘Guilds’ were heavily promoted in the armed services by the bishop of the forces, James Dey, other factors galvanized ³⁸ Alan Wilkinson, Dissent or Conform? War, Peace and the English Churches 1900–1945 (London, 1986), p. 291. ³⁹ Mews, ‘Sword of the Spirit’, p. 414. ⁴⁰ Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church 1900–2000 (Oxford, 2008), p. 287. ⁴¹ University of Sussex, Mass-Observation Archive, FR 1667.

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Catholic support for the war. Besides a strong measure of native patriotism, these included the influence of socialist politics on many working-class Catholics. George Orwell, for example, famously remarked on how many households in Lancashire had a crucifix on the wall and a copy of the Daily Worker on the table. The plight of Catholic Poland, martyred in 1939 by the godless forces of Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, furnished another rallying point. As the Catholic military historian Sir John Keegan remembered of his wartime childhood in the West Country, the family church (‘a very solitary beacon of the faith in the deeply Protestant west’) provided ‘a natural haven for uprooted and lonely fellowbelievers’ from all nations. However, the Polish forces in exile held a special place in his father’s esteem. For Keegan senior, a veteran of the Great War, ‘They were peerless: Catholic, high-spirited, heroes of the Battle of Britain, undaunted by exile, they satisfied every one of his exacting tests of warriordom, and he sought out their company whenever he could find it.’⁴² Another notable Catholic exile was the Hereditary Grand Duke John of Luxembourg, an old Amplefordian, who served in the Irish Guards in Normandy and, according to his chaplain, ‘set a splendid example’ to the officers and men of its Third Battalion.⁴³ However, the war also produced a further rollcall of indigenous Catholic heroes and role models. These included the Cavan-born, Stonyhurst alumnus Captain Marcus Ervine-Andrews of the East Lancashire Regiment, who won the only VC of the Dunkirk evacuation, and the Spitfire ace Brendan (‘Paddy’) Finucane, the RAF’s youngest ever wing commander, who died aged 21 after shooting down at least twenty-eight German aircraft. The son of an Irish father and English mother who had emigrated from Dublin to Surrey in 1936, Finucane’s paternal grandfather had been a regular soldier and his father, though he had served under de Valera’s command in the Easter Rising, had attempted to join the RAF at the outbreak of war. After his death off the French coast in July 1942, a Requiem Mass for Finucane was held in Westminster Cathedral, while a former comrade testified to Finucane kneeling at Mass and telling his beads ‘with complete simplicity’ the Sunday before he died. He was, according to the same letter published in The Tablet, ‘a clean, noble and fearless Christian fighter, and an inspiring ideal to all who were privileged to know him’.⁴⁴ But there were others who were no less sans peur et sans reproche. For example, certain alumni of Ampleforth College played a prominent role in the wartime development of Britain’s much-vaunted special forces. The founder of the Special Air Service (SAS) was David Stirling, whose cousin and contemporary, Simon Fraser, the fifteenth Lord Lovat, was a leading army commando who was piped ashore on D-Day—as befitted the chief of Clan Fraser. Another contemporary was ⁴² John Keegan, Six Armies in Normandy (London, 1992), pp. 7–9. ⁴³ Dan Cummings, Rest and be Thankful (Newtownards, 2015) p. 193. ⁴⁴ The Tablet, 25 July 1942, p. 45.

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Hugh Dormer of the Special Operations Executive, who undertook successive missions to occupied France while mindful of England’s Catholic martyrs: ‘They were trained at Douai in France to redeem England, as I am being trained in England to redeem France.’⁴⁵ While it is striking that these products of a monastic education should have been so prominent in this buccaneering type of warfare, other distinctions were no less ironic. Between the surrender of Italy in September 1943 and the liberation of Rome the following June, Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, a citizen of neutral Ireland operating from the neutral Vatican, provided an escape route and sanctuary to thousands of Allied prisoners of war and Jewish civilians. Furthermore, and partly because post-Partition Northern Ireland was billed by its first prime minister, Sir James Craig, as ‘a Protestant state’, Northern Irish Catholics continued to enlist in Britain’s armed forces in significant numbers. Indeed, in the early years of the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’, the Catholic Ex-Servicemen’s Association served as ‘an unarmed vigilante organisation set up to protect Catholic areas from loyalist violence’.⁴⁶ Furthermore, it was remarkable (especially in the absence of conscription) that Northern Ireland’s only native winner of the VC in the Second World War was a Catholic—Belfast-born Leading Seaman James Magennis, who earned the award in connection with a midget submarine attack on Japanese shipping in 1945. Although his Catholic and nationalist background caused embarrassment on both sides of Northern Ireland’s political and sectarian divide (and appears to have precluded his being awarded the Freedom of the City of Belfast) a public subscription raised over £3,000 in his honour. However, it was not until 1999, more than a decade after he had died in obscurity in Bradford, that a memorial to Magennis was finally unveiled in the grounds of Belfast’s City Hall. In a telling reflection of the unpredictable trajectory of the Northern Irish peace process, as a Northern Irish Catholic, Magennis has the singular distinction of being honoured with a mural in a staunchly loyalist area of East Belfast (Figure 4.2). The poignant case of James Magennis underlines once again the problematics of Catholic memorialization of military service in the British Isles, even in the decades after the Second World War. While some Catholic parishes and schools installed further memorials (a war memorial chapel was built by John Bunting at Ampleforth in the late 1950s, for example), or simply added to existing ones, Britain’s total military losses were much less than in the First World War—some 271,000, as opposed to 744,000.⁴⁷ Besides the competing post-war challenge of restoring much of the Church’s built infrastructure, enduring long-term factors also inhibited the work of Catholic memorialization: among them further ⁴⁵ Catholic Herald, 13 June 1947, p. 6. ⁴⁶ Harry McCallion, Undercover War: Britain’s Special Forces and their Battle against the IRA (London, 2020), p. 17. ⁴⁷ Peter Howlett (ed.), Fighting with Figures: A Statistical Digest of the Second World War (London, 1995), p. vi.

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Figure 4.2 Mural memorial to James Magennis, VC, in Tullycarnet East Belfast. Photograph courtesy of Reverend Andrew Totten.

immigration from Ireland, the old shibboleths of nationalist politics, the continuing proliferation of Catholic parishes and churches, and (until the Second Vatican Council) the inability to participate in Remembrance services with non-Catholics. Although a scheme for acquiring Fountains Abbey and restoring it ‘as a Benedictine monastery to commemorate Catholics killed in the war’ was put forward in 1946 ‘by a group of prominent Roman Catholics’,⁴⁸ the proposal was opposed by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and resulted in little more than a public controversy in organs ranging from The Times to the Picture Post. A more modest but successful venture, however, was the building of a small memorial church at Wymondham in Norfolk for all those prisoners of war and internees who had died in Japanese captivity in the Far East. Completed in 1952, the church of Our Lady and St Thomas of Canterbury was the brainchild of Malcolm Cowin, a former army chaplain who had distinguished himself in his ministry to fellow prisoners on the Burma Railway, the infamous ‘Railway of Death’. Given the issues and sensitivities that complicated Catholic memorialization, it is perhaps no surprise that the impact of the two world wars on British and Irish Catholics was most famously preserved and mediated in other ways. Although the cult of Willie Doyle seemed to wither on the vine, it appears that the trials and

⁴⁸ Illustrated London News, 9 November 1946, p. 534.

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tribulations of the First World War did much to popularize the cult of Thérèse of Lisieux, ‘The Little Flower’, among British soldiers on the Western Front. These conflicts also stimulated some of the great classics of twentieth-century English literature, notably J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (1954–5), David Jones’s In Parenthesis (1937), and Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945) and Sword of Honour trilogy (1952–61). Converts and vocations were also notable products of both wars—although how many Catholics lapsed in consequence of their military service can only be conjectured. During and after the First World War, breezy estimates counted the number of war-related converts in the tens of thousands, while in 1947 the number of converts from the British Army alone was estimated at 5,000.⁴⁹ If the overall number of conversions is impossible to ascertain (and their causes hard to disaggregate from ‘civilian’ influences, such as the prospect or effect of mixed marriages),⁵⁰ there was some assurance in Catholic circles that the experience of military service helped pave the path to Rome. Significantly, in the Second World War, this apprehension was shared even outside Catholic circles, with the issue being discussed at regular meetings of Church of England bishops at Lambeth Palace. In October 1944, for example, the bishop of Lichfield, fresh from a visit to the Italian Front, noted with satisfaction ‘the effect produced on our men by the poverty, squalor and superstition of the adherents of the Roman Catholic Communion’.⁵¹ However, there was less consoling news in October 1945, when the bishop of Winchester, having returned from the British Army of the Rhine, now occupying the traditionally Catholic areas of north-west Germany, reported that the problem of mixed marriages ‘was a really serious one, as many of our men were becoming Roman Catholics’.⁵² However, if mixed marriages were a perennial source of converts (and a constant bone of contention), there were other, more conspicuous war-related conversions. Siegfried Sassoon—perhaps the most influential of Britain’s First World War poets—was received into the Church in 1957, after a spiritual pilgrimage lasting several decades. A briefer post-war sojourn was that of Leonard Cheshire, VC, the most distinguished pilot in RAF Bomber Command and Britain’s appointed observer at the bombing of Nagasaki. Leonard was received in 1948, and the cause for his canonization (rooted in his intense spirituality and his post-war charitable work) was taken up by the diocese of East Anglia in 2017. If, as at St John’s, Wonersh, a flow into the priesthood of former and less biddable servicemen after the Second World War could prove destabilizing for seminary life, the growing number of unmarried women in Britain’s armed forces between 1939 and 1945 also affected female religious life (as Mangion’s Chapter 13 in this ⁴⁹ Snape, ‘British Catholicism’, p. 336; Martin Dempsey (ed.), The Priest Among the Soldiers (London, 1947), p. 5. ⁵⁰ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Conversions’ table, A8.1. ⁵¹ Lambeth Palace Library, Bishops’ Meetings, XI, f. 406. ⁵² Lambeth Palace Library, Bishops’ Meetings, XII, f. 65.

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volume illuminates). Mother Mary Edmund Campion, formerly Avarina Mary Bodger and a veteran of the Women’s Royal Naval Service, joined the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre OSB (the ‘Tyburn Nuns’) in 1949. Her naval background and sixty-three years with the order eventually earned her the moniker ‘the Rock of Gibraltar’.⁵³ Also among the unknown number of post-war nuns with a military background was Anne Laws, who served on anti-aircraft batteries in England and Belgium as a member of the army’s Auxiliary Territorial Service. Living under canvas, hers was a dreary, semi-itinerant existence of boredom, mud, wind, cold, rain, and hard physical work. Nevertheless, and curiously adumbrating Charles Ryder’s words at the conclusion of Brideshead Revisited, Laws wrote in her diary in the autumn of 1944: ‘It would be difficult not to have some sort of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament because Our Lord draws one so and always seems to remind one of his presence in the different towns one finds oneself in.’⁵⁴

A Troubled ‘Peace’ Although the massive mobilizations of the two world wars naturally dominate the history of Catholic military service in the British Isles, this tradition endured into the Cold War and beyond. In 1958, General Sir Francis Festing earned the distinction of becoming the first practising Catholic to be appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the most senior soldier in the British Army. Furthermore, and to meet the military demands of the early Cold War, and Britain’s retreat from empire, National Service—conscription by another name—was operative from 1949 to 1963 (but, once again, it did not apply to Northern Ireland). Overall, more than 1.6 million young men fulfilled this obligation in years that saw at least a 22 per cent increase in the Catholic population, driven by mixed marriages, high fertility rates and, above all, more than half a million immigrants from the Republic of Ireland.⁵⁵ While such figures suggest that around 8 per cent of National Servicemen were Catholic, even in this nuclear age conscientious objection remained a rarity, with the position of Pax being weakened by Pius XII’s Christmas message of 1956 which stated that, in a democracy, ‘a Catholic citizen cannot invoke his own conscience in order to refuse to serve and fulfil those duties the law imposes’.⁵⁶ Coming hard after Britain’s Suez debacle, but reflecting Cold War tensions heightened by the crushing of the Hungarian Uprising, this statement highlighted the fact that, unusually, the Vatican and Great Britain (a founder ⁵³ The Tablet, 18 February 2012, p. 16. ⁵⁴ Imperial War Museum, Department of Documents, Anne Laws, P347. ⁵⁵ Tom Hickman, The Call-Up (London, 2004), p. 333 n. 13. ⁵⁶ Valerie Flessati, ‘Pax: The History of a Catholic Peace Society in Britain 1936–1971’ (University of Bradford PhD thesis, 1991), II, p. 281.

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member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949) were now very much on the same side. If British Catholics shouldered the burden of National Service with their customary compliance, Catholics from across the British Isles continued to choose the military profession in abnormally large numbers. This fact was of some concern to the archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, who took a strong interest in military affairs. In 1953, for example, Fisher was alerted to the fact that, owing to the recent ‘flow of Irish Doctors’, the RAF’s Medical Branch was now ‘top-heavy with Roman Catholics’. This compounded Anglican concern over Catholic claims to separate chapels, an assertiveness seen (at least by its Anglican chaplain-in-chief) as both cause and effect of the RAF’s constant ‘giving in to the Roman Catholics’.⁵⁷ While the ideological cleavages of the Cold War and the global threat posed by atheistic communism rendered the nagging question of Catholic loyalty all but nugatory, the same could not be said of other military operations undertaken in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In 1990–1, Pope John Paul II was strongly opposed to the use of (UN-sanctioned) force to drive the invading Iraqis out of Kuwait. Nine years earlier, and just as Protestant (and increasingly secular) Britain was bracing itself for its first ever papal visit from the same pontiff, Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands seemed, at least in certain quarters, to resurrect atavistic caricatures of the foreign Catholic bogeyman. Billy Wolfe, the president of the Scottish National Party, who had recently deplored the appointment of a papal nuncio to Great Britain, now protested the papal visit and fulminated in The Scotsman about the necessity of protecting Protestant islanders from ‘the cruel and ruthless fascist dictatorship of a Roman Catholic state’.⁵⁸ Furthermore, there was real concern that the visit might be cancelled to avoid compromising Vatican neutrality. In the event, the visit went ahead, though at the price of a compensatory papal visit to Argentina and with the Pope taking several opportunities to condemn war in general (notably and symbolically in Coventry) and appeal for peace in the South Atlantic. Given the atmospherics of the Falklands conflict, it was remarkable, though perhaps unsurprising, that its most famous religious episode concerned a Catholic officer and the toughest battle in that bloody but undeclared war. Left in command of the Second Battalion of the Parachute Regiment at Goose Green after the death of its commanding officer, Major Chris Keeble (another product of a Benedictine school, namely Douai Abbey) turned for inspiration to the Prayer of Abandonment by the desert mystic and former French cavalry officer, Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916). Galvanized by this profound moment of private prayer, Keeble successfully appealed to their common humanity and Catholic faith in securing the surrender of the Argentine garrison.

⁵⁷ TNA AIR 20/9301.

⁵⁸ Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, p. 434.

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But, by the early 1980s, other currents were unsettling Catholic relations with Britain’s armed forces, though (as ever) the situation was replete with striking ironies. Despite the Vatican’s hostility to communism, just war precepts required an unequivocal response to the advent, use, and further development of nuclear weapons. Pius XII’s reaction to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 prompted even Herbert Hensley Henson, a robustly anti-Catholic former bishop of Durham, to write ‘It is not often that I find myself in agreement with the pronouncements of the Vatican, but I cannot but approve the Pope’s condemnation of the use of this fearful instrument of indiscriminate slaughter and devastation, which we have ourselves employed against Japan.’⁵⁹ While the Catholic Herald and The Tablet joined the chorus of denunciation that summer, which was echoed by Ronald Knox’s warning broadside God and the Atom (1945), the Church’s evolving critique of nuclear weapons was expressed in John XXIII’s encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) and in Pope Paul VI’s impassioned appeal for peace at the UN two years later. Naturally, this fuelled the growth of Pax and Pax Christi, and fostered a broader mood of ‘functional pacifism’ among British Catholics, what George Weigel described as ‘an approach to just war in which it is assumed that the hurdles to be overcome by statesmen are so high that the morally appropriate use of armed force is virtually inconceivable’.⁶⁰ Certainly, this approach was in tension with the cornerstone of British defence policy from the early 1950s, when Britain became ‘the first nation to base its national security strategy planning almost entirely on a declaratory policy of nuclear deterrence’.⁶¹ With the raising of Cold War tensions and the escalation of the nuclear arms race in the early 1980s, this long-term opposition led the Scottish bishops to pronounce in 1982 that ‘if it is immoral to use nuclear weapons it is also immoral to threaten their use’.⁶² These currents also help to explain the emergence of Monsignor Bruce Kent as the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1980.⁶³ Symptomatic of the overt ecumenism of the peace movement and the growing stature of the Catholic Church in Great Britain, Kent’s emergence as the leading clerical figure in a mass peace movement reprised a role previously played by Anglican canons of St Paul’s Cathedral (notably ‘Dick’ Sheppard of the Peace Pledge Union in the 1930s, and John Collins in the early days of CND). It was also suggestive of changing times that Kent was another Stonyhurst alumnus and a former officer in the Royal Tank Regiment.

⁵⁹ Herbert Hensley Henson, Retrospect of an Unimportant Life (London, 1950), III, p. 300. ⁶⁰ George Weigel, ‘The Development of Just War Thinking in the Post-Cold War World: An American Perspective’, in Charles Reed and David Ryall (eds.), The Price of Peace (Cambridge, 2007), p. 25. ⁶¹ Richard Dannatt, Boots on the Ground: Britain and her Army since 1945 (London, 2017), p. 123. ⁶² ‘Catholic Leader Defends Trident Stance’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1169864.stm (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁶³ Bruce Kent, Undiscovered Ends: An Autobiography (London, 1994).

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If the moral dilemmas of the nuclear era helped re-emphasize the Vatican’s perennial capacity to problematize questions of national allegiance—and, potentially at least, to complicate the situation of Catholics in Britain’s armed forces— the unresolved question of Irish nationhood also accentuated the distinctive position of Catholics in the armed forces. Given the driving role of an armed republican insurgency in the Northern Irish ‘Troubles’ of 1968–98, and the widespread identification of militant republicanism with Catholicism (an association which, ever since 1798, was never as close as commonly assumed), the position of Irish Catholics, or Catholics of Irish descent, in the British Army could range from the slightly awkward to the extremely vulnerable. For Catholics in the Ulster Defence Regiment, who initially comprised about a fifth of its part-time soldiers, a combination of Protestant hostility, internment, and a republican (and even loyalist) campaign of intimidation and murder had rendered their position all but untenable by the mid-1970s. While political considerations meant that the deployment of regular Irish regiments to the province was eschewed until the mid-1980s, during the early years of Operation Banner (1969–2007; the longest continuous operation ever undertaken by the British Army) there was also an undercurrent of sectarian tension in some Scottish regiments. While this was partly due to the relatively large number of Catholic officers and soldiers, reflecting the sectarianism then rife in the west of Scotland, the dangerous position of the army’s many Catholic recruits from the island of Ireland was demonstrated as it deployed on the streets of Derry and Belfast in August 1969. Among those who died in the first hours of Operation Banner was Trooper Hugh McCabe of the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, who was shot by the Royal Ulster Constabulary while on leave from Germany. As republican attacks on the army gathered momentum from 1971, the Troubles generated yet more ironies of this kind. The only British Army chaplain to die in the Troubles was Father Gerry Weston, Catholic chaplain of the Parachute Regiment, who was killed in a bomb attack on its Brigade headquarters at Aldershot in February 1972—allegedly in reprisal for the part played by its First Battalion in Derry’s ‘Bloody Sunday’ massacre three weeks before. Appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his earlier liaison work between the army and Catholic estates in the province, republican sources insisted that Weston—and other Catholic chaplains—had been engaged in intelligence-gathering activities. Other Catholics certainly were, no doubt aided by their ability to mix in public religious gatherings. Captain Anthony Pollen of the Coldstream Guards and 14 Intelligence Company, relative and namesake of the Oratorian hero of Jutland, was cornered, shot, and killed while infiltrating a republican Easter parade in Derry in April 1974. A second intelligence officer who was fatally immersed in the murky and murderous world of the Troubles in the 1970s was yet another Amplefordian, Captain Robert Nairac of the Grenadier Guards, who was captured, tortured, and shot by the Provisional IRA while on a covert and unexplained mission in south Armagh in May 1977. Aptly described as

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‘A colourful if somewhat controversial figure’, Nairac was posthumously awarded the George Cross.⁶⁴ Around the turn of the twenty-first century, and even as British society became ever more secular, the religious (or ethno-religious) contexts of British military operations became more—not less—significant. Whether in Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War of 1991 or in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, or Afghanistan over subsequent decades, religious sensitivities, imperatives, and undercurrents were obvious and unavoidable—a reality which, in Afghanistan, heightened the importance of Catholic and other chaplains as interlocutors with local and deeply conservative Muslim communities. In Helmand Province in 2009, for example, Father Stephen Sharkey of the Fourth Battalion of the Rifles was engaged in carefully structured dialogue with a leading mullah and a district governor, both of whom ‘had no idea that Christianity has parallels with the Islamic faith’. This amounted to much more than an elementary, interfaith platitude, being a critical point to stress given Islamist characterizations of a wholly secular and decadent west, and a bitter hatred that was still felt towards the atheistic Soviets.⁶⁵ And, despite Catholic misgivings over the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (that February, the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor joined with the archbishop of Canterbury in challenging its ‘moral legitimacy’),⁶⁶ sharp and unprecedented criticism of a Catholic army chaplain in the Baha Mousa inquiry of 2011, and the drastic thinning of the Church’s civilian ranks in Great Britain and Ireland, Catholics and Catholicism remained conspicuous and even entrenched in the institutional context of Britain’s armed forces. Amidst their growing religious pluralism (a pluralism that Catholics did much to pioneer), these remained attentive to Catholic concerns and interests. General Sir Charles Guthrie, a convert to Catholicism, was appointed Chief of the General Staff (CGS) in 1994 and, three years later, went on to become Chief of the Defence Staff, the most senior professional member of Britain’s armed forces. In 2022, amidst heightened international tensions caused by the invasion of Ukraine, another Catholic, General Sir Patrick Sanders, was appointed CGS, solemnly noting that the British Army must now be prepared to confront Putin’s Russia on the battlefield. Moreover, and despite the very public tensions engendered by the Iraq War, in 2004 the Catholic chapel at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, was rebuilt and consecrated by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. In the same year, military ecumenism took a step forward when the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department abandoned its old bipartite structure and ‘converged [its] Roman Catholic and non-Roman Catholic elements’, with Catholic chaplains now charged with

⁶⁴ A. Edwards, The Northern Ireland Troubles: Operation Banner, 1969–2007 (Oxford, 2014), pp. 49–51. ⁶⁵ S. Sharkey, ‘Chaplain in Conflict’, Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Journal, 49 (2010), p. 16. ⁶⁶ C. Reed, Just War? (London, 2004), p. 112.

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providing ‘spiritual, moral and pastoral support to all’ as well as meeting the ‘spiritual and liturgical needs of their own faith community’.⁶⁷

Conclusion The British and Irish Catholic experience of war from c.1900 to c.2020, especially when studied through the prism of Catholic participation in Britain’s armed forces, throws into relief some key features and dynamics of Catholic history in this period. Though Catholics shared much more fully in British national life, and the relationship between the Church and the British State was generally harmonious and mutually advantageous, Catholic distinctiveness was never entirely erased, nor its problems overcome. This was despite the privileges that Catholicism came to enjoy in Britain’s armed forces, and (indeed) their disproportionately Catholic membership. In part, this was an ethnic and national problem: besides the awkward presence of other nationalities (Germans and Austrians in the First World War; Italians in the Second), the competing claims of Irish nationalism (and, increasingly, Irish republicanism) strained and complicated the allegiances of Irish Catholics throughout the twentieth century. Furthermore, the supranational nature of Catholic religious loyalties surfaced uncomfortably in the First World War, the Second World War, the Falklands Conflict, and even before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, as British Catholics were confronted with pontiffs who were controversially associated with the pursuit of neutrality and peace. Moreover, and despite their general loyalty and often distinguished service, for nearly half a century, and at least until the Second Vatican Council, British Catholics held themselves aloof from the national cult of Remembrance born of the First World War, and from the ecumenical liturgies that came to be associated with it. If the nature and cumulative effects of demographic growth also served to disguise the nature and scale of Catholic military participation in the two world wars, tensions also accumulated during the Cold War, when Catholic teaching on the just war (once an ethical mainstay of Catholic military service) grew increasingly uncomfortable with atomic weapons and the nuclear arms race, propounding a ‘presumption against war’ in the 1980s, and later even morphing into an alternative discourse on ‘just peace’. Nevertheless, and whether reflected in the personal histories of hundreds of thousands of British and Irish Catholics, in the celebrated literary output of J. R. R. Tolkien, David Jones, and Evelyn Waugh, or in the cults of Willie Doyle and (in time?) Leonard Cheshire, the mark that war and the experience of military service had on British and Irish Catholicism in these twelve decades of conflict are unmistakable and warrant much greater recognition and study.

⁶⁷ D. E. Wilkes, ‘Foreword’, Royal Army Chaplains’ Department Journal, 44 (2005), p. 5.

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Select Bibliography Bartlett, Thomas and Keith Jeffery (eds.), A Military History of Ireland (Cambridge, 1996). Burke, Edward, An Army of Tribes: British Army Cohesion, Deviancy and Murder in Northern Ireland (Liverpool, 2018). Flessati, Valerie, ‘Pax: The History of a Catholic Peace Society in Britain 1936–1971’ (University of Bradford PhD thesis, 1991). Gregory, Adrian, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (Oxford, 1994). Hagerty, James, Priests in Uniform: Catholic Chaplains to the British Forces in the First World War (Leominster, 2017). Hagerty, James, No Ordinary Shepherds: Catholic Chaplains to the British Forces in the Second World War (Leominster, 2020). McFarland, Elaine, ‘ “How the Irish Paid Their Debt”: Irish Catholics in Scotland and Voluntary Enlistment, August 1914–July 1915’, Scottish Historical Review, 82 (2003), pp. 261–84. Pereira, Edward, Spencer Jones, and Michael LoCicero (eds.), Catholic General: The Private Wartime Correspondence of Major-General Sir Cecil Edward Pereira, 1914–19 (Warwick, 2020). Snape, Michael, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26 (2002), p. 314–58. Taouk, Youssef, ‘The Guild of the Pope’s Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War’, Recusant History, 29 (2008), pp. 252–71. Tierney, Darren, ‘Catholics and Great War Memorialisation in Scotland’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 37 (2017), pp. 19–51.

5 Marriage, the Family, and Sexual Ethics David Geiringer and Laura Kelly

Questions of marriage, sex, and the family both defined and polarized modern British and Irish Catholicism. Contests surrounding contraception, homosexuality, gender identity, abortion, divorce, and reproductive technologies reshaped the cultural identity of the Catholic Church at various points in the twentieth century, but also served to create, or perhaps reveal, divides within the Catholic community which remain to this day. The Catholic Church in Ireland has traditionally wielded more direct influence on legal, political, and societal attitudes towards sexuality than its counterparts in England, Wales, and Scotland, but, as the recent referendums on marriage equality in 2015 and the eighth amendment (concerning abortion) in 2018 indicate, this appears to have diminished considerably in recent years.¹ Following the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the Catholic ethos influenced governance and legislation in the country surrounding sexuality and reproductive rights. As scholar James Smith has shown, the Catholic Church and the new Irish Free State ‘cooperated increasingly throughout the 1920s as the selfappointed guardians of the nation’s moral climate’.² Northern Ireland, on the other hand, fell within the purview of British legislation. However, as historians like Leanne McCormick have shown, the Catholic and Protestant Churches had a significant impact on the moral climate there, and religious and political groups were united over questions relating to female sexuality.³ The 1980s and early 1990s represented a period of significant backlash towards issues of sexual liberation in the Republic of Ireland, including divisive referendums over abortion (1983, 1992) and divorce (1986, 1995), as well as debates over the liberalization of the law relating to contraception (1985).⁴ Similarly, the Catholic Church in England worked to resist a number of liberalizing reforms in the law relating to sexuality and marriage, notably the ‘permissive’ legislation of the 1960s The authors wish to thank Alana Harris for her insightful commentary throughout the process and Pat Geiringer for her careful proof reading. ¹ Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Catholic Church in Modern Irish Society (Dublin, 1997); and Chrystel Hug, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland (Basingstoke, 1999). ² James M. Smith, ‘The Politics of Sexual Knowledge: The Origins of Ireland’s Containment Culture and the Carrigan Report (1931)’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, 13:2 (2004), p. 208. ³ Leanne McCormick, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2009). ⁴ Diarmaid Ferriter, Ambiguous Republic, Ireland in the 1970s (London, 2012), p. 679. David Geiringer and Laura Kelly, Marriage, the Family, and Sexual Ethics In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0006

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concerning homosexuality (1968), divorce (1969), and abortion (1969). Legislative changes came later to Scotland, for example around divorce (1976) and homosexuality (1980), and the Church hierarchy has tended to be more vociferous in its opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex (LGBTQI) rights—for example through in its support of the Keep the Clause campaign aimed at resisting Holyrood’s repeal of Clause 2A of the Local Government Act (1988) which forbade local authorities from promoting the view that homosexuality was morally equivalent to heterosexual relationships.⁵ Lay Catholic experiences and understandings of sex, marriage, and the family varied greatly depending on age, geographical location, ethnicity, and class throughout the century. Rather than providing an overview which flattens out these complexities and specificities, we explore the major themes and intertwined narratives which constitute the messy and diverse relationship between Catholicism and sexual change in modern Britain and Ireland. Placing the Catholic experience in broader trajectories of sexual and Christian change, scholars such as Callum Brown and Hugh McLeod have argued that Britain’s dominant Christian culture was destroyed in the 1960s by a sudden and abrupt ‘sexual revolution’. While Brown focuses on the Anglican community, Gerard Parsons is of the opinion that ‘the pivotal significance of the 1960s in Christian decline is stressed by placing more emphasis on the Catholic Church.’⁶ In this chapter, we reconsider the extent to which the cultural shifts of the mid-century, notably those relating to sexuality, reproduction, and the body, marked a watershed for modern British and Irish Catholicism.

Marriage and the Family The Catholic community in Britain was steadily expanding in the middle of the century due, in part, to Irish and Continental immigration, but it remained a relatively small percentage of the English population throughout the period. In 1940, 2.23 million Catholics were recorded as regular church goers (4.6 per cent of the national population), 2.43 million in 1950, and 2.85 million by 1960 (5.4 per cent of the population).⁷ In Ireland, Catholic Mass attendance remained high into the late twentieth century, recorded as being at 91 per cent of the population in ⁵ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2000/jan/23/scotlanddevolution.devolution (accessed 20 December 2020). ⁶ Gerard Parsons, ‘How the Times They Are a-Changing: Exploring the Context of Religious Transformation in Britain in the 1960s’, in John Wolffe (ed.), Religion in History: Conflict, Conversion and Coexistence (Manchester, 2004), p. 164. Hugh McLeod, The Religious Crisis of the 1960s (Oxford, 2007), p. 65. ⁷ Callum Brown, Religion and the Demographic Revolution: Women and Secularisation in Canada, Ireland, UK and USA since, the 1960s (Woodbridge, 2012), p. 79; and in this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Mass Attendance Estimates’ table, A1.1.

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1974 and 87 per cent in 1981.⁸ Similarly high rates of religiosity were recorded in Northern Ireland among both Protestants and Catholics, with weekly church attendance in 1968 being over 65 per cent⁹ and probably even higher for Catholics.¹⁰ Over the twentieth century, Ireland experienced long-term population decline, high rates of emigration as well as low rates of marriage and late age of marriage, high marital fertility and a late transition to smaller families.¹¹ Between 1911 and 1946, family size fell by approximately 20 per cent; in 1946, as Mary E. Daly has shown, couples who had been married for thirty to thirty-four years had an average of 4.94 children compared with 6.77 children for couples with marriages of a similar duration in 1911.¹² Nevertheless, when compared with British couples who had been married for a similar duration, Irish couples with marriages of twenty years duration in 1946 had twice as many children as their counterparts in Britain, 4.39 compared to 2.16.¹³ In the 1950s, Ireland’s birth rate was close to the western European average as a result of the unusual combination of a low marriage rate and a very high marital fertility. For instance, in 1961, the figure for legitimate births per married women in Ireland was 195.5 per 1,000; this was almost double the figure in England and Wales (108.3).¹⁴ The number of births in Ireland fell by almost 3 per cent between 1966 and 1968.¹⁵ However, marital fertility in Ireland remained out of line with other western countries where fertility rates were falling sharply.¹⁶ After a slight increase in the marriage rate with the spurt of economic expansion in the 1970s, marriage began to lose popularity in the 1980s and there was a sharp fall in marriage rates with a rise in births outside marriage.¹⁷ This could be attributed to social changes in the 1970s such as the removal of the marriage bar and the legalization of contraception. Sex outside marriage was strongly condemned and there was significant stigma towards ‘promiscuity’, unmarried motherhood, and marriage breakdown in Ireland. A series of governmental reports in the 1920s and 1930s drew attention to perceptions of moral decline in the country and rising rates of illegitimacy.¹⁸ The 1937 Irish Constitution defined women’s role in Irish society as subsidiary to ⁸ Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002), p. 250; and see in this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Frequency of Attendance’ table, A1.3. ⁹ Bernadette C. Hayes and Richard Sinnott, Conflict and Consensus: A Study of Values and Attitudes in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, ed. Tony Fahey (Leiden, 2006), p. 41, cited in Brown, Religion and the Demographic Revolution, p. 82. ¹⁰ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Frequency of Attendance’ table, A1.3. ¹¹ Mary E. Daly, The Slow Failure: Population Decline and Independent Ireland, 1920–1973 (Madison, 2003), p. 4. ¹² Daly, The Slow Failure, p. 122. ¹³ Daly, The Slow Failure. ¹⁴ Mary E. Daly, Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–1973 (Cambridge, 2016), p. 144. ¹⁵ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 144. ¹⁶ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 145. ¹⁷ Finola Kennedy, Cottage to Creche: Family Change in Ireland (Dublin, 2001), p. 24. ¹⁸ Lindsey Earner-Byrne, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin (Manchester, 2007), pp. 176–93.

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the institution of the family. For a woman who found herself pregnant outside of marriage, there were limited options—marriage to the father, emigration to Britain to have the baby in secret and give it up for adoption, or, in the majority of cases, to seek assistance from a mother and baby home. The issue of unmarried women emigrating to Britain to have their babies in secret there, although sometimes in Catholic institutions, caused considerable angst in Ireland, and there were real concerns about the proselytization of Irish children in Britain. This motivated the Irish government to increase the pressure on the Irish Catholic hierarchy to provide better services for unmarried mothers, with the issue increasingly framed as one of moral duty rather than State responsibility. The fate of single women who migrated to Britain also drew the attention of public and moral discourse throughout the twentieth century.¹⁹ Nevertheless, for most of the twentieth century in both countries, marriage between a man and a woman with the aim of producing a family remained a Catholic ideal. The history of the Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (CMAC; later renamed Marriage Care) illuminates the dual trajectories of the Catholic Church’s approach to marriage in post-war England and Wales: a steadfast, perhaps even intensified, commitment to the sanctity of marriage in the context of its diminishing legal and societal status, and an evolution in the modes of communication, lay involvement, and engagement with secular thought when presenting its prescriptions on marital love. The CMAC was founded in 1946 amidst widespread concerns for the decaying institutions of marriage and the family following the Second World War. Established by the lay solicitor Graham J. Graham-Green under the auspices of the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bernard Griffin, the CMAC was supported by a large cohort of mostly lay female counsellors.²⁰ At its initiation, the CMAC offered private counselling for couples and was largely confined to the London area,²¹ and the initial years of the CMAC were characterized by its efforts to categorize and diagnose marriage troubles. In their first year of operation, the CMAC reported 648 applications and ‘reconciliation’ in a third of cases.²² It remained, a ‘small and rather closed organisation’ until the early 1960s when it rapidly transformed into a professional organization endowed with unprecedented pastoral responsibilities.²³ By 1968 it had moved ¹⁹ Jennifer Redmond, ‘ “Sinful Singleness”? Exploring the Discourses on Irish Single Women’s Emigration to England, 1922–1948’, Women’s History Review, 17:3 (2008), pp. 455–76; and Jennifer Redmond, Moving Histories: Irish Women’s Emigration to Britain from Independence to Republic (Liverpool, 2018), pp. 72–130. ²⁰ Alana Harris, ‘Love Divine and Love Sublime: The Catholic Marriage Advisory Council, the Marriage Guidance Movement and the State’, in Alana Harris and Timothy Willem Jones (eds.), Love and Romance in Britain, 1918–1970 (Basingstoke, 2014), p. 188. ²¹ John Marshall, Fifty Years of Marriage Care (London, 1996), p. 5. ²² Harris, ‘Love Divine’, p. 203. ²³ Jane Lewis, ‘Private Counselling versus Public Voice, 1948–68’, in Jane Lewis, David Clark, and David Morgan (eds.), Whom God Hath Joined Together: The Work of Marriage Guidance (London, 1992), p. 74.

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into sex therapy services, sex education, and medical work with fifty-nine centres across Britain.²⁴ The CMAC’s counsellors, laymen and women trained in psychotherapeutic modes of communication, were encouraged to act as the principal distributors of sexual advice to Catholic couples. While some Catholic ‘clients’ found the services somewhat ‘clinical’, and others were frustrated by the counsellors’ obligation to ‘toe the party line’ in areas such as contraception, the ascendency of the CMAC marked a significant reorientation in Catholic understandings of sexual knowledge, marital relations, and therapeutic practice, bringing the Catholic community more in line with the mores and values of wider post-war intimacies.²⁵ The question of formal marriage instruction in Ireland was raised by J. McCarthy in in 1951, who asked whether an institution such as the CMAC ‘would be workable in Ireland?’²⁶ However, the Irish Catholic hierarchy did not make efforts to provide education on family planning or marriage instruction in the same way as bishops in the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands.²⁷ Literature which dealt with sexual themes faced the wrath of the Irish Censorship Board, most famously Edna O’Brien’s The Country Girls trilogy (all three books were banned in 1960, 1962, and 1964). Publications for young persons which began to emerge from the 1950s through the Catholic Truth Society (and often authored by clergy) tended to deal with the morality of sex, dating, and courtship rather than providing basic factual information on the physiology of reproduction.²⁸ It was not until 1962 that the CMAC was established in Ireland, later renamed Accord. By 1976 there were twenty-two centres in the Dublin diocese and thirty-three in the rest of the country.²⁹ Pre-marriage courses usually took place over three sessions, covering a wide range of issues such as money and household chores, love, infertility, methods of family planning (this element usually being delivered by a doctor), sex, parenthood, issues of faith, the marriage ceremony, and family and community.³⁰ Catholic organizations in both Britain and Ireland resisted legal reform around divorce at various points in the twentieth century. From its establishment in 1906, The Catholic Women’s League (CWL) campaigned to enhance the role and status of women in society in a manner which Catriona Beaumont compares to secular feminist and political women’s organizations, but tensions emerged when changes ²⁴ Marshall, Fifty Years, p. 5. ²⁵ David Geiringer, ‘Catholic Understandings of Female Sexuality in 1960s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 28 (2017), pp. 209–38. ²⁶ J. McCarthy, ‘Preparation for Marriage’, Irish Theological Quarterly, 18 (1951), pp. 189–91. ²⁷ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 145. ²⁸ See for instance: T. A. Finnegan, The Boy’s Own: A Practical Booklet for Teenage Boys (Dublin, 1954); and T. A. Finnegan, The Girl’s Own: Questions Young Women Ask (Dublin, 1966); Aidan Mackey, What Is Love: A Guide to Right Attitudes to Love and Sex for Children and Younger Adolescents (Dublin, 1964). ²⁹ ‘Apprenticeship for Marriage’, Irish Press, 30 December 1976, p. 9. ³⁰ P. Gleeson, Helping Engaged Couples: A Guide for Priests (Dublin, 1978).

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in public attitudes led to the liberalization of the law in England and Wales in relation to divorce in 1923 and 1937.³¹ The CWL argued that, as well as dissolving the sanctity of marriage, these reforms would undermine the status of women as housewives, mothers, and citizens. Catholic groups such as the CMAC and CWL marked themselves out from analogous Church of England organizations by supporting the episcopacy and Catholic MPs in vocally protesting the Divorce Reform Act of 1969. The Act not only added further grounds for divorce, but also removed the concept of ‘matrimonial offences’. At the second reading of the Divorce Reform Bill in the House of Lords, the earl of Longford (Frank Pakenham), the self-avowed ‘first Catholic speaker in this debate’ concisely put forward the ‘Catholic position’: ‘ “Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.” If anyone wishes to know what is the Roman Catholic point of view, and a view which is shared by so many other millions of Christians, that is the heart of it’.³² In Ireland, divorce reform was much slower to be introduced and the Catholic responses to reform echoed those that had been voices earlier across the Irish Sea. The Irish Constitution of 1937 forbade the introduction of legislation which would permit divorce, and Catholic annulments were not recognized in civil law.³³ In the mid-1970s, around 800 annual petitions for Church annulments were presented, while civil annulments were less common due to the costs involved.³⁴ By 1981, Church annulments constituted a type of ‘Catholic divorce’ and the number of annulments was claimed to have risen by 2,000 per cent over the previous five years, highlighting a need for the government to consider the introduction of civil divorce.³⁵ The Irish taoiseach (prime minister), Garret FitzGerald, met with the Catholic hierarchy in 1986 who ‘whilst they did not oppose a referendum, [reminded that] their stance on divorce was fixed’, compared to the Protestant churches who also met with FitzGerald and unequivocally supported divorce reform. In April that year, plans for a referendum were made public.³⁶ The anti-divorce campaign in Ireland was led by lay Catholic conservative groups, including members of the pro-life movement, Opus Dei, the League of

³¹ Caitriona Beaumont, ‘Moral Dilemmas and Women’s Rights: the Attitude of the Mothers’ Union and Catholic Women’s League to Divorce, Birth Control and Abortion in England, 1928–1939’, Women’s History Review, 16:4 (2007), pp. 463–85. ³² ‘Divorce Reform Bill’, HL Deb, 30 June 1969, vol. 303 cc332–441, Hansard (accessed online 30 June 2020); see Peter Stanford, The Outcasts’ Outcast: A Biography of Lord Longford (Stroud, 2003), pp. 302–32, and contrast Laura Monica Ramsay, ‘The Church of England, Homosexual Law Reform, and the Shaping of the Permissive Society, 1957–1979’, Journal of British Studies, 57:1 (2018), pp. 108–37. ³³ Kennedy, Cottage to Creche, p. 157. ³⁴ William Duncan, The Case for Divorce in the Irish Republic (Dublin, 1979), pp. 12 and 117, cited in Diane Urqhuart, Irish Divorce: A History (Cambridge, 2020), p. 207. ³⁵ Duncan, The Case for Divorce in Urqhuart, Irish Divorce, p. 210. ³⁶ Duncan, The Case for Divorce in Urqhuart, Irish Divorce, p. 216.

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Decency, the Knights of Columbanus, and the Responsible Society.³⁷ While the Church claimed that it would not intervene on the issue, anti-divorce sermons were common, and the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Dr McNamara, went so far as to compare divorce to the Chernobyl disaster. The hierarchy’s 1986 pastoral, ‘Marriage, the Family and Divorce’, ‘stressed its toleration of separation and spouses living apart but rescinded the claim of rights over all Christian marriages’, and ‘offered no hope of divorce and remarriage’ to Catholics, stressing that the remarriage of a civilly divorced person was ‘not a real marriage in the eyes of God’.³⁸ It seemed the time was not yet ripe for change: 63.3 per cent of voters opposed the amendment which would introduce divorce while 36.3 per cent were in favour. A second referendum held in 1995 passed by 50.28 per cent to 49.72 per cent.³⁹ Evidently, while Catholic opposition to divorce was strong in both jurisdictions, the Catholic bishops and lay Catholic groups arguably had a greater influence in delaying the introduction of legal divorce in Ireland.

Sexualities If, as the journalist Mark Dowd has opined, ‘the tectonic plates of queerdom and the Holy Roman Church nestled uneasily alongside each other’ in twentiethcentury Britain, then a case could be made that these plates shifted more in intrinsic constitution than in relation to one another.⁴⁰ Homosexuality emerged as a key terrain of personal and political transformation in British society, as the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in England in 1968—itself as much a consequence of legal reorientations and party political opportunism as an unadulterated victory for ‘permissiveness’—precipitated campaigns for the wider cultural and social emancipation of same-sex love, as articulated by the Gay Liberation Movement from the 1970s.⁴¹ The Catholic Church, and its approach to heterosexuality, became reconfigured by the integration of lay voices and secular expertise as part of the modernizing spirit of aggiornamento signalled by the Second Vatican Council. The laws and restrictions of the Church’s position on homosexuality, however, underwent little meaningful change: the Catechism of 1951 called for homosexual persons to practice chastity through the ‘virtues selfmastery’. Treating homosexuality in pathological terms became commonplace among Catholic authorities in post-war Britain—the Catholic Medical

³⁷ Duncan, The Case for Divorce in Urqhuart, Irish Divorce, p. 220. ³⁸ Duncan, The Case for Divorce in Urqhuart, Irish Divorce, pp. 221–2. ³⁹ Duncan, The Case for Divorce in Urqhuart, Irish Divorce, p. 233. ⁴⁰ Cited in Stephen Bullivant, Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America Since Vatican II (Oxford, 2019), p. 210. ⁴¹ Lucy Robinson, Gay Men and the Left: How the Personal got Political (Manchester, 2007).

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Association insisted that homosexuality was ‘preventable’ and a symptom of underlying psychological causes.⁴² The English Catholic hierarchy housed a wider variety of theological positions on sexuality from the mid-century, with dissent spearheaded by an educated, middle-class Catholic cabal who worked to interrogate the Church’s traditional teachings on martial love and sexuality. Reporting to the Wolfenden Committee, the body established in 1953 to explore the possibility of legal reform in relation to the sexual offense Act, the Catholic Commission to the Wolfenden Inquiry produced a surprisingly progressive report that endorsed the position of the reformers in advocating for the separation of sin from criminality.⁴³ This report from a panel of lay professionals and theologians, which melded the language of sexology, psychology, and pastoral care with reappraisals of ‘natural law’ was, however, considerably in advance of most of their co-religionists and soon buried by a more conservative archbishop of Westminster. It was not until the 1990s that certain figures within the English Catholic hierarchy worked more concertedly and publicly to temper the hardline language on homosexuality being propagated by the Vatican—notably that produced by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the context of the AIDS crisis.⁴⁴ In 1997, Cardinal Basil Hume issued A Note on the Teaching of the Catholic Church Concerning Homosexuality which stated that the Church recognized the dignity and right to respectful treatment of all people and did not see the ‘objective disorder’ of homosexual people as making them wholly ‘disordered’.⁴⁵ There also existed far more ‘ambivalence, contradiction and disagreement’ over the case for legal reform on homosexuality within the Catholic Church in Scotland than has been widely thought.⁴⁶ Indeed, homosexuality was not decriminalized in Scotland until 1980, thirteen years after the law had been changed in England. Countering histories which attribute Scotland’s exclusion from the Sexual Offences Act (1967) to strong opposition from Scotland’s churches, Jeff Meek draws attention to the contests and contingencies over sexual morality which existed within the structures of the Church. The Scottish Catholic Church played a formative role in the development, and survival, of Scotland’s foremost homosexual rights organization, the Scottish Minority Group, with (English) Catholic priests such as Fr Columba Ryan, OP, speaking at public events and the Church

⁴² Stephen Hunt (ed.), Contemporary Christianity and LGBT Sexualities (Oxford, 2016), p. 3. ⁴³ Alana Harris, ‘ “Pope Norman”, Griffin’s Report and Roman Catholic Reactions to Homosexual Law Reform, 1954–1971’, in Mark Chapman and Dominic Janes (eds.), New Approaches in History and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire (Basingstoke, 2018), pp. 93–116. ⁴⁴ https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_ 19861001_homosexual-persons_lt.html (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁴⁵ Richard Scorer, Betrayed: The English Catholic Church and the Sex Abuse Crisis (Hull, 2014), p. 208. ⁴⁶ Jeff Meek, ‘Scottish Churches, Morality and Homosexual Law Reform, 1957–1980’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 66 (2015), pp. 596–613.

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offering use of its spaces to the group. The scale and legacy of these liberal voices within modern Scottish Catholicism is difficult to discern—with trenchant opposition from the bishops to the Scottish National Party (SNP)’s Health and Wellbeing census plans as part of updating sex education in schools representing the latest fault-line⁴⁷—but they do complicate monolithic models of ‘the Church’s’ stance on sexuality. As the century progressed, Catholics increasingly assumed positions of authority in the various institutions which regulated sexual behaviour, such as medicine, politics, and the law. These were also supported by lay Catholic organizations. For instance, Callum Brown has drawn attention to the work of the London Committee Against Obscenity (LCAO), a Catholic organization formed in 1960.⁴⁸ The apparent intensification of police activity against homosexuality in London during and following the Second World War has been seen to be driven by the ‘devoutly Catholic’ Theobald Mathew’s tenure as director of public prosecutions from 1944.⁴⁹ Patrick Higgins describes Matthews as a ‘high-placed moralist with a very specific axe to grind’ who was anxious to quell a perceived ‘increase in vice’.⁵⁰ However, Matt Houlbrook has complicated the idea that these increased arrests amounted to a ‘witch-hunt’ orchestrated from on high, demonstrating that the intensification of police surveillance did not coincide with Mathews’ appointment but rather followed the Metropolitan Police’s return to peacetime operations.⁵¹ Hostility towards homosexuality ran through almost all the structures of mid-century British society as opposed to be being peculiar to the Catholic community, although that is not to say that homophobia did not take on a specifically Catholic flavour. Prominent Catholic cultural commentators, such as the convert journalist and essayist Malcolm Muggeridge, openly articulated a stream of anti-gay and sexually conservative positions in the 1960s which explicitly appealed to religious moral arguments.⁵² In the Republic of Ireland, the law criminalizing homosexual acts dated to 1861 and many Irish men and women who wanted to live an openly gay life left the country.⁵³ Political action on homosexuality was undertaken by campaigners such as Senator David Norris from the 1970s. Norris took a number of cases to the High Court and Supreme Court in Ireland, ultimately culminating in a 1988 case ⁴⁷ https://www.heraldscotland.com/business_hq/19771165.catholic-bishops-call-scots-ministerswithdraw-pupils-sex-census/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁴⁸ Callum Brown, The Battle for Christian Britain, Sex, Humanists and Secularisation, 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 149–78. ⁴⁹ Matt Houlbrook, Queer London: Perils and Pleasures in the Sexual Metropolis, 1918–1957 (Chicago, IL, 2005), p. 34. ⁵⁰ Patrick Higgins, Heterosexual Dictatorship: Male Homosexuality in Post-war Britain (London, 1996), p. 175. ⁵¹ Houlbrook, Queer London, p. 35. ⁵² David G. Reagles, Searching for God in Britain and Beyond: Reading Letters to Malcolm Muggeridge, 1966–1982 (Montreal, 2021). ⁵³ Diarmaid Ferriter, Occasions of Sin: Sex and Society in Modern Ireland (London, 2012), p. 475.

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in the European Court of Human Rights which led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1993.⁵⁴ During this period, the Irish Catholic Church’s position on homosexuality remained consistent. The 1985 pastoral ‘Love is for Life’ distinguished between homosexual orientation and homosexual acts, suggesting that ‘a person with a homosexual orientation is not thereby a sinner’ but emphasized the teachings of the Vatican that ‘deliberate homosexual acts are objectively and gravely immoral’ and provided significant criticisms of Irish gay rights campaigns. As in Britain, homosexuality was characterized as a disorder needing ‘sympathetic, compassionate and patient pastoral care’.⁵⁵ In 1993, during debates in parliament on the issue of decriminalization, the Church maintained its stance, pronouncing that State law could not change the moral law.⁵⁶ However, in later years, such as during the marriage equality referendum in 2015, which was passed by an overwhelming majority, the Church had a more muted response and did not engage in discussions to the same extent. In Northern Ireland, as Sean Brady has shown, gay men and women were not only caught up in the ‘vagaries of the Troubles’ but had the ‘added dimension of their lives and social being vilified by religious leaders and politicians on both sides of the community divide.’⁵⁷ For instance, campaigns such as ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’, started by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader and Free Presbyterian Church moderator Ian Paisley in the mid-1970s, were given ‘tacit, and sometimes explicit support’ by the Catholic hierarchy in Northern Ireland.⁵⁸ The range of attitudes towards and experiences of homosexuality amongst the Catholic laity remains an elusive and enigmatic subject, not least because of the limited source material available to social historians. Literary scholars have explored the entanglements between Catholicism and the ‘modernist’ movement in the years surrounding the First World War: for Frederick Roden, the crisis of ‘Catholic modernity’ was closely intertwined with the ‘crisis of sexual modernity’.⁵⁹ Radcliffe Hall’s novel The Well of Loneliness (1928)—and the press coverage of its related obscenity trial—has been identified as a key text in the emergence of modern lesbian identity in Britain.⁶⁰ Images of Hall, who was presented in traditionally masculine attire in the popular press, were offset by reports on her conversion to Catholicism in 1912, her and her partner Una Trourbridge’s intense

⁵⁴ Hug, Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland, pp. 201–40. ⁵⁵ https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5276, §126 (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁵⁶ Hug, Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland, p. 225. ⁵⁷ Sean Brady, ‘ “Save Ulster from Sodomy!” Homosexuality in Northern Ireland after 1967’, Cultural and Social History (forthcoming). ⁵⁸ Brady, ‘ “Save Ulster from Sodomy!” ’. ⁵⁹ Lowell Gallagher, Frederick S. Roden, and Patricia Julianna Smith (eds.), Catholic Figures, Queer Narratives (Basingstoke, 2006), pp. 1–19. ⁶⁰ Laura Doan, Fashioning Sapphism: The Origins of a Modern English Lesbian Culture (New York, 2001).

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Catholic devotion including a private audience with Pope Pius X.⁶¹ Her novels were often preoccupied with the Passion of Christ—for as Richard Dellamora observed, ‘the suffering of Christ provided a context for experiencing, troping, and narrativizing the negativities, psychic and social, that accompanied [her] nonconformity’.⁶² While developments in what Michael Hornsby-Smith might term ‘ordinary’ Catholic understandings of homosexuality, that is Catholics without the platforms and privileges enjoyed by a literary elite, may be difficult to trace through the twentieth century with any consistency, data produced by a proliferation of social surveys since the 1960s suggests that significant attitudinal changes occurred in this period.⁶³ An opinion poll undertaken by Gallup in 1963–4 found that 30 per cent of Catholics thought that homosexuals should be punished by law, 28 per cent thought they should be condemned but not punished, and 12 per cent did not know.⁶⁴ Fifty years later, the reframed questions asked by social investigators reflected a paradigmatic shift in the social, legal, and moral frameworks within which homosexuality was understood: a YouGov poll of 2015 found that Catholics had a more liberal attitude towards gay marriage than Protestants, with 50 per cent of Catholics supporting gay marriage, although both groups appeared less accepting on the issue than the public as a whole.⁶⁵ Despite quantitative surveys suggesting a gradual relaxation of attitudes towards sexuality, it is clear that queer men and women ‘who belonged to the Catholic faith faced a particularly fraught challenge in their attempts to recognise both their sexuality and their faith’.⁶⁶

Reproductive Health, Contraception, and Abortion The birth control movement in Britain met staunch opposition from a range of Catholic voices in the period after the First World War. Marie Stopes, who opened the first birth control clinics in 1918 and authored the path-breaking contraceptive manual Married Love (1918), was embroiled in a number of public spats with

⁶¹ Richard Dellamora, ‘The Well of Loneliness and the Catholic Rhetoric of Sexual Dissidence’, in Gallagher, Roden, and Smith (eds.), Catholic Figures, pp. 115–29. ⁶² Dellamora, ‘The Well of Loneliness’, p. 119. ⁶³ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England: Customary Catholicism and Transformations of Religious Authority (Cambridge, 1991), p. 28. ⁶⁴ Ben Clements, ‘Roman Catholics’ Attitudes towards Homosexuality’, http://www.brin.ac. uk/roman-catholics-attitudes-towards-homosexuality/ (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁶⁵ Ben Clements and Stephen Bullivant, ‘To Conscience First, and to the Pope (Long) Afterwards? British Catholics and their Attitudes towards Morality and Structural Issues Concerning the Catholic Church’, Review of Religious Research, 63 (2021), 583–606. ⁶⁶ Jeff Meek, Queer Voices in Post-War Scotland: Male Homosexuality, Religion and Society, (London, 2015), p. 154.

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Catholic commentators.⁶⁷ The most prominent confrontation was with the Catholic doctor Halliday Sutherland following the publication of his book, Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the Neo-Malthusians (1922), in which Sutherland accused Stopes of propagating a eugenic ideology.⁶⁸ In a forthright, and at times personal, attack on Stopes and her contraceptive campaign, Sutherland protested against what he viewed as the coercive and morally corrosive influence of birth control on the working classes.⁶⁹ The book led to a series of embittered libel cases between Stopes and Sutherland which were widely reported in the national press. Catholic figures such as Sutherland, and the first female chief medical officer of the London County Council, Letitia Fairfield, offered critical interventions in interwar contests around sex, reproduction, and the body, establishing Catholicism as a source of resistance against the unfolding ‘sexual modernity’.⁷⁰ Catholic opposition to birth control couched against the growing popularity of ‘eugenic’ ideals first found its public expression in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Casti Connubii (1930). Casti Connubii was a response to the Lambeth Conference of the Anglican Church in the same year which had approved the use of artificial birth control in certain circumstances. While the encyclical is often regarded as an expression of religious objection to the growing popularity of eugenics, it was as much as an articulation of changing theologies of Catholic marriage as a response to the social engineering of populations.⁷¹ The encyclical marked a new phase in a bitter contest over the nature, purpose, and practice of martial sexuality which was to reshape the composition of the Catholic communion in the following decades.⁷² Following developments in the techniques and efficacy of a birth regulation approach known as the ‘rhythm’ method, Pope Pius XII officially endorsed the practice of natural family planning (NFP) in 1951.⁷³ The method involved calculating the fertility of the wife, either by charting temperature and/or mucus consistency, and then abstaining from sex in the ‘unsafe’ periods of ovulation. While the method was advertised as providing a holistic and mutual enhancement of marital relations which avoided the intrusion of foreign apparatus into the sex

⁶⁷ Marie Carmichael Stopes, Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution to Sexual Difficulties (London, 1918). ⁶⁸ Lesley Hall, ‘ “The Subject Is Obscene: No Lady Would Dream of Alluding to It”: Marie Stopes and Her Courtroom Dramas’, Women’s History Review, 22:2 (2013), pp. 253–66. ⁶⁹ Halliday Sutherland, Birth Control: A Statement of Christian Doctrine against the NeoMalthusians (London, 1922), pp. 101–2. ⁷⁰ Alana Harris, ‘Reframing the “Laws of Life”: Catholic Doctors, Natural Law and the Evolution of Catholic Sexology in Interwar Britain’, Contemporary British History, 34:4 (2020), pp. 529–54. ⁷¹ Etienne Lepicard, ‘Eugenics and Roman Catholicism: An Encyclical Letter in Context. Casti connubii, December 31, 1930’, Science in Context, 11:3–4 (1998), pp. 527–44. ⁷² Lucia Pozzi, The Catholic Church and Modern Sexual Knowledge (London, 2021). ⁷³ See Pius XII, ‘Address to Midwives on the Nature of their Profession’, 29 October 1951, https:// www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12midwives.htm (accessed 20 December 2021).

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act, in practice many Catholics struggled with the physical and emotional demands it made on them, as articulated by one oral history interviewee: So it [NFP] sort of affected our relationship, inevitably. And we’ve . . . [breaks into tears] it’s been a great sorrow really, a sorrow about what might have been, because when you were in bed together, and you want to have sex and you can’t have sex, I mean that for . . . but then you, or certainly we, moved to a stage when it’s easier to cope with if you don’t get close, and you want sex, it’s a selfprotection, you know.⁷⁴

The psychological burdens of NFP were heightened by uncertainties around the efficiency of the method: unexpected pregnancies, or at least the perennial fear of them, caused anxiety in the marital bedroom. As the Catholic author David Lodge said of his own experience of the method, ‘Rhythm’ or the “Safe Method”— perhaps better characterized as ‘Vatican roulette’—‘was in practice neither rhythmical nor safe, and therefore a cause of considerable stress’.⁷⁵ In Ireland, the situation was markedly different as contraception had been banned by law in 1935. For many couples, advice on the ‘safe period’ was limited to middle-class couples who had access to manuals or a sympathetic doctor.⁷⁶ In Northern Ireland, although contraception was never illegal, it was ‘not embraced in any meaningful way by either citizens or state prior to the 1970s’, but even from then, the completed family size in Northern Ireland remained higher than in the rest of the UK.⁷⁷ The introduction of the contraceptive pill in Britain in 1961 was heralded as the answer to many Catholic bedtime prayers, not least because it appeared to replicate the ‘natural’ processes of the human body and therefore seemed likely to be doctrinally acceptable within the strictures of ‘natural law’. Expectations that the Vatican would officially endorse use of the pill were fortified by the leaked report of a secretive Papal Commission for Birth Control in 1966 which suggested that the Church should relax its traditional opposition to ‘artificial’ means. In Ireland, Catholic couples and doctors eagerly awaited a decision from the pope and hoped that the pill would be permitted. Indicative of such views was the response of a 24-year-old woman who was expecting her third child, interviewed by Dorine Rohan in 1967. Rohan asked the women if she would use the pill or any form of contraceptive if the Church allowed it, or whether she would use it without the Church’s permission. The woman explained, ‘Well, we’d rather have

⁷⁴ David Geiringer, The Pope and the Pill: Sex, Catholicism and Women in Post-war England (Manchester, 2019), p. 131. ⁷⁵ ‘Afterword’, in David Lodge, The British Museum Is Falling Down (London, [1965], 2011), p. 168. ⁷⁶ Daly, Sixties Ireland, p. 145. ⁷⁷ Lindsay Earner-Byrne and Diane Urqhart, The Irish Abortion Journey (London, 2019), pp. 64–6.

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the permission. I wouldn’t like to have to give up my religion.’⁷⁸ Irish doctors were also placed in a difficult position. Speaking in 1968, Dr Kieran O’Driscoll, who ran a family planning clinic at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin which provided advice exclusively on the ‘safe period’, explained how many of his patients rejected advice on the safe period and instead sought out the pill elsewhere, and also discussed the predicament of conscience that many doctors were placed in. O’Driscoll hoped ‘that clear guidance will not be much longer delayed’.⁷⁹ It was this sense of anticipation which made Pope Paul VI’s encyclical letter Humanae Vitae (1968), with its rejection of the Commission’s suggestion and reassertion of the ‘intrinsically evil’ status of contraception, all the more shocking to many Catholic and non-Catholic observers in both countries. In an attempt to assuage the heated dissent and stem the steady flow of disaffiliation in the immediate aftermath of Humanae Vitae, Cardinal Heenan appeared on ITV in an interview with David Frost and reiterated that the encyclical had not been classed ‘infallible’ and that individual conscience should prevail in the minds of the Catholic couples.⁸⁰ But there was little hope of dampening the impact of this pronouncement jarring with wider public sentiment; as the archbishop of Westminster wryly admitted in a private conversation with the then-chairman of the CMAC Professor John Marshall, ‘the people have already made up their minds’.⁸¹ State law enforced Church teaching in the Republic of Ireland however, and as Peter Murray has noted, ‘it was around the law rather than the teaching that debate revolved once the initial impact of Humanae Vitae has been absorbed.’⁸² The Church hierarchy in Ireland reiterated the Pope’s views on the issue and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid described the encyclical ‘as an essential document which set forth once again the teaching of the Church’.⁸³ Some went further in their condemnation, such as the bishop of Galway, Revd Dr Michael Browne, who wrote of the potential side effects of the pill and recalled the thalidomide disaster as an example of a pill being put on sale without adequate research into its side effects.⁸⁴ Father James Good was one of the few outspoken Catholic voices on this issue in Ireland. In a piece published in The Tablet he stated that ‘the reaction from the married laity shows that the ideal of Humanae Vitae cannot be translated into real life as it stands’, and that for ‘the normal couple the alternatives of abstinence or continued procreation are totally ⁷⁸ ‘Marriage Irish style’, Irish Times, 24 November 1967, p. 10. ⁷⁹ ‘Ireland: Anticipating the Pope’, The Tablet, 20 May 1967, p. 566. ⁸⁰ Alana Harris, ‘ “A Galileo-Crisis Not a Luther Crisis”? English Catholic’s Attitudes to Contraception”, in Alana Harris (ed.), The Schism of ’68: Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–1975 (Oxford, 2018), p. 82. ⁸¹ Interview in author’s possession with Professor John Marshall, chairman of the CMAC, 12 May 2011. ⁸² Peter Murray, ‘The Best News Ireland Ever Got? Humanae Vitae’s Reception on the Pope’s Green Island’, in Harris (ed.), The Schism of ’68, p. 292. ⁸³ ‘The Encyclical: First Catholic Reactions’, The Tablet, 3 August 1968, p. 766. ⁸⁴ ‘Galway Hears Its Bishop’, Irish Times, 5 August 1968, p. 11.

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impracticable’.⁸⁵ Discussions of the issue in popular women’s magazine, Woman’s Way, highlighted the disappointment felt by many Irish women in the wake of the encyclical, and the stresses and strains placed on Irish mothers who wanted to abide by Church teachings.⁸⁶ The Church’s condemnation of birth control ran against both the spirit of youthful radicalism which was sweeping across European cities and the tide of permissive legislation being passed in Britain during the late 1960s.⁸⁷ The Abortion Act (1967), which legalized abortion on a wide number of grounds in Britain (but not Northern Ireland), was a key component of this permissive moment. The passage of the Act found more opposition from individual Catholic MPs, doctors, and societies than it did the clerical hierarchy. Catholic (and gay) MP Norman St John Stevas, who campaigned in favour of the decriminalization of homosexuality and in favour of liberalizing the Church’s stance on contraception, aligned with traditional teaching on this issue and appealed to all Catholics, particularly Catholic women’s societies, to do all they could to defeat this ‘shocking Bill’.⁸⁸ But the Catholic hierarchy in England remained silent on the matter, a decision which seems all the more surprising considering the relatively consistent support for the Church’s teaching amongst the laity throughout the century. Sociologists of Catholicism such as Hornsby-Smith concluded that ‘strict orthodoxy’ on the issue of abortion, unlike many other aspects of sexual morality, was widely viewed as being the ‘key indicator of Catholic loyalty’.⁸⁹ In Ireland and Northern Ireland, significant numbers of women seeking abortions travelled to the UK from 1967 onwards. From the 1970s in light of public discussion of the abortion issue and an acknowledgement of this trend, the Catholic Church in Ireland began to adopt a more sympathetic attitude to unmarried mothers, which may be seen through the establishment of Church affiliated pro-life crisis pregnancy agency CURA in 1977. Nevertheless, the Catholic hierarchy in Ireland continued to emphasize the Church’s line on contraception in the wake of continuing debates on its legalization. In their 1969 Lenten pastoral ‘Christian Marriage’, the Irish bishops emphasized the importance of sexual morality and virginity, as well as arguing against divorce and artificial contraception.⁹⁰ Two years later, in response to increasing public discussion of the issue of contraception and the activities of legislators such

⁸⁵ James Good, ‘Humanae Vitae: A Platonic Document’, The Tablet, 19 April 1969, pp. 386–7. ⁸⁶ Laura Kelly, ‘Debates on Family Planning and the Contraceptive Pill in the Irish Magazine Woman’s Way, 1963–1973’, Women’s History Review, 30:6 (2020), pp. 971–89. ⁸⁷ Jeff Weeks, Sex Politics and Society: The Regulations of Sexuality since 1800, 4th edn (Oxford, 2014). ⁸⁸ Olivia Dee, The Anti-Abortion Movement in England 1966–1989 (New York, 2019). ⁸⁹ Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England, p. 85. ⁹⁰ https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=3703 (accessed 22 December 2021).

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as Senator Mary Robinson who were attempting to have the law liberalized,⁹¹ Archbishop McQuaid published a pastoral on the issue of contraception which was also read at every Sunday Mass in the Dublin diocese. The pastoral declared that if legislation was passed allowing contraception, it would be ‘an insult to our Faith; it would, without question, prove to be gravely damaging to morality, private and public; it would be and would remain a curse upon our country.’⁹² In McQuaid’s view, the legalization of contraception would also potentially result in the negative social consequences he diagnosed in other developed, European countries. Women’s liberation groups on the other hand, argued that the legalization of contraception would allow women to have fuller control of their lives and better economic opportunities.⁹³ Information on family planning remained largely limited to the middle classes and individuals with the means to attend urban-based private family planning clinics. In order to address this, and as a result of their concerns about the side effects of artificial contraception, the National Association of the Ovulation Method of Ireland (NAOMI), a lay organization comprised of female counsellors working on a voluntary basis was founded in 1970 and provided information on the Billings Method, later becoming involved in CMAC pre-marriage courses. Campaigners such as the conservative Catholic group, the Irish Family League, founded in 1973, were active in supporting the Church’s teachings, arguing that the legalization of contraception would lead to the introduction of legal abortion.⁹⁴ The Lenten pastoral ‘Human Life is Sacred’ (1975) argued strongly against abortion, as well as emphasizing again its views on artificial contraception. Natural birth control methods were deemed the only acceptable forms of family planning, and the pastoral claimed that contraceptive pills and intra-uterine devices were ‘in fact primarily abortifacients’.⁹⁵ The Family Planning Act, introduced in 1979, legalized contraception for bona fide family planning purposes only, with this being widely interpreted as meaning that contraception was only available to married couples. The Act also provided funding for research into NFP. In a statement issued in response to the legislation, Irish bishops stated that legal change ‘does not alter the morality of contraception’ which they viewed as ‘contrary to God’s design for the expression of married love and the transmission of human life’. Catholic couples were encouraged instead to inform themselves on

⁹¹ Mary Robinson, Everybody Matters: A Memoir (London, 2013). ⁹² ‘Alteration of Law Would Be “a Curse upon Our Country”: Archbishop’s Pastoral’, Irish Times, 29 March 1971, p. 11. ⁹³ Laura Kelly, ‘The Contraceptive Pill in Ireland c.1964–79: Activism, Women and Patient–Doctor Relationships’, Medical History, 64:2 (2020), pp. 209–14. ⁹⁴ Kelly, ‘The Contraceptive Pill’, pp. 214–17. ⁹⁵ Human Life is Sacred: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops (Dublin, 1975), pp. 56–7, https://www. catholicbishops.ie/1975/05/01/human-life-is-sacred/ (accessed 20 December 2021).

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NFP methods.⁹⁶ Pre-marital sex, casual sexual relationships, and pregnancies outside of marriage were described as being ‘against God’s laws of love’.⁹⁷ Following the legalization of contraception in Ireland, the abortion question came to the fore. Pro-life groups such as the Pro-Life Amendment Campaign emerged who campaigned vigorously to ensure that a referendum on the issue was held. The ensuing referendum on the introduction of the eighth amendment to the constitution occurred in 1983, with over 66 per cent of votes in favour of the eighth amendment which effectively made abortion illegal in the country. This was repealed in May 2018 following a public referendum where the public voted overwhelmingly in favour of repeal. In Northern Ireland, there was not the same arena for public discussion of the abortion issue and no referendums were held.⁹⁸ The Offences Against the Person Act of 1861 remained in situ there and abortion was only available in strict medical circumstances, with similar levels of stigma and shame attached to the issue as in the Republic.⁹⁹ Paralleling their opposition to homosexuality, Northern Ireland church leaders across religious denominations and political parties have been united in their opposition to the legalization of abortion. Abortion was eventually decriminalized in Northern Ireland in October 2019, following the culmination of decades of campaigning for law reform.¹⁰⁰ Against the backdrop of these issues and framed by the conservative biopolitics of John Paul II’s papacy, the development of successful and accessible in vitro fertilization (IVF) technology in the late 1970s prompted the English Catholic Church to engage more directly in debates surrounding reproductive technology.¹⁰¹ The Catholic Bishops’ Joint Committee on Bioethical Issues submitted a report to the Warnock Inquiry (1983) which reasserted the bishop’s support of ‘justice-based legislative protection of innocent human life’ and set out a Catholic moral case against artificial insemination, stating that there could be no toleration of embryo experimentation, storage, or selection, interventions that would, it argued, ‘facilitate dominative and manipulative attitudes towards human life, compromising human dignity, thwarting justice, and engendering an instrumentalist approach to human reproduction’.¹⁰² There were some rare but ⁹⁶ ‘Ireland: Catholic View on Family Planning Act’, The Tablet, 8 November 1980, p. 1107. ⁹⁷ Love Is for Life: Pastoral Letter of the Irish Bishops (Dublin, 1985), https://www.catholicculture. org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=5276#II9 (accessed 20 December 2021). ⁹⁸ Earner-Byrne and Urquhart, The Irish Abortion Journey, p. 7. ⁹⁹ Earner-Byrne and Urquhart, The Irish Abortion Journey, p. 88. ¹⁰⁰ Sally Sheldon, Jane O’Neill, Clare Parker, and Gayle Davis, ‘ “Too Much, Too Indigestible, Too Fast?” The Decades of Struggle for Abortion Law Reform in Northern Ireland’, Modern Law Review, 83:4 (2020), pp. 761–96. ¹⁰¹ John Wilson, Abortion, Reproductive Technology, and Euthanasia: Post-Conciliar Responses from within the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales 1965–2000 (University of Durham PhD thesis, 2003). ¹⁰² Catholic Bishops’ Joint Committee on Bio-Ethical Issues, In Vitro Fertilisation: Morality and Public Policy (London, 1983), pp. 8–9.

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significant divergences within the clerical community—the British Jesuit John Mahoney responded positively to the first IVF birth and openly questioned the prohibitive argumentation traditionally employed in Catholic teaching. While conscious of fertility technology’s ‘eugenic potential’, Mahoney, SJ, argued that the qualities of a loving married relationship and desire for a child should be prioritized over physiological correctness.¹⁰³ In Ireland, the first IVF baby was born in 1986 at Professor Robert Harrison’s clinic at St James’ Hospital, Dublin. That same year, the Irish bishops produced a statement on IVF in which they set out their key concerns over the destruction of the embryo and the dehumanization of the generation of life.¹⁰⁴ A more detailed statement on the issue was published in 2000, again focused on concerns around technology and the destruction of embryos, but focused on three principles—the right to life and bodily integrity, the right to an identity of origin, and the essential meaning of human sexuality.¹⁰⁵

Conclusion In this chapter, we have outlined the development of Catholic teachings and practices relating to marriage and the family, sexualities, and reproductive health in Britain and Ireland in the twentieth century, but there remains a number of underexplored areas and fields for fruitful further enquiry. Studies of the relationship between Catholicism and homosexuality tend to focus on gay men, with little research on lesbianism and Catholicism.¹⁰⁶ More work on the experiences of LGBTQI Catholics and Catholic experiences of IVF is needed across all jurisdictions.¹⁰⁷ Finally, there is undoubtedly scope for more research on how Catholic teachings and faith impacted on ‘ordinary’ people’s experiences of sexuality, marriage, and reproductive health, particularly in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. While sexual ethics and the body were viewed as sites for doctrinal scrutiny within Catholicism during the twentieth century, these debates have been somewhat put to bed in the twenty-first century: Pope Francis’ call to move on from the Church’s preoccupation with questions of sexual ethics may have been welcomed ¹⁰³ John Mahoney, ‘A Further Study of the Ethics of Human Genetic Development: The Future of Man—Laboratory Reproduction of a Child and the Cloning of a Human Being’, The Month, 12:11 (1979), pp. 293–8. ¹⁰⁴ ‘Irish Catholic Bishops Commission for Doctrine, “In Vitro Fertilisation” ’, The Furrow, 37 (1986), pp. 197–200, cited in Padraig Corkery, ‘Bio-Ethics and Contemporary Irish Moral Discourse’, in Amelia Fleming (ed.), Contemporary Irish Moral Discourse (Dublin, 2007), p. 29. ¹⁰⁵ Corkery, ‘Bio-Ethics’, pp. 29–31. ¹⁰⁶ Kathryn Lamontagne, ‘Unconventional Religiosity: Modes of Lay Catholic Womanhood in Britain, c.1880–c.1920’ (Unpublished PhD, Boston University, 2020). ¹⁰⁷ Tinne Claes and Yuliya Hilevych, ‘Aiding Marital Childlessness: Christian Religious Responses to Husband and Donor Insemination in Belgium and Britain, 1940–1980’, Journal of Religious History, 46:3 (2022), pp. 503–25.

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by ‘liberal’ Catholics in Britain and Ireland, but this rhetoric has also served to close the door to meaningful doctrinal development.¹⁰⁸ The laity in Britain have, for the most part, taken matters into their own hands, practising a form of religiosity which has been described as ‘pick and mix’ or ‘a la carte’ Catholicism. The splintering of Catholic attitudes and behaviours around sexuality in the postconciliar era has been framed as sign and symptom of ‘secularization’; but rather than a dilution of theological integrity, or an accession to the corrupting influences of secular modernity, these changes might be understood as a set of transformations in personal and collective religiosity. The question we should ask about the emergence of ‘heterodox’, ‘liberal’, and diverse beliefs and practices around sexuality within the mainly lay, but also strands of the clerical, Catholic community, is not the extent to which they precipitated a ‘mass exodus’, but the extent to which they ensured the survival of Catholicism in an increasingly fragmented late modernity.¹⁰⁹ Moreover, the recent development of app technologies which monitor fertility cycles has promoted a reappraisal of NFP, traditionally regarded as the ‘Catholic method’, amongst non-Catholic couples seeking an alternative to hormonal contraception. These and other developments—including Pope Francis’ re-engagement with John Paul II’s Theology of the Body when discussing LGBTQI rights—suggest that we need to rethink how certain practices are attached to Catholicism, as well as particular times, places, and papacies.¹¹⁰ The unhelpful tendency within the contemporary media to bundle up these changes in sexual morality with the ongoing scandal of the clerical sex abuse crisis, explored in this volume in Chapter 15 by Daly and Pound, underlines the need for more sustained and historically orientated scholarship to disentangle the ways that marriage (or celibacy), sex, and sexual orientation, alongside constructions of the family as the ‘domestic church’ and critiques of ‘gender ideology’ continue to define and polarize modern British and Irish Catholicism.

Select Bibliography Brown, Callum, The Battle for Christian Britain, Sex, Humanists and Secularisation, 1945–1980 (Cambridge, 2019). Earner-Byrne, Lindsey, Mother and Child: Maternity and Child Welfare in Dublin (Manchester, 2007).

¹⁰⁸ Richard A. Spinello, ‘Pope Francis’ Candid Views of Sexual Morality’, Crisis Magazine, 12 February 2019, https://www.crisismagazine.com/2019/pope-franciss-candid-views-on-sexual-morality (accessed 22 December 2021); and Jorge A. Aquino, ‘No Queer Aggiornamento this Time: Resubscribing to the Philosophy of Natural Law, Pope Francis Forecloses Reforms of Catholic Teaching on Sexuality’, Politics and Religion Journal, 11:2 (2017), pp. 217–32. ¹⁰⁹ Bullivant, Mass Exodus, p. 102. ¹¹⁰ Gerard Loughlin, ‘Catholic Homophobia’, Theology, 121 (2018), pp. 188–96.

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Harris, Alana, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945–82 (Manchester, 2013). Harris, Alana (ed.), The Schism of ’68: Catholicism, Contraception and Humanae Vitae in Europe, 1945–75 (London, 2018). Hug, Chrystel, The Politics of Sexual Morality in Ireland (Basingstoke, 1999). Inglis, Tom, Moral Monopoly: The Catholic Church in Modern Irish Society (Dublin, 1997). McCormick, Leanne, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2009). Meek, Jeff, ‘Scottish Churches, Morality and Homosexual Law Reform, 1957–1980’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 66:3 (2015), pp. 596–613.

6 Catholic Education in Britain and Ireland Stephen G. Parker

The first Catholic school I attended was the Notre Dame Convent in Glasgow . . . [At St Thomas’s, Muirkirk, where I was evacuated] the headmistress, probably in her early thirties, wielded a leather strap viciously on occasion . . . while the grandchildren of a higher-class English lady were inevitably excused. I suspect that lower-class, Irish recalcitrant children were perceived by teachers as needing to be beaten into submission . . . [even so] I have fond memories of my school years . . . I also learned to love the Catholic Church and its teaching. In this respect, I obtained a much better grounding than my own children.¹ It is possible to trace the history of Catholic education in Britain and Ireland through remembered experiences of it. The Catholic memoirs of those born in early- to mid-twentieth-century Britain and Ireland—as typified in the epigraph— present a paradoxical mix of ubiquitous physical brutality and retrospective gratitude for religious formation and discipline. The harsh regimen of religious instruction of such memoirs do little to invite a cosy view of Catholic childhoods,² yet for many it remained possible to value the stringencies of religious socialization, an immersive devotional culture and the rote learning of doctrinal formularies. The educational austerities experienced by children educated from the beginning to the middle of the twentieth century were in the context of a Church still culturally marginalized, fearful of the encroaching welfare State and worried that a well-educated, healthy, and leisured Catholic population would be distracted from

The author thanks Dr Marie Rowlands for conversations early on, which helped to scope the chapter, and to Professor V. A. McClelland for his correspondence on education in the post-Vatican II context, alongside Timothy Kinnear for essential research assistance and archival digitization. ¹ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Reflections on a Catholic Life (Peterborough, 2010), pp. 52–4, 63. ² For example, Peter O’Brien, Evacuation Stations: Memoir of a Boyhood in Wartime England (London, 2012), pp. 263–83. Stephen G. Parker, Catholic Education in Britain and Ireland In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0007

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religious obligation.³ Such fears may have been well founded, as 1960s sociologists discovered educated Catholics describing parish life as ‘irrelevant’,⁴ and clergy lamented youth lost to the faith.⁵ Perennial anxieties about young people ‘lapsing’ led to redoubled resorts to austere religious rigours and prompted church leaders to prioritize formation to safeguard later conformity. In effect, the anxieties of a ‘fortress church’ uncertain of its place in wider society were inflicted upon children’s bodies through the disciplines meted out in multiple educational settings. Biographers such as Hornsby-Smith are perhaps unrepresentative of the wider cohort of working-class Catholics in Britain and Ireland, who did not acquire theological frameworks to reflect upon the severities of their experience and process these emotional legacies from a distance. Even so, in the absence of focused oral histories, such published retrospectives provide a lens through which to view the pre-conciliar Catholic educational experience. Although these physical and spiritual rigours—even penitential settings—were gradually transformed after the Second Vatican Council, what remains constant is the absolute priority given to Catholic schooling. These institutions retained a pivotal place in efforts to perpetuate the Catholic faith, to maintain a visible Catholic presence in society, and to differentiate the Church from others within a State-maintained education system. As the committed educationalist Archbishop George Beck of Liverpool opined, Catholic education was not to shore up Catholicism against the world, but rather to bring faith to bear upon it.⁶ In this sense, Catholic education’s relative health and remarkable endurance across the period could be deemed a marker of success. This chapter deals with education in a necessarily selective, thematic, and partial way, focused on State-maintained Catholic schooling, and it is only able to point to some other features of the history of education in this period. All meritworthy but beyond the remit of this discussion are the histories of independent Catholic schools,⁷ the history of Catholic higher education and chaplaincies and the history of the Catholic Education Service. The relative dearth of historiography has been noted for some time,⁸ but various educational fields still await systematic analysis. Moreover, there are methodological challenges in dealing comparatively with Britain and Ireland. The five educational jurisdictions ³ Joan Keating, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility, 1945-62’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), pp. 86–108. ⁴ Joan Brothers, Church and School: A Study of the Impact of Education on Religion (Liverpool, 1964), p. 159. ⁵ Brothers, Church and School, p. 160. ⁶ V. Alan McClelland, ‘Education (Gravissimum Educationis)’, in Adrian Hastings (ed), Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After (Oxford, 1991), p. 174. ⁷ Anthony Marrett-Crosby, A School of the Lord’s Service, a History of Ampleforth (London, 2002); T. E. Muir, Stonyhurst, 1593–1993 (London, 1992); Dominic Aidan Bellinger, Downside: A Pictorial History (Bath, 1998). ⁸ James Arthur, The Ebbing Tide: Policy and Principles of Catholic Education (Leominster, 1995), p. 5.

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(Northern Ireland was disaggregated after partition) of Britain and Ireland have never had identical de jure Church-State foundations. Added to this complexity, implementation of educational policy has been handled differently, even at diocesan and parochial levels, albeit that the Catholic hierarchies regularly attempted to present a unified front in such matters.⁹ In reality, the episcopacy had to accept that their influence over education was limited. Potent agency lay either in the hands of the religious orders, who established and ran schools, or with the parish clergy.¹⁰ The dispersed nature of diocesan specific archives make synoptic studies of the cross-jurisdictional picture highly challenging and, for present purposes, only partially achievable. This chapter therefore provides a synthesis of the extant historiography, usually emanating from Catholic scholars, alongside some key published sources—all of which should be a stimulus to more sustained research. These caveats aside, this chapter traces shifts in education policy and the effects of major educational legislation within each jurisdiction. It diagnoses a valorization of a holistic approach to children’s religious education as mediated by the Catholic school and the triadic unity of home, church, and parish as the mechanism for religious formation. The chapter explores Catholics’ concern to improve the content of catechesis in sodalities and classrooms, anxieties about the training of Catholic teachers, and the creation of colleges and qualifications to professionalize Catholic education. Some of these issues are demonstrated by means of a case study of the pre-eminent catechist, Fr Francis Drinkwater, in an attempt to centre considerations of ‘faith’ alongside structural discussions of educational policy development.¹¹ Moreover, it argues that Catholic’s continued commitment to State-funded education (including selective withdrawal from key elements) influenced the curricula, pedagogy, and educational aspirations of the wider school sector. As was the case with the Church of England, Catholicism was strongly implicated in the evolution of elementary and secondary educational systems, even if the influence of Catholicism is subtly and contrastingly different to that of the Established Church.¹² The chapter concludes by considering contemporaneous challenges for Catholic education—including growing religious pluralism as well as the ongoing fallout (especially for independent schools) from the abuse crisis—all of which suggest an uncertain future for it across both islands into the twenty-first century.

⁹ Maurice Whitehead, ‘A View from the Bridge: the Catholic School’, in V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts (eds.), From without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000 (London, 1999), p. 220. ¹⁰ Kit Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds: The Catholic Educational Dilemma in 1944’, History of Education, 33 (2004), p. 666. ¹¹ Stephen G. Parker, Sophie Allen, and Rob Freathy, ‘The Church of England and the Elementary Education Act of 1870’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 68 (2020), pp. 541–66. ¹² Stephen Parker and Rob Freathy, ‘The Church of England and Religious Education during the Twentieth Century’, in Tom Rodger, Philip Williamson, and Matthew Grimley (eds.), The Church of England and British Politics Since 1900 (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 199–221.

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Church and State and the Education Acts Negotiations over education policy are a finely calibrated barometer of the relationship between Catholics and the State, exemplifying how the Church sought to situate itself within the political structures of society. After decades of wrangling, when Westminster legislated at different points across the nineteenth century to fund an education system across Britain and Ireland, it chose to augment rather than replace voluntary provision with differing modalities of schooling.¹³ Integral to nation-building in the post-Partition period in Ireland was the teaching of the Irish language, which the bishops were prepared to support only insofar as it would not impact deleteriously on the capabilities in English of a rising generation of potential (missionary) seminarians. The bishops succeeded in opposing a further expansion to the teaching of Irish language and literature in 1937.¹⁴ Catholics maintained their influence within education for at least four decades after the creation of an independent Ireland, and this has rightly been described as the ‘heyday of the Church in the new country’.¹⁵ By 1965 there were 3,789 primary schools in Ireland, each managed by the local priest and staffed by 2,948 members of religious orders, and 1,990 Catholic lay teachers—a veritable army of educationalists for the faith.¹⁶ From the 1960s, with the government’s intent to expand the economy and with it the education system, Catholic schooling benefited. Because the Church of the 1960s was more confident of its social standing, it lent support to the State in this initiative, even though it lost some status within the education system as a whole, for example as governance structures widened beyond the parish priest.¹⁷ Since then, the Church has gradually taken a more ‘participatory approach, as opposed to an confrontational one’ in order to maintain its influence in education in light of the changing attitudes of Catholics towards their own faith as well as increased religious pluralism in wider society.¹⁸ With the creation of Northern Ireland, the Protestant dominated government of the new jurisdiction was keen that education provision parallel that of England and Wales.¹⁹ However, some Catholics resisted the formation of the new State in various ways: some teachers refused to accept salaries paid by the Ministry; some

¹³ See Chapter 5, ‘Education and Schooling’, by Maurice Whitehead / Deirdre Raftery / Jane McDermid, in Volume IV. ¹⁴ Tom O’Donoghue and Judith Harford, ‘A Comparative History of Church-State Relations in Irish Education’, Comparative Education Review, 55 (2011), p. 324. ¹⁵ O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 325. ¹⁶ O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 328. For a seventy-year overview and even higher estimates for this period, see in this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, table A11.6. ¹⁷ O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 329. ¹⁸ O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 333. ¹⁹ O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 323.

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Catholic schools would not present candidates for external examinations; and invitations to the Catholic authorities to join the Lynn Committee were steadfastly blocked.²⁰ The 1923 Education Act allowed for the transfer of existing denominational schools into local education authority control, but religious education was to be neither provided nor paid for by the State.²¹ The separation of religious education from the rest of the curriculum—anathema to Catholics—made it impossible for school managers to transfer fully their schools into the new system and therefore led to Catholic schools being financially disadvantaged.²² However, the 1930 Education Act did enable Catholics to receive 50 per cent of the costs of building, altering and equipping its schools.²³ During the post-Second World War period, increased State funding of Catholic secondary provision was made possible due to a willingness to give 80 per cent of fee-paying Catholic grammar school places to eligible pupils (who had their fees paid for by the local authority), receiving 65 per cent of capital expenditure for such schools in return.²⁴ This policy, and the 1947 Education Act of which it was a part, greatly expanded access to grammar schooling for large numbers of Northern Irish Catholics in the postwar period. From the retrospective view of the politician, John Hume, it created a Catholic intelligentsia in the north, a cadre who were later involved in the peace process.²⁵ Of the 507 Catholic primary schools, 497 had adopted maintained status by 1980, as had all Catholic secondary schools.²⁶ The nineteenth-century impetus to educate Catholics and Protestants together to aid social cohesion remained disputed, however: a 1981 survey identified 75 per cent of Protestants and 66 per cent of Catholics in favour of common schooling in Northern Ireland.²⁷ As late as 1993, Cahal Daly spoke of being unconvinced of its value.²⁸ The cognitive resilience of the commitment to denominational schooling remains, even in contexts in which the empirical evidence bears out the value of integrated schooling to those children who experience it.²⁹ Some decades after the founding of the Irish education system came provision for England and Wales with the 1870 Elementary Education Act. The Act created a ‘dual system’ of voluntary schools provided by the churches and school boards,

²⁰ Margaret Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy and Schooling in Northern Ireland’, in Witold Tulasiewicz and Colin Brock (eds) Christianity and Educational Provision in International Perspective (London, 1988) p. 40. ²¹ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p.41. ²² O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 324. ²³ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 42. ²⁴ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, pp. 44–5. ²⁵ ‘John Hume: The Life and Times of the Man Who Brought Peace to Northern Ireland’, https:// www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/john-hume-life-times-man-18710540 (accessed February 2021); see also, in this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, tables A11.6–A11.8. ²⁶ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 46. ²⁷ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 52. ²⁸ Bernadette Hayes and Ian McAllister, Conflict to Peace: Politics and Society in Northern Ireland over Half a Century (Manchester, 2013), p. 172. ²⁹ Hayes and McAllister, Conflict to Peace, p. 197.

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the former retaining the right to denominational religious instruction, the latter permitted a form of non-denominational religious instruction according to ‘no religious catechism or religious formulary’.³⁰ The Act effectively drew existing Catholic voluntary schools into the national fold and, with some preconditions, provided funding to expand the voluntary school system. Even if the new relationship with the State meant relief from some of the financial burden of building, staffing, and maintaining its own schools, the retention and expansion of the numbers of schools were borne at considerable cost to a minority community. Despite this financial millstone, the level of Church involvement was often expressed as a matter of pride, especially given the Established Church’s relative loss of 2,700 elementary schools between 1902 and 1942.³¹ Having gained a foothold onto political legitimacy, Catholics insisted on the right to organize their own schools, appoint their own staff, and control the curriculum and ethos of their institutions.³² Even so, by 1938, some of the Catholic elementary school premises, of which there were 1,266 in England alone, were amongst the most dilapidated and their teachers (frequently women religious) the most poorly trained.³³ Where the Church of England principally opted to take advantage of the newly created ‘Voluntary Controlled’ category resulting from the 1944 Education Act, the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bernard Griffin, persuaded his fellow bishops to choose the ‘Voluntary Aided’ route.³⁴ Though it required much more financially, this mechanism preserved the right to provide denominational religious instruction. This was deemed the only option, as despite their fervent agitation for the ‘Scottish solution’ (described below), looking towards the postwar welfare state settlement, Westminster balked at assumption of the entire schooling cost.³⁵ This ‘Voluntary Aided’ route was to prove fortuitous in the longer term, as Anglicans looked on enviously whilst Catholics expanded primary school places in England from 354,401 in 1930 to 423,570 by 2000;³⁶ and its pupils in other maintained schools, including secondary provision, from 53,897 in 1930 to 382,198 by 2000.³⁷ The financial commitment of the laity was enormous by any

³⁰ James Murphy, Church, State and Schools in Britain, 1800–1970 (London, 1975), pp. 57–8. ³¹ Whitehead, ‘A View from the Bridge’, p. 220. ³² O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 316. ³³ Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, pp. 668–70. ³⁴ John Davies, ‘ “L’Art du Possible”: The Board of Education, the Catholic Church and Negotiations over the White Paper and the Education Bill, 1943–1944’, British Catholic History, 22 (1994), pp. 231–50. ³⁵ Francis Phillips, Bishop Beck and English Education, 1949–1959 (Lampeter, 1990), p. 8; O’Donoghue and Harford, ‘A Comparative History’, p. 325; H. C. Dent, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales, 1800–1975 (London, 1975), p. 25. ³⁶ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, table A11.1. ³⁷ The Catholic Directory of England and Wales, cf. The Way Ahead: Church of England Schools in the New Millennium (London, 2001), p. 7.

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standard. The government estimated that the 1944 Act would require an investment of £10,000,000 over twenty-five years, but this contribution quickly rose in reality to £60,000,000.³⁸ By the 1960s a further £80,000,000 was the anticipated spend towards the planned school-building programme.³⁹ These figures represented an often unappreciated commitment on the part of the Church to civil society, for as educationalist A. C. F. Beales⁴⁰ pointed out: ‘those who cannot conscientiously accept undenominational teaching for their children have been in effect penalized—they have to pay twice over’ for schooling through their obligations to the Church and through taxation.⁴¹ Across types of school and sector, maintained Catholic schools have increased in number in England and Wales from 1,638 in 1920 to 2,397 in 2000; and the number of pupils served has doubled from 428,066 in 1930 to 820,866 in 2000. By no means are all these pupils necessarily Catholic, especially at primary level. Since the 1970s, especially with the absence of maintained Islamic schools, Muslim parents have turned to Christian denominational schools as the closest means of providing ‘a stable moral foundation’.⁴² Even so, the expansion of religious voluntary aided schools from 1998 to include provision for Islamic education was not comprehensive enough to serve all Muslim communities, so Catholic schools continue to serve in this way. In Scotland the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act, which sought to transfer voluntary schools into the newly formed school boards without compensation, was staunchly resisted by Catholics who wished to maintain a denominational religious education and the freedom to appoint Catholic teachers.⁴³ The Act’s introduction of compulsory schooling, moreover, increased the financial burden on the Church, as pupil numbers consequently rose. The 1918 Education (Scotland) Act represented, therefore, not only the release of a financial burden but a radical departure—putting the Scottish educational system on a very different trajectory to the other jurisdictions as a fully State-funded religious system for most Catholic schools. The 1918 Act placed ‘Roman Catholic schools under secular control in all but religious matters’, transferring buildings, curricula, and the payment of staff to the State, whilst guaranteeing the hierarchy the freedom to decide upon the nature of religious instruction, the appointment of teachers, and access to the school (to teach and inspect provision). It also required education authorities to establish new denominational schools where these were deemed ³⁸ A. C. F. Beales, The Catholic Schools Crisis of 1950 (Oxford, c.1950), p. 16. ³⁹ Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, p. 665. ⁴⁰ James Scotland, ‘Professor A.C.F. Beales: A Memorial’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 23 (1975), pp. 5–6. ⁴¹ Beales, Catholic Schools, pp. 23–4. ⁴² J. Mark Halstead, The Case for Muslim Voluntary-Aided Schools: Some Philosophical Reflections (Cambridge, 1986), p. 29. ⁴³ Stephen McKinney and Raymond McCluskey (eds.), A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland (London, 2019), pp. 23–4.

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necessary.⁴⁴ In return for these generous terms, it was initially agreed that Catholic schools would be leased to education authorities.⁴⁵ Many of these were subsequently, from the late 1920s, sold off as the Church began to accept that ‘the only viable future for Catholic education lay in complete financial integration with the State sector’.⁴⁶ By these means the Church has been able to maintain a resilient educational presence in Scotland for the longer term,⁴⁷ with a distinct policy towards Catholic schooling. By 2005 there were 409 Catholic maintained schools in Scotland; this figure had fallen slightly to 366 by 2018, though pupil numbers had remained stable.⁴⁸ Although from a legislative point of view England and Wales were continually treated as one, Trystan Owain Hughes asserts that Welsh Catholic insistence on its own schools was confronted with greater hostility and opposition than in any other jurisdiction.⁴⁹ The spectre of a popish plot was perpetuated amongst Welsh non-conformists in the interwar period,⁵⁰ and into the 1960s school foundations by religious orders were viewed with suspicion. The degree of anti-Catholic sentiment soured discussions around the founding and funding of a modest number of Catholic schools at a local level.⁵¹ Alongside the financial burden of funding their schools, education has ranked as one of the greatest challenges for the Church in Wales.⁵²

Catholic ‘Atmosphere’ and the Trinity of Home, School, and Church On the nature of Christian education, Catholics agreed with High Anglicans that this could not be achieved in contexts where religious education was understood in isolation from the rest of the child’s educational experience. This conviction militated against fully maintained schools in the form of non-denominational religious instruction,⁵³ instead prioritizing a holistic Christian ‘atmosphere’ ⁴⁴ Ian Findlay, ‘Christianity and Educational Provision in Scotland’, in Tulasiewicz and Brock (eds.), Christianity and Educational Provision, p. 23. ⁴⁵ Mary McHugh, ‘The Education Scotland Act, 1918, Revisited’, in McKinney and McCluskey, A History of Catholic Education, pp. 176–80. ⁴⁶ McHugh, ‘The Education Scotland Act, 1918’, p. 180. ⁴⁷ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, table A11.3. ⁴⁸ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, tables A11.5–A11.6. ⁴⁹ Trystan Owain Hughes, Winds of Change: The Roman Catholic Church and Society in Wales, 1916–1962 (Cardiff, 2017), p. 4. ⁵⁰ Hughes, Winds of Change, p. 71. ⁵¹ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Schools and Their Pupils’, table A11.2. ⁵² Hughes, Winds of Change, p. 134. ⁵³ Parker, Allen, and Freathy, ‘The Church of England’, pp. 541–66.

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including curriculum, the home, and the parish. As religious education in the common school increasingly came to be bifurcated from other subjects, Catholic notions of an immersive socialization in the faith were prized as uniquely distinctive. As educationalist Beales put it in 1950, ‘few, except the Catholics, subscribe any longer to the bedrock educational truth, that the Christian formation of the child can be secured only by a dedicated partnership of the home, the church and the school, through the trinity of parent-priest-teacher.’⁵⁴ Nondenominational religious instruction may have been enough even for those Anglicans previously committed to a thoroughgoing Church school education, but it was insufficient to salve the consciences of the Catholic hierarchy and Catholic parents.⁵⁵ The contrast between ‘secular’ maintained education and this formative conceptualization of religious education was a persistent idea across the period, being emphatically articulated by Pope Pius XI that ‘all the teaching and the whole organization of the school . . . be permeated with Christian piety’.⁵⁶ The prevalence of a holistic view of Catholic education was consistently reiterated by bishops and Catholic educationalists alike as essential to children’s upbringing.⁵⁷ Christian formation could not be conferred to children through half an hour a week of religious education, just as physical education is taught by insisting upon ‘right posture, cleanliness and the rules of hygiene’.⁵⁸ Such was the seriousness of this undertaking that Archbishop Francis Mostyn declared it a grievous sin for Welsh parents not to send their children to Catholic schools, even if the quality and supply of secular education was better.⁵⁹ Similarly, the bishop of Shrewsbury refused to give Catholic parents permission to send their children to a nonCatholic school, pointing out that they would regret their decision should their child marry outside the faith and their grandchildren neglect recitation of the ‘Hail Mary’.⁶⁰ Moving beyond mere assertion, social scientific research began to be utilized,⁶¹ with sociological studies concluding that an alignment between home and classroom in Catholic schools was effective in shaping pupils’ values.⁶² Scottish Catholic bishops admitted in a joint pastoral letter that religious knowledge could be taught ‘even by an unbeliever’ but, they averred, Christian faith ⁵⁴ A. C. F. Beales, ‘The Struggle for the Schools’, in George Andrew Beck (ed), The English Catholics 1850–1950 (London, 1950), p. 407. ⁵⁵ Beales, Catholic Schools Crisis, p.7. ⁵⁶ Divini Illius Magistri (1929) §80, https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-xi/en/encyclicals/ documents/hf_p-xi_enc_31121929_divini-illius-magistri.html (accessed 22 December 2021). ⁵⁷ Arthur, The Ebbing Tide, pp. 59–62. ⁵⁸ Pastoral Letter of Richard Downey, Archbishop of Liverpool and Metropolitan, Lent (London, 1950), p. 4, quoted in Whitehead, ‘A View from the Bridge’, p. 225. ⁵⁹ Hughes, Winds of Change, p. 35. ⁶⁰ Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, p. 673. ⁶¹ Philip Jebb, OSB (ed.), Religious Education: Drift or Decision (London, 1968); and Michael Hornsby-Smith, Catholic Education: The Unobtrusive Partner (London, 1978). ⁶² A. E. C. W. Spencer, ‘An Evaluation of Roman Catholic Educational Policy in England and Wales 1900–1960’, in Jebb (ed.), Religious Education, pp. 165–221.

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could not be conveyed to young people by religious education lessons alone, but rather ‘intangibly communicated’ through the entirety of the school experience, and by a committed Catholic teacher.⁶³ Even in circumstances where schools increasingly found themselves serving more religiously diverse populations, maintaining a Catholic atmosphere was still stressed as paramount. The term ‘atmosphere’ was transposed after the Council into the language of ‘ethos’ with a similar meaning, embracing a school’s governance, leadership, pastoral care, charitable outreach, and even the design and maintenance of school buildings.⁶⁴ Alongside this, Catholic education was described as being concerned with the ‘hidden curriculum’ as much as any prescribed one.⁶⁵ A school’s ‘ecology’ was deemed to be one in which human flourishing was prioritized and, towards the end of the twentieth century, the promotion of common values and interreligious understanding within an inclusive Catholic tradition.⁶⁶ This critical difference between Catholics and other Christians around Church schooling—intertwined with parish and home life— remained historically continuous across all jurisdictions. Not only were the religious education syllabus, prayers, liturgy (Mass and extra-liturgicals), and moral education formative, but faith was expected to permeate a school’s spaces, halls, corridors, and all classes, nurturing a ‘Catholic imaginary’ with the material ephemera of Catholic devotional life. By the 1970s, some leading Anglicans had begun to take a softer line on religious education, viewing it as much in service of the community as serving Christianity’s own evangelistic ends.⁶⁷ However, Catholics were slower to modulate their views in the same direction.⁶⁸ For instance, even where Catholic schools were in diverse social settings and not comprised of predominantly worshipping Catholics, schools were still viewed as providing settings in which ‘value-oriented behaviours’ could be inculcated.⁶⁹ Thus, although Catholicism has become an integral part of the Christian denominational fabric of England and Wales, the distinctive contribution of Catholic schools continues to be asserted. Notable examples might include the Vatican’s The Catholic School on the Threshold of the Third Millennium (1997),⁷⁰ reaffirming that there is ‘no separation between time for learning and time for formation’, and a local reiteration by the ⁶³ Pastoral Letter of the Archbishops and Bishops of Scotland, 13 November 1966. ⁶⁴ Marcus Stock, Christ at the Centre: Why the Church provides Catholic Schools (London [2005], 2013), pp. 7–9, 18–24. ⁶⁵ Whitehead, ‘A View from the Bridge’, p. 224. ⁶⁶ Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Meeting God in Friend and Stranger (London, 2010), pp. 83–4. ⁶⁷ Fourth R: The Durham Report on Religious Education (London, 1970), p. 281. ⁶⁸ David Konstant, R.E. for R.Cs: A Report on Religious Education (Harrow, 1968). ⁶⁹ Spencer, ‘An Evaluation of Roman Catholic Educational Policy’, p. 221. ⁷⁰ Congregation for Catholic Education, 28 December 1997, p. 9, https://www.vatican.va/roman_ curia/congregations/ccatheduc/documents/rc_con_ccatheduc_doc_27041998_school2000_en.html (accessed 8 October 2021).

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English Bishops’ Conference describing the purpose of Catholic schools as giving assistance to parents in their primary role of religious formation, alongside service to the local church and then to society.⁷¹ In a recent volume intended to commemorate the publication of the Case for Catholic Schools (1951), educationalist Andrew Morris claimed that to remain true to their aim, Catholic schools should be ‘Christian communities’ which foster ‘an overall religious perspective of human life and purpose.’⁷²

Catholic Schooling, Mythologized and Memorialized Although Catholics were adamant that the distinctiveness of their schools lay in their immersive character, from the child’s viewpoint one can appreciate how these institutions were sometimes experienced as totalizing and oppressive. This ambivalence characterizes numerous memoirs and biographies of notable Catholics who confess a mix of fondness and repugnance towards the Catholic education they received. Similarly, the ‘penny Catechism’ as the principal means by which children were inducted by rote into Catholic orthodoxies is totemic in these accounts, revered as influential in shaping but distorting youthful spirituality. In her recollections journalist Libby Purves (b. 1950) reflected: Lapsed Catholic writers of my generation almost invariably make a great song and dance about the penny Catechism, claiming to have been traumatised and stunted by it . . . any child taking it literally is liable to conclude that one missed Mass or impure thought, followed by a car crash, could do no otherwise than doom you to eternal flames. However, I was obviously a child of shamingly phlegmatic humour, because I cannot remember a moment’s real unease.⁷³

Likewise, author and academic John Cornwell’s (b. 1940) memoir describes the somewhat brutal and macabre iconography seemingly commonplace within midtwentieth century Catholic classrooms: One day Sister Paul unrolled a picture which she hung on the wall for the whole day. It showed naked people standing in beds of fire. ‘These are the souls of the dead who died in mortal sin,’ she said. . . . The round white wafer was God, which I came to eat. I put out my tongue and there he was. God was sour and soggy in my saliva. . . . I could feel him sliding down inside me, the slimy little God inside me . . . .⁷⁴

⁷¹ ⁷² ⁷³ ⁷⁴

Stock, Christ at the Centre, pp. 7–9. Andrew Morris, Fifty Years On: The Case for Catholic Schools (Chelmsford, 2008), p. 84. Libby Purves, Holy Smoke. Religion and Roots: A Personal Memoir (London, 1998), pp. 30–1. John Cornwell, Seminary Boy (London, 2006), p. 21.

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These clumsy attempts to capture and hold the sensory imaginations of children portray an environment in which children’s early experiences and eroticized religion were both ill-conceived and seriously considered, but this didactic instruction in developing an understanding of the faith was by no means exclusive to Catholicism.⁷⁵ Moreover, the slow advent of ‘child-centred’ education⁷⁶— which endeavoured to apply the new insights of psychology and reconfigure infantilized creedal beliefs coupled with a culture of ‘undue deference’⁷⁷—may be implicated in the anger and disillusionment prompted by clerical abuse explored in Chapter 15 by Daly and Pound in this volume.⁷⁸ The substance and nature of education in Catholic schools, and how catechism was conducted and experienced across the century are profoundly neglected matters in Catholic religious history. Nevertheless, we can conclude that, notwithstanding assertions as to its importance, it was widely acknowledged by senior clerics by mid-century that Catholic teachers were ill-prepared to teach, and that religious education was poorly taught, affecting the poorest of Catholics most of all.⁷⁹ As David Lodge (b. 1935) recalled: Surprisingly, religious instruction was probably the worst-taught subject of all . . . there were no specialist teachers of religious instruction [and] . . . we never studied the Bible as a text, nor later in our schooling were we entered for public examinations in religious instruction which would have entailed such study. Our teachers sometimes seemed as bored by RI as we were.⁸⁰

The character of Catholic religious education was lambasted by one leading clerical catechist based in the English Midlands, Francis Drinkwater, as ‘formal and wooden . . . hardly good enough to take firm root and grow in that particular soil in which it has been planted.’⁸¹ Drinkwater had been inspired to act on the parlous state of Catholic teaching from his time as an armed forces chaplain during the First World War,⁸² evaluating the successes and failures of fifty years of maintained Catholic school education to conclude:

⁷⁵ Chris Boyatzis, ‘Agency, Voice and Maturity in Children’s Religious and Spiritual Development’, in Susan Ridgely (ed.), The Study of Children in Religions (New York, 2011), pp. 19–32. ⁷⁶ Jennifer Beste, ‘Catholic Children’s Experience of Scripture and the Sacrament of Reconciliation through the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd’, in Ridgely, The Study of Children in Religions, p. 170. ⁷⁷ David Konstant, Signposts and Homecomings: The Educative Task of the Catholic Community (Slough, 1981), pp. 142–55. ⁷⁸ See also Susie Donnelly, ‘The Learning Curve of Clerical Child Sex Abuse: Lessons from Ireland’, in Anna Strhan, Stephen G. Parker, and Susan Ridgely (eds.), The Bloomsbury Reader in Childhood and Religion (London, 2107), pp. 343–4. ⁷⁹ Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, pp. 669–70. ⁸⁰ David Lodge, Quite a Good Time to be Born, a Memoir, 1935–1975 (London, 2015), pp. 75–7. ⁸¹ Francis Drinkwater, Educational Essays (London, [1926] 1951), p. 271. ⁸² Kester Aspden, ‘Drinkwater, Francis Harold (1886–1982)’, ODNB.

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it is only when Christian dogma is held with strength of motive that you get saints, or indeed ordinary Catholics who can be relied upon to wear well. What are we doing, then, when we allow our doctrinal teaching to be isolated into a purely intellectual atmosphere and to become a matter of words and books?⁸³

Drinkwater set about challenging indifferentism in religion by founding the catechetical journal The Sower in 1919. Penning it initially from his Birmingham presbytery, he deliberated on multiple aspects of pedagogy, with occasional forays into other matters of social teaching and sociological comment. While perhaps confined to certain educated circles, Drinkwater’s ideas attained influence across the English-speaking world through widespread publication and in England he had a hand in creating what was later described as a ‘child friendly syllabus for the teaching of religion’, a scheme of age-appropriate catechesis for the diocese of Birmingham.⁸⁴ By 1956 he was acknowledged as the ‘patriarch of the catechetical movement in Europe’ when addressing the International Congress of Catechetics in Louvain,⁸⁵ and a volume of essays on the post-war catechetical movement was dedicated to him as ‘a pioneer’ and ‘one whose thought and fame spread throughout the world’.⁸⁶ Drinkwater was passionately committed to supporting a quality of religious instruction that was as good as that of teaching in other subjects of the curriculum, as ‘God did not intend children of primary school age to sit assembled in desks and endure long formal lessons . . . the whole idea of it is rather blasphemous, like putting skylarks in cage.’⁸⁷ His approach was to encourage teachers to ‘try nearly always to appeal to the eye as well as to the ear’ when arranging activities for children. ‘Seeing and hearing are all very well’, he observed ‘but best of all is to learn by doing; more especially by the kind of doing that involves some bodily movement, or through a narrative’.⁸⁸ For Drinkwater, ‘religion in school’ was not religious instruction, nor the use of religious books or art, but prayer—for ‘when we are saying prayers we are not merely talking about religion, or reading or writing about it; we are actually putting it in practice, or ought to be’.⁸⁹ Drinkwater’s teaching methods were redolent of other innovative Christian educators of the interwar period working for change across denominations.⁹⁰ His pedagogical adaptations still had at their heart the Catholic catechism, but he drew

⁸³ Drinkwater, Educational Essays, p. 273. ⁸⁴ Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, p. 670. ⁸⁵ Aspden, Drinkwater; Fr Michael Tynan, ‘Catechism Congress at Antwerp’, The Furrow, 7 (1956), p. 623. ⁸⁶ Kevin Nichols, Voice of the Hidden Waterfall: Essays on Religious Education (Slough, 1980). ⁸⁷ Francis Drinkwater, God and the Under Elevens (London, [1933] 1963), p. v. ⁸⁸ Drinkwater, God and the Under Elevens, pp. vi–vii; his emphasis. ⁸⁹ Drinkwater, Educational Essays, p. 282. ⁹⁰ Caitriona McCartney, ‘British Sunday Schools: An Educational Arm of the Churches, 1900–39’, in Morwenna Ludlow, Charlotte Methuen, and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Churches and Education (Cambridge, 2019), p. 567.

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upon elements of child psychology to enliven it, even if he was somewhat dismissive of the new science—preferring instead ‘common sense’ over ‘pedagogics’.⁹¹ He affirmed the work of Maria Montessori, albeit in a limited way, endorsing her opposition to the ‘parrot-system’ in favour of active learning and recognition that the liturgy offered a ‘magnificent expression of the content of the Faith . . . the “pedagogical method” of the Catholic Church’.⁹² Drinkwater’s subdued respect for Montessori’s ideas was in marked contrast to Irish Catholic views on her work and that of other progressive theorists. As Donald Akenson observed of Ireland, the aim of education was not ‘to bring out the latent perfections in the child’, but ‘primarily to help him [sic] overcome his imperfections of behaviour and belief and so to preserve his immortal soul unto eternal life’.⁹³ Though critical of some of the emerging theories, Drinkwater sought to utilize their insights selectively to refine how the catechism was taught. In a culture which was increasingly drawing upon the new science, and gradually being ‘psychologized’,⁹⁴ he was not averse to using its insights to construct a different teaching style, even in giving advice to adults on how to address teenagers.⁹⁵ Further sustained study of Drinkwater’s ideas and their reception would undoubtedly reveal new lines of thinking about pre- and post-conciliar catechetics and shifting Catholic attitudes to childhood. Textured research around the lived, experiential history of sacramental preparation—using sources produced by ‘ordinary’ Catholic children like Alison Kane from Peterborough preparing for her first confession in the mid-1960s—would illuminate further the intertwining of doctrinal rote (‘grace to make a good confession’) with a personalized expression of faith (here a vision of a smiling, rainbow Christ; Figure 6.1). Nevertheless, in post-war Britain concern was still being expressed at the fragmentation of the religious educational experience of young people. In an article headlined ‘Religion: Rules; Life: Fun, School Leavers’ Divided Minds’, it was reported that the division between secular and religious knowledge in education was resulting in a false dichotomy in the experience of young people.⁹⁶ This finding, put to the Lay Apostolic Congress meeting in Rome in 1957, was that young people were being ill-prepared by their schooling or unduly pious parish sodalities to be Catholic citizens in the workplace. Various initiatives were in operation to reclaim young people for the Church by forms of adult catechesis—many

⁹¹ Drinkwater, Educational Essays, p. 349. ⁹² Drinkwater, Educational Essays, p. 367. Originally published in 1929 and quoting from Maria Montessori’s, The Child in the Church. ⁹³ Donald Akenson, A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face: Education in Independent Ireland, 1922–1960 (Montreal, 1975), p. 200. ⁹⁴ Mathew Thomson, Psychological Subjects: Identity, Culture and Health in Twentieth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2006), pp. 117–18. ⁹⁵ Francis Drinkwater, Talking to Teenagers: Notes for Parents and Teachers (Montreal, [1956], 1964). ⁹⁶ Catholic Herald, 27 September 1957.

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Figure 6.1 Confession book of Alison Kane (aged 6) c.1964 from the parish of St Thomas More, Peterborough. Photograph courtesy of Alison Kane and Laura Tisdall.

building on the early work of the Oxford-based Catholic Workers’ College (renamed Plater College) under the orbit of the Jesuits since 1922.⁹⁷ The Young Christian Workers movement, building on the international Jocist ethos and established in England and Wales in 1937, was highly influential in offering mid-century theological formation for working-class young people and their participation in action for social justice.⁹⁸ Joan Brothers’ Liverpool-based social research underlined the need for such initiatives, especially to counteract the effect of grammar schools on Catholic youth—as these young professionals needed a ‘religious knowledge more fitted to maturity than that of an adolescent’.⁹⁹ She went on to indicate that university chaplains reported the distress felt by students at the loss of their faith . . . [due to the] kind of religious teaching which leaves the young person unable to visualize belief as developing as the individual matures, rather than as a set of ideas learned at an early age and having relevance to that period of life alone.¹⁰⁰

Due to the inadequacies of parish life, she observed, quality religious instruction was only likely to be found in the Cathedral settings rather than through ordinary parish clergy. Providing both a grounding in the faith and retaining young people for the Church were continuing preoccupations in the post-conciliar context. The general nature of Vatican II’s Declaration on Christian Education (1965) proved particularly problematic for Ireland where, from the buoyancy of the interwar period,

⁹⁷ Peter Doyle, ‘Charles Plater S.J. and the Origins of the Catholic Social Guild’, 21 (1993) British Catholic History, pp. 401–17. ⁹⁸ Sylvia Collins and Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, ‘The Rise and Fall of the YCW in England’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 17 (2002), pp. 87–100. ⁹⁹ Brothers, Church and School, p. 170. ¹⁰⁰ Brothers, Church and School, p. 171.

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there was increasing recognition of declining vocations to priesthood and the rapid withdrawal of religious from teaching and school management.¹⁰¹ Conciliar historian Aidan Nichols, OP, summarized the document as ‘platitudinous in tone’ and marked by ‘benign, portentous language . . . [but] saying not always a great deal’.¹⁰² While emphasizing the importance of ‘wholeness’ in both spiritual and temporal formation, the Council left central educational issues to the fate of episcopal conferences, failing to provide any perceptible guidance as to how theory and practice should address profound societal changes.¹⁰³ The challenges for adult catechesis flowing from increasing post-school provision or higher education also remained largely unaddressed. As a result, the Catholic educationalist V. A. McClelland concluded that the Second Vatican Council’s recommendations could be summed up as a ‘spectacular failure’.¹⁰⁴ Research on 1970s Ireland showed that 90 per cent of Catholic primary schools were using a scheme called the ‘Children of God’ course, an RE curriculum commissioned by the Catholic bishops of Ireland,¹⁰⁵ while only 60 per cent of Catholic secondary schools were using the Irish catechetical programme.¹⁰⁶ Such programmes also made their way into the syllabi of Catholic teacher education, thus influencing how teachers approached religious education in schools. The ‘Children of God’ scheme and books for secondary aged pupils for example ‘The Christian Way’, were assessed retrospectively by one pupil (journalist Derek Scally; b. 1977), as being ‘a slow-motion pedagogical car crash’ in trying, and failing, to combine the spirit of the Second Vatican Council and the experiential and child-centred methods of the 1970s.¹⁰⁷ Crucially, as one teacher of the time later concluded, these programmes ‘operated on the assumption—largely mistaken, as it turned out—that children were being supported in their parish or experiencing religion in the home’.¹⁰⁸ For English primary schools, the widely used ‘Here I Am’ scheme (1989) sought to bridge the divide between school, home, and church,¹⁰⁹ providing a tailored and systematic programme that guided teachers through the precepts of Catholic belief. Seeking to take children’s experience of faith seriously, it declared ‘experience needs to be recognised, valued, tested against Christian Revelation and the experience of others . . . religion is not ¹⁰¹ Deirdre Raftery, ‘Among the School Children: The Churches, Politics and Irish Schooling, 1830–1930’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 100 (2011), pp. 433–40. ¹⁰² Aidan Nichols, Conciliar Octet: A Concise Commentary on the Eight Key Texts of the Second Vatican Council (San Francisco, 2019), pp. 95–6. ¹⁰³ Sean Whittle (ed.), Vatican II and New Thinking about Catholic Education: The Impact and Legacy of Gravissiumum Educationis (London, 2018). ¹⁰⁴ From correspondence with Professor McClelland, with grateful thanks for generous reflections that have shaped the analysis that follows. ¹⁰⁵ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 47. ¹⁰⁶ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’. ¹⁰⁷ Derek Scally, The Best Catholics in the World (Milton Keynes, 2021), p. 79. ¹⁰⁸ Scally, The Best Catholics, p. 82. ¹⁰⁹ David Konstant, A Syllabus of Religious Instruction for Catholic Primary Schools (London, 1966), pp. 11–24.

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just for learning, but for living and that all living can become religious’.¹¹⁰ Nevertheless, there were some that lamented this as amorphous, lacking in biblical foundation or the systematic, theological rigour of the creedal formularies of the past. Drinkwater’s initiatives and those of his successors to professionalize catechesis are illustrative of a real fear that Catholic children were being lost to the faith due to the banality or rigidity of its presentation to them and increasing distance from the parish enclave. From the 1940s, Drinkwater and others were alert to the need for a more robust religious education, instilling in young people a capacity to make meaning for themselves from what was being taught. Towards the end of the century, these anxieties were compounded by the forces of social mobility which took Catholics into educational settings other than the parish school or fractured the educational triad of family-church-parish school. Into the twenty-first century, Ann Casson undertook a longitudinal study of three secondary schools which found young Catholics’ identity to be ‘fragmented’ and their Catholic education ‘diluted’.¹¹¹ Even so, the essential bond between faith and school exists, with comparative studies of Catholicism across Europe and the US, identifying Catholic schools as ‘the only source of the memory of the Catholic faith tradition’ for a growing proportion of the young people attending them.¹¹²

The Training and Professional Development of Catholic Teachers The Anglican convert Thomas Allies’ axiom of 1870 that there should be ‘Catholic schools for Catholic children, with Catholic teachers’ (originally also stating ‘under Catholic control’) remained the guiding principle on policy into the following century.¹¹³ Putting this into practice in relation to teacher recruitment and training was challenging in two respects. First, Catholics had to negotiate with policymakers to ensure they had influence over who was appointed to teach in the Church’s schools. A larger challenge, however, was ensuring that there was a sufficient supply of competent Catholic teachers and that they were of adequate professional quality. This became more of a problem in the post-conciliar period as both male and female religious communities diminished—though some of these nuns and brothers took on management roles in schools instead—alongside the trend towards professionalization and credentialism which exacerbated the ¹¹⁰ Ann Byrne, Chris Malone et al., Here I Am (London, 1989), p. 5. ¹¹¹ Ann Casson, Fragmented Catholicity and Social Cohesion (Oxford, 2013), p. 151. ¹¹² John Fulton et al., Young Catholics at the New Millennium: The Religion and Morality of Young Adults in Western Countries (Dublin, 2000). ¹¹³ Beales, The Catholic Schools Crisis, p. 6; Mark Lofthouse, Faith, Class and Politics: The Role of the Churches in Teacher Training, 1914–1945 (Leicestershire, 2009), p. 37.

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demand for qualified lay Catholic teachers. It is this latter challenge here charted, especially the establishment of Catholic teacher training colleges in the period. Of the thirty teacher training colleges in existence in England by 1850, only one was Catholic, St Mary’s in Hammersmith (which moved to Strawberry Hill in 1925).¹¹⁴ In part this was due to Cardinal Manning’s earlier defence of the pupilteacher system, which identified bright pupils and trained them to teach in the classroom environment, thus inhibiting investment in the more formal mode of teacher education.¹¹⁵ By 1900, there were six Catholic training colleges in Britain, rising to sixteen during the 1920s.¹¹⁶ Aside from the cost of providing training which the Church bore, the institutions themselves were found by inspectors to be all too closely modelled on seminaries and religious houses and therefore overly strict, authoritarian, and anti-intellectual, ill-preparing their students.¹¹⁷ The number of Catholic teacher training colleges in England and Wales fell to nine by the outbreak of the Second World War, but rose again to thirteen by 1951.¹¹⁸ There are now just four Catholic teacher training colleges in England and Wales: St Mary’s University Twickenham; Newman University, Leeds Trinity; and the joint Catholic/Anglican, Liverpool Hope University. The situation in Northern Ireland remained a religiously divided one for much of the twentieth century. Catholic teachers were trained in institutions separate to their Protestant counterparts, and by differing genders, at the colleges of St Mary and St Joseph.¹¹⁹ Although it was possible for trainees to complete teaching practices in the other denominations (and vice versa), attempts to merge the ostensibly Protestant, Stranmillis College with the Queen’s University Institute of Education in the early 1980s were strongly opposed by the Catholic authorities, garnering some 300,000 petition signatures and viewed as the first step towards total desegregation of schooling.¹²⁰ In contrast, in the new Republic of Ireland, teacher education was assumed by default to be Catholic (just one of the six being of another denomination, a Church of Ireland college) and the most important facet of the institutions in the postpartition period was the medium in which courses were taught—namely Irish.¹²¹ In Scotland, Catholic teacher education occurred at different sites for male and female teachers, St Kentigern’s Jordanhill, Glasgow, and Craiglockhart and Dowanhill, Edinburgh, for each respectively. Prospective teachers were also required to gain a Religious Certificate of Approval and to take an additional examination in religion.¹²²

¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷ ¹¹⁹ ¹²¹ ¹²²

Dent, The Training of Teachers, p. 45. ¹¹⁵ Lofthouse, Faith, Class and Politics, p. 38. Lofthouse, Faith, Class and Politics, p. 127. Lofthouse, Faith, Class and Politics, pp. 40–1. ¹¹⁸ Dent, The Training of Teachers, p. 130. Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 50. ¹²⁰ Sutherland, ‘Religious Dichotomy’, p. 51. Akenson, Mirror to Kathleen’s Face, p. 51. McHugh, ‘The Education Scotland Act, 1918’, pp. 184–5.

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The Catholic teacher was also ascribed a sacralized function in the system, as the vocation to be a Catholic teacher should be without a sense of ‘careerism’ and with an emphasis on its sacrificial character, not its material benefits.¹²³ That lay Catholic teachers were becoming the mainstay of Catholic schooling into the 1960s was underscored by Gravissimum Educationis,¹²⁴ and the financial difficulties this raised are explored in Carmen Mangion’s Chapter 13 in this volume. Returning to the religious formation triad, Catholic teachers were deemed to be acting in loco parentis not loco civitas, working with parents in the service of the Church, not simply as servants of the State.¹²⁵ Mechanisms by which Catholic teachers might gain separate accreditation to teach within Catholic contexts became critical to underlining the qualitative difference in expectations of teachers in Catholic environments, especially as professed religious men and women departed. One such means of adding an imprimatur was the Catholic Certificate in Religious Studies which was established as a programme in 1991–2, replacing its precursors, the Catholic Teachers’ Certificate and the Catholic Certificate in Religious Education.¹²⁶ Open to teachers, catechists, and other lay workers, it was emblematic of a desire to ensure the Catholicity of educationalists, though contemporary research suggests that its pertinence as a qualification was lessened when it ceased to be compulsory and alternative, career-enhancing, educational, or management qualifications diverted teachers’ energies.¹²⁷ Paralleling trends in adult catechesis into the twenty-first century, the most robust forms of religious education and theological formation for Catholics might now take place in ecumenical or ‘secular’ higher education contexts.

Conclusion ‘If education is to have a soul, it should not properly be the business of civil government, either national or local’, mused Francis Drinkwater, reflecting on seventy years of State-funded schooling on the eve of the 1944 Education Act.¹²⁸ The commitment to educate Catholic children within State-maintained schooling alongside an atmosphere steeped in Catholic language, imagery, and ritual shaped Catholic education policy and legislative compromises across the twentieth century. This educational ideal had to be tempered by the economic realities: Catholics simply could not afford to fund entirely the schools they needed without

¹²³ ‘Editorial: Dangers to Catholic Education’, Blackfriars, 24 (1943), p. 364. ¹²⁴ Gravissimum Educationis, §8, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/ documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_gravissimum-educationis_en.html (accessed 8 October 2021). ¹²⁵ Beales, ‘The Struggle for the Schools’, p. 389. ¹²⁶ Ros Stuart-Buttle and Peter Flew, CCRS Twenty Five Years On: One Size fits all? (London, 2019). ¹²⁷ Stuart-Buttle and Flew, CCRS Twenty Five Years On, p. 92. ¹²⁸ Francis Drinkwater, ‘Autumn Thoughts on a White Paper’, Blackfriars, 24 (1943), p. 368.

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State support and therefore carefully calibrated concessions had to be made along the way. The nature of the Church-State settlements reached by various hierarchies highlights the contrasting legal, fiscal, and demographic realities across national contexts. Catholics perennially found themselves having to justify the case for separate religious schooling funded in part from the public purse. The opposition to denominational schooling from the inception of maintained education has never gone away, even if the basis for such opposition has mutated— from anti-Catholic sentiment per se (and ‘No Rome on the Rates’ rhetoric)¹²⁹ to a more general twenty-first-century opposition to faith schools as purportedly indoctrinatory, socially divisive, and distorting of local educational demographics.¹³⁰ That Catholic schools continue to be funded (along with those of other faiths) reveals a dogged resistance to a completely secular State education system.¹³¹ Unease about clerical authority, the exodus of the habit wearing nuns and brothers from classrooms, and the laicization of Catholic teaching have each altered the educational dynamics of such schools. Schooling itself has altered the social mobility and life chances of Catholics, and ultimately also the character of the Catholic faith, as generations of educated Catholics reflected on the inadequacies (or worse) of the induction to the faith they had received in search of one which served them better in adult life. It was the sense of the definitive nature of Catholicity within schools as mutating or ebbing away which defined the later decades of the twentieth century to the present, highlighting the hopes and fears of traditionalists and progressives in the British and Irish context. One of the paradoxes of State provided Catholic education for the Catholic community in the twentieth century, especially with the expansion of secondary school provision, was that it created a cadre of highly educated lay Catholics who, though maintaining their allegiance, wished to exercise and express their Catholicism maturely and intelligently.¹³² They were thus less inclined to succumb to clerical control, with expanded social horizons and aspirations beyond mere loyalty to ‘tribe’ or tradition. This liberalization of perspective has been further exacerbated by the clerical abuse scandal— continuing to erode deference towards hierarchical authority and trust in Church teaching. Into the twenty-first century, an influential survey of critical challenges to Catholic education in Britain and Ireland concluded that despite more than a century of maintained Catholic education, there remains a lack of clarity concerning its nature and purpose,¹³³ and a need to identify anew holistic ¹²⁹ John Davies, ‘ “Rome on the Rates”: Archbishop Richard Downey and the Catholic School Question, 1929–1939’, North West Catholic History, 18 (1991), pp. 16–32. ¹³⁰ Richard Pring, The Future of Publicly Funded Faith Schools: A Critical Perspective (London, 2018), ch. 12. ¹³¹ Ashley Rogers Berner, ‘Is English Education Secular?’, in Jane Garnett et al. (eds.), Redefining Christian Britain: Post-1945 Perspectives (London, 2007), pp. 222–32. ¹³² Elliott, ‘Between Two Worlds’, p. 681. ¹³³ Sean Whittle, A Theory of Catholic Education (London, 2015), pp. 11–25.

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and exploratory modes of teaching that bring children to the ‘threshold of theology’.¹³⁴ As the ‘Catholic family’ and the ‘parish church’ have changed profoundly as sites of religious socialization in Britain and Ireland since 1914, the Catholic school too finds itself struggling to redefine its role, delineate its functions, and articulate afresh a distinctive ethos that chimes with contemporary understandings of the spiritual formation of children.

Select Bibliography Akenson, Donald H., A Mirror to Kathleen’s Face: Education in Independent Ireland, 1922–1960 (Montreal, 1975). Casson, Ann E., Fragmented Catholicity and Social Cohesion: Faith Schools in a Plural Society (Oxford, 2013). Elliott, Kit, ‘Between Two Worlds: The Catholic Educational Dilemma in 1944’, History of Education, 33 (2004), pp. 661–82. McKinney, Stephen J. and Raymond McCluskey (eds.) A History of Catholic Education and Schooling in Scotland (London, 2019). O’Donoghue, Tom and Judith Harford,‘A Comparative History of Church-State Relations in Irish Education’, Comparative Education Review, 55 (2011), pp. 315–41. Whitehead, Maurice, ‘A View from the Bridge: The Catholic School’, in V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts (eds.), From without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales, 1850–2000 (London, 1999), pp. 217–44.

¹³⁴ Whittle, A Theory, pp. 155–75.

7 Saints and Devotional Cultures Mary Heimann and Cara Delay

Catholic devotional life in Britain and Ireland changed profoundly during the twentieth century. The Second Vatican Council (1962‒5), although it did not change everything, offers a convenient demarcation line between a notional ‘before’ and ‘after’. Broadly speaking, the pre-Vatican II Catholic world was more communal, even sectarian, in its cradle-to-grave institutional Catholicism. Before the liberalization of the 1960s and 1970s, when ‘no salvation outside the Catholic Church’ was interpreted strictly, ‘Catholics generally only met and socialised with other Catholics’. This gave Catholics in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland a strongly communal identity fostered through parishes, schools, sodalities, clubs, and societies. ‘Being Catholic’, as Catholic sociologist Michael Hornsby-Smith reminisced, ‘was as much a part’ of who one was as one’s gender or ethnicity: ‘ “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic” ’.¹ Catholics had their own ‘subculture’ of Christian beliefs (including transubstantiation, the sacredness of the priesthood, papal infallibility, saintly intercession, the sinlessness of the Blessed Virgin Mary), values (including sexual chastity and opposition to contraception), and practices (such as fasting before receiving Holy Communion, abstaining from meat on Fridays, weekly confession, genuflecting in front of the Blessed Sacrament, receiving ashes on the forehead on Ash Wednesday, going to Mass on holy days of obligation as well as on Sundays), some of which seemed blasphemous or superstitious to Protestants. Aspects of faith were expressed through specific images, concepts, and spiritual aids: by praying with rosary beads, making the sign of the cross, wearing scapulars, praying to saints (especially the Blessed Virgin Mary), or contemplating uniquely Catholic images like the Sacred Heart or Our Lady of Lourdes. Post-conciliar Catholicism, which sought to modernize, ecumenize, and open up to the world, made Catholicism more accessible but less distinctive, attracting some and repelling others. This cultural change, sometimes described as an exit from the Catholic ‘ghetto’, occurred at the same time that anti-Catholic prejudice

The authors are grateful to Angela Muir for bringing the complexities of Welsh Bible history to their attention; to Peter Collins for helpful discussions; and to Michael Novotný for feedback on the chapter draft. They would also like to thank Alana Harris and Salvador Ryan for valuable assistance with the chapter. ¹ Michael Hornsby-Smith, Reflections on a Catholic Life (Peterborough, 2010), p. 49. Mary Heimann and Cara Delay, Saints and Devotional Cultures In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0008

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was declining, along with religious observance more generally, across most of the British Isles. Because membership in the Established Churches continued to drop faster than in the Catholic Church, by 1989 Catholicism had overtaken Anglicanism as the largest denomination in the British Isles. Whether it was still ‘the same church’ after the changes of the 1960s and 1970s—changes which included the shift from the Latin to the vernacular liturgy, the weakening of sodalities and confraternities, and the erosion of formerly central devotions such as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and Public Rosary—seemed more open to question.² Devotional practices in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland did not exist in splendid isolation: each borrowed from, shared, or influenced the others. This chapter is nevertheless divided, for the sake of clarity, into two parts: the first looks at devotional cultures in England, Scotland, and Wales since 1900; the second focuses on the island of Ireland, both before and for a hundred years after the creation of the Irish Free State. Northern Ireland, a constituent part of the United Kingdom, is treated in this chapter geographically and ecclesially rather than constitutionally and so falls under discussion of the island of Ireland. Some regions and geographical areas, especially those associated with the recusant past, such as Lancashire, Yorkshire, and parts of London, held distinctive microhistories which could set their Catholicism apart. Others created or rediscovered their own local histories, saints, and holy places. Local campaigns, like one advocated by Liverpool schoolteachers in the 1930s for an alleged English stigmatic, which was eventually turned down by Rome, sharply divided domestic Catholic opinion.³ During the interwar years, there was a marked struggle in the Catholic press between those who sought to keep a distinctively English character to devotional life and those who more readily incorporated Continental or Irish practices. The Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, beatified in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, were finally canonized in 1970; Scottish Jesuit John Ogilvie was canonized in 1976; and Edinburgh-born enclosed nun Margaret Sinclair was declared venerable in 1978. The Eucharistic Congress of 1908, a grand Catholic occasion and the backdrop to one of G. K. Chesterton’s ‘Father Brown’ stories, evokes the atmosphere of the pre-conciliar world which revived in the interwar period and dominated until the 1960s. Clergy and religious from around the world descended on Edwardian London, where ‘a procession of nearly 20,000 Catholic children’ from all over the capital, the girls decked in ‘veils and wreaths’, the boys in ‘sashes and rosettes’, carried ‘banners and streamers and gay devices’ along streets lined with the papal ² Frank J. Sheed, Is It the Same Church? (London, 1968), p. 1. ³ Mary Heimann, ‘Medical and Mystical Opinion in British Catholicism: The Contentious Case of Teresa Higginson’, in Tine Van Osselaer, Henk De Smaele, and Kaat Wils (eds.), Sign or Symptom? Exceptional Corporeal Phenomena in Religion and Medicine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leuven, 2017), pp. 75–100.

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colours.⁴ The 1908 Congress offers a snapshot of how the Catholic hierarchy in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland sought to present Catholicism to the world: as a mass community of the faithful, clearly organized into religious orders, Catholic schools, mutual aid societies, prayer circles, confraternities, guilds, and sodalities ranging from the Children of Mary and Third Order of St Francis to the St Vincent de Paul Society and the recently founded (1906) Catholic Women’s League. Every demographic, every stage of life, had its particular Catholic umbrella. Hosting the Eucharistic Congress in London proclaimed Catholicism in Britain to have ‘arrived’. The triumphalism was tinged with defensiveness. Towns and cities, most notoriously Glasgow, Liverpool, and Belfast, continued to be sharply divided along confessional lines for most of the century. Nor was official toleration yet taken for granted. The ecclesiastical hierarchy had been restored to England and Wales two generations earlier, but it was only thirty years since Scotland had ceased to be viewed by Rome as missionary territory (1878). Wales had only been treated as a separate ecclesiastical unit, with its own vicar apostolic, since 1895. Even London’s Westminster Cathedral, or ‘Metropolitan Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ’, had been open just five years (1903). The neo-Byzantine basilica, with its soaring campanile, was uncompromisingly Italian; but the interior was a devotional space which focused on English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish saints and martyrs, and catered for the local Catholic community’s traditions and devotional tastes, themselves a melting pot of domestic and foreign influences. Eucharistic devotion lay at the heart of faith. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, in the specific form which had been developed by English recusants and which, by the First World War, had come to rival the Mass as the most popular form of worship among Catholics across the British Isles, remained the single most widely offered church-based devotion throughout Britain well into the 1960s.⁵ The 1908 Eucharistic Congress was supposed to reach its final crescendo with the public procession of the Blessed Sacrament through the streets of London, for the first time since the reign of Mary Tudor. The Host, held aloft in a monstrance, was to be followed from Westminster Cathedral by Catholic dignitaries dressed in full ecclesiastical splendour; and the Congress brought to a close by the blessing, with the Blessed Sacrament, of 150,000 people gathered in the streets. At the last minute, the prime minister asked that the display be toned down, a request justified through the terms of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), which technically still forbade outdoor religious processions, though these

⁴ Report of the Nineteenth Eucharistic Congress (London and Edinburgh, 1909), p. 534. ⁵ See Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, 1995), pp. 176–90; and e.g. The Catholic Directory 1937 (London, 1937), pp. 73–449.

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provisions had not been enforced for years.⁶ Benediction was therefore given from the balcony of Westminster Cathedral rather than in the streets. ‘Shorn’, as the official English Catholic report of the Congress lamented, ‘of the splendour which would have been conferred by rich vestments, costly banners, torches, incense and silken canopies’, the ‘spectacle of that vast array of clergy, with Prelates, Bishops, and Princes of the Church’ was nevertheless ‘stupendously imposing’. Between the cathedral and a guard of honour formed by the Catholic Boys’ Brigade, an observer recalled, ‘stood line upon line of altar-servers, members of confraternities, British and foreign clergy and laity.’ After a series of bugle calls, which brought the crowds to a hushed silence, ‘every head in the vast multitude bowed low as the Cardinal Legate appeared on the balcony bearing the Sacred Host’ and ‘ “with tears streaming from his eyes”, blessed the faithful’.⁷ For all the outward show of confidence, the Catholic hierarchy was anxious. Although baptism figures were still buoyant,⁸ it was repeated everywhere that ‘far too many Catholics neglect Sunday Mass’.⁹ ‘Leakage’ from the faith was only partly attributed to lack of state funding for Catholic schools. Clerics worried that parental ‘indifference’ led children to neglect Sunday Mass, so preventing the formation of pious habits. ‘Saturday’s drinking, late shopping, theatres, going to bed after midnight, long sleep in the morning, Sunday excursions’ and ‘evil surroundings’, especially in ‘large towns’, where ‘the atmosphere is Protestant, worldly, sensual, materialistic’ with ‘all kinds of dangerous attractions’, were ‘killing religion’.¹⁰ Similar complaints were still being made in 1950, when the centenary of the Restoration of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy was celebrated in London’s vast Wembley Stadium. On this occasion, the usual football fans were replaced by 100,000 Catholics who together recited the Latin Credo and sang ‘Faith of Our Fathers’ and ‘God Bless Our Pope’.¹¹ A Catholic’s life followed the fasting and feasting, the rhythms and seasons of the liturgical calendar. This included abstinence on Fridays, taking part in mass Corpus Christi processions, going on Lenten retreats, celebrating Easter, and preparing for a ‘good’ death. Corpus Christi at Cardiff Castle was called the event of the year (Figure 7.1).¹² At Mass, one could follow along in one’s own missal, recite alternative prayers (such as those to be found in the Catholic Truth Society’s Simple Prayer Book), or simply pray the rosary, contemplating mysteries, ⁶ Carol Devlin, ‘The Eucharistic Procession of 1908: The Dilemma of the Liberal Government’, Church History, 63:3 (1994), p. 425. ⁷ Report of the Nineteenth Eucharistic Congress, pp. 599, 601–2. ⁸ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Baptisms’, tables A10.1–10.2. ⁹ F. M. Geudens, ‘The Neglect of Sunday Mass’, in Report of the Nineteenth Eucharistic Congress, p. 103. ¹⁰ Geudens, ‘The Neglect of Sunday Mass’, p. 112. ¹¹ John Murray, ‘Westminster and Wembley: Reflections on a Recent Centenary’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 39:156 (1950), pp. 407–18. ¹² Trystan Owain Hughes, Winds of Change: The Roman Catholic Church and Society in Wales 1916–1962 (Cardiff, [1999], 2017), pp. 8, 205–6.

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Figure 7.1 Annual Corpus Christi procession through the streets of Cardiff, here passing through Cardiff Castle. Image with permission of Hulton Archive / Getty Images.

while the priest officiated. Outside Mass, pious practices included attending Benediction or Vespers; taking part in the ‘living’ rosary; following the Stations of the Cross; honouring the first Friday of Devotion to the Sacred Heart; making novenas to the Blessed Virgin Mary or to popular saints such as St Anthony of Padua or St Francis of Assisi, or going on pilgrimage. Popular Catholicism was

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shot through with homely practices—saying grace before meals; keeping a picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall or a bottle of Lourdes water on the mantelpiece; reciting a quick prayer to St Anthony to find a misplaced object; wearing a St Christopher talisman bearing the legend ‘Behold St Christopher. Then go your way in safety’ when setting out on a journey—or even attaching specially made St Christopher badges to car or bicycle.¹³ Central to Catholic understandings was the reality of purgatory and the need to reduce the amount of time spent there for oneself and one’s loved ones.¹⁴ Indulgences, including plenary, were sought. Prayer cards, given out at funerals, requested mourners to pray for the soul of the deceased. Flowers and red votive candles were left at graves; rosaries or scapulars sometimes buried with the corpse. At home, pictures of the Sacred Heart, or Our Lady of Fátima, were turned into makeshift domestic shrines adorned with candles and flowers. Catholic homes were further marked out by the placement of a crucifix, or perhaps a statue of Christ or a saint, in the entry hall, kitchen, or bedroom. They might display holy water, perhaps a memento from a pilgrimage kept in a container shaped like the Blessed Virgin Mary, rosaries made of olive wood from the Holy Land, images of the pope, Our Lady of Lourdes, and other devotional objects. Children’s bedrooms typically displayed an image of the Holy Family, the Blessed Virgin Mary, or a favourite saint. First Communion was an elaborate coming of age ritual for which little girls were dressed like brides. Expensive gifts, such as silver or golden necklaces with a crucifix or medallion, richly decorated missals, or costly rosary beads marked the occasion. These matched the set of silver apostles’ spoons which were typically given at a Christening, in which the baby was again dressed symbolically in white, its sins washed away through the sacrament of baptism, just as they were again forgiven during first reception, confession, confirmation, and after the Confiteor. A distinctively English Catholic atmosphere was first conveyed to middle-class children in the nursery, before they were old enough to be sent away to school. Joan Windham’s Six O’Clock Saints, aimed at the ‘six-year-old [who] is easily bored’, ensured that even young children could relate to saints. St Antony of Padua was introduced to Catholic children as the same St Antony who finds things for you when you have lost them; singing the ‘Alma Redemptoris Mater’ as a way to avoid being ‘Run Over at Crossings’. St Francis put the wolf of Gubbio and the villagers ‘on their Honours’ to live together in peace. St Joseph called their donkey ‘Flopears because its ears were so big and floppy’ whereas ‘Our Lady called it Softears because they were so soft to stroke’. ‘I’m just coming’, sang Our Lady, as the Holy Family fled Egypt for

¹³ See, e.g. Catholic Directory (1937), p. 29. ¹⁴ David Geiringer, ‘At Some Point in the 1960s, Hell Disappeared: Hell, Gender and Catholicism in Post-war England’, Twentieth Century British History, 15:2 (2008), pp. 255–72.

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their lives, ‘and she popped two wooden animals that St Joseph had made for Jesus into the basket’.¹⁵

Catholic children were encouraged to view all countries in which there were Catholics and all historical periods since the birth of Christ as their inheritance. Saints, living or dead, were family. Present institutions, such as Westminster Abbey, the Coronation Oath, or the University of Oxford, were presented as part of their own distinctive pre-Reformation history. In More Saints for Six O’Clock, the first in a series of sequels, children were introduced to the Welsh St Winifrede, the Scottish St Margaret, and the English St George; but not the Irish St Patrick.¹⁶ Although Irish Catholics made up numbers, their distinctive spirituality was considered in some senses separate from the recusant traditions of the English, Welsh, and Scottish, whose own martyrs and saints were given a strong plug in Catholic Truth Society pamphlets. Separate Catholic Truth Societies of Ireland, India, Scotland (or even of Hexham and Newcastle) catered for partially distinctive markets: the Scottish Catholic Truth Society, for example, focused mainly on recovering Scottish Catholic history and promoting local saints and martyrs, leaving it to the Catholic Truth Society in London to publish J. W. Reeks’ St George, Protector of England (1932) and the Catholic Truth Society in Dublin to bring out Saint Patrick, edited by Paul Walsh, in the same year. Suffering was a core component of the Catholic message. It was dwelt upon in hagiographies, contemplated in the crucifix, the rosary, and the Sacred Heart, and invoked through the stations of the cross. Mortifications and self-denial were recommended even to young children, with wider ramifications explored in Chapter 15 in this volume by Daly and Pound. The rules, as explained to young Catholic children, were that whatever anyone says, or wants you to do, you say ‘Yes’ . . . The more you hate it the bigger your sacrifice to add to your Special Pile of Sacrifices. And Our Lord or your Guardian Angel counts each time you say it, and at the end we’ll all see who has the most.

Following too formulaic an interpretation of self-mortification was also wrong. ‘Did you know,’ Windham explained, that there is a sort of Unselfishness that is Selfish? I know it sounds all wrong, but it is when people Grab all the Not Very Nice things to do, and that doesn’t give

¹⁵ Joan Windham, Six O’Clock Saints (London, [1934] 1943), pp. 51, 21, 3–4. ¹⁶ Joan Windham and Marigold Hunt, More Saints for Six O’Clock (London, 1943), pp. 55–9, 72–6.

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anyone else a chance of being Unselfish too. They might be collecting ‘Yes’s’ just as hard as you are, and you are spoiling it for them!¹⁷

Catholic remedies for the scrupulosity (‘Catholic guilt’) engendered through constant, anxious self-scrutiny were to be found in prayer and, above all, in confession and subsequent reception of the Blessed Sacrament, through which the slate was wiped clean and the unworthy sinner restored, albeit temporarily, to a state of baptismal innocence.¹⁸ And so the cycle of sin, repentance, and forgiveness began again. Catholics in Britain were expected to remain vigilant, aware as a religious minority that they inhabited an ‘alien world’ which did not share or understand Catholic values. Adolescents were warned about the power of sex. ‘We eat too much and we have it in our power to stop’, explained a Benedictine housemaster at Ampleforth College in Yorkshire, ‘but with the sex impulse it is like jumping over a cliff, we have power to jump or not to jump, but once the leap has been taken, good-bye control’. Young Catholic men, about to encounter the society of women, were to cast themselves ‘at the foot of the cross’ and ‘demand assistance from Christ’. They were to ‘implore our Blessed Lady, Virgin most Pure, to lift us out of the jungle of desire’. ‘Mortifications’, they were gently reminded, ‘need not be hair shirts but, for instance, quite simply, but very hard, not seeing the dangerous person again, or not getting into the dangerous situation again. All of which is so easy to say and so difficult to do.’¹⁹ The elevation of chastity, a virtue enjoined on both sexes, but with particular intensity for girls, fit the highly gendered 1950s. The sodality of the Children of Mary, open to young people after they had taken their First Communion, been aspirants for at least three months, and ‘given proof of true piety and devotion’, required members to say morning and evening prayers, recite the rosary, go to Mass daily if possible, confess their sins, take Communion weekly or fortnightly ‘but never less than once a month’, and go on retreat at least four days every year.²⁰ Catholic girls, who became Children of Mary as commonly as non-Catholics became Girl Guides, were encouraged to seek help from the Virgin Mary to keep chaste. Symbolism surrounding the Immaculate Mother of God and everVirgin, whose bodily Assumption into heaven was infallibly declared in 1950, emphasized purity. On the Feast of the Purification, remembered a convent girl in the 1950s, ‘we wore starched white veils of tulle that stood out around us like a nimbus. With the medals of the Sodality of Our Lady on blue ribbons round our necks, we processed with our lit candles up to the communion rails to be

¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹ ²⁰

Windham, Six O’Clock Saints, pp. 100, 102. Walter Jewell, On Making a Good Confession (London, 1945). Columba Cary-Elwes, The Beginning of Goodness (London, 1944), pp. 74–8. The Child of Mary’s Little Handbook (London, 1901), pp. 25, 29, 39–40.

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blessed’.²¹ On the same day, each young girl laid a lily at the feet of the Virgin’s statue with the words: ‘Mary, I give you the lily of my heart, be thou its guardian for ever’. St Thérèse of Lisieux, ‘the Little Flower’, appealed to those who identified with the sentimental notion that the young saint had given glory to God by ‘just being her beautiful little self among the other flowers in God’s garden’. The Little Flower had promised before she died to let fall ‘a shower of roses’ after her death, and to answer every prayer specifically addressed to her.²² The effect of Catholic training was to create a parallel mental and imaginative universe. As was taught in the classroom catechism, preached from the pulpit, and repeated in Catholic apologetics, hagiography, and fiction, transcendent meaning shot through the visible and tangible world.²³ This mode of perception was said to make all the difference as a person confronted death, whether on the battlefield or in a hospital bed, and faced the prospect of divine judgement and possibility of eternal punishment.²⁴ The fictional Scottish Catholic priest in Bruce Marshall’s All Glorious Within found that the wisdom and coherence of the Church’s supernatural teachings shone ‘forth from behind bomber airplanes and advertisements for syrup of figs’ which adorned Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. As he lay dying, he saw the answer to it all: how the lame and the sick should be healed and how the poor should be rewarded and how God’s saints might eat peas off their knives; how the banker might be last and the harlot first; how a priest’s hands never failed however flat his words; how the Church was all glorious within because the freight she carried healed all her cracks . . . It was all so simple really . . . .²⁵

The distinctive Catholic message of salvation was preached, in self-conscious competition with Protestant, socialist, nationalist, materialist, spiritualist, and fascist alternatives, in a succession of accessible books, often penned by converts, most notably Monsignor Ronald Knox, and through a wide range of cheap pamphlets put out by the Catholic Truth Society which explained everything from how to pray to what the latest papal encyclicals were about. Marian devotion, although not to everyone’s taste, dominated pre-conciliar devotional life. Interwar Marian apparitions, which continued at Fátima in Portugal and began at Beauraing and Banneux in Belgium, were closely watched by Catholics in Britain who continued to make pilgrimages to Lourdes, or to

²¹ Marina Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London, 1976), p. xix. ²² See e.g. Vernon Johnson, The Message of St Thérèse of Lisieux (London, 1936). ²³ See Robert Orsi, History and Presence (Cambridge, MA, 2016). ²⁴ Rick Schweitzer, ‘The Cross and the Trenches: Religious Faith and Doubt among Some British Soldiers on the Western Front’, War & Society, 16:2 (1998), pp. 33–57. ²⁵ Bruce Marshall, All Glorious Within (London, 1944), pp. 210–11.

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replicate Lourdes grottos, the most elaborate of which was built by unemployed miners at Carfin, near Motherwell in Scotland, in 1922.²⁶ Increasingly, Catholics visited Walsingham in Norfolk, where the first official Catholic pilgrimage was celebrated in 1934. Pilgrims to the Catholic shrine at Holywell in north Wales might bathe in or take holy water away from the ancient well: miraculous cures continued to be recorded, as they had even during the eighteenth century. Shrines associated with the Virgin Mary were places of supernatural cures, physical and spiritual. This seemed in tune with Pius XII’s dedication of the world to the ‘Immaculate Heart of Mary’ in 1942 and institution of the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1944. Franz Werfel’s best-selling Song of Bernadette, made into a blockbuster film in 1943, further popularized Lourdes and was screened for English Catholic schoolchildren.²⁷ In 1946, the same year in which 700,000 pilgrims gathered at the shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa to consecrate Poland to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lady of Fátima was crowned by Pius XII. Alongside notions of a meek, compassionate, and gentle Blessed Virgin Mary who prayed for the dying and cured the sick were ideas of a battle-hardened, sternly punishing Mary who led the ‘Legion’ for which she was named. This ‘Cold War Mary’ was a Blessed Virgin who looked at twentieth-century communism in much the same disapproving spirit as she had the French Revolution, and who could warn, denounce, or punish.²⁸ Marian devotion could mean different things. After the ‘fall’ of communism in 1989, the Blessed Virgin Mary came to be especially associated with the ‘protection of the unborn’ and ‘sanctity of life’, the central anti-abortion message proclaimed, for example, in a Marian apparition in Surbiton in Greater London, in 1984, but which was eventually rejected by the Vatican in 2007. Devotional life changed after the Second Vatican Council. The liturgy was said in English, rather than traditional Latin, which pleased some and disappointed others, as explored in McElroy’s Chapter 9 in this volume. The reduction in the time required to fast before taking communion to just one hour—rather than, as before, from midnight the previous day—meant that it was easier to get to Mass at any time of day. This led to a decline in attendance at Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The women’s movement of the 1970s, which advocated sexual equality and charged the Catholic Church with oppressing women through the ages, presented traditional devotion to the Mary as sexist. The supposed ‘victory’ over communism in 1989 through a series of events set in train by John Paul II, the first

²⁶ See also Alana Harris, ‘Astonishing scenes at the Scottish Lourdes: Masculinity, the Miraculous and Sectarian Strife at Carfin, 1922‒1945’, Innes Review, 66:1 (2015), pp. 102–29. ²⁷ Alana Harris, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism (Manchester, 2013), pp. 213–14. ²⁸ Peter Jan Margry (ed.), Cold War Mary (Leuven, 2021).

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Polish pope, led to some specifically Catholic anti-liberal triumphalism.²⁹ In the decades following the ‘end’ of the Cold War, congregations in England, Wales, and Scotland, which consisted largely of older people, were reinforced with young Catholics from Poland, Lithuania, and elsewhere in the former eastern bloc. This renewed, but could also divide, parishes, which characteristically added separate Polish-language Masses rather than immediately integrating immigrants. Poles also brought with them devotional traditions, such as the newly established Divine Mercy of Jesus images³⁰ and the traditional presentation of Easter baskets for blessing. Attitudes to social issues, especially gender and homosexuality, could seem equally old-fashioned. As many confraternities fell out of fashion, new ‘charismatic’ groups formed which sought to evangelize and worship with an intensity and in forms traditionally associated with Protestantism.³¹ The introduction into a parish of charismatic movements could be controversial. In 1996, for example, the bishop of Clifton launched a formal enquiry to consider whether parishes had ‘suffered harm and neglect’ due to the presence and activities of the Neo-Catechumenate, an organization which Pope John Paul II warmly commended. Opus Dei, founded in interwar Spain and established in post-war England,³² became especially controversial around the turn of the millennium, when its right-wing politics, cult-like practices (especially mortification of the flesh), and alleged influence with the Vatican won it a controversial, even sinister, reputation. Youth 2000, warmly championed by the Vatican, was another movement which appeared outwardly evangelical in its informality and spontaneity, yet linked young people with distinctively Catholic phenomena such as the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary reported in Medjugorje from 1981 or the stigmatic Padre Pio, a figure who had been held in suspicion by John XXIII, rehabilitated by Pius XI and Paul VI, and was then canonized, with unusual speed, by John Paul II. In the twenty-first century, Catholic devotional life was various. In some places, charismatic youth groups and prayer circles, centred on Jesus and the Gospel, or on the Holy Spirit, seemed almost indistinguishable from their Protestant equivalents. Elsewhere, enclaves remained where pre-Vatican-II-style worship and devotion, such as Gregorian chant, Latin Masses, Benedictions, devotions to the rosary, Sacred Heart, or holy relics,³³ continued. Pilgrimages to Lourdes, Walsingham,

²⁹ See e.g. George Weigel, The Final Revolution (Oxford, 1992). ³⁰ Alana Harris, ‘Corporeal Commotions: St Faustina and the Transnational Evolution of her Cult across the Twentieth Century’, Journal of Religious History, 42:4 (2018), pp. 545–67. ³¹ Michael Hayes (ed.), Religious Movements in the Catholic Church (London and New York, 2005). ³² https://opusdei.org/en-uk/article/the-saint-who-loved-england/?fbclid=IwAR187GmdqEbP4bxHd LvGWCMKfxj9gLYbWWPRs_yLHpV462mLjc55LCIZ4NQ (accessed 29 December 2021). ³³ Alana Harris, ‘Bone Idol? British Catholics and Devotion to Thérèse of Lisieux’, in Nancy Christie and Michael Gauvreau (eds.), The Sixties and Beyond: Dechristianization in North America and Western Europe 1945–2000 (Toronto, 2013), 429–52.

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Holywell, Aylesford Priory, and Carfin continue to attract pilgrims. Catholic churches, whether Georgian, neo-Gothic, modernist, or brutalist, fill up on Sundays better than Anglican churches, but much less well than they once did. Catholic girls’ and mixed schools still exist; but no longer typically staffed by nuns and no longer offering a distinctively Catholic formation. Some boarding schools run by monks survive: but most nineteenth-century convents, monasteries, and seminaries were either at risk of closure or have already closed. Confession, renamed ‘reconciliation’ and usually no longer held in a booth, dropped in popularity. Francis I, affectionately portrayed, together with his immediate predecessor Benedict XVI, in the 2019 film The Two Popes, was shown as a humble and simple man with the political and emotional intelligence to build bridges between progressives and conservatives partly through use of social media, including Twitter. The encyclical Fratelli Tutti (3 October 2020), issued during the COVID-19 pandemic, called upon the world to reject war, narrow and violent nationalism, xenophobia, and contempt for people different from ourselves, but it also reaffirmed the sanctity of life. Whether the combination of traditionally liberal and conservative views, and a distinctly Catholic conscience will unify twenty-first-century Catholics in Britain the way the old ‘Catholic ghetto’ and sensory ‘imaginary’ once could remains to be seen.

Ireland Across the Irish Sea, the prominence of twentieth-century Catholicism has been well established. In Northern Ireland, the ‘spiritual danger’ that English Catholics confronted was present as well, as Ulster Catholics had been ‘on the losing side for most of the past four centuries’.³⁴ After partition in 1921, as the realities of being a religious minority sank in, fears of being left behind by the rest of the island created notions of a Church and faith under siege.³⁵ In western Northern Ireland, however, popular Catholic devotions resembled those practiced across other parts of the island. Meanwhile, the Catholic Church arguably gave the postindependence Free State, and later the Republic, their ‘political legitimacy’.³⁶ For Irish Catholics, north and south, popular Catholic devotions were not only central to their faith but also helped mark the life-cycle and seasons. They established family and community ties, constituted domestic culture, and allowed Catholics to claim public space. Throughout the twentieth century, practices such as the rosary and the consumption of devotional items proved stalwart. The significance of the Catholic

³⁴ Marianne Elliot, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (New York, 2001), p. xxxviii. ³⁵ Elliot, Catholics of Ulster, pp. 366, 369, 374–8. ³⁶ Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950 (Dublin, 2002), p. 3.

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home as a devotional space has recently been demonstrated by scholars working on the United Kingdom and Ireland.³⁷ Across the British and Irish isles, practices included home-based devotions such as family prayer, decorating with religious items, and building home altars or backyard grottoes. These domestic devotions expressed the importance of piety to daily life, allowed for intimate individual and familial connections with the sacred, and taught children to incorporate Catholic material culture into their devotional lives. Domestic piety was promoted by the hierarchy and clergy as well; Irish-born and US-based Patrick Peyton, CSC, known as ‘The Rosary Priest’, became famous in the 1950s as he travelled the world promoting Marian devotion through the family rosary. Popular Catholic devotions linked families, communities, and nation. Shortly after the 1932 Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, the following assessment appeared in the Irish Press: ‘Last week showed many things—and one was the steel strength of our home life. Every happening had behind it its father, mother, child. The decorations—father on top of the ladder, mother handing him things—mainly fashioned by herself—and advising, children looking on’.³⁸ Here, community devotions relied on what happened in the home, often constructed as the heart of the faith. Also central to commemorative events like the Congress were material culture and consumerism. During and after the celebration, the Irish Catholic Directory featured ads by companies selling a variety of rosary beads, including ‘in Fancy Colours or in Mother of Pearl’ for between 4 and 8 shillings, as well as brown scapulars, statues of St Anne, Sacred Heart badges, hanging crucifixes, religious framed pictures, and holy water fonts.³⁹ These items increasingly adorned the bodies and decorated the homes of Irish Catholics. Eucharistic devotions also were essential in Ireland (Figure 7.2), where Corpus Christi processions had become integral to devotional life and the Eucharistic Congress showcased popular piety in Dublin.⁴⁰ Yet other rituals and practices persevered in the Irish context as well. Masses and rites of passage including the infamous wake thrived. These events were structurally supported by one of the most visible effects of Church renewal in modern Ireland: a revitalized Catholic architecture and infrastructure.⁴¹ Membership in confraternities and sodalities exploded in the twentieth century. Ubiquitous by the 1960s, the archconfraternity of the Holy Family spread through every parish in Dublin ‘with an average membership of 450 men, 800 women and 980 youths’. The Church hierarchy

³⁷ Harris, Faith in the Family; Cara Delay, ‘Holy Water and a Twig: Catholic Households and Women’s Religious Authority in Modern Ireland’, Journal of Family History, 43:3 (2018), pp. 302–19. ³⁸ Irish Press, 27 June 1932. ³⁹ Irish Catholic Directory (Dublin, 1932), pp. 111–18. ⁴⁰ Rory O’Dwyer, The Eucharistic Congress, Dublin 1932: An Illustrated History (Dublin, 2009). ⁴¹ E.g., Thomas Kennedy, ‘Church Building’, A History of Irish Catholicism: Vol. 5, The Church Since Emancipation (Dublin, 1970).

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Figure 7.2 Dubliners watching the annual Corpus Christi procession, 1985. Image with permission of Tony Murray.

actively encouraged the expansion of sodalities and confraternities, in part to combat fears of encroaching secularization and individualism.⁴² In rural areas, outdoor occasions—parish missions, pilgrimages, and devotions at holy wells—dominated. Public Marian devotions would ebb and flow throughout the century; parish missions witnessed their heyday before 1950; and some holy wells fell into ruin by the 1950s and 1960s, but each of these remained important in some places well into the second half of the twentieth century and certainly, at least sporadically, well past the Second Vatican Council. These religious occasions shed light on the continuities and heterodoxies of Irish Catholicism,⁴³ revealing the dynamic devotional cultures that still linger across the island despite conciliar reforms, the impact of the abuse crisis, and the enormous transformations of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years. One of the most intensely popular and powerful religious occasions was the parish mission or ‘the missions’. During the missions, orders such as the Redemptorists travelled to Irish parishes and stirred up devotion for weeks. They encouraged Marian piety, including the laity’s devotions to Our Lady of ⁴² Cara Delay, Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism (Manchester, 2019), pp. 62–9. ⁴³ Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries, ‘Introduction’, in Sue Morgan and Jacqueline deVries (eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain, 1800–1940 (New York, 2010), p. 3; Suzanne J. Crawford O’Brien, ‘Well, Water, Rock: Holy Wells, Mass Rocks and Reconciling Identity in the Republic of Ireland’, Material Religion, 4:3 (2008), pp. 326–48.

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Perpetual Succour. The popularity of the parish missions suggests that they ‘were touching something very deep in the people’s psyche’.⁴⁴ Even in the 1940s and 1950s the vibrant popular devotion that Irish Catholics expected and embraced was visible at the missions. Processions and pilgrimages during the missions were ‘colourful, with religious emblems, banners, [and] flowers’. Temperance soirees featured food, music, and dancing.⁴⁵ Missioners preached in chapels, but attendees, and devotions, spilled outside of their walls. The bodily performances of the missioners were gendered, helping to establish a sort of ‘muscular Catholicism’ that was especially significant in a post-colonial Ireland trying to overcome the historical feminization of its men as well as compete with Protestant notions of muscular Christianity.⁴⁶ At the mission, parishioners also made their voices heard; they wept, shouted, and cheered. A full-on sensory experience, the parish mission was one that enthralled the body of the worshipper.⁴⁷ Missions provide compelling evidence for the syncretic and often rural nature of popular Irish Catholicism.⁴⁸ Brendan McConvery, moreover, has argued that in the wake of Irish Revolution in the 1910s and 1920s, missions helped recreate local ties, serving as ‘instruments of reconciliation in communities that had been deeply divided by years of conflict and civil war’.⁴⁹ The popularity and endurance of parish missions well in the 1980s⁵⁰ also testifies to how some occasions normally associated with the ‘devotional revolution’ of the nineteenth century⁵¹ lingered well into the twentieth century. While outdoor devotions such as religious pilgrimages were a central element of popular religious life across the British and Irish isles, they often took a unique form in Ireland. Irish people travelled to popular Marian pilgrimage sites such as Lourdes and even Medjugorje, but most experienced pilgrimages in a more local context, and many sites ‘were connected to older, vernacular traditions of belief and their associations with particular places’.⁵² The famous pilgrimage to Lough Derg, County Donegal, has been made by pilgrims continuously for centuries; for

⁴⁴ Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe, 1850–1904 (Blackrock, 1995), p. 53. ⁴⁵ Lawrence Taylor, Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics (Philadelphia, 1995), p. 169; Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe, pp. 268, 264. ⁴⁶ Joseph Nugent, ‘The Sword and the Prayerbook: Ideals of Authentic Irish Manliness’, Victorian Studies, 50:4 (2008), pp. 587–613. ⁴⁷ David Morgan, The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley, 2012), p. 6. ⁴⁸ Taylor, Occasions of Faith, p. 170. ⁴⁹ Brendan McConvery, ‘The Redemptorists and the Shaping of Irish Popular Devotion, 1851‒1965’, in Henning Laugerud and Salvador Ryan (eds.), Devotional Cultures of European Christianity, 1790–1960 (Dublin, 2012), p. 52. ⁵⁰ Taylor, Occasions of Faith, ch. 6. ⁵¹ Emmet Larkin, ‘The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850‒75’, The American Historical Review, 77:3 (1972), pp. 625–52. See also Chapter 7 by Salvador Ryan in Volume IV of this series. ⁵² Síle De Cléir, Popular Catholicism in 20th-Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017), p. 57.

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many Catholics, making the pilgrimage was an expected rite of passage⁵³ and reaffirms the centrality of sacred places in Irish culture. Drawing on earlier traditions that marked the landscape as pure or profane, Irish Catholicism was a faith that encouraged people to map devotional space.⁵⁴ Scholars have long observed ‘the existence and influence of a “special relationship” between community and physical environment’ or ‘between people and place’ in Ireland.⁵⁵ Even as the Irish Church hierarchy attempted to draw its laity’s devotions into controlled spaces like the parish chapel,⁵⁶ outdoor devotions remained a hallmark of Irish popular Catholicism. Like pilgrimages, holy well devotions persevered, particularly in rural areas. In 1997, there were still 3,000 holy wells in Ireland, many that had fallen into ruin, but some that were still actively used.⁵⁷ In Irish tradition, most people believed the well water to be sacred, and some wells became famous for their water’s powerful cures.⁵⁸ On certain days, parishioners attended patterns, where they conducted a series of rounds and prayers at holy wells.⁵⁹ In a County Sligo parish, local residents decorated the holy well ‘with little statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary, small coloured religious pictures, a crucifix and beads, and Candlesticks . . .’ They also tied ‘numerous rags [and] scapulars’ to trees.⁶⁰ Celeste Ray argues that their commitment to holy wells marks Irish Catholics as ‘unusual in Europe’.⁶¹ She also posits that, after Vatican II demoted the roles of unverifiable saints, holy well devotions ‘dropped off ’, only to be revived again in the 1980s.⁶² Popular Marian devotion would also ebb and flow in the twentieth century, but it has remained a constant presence in Irish popular culture. The popular Northern Irish sitcom Derry Girls (2018) features four Catholic teenage girls (and one boy) coming of age in the 1990s during the ‘Troubles’. In a season one episode, based on a 1986 episode of BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, the gang, having stayed up all night to cram for their exams, chase their dog into their local Catholic Church. There, they have a miraculous experience: the statute of the

⁵³ Victor W. Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (New York, 2011). ⁵⁴ Robert Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars who Study Them (Princeton, 2005). ⁵⁵ Gerry Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination (New York, 2001), pp. 19–20. ⁵⁶ Quoted in Máire MacNeill, The Festival of Lughnasa: A Study of the Survival of the Celtic Festival of the Beginning of the Harvest (Oxford, 1962), p. 79. ⁵⁷ F. H. A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan, and Matthew Stout (eds.), Atlas of the Rural Irish Landscape (Cork, 1997), p. 174. ⁵⁸ Walter L. Brenneman, Jr. and Mary G. Brenneman, Crossing the Circle at the Holy Wells of Ireland (Charlottesville, 1995), pp. 5–6. ⁵⁹ Celeste Ray, ‘Paying the Rounds at Ireland’s Holy Wells’, Anthropos 110 (2015), p. 418. ⁶⁰ Description of Tobernaltha Well, Sligo. Lord Walter Fitzgerald papers (nd; early twentieth century), Ms. 18869, National Library of Ireland, Dublin. ⁶¹ Ray, ‘Paying the Rounds’, pp. 416–17. ⁶² Celeste Ray, ‘The Sacred and the Body Politic at Ireland’s Holy Wells’, International Social Science Journal, 62 (2013), p. 279.

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Virgin Mary appears to them and begins to cry real tears. As the liquid drips down the Virgin’s face, the girls immediately plot to use the miraculous occasion to get out of their exam. ‘We are the motherfucking children of Fatima!’ exclaims one. In reality, however, the dog sought by the girls has urinated above the statue onto the face of Mary, and in the end the girls are denounced for perpetrating a hoax on the parish.⁶³ For the viewer, the humour of the scene comes from making fun of the trope of the overwrought teenage girl and the apparition-as-hoax, but it also taps into a cultural reality: that in the 1980s, ‘strange supernatural happenings’, often involving an animated Blessed Virgin, overtook parts of the country, becoming fodder for the press and resulting in both increased piety and scathing scepticism.⁶⁴ Beginning in February 1985 and continuing for months, Catholics in counties Kerry, Cork, and Waterford reported that religious statues, mostly of the Virgin Mary, ‘were moving, changing color, . . . or had come alive and given messages to the people of God’.⁶⁵ Although such appearances were particularly frequent in the 1980s, supernatural Marianism was not new to Ireland. MacCurtain argues that Marianism became relevant amidst the cultural and emotional destruction of the Famine years, citing the 1879 apparition at Knock, County Mayo, as happening at the peak of popular Marian devotion. According to James Donnelly, however, this peak came much later—between 1930 and 1960.⁶⁶ Certainly the 1950s was an era of increased piety; in the Marian year of 1954, hundreds of grottoes were constructed across Ireland.⁶⁷ There was a public waning of interest in, and reporting on, Marianism after the 1960s, but the events of the 1980s across Ireland remind us that devotion to the Virgin could pop up again, particularly in response to crisis.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, a decline in religious practice was evident by the 1990s, when clerical abuse scandals and revelations about horrors at the Magdalen laundries shook the reputation of the Church.⁶⁹ These developments occurred alongside the unprecedented economic prosperity of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ years that supported secularization, and were followed by surveys and polls that claimed Ireland’s

⁶³ Derry Girls TV series, Channel 4, UK, created by Lisa McGee, episode 1.3 (2018). ⁶⁴ The Nationalist (Tipperary), 24 August 1985. ⁶⁵ Sandra L. Zimdars-Swartz, ‘Popular Devotion to the Virgin: The Marian Phenomena at Melleray, Republic of Ireland’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 67 (1989), p. 126. ⁶⁶ James S. Donnelly, ‘The Peak of Marianism in Ireland, 1930‒60’, in Steward J. Brown and David W. Miller (eds), Piety and Power in Ireland 1760–1960 (Notre Dame, IN, 2000), pp. 252–83. ⁶⁷ Donnelly, ‘The Peak of Marianism’, p. 127. ⁶⁸ James S. Donnelly, ‘Opposing the “Modern World”: The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Ireland, 1965‒85’, Éire-Ireland, 40 (2005), pp. 183–245. ⁶⁹ James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (South Bend, IN, 2007); Louise Fuller, ‘Critical Voices in Irish Catholicism: Reading the Signs of the Times’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly, 100 (2011), p. 477.

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Catholics were abandoning Mass and confession,⁷⁰ a conclusion partly borne out by the Church’s own statistics.⁷¹ By the first few decades of the twenty-first century, popular votes that legalized same-sex marriage and repealed Ireland’s anti-abortion legislation (2015 and 2018 respectively) fundamentally challenged the taken for granted link between Ireland and Catholicism. While some aspects of extra-liturgical devotional life remain—the importance of First Holy Communion comes to mind—even these occasions seem different to some; in the case of First Communion, blatant consumerism and ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, in terms of dress and gifts, has caused many to lament the tangible popular devotion that once marked life-cycle rituals and other religious occasions.⁷² Still, priest academic Peter McGrail finds generational continuities in recent First Communion rituals, arguing that the elements of the ritual as a rite of initiation, a celebration of the child-worshipper, and the importance of symbol, through dress, gift-giving, and eating and drinking, ‘have hardly changed since the mid-twentieth century’.⁷³ Continuities and changes in Irish Catholic devotional cultures, which marked the twentieth century, thus persist. Perhaps being Irish and Catholic in the new millennium has less to do with what rituals one attends or devotions one performs and more to do with ‘belonging to a cultural tradition and heritage, to a shared collective memory’.⁷⁴ However, many in Ireland today who actually practice their faith do not have a shared collective memory. The first few decades of the 2000s have witnessed significant immigration, and Polish migrants’ commitment to Catholic belief and practice have earned them a reputation as ‘unexpected saviours of faith’ in both the UK and Ireland.⁷⁵ Polish female religious and mystic Faustina Kowalska, inspiration of the Divine Mercy, has helped solidify the devotion in Ireland in recent years, leading one Limerick priest to reflect: ‘The Polish community brings great life to the parish. If you look at the way they worship, it is like Ireland was 40 years ago’.⁷⁶ The Ireland of forty years ago, with its very public and visible outdoor spectacles of devotion, displayed the vibrant nature of Irish popular Catholicism. Markedly diminished aspects of this performative piety nevertheless persist, even through a ⁷⁰ Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950, p. iii. ⁷¹ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Frequency of Attendance’, table A1.3. ⁷² Cara Delay, ‘Fashion and Faith: The First Communion Dress in Twentieth-Century Ireland’, Religions, 12:7 (2021), p. 518. ⁷³ Peter McGrail, First Communion: Ritual, Church and Popular Religious Identity (New York, 2007), p. 151. ⁷⁴ Tom Inglis, ‘Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 22:2 (2007), p. 207. ⁷⁵ Kerry Gallagher and Marta Trzebiatowska, ‘Becoming a “Real” Catholic: Polish Migrants and Lived Religiosity in the UK and Ireland’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 32:3 (2017), p. 432. ⁷⁶ ‘Polish Catholics Bring New Life to Limerick Parish’, Irish Times, 16 May 2016, https://www. irishtimes.com/news/social-affairs/polish-catholics-bring-new-life-to-limerick-parish-1.2648913 (accessed 29 December 2021).

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century of unprecedented change. As to home-based devotional rituals and material piety, recent transformations in Irish Catholics’ domestic expressions of believing and belonging await their anthropological and sociological survey.

Select Bibliography De Cléir, Síle, Popular Catholicism in 20th-Century Ireland: Locality, Identity and Culture (London, 2017). Delay, Cara, ‘Holy Water and a Twig: Catholic Households and Women’s Religious Authority in Modern Ireland’, Journal of Family History, 43:3 (2018), pp. 302–19. Delay, Cara, Irish Women and the Creation of Modern Catholicism (Manchester, 2019). Elliot, Marianne, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (New York, 2001). Fuller, Louise, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002). Harris, Alana, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945–1982 (Manchester, 2013). Heimann, Mary, ‘The Secularization of St Francis of Assisi’, British Catholic History, 33:3 (2017), pp. 401–20. Heimann, Mary, ‘Medical and Mystical Opinion in British Catholicism: The Contentious Case of Teresa Higginson’ in Tine Van Osselaer, Henk De Smaele, and Kaat Wils (eds.), Sign or Symptom? Exceptional Corporeal Phenomena in Religion and Medicine in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leuven, 2017), pp. 75–100. Taylor, Lawrence J. Occasions of Faith: An Anthropology of Irish Catholics (Philadelphia, 1995).

8 The Architecture and Art of British and Irish Catholicism Robert Proctor

British and Irish Catholics invested enormous financial and emotional resources into building the structures in which they worshipped, taught, and sometimes also lived at an unprecedented scale in the twentieth century, creating spaces that organized social and political relationships between themselves and wider society and enabled Catholic religious life to thrive. Though oriented to the divine, this new Catholic architecture occupied mundane sites of twentieth-century modernity, adopting modern technologies. The Catholic Church’s building activity was therefore a kind of infrastructure, a spatial and material equipment shaping social and institutional forms and actions.¹ Changes of style and form in church buildings are important, but this wider, comprehensive project of building the Church is more fundamental. Key landmarks of scholarship in this field remain important and deserve continued revisiting.² There is an accepted view that the Second Vatican Council and the architectural modern movement were intrinsically aligned, prompting the transformation of twentieth-century church architecture and art.³ Teleological narratives, however, have read reformist values into the past, ignoring swathes of building activity deemed inadequately ‘modern’.⁴ This omission has led to efforts to reassess twentieth-century church architecture following wider historiographical concerns. These include analysis of the Church’s

The author is grateful to Dr Kate Jordan and Dr Roderick O’Donnell for their thoughtful comments on a draft of this chapter. ¹ Ellen Rowley, ‘Catholic Churches and Cathedrals in the Twentieth Century’, in Rolf Loeber, Hugh Campbell, Livia Hurley, John Montague, and Ellen Rowley (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, vol. IV: Architecture 1600–2000 (Dublin, 2014), pp. 295–9, 296. ² Notably Bryan Little, Catholic Churches since 1623: A Study of Roman Catholic Churches in England and Wales from Penal Times to the Present Decade (London, 1966). ³ Paul D. Walker, ‘Developments in Catholic Church building in the British Isles, 1945–1980’ (University of Sheffield PhD thesis, 1985); Robert Proctor, ‘Churches for a Changing Liturgy: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Second Vatican Council’, Architectural History, 48 (2005), pp. 291–322; Robert Proctor, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (Aldershot, 2014). ⁴ Richard Hurley and Wilfrid Cantwell, Contemporary Irish Church Architecture (Dublin, 1985); Richard Hurley, Irish Church Architecture in the Era of Vatican II (Dublin, 2001). Robert Proctor, The Architecture and Art of British and Irish Catholicism In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0009

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involvement in urban planning, with political ramifications in Ireland; and sociological concerns with design, class, and community in typical churches.⁵ Concern with the ‘lived religion’ of Catholics has led to work on the ‘material religion’ of their surroundings, including the design and use of religious imagery, both the commonplace and canonical.⁶ Consideration of women’s roles has led to work exploring their agency in building and furnishing churches, particularly through religious orders.⁷ Meanwhile, studies of specific architects, artists, buildings, and sites continue to enrich our understanding of the period’s church art and architecture.⁸ Acknowledging this increasingly rich field of scholarship, this overview of the built infrastructure of the Church considers not only churches but also wider building activities, including schools and colleges. The relationships between liturgical reform and architecture were a defining feature of the twentieth-century Church, affecting worshippers’ everyday experiences; with much scholarship available on this subject, it is positioned here in relation to this broader perspective. What is, after all, most salient about the Church’s twentieth-century building activity is simply its scale, as Catholics continued and extended the nineteenthcentury’s work of restoration.

Parish Planning and Funding The Catholic population in Britain grew remarkably in the mid-twentieth century, especially due to continued and increasingly widespread Irish migration.⁹ Burgeoning numbers combined with high church attendance made provision of buildings feel urgent. A characteristic of twentieth-century cities was suburban expansion, mostly unplanned through private development before the war, and after it controlled through new planning legislation—although pioneering municipal estates such as Wythenshawe and Speke were begun in the 1930s. Dioceses subdivided unmapped rural areas into suburban parishes (casually so, without the demographic research conducted elsewhere in Europe), and acquired land for ⁵ Ellen Rowley, ‘The Architect, the Planner and the Bishop: the Shapers of “Ordinary” Dublin’, Footprint, 9 (2015), pp. 69–88; Richard J. Butler, ‘Catholic Power and the Irish City: Modernity, Religion, and Planning in Galway, 1944–1949’, Journal of British Studies, 59 (2020), pp. 521–54; Robert Proctor, ‘Designing the Suburban Church: The Mid Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Churches of Reynolds & Scott’, Journal of Historical Geography, 56 (2017), pp. 113–33. ⁶ Robert Proctor and Ambrose Gillick, ‘Pilgrimage and Visual Genre: The Architecture of Twentieth-Century Roman Catholic Pilgrimage in Scotland’, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art and Belief, 15 (2019), pp. 456–87. ⁷ Kate Jordan, ‘The Building Sisters of Presteigne: Gender, Innovation and Tradition in Roman Catholic Architecture’, in Kate Jordan and Ayla Lepine (eds.), Modern Architecture for Religious Communities, 1850–1970: Building the Kingdom (London, 2018), pp. 123–38. ⁸ For example, Dominic Wilkinson and Andrew Crompton, F. X. Velarde (Liverpool, 2020). ⁹ Enda Delaney, The Irish in Post-War Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 89–109.

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parish centres. Catholic dioceses competed with other denominations for prominent sites. Local planners often allocated church sites in plans, and in post-war Britain interdenominational committees agreed church sites in local authority housing areas. In Ireland the Church’s new constitutional position gave it confidence to intervene in planning: Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin demanded prime sites in new housing areas to ensure the Church would visually and socially dominate residents’ lives.¹⁰ In Britain, too, Catholics asserted their presence with unmistakable, monumental structures. As in Ireland, depending on the bishop’s taste, new churches might shun the modernity of surrounding housing and municipal buildings—the neo-Byzantine bulk of Adrian Gilbert Scott’s churches on the Lansbury Estate in London and in Wythenshawe being especially provocative. Elsewhere, especially in churches for New Towns such as Harlow or East Kilbride, architects embraced a modernism in tune with the modernity of the church’s surroundings. Yet whatever style was preferred, prominent sites, monumental forms, and striking skylines sought to assert contemporary citizenship for the Catholic faithful. When the Second Vatican Council popularized new theology about the role of the Church in the world with documents such as Gaudium et Spes (1965), this convention of monumental church building was questioned in favour of sites and forms expressing concepts of a pilgrim or servant Church. More domestically scaled buildings followed, more modestly sited in neighbourhood centres and including secular community facilities. In Dublin, McQuaid’s successor Dermot Ryan ran an architectural competition for economical church designs with community centres for new suburbs in 1976, attracting nearly 200 entries, five of which were adapted to specific sites and built.¹¹ There was a customary sequence in planning parish infrastructure. The permanent church was the objective, but new parishes with limited funds began with more expedient structures. The presbytery generally came first, often simply a purchased house. Living rooms could be converted into tiny oratories. When a permanent church was built, a new presbytery was normally built alongside, emulating the middle-class suburban house, with semi-public rooms for administration and meetings.¹² Some took a more institutional, civic appearance, those by modern movement architects often visually related to their churches. These houses, often architecturally interesting, forming the administrative hubs of parishes and housing the spaces of significant social relationships between priests

¹⁰ Rowley, ‘The Architect’. ¹¹ Ellen Rowley, ‘Architectural Competitions in the Twentieth Century’, in Loeber, Campbell, Hurley, Montague, and Rowley (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, pp. 122–5. ¹² Proctor, ‘Designing the Suburban Church’, pp. 116–17.

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and laity, have been largely ignored in research on twentieth-century Catholicism and deserve investigation. Parishes would also initially build a hall where Mass could be said, doubling as a secular space for use by Catholics and others, occasionally even as school rooms. Rental charges for events provided a substantial income. Many halls had a sanctuary behind folding screens, allowing daily Masses or private devotional visits through a side door, while a theatrical stage occupied the other end. These buildings were usually envisaged as permanent halls to complement the future church. Though not phrased as such in contemporary sources, this building type echoes the European interwar ‘Catholic Action’ movement which aimed to extend the Church’s reach into secular community life. In new housing areas, buildings for civic assembly were uncommon, and church halls became vital community centres. In England, Wales, and Ireland, many dioceses located schools, especially primary schools, alongside other parish buildings, most consistently in Salford and Dublin. Dioceses chose school architects from rosters of favoured firms. Permanent churches could thus form visual landmarks for substantial Catholic campuses, school, hall, and presbytery often dominating neighbourhoods, further marked with signboards and statuary. Langley, near Middleton, exemplifies this model: its school faced the church across a road creating a Catholic civic complex, including a convent whose nuns undertook social work. Such pre-conciliar developments support the idea of a ‘fortress Church’ containing Catholics’ lives within its boundaries.¹³ Strength of community and identity were evident benefits, but the social faults of this ‘architecture of containment’ are also increasingly apparent, and the effects of its spatial forms deserve further study.¹⁴ Occasionally, especially on constricted urban sites or where budgets were pressed, churches were integrated with secular elements. Churches in older areas of London, such as the Holy Apostles, Pimlico, rebuilt after wartime bombing, often had halls in basements under their naves, resembling a church type prevalent in Milan, where multi-storey buildings provided worship spaces inside coherent centres of community and education.¹⁵ But in Britain this approach was expedient, not articulated as a pastoral ideal until the Second Vatican Council’s implications were debated. With such a volume of building to undertake and parishes responsible for their own finances, money was a constant preoccupation, but fundraising for ¹³ Michael P. Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholics in England: Studies in Social Structure Since the Second World War (Cambridge, 1987), p. 21. ¹⁴ James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Manchester, 2008). ¹⁵ Umberto Bordoni, Maria Antonietta Crippa, Davide Fusari, and Ferdinando Zanzottera, ‘A Laboratory of Pastoral Modernity: Church Building in Milan under Cardinal Montini and Enrico Mattei from 1955 to 1963’, in Sven Sterken and Eva Weyns (eds.), Territories of Faith: Religion, Urban Planning and Demographic Change in Post-War Europe (Leuven, 2022), pp. 251–80.

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permanent churches cemented parish communities, including through social events in halls. Large gifts and national or international campaigns were unusual and mostly confined to special projects such as pilgrimage sites. The Marquesses of Bute supported some churches in Scotland, and businessman Francis van Neste financed several post-war churches in Wales as well as Clifton Cathedral.¹⁶ Football pools were locally organized, the priest’s household collections a pretext for pastoral oversight in Liverpool; in the diocese of Edinburgh and St Andrews, however, bingo was banned, as gambling was denounced by other denominations.¹⁷ Named donations were solicited from parishioners for items of furnishing, encouraging personal identification with the building project, as in other periods and denominations. Dioceses offered grants only in some poorer rural contexts, especially Wales, and strictly controlled parish spending. Such piecemeal fundraising delayed permanent churches, many only arising thirty or forty years after surrounding housing. In the post-war period, however, demand for new churches was high, confidence in future growth mistakenly strong, and bank loans were cheap and freely used, accelerating building but leaving parishes in debt. Parishes in bombed cities, interwar suburbs, and postwar housing estates all built together in the 1950s and 1960s in an unprecedented boom in church-building. Economic crises from the early 1970s onwards reduced access to credit, and rising building costs contributed as much as declining attendance and the new post-conciliar ethos to the changing nature of church buildings. New churches were increasingly modest and utilitarian for the rest of the century. The end of the twentieth century was marked by a sense of crisis in many dioceses: parishes were merged and churches sold and demolished, including many prestigious buildings. New church buildings became a rarity, often predicated on the closure of other churches.

Education School building, meanwhile, benefited from government funding, varying in the different nations. In England and Wales, the 1902 Education Act brought church schools partially within the State system, with government grants for buildings. Catholics retained control and commissioned buildings themselves, choosing trusted church architects. After the Second World War, the Ministry of Education disseminated modern architectural principles, giving advice on cost standards, new building techniques, and methods of functional analysis. Architects’ experiences in this ¹⁶ Menevia Diocesan Archives, Burry Port parish file; Catholic Building Review, Northern edn (1965), p. 159; ‘£250,000 Promise for New R. C. Cathedral’, in Evening Post (Bristol), 17 January 1966. ¹⁷ Anthony Kenny, A Path From Rome: An Autobiography (London, 1985), p. 154; Scottish Catholic Archives, Edinburgh, DE/59/318.

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secular field often informed their church design: Weightman & Bullen even built a church in Bradford using the CLASP system originally invented for schools. But sometimes the reverse was true: some of F. X. Velarde’s post-war schools were unfashionably monumental, built in brick. In Scotland, Catholic schools were more completely absorbed into the State in 1919, built by local authorities who appointed their architects, but seemingly followed diocesan recommendations: Notre Dame High School in Glasgow of 1939 to 1953 was by church architect Thomas Cordiner, for example, and Gillespie, Kidd & Coia designed a remarkable copper-clad secondary school in Cumbernauld. In Ireland, most primary schools were State-funded and -built, while the Church ran secondary schools until State provision began in the 1960s. Until then large houses were commonly adapted and extended, sometimes with work of architectural significance, such as that by architects O’Connor and Aylward for the Christian Brothers.¹⁸ Religious orders ran many schools within the State system in Britain, sometimes following the Irish method of expanding big houses (at Thornleigh Silesian school at Bolton, for example). There was a parallel system of private schools, particularly attached to Benedictine abbeys. In the 1960s and 1970s, Francis Pollen designed buildings at Worth, where he was the abbey’s architect, and at Downside and Buckfast, accommodating schools in finely designed and distinctly monastic environments.¹⁹ The Church also attempted to invest in higher education, with mixed results. Edwin Lutyens designed Campion Hall at Oxford in the mid-1930s in a plain vernacular style, a small university college run by Jesuits. The 1960s seminary of St Peter’s College at Cardross has become famous as a magnificent brutalist ruin, designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia in a remote woodland setting, abandoned when it was deemed unsuited to pastoral training following post-conciliar seminary reforms. It was never more than half occupied, designed for an increase in vocations that never happened.²⁰ Other projects were abandoned before they were begun: at the Jesuit college at Heythrop, a plan to invite other religious orders to build houses for their students, emulating Maynooth, led to intriguing modernist designs by Howell, Killick, Partridge & Amis. This too fell victim to post-conciliar changes of emphasis and falling vocations.²¹ Maynooth itself was extended with a college for the Society of African Missions in the 1970s. There was a campaign in Britain for university chaplaincies, as students were increasingly dislocated from the parish system after the war as generous grants ¹⁸ Ellen Rowley, ‘Schools in the Twentieth Century’, in Loeber, Campbell, Hurley, Montague, and Rowley (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, IV, pp. 217–21. ¹⁹ Alan Powers, Francis Pollen: Architect, 1926–1987 (Oxford, 1999), pp. 52–61, 94–5; Alan Powers, ‘The Work of Francis Pollen’, in Aidan Bellenger (ed.), Downside Abbey: An Architectural History (London, 2011), pp. 201–16; Alan Powers, ‘Buckfast School’, in Peter Beacham (ed.), Buckfast Abbey: History, Art and Architecture (London, 2017), pp. 187–95. ²⁰ Diane M. Watters, St Peter’s, Cardross: Birth, Death and Renewal (Edinburgh, 2016). ²¹ Geraint Franklin, Howell, Killick, Partridge and Amis (Swindon, 2017), pp. 60–5.

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encouraged leaving home to study. The most notable were in Manchester (a modernist student hostel, complementing new university buildings, and the later church of St Augustine by Desmond Williams); Cambridge, by Gerard Goalen, and Oxford, by Ahrends, Burton & Koralek. Some universities built their own interdenominational chaplaincies, expecting the churches to participate. Those at Keele and Lancaster were early examples of ecumenical collaboration where denominational chapels shared central spaces in one building. Most successful were post-war teacher training colleges, which received government funding to enable middle-class careers for Catholics, especially women, entirely contained within a Catholic framework. They included residential and teaching accommodation, like miniature universities. The college at Middleton had buildings by Reynolds & Scott and a chapel by Frederick Gibberd; another in Leeds was designed by Weightman & Bullen, likewise with a distinctive modern chapel, and St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, had a thoughtfully designed 1960s campus with chapel by Robinson Keefe Devane surrounding a Victorian core. At Bearsden a training college run by the Sisters of Notre Dame was designed by Gillespie, Kidd & Coia, with its own school below the convent and student rooms. The Catholic infrastructure of education, then, remained patchy at the higher level, but in schooling and teacher training, the desire to raise every Catholic within settings inculcating Catholic values led to a comprehensive built network. While aiming to shelter the faithful from the modern world, this infrastructure was dependent on State funding and followed secular developments.

Parish Churches and Cathedrals: Style, Meaning, and Modernity Churches were surely less important to the reproduction of Catholic society than schools, which, even with government contributions, demanded far greater resources to build and administer, while many parishes went without permanent churches for years. With attendance peaking in the 1960s, however, new churches seemed urgent: parish histories describe crowds worshipping outside for lack of space. Calculations were made about how many Masses could be celebrated, limited by canon law, and how many faithful could be squeezed into each. Five Sunday Masses were normal, requiring three priests. Even modest churches seated congregations in the hundreds, and churches for 1,000 were built in most major cities; churches for 1,500 were not unknown in Ireland. Many large sheltering structures were therefore needed at modest cost, all other design considerations being relatively unimportant. Whether churches were rectangular or circular, Gothic or Byzantine, or the position of their altars were minor issues compared to the organizational and financial efforts of providing so many new buildings. Dioceses saw architectural innovation as an inconvenience,

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requiring scrutiny of plans and problematic decisions. Bishops and finance committees would regularly insist on ‘traditional’ forms, citing papal statements on church design before the Second Vatican Council, and went to trusted architects, who prospered by providing many similar buildings. New technology assisted this boom in church-building, reducing construction costs. Masonry vaults became obsolete for all but prestige projects by the 1920s. Reinforced concrete was an established technique by then and achieved the same look and permanence without the cost or skill. From the 1930s, light steel trusses with plaster ceilings were also adopted. Diehard anti-modernists like H. S. Goodhart-Rendel disliked the new materials but could not afford any better.²² Brick or stone cladding, meanwhile, gave reassuring solidity and dressed the structure in stylistically acceptable clothing. Modernism arose in part because of this contradiction, seeking a straightforward relationship between structure and form, and exploiting the spatial and expressive potential which new structures offered. Whether historical or modern in style, however, and if historical, of which style, were choices that could carry important meanings. The Gothic Revival tailed off in the twentieth century, with increasing simplification and influence from America and European Expressionism, favouring a stripped-down Perpendicular. Relatively few serious Gothic Revival churches were built, though there were notable examples by Giles Gilbert Scott (including Oban Cathedral and Christ the King, Plymouth).²³ Some of Reynolds & Scott’s many churches adopted the style, evoking solid English parish churches with simple means (at Moreton, for example). Post-war reconstructions sometimes maintained the Gothic, such as Romilly Craze’s rebuilding of Pugin’s Southwark Cathedral, conveying continuity. Gothic was partly unfashionable and partly considered too Anglican (Scott’s Liverpool Cathedral impossible to rival) and was expensive to execute well. An Arts and Crafts mode, however, suited humbler churches, such as St George, Sudbury, of 1927 for Anglican convert Clement Lloyd Russell, who attempted to recreate a medieval English church including liturgical furnishings.²⁴ Significantly, however, a full-blooded Gothic approach flourished for monastic projects aspiring to revive medieval precursors. Scott designed an unusual church at Ampleforth Abbey from 1922 in a severe, simplified early English style with saucer domes instead of vaults. He also added a tower and nave at

²² Alan Powers (ed.), H. S. Goodhart-Rendel, 1887–1959 (London, 1987), p. 46; Scottish Catholic Archives, Edinburgh, DG/54/2. ²³ Gavin Stamp, ‘ “A Catholic Church in Which Everything is Genuine and Good”: The Roman Catholic Parish Churches of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’, Ecclesiology Today, 38 (2007), pp. 63–80. ²⁴ Richard Hawker, ‘St George’s Sudbury and Fr. Clement Lloyd Russell’, Liturgical Arts Journal, 24 April 2018, https://www.liturgicalartsjournal.com/2018/04/st-georges-sudbury-and-fr-clementlloyd.html (accessed 15 December 2020).

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Downside, emulating its earlier choir as the abbot demanded.²⁵ Here, continuity with the medieval Glastonbury Abbey was suggested: stones from its ruins were incorporated into the sanctuary, and pilgrimages often began in the church. Mount Melleray Abbey in County Waterford was another late Gothic Revival outpost, built in the 1930s to designs by Alfred Jones. More eccentric was Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, designed and built before the First World War by Dom Paul Bellot, an architect trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in a remarkable and unique Expressionist brick Gothic style unlike anything else in Britain. The most favoured styles until about 1960 were, often in confused combination, early Christian basilican, Byzantine, and Lombardic Romanesque, usually in brick, sometimes given a theatrical Art Deco treatment (Adrian Gilbert Scott used parabolic arches, for example). A more civic Renaissance or neo-Georgian accent could be introduced through details, or archaeologically studious attempts made when funds allowed (Scott’s St Alphege, Bath, and J. S. Brocklesby’s St Joseph, Burslem, being especially outstanding). This style may have developed through emulation of Westminster Cathedral, but it also became internationally common for urban churches in Europe and America. Westminster gave it Catholic identity;²⁶ and it was conducive to cheap, plain structures that could be gradually embellished later. Many were decorated with brilliant mosaics: two such important interwar churches are St Catherine of Alexandria at Droitwich, with mosaics by Gabriel Pippet, and St John the Baptist, Rochdale, a centrally domed Byzantinestyle church by Hill, Sandy & Norris, decorated by Eric Newton of the Oppenheimer mosaic firm of Manchester. The stylized character of these schemes suggests Art Deco influence and thus a degree of modernity, and the architecture of simple surfaces and forms was considered modern but retained allegiance to tradition. In Ireland, the same approach continued into the 1960s, but the Romanesque was instead often used to convey national associations by applying early medieval Irish precedent, evident in rubble stonework and Celtic decorative motifs, often with much creativity: architects Rudolf Butler, John J. Robinson, and Ralph Byrne are notable, and deserve further study.²⁷ Most important is William Scott’s interwar church at Lough Derg: octagonal in form, rough Irish Romanesque in style, but ornamented with high quality finishes and furnishings including windows by Harry Clarke, it was a confident assertion of Catholic national identity at the shrine of St Patrick. Byrne, however, also designed Mullingar and Cavan ²⁵ Gavin Stamp, ‘Downside Abbey and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’, in Bellenger (ed.), Downside Abbey, pp. 177–99. ²⁶ Alana Harris and John Jenkins, ‘More English than the English, More Roman than Rome? Historical Signifiers and Cultural Memory at Westminster Cathedral’, Religion, 49 (2018), pp. 48–73. ²⁷ Paul Larmour, ‘Twentieth-Century Church Architecture in Ireland’, in Annette Becker, John Olley, and Wilfried Wang (eds.), 20th-Century Architecture: Ireland (Munich, 1997), pp. 61–5.

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cathedrals in the 1930s using an oddly English Neoclassical architecture, confounding any straightforward nationalist narrative. Similarly, Robinson’s post-war Galway Cathedral eclectically combined Hiberno-Romanesque elements with a Renaissance appearance. Renaissance references were otherwise uncommon in this period but included Edwin Lutyens’s unbuilt design for Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.²⁸ The primary value for Catholic clergy in any of these styles was that they were not overtly modern. This is amply demonstrated by the notorious competition held by the archdiocese of Dublin in 1954 for a church at Clonskeagh. Though Tom Ryan won with a moderate modernist design, McQuaid controversially ignored the assessors to appoint Jones & Kelly for a sumptuous ByzantineRomanesque hulk (Figure 8.1).²⁹ Between the wars Anglican churches were more adventurous: architects N. F. Cachemaille-Day and Bernard Miller, for example, were influenced by

Figure 8.1 Church of the Miraculous Medal, Clonskeagh, Dublin, 1954–7, by Jones & Kelly. Photograph courtesy of the Irish Architectural Archive, taken in 2017; converted to black and white and cropped by Robert Proctor.

²⁸ Charlotte Wildman, Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918–39 (London, 2016), pp. 167–89. ²⁹ Ellen Rowley, ‘Transitional Modernism: Post-War Dublin Churches and the Example of the Clonskeagh Church Competition, 1954’, in Carole Taffe and Edwina Keown (eds.), Irish Modernism: Origins, Contexts, Publics (London, 2009), pp. 195–216.

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Dutch and Scandinavian modern architecture in brick and reinforced concrete. But some Catholic clergy encouraged a degree of experimentation. The churches of F. X. Velarde of Liverpool pushed the Byzantine-Romanesque into new forms, influenced by German models but with personal idiosyncrasies; yet he nevertheless advocated continuity with tradition.³⁰ Giuseppe Rinvolucri, designer of several chunky Romanesque churches in Wales, built a startling modern church with parabolic concrete vaults in Amlwch, Anglesey. Gillespie, Kidd & Coia designed thoughtful Expressionist brick churches at Ardrossan, Woodside in Glasgow, and Rutherglen. Even these exceptional modern churches maintained, however, a fundamental basilican plan. Modern architecture became widely accepted for churches in Britain from the mid-1950s, frankly revealing new construction techniques including steel or reinforced concrete portal frames or A-frames. The change of style initially had little effect on the church’s shape, with long basilican forms remaining normal, although aisles were commonly suppressed. Basil Spence’s Anglican Coventry Cathedral, won in competition in 1951 and completed in 1962, was influential, with concrete piers and vaults echoing the Gothic in modern form. Notable Catholic examples include Weightman & Bullen’s Holy Ghost, Bootle; Gillespie, Kidd & Coia’s St Charles, Kelvinside, with folded concrete vaults; London churches by Burles, Newton & Partners; and Hadfield, Cawkwell & Davidson’s elegant Holy Apostles, Pimlico. The Irish hierarchy resisted innovation, however. Modernist architect Michael Scott designed churches for parish priests at Lettermore and Moneytown, Dublin, that their bishops cancelled. His only completed church was at Knockanure, begun in 1960—a radically simple parallelwalled, glass-ended box with concrete-beamed roof, broad but still basilican in plan, and distinctly monumental.³¹ Corr & McCormick’s 1951 Holy Rosary in Limerick is often cited as Ireland’s first modern post-war church, a simple, long, narrow basilica in steel, only acceptable because it was intended as temporary and movable. The light-filled steel and brick church at Curragh Camp of 1959 was an influential turning point, when even bishops admitted that modern architecture could convey sufficient dignity. Catholic architectural modernism emerged in a wider cultural sphere. Young post-war architects admired European architecture, including an emerging canon of modern church architects, particularly Rudolf Schwarz. Publications and travel made such knowledge accessible; Irish architects arranged several exhibitions on European church architecture from the mid-1950s, also attracting clergy.³² ³⁰ R. Velarde and F. X. Velarde, ‘Modern Church Architecture and Some of Its Problems’, Clergy Review, 38 (1953), pp. 513–26. ³¹ John O’Regan and Nicola Dearey (eds.), Michael Scott Architect in (Casual) Conversation with Dorothy Walker (Oysterhaven, 1995), pp. 182–4, 203–5, 208–9. ³² Austin Flannery, ‘Introduction’, to Hurley and Cantwell, Contemporary Irish Church Architecture, pp. 9–29.

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Modernism promised cheaper and faster construction, a pressing concern when so many churches were required. But it also suggests a new atmosphere in the Church amongst clergy and parishioners: that provision of this expanded Catholic built environment aroused an enthusiasm for demonstrating participation as confident communities in the modern nation. Modern architecture allied churches with the visual culture of the contemporary civic and institutional buildings that typified the welfare State. But architects also explored modernism’s potential for atmospheric expression, encouraging a contemplative spirituality. Effects of darkness and light became hallmarks of some architects’ work, particularly for Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and Andrew Devane. An abstract, poetic approach, initially inspired by Le Corbusier’s religious buildings, could also suggest other expressive meanings. In McCormick’s work, for example, a romantic engagement with landscape associated the church with national origins: St Aengus at Burt, County Donegal, borrowed its round shape and rubble walls from a prehistoric ruin on the hilltop behind it.³³ Modernism was challenged by the mid-1970s within and beyond the architectural profession, but with the decline in church-building, even in Ireland, there was little opportunity for new architectural responses. Most work in church architecture after 1975 involved the conservation of older buildings. Historicism sometimes reasserted itself with newfound confidence. The bishop of Brentwood, Thomas McMahon, lavishly rebuilt the cathedral, hiring architect Quinlan Terry, a vocal opponent of modern architecture, favoured of Prince Charles. The remains of the Victorian Gothic church were retained, and a Neoclassical volume attached, opened in 1991. Its centralized liturgical planning is fully post-conciliar, but the architecture is oddly based on eighteenth-century secular models. Craig Hamilton Architects have recently built a series of private chapels in an informed, creative classical style for wealthy clients, but whether this approach would be feasible for larger churches on modest budgets remains untested. In newer and subtler forms, hinting at historical sources and engaging with landscape, modern architecture has resurfaced in promising ways: De Blacam and Meagher’s half-buried Chapel of Reconciliation at Knock and Simpson and Brown’s timber and stone chapel for Edinburgh University’s Catholic chaplaincy are distinguished, though neither is a parish church, and the handful of those built in the last forty years has been unremarkable.³⁴

³³ Paul Larmour and Shane O’Toole (eds.), North by Northwest: The Life and Work of Liam McCormick (Kinsale, 2008). ³⁴ Gavin Stamp, ‘Art and Soul’, Architecture Today (n.d.), https://architecturetoday.co.uk/art-andsoul (accessed 29 March 2021); Ellis Woodman, ‘The Chapel of Our Lady’, Architecture Today (n.d.), https://architecturetoday.co.uk/the-chapel-of-our-lady (accessed 29 March 2021); Shane de Blacam and John Olley, ‘Chapel of Reform: Appraisal’, Architects’ Journal, 5 August 1992, pp. 24–33.

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Modernism and Liturgical Reform The modern movement’s greatest impact was that, more fundamentally, it was a design approach that set aside conventional forms to analyse the functions of buildings and accommodate them through design from first principles. Architects taking this approach discovered the liturgical movement, premised on the centrality of the Eucharistic liturgy and participation of worshippers. The basilican church was thought to be a flawed medieval development: as religious infrastructure, therefore, most church buildings were faulty. To ‘actively participate’, smaller numbers of faithful had to be gathered ‘naturally’ near the altar. Interwar Catholic church architecture, especially in Germany, already demonstrated new ways to achieve this ideal with square or rounded plans, using reinforced concrete for freely shaped spaces.³⁵ In Britain the New Churches Research Group led by Anglican priest Peter Hammond advocated this idea with significant publications and a model Anglican church at Bow Common, designed by Robert Maguire and Keith Murray with seating on three sides of a freestanding altar, opened in 1960. Lance Wright, architect of three churches, journalist, and lecturer, was a Catholic member of the group; so was theologian Charles Davis.³⁶ In Ireland, meanwhile, architects including Wilfred Cantwell were involved with the liturgical movement through Glenstal Abbey (discussed in McElroy’s Chapter 9 in this volume), whose conferences included one on church architecture in 1962.³⁷ Before the Second World War, any awareness of the liturgical movement had little impact on church buildings. Charles Borromeo’s Instructions remained a guide, recommending good visibility of the altar. Regular communion and Gregorian chant were advocated by Pope Leo X, so wide sanctuaries with long communion rails and choir galleries over west ends were normal.³⁸ There were pioneering but idiosyncratic exceptions. One was St Peter’s, Gorleston, of 1939, designed by the sculptor Eric Gill. A Latin cross with plain broad pointed arches, its simple altar occupied the centre of the sanctuary faced by seating on three sides in nave and transepts. It followed Gill’s essay ‘Mass for the Masses’ of 1938, which advocated stripping back church architecture to fundamental principles and a central location for the altar.³⁹ Gill’s supporter John O’Connor, a parish priest in Bradford, commissioned local architect J. H. Langtry-Langton to design an

³⁵ Kathleen James-Chakraborty, German Architecture for a Mass Audience (London, 2000), pp. 58–67. ³⁶ Peter Hammond, Liturgy and Architecture (London, 1960); Peter Hammond (ed.), Towards a Church Architecture (London, 1962). ³⁷ Hurley, Irish Church Architecture, p. 37. ³⁸ Architectural History Practice, Twentieth Century Roman Catholic Church Architecture in England: A Characterisation Study (London, 2014), pp. 16–18. ³⁹ Fiona McCarthy, Eric Gill (London, 1990), pp. 279–80; Eric Gill, Sacred & Secular &c. (London, 1940), pp. 143–55.

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octagonal church with central altar in 1935. Equally isolated and unusual was the 1931 church of Christ the King, Cork, by Chicago architect Barry Byrne. A single hangar-like space without columns (enabled by a steel-truss roof on concrete walls), with a theatrical Art Deco reredos behind a raised sanctuary, this may be the only pre-war Catholic parish church in Britain or Ireland embracing modernism that also considered emerging liturgical movement ideas (Figure 8.2).⁴⁰ The Benedictine priory church of Christ the King at Cockfosters represents another exceptional example, completed in 1940 to a striking modern design by Dom Constantine Bosschaerts and reputedly the site of the first dialogue Mass in Britain.⁴¹ Only after the Second World War did awareness of the liturgical movement become widespread thanks to international conferences and publications such as Worship, produced by American Benedictines at Collegeville, a centre of liturgical reform. Around 1960, when Gibberd won the Liverpool competition, centralizing church plans became mainstream, though Irish bishops were reluctant to innovate until the Second Vatican Council explicitly endorsed the liturgical movement in

Figure 8.2 Christ the King, Turner’s Cross, Cork, 1927–31, by architect Barry Byrne. Photograph courtesy of William Murphy (informatique.org), 2021, converted to black and white by Robert Proctor. ⁴⁰ Vincent L. Michael, ‘Expressing the Modern: Barry Byrne in 1920s Europe’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 69 (2010), pp. 534–55. ⁴¹ Kate Jordan, ‘Ordered Spaces, Separate Spheres: Women and the Building of British Convents, 1829‒1939’ (PhD thesis, University College London, 2015), p. 56.

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Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963). Even in Britain, canon law was normally observed, so tabernacles often remained firmly attached to altars until bishops allowed them to be placed elsewhere following the Vatican documents Inter Oecumenici (On Implementing the Constitution on Liturgy) of 1964 and Eucharisticum Mysterium (Instruction on Eucharistic Worship) of 1967. The earliest fully fledged post-war liturgical movement church in Britain and Ireland must be Father James Crichton’s at Pershore. Crichton was involved in the liturgical movement’s development, editing the journal Liturgy and attending European liturgy conferences in the 1950s. He instructed architect Hugh Bankart to design the church of the Holy Redeemer of 1957‒9 with a simple broad rectangular interior with freestanding altar placed deep into the congregation, anticipating future permission for Mass facing the people, the tabernacle in a side chapel behind it. Though architecturally unremarkable, the church’s innovative arrangements attracted much interest. In parallel, Gerard Goalen designed Our Lady of Fatima at Harlow for Francis Burgess on similar liturgical lines but with a rigorous modernist approach to every detail and a generous budget. The church, opened in 1960, is T-shaped in plan, nave and transepts of equal length, the altar central in a square sanctuary. The bishop demanded the tabernacle on the altar (Figure 8.3).⁴²

Figure 8.3 Our Lady of Fatima, Harlow, 1954–60, by Gerard Goalen. Photograph courtesy of Robert Proctor, 2010.

⁴² Proctor, Building the Modern Church, pp. 142–8.

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Weightman & Bullen of Liverpool also demonstrated awareness of liturgical thought from the late 1950s. Their most important church was the circular St Mary, Leyland, with a central altar, opened in 1964, for a parish run by Benedictine Edmund Fitzsimons, who sketched out the plan with advice from Crichton and Benedictines in America.⁴³ There was nothing of equivalent significance in Ireland at this time; a simple modern chapel at Ros Goill of 1954 by Brendan O’Connor is sometimes highlighted, with U-shaped seating facing a sanctuary on the long side, though the altar was at the back of a cramped recess.⁴⁴ Gillespie, Kidd & Coia’s St Paul, Glenrothes, of 1958, wedge shaped and shallow naved; and St Joseph, Faifley, of 1963, with a freestanding platform sanctuary in the midst of the seating, were perhaps the most pioneering Scottish churches.⁴⁵ After Vatican II, architects and clergy developed new plan forms more freely and with careful reasoning about liturgical functions. Circular or octagonal off-centre plans were widespread in the 1960s. Semi-circular and fan-shaped churches, or fan-shaped seating arranged diagonally across square plans, also lent themselves to intimate congregational gathering around the sanctuary. New plan types encouraged expressive roof forms as prominent landmarks, including reinforced concrete hyperbolic paraboloids made into canopies of vaults. Clifton Cathedral, Bristol, by Ronald Weeks of the Percy Thomas Partnership, opened in 1973, was one of the most rigorous post-conciliar designs. Its hexagonal geometry organized the fan-shaped congregational seating and liturgical furnishings in symbolic and ritual relationships with each other (Figure 8.4).⁴⁶ The Council had further implications for church architecture through its insights into the relationships between the Church, other Christian denominations as ecumenical partners, and the secular world. A belief that worship should encourage a sense of fellowship between parishioners and the wider community led to experiments with multi-functional churches in which the nave could be opened into rooms for secular use. Williams & Winkley’s St Margaret of Scotland, Twickenham, for example, could slide back one side of the nave to merge with the hall, and John Rochford & Partners’ St Thomas More, Sheffield, was designed with a central worship space surrounded by a range of community facilities. A few parishes in the 1970s built ecumenical churches shared with other denominations, though administrative complexities created significant hurdles. Most important was St Andrew, Cippenham, Slough, by Michael Hattrell, of 1970—a square building subdivided by sliding screens that could be configured for large or small services and secular activities, with portable furnishings. ⁴³ Parish archive, Leyland; Proctor, Building the Modern Church, pp. 149–52. ⁴⁴ Hurley and Cantwell, Contemporary Irish Church Architecture, pp. 37–9. ⁴⁵ Proctor, ‘Churches for a Changing Liturgy’, pp. 306–11. ⁴⁶ Robert Proctor, ‘Modern Church Architect as Ritual Anthropologist: Architecture and Liturgy at Clifton Cathedral’, Architectural Research Quarterly, 15 (2011), pp. 359–72.

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Figure 8.4 Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, Clifton, Bristol, 1965–73, by the Percy Thomas Partnership. Photograph courtesy of Robert Proctor, 2013.

Catholic and Anglican Masses were said at different times. All Saints, Pin Green, Stevenage, went further. The New Town Development Corporation demanded a shared church and designed the building itself as part of the neighbourhood centre. Ecumenical cooperation included united Catholic, Anglican, and nonconformist services.⁴⁷ Over two decades of effervescent innovation in church design, British and Irish architects and clergy sought to remake the sacred infrastructure of worship to suit the revised forms of liturgy and sacraments emerging after Vatican II, implementing new theological knowledge about the Church and its rites. Controversially, this refashioning of the church building was also applied to older churches. Victorian architecture had reached a nadir of public appreciation that made it vulnerable to heavy-handed alterations. The first liturgical reordering was at Aberdeen Cathedral in 1960 under Bishop Francis Walsh, who employed architect Charles Gray to replace rich Gothic Revival furnishings and statues with plain wooden panelling and simple modern furnishings, including a granite altar for Mass facing the people.⁴⁸ Richard O’Mahoney designed a thorough reordering of the

⁴⁷ Proctor, Building the Modern Church, pp. 312–18; David Woodard, ‘The Cippenham Shared Church’, Clergy Review, 53 (1968), pp. 381–3; Lance Wright and Michael Hattrell, ‘Building Study: Shared Church at Elmshott Lane, Cippenham’, Architects’ Journal, 12 May 1971, pp. 1055–66. ⁴⁸ Francis Walsh, ‘Aberdeen Cathedral’, Clergy Review, 46 (1961), pp. 211–17; Walker, ‘Developments in Catholic Churchbuilding’, pp. 425–30.

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substantial 1920s church of St Mary, Lowe House, St Helens, positioning a new altar under the crossing with seating on three sides, using the transepts; a new font was built near the entrance; decorative screens behind the sanctuary concealed the Blessed Sacrament chapel during Mass.⁴⁹ Pugin’s Killarney Cathedral was drastically reordered by Dan Kennedy in 1970, including removing painted plasterwork to expose rough masonry walls.⁵⁰ Controversy raged over such alterations, sometimes seen as clerical suppression of lay tastes, a concern some subsequently applied to the whole project of modern church architecture and liturgy.⁵¹ But most reorderings were less damaging, communion rails often only partially removed and altars simply moved forward or new ones added, maintaining church buildings’ significant secondary functions of stimulating devotion and enshrining the memories of communities.

Church Art, Craft, and Visual Culture Considering church art and decoration brings into focus the surface zone between the built infrastructure that structured people’s religious lives and their personal beliefs and behaviours. This visual equipment too was orchestrated by the Church to channel devotion into orthodox but developing forms.⁵² Artists, meanwhile, whether inside or outside the boundaries of acceptable doctrines and liturgical rules, sought to give original and resonant expression and meaning to familiar concepts. Diatribes against conventional commercial art and decoration typified debates on church art, and often seem to be attempts by artists and critics to distinguish their own value from the tastes of ordinary worshippers.⁵³ Not all standard criticisms of ‘repository art’ were legitimate. That it was ‘mass-produced’ and ‘cheap’ was not true of the many hand-carved wooden statues acquired for churches. Commercial producers of ecclesiastical art often emphasized the hand-made nature of their work because of Vatican commentary against mass production. Criticism of ‘imported’ artworks suggested that Britain and Ireland lacked a genuine expression of devotion. European firms such as Mayer of Munich and Stüflesser in the Tyrol were, however, popular throughout the century, and parish literature often celebrated the international origins of statuary. That ⁴⁹ Catholic Building Review, Northern edn (1970), pp. 78–81. ⁵⁰ Hurley, Irish Church Architecture, pp. 115–16. ⁵¹ Antony Archer, The Two Catholic Churches: A Study in Oppression (London, 1986). ⁵² Colleen McDannell, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America (New Haven, 1995); and David Morgan, The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice (Berkeley, 2005). ⁵³ John Turpin, ‘Modernism, Tradition and Debates on Religious Art in Ireland 1920–1950’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 91 (2002), pp. 252–66; Ann Wilson, ‘Arts and Crafts and Revivalism in Catholic Church Decoration: A Brief Duration’, Éire-Ireland, 48 (2013), pp. 5–48.

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commercial religious art was ‘sentimental’ was a more legitimate accusation, white faces and feminine features seemingly designed to stimulate sympathetic resonance in western, especially female, viewers. That it was ‘stereotyped’, however, was an essential aspect of Catholic art; even when hand-made, statues were ordered from catalogues of standard models. Repetition afforded recognition and certainty over theological rectitude, without risk of transgression into unorthodox forms. Commercial imagery until the 1960s was often based on historic styles, especially rococo sculpture, but rapidly accommodated the wider acceptance of modern art with simplified figurative forms. This popular devotional art was usually disparaged by architects, but installed in churches by clergy. Architects wanted to work with artists to integrate spatial and visual forms and advised priests accordingly whenever the budget sufficed. Artists, meanwhile, reacted against commercial production by developing unique approaches, responding to modern movements, thinking about devotional purpose, and exploring craft techniques and new materials. Gill was influential, despite limited work for churches, in attaching religious faith to an Arts and Crafts model of imagined medieval-style guild communities of artisan-artists, so that a Catholic community of artists would live almost monastic lives, their art thereby becoming an authentic religious expression. French Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain influenced this idea.⁵⁴ Long after Gill had left Ditchling, his associates there including Dunstan Pruden and Joseph Cribb attracted other artists, developing a distinct English Catholic Arts and Crafts approach, cemented through the Guild of Catholic Artists founded in the 1920s. Stained glass artist J. E. Nuttgens lived alongside Gill’s later home in the Chilterns and taught Patrick Reyntiens, both responsible for many mid-century windows in Catholic churches. Gill’s stations of the cross at Westminster Cathedral used direct stone-carving and a stylized simplicity of figurative treatment evoking early Christian sculpture and were often emulated. Philip Lindsey Clarke and his son Michael Clarke had academic training but took a similar approach. Pruden’s simple metalwork had early medieval and folk-art associations. It was thought that simple, idealized figures emulating early Christian traditions would prompt direct devotional engagement and convey sacred nobility rather than human emotion.⁵⁵ Conrad Pepler, a Dominican connected with Ditchling, sustained Gill’s model after the war through events at Hawkesyard Priory attracting Catholic artists and architects. Other religious establishments practised the Arts and Crafts ideal themselves. At Aylesford Priory, Polish-born ceramicist Adam Kossowski worked alongside others in the 1950s and 1960s under the prior, Malachy Lynch.⁵⁶ At Buckfast Abbey, Charles Norris ran a prolific stained glass studio, and Glenstal ⁵⁴ McCarthy, Eric Gill, p. 161. ⁵⁵ McDannell, Material Christianity, p. 178. ⁵⁶ Rosemary Hill, ‘Prior Commitment’, Crafts, September/October 2001, 28–31.

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was home to artist Benedict Tutty. Several women religious are also notable. Werburg Welch of Stanbrook Abbey was involved with Gill’s Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic and made vestments and stations of the cross for churches. Carmelite nun Margaret Agnes Rope designed stained glass with an Arts and Crafts approach, often working with her lay cousin Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope. There were evidently networks of monastic creativity based on Romantic ideas of the Middle Ages and encouraging formal contributions from women to the liturgical and devotional aspects of church architecture, deserving further study. In Ireland, a similar approach took on nationalist overtones and particularly involved women. The An Túr Gloine stained glass workshops established by Sarah Purser were especially significant, attracting Evie Hone, Michael Healy, and Patrick Pollen, all important in the craft. The Dun Emer Guild run by Evelyn Gleeson exclusively for women specialized in textiles, often in a Celtic Revival style and producing much work for churches. Both closed in the Second World War but had long-lasting influence.⁵⁷ Primitive Celtic sources also inspired post-war sculptors Imogen Stuart and Oisín Kelly, who worked closely with modern architects, especially McCormick.⁵⁸ The French Art Sacré movement introduced a more controversial high-art approach in the 1950s. Dominican Marie-Alain Couturier argued that modern artists most ably expressed spiritual values in church art regardless of their personal religious practice. Through the magazine L’Art sacré and famous commissions such as Le Corbusier’s chapel at Ronchamp and the church at Assy, endowed with artworks by Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Fernand Léger, and others, he promoted modern abstraction in sacred art. The movement was controversial, provoking Vatican statements condemning extreme deformation or abstraction in church art.⁵⁹ Spence took this approach at Coventry Cathedral, commissioning sculpture from Jacob Epstein, a reredos tapestry from Graham Sutherland (a Catholic convert living in France), and glass from Geoffrey Clarke and John Piper and Reyntiens. The Art Sacré movement’s influence on British Catholic churches was significant in the 1950s and 1960s. Several Jewish immigrant artists received notable commissions. George Mayer-Marton, a Hungarian refugee, worked in mosaic and fresco at Holy Rosary, Oldham and St Clare, Blackley, and Estonian-born sculptor Benno Schotz worked for Gillespie, Kidd & Coia at St Charles, Kelvinside, and

⁵⁷ Christina Kennedy, ‘Stained Glass, Rug and Tapestry Design’, in Catherine Marshall and Peter Murray (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, vol. V, ‘Twentieth Century’ (Dublin, 2014), pp. 451–6; and Catherine Marshall, ‘Sarah Purser’, in Marshall and Murray (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, pp. 398–9. ⁵⁸ Carole Pollard, ‘A Lifelong Affair: Liam McCormick and Imogen Stuart’, in Lisa Godson and Kathleen James-Chakraborty (eds.), Modern Religious Architecture in Germany, Ireland and Beyond: Influence, Process and Afterlife since 1945 (New York, 2019), pp. 41–61. ⁵⁹ William S. Rubin, Modern Sacred Art and the Church of Assy (New York, 1961).

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St Paul, Glenrothes. Gibberd emulated Spence’s daring at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, commissioning Piper and Reyntiens, Elisabeth Frink, and abstract works by Ceri Richards. Piper painted a reredos with figures in the style of Matisse at St Bernadette, Lancaster, for architect Tom Mellor. St Aidan, East Acton, by Burles, Newton & Partners and St Mary, Leyland, by Weightman & Bullen were more strictly Catholic in their chosen artists, but the former included a dramatic crucifixion painting by Sutherland and the latter had spiky bronze stations by Arthur Dooley, both resonant with contemporary political allusions. This approach to more radical forms of modern art was short-lived however: liturgical movement writers distrusted the dominance of imagery in churches, preferring to foreground liturgical actions in simpler settings with fewer more strictly liturgical artworks. A new form of stained glass invented in France in the 1930s became popular from the late-1950s in Britain: called dalle de verre, it consisted of coloured glass chunks embedded in concrete or resin giving broad areas of bright, vivid, highly stylized imagery. The leading exponents in Britain were Norris, whose work included glowing walls of glass at Goalen’s church at Harlow and a new chapel at Buckfast, and Pierre Fourmaintraux of the Whitefriars company, with a more sombre palette and angular style. Gabriel Loire of Chartres also made dalle de verre windows for British churches, notably St Richard at Chichester, as did Reyntiens at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Leyland, and Goalen’s Good Shepherd, Nottingham. Modern architects admired the technique’s integration with reinforced concrete structures, and it enabled dramatic large-scale effects with relatively little expense.⁶⁰ While late-twentieth-century church art could be banal and chaotic, with standardized commercial decoration including banners and generic scenes of nature, there was also an increasing emphasis from the mid-1970s on congregations generating artworks, even during services. There was a growing diversity of visual languages associated with the cultures of immigrant communities, including specific forms of devotion and their associated imagery. Reproductions of the Divine Mercy painting, for example, became commonplace as Polish Catholics became more widespread. Since the 1940s, Polish Catholics were second only to the Irish in importance in Britain, with dedicated churches filled with national imagery such as St Andrew Bobola in Hammersmith. There are also twentiethcentury churches associated with Italian, French, and German communities. More recent immigration has brought a wider, global diversity of Catholics with associated new visual cultures. Minority communities’ creation and decoration of places of worship to express identity and achieve a sense of agency are

⁶⁰ Robert Proctor, ‘Modern Medievalism: Dom Charles Norris, Dalle de Verre and the Blessed Sacrament Chapel’, in Beacham (ed.), Buckfast Abbey, 207–31.

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well-established scholarly topics, but research considering British and Irish Catholic churches in this light is so far scanty.⁶¹ The visual culture of church interiors in the twentieth century thus moved from careful experimentation and self-regulation, sustaining congregational piety within orthodox boundaries, to a freer, more trusting approach encouraging individual expression and thought. Loss of visual coherence and familiarity was often evident and alarmed some. But the new overlaid or added to the old, not usually replacing it: the visual equipment of devotion thus became more diverse and open to choice than ever before.

Conclusion Twentieth-century Roman Catholics in Britain and Ireland built on a huge scale, expending immense resources and much ingenuity to create the physical environments they felt to be necessary for sustaining their faith in a rapidly changing world. They had to compensate for a historic legacy of inadequate accommodation, new demographic movements between cities and suburbs, and new waves of Catholic migration. They created spaces conducive to communal worship, but also to sustaining a sense of identity, projected both inwards and outwards as a valid component of the modern nation (though in different political contexts in Ireland and Britain). And they took advantage of the accepted status achieved through such efforts, including State support, to extend the infrastructure of Catholic life into the formation of children and young adults under the aegis of the Church. The Second Vatican Council was an important moment in which the shapes of these spaces were reformed in ways that, it was thought, would better achieve those aims, particularly to promote worship that was more expressively communal, and an identity more meaningful in the modern context. A distinctive transformation in Catholic church architecture and especially visual culture in the twentieth century was not so much a shift from tradition to modernity, but rather from apparently stable consensus to diversity and pluralism: the rich diversity brought by new communities, but also an uneasy coexistence of modern and historic forms, including the restoration of older buildings as well as liturgies. Whether the Council and its effects induced the sharp decline in attendance and self-confidence after 1970 has been much debated and remains unresolved, but a change of approach to buildings inevitably followed. The generous, richly ⁶¹ E.g. Jane Garnett and Alana Harris (eds.), Rescripting Religion in the City: Migration and Religious Identity in the Modern Metropolis (Farnham, 2013); Dominic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal (eds.), Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism: Global Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2016); David Gilbert, Claire Dwyer, Nazneen Ahmed, Laura Cuch, and Natalie Hyacinth, ‘The Hidden Geographies of Religious Creativity: Place-Making and Material Culture in West London Faith Communities’, Cultural Geographies, 26 (2019), pp. 23–41.

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endowed spaces of twentieth-century Catholicism often became alarming figures on financial spreadsheets to depleted dioceses and religious orders. Nevertheless there has been a growing recognition of the significance of these buildings and artworks among wider audiences beyond the Church as a remarkable built heritage that eloquently conveys important aspects of the social and religious history of the twentieth century.

Select Bibliography Hurley, Richard and Wilfrid Cantwell, Contemporary Irish Church Architecture (Dublin, 1985). Jordan, Kate, ‘Ordered Spaces, Separate Spheres: Women and the Building of British Convents, 1829‒1939’ (University College London PhD thesis, 2015). Little, Bryan, Catholic Churches since 1623: A Study of Roman Catholic Churches in England and Wales from Penal Times to the Present Decade (London, 1966). Loeber, Rolf, Hugh Campbell, Livia Hurley, John Montague, and Ellen Rowley (eds.), Art and Architecture of Ireland, vol. IV: Architecture 1600–2000 (Dublin, 2014). Proctor, Robert, Building the Modern Church: Roman Catholic Church Architecture in Britain, 1955 to 1975 (Aldershot, 2014). Rowley, Ellen, ‘Transitional Modernism: Post-War Dublin Churches and the Example of the Clonskeagh Church Competition, 1954’, in Carole Taffe and Edwina Keown (eds.), Irish Modernism: Origins, Contexts, Publics (London, 2009), pp. 195–216. Walker, Paul D. ‘Developments in Catholic Churchbuilding in the British Isles, 1945–1980’ (University of Sheffield PhD thesis, 1985). Watters, Diane M., Cardross Seminary: Gillespie, Kidd & Coia and the Architecture of Postwar Catholicism (Edinburgh, 1997). Wilson, Ann, ‘Arts and Crafts and Revivalism in Catholic Church Decoration: A Brief Duration’, Éire-Ireland, 48 (2013), pp. 5–48.

9 Liturgy and Music Christopher McElroy

What a transformation! No, not a transformation, that was the trouble, it hadn’t been transformed, just meddled with . . . and quite honestly the mass itself seemed to me to be the same sort of muddle, bits of the old liturgy and bits of the new flung together, and nobody quite knowing what to do or what to expect. ‘These things take time’, said Miriam. ‘Catholics aren’t used to participating in the liturgy. They’re used to watching the priest and saying their own prayers privately.’¹ During the course of the twentieth century, Catholics worldwide were expected to travel the considerable journey from being silent spectators to fully conscious participants in the liturgical rites of the Church.² This change had both commonalities and differences across Britain and Ireland, and Pius X’s motu proprio, Tra le Sollecitudini (TLS; 1903) is a convenient starting point in examining the ‘transformations’ novelist David Lodge humorously catalogued. TLS brought into the mainstream the notion of actuosa participatio, a key principle which was to play an increasingly important role as the century progressed, and its contested ‘reception’ by the laity anticipated better known liturgical controversies of the post-conciliar and contemporary moment. The implementation of the Second Vatican Council’s liturgical constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC; 1963) has rightly garnered a vast literature,³ and for many parishioners Vatican II was experienced primarily through their weekly attendance at Sunday Mass—where the almost total shift of the liturgical language from Latin into English and the orientation of the priest at the altar were particularly noticeable changes. While these liturgical changes, however, were primarily directed at Bishops’ Conferences and remained subject to clerical control, musical leadership throughout the

The author is grateful for assistance in the preparation of his chapter to John Ainslie, Naomi Johnson, Teena Cartwright-Terry, Michael Turnbull, and Michael Hutson. ¹ David Lodge, How Far Can You Go? (London, [1980] 2012), p. 83. ² Sacrosanctum Concilium, §§62, 14. ³ For surveys of the literature, see Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering, The Reception of Vatican II (Oxford, 2017); Kathleen Sprows Cummings, Timothy Matovina, and Robert A. Orsi (eds.), Catholics in the Vatican II Era: Local Histories of a Global Event (Cambridge, 2017). Christopher McElroy, Liturgy and Music In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0010

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twentieth century has largely been a lay-led activity and liturgical musicians led a musical shift from relative uniformity to marked pluralism, based largely on local need. Two underlying themes run throughout this chapter analysing changes to liturgy and music in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. The first is a tacitly ecclesiological critique of ‘authority’, manifested acutely through contestations about the style of liturgy and music in Catholic churches. The second, interrelated theme is the growing influence of an unacknowledged ‘clerisy’ of lay (and clerical, often monastic) liturgical experts who shaped liturgical study and implementation. As demonstrated through the reception of TLS, the seeds of change regarding a critique of papal and episcopal control of liturgy and music in Britain and Ireland, and reconceptualization of leadership opportunities exercised by priests and lay people, were sown in the early years of the twentieth century.

Reception of Tra le Sollecitudini Liturgical music in Britain during the nineteenth century ‘tend[ed] to be viewed with disdain’⁴ with R. R. Terry asking ‘Why is church music so bad?’⁵ ‘Dead, buried and scorned’ was how John Ainslie described the repertoire in use,⁶ but Brian Plumb begged to differ.⁷ Recent research by Bennett Zon⁸ and Thomas Muir⁹ shows that there was much liturgical musical activity (of variable quality) for English Catholics, while Scotland emerged from 200 years of liturgy conducted with little ceremony and a blanket ban on singing,¹⁰ and Ireland remained heavily influenced by the Continental Cecilian reform movement.¹¹ It was into this varied context that TLS was received,¹² placing an emphasis on active participation in the liturgy (through singing) which would gain wider discussion and traction over the next sixty years. ⁴ Shelagh Mary Noden, ‘The Revival of Music in the Worship of the Catholic Church in Scotland, 1789–1829’ (University of Aberdeen PhD thesis, 2014), p. 12. ⁵ Richard R. Terry, ‘Why Is Church Music so Bad?’, A Forgotten Psalter and Other Essays (London, 1929). ⁶ John Ainslie, ‘English Liturgical Music before Vatican II’, in James D. Crichton, Harold E. Winstone, and John Ainslie (eds.), English Catholic Worship: Liturgical Renewal in England since 1900 (London, 1979), p. 49. ⁷ Brian Plumb, ‘Dead, Buried and Scorned? Catholic Church Music 1791–1960’, North West Catholic History, 26 (1999), pp. 70–95. ⁸ Bennett Zon, The English Plainchant Revival (Oxford, 1999). ⁹ Thomas Erskine Muir, ‘ “Full in the Panting Heart of Rome”: Roman Catholic Music in England: 1850–1962’ (PhD, Durham University, 2004). ¹⁰ Mark Dilworth, ‘Roman Catholic Worship’, in Douglas M. Murray and Duncan B. Forrester (eds.), Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1996), p. 146. ¹¹ Kieran Anthony Daly, Catholic Church Music in Ireland, 1878–1903: The Cecilian Reform Movement (Dublin, 1995). ¹² Thomas E. Muir, ‘Catholic Church Music in England: The 1950s’, in Paul Collins (ed.), Renewal and Resistance: Catholic Church Music from the 1850s to Vatican II (Bern, 2010), pp. 121–50, 135.

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John Ainslie, in his influential book English Catholic Worship (1979) was dismissive of the influence of the motu proprio: ‘For all the professed loyalty of the Catholic community to the Holy See . . . the attention it gave to [TLS] was minimal’¹³ and the same is true of Ireland, which was ‘reluctant, half-hearted, and sometimes even positively disrespectful’ of the directive,¹⁴ belying its ultramontane caricature. While these commentators are correct that efforts to foster congregational music were largely unheeded and the spread of plainsong and polyphony was limited, TLS nevertheless heralded a direction of travel which gained momentum in Ireland and the British Isles. The letters page of the London-based Catholic weekly The Tablet provided a forum for liturgical reaction and debate. Within its pages, Joseph Short from Birmingham went as far as to draw up a petition seeking the retention of repertoire which was deemed ‘theatrical’, ‘operatic’, or ‘concert hall’ variety by the motu proprio as nevertheless necessary to ‘promote and advance the Catholic faith in England’.¹⁵ In the decades during which the women’s suffrage organizations were agitating for the franchise and moving towards direct action, Vatican instructions to remove women from church choirs was regarded as an afront.¹⁶ Bishops were divided on this issue, with the archbishop of Dublin pleading with Rome not to remove women choristers,¹⁷ but the bishop of Elphin attributing the main abuses in Catholic music to the ‘intrusion of the female element into our church choirs’.¹⁸ The bishop of Liverpool, Thomas Whiteside, tried to find a via media by recommending that both men and women could form a congregational choir.¹⁹ To some Tablet correspondents, however, both the issue of musical style and choir composition were subservient to the force majeure of obedience— indeed, the very first letter printed in The Tablet questioned how far, and with what grace, those concerned would carry out the commands of the document.²⁰ These ultramontanists enjoyed the support of R. R. Terry, master of music at Westminster Cathedral, who noted that the publication of TLS ‘removed from the region of controversy to the region of obedience’ the subject of sacred music.²¹ The movement to popularize plainchant certainly seemed to have some effect. Early evidence for the implementation of TLS’s directives on Gregorian chant

¹³ Ainslie, ‘English Liturgical Music’, p. 49. ¹⁴ Paul Collins, ‘Catholic Church Music in Limerick, c. 1860–1965’, in Kerry Houston and Harry White (eds.), A Musical Offering (Dublin, 2018), p. 20. ¹⁵ ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Tablet, 16 April 1904, p. 617. ¹⁶ Elaine Clark, ‘Catholics and the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage in England’, Church History, 73 (2004), pp. 635–65. ¹⁷ ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Tablet, 7 May 1904, p. 736. ¹⁸ Collins, ‘Catholic Church Music in Limerick’, p. 21. ¹⁹ Bishop’s Letter on Church Music Accompanying the Approved List of Church Music for the Diocese of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1906). ²⁰ ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Tablet, 23 January 1904, p. 141. ²¹ Richard R. Terry, Catholic Church Music (London, 1907), p. 40.

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were apparent in Limerick,²² Musselburgh in east Scotland,²³ and the newly built Westminster Cathedral in London. The formation of the Society of St Gregory (SSG) in 1929 included in its stated aims implementation of TLS, which it did in the early years primarily through the promotion and study of Gregorian chant, particularly in conjunction with congregational participation.²⁴ The SSG’s work in parishes was furthered by the success of Plainsong for Schools edited by Dom Dominic Willson (1930). In 1933, 30,000 school children chanted outdoors at the laying of the foundation stone of the Cathedral of Christ the King in Liverpool,²⁵ and plainsong festivals and competitions were held throughout England in Manchester, Rochester, Canterbury, Southwark, Westminster, and Birmingham. In Liverpool, school teachers were required to undertake exams on teaching the chant set by the SSG and the Benedictine Dames of Stanbrook Abbey (especially Laurentia McLachlan),²⁶ and Dom Gregory Ould led the revival of plainchant throughout Scotland.²⁷ Influential in popularizing chant in Ireland was the Revd Dr John Burke who began an annual chant summer school in Dublin from 1926, attracting delegates from every diocese in Ireland, and offering optional examinations recognized by Solesmes.²⁸ Chant festivals and competitions took place throughout Ireland, with the diocese of Limerick being particularly active,²⁹ and the Dublin International Eucharistic Congress of 1932 featured a choir of almost 3,000 young voices singing Gregorian chant at the children’s solemn pontifical High Mass.³⁰ Another key effect of TLS, following in the Cecilian spirit, was the requirement for approved lists of church music. In responding to this requirement, Scotland was the first to establish both a Church Music Commission and to issue a list of approved music.³¹ The 1904 list, updated on several occasions thereafter, forbade the singing of works by numerous Viennese composers, depreciated the use of solo singing, and restricted the use of instruments to the organ or harmonium. Similar lists were issued by several English dioceses, including Salford, Liverpool, Westminster, and Lancaster.

²² Collins, ‘Catholic Church Music in Limerick’, p. 20. ²³ ‘Letters to the Editor’, The Tablet, 3 December 1904, p. 896. ²⁴ J. D. Crichton, ‘1920–1940: The Dawn of a Liturgical Movement’, in Crichton, Winstone, and Ainslie (eds.), English Catholic Worship, pp. 42–3. ²⁵ ‘The Laying of the Foundation Stone of the Liverpool Cathedral of Christ the King’, Music and Liturgy, 4 (1933), p. 69. ²⁶ Muir, ‘ “Full in the Panting Heart of Rome” ’, p. 207. ²⁷ Michael T. R. B. Turnbull, ‘Dom Samuel Gregory Ould OSB (1864–1939), Liturgist and Musician’, The Innes Review, 69 (2018), pp. 70–89. ²⁸ Helen Frances Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis : The Emergence of a Theology of Music with Reference to Post-Vatican II Irish Catholicism’ (PhD, University of Limerick, 2000), p. 97. ²⁹ Collins, ‘Catholic Church Music in Limerick’, p. 21. ³⁰ Kieran Anthony Daly, ‘The Dublin Eucharistic Congress: Tra Le Sollecitudini in the Phoenix Park’, in Collins (ed.), Renewal and Resistance, p. 67. ³¹ Turnbull, ‘Dom Samuel Gregory Ould’, p. 75.

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The increase of the singing of vernacular hymns (though not, of course, during Mass) led to a number of new hymnals, with the influence of the Oratorians Edward Caswall, Frederick Faber and St John Henry Newman especially marked.³² On its publication in 1912, the Westminster Hymnal became the standard (though not unproblematic) Catholic hymn book used in parishes in England and Wales during the interwar period,³³ and subsequently served as a primary source for Irish adaptations such as the Redemptorist Hymn Book (1947) and the Holy Ghost Hymnal (1950).³⁴ The reception of TLS was a perceptible first step towards liturgical reform in the twentieth century on both islands and from his vantage point in 1934, Dom Bernard McElligott (who founded SSG) adjudicated its impact: ‘Only now is a definite movement perceptible . . . Much of it is taking place in schoolrooms and in small country parishes; there are few spectacular displays . . . but the thing is on the move.’³⁵

Theological Underpinnings of the Liturgical Movement Although generally evaluated as limited and lackluster compared to the Continent, Britain and Ireland did have a small, somewhat elite, but nevertheless dynamic liturgical movement which manifested a ‘remarkable interconfessional renewal of worship’.³⁶ First amongst the twentieth-century Catholic pioneers was Dom Anscar Vonier (1875‒1938) who did much to familiarize English theologians with the ideas emerging from the Continental liturgical movement, and attempted to reconcile the teaching of Aquinas with the emerging mysterytheology of Odo Casel.³⁷ Drawing on Vonier’s exposition, other Benedictines offered further ecclesiological reflections—circulated through the publishing houses of Catholic laity such as Sheed and Ward and Burns and Oates—including Dom Illtyd Trethowan,³⁸ Benedict Steuart,³⁹ and conciliar peritus Christopher Butler.⁴⁰ Douglas Woodruff ’s The Tablet, whilst liturgically conservative under his editorship, carried news items on liturgical developments, and book reviews of key ³² Brian Plumb, ‘Hymnbooks Revisited’, North West Catholic History, 27 (2000), pp. 68–91. ³³ Muir, ‘Catholic Church Music in England’, p. 133; and Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England: Ecumenical Century 1900 to the Present (Princeton, NJ, 1996), p. 116. ³⁴ Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis’, p. 240. ³⁵ Bernard McElligott, ‘The SSG and the Plain Man’, Music and Liturgy, 4 (1934), p. 158. ³⁶ Davies, Worship and Theology, p. 47. ³⁷ Anscar Vonier, A Key to the Doctrine of the Eucharist (London, 1925). ³⁸ Dom Illtyd Trethowan, Christ in the Liturgy (London, 1952). ³⁹ Benedict Steuart, The Development of Christian Worship: An Outline of Liturgical History (London, 1954), p. xi. ⁴⁰ Alana Harris, ‘ “Your Influence and Advice Will Be Called on Copiously”: Abbot Christopher Butler OSB and the English at the Council’, in Christian Sorrel (ed.), Religieux et Vatican II (Leuven, 2019), pp. 179–88.

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liturgical movement publications could be found in the Clergy Review, Scottish Catholic Observer, and Ireland’s Doctrine and Life, which offered insightful articles and opinion pieces. Catechetical publications aimed at the more ‘intelligent following the Mass with the Missal’—usually Fortescue’s Roman Missal (1915) or Cabrol’s Latin/English The Roman Missal (1925)—were popular by well-known clerical authors such as Cyril Martindale, SJ, or Ronald Knox.⁴¹ This shift was reinforced through the increasing use of the dialogue Mass, the gradual introduction of more frequent communion and the move for the increased use of the vernacular—driven primarily by English Liturgy Society, founded in 1943 (subsequently renamed as the Vernacular Society of Great Britain) and liturgical experimentation carried out by members of the Young Christian Workers.⁴² In comparison to England and Wales, pre-conciliar liturgical reform in Ireland and Scotland was fragmented and sporadic, with liturgical cultures characterized by ‘continued use of alternative prayers, unceremonious entrances and exits, and an extreme shyness of singing at liturgy’⁴³ despite large congregations. As Chapter 7 by Heimann and Delay in this volume illustrates, extra-liturgical devotions by contrast offered creative scope for participation and customization through singing, processions, and embodied pieties.

Towards a Pastoral Liturgical Movement Following the Second World War, key individuals worked to spread the message of the liturgical movement, and theological journals exposed audiences to Continental currents and conferences and networks. Described as the ‘veritable dynamo of the Liturgical Movement in England’,⁴⁴ Clifford Howell, SJ, pioneered liturgical missions in parishes throughout the English-speaking world and introduced the practice of commentators and lay lectors. Whilst serving as an army chaplain during the Second World War, Howell began to use the dialogue Mass and continued (despite some episcopal disquiet) upon his return.⁴⁵ Another key player was Monsignor J. D. Crichton, who through his editorship of SSG journals and a slew of publications,⁴⁶ exerted wide influence in English liturgical renewal

⁴¹ Cyril Martindale, What is He Doing at the Altar? (London, 1931); and Ronald Knox, The Mass in Slow Motion (New York, 1948). ⁴² Charles Walker, Worker Apostles: The YCW Movement in Britain (London, 1994). ⁴³ Helen Frances Phelan, ‘Ireland, Music and the Modern Liturgical Movement’, in Collins (ed.), Renewal and Resistance, p. 93. ⁴⁴ Davies, Worship and Theology, p. 279. ⁴⁵ J. D. Crichton, ‘The Liturgical Movement from 1940 to Vatican II’, in Crichton, Winstone, and Ainslie, English Catholic Worship, p. 68. ⁴⁶ These included J. D. Crichton, The Church’s Worship (London, 1964); and J. D. Crichton, Changes in the Liturgy (London, 1965).

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from the 1930s onwards.⁴⁷ Well read and theologically connected (he was one of the few English participants at the First International Congress of Pastoral Liturgy in Assisi in 1956),⁴⁸ Crichton was anxious to further the liturgical movement at home—and felt fully vindicated by the promulgation of SC, as he ‘recognized with delight much that I have been trying to propagate’.⁴⁹ In Scotland the spread of the liturgical movement was limited, but the pastoral work of Dom Lambert Beauduin in Belgium became known in the archdiocese of Glasgow through the work of Octave Claeys, a Belgian priest who taught at the seminary.⁵⁰ In Ireland, five clergymen were responsible for the advancement of the postwar liturgical renewal. Although initially known as the editor of Fortescue’s Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, the Irishman Canon J. B. O’Connell exerted an influence on a generation of priests prior to the Council through his replies to liturgical queries in the pages of the Clergy Review.⁵¹ Gerard J. McGarry, professor of pastoral theology at Maynooth, was responsible for founding a new pastoral journal for the Irish Church, The Furrow, which aimed to enrich pastoral practice by bringing Continental experimentation to the attention of Irish clergy and laity. Austin Flannery, OP, described as ‘one of the main contributors to the raising of awareness of the need for an Irish liturgical renewal’,⁵² undertook the translation and one of the first commentaries on SC within just four months of its promulgation. From a more practical perspective, John Fennelly, parish priest of Greystones (County Wicklow) in the 1950s and early 1960s, was described as a ‘zealous and courageous pioneer of the liturgical movement in Ireland’, with a particular focus on congregational singing through chant and vernacular hymns, and the use of the English dialogue Mass, following the example of the Betsingmesse of Pius Parsch.⁵³ Each of these clerical pioneers worked largely independently, but with a fair amount of overlap, doing what they could to bring awareness of liturgical theology from the Continent to the attention of their own hierarchy and to encourage practical experimentation by laypeople in parishes. Annual conferences also engaged small but enthusiastic groups, who in turn shared their experiences with their local parishes and communities. Particularly ⁴⁷ Daniel Peter Grigassy, ‘J.D. Crichton’s Significance for Pastoral Liturgy in England’ (PhD, Catholic University of America, 1985). ⁴⁸ See J. D. Crichton, ‘The Bases for a Theology of the Liturgy’, Ampleforth Review, 2 (1980), pp. 62–8. ⁴⁹ Crichton, The Church’s Worship, p. ix. ⁵⁰ Michael Regan, ‘The Reception of the Liturgical Changes of the Second Vatican Council’, in Murray and Forrester, Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland, p. 221. ⁵¹ J. D. Crichton, ‘Canon J B O’Connell’, Clergy Review, June 1970, p. 475. ⁵² Eugene Duffy, ‘The Reception of the Conciliar Liturgical Reforms in Ireland’, Questions Liturgiques / Studies in Liturgy, 95 (2014), p. 115. ⁵³ Moira Bergin, ‘The Work of Liturgical Renewal in Ireland—and Patrick Jones’, in Thomas R. Whelan and Liam M. Tracey (eds.), Serving Liturgical Renewal: Pastoral and Theological Questions: Essays in Honour of Patrick Jones (Dublin, 2015), p. 372.

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influential in igniting the Irish liturgical renewal were the Glenstal Liturgical Congresses, held annually from 1954 until 1975. Led initially by Placid Murray, OSB, early congresses addressed a wide range of liturgical and musical topics and included distinguished visitors such as Joseph Jungmann and Balthasar Fischer, who encouraged discussion of the Continental liturgical movement in Ireland for the first time.⁵⁴ The Spode Music week in England, founded in 1955 by Fr Conrad Pepler, OP, combined lectures with both liturgical and non-liturgical musicmaking. The SSG kept members abreast of liturgical developments in Europe and the USA through its quarterly magazine, Liturgy, and through annual summer schools held across England.⁵⁵ It was the introduction of the new Holy Week rite in 1955 that brought the notion of liturgical change to the consciousness of the wider Church and into the devotional practices of the laity. In Ireland the new Holy Week liturgies boosted attendance,⁵⁶ and in Scotland increased attendance was also noted.⁵⁷ The Bishop of Menevia welcomed the ‘changed times [i.e. evening], the simplification of rites, and the increased participation by the laity’.⁵⁸ In England, catechetical instruction accompanied the changes, with priests in the diocese of Leeds speaking each week during Lent to prepare the congregation for the new rites,⁵⁹ and in the larger churches of the archdiocese of Westminster an additional priest acted as commentator from the pulpit, explaining and describing the liturgical actions.⁶⁰ The positive reception of the new Holy Week rites disrupt the prevailing historiographical opinion that Catholics had been locked in a time warp since 1850, and give some credence to the view that many in the pews were open to adaptation and diversified ways of practicing their faith if presented with adequate explanation and preparation.⁶¹ Alongside the emergence of the new Holy Week rites, another mid-century change in many parishes was the introduction of new congregational musical settings (in Latin) of the texts of the Mass. Two English monks were particularly influential in bridging the gap between pre- and post-conciliar congregational music: Dom Laurence Bevenot, who published settings of the proper texts of the Mass (e.g. Introit, Gradual) and settings of the Mass ordinary (e.g. Kyrie, Gloria) which were modal in character, but exploited the possibilities of using cantor, choir, and congregation in alternim or together, and Dom Gregory Murray whose ⁵⁴ Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis’, p. 122. ⁵⁵ Crichton, ‘The Liturgical Movement from 1940 to Vatican II’, pp. 64–7. ⁵⁶ ‘Sacrosanctum Concilium at Fifty: Reports from Five English-Speaking Countries’, Worship, 87 (2013), p. 504. ⁵⁷ Dilworth, ‘Roman Catholic Worship’, p. 143. ⁵⁸ Report on the Restored Liturgy of Holy Week, 1956, in the Diocese of Menevia, Archdiocese of Birmingham Archives (hereafter ABA), AP/L/9. ⁵⁹ Letter from Bishop Heenan to Archbishop Grimshaw, 5 June 1956, ABA/AP/L/9. ⁶⁰ Archdiocese of Westminster, Holy Week, 1956, ABA/AP/L/9. ⁶¹ Robert Nowell, ‘The Church in England and Wales’, in Cumming and Burns, The Church Now (London, 1980), p. 15.

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‘A People’s Mass’ (1950) owed far more to Victorian hymnody than to chant. The popularity of this Mass (selling more than two million copies in Latin and English, before and after Vatican II)⁶² signalled a new phase in liturgical composition which moved towards diatonic block-chord harmony. The move towards a pastoral liturgical movement was predominantly led by priests (secular and religious) and educated lay people, who had assimilated Continental trends—contrasting with many in the episcopacy who ‘by and large [were] intellectually ill-prepared for the Council . . . for whom theology was a bore, and for whom liturgy was rubrics.’⁶³ Such a description is borne out in the prepreparatory reports (relationes) submitted to the Council by the English, Scottish, and Welsh bishops, and summed up by Cardinal Godfrey who proudly asserted that the ‘radical’ changes being proposed in other parts of the world were not to be found in the responses from Britain!⁶⁴ The growing call from some quarters for the increased use of the vernacular was noted, with Scottish bishops McGee and Hart urging the introduction of the vernacular in the Mass,⁶⁵ a view tempered by the archbishop of Westminster.⁶⁶ The thirty-one relationes from the Irish bishops were similarly described as ‘short and skimpy’, expressing a ‘legalistic mentality and a concern to stick firmly to classical positions’,⁶⁷ with a handful advocating for the vernacular,⁶⁸ but most concerned not to disturb as to what they perceived as the Irish people’s traditional devotion to the Mass.⁶⁹ A mix of paternalism, administrative pragmatism, and theological conservatism characterized the liturgical positions of British, Scottish, and Irish bishops on the cusp of the Council.

Initial Responses to Sacrosanctum Concilium The liturgy schema was discussed in St Peter’s Basilica in October to November 1962, with 328 fathers speaking on the floor, and 297 submitting written comments.⁷⁰ Several of the opening speakers, including Cardinal Godfrey, praised

⁶² Muir, ‘Catholic Church Music in England’, p. 145. ⁶³ Eamon Duffy, Faith of Our Fathers: Reflections on Catholic Tradition (London, 2006), p. 142. ⁶⁴ Acta et Documenta (hereafter AD) Series I: Antepraeparatoria, II/1, pp. 44–5. ⁶⁵ Michael T. R. B. Turnbull, ‘Scotland and the Second Vatican Council’ (Unpublished manuscript, n.d.), p. 6. ⁶⁶ AD Series I, II/1, pp. 44–5. ⁶⁷ Étienne Fouilloux, ‘The Antepreparatory Phase: The Slow Emergence from Inertia (January, 1959–October, 1962)’, in Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph Komonchak (eds.), History of Vatican II (Leuven, 1995), 1, p. 117. ⁶⁸ AD Series I, II/3, pp. 64–5, 68–9, 86. ⁶⁹ Eugene Duffy, ‘The Reception of the Conciliar Liturgical Reforms in Ireland’, Questions Liturgiques/Studies in Liturgy, 95 (2014), p. 117. ⁷⁰ Mathijs Lamberigts, ‘The Liturgy Debate’, in Alberigo and Komonchak (eds.), History of Vatican II (Leuven, 1997), 2, pp. 107–66.

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the pastoral nature of the proposed schema but argued that the proposed liturgical changes should grow out of pastoral necessity rather than historical arguments.⁷¹ Archbishop McQuaid, speaking on behalf of the Irish hierarchy, defended the use of Latin at Mass and reinforcement of the centrality of the sacrificial nature of the Mass.⁷² On the issue of the use of vernacular in the liturgy, Cardinal Godfrey was cautious, questioning whether its widespread use would improve participation at Mass, noting that the Anglican Church in England, which used a beautiful and classical vernacular, was poorly attended.⁷³ Godfrey envisioned a Mass largely in Latin, with a limited number of congregational prayers in the vernacular and space for quiet personal prayer.⁷⁴ Despite the English and Irish bishops’ contributions not being entirely at one with the aggiornamento of the proposed schema, loyalty to the pope and the Church led them to vote overwhelmingly placet (with the exception of Cardinal Godfrey) for the liturgical constitution.⁷⁵ It was the belief of many of the bishops of Britain and Ireland that ‘after the Council one simply needed to “translate” into action or apply what had been articulated theoretically’⁷⁶ in the conciliar documents. For Archbishop Gray of St Andrews and Edinburgh there was a sense of urgency: ‘People are expecting changes after all the publicity . . . the vast majority of our people who are ready to accept what changes the bishops decree may well lose interest and grow apathetic. I do feel strongly that we should strike while the iron is hot.’⁷⁷ During the second conciliar session the bishops of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland met weekly to exchange ideas, expressing a desire to have common vernacular texts and uniform liturgical practice where possible.⁷⁸ As it became clear that the vernacular was to be introduced, questions came to be asked about precisely which language should be used. Monsignor Gordon Wheeler, administrator of Westminster Cathedral, advocated adopting elements of the Book of Common Prayer, arguing that it already existed, was in common use, would improve ecumenical relations, and had a large corpus of music already composed.⁷⁹ However, before SC had even been promulgated, a small number of bishops from English-speaking countries, led by Archbishop Grimshaw of Birmingham and including Archbishop Gray of St Andrews and Edinburgh and Archbishop Walsh of Tuam had been meeting regularly whilst in Rome, discussing how a common translation might be possible across the English-speaking

⁷¹ Acta Synodalia (AS) I/1, p. 374. ⁷² AS I/1, i–ix, p. 414; AS I/2, x–xviii, p. 44. ⁷³ AS I/1, pp. 373–4. ⁷⁴ AS I/2, p. 11. ⁷⁵ See John Glen, ‘The Episcopal Contribution to Liturgical Reform in England and Wales 1959–1984’ (PhD, Institut Catholique de Paris, 1986), pp. 1–153. ⁷⁶ Gilles Routhier, ‘Reception in the Current Theological Debate’, Jurist, 57 (1997), p. 20. ⁷⁷ Letter from Archbishop Gray to Archbishop Grimshaw, 10 February 1964, ABA AP/L/14. ⁷⁸ Second Session Survey, 28 November 1963, Mgr Derek Worlock, ABA FJG/G27. ⁷⁹ Letter from Mgr Gordon Wheeler to Archbishop Grimshaw, 16 January 1964, ABA AP/L/14; and James Hagerty, Bishop Gordon Wheeler: A Journey into the Fullness of Faith (Leominster, 2014).

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Catholic world.⁸⁰ At an early stage this group, which would eventually become the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL), privileged pastoral considerations and aimed to reflect the spoken English language of the midtwentieth century in a format suitable for public proclamation and singing.⁸¹ The initial ICEL translations were not entirely popular with several English and Irish bishops,⁸² with some (including Archbishop Grimshaw) preferring to have home-grown translations (such as his own translation of the ritual). Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin put it bluntly when he stated ‘I find it hard to see . . . why Ireland, England and Scotland should have to follow the American version of the English vernacular or even the American pattern. We speak a different language and live in very different circumstances.’⁸³ The National Liturgical Commission of England and Wales set to work on its own translation of the Roman Missal and other rites immediately after the Council, producing versions which coexisted into the 1970s alongside the ICEL texts before being largely discarded. More longlasting was the venture of the Glenstal-Headingley Committee in producing a translation of the Liturgy of the Hours which is still approved for use today by the episcopal conferences of Australia, England and Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.⁸⁴ A Gaelic Mass was produced by the Church Music Committee of Argyle and the Isles for use in the diocese,⁸⁵ and a Welsh translation of the Mass was broadcast on the BBC Welsh Home Service on the First Sunday of Advent in 1967.⁸⁶ Difficulties occurred, however, when Irish-language translations of the Missal and rites approved by the Irish Episcopal Conference failed to receive the Roman recognitio.⁸⁷ An important ecumenical step was taken in 1974 between Catholics and the Anglican communion through the adoption of the International Consultation on English Texts (ICET) translation of the ordinary of the Mass due to the pioneering efforts of Fr Harold Winstone and Canon Ronald Jasper.⁸⁸ Both the ICEL and ICET translations followed the dynamic equivalence model as advocated by the Consilium’s instruction Comme le Prévoit (1969). This ⁸⁰ Frederick R. McManus, ‘ICEL: The First Years’, in Denis E. Hurley, Peter C. Finn, and James M. Schellman (eds.), Shaping English Liturgy: Studies in Honor of Archbishop Denis Hurley (Washington, DC, 1990), pp. 433–60. ⁸¹ ‘If our English Language Liturgical Commission ever becomes a reality, I shall be among those to advocate taking the bull by the horns and getting rid of the “thou’s” and the “thee’s” once and for all’. Archbishop Hurley of Durban, South Africa, in a letter to Archbishop Grimshaw, 19 April 1963, ABA/AP/L/13. ⁸² John McHugh, ‘An Open Letter to the Bishop of Shrewsbury on Englishing the Liturgy (Part I/ II)’, Liturgy, 8 (1983), pp. 18, 61–88. ⁸³ Gary Carville, ‘Ireland and Vatican II: Aspects of Episcopal Engagement with and Reception of a Church Council, 1959–1977’ (PhD, Dublin City University, 2018), p. 215. ⁸⁴ Placid Murray, ‘The Glenstal-Headingley Collects’, Life and Worship (July 1973), pp. 10–15; Glen, ‘The Episcopal Contribution’, pp. 239–48. ⁸⁵ Turnbull, ‘Scotland and the Second Vatican Council’, p. 12. ⁸⁶ ‘Home News’, The Tablet, 14 October 1967, p. 1075. ⁸⁷ Bergin, ‘The Work of Liturgical Renewal’, p. 381. ⁸⁸ Ronald Jasper, ‘Growing Convergence in Liturgical Renewal: The Ecumenical Dimension’, Liturgy, 8 (1984), pp. 194–201.

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approach to translation was subsequently amended in the twenty-first century in the light of the 2001 instruction Liturgiam Authenticam to follow a more formal rendering of the Latin into local languages—a principle followed in the 2010 English translation of the Roman Missal.

Structures for Liturgical Renewal The vernacular was officially introduced, with diocesan variations, into Mass in 1964–5,⁸⁹ and following collaboration between the episcopal conferences of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, common interim texts for many of the prayers and responses were introduced from Advent 1966.⁹⁰ Other liturgical changes included the orientation of the celebrant, the introduction of a homily at all Sunday Masses, a greater emphasis on the scriptures and psalms at Mass, primarily from the Jerusalem Bible (1966) and the Grail Psalter (1963), and the introduction of the General Intercessions or Prayer of the Faithful. The Irish bishops wasted no time in setting up structures to enable the liturgical reception of the Council. In December 1963, merely days after SC was promulgated, the Episcopal Commission for Liturgy was set up and in 1975 the Irish Commission for Liturgy was established as the primary consultative body for national liturgical matters. The appointment of Fr Seán Swayne as national secretary for liturgy in 1968 and the creation of the Institute for Pastoral Liturgy in 1974 was to play an important role in the ongoing reception of Vatican II in Ireland and has been acknowledged as having ‘an enormous impact upon Irish post-conciliar life’⁹¹ with over 200 students from eighteen countries completing the one year residential programme between 1974 and 1984.⁹² The academic rigour and international standing of this centre was further enhanced through close proximity to the faculty of theology⁹³ and led to the offering of diplomas in pastoral liturgy and a Master’s degree in theology including, from 1999, a diploma in arts (church music) in conjunction with Maynooth University. In 1965, Archbishop Dwyer succeeded Archbishop Grimshaw as president of the Liturgical Commission of England and Wales. Dwyer saw the National Liturgical Commission created by his predecessor as having two distinct roles to fulfil: to channel information from the bishops to clergy and people and to act as a ⁸⁹ ‘Varying the Vernacular’, The Tablet, 14 November 1964, p. 1301. ⁹⁰ Such collaboration required changes to texts which had been previously adopted. For example, in translating et cum spiritu tuo the English and Welsh had been using ‘and with you’, the Scottish ‘and with your spirit’, and the Irish ‘and also with you’. It was the Irish response that was universally adopted across the British Isles and Ireland, in common with North America, and indeed the subsequent ICEL translation. ⁹¹ Seán Swayne, ‘Liturgical Renewal in Ireland 1963–1983’, New Liturgy, 40–1 (1983–4), pp. 12–29. ⁹² Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis’, p. 250. ⁹³ Virgilio Noè, ‘Address to Irish Bishops’, New Liturgy, 45–6 (1985), pp. 5–9.

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consultative body.⁹⁴ Towards the end of Dwyer’s presidency, a Liturgy Newsletter (later Liturgy) allowed for the dissemination and commentary on liturgical reform. In the late 1970s Fr Anthony Boylan was tasked with carrying out a study into the state of liturgical reform in England and Wales, resulting in the prophetic Living Liturgy (1981) which called on the bishops to adopt a strategy for liturgical formation through the provision of a National Liturgical Institute. Regrettably this proposal failed to become a reality, and unlike Ireland, England, and Wales still has no National Pastoral Liturgical Institute.⁹⁵ However, the English bishops did issue three documents on the liturgy—Music in the Parish Mass (1975), The Parish Mass (1981), and The Parish Church (1983)—which sought to evaluate progress and propose future initiatives in liturgical renewal. Archbishop Gray had considerable influence in the initial post-conciliar liturgical renewal both through his leadership of the episcopal conference in Scotland and subsequently on a wider scale as the chairman of ICEL. Scotland differed from England and Ireland in the sense that with only eight dioceses, larger scale initiatives were not as necessary and this led the bishops to approach liturgical change in a gradual and coordinated fashion. By way of example, in his own diocese Gray adopted a practical approach by forming a liturgical commission to organize liturgical conferences in every deanery at which a central feature was the celebration of Mass, led by Archbishop Gray in the vernacular, facing the people, followed by talks by members of the liturgical commission.⁹⁶ As this survey conveys, there was a stark contrast between the structural and pastoral approaches to liturgical reception in Ireland, Scotland, and England and Wales. In Ireland, through the early creation of an institute for liturgy and associated academic endeavours, direct engagement in liturgical formation with a wide range of people was cultivated. In Scotland, liturgical reform in Edinburgh was led by Archbishop Gray in a more practical, hands on manner.⁹⁷ In England, despite commissioning a report identifying the need for a National Liturgical Institute, no such centre was ever opened. This is despite the early promise of the National Catechetical Centre at Corpus Christi College in London,⁹⁸ and the efforts of Fr Harold Winston to stimulate theological reflection through his Westminster Pastoral Liturgy Centre at St Thomas More church, East London. The marked difficulties in England and Wales which followed, stemming from a lack of liturgical catechesis, have been attributed to these missed opportunities.⁹⁹ ⁹⁴ Glen, ‘The Episcopal Contribution’, p. 168. ⁹⁵ Glen, ‘The Episcopal Contribution’, pp. 293–8. ⁹⁶ ‘From Our Notebook’, The Tablet, 30 January 1965, p. 123. ⁹⁷ Josephine Mary Smith, ‘Church Liturgy and Catechesis: A Critical Examination of Liturgical Development in Its Relationship to Catechesis in the Modern Catholic Church’ (PhD, University of Glasgow, 2013), p. 368. ⁹⁸ Michael Anthony Lundy, ‘Adult Catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church in Britain since the Second Vatican Council’ (PhD, University of Manchester, 1990), pp. 212–313. ⁹⁹ Anthony Boylan, ‘Liturgical Renewal: Where Did We All Go Wrong?’, Liturgy, 4 (1980).

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The Reception of Sacrosanctum Concilium Writing three decades after the Council, Michael Hornsby-Smith detected three stances towards the teaching of the post-conciliar Church: substantial acceptance of Church teachings, modified acceptance, and outright rejection and criticism.¹⁰⁰ These stances manifested themselves in a particular way in the liturgical and sacramental life of lay Catholics, with a strong preference for qualified acceptance. The advent of liturgical choice spurred a growing movement of liturgical experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s,¹⁰¹ including charismatic renewal services, leading to a form of ‘pick and mix’ in which parishioners would increasingly shop around for a church, form of liturgy (and music), as well as priest that suited them. This shift had consequences for the sacramental life of individual parishes. Numbers presented for baptism decreased,¹⁰² and whilst the renewed liturgy often opened the door to a wider congregation, it led to frustrations amongst priests as these sacramental encounters were increasingly seen as milestone events rather than an integration into the Christian community. One innovative approach in the 1980s to encourage ongoing liturgical and catechetical engagement with children and teenagers took place in the diocese of Salford led by Bishop Patrick Kelly (and subsequently also in the archdiocese of Liverpool after his translation), and most of the Scottish dioceses, in which a revised sequence of initiation rites for children was instituted (baptism, confirmation, reconciliation, Eucharist) in an attempt to provide a deeper sacramental experience and entry into the faith.¹⁰³ Enthusiasm for the adult catechumenate through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) from the early 1980s was at first initiated by lay enthusiasts, and only subsequently did the bishops discern its value.¹⁰⁴ By the late 1980s the majority of dioceses across both islands were using the RCIA,¹⁰⁵ leading to ‘a gradual but fruitful discovery of an imaginative means of adult formation in Christian faith and community.’¹⁰⁶ There were however some (often influential and certainly vociferous) laity and clergy, especially in England and Wales, who rejected the direction of travel signalled by SC and sought to resist changes to liturgical form and rubric— leading to the grassroots formation of the Latin Mass Society (LMS) in January 1965 in which several women took a strong lead. With a steadily rising membership which peaked at around 5,000 in 1971, the LMS focused on the retention of ¹⁰⁰ Michael Hornsby-Smith, Roman Catholic Beliefs in England (Cambridge, 1991), p. 70–1. ¹⁰¹ Peter Hebblethwaite, The Runaway Church: Post-Conciliar Growth or Decline (New York, 1975), pp. 38–41. ¹⁰² In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Baptisms’, tables A10.1–10.2. ¹⁰³ William Byrne, ‘The Sacraments of Initiation in Salford Diocese’, Liturgy, 17 (1993), pp. 256–65. ¹⁰⁴ John O’Shea, ‘RCIA: Its Development in England & Wales’, Liturgy, 12 (1987), pp. 2–3. ¹⁰⁵ Geoffrey Steel, ‘ “RIKKA” Lives in Britain’, Liturgy, 14 (1990), p. 105. ¹⁰⁶ Lundy, ‘Adult Catechesis’, p. 432.

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Latin and the pre-conciliar Roman Missal, alongside critiquing other liturgical changes sweeping English churches. The major achievement of the LMS was the pressure it exerted on Cardinal Heenan to secure the so-called ‘Agatha Christie’ indult in 1971 (because the novelist, alongside other well-known intellectuals and artists, was a petition signatory), in which English Catholics were permitted by Pope Paul VI to celebrate the Latin Tridentine Mass ‘on special occasions’.¹⁰⁷ Despite the formation of a Scottish branch of Una Voce (the international association for the preservation of Latin the liturgy) in Edinburgh in 1965,¹⁰⁸ Ireland and Scotland experienced no such organized rebellion to the liturgical reforms,¹⁰⁹ confirming the unique English circumstances and a particular strain of theological critique of the post-conciliar liturgy amongst a number of British (Catholic) academics, usually laypeople.¹¹⁰ In 2007, by means of his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI liberalized the 1962 Missal for the worldwide Church, freeing local stable groups from restrictive episcopal control. Whilst pockets of traditionalism experienced resurgence,¹¹¹ including some English bishops carrying out ordinations in the ‘Extraordinary Form’, Pope Francis’ 2021 motu proprio Traditionis Custodes firmly re-asserted the primacy of the 1970 Missal and, to the expressed dismay of some English Catholics,¹¹² restricts liturgical freedoms claimed over the past decades.

Music after Vatican II Music in the average Catholic parish sounded vastly different at the end of the twentieth century than it did at the beginning. Whilst the years following TLS demonstrated the first steps towards liturgical reform, it was in the years following the Council that a marked shift in parish music took place.¹¹³ Liturgical music was caught up in the whirlwind of liturgical revolution following the Council—almost overnight Gregorian chant vanished and, in many cases, choirs were considered no longer necessary. The primary conduit for these changes was the wholesale move of liturgical texts into the vernacular, which seemingly rendered the ¹⁰⁷ Alana Harris, ‘A Fresh Stripping of the Altars? Liturgical Language and the Legacy of the Reformation in England, 1964–1984’, in Cummings, Matovina, and Orsi (eds.), Catholics in the Vatican II Era, p. 261. ¹⁰⁸ Turnbull, ‘Scotland and the Second Vatican Council’, p. 12. ¹⁰⁹ V. Alan McClelland, ‘Great Britain and Ireland’, in Adrian Hastings (ed.), Modern Catholicism: Vatican II and After (London, 1991), pp. 366–9. ¹¹⁰ Victor Turner, ‘Ritual, Tribal and Catholic’, Worship, 50 (1976), pp. 504–26. ¹¹¹ Joseph Shaw, ‘The Demographics of the Extraordinary Form’, Homiletic and Pastoral Review, January 2021, https://www.hprweb.com/2021/01/the-demographics-of-the-extraordinary-form/ (accessed 30 December 2021). ¹¹² ‘Are Papal Priorities Right?’ Catholic Herald, October 2021, https://catholicherald.co.uk/ are-papal-priorities-right/ (accessed 29 December 2021). ¹¹³ Ainslie, ‘English Liturgical Music’, p. 93.

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inherited repertoire in Latin as unsuitable. Scholarship exploring the scale and scope of these changes is only now emerging,¹¹⁴ hindered by issues surrounding sources (liturgical music is primarily lay led and parish based) and the need for an interdisciplinary methodology spanning history, theology, and musicology. In the early years after the Second Vatican Council, efforts were made at a national level to provide elements of liturgical musical leadership. In Ireland, this leadership was centralized with an enduring legacy due to the founding of the Irish Church Music Association in 1969.¹¹⁵ The commissioning of Mass settings by four Irish composers during the 1970s had a significant impact in both Irish churches and those in the wider English-speaking world¹¹⁶ and, reminiscent of Cecilian times, the Irish Diocesan directors of music established a basic national repertory of church music with two Mass settings recommended, an emphasis on Irish compositions, but also included Gregorian chant and Continental music.¹¹⁷ In England and Wales a national commission for liturgical music was formed in 1965, chaired by Bishop Grant and comprised of seasoned musicians and members of the SSG and Church Music Association.¹¹⁸ During the years 1969–73, the Church Music Association became the operative agency for church music of the Bishops’ Conference, led by a full time salaried director, John Michael East.¹¹⁹ East’s promising work was abruptly ended when funding to pay his salary was withdrawn, but his legacy was to show glimpses of what is possible when liturgical music was prioritized. In November 1975, the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales issued a request to the Liturgy Commission for a directory on church music. Music in the Parish Mass was a poor document, reflective of its time and without lasting influence.¹²⁰ In Scotland, a variety of local initiatives provided impetus to the renewal of liturgical music. Diocesan choirs such as the St Mungo Singers (Glasgow), the Motherwell Diocesan Choir, Forth in Praise (Edinburgh), and the biannual pastoral music weekends known as ‘LiturgyWorks’ in the diocese of Argyll and the Isles all influenced music-making in their dioceses and beyond. Whilst hymns have not traditionally played as central a role in Catholic Masses as they have in many Protestant traditions, Catholic hymnals became important

¹¹⁴ Elizabeth L. Theobold, ‘Music in Roman Catholic Liturgies in England, Wales Since Vatican II’ (PhD, Southampton University, 1997); Christopher McElroy, ‘The Treasury of Sacred Music: A Hermeneutical Investigation to the Reception of Chapter Six of Sacrosanctum Concilium in England’ (PhD, Liverpool, University of Liverpool, 2013); and Michael Ferguson, ‘Understanding the Tensions in Liturgical Music-Making in the Roman Catholic Church in Contemporary Scotland’ (PhD, The University of Edinburgh, 2015). ¹¹⁵ Gerard T. Gillen, ‘Looking Back, Looking Forward’, New Liturgy, 98 (1998), p. 5. ¹¹⁶ Seóirse Bodley, Mass of Peace (1976); Fintan O’Carroll, Mass of the Immaculate Conception (1977); Thomas C. Kelly, Mass of Peace (1976); and Gerard Victory, Mass of the Resurrection (1977). ¹¹⁷ Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis’, pp. 208–9. ¹¹⁸ ‘The National Commission for Catholic Church Music’, Church Music 2 (1965); and ‘Notes and News’, Liturgy 35 (1966), p. 23. ¹¹⁹ John Ainslie, ‘John Michael East’, Music and Liturgy, 45 (2019), pp. 14–15. ¹²⁰ For criticisms, see McElroy, ‘The Treasury of Sacred Music’, pp. 268–71.

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after the Council as a liturgical book placed into the hands of many parishioners which was often edited and compiled predominantly by lay people. In England and Wales, the need for music with vernacular texts led to many Anglican and Lutheran hymns quickly coming into use, a significant departure from the 1912 and 1939 Westminster Hymnals which had gone to some lengths to avoid having any non-Catholic material whatsoever. Clifford Howell’s Mass Together (1963) sold 70,000 copies, leading the way in post-conciliar vernacular hymnals, followed in 1966 (revised 1972) by Praise the Lord and the 1968 Parish Hymnbook, described by Ainslie as a relic of a previous age.¹²¹ Subsequent hymnals have continued the trend of large sales, including Hymns Old and New (1983), Celebration Hymnal for Everyone (1994), and Laudate (1999). The move towards singing the Mass rather than singing at Mass was supported by publications such Sing the Mass (1974) and Music for the Mass (1985). The Simple Gradual (1970), setting the proper texts of the liturgy in the vernacular, fell victim to the sweeping movement towards the four-hymn sandwich. The Panel of Monastic Musicians produced a hymnal for the daily office A Song in Season (1976), subsequently replaced by Hymns for Prayer and Praise (1996) which offered both chant and diatonic harmony musical options. Influential post-conciliar hymnals in Ireland included the College Hymnal (1964), New Liturgy Hymn Book (1966), Alleluia! Amen! (1978), and probably the most influential, the Veritas Hymnal (1973) commissioned by the National Commission for Sacred Music and approved by the Irish Church Music Association, which has been reprinted several times, including as recently as 2010.¹²² A Scottish equivalent might be James Quinn, SJ’s popular New Hymns for All Seasons (1969),¹²³ while John Bell brings an ecumenical slant¹²⁴ and the venerable tradition of singing of Gaelic hymns embodied in Seinnibh dhan Tighearna (1986) continues to be used in the parishes of the Western Isles. Concerted efforts were made in the early post-conciliar years to encourage mainstream composers to write settings of the new vernacular texts for the English liturgy. In England, Fr Wilfred Purney sought to avoid a compositional ‘free for all’ by proposing in 1965 a centralized attempt to form a new vernacular repertoire.¹²⁵ The subsequent collapse of the Church Music Association and an open publishing market realized his fears, with internationally renowned Christopher Walker lamenting: after Vatican II went into the vernacular, suddenly anyone who could play D, G and A7 was a composer and we have been flooded with extremely poor music. ¹²¹ Ainslie, ‘English Liturgical Music’, p. 97. ¹²² Phelan, ‘Laus Perennis’, pp. 246–7. ¹²³ Paul Inwood (ed.), Hymns for All Seasons: The Complete Works of James Quinn, SJ (Portland, OR, 2017), pp. vi–xxix. ¹²⁴ John L. Bell, ‘Scottish Hymnody: An Ecumenical and Personal Perspective’, in Murray and Forrester (eds.), Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland, pp. 259–78. ¹²⁵ ‘New Music for the New Liturgy’, Church Music, 2 (1964), p. 8.

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Poor theological texts as well, but mostly poor melodies that people have sung again and again so it’s familiar, so they sing them.¹²⁶

Mainstream composers who showed interest in composing for the liturgy were strongly warned off,¹²⁷ and those that did compose new Masses were subject to savage reviews.¹²⁸ A particularly public example of this uneasy relationship was exhibited at the celebration of Mass in Bellahouston Park in Glasgow by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 which laid bare musical tensions associated with Sir James MacMillan’s Mass of Blessed John Henry Newman—commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland, England, and Wales and branded as ‘not pastoral enough’, ‘unsingable’, and not ‘fit for purpose.’ This led MacMillan to describe the musical preferences of his critics as orientated to ‘dumbed-down, sentimental bubble-gum music’.¹²⁹ Some of the more popular compositions and composers originating from England in the 1970s and 1980s were associated with the St Thomas Moore Centre in London, with composers such as Stephen Dean, Bernadette Farrell, Paul Inwood, and Christopher Walker becoming household names in Catholic hymnals on both sides of the Atlantic. In Ireland, Fintan O’Carroll was particularly influential, alongside the prolific Margaret Daly, and in a more popular style, Liam Lawton. The well-crafted compositions of Colin Mawby were popular in parishes on both sides of the Irish Sea. The singing of Gregorian chant remains strong in many monastic communities, ranging from Pluscarden Abbey in Scotland and St Cecilia’s Abbey on the Isle of Wight which sing all their liturgical services in Latin using Gregorian chant, to Ampleforth Abbey which combine the Latin Gregorian tradition with new compositions in the vernacular, through to Mount St Bernard Abbey in Leicestershire which sings largely in the vernacular using newly composed psalm tones and antiphons impregnated by Gregorian chant.¹³⁰

Conclusion The twentieth-century liturgical renewal in the local churches of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland has a distinctive history and the development of worship and music in each national setting reflects its own cultural, liturgical, and musical

¹²⁶ Interview with Christopher Walker in McElroy, ‘The Treasury of Sacred Music’, p. 290. ¹²⁷ Bill Tamblyn, ‘Editorial’, Church Music, 2 (1966), p. 3. ¹²⁸ Paul Inwood, ‘New Milner Mass’, Music and Liturgy, 3 (1977), p. 23. ¹²⁹ https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2012/12/03/more-on-macmillan/ (accessed 29 December 2021). ¹³⁰ Karin Strinnholm Lagergren, ‘The Word Became Song: Liturgical Song in Roman Catholic Convents and Monasteries 2005–2007’ (Gothenburg University PhD thesis, 2009), p. 86.

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heritage, alongside shifts in the locus of liturgical authority. This was manifest at the beginning of the twentieth century, as many of the teachings of TLS were widely ignored or subtly sidestepped. Similar sentiments arose once again after the Council with the issue of liturgical translations and ICEL, with some priests and their parishioners believing that the ICEL translations were too American and insufficiently adapted to the varied vernaculars used in these Islands. TLS gave papal approval to a principal tenet of the liturgical movement, that of actuosa participatio—but many critiques by congregations and clergy were superficial and centred on temperament and taste rather than theological interrogation. In this, these earlier changes paralleled the reception of SC (especially in England), where a dearth of liturgical catechesis limited reception and provoked reaction. Despite this, there can be no doubt that both the sight and sound of Mass in the average parish church in Britain and Ireland is radically different between 1903 and the present day. Today the sanctuary is often reordered with the altar freestanding, the priest praying facing the congregation and women fulfilling liturgical ministries as lectors, eucharistic ministers, or catechists. Music today is just as likely to be led by a music group singing folk-like music or a cantor, than the presence of a choir and organ and the sound of Gregorian chant. An underlying issue prevalent throughout this chapter is that of ecclesial authority and more democratized forms of being ‘church’. As first highlighted in the reaction to TLS, blind obedience to Roman and episcopal mandate became less the norm, a fact amply demonstrated by implementation of SC where choirs and established musical repertoire were abandoned. Music, unlike the liturgical actions itself, is largely a lay-led activity. Most parish musicians are volunteers, and not always well equipped with musical, liturgical, or theological knowledge. These musicians exerted a huge amount of influence on parish liturgies, much more than is usually acknowledged. With the shift from compulsion of attendance (‘Sunday obligation’) towards gathered congregations to participate in an experiential liturgy, music can become both a positive factor drawing people to Church, but also negative when splitting parish attendance around forms of worship (Folk Mass, Organ Mass, Choir Mass). This chapter also highlights several influential individuals throughout the century who played an important role in furthering liturgical and musical renewal. The contribution of these pioneers (including lay and women religious) has not always been noted. The study of liturgy and music across the twentieth century warrants more study, both historically but also pastorally orientated. Equally, the gradual transferal of authority in the liturgical arena alongside the growing influence of certain lay people is a shift that has not received due acknowledgement. As this chapter illustrates, a dual focus on liturgical and musical transformations provides an unparalleled lens into questions around lay leadership, ministry, and participation in the Church, recasting questions about the sites (and sounds) for expression of the sensus fidelium in a synodal church.

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Select Bibliography Crichton, James D., Harold E. Winstone, and John Ainslie (eds.), English Catholic Worship—Liturgical Renewal in England since 1900 (London, 1979). Davies, Horton, Worship and Theology in England: Ecumenical Century 1900 to the Present (Princeton, NJ, 1996). Murray, Douglas M. and Duncan B. Forrester (eds.), Studies in the History of Worship in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1996). Thomas, Martin, English Cathedral Music and Liturgy in the Twentieth Century (Oxford, 2015). Whelan, Thomas R. and Liam M. Tracey (eds.), Serving Liturgical Renewal: Pastoral and Theological Questions: Essays in Honour of Patrick Jones (Dublin, 2015).

10 British and Irish Novels and the Catholic Imagination Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros

The decades that followed the Great War ravaged the European social and political landscape, and yet it was in this moment that Catholic thought and writing in English flourished. Following the re-establishment of the episcopal hierarchy in Britain, a new generation of writers—often converts and mostly highly educated—joined a minority Catholic Church and embraced a position of difference within society. Marginal, articulate, and aware of their social and moral duty to a nation and a continent in conflict, these figures brought the personal reality of the Catholic faith into the public sphere through prose, poetry, the visual arts, and the spoken word. In Ireland, the decades following 1914 told a different story. Newly liberated from British rule, the Republic rapidly became, in practice if not in policy, a Catholic state. Much has been made of the period’s clericalism, and its vigorous censorship of arts and letters as forces that curtailed literary production.¹ But this view needs to be balanced with the fact that earlytwentieth-century Irish writing was in fact rich and copious. Although the Irish censorship board was quick to denounce many titles, most if not all countries in the world had active censorship policies at the time and, in many cases, censorship appears to have enhanced, rather than diminished, the popularity of Ireland’s banned books around the world.² It is true that many Irish writers in the first part of the century spent long periods of their life abroad, yet they predominantly used those years to write about Ireland. Even greater in number were the writers who stayed in Ireland, though many of their works have been forgotten. It is still a widely held view that the Catholic Literary Revival was predominantly located in Protestant England. However, Catholic literature was in fact produced in all areas of Britain and Ireland, was composed by men and women of vastly different backgrounds, and spanned a much longer period of time than is ¹ Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism Since 1850 (Dublin: Gill & Manmillan, 2002), pp. 37–8; Eamon Maher, ‘An Irish Catholic Novel?’, in Mary R. Reichardt (ed.), Between Human and Divine: The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature (Washington, 2010), pp. 69–85. ² Brian Fallon, The Age of Innocence: Irish Culture 1930–1969 (New York, 1998), pp. 201–10; Michael G. Cronin, Impure Thoughts: Sexuality, Catholicism and Literature in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 2012). Bonnie Lander Johnson and Julia Meszaros, British and Irish Novels and the Catholic Imagination In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0011

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usually assumed. This Revival in Britain and Ireland is exemplified by the work of Hilaire Belloc, Robert Hugh Benson, G. K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Gerard Manley Hopkins, John McGahern, Ronald Knox, Francis McManus, Brian Moore, Frank O’Connor, Richard Power, and Evelyn Waugh—all of whom have been consistently in print throughout the last century.³ But in fact the Revival’s most numerous members were women. While some of these women remain well-known—Muriel Spark, Rummer Godden, Antonia White, Kate O’Brien, Maisie Ward—many others have fallen out of circulation: Enid Dinnis, Alice Thomas Ellis, Caryll Houselander, Sheila Kaye-Smith, Marie Belloc Lowndes, Alice Meynell, Edith Sitwell, Gladys Bronwyn Stern, and Josephine Ward. Many further writers, often very popular in their own time, are almost entirely forgotten,⁴ and only now coming back into print.⁵

Catholic Women, the Catholic Novel, and ‘Modernity’ There are various reasons why female Catholic writers fell out of circulation. Broadly, we can point to changes in the commercial publishing world after World War II, changes within the Church itself, and academic fashions in the Englishspeaking universities that redefined the literary canon in the last decades of the twentieth century. Yet it remains puzzling that a body of writing so creative, so attuned to its historical moment, and so unique in its perspective on the human condition should have fallen out of print for so long. Crucially, the obscuring of women’s participation in the Catholic Literary Revival has distorted the movement’s intellectual legacy. Modern Catholic literature, especially the novel, now attracts significant scholarly attention from historians, theologians, and literary critics. Within this body of criticism, two central positions remain largely unchallenged: that few Irish writers contributed to the movement⁶ and that after the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) Catholic literature died.⁷ However, when we

³ See Adrian Hastings, ‘Some Reflections on the English Catholicism of the Late 1930s’, Bishops and Writers: Aspects of the Evolution of Modern English Catholicism (Wheathamstead, 1977). ⁴ Such as: Mary Beckett, Mary Butler, Cecilia Mary Caddell, Ellen Mary Clerke, Kathleen Coyle, Julia Crottie, Margaret Anna Cusack, Alice Curtayne, Eleanor Farjeon, Clotilde Graves, Emily Henrietta Hickey, Pamela Hinkson, Julia Kavanagh, Jane Lane, Maura Laverty, Mary Lavin, Rosa Mulholland, Lily O’Brennan, Charlotte Grace O’Brien, Sophie Raffalovich O’Brien, Geraldine Penrose-Fitzgerald, Kathleen Raine, Pearl Mary Teresa Richards, and Annie A. M. Smithson. ⁵ See Catholic University of America Press’s new series ‘Catholic Women Writers’. ⁶ E.g. James H. Murphy, ‘Catholics and Fiction during the Union 1801–1922’, in John Wilson Foster (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 97–112. ⁷ Mary Gerhart, ‘What Ever Happened to the Catholic Genre?’, in Mary Gerhart and Arthur C. Yu (eds.), Morphologies of Faith: Essays in Religion and Culture in Honor of Nathan A. Scott, Jr. (Atlanta, 1990), pp. 181–201; Gene Kellogg, The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence (Chicago, 1970), p. 1.

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consider the large and overlooked body of writing by Catholic women, it becomes necessary to revise both of these positions. We see that Irish Catholic writers— and, indeed, those in Scotland and Wales⁸—were in fact very active in the Revival. And, when female writers are returned to the historical frame, it becomes clear that the Catholic novel in particular can be traced as a consistent presence in British and Irish literary production throughout the years following Vatican II and up to the present day. Rather than losing its significant place in the broader British and Irish literary tradition as a result of Vatican II, the Catholic novel can instead be seen as developing alongside, and often in direct relationship with, each decade of the twentieth century. In literary studies, it is widely acknowledged that technical developments within the novel form stayed abreast of social and cultural changes. More than just reflecting human culture through its content, the twentiethcentury novel sought to understand and interpret a changing world through formal innovation. So too the Catholic novel was able to contain and explore not just literary and social change but also the successive theological, ecclesial, and liturgical movements that unfurled—slowly before the Council and rapidly after it. Indeed, the rapid nature of change immediately following the Council was sometimes easier to explore in the commercial fiction market—itself a fast-paced sphere—than it was in the world of academic theology and history. The Catholic Literary Revival’s finest achievements in Britain are the novels through which the movement has come to be defined. Exemplary among these are Greene’s The Power and the Glory (1940) and Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945). Both Waugh and Greene exploited strategies developed in the preceding decades by French Catholic writers such as Bernanos, Mauriac, and Péguy.⁹ Their novels foregrounded the struggles of an individual sinner in a world at once fallen and imbued with divine grace; they offered a critique of materialism; and they constructed a narrative grounded, however implicitly, in the idea of God as the Hound of Heaven who seeks always the good for his children—even when they wilfully turn away from him.¹⁰ These narrative strategies were especially possible in the novel form. Since its inception, the novel has been concerned with individual characters who must navigate moral complexities that are opaque and threatening but whose choices are ultimately bound up in the wider actions of Providence.

⁸ E.g. Gerard Carruthers, ‘Losing His Religion: The Neglected Catholicism of A.J. Cronin’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 45:2 (2019), pp. 42–6. ⁹ Alice Glen Reeve-Tucker, ‘Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Catholicism, 1928–1939’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2012). ¹⁰ David Lodge, ‘Introduction’, in François Mauriac, The Viper’s Tangle, trans. Gerard Hopkins (New York, 1987); Antonia White, The Hound and the Falcon: The Story of a Reconversion to Catholic Faith (London, 1965).

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Emerging in the late seventeenth century, the novel was modernity’s chief literary innovation. It grew out of several prose traditions, especially the spiritual autobiography, and yet it has been called both a Protestant and a secular form. Although able to contain and explore religious concerns, especially the role of Providence and personal conscience, it is ultimately resistant to ‘the pressures put upon it by many writers to transcend the limits’ of the secular world.¹¹ Graham Greene criticized most English novelists for what he saw as a deficiency of Christian vision. Of Dickens, he said that ‘evil appears only as an economic factor, nothing more. Christianity is a woman serving soup to the poor.’¹² Greene’s own view was that all good novels must take account of the spiritual reality that shapes human character. ‘Rob human beings of their heavenly and their infernal importance, and you rob your characters of their individuality’.¹³ British literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was surprisingly interested in the Catholic faith, but often only in a cursory way. For fin de siècle, often avant-garde, novelists ‘Catholicism was the odd disruption, the hysterical symptom, the mystical effusion, the medieval spectacle, the last hope of paganism, in an age of Victorian puritanism, Enlightenment rationalism, and bourgeois materialism’.¹⁴ The late nineteenth and early twentieth century was religiously tumultuous; often defined, even at the time, as the age of faith and doubt. Writers and artists of every stripe examined the role of institutional religion in public life, and the personal consequences of lives lived with or without faith. The period has been described as the beginning of a modern secular society but it also witnessed powerful resistance to secularization; writers from Wilfrid and Josephine Ward to T. S. Eliot, Oscar Wilde, and Evelyn Waugh identified religious belief as newly urgent and necessary. A non-religious or strictly materialist world-view was for many an increasingly dangerous proposition. In 1935, T. S. Eliot criticized writers who failed to resist the drift towards secularism: ‘the whole of modern literature is corrupted by what I call Secularism . . . it is simply unaware of, simply cannot understand the meaning of, the primacy of the supernatural over the natural life . . . something which I assume to be our primary concern’.¹⁵ For Catholic writers in particular, ‘Catholicism was both a reactionary critique of the state of religious decline in modernity and also a powerful theological, philosophical, and artistic alternative to this seeming decline’.¹⁶ The period’s

¹¹ George Levine, Realism, Ethics and Secularism: Essays on Victorian Literature and Science (Cambridge, 2011), p. 210; Deirdre Shauna Lynch, ‘Gothic Fiction and “Belief in Every Kind of Prodigy” ’, in Mark Knight (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Literature and Religion (London, 2016), pp. 252–62. ¹² Graham Greene, Collected Essays (London, 1993), p. 113. ¹³ Greene, Collected Essays, p. 154. ¹⁴ Ellis Hanson, Decadence and Catholicism (Cambridge, MA, 1997), p. 26. ¹⁵ T. S. Eliot, ‘Religion and Literature’, in Frank Kermode (ed.), Selected Prose (New York, 1975), pp. 104–5. ¹⁶ Mark Bosco, Graham Greene’s Catholic Imagination (Oxford, 2005), pp. 7–8.

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many conversions to Catholicism, notably among writers and artists,¹⁷ helped to shape in new and dynamic ways the ‘Catholic imagination’. This term can be broadly defined as a vision of the world in which the drama of salvation, the battle between good and evil, is played out in the mundane experiences of the everyday; in which the human being encounters God in and through the visible and created things of the world; the development of individual character and community identity; and the adventure of human relationships. The Catholic imagination is that state of awareness through which the seemingly abstract doctrines of Church teaching are played out in a person’s day-to-day experiences and moral actions, to the point that some of the smallest human endeavours become nothing less than matters of life and death. From a technical point of view, the novel was uniquely suited to exploring these varied levels of human experience. Its innovations in voice and point of view, and in narrative time, and the role of description and world-making in constructing human interiority predisposed it to the dramatization of both earthly and cosmic dimensions and to moral or spiritual battles both social and personal. The novel has often been characterized, especially in its early-eighteenthcentury form, as primarily concerned with female experience and the domestic sphere.¹⁸ While prominent counter-examples to this thesis exist in the work of Fielding and Dickens, the genre nonetheless frequently explores the internal lives of female characters and their negotiation of personal relationships within the more limited geographical settings of a single house, village, or city. But the novel is also a genre well suited to the exploration of social and political change. Unlike most pre-modern forms, especially the epic, the novel can provide a voice for those who do not possess great social power, who must navigate moral challenges, often on their own and in direct conflict with the culture around them, and who, in doing so, offer criticisms of the society in which they find themselves. In this respect, the novel offered a perfect vehicle for exploring the challenges faced by a Catholic in modern society. A large number of Catholic writers were converts from Anglicanism or from no religion at all. Their imaginations were therefore shaped by a radical change in perspective. In Britain, becoming Catholic meant accepting a place outside of the establishment; in Ireland, conversion from Anglicanism often occurred in concert with an awakening to the nationalist or republican cause. Whether in Britain or Ireland, conversion often meant writers could see their society, and the novel form in which they were already working, with clear eyes for the first time.

¹⁷ Patrick Allitt, Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome (New York, 2000). ¹⁸ E.g. Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction (Oxford, 1987); Catherine Ingrassia, Authorship, Commerce and Gender in Early-Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1998).

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The neglected female representatives of the Catholic Literary Revival cast a distinct and important light on the Catholic imagination. Typically writing from within more introspective, domestic, devotional, and romantic contexts, they often root Catholic experience in the everyday, revealing its relevance in and to the lives of ordinary men and women. If the women writers involved in the Revival often wrote from a more domestic or interpersonal angle, they were by no means unaware or uncritical of the social, cultural, political, and ecclesial developments of their time. Indeed, their more marginal role in British and Irish society often allowed them to adopt a uniquely perceptive outsider’s view. A reconsideration of female participation in the Revival enables us to see that the movement spanned a much wider geographic location than has previously been recognized. In England most Catholic writers, including women, were concentrated in London, Oxford, and the south. But many Catholic writers were Irish, and although the more well-known lived for a time in London, Europe, or America (Mary Lavin, Kate O’Brien, Kathleen Coyle), many more remained in Ireland.¹⁹ In Scotland, Muriel Spark set the benchmark for postmodern literary innovation; indeed, Spark’s work exemplifies the Catholic postmodern novel, a crucial sub-category of the genre that deserves greater critical attention. Very much influenced by Spark, Alice Thomas Ellis was raised in Wales and continued to maintain a residence there throughout her adult years in London. Ellis was one of Wales’ greatest modern literary figures, a winner of the Arts Council of Wales Literature Award and nominated for the Booker Prize. She was also one of the most prominent post-conciliar Catholic novelists. A reconsideration of women’s role in the Revival also offers a crucial opportunity to revise the widespread view that Vatican II brought an end to the Catholic novel. There has been a growing consensus by critics of the last four decades that the Catholic novel and its dynamic shaping of the Catholic imagination disappeared after Vatican II when ‘Catholicism shed its opposition to serious engagement with the modern world.’²⁰ The genre ‘began when the isolation of the world’s Roman Catholic communities started to break down in the nineteenth century’ and tapered off—perhaps ended—when Roman Catholics ‘joined the modern world’.²¹ Albert Sonnenfeld takes this view even further: ‘Vatican II marked the legitimization and consecration of a host of modernist longings that were both a reflection and a cause of the “decline and fall” of that possibly perverse and reactionary nostalgia which made the Catholic Novel possible.’²²

¹⁹ E.g. Mary Beckett, Mary Butler, Julia Crottie, Margaret Anna Cusack, Alice Curtayne, Emily Henrietta Hickey, Pamela Hinkson, Maura Laverty, Rosa Mulholland, Lily O’Brennan, Charlotte Grace O’Brien, Sophie Raffalovich O’Brien, and Annie M. P. Smithson. ²⁰ Bosco, Graham Greene’s Catholic Imagination, p. 9. ²¹ Kellogg, The Vital Tradition, p. 1. ²² Albert Sonnenfeld, Crossroads: Essays on the Catholic Novelists (York, SC, 1982), p. viii.

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However, it is simply not true that the British and Irish Catholic novel has died.²³ It may have been forced off-shore. Most Catholic writers still active today—Piers Paul Read, Lucy Beckett, Fiorella de Maria—took their most explicitly Catholic novels to American Catholic publishers. The continuation of the British Catholic literary tradition may therefore be more threatened by commercial forces than any reorientation in the Church’s relationship to the world. It could also be said that now, two decades into the twenty-first century, the Church in Britain is not in fact as comfortable with the modern world as it might have seemed in the decades immediately following Vatican II. However radically harmonized that relationship was felt to be in the 1980s, the British public sphere has since moved steadily further away from its Christian identity. Perhaps Catholics now inhabit once again a position of difference in Britain; one which, though quite unlike that of the penal centuries, is nonetheless significant enough to ensure that the average Catholic, whether lay or religious, feels they inhabit the hinterlands of public life. But this position has neither diminished nor enhanced literary output among Catholics; the Catholic novel appears to continue regardless of fluctuation in the relationship between British society and its Catholicism. One of the most striking revisions that novels by Catholic women bring to our understanding of the field is the central importance of female community as the location of human and divine action. Catholic novels by male writers often focus on the solitary figure of a priest or layman in spiritual combat with the world around him. Instead, novels by women are more often situated in families and villages (Beckett, Laverty, Ellis, Coyle, Ward, Kaye-Smith) and in the institutional communities in which women novelists first encountered the faith: schools (Spark, White), convents (Godden, Ellis, Spark), or convent schools (O’Brien, White).²⁴ Almost wholly unrecognized by scholarship of the Catholic Literary Revival are the frequent novelistic depictions of female religious life. Antonia White’s Frost in May (1933) was the first title on Virago’s Modern Classics list and is possibly the most widely known convent novel among non-Catholic readers. It offers an ambivalent portrait of a devout and passionate young girl’s experience in a strict convent school. The brilliance of White’s technique ensures that the more narrow and manipulative elements of the convent’s management—the nuns’ close surveillance of students, their petty cruelties, their mistrust of anything worldly— is never wholly oppressive or claustrophobic but part of the rarefied, spiritual and beautiful atmosphere that so enthrals the students. Also on the Virago Modern Classics list is Rumer Godden, who wrote three convent novels: Black Narcissus (1939), which follows an order of Anglican nuns in India; In This House of Brede (1969), set in a Sussex Benedictine convent; and ²³ Patrick Sherry, ‘The End of the Catholic Novel?’, Literature and Theology, 9:2 (1995), pp. 165–78. ²⁴ Meoghan B. Cronin, ‘Maiden Mothers and Little Sisters’, in Reichardt (ed.), Between Human and Divine, pp. 262–80.

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Five for Sorrow and Ten for Joy (1979), which depicts a Parisian order of nuns who work with prostitutes and street children. In each novel, the religious life of women in community is unsentimental but nonetheless a definite source of both human fulfilment and divine grace. Kate O’Brien’s Land of Spices (1941) is set in an Irish convent school and follows the spiritual development of both its prioress and its youngest student. The school in Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) is not Catholic, but the main student character converts and through her conversion becomes the sole agent in the unmasking of Jean Brodie’s manipulations. Spark also wrote The Abbess of Crewe (1974), which follows the intrigue surrounding an order’s appointment of their new leader. And in The 27th Kingdom (1982) by Alice Thomas Ellis, a levitating novice is sent by her mother superior back into the world until her spiritual excesses can be brought to a manageable level. While there, the novice helps to bring redemption into a particularly vice-ridden area of bohemian Chelsea. These titles are exemplary of a sub-genre of considerable size that spans writing from across the British Isles; the list grows longer when American novels and historical novels about women’s religious orders are included. Catholic novels of female institutional life make full use of the unique and varied material—social, psychological, spiritual—to be found in the governance and ordering of community: the clash of generations, the precision of ritual, and tradition and its effects on the interior life, the means by which human intimacy is shaped through social systems designed to order relationships along lines of virtue. These novels show the human condition at work in uniquely Catholic worlds. Convent novels from the second half of the century (Godden, Ellis, Spark) all in some way register the impact of Vatican II on the organization of religious life. But the novel that describes these changes most explicitly is David Lodge’s How Far Can You Go? (1980), which charts the disaffiliation of a group of London Catholics after the Council. Among the novel’s characters is Ruth, a nun who joined an educational order when it was still organized on a pre-conciliar model. Through her eyes, and through her own modernizing initiatives, we follow the order’s steady renunciation of tradition in dress, daily life, pedagogy, prayer, and liturgy, until Ruth drifts away from her community entirely. But this steady disaffiliation is nonetheless depicted in uncertain terms: change seems an inevitable force but through it much of value is lost.

Vernacular Theologies in Print, Journalism, and through the Public Lecture In Josephine Ward’s 1899 novel One Poor Scruple, the old recusant Riversdale family has survived the long penal years by observing a quiet aristocratic life of sport and agriculture, never stepping into the public sphere from which Catholics

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in Britain had been barred for so long. But at the start of the twentieth century, a new generation has emerged. The novel’s younger characters are now legally able to go to Oxford and Cambridge and to enter the public life of letters. Emboldened by the confident work of John Henry Newman, this younger generation of Catholics was nonetheless cautioned by its elders (including some members of the re-established Church hierarchy) not to trust the Protestant establishment. Catholic participation in the public sphere from 1914 needs to be understood in this context. From Ward’s One Poor Scruple to Lodge’s How Far Can You Go?, many novels across the century ask to what extent a Catholic can immerse him- or herself in Protestant society. How do Catholics evangelize the non-Catholic world and support the growth of a nascent Catholic community, without losing entirely a corporate identity that had been maintained for so long by protectionist isolation? For intellectuals and writers these questions were especially urgent because there was insufficient room for the modern mind in a Catholic rural home, shut off from towns, universities, and the wider public life and public offices of Britain and Ireland. One response to this emerging need were the numerous coteries that emerged in the period—in this regard, women’s sociality needs to be recognized as a significant shaping influence on the Catholic Literary Revival. We can point to the homes of prominent Catholic intellectuals where clergy, artists, and scholars met to engage in theologically driven conversation and literary activity: the Wards (both generations), the von Hügels, the Chestertons, and especially the poet and essayist, Alice Meynell, whose London salons were hubs of Catholic literary activity throughout the early twentieth century. In a further attempt to reconcile the newly urgent Catholic desire for a public life of letters with the desire to retain a communal Catholic identity, the early twentieth century saw the flourishing of a number of Catholic newspapers, literary journals, periodicals, and publishing houses—many of which (The Tablet, The Catholic Herald) are still in circulation.²⁵ This period in the history of British and Irish Catholicism is of significant relevance to the Catholic Literary Revival—and its women in particular—because it was through the establishment of print outlets that many of the movement’s writers found their voice. Josephine Ward herself emerged as a writer in this way. With her husband, the biographer and theologian Wilfrid Ward (son of the Tractarian convert, W. G. Ward), Josephine raised a large family while working across numerous genres—theological pamphlets, fiction, reviews and sketches, biography, and the lecture circuit. The Wards were as involved in fin de siècle literary communities as they were with Catholic

²⁵ Niall Coll and Alana Harris, ‘The Path to Rome: Characteristics and Contours of Theology in Britain and Ireland before the Council’, in Joachim Schmiedl, Peter Hünermann, Margit Eckholt, and Klaus Vellguth (eds.), Vatican II—Legacy and Mandate, Intercontinental Commentary: Reception and Orientations for the Life of the Church (Leuven, 2024).

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intellectuals: they were close friends with Tennyson and Gladstone, and with Newman and Manning. Wilfrid, like his father, was for a time editor of the Dublin Review, a London Catholic journal, whose name signalled the period’s recognition of Dublin as the cultural centre of Catholic life in the English-speaking world. Throughout the twentieth century, the Catholic Truth Society (CTS), established in 1869, continued to print accessible theological pamphlets by clergy and the laity (in 1924 Josephine Ward herself wrote the CTS pamphlet on marriage). Following the closure of the Victorian Catholic periodical, The Lamp, the convert nun, Frances Margaret Taylor, established The Month in 1864 and continued as its editor until she sold it to the Jesuits. The Month went on to absorb the Dublin Review and continued in print until 2001. Throughout the twentieth century, The Month printed work by many of the most active Catholic writers: Waugh, Greene, Spark, Merton. For a time, The Month was also owned by Burns & Oates, and it is this intersection between Catholic publishing houses and print journalism that, for much of the twentieth century, allowed Catholic writers to both develop fictional or imaginative work and engage in contemporary politics and theological debate. The most significant concentration of Catholic literary activity in the twentieth century was overseen by Maisie Ward, daughter of Josephine and Wilfrid, and her husband Frank Sheed. The couple not only established rural parishes and communal agricultural projects (on the model of the Catholic Worker farms), but also founded Sheed and Ward, an influential Catholic publishing house with offices in both London and New York. Printing fiction, biography, spiritual and theological writing, criticism, and review, Sheed and Ward reached its wide readership through the talents of its founders who were regularly on the public lecture circuit in both the UK and the USA.²⁶ Before the widespread establishment of radio, the public lecture circuit was a primary means for acquiring an audience. As a result, Catholic writers were often highly skilled speakers. For women, this meant a significant opportunity to take up a public role and it brought those women, such as Josephine and Maisie, who may have previously been more sheltered by an aristocratic childhood, into direct conversation with a socially and ethnically diverse audience. This convergence of public speaking and writing is perhaps most evident in the work of the Catholic Evidence Guild (CEG), founded in London in 1918 and spreading eventually to the USA and a number of other countries.²⁷ In her later life, the widowed Josephine Ward was herself a member of the Guild, alongside Maisie Ward and Frank Sheed. The CEG was a forum for public apologetics but it

²⁶ James R. Lothian, The Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community, 1910–1950 (Notre Dame, 2009). ²⁷ Francis Leonard, Fools for Christ’s Sake: Being a Short Account of the Catholic Evidence Guild in England and Wales (Plawsworth, 2000).

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was also a Catholic community with established patterns of prayer and training for both clergy and lay members, many of whom lived with or near each other, observing daily prayers communally and developing each other’s abilities. The CEG printed its own manifesto with the CTS, in which it outlined the importance of prayer, prose, and public apologetics as a crucial and interdependent form of intellectual engagement for Catholics. In effect, the twentieth century sees the emergence in Ireland, but most especially in Britain, of what Coll and Harris have termed the ‘theological vernacular’.²⁸ Both clergy and laymen and -women were collaborating in small communities in order to engage with public life and to develop the intellectual and spiritual integrity of the Catholic Church as it reestablished itself after centuries of near-silence.

Theological Development in the Pre- and Post-Conciliar Catholic Novel: Suffering, Immanence, Eschatology Many Catholic women novelists experienced personal suffering to an inordinate degree: child loss, mental illness, poverty. Catholic teaching on the redemptive potential of suffering helped them to understand the role their pain played in the small drama of their own life and in the bigger cosmic drama of which we are all a part. Yet, female novelists were also acutely aware of the potential abuse hiding in the Catholic idea of redemptive suffering. Following the Council, some feminist theologians went as far as dismissing it as intrinsically dangerous or destructive.²⁹ But for Catholic novelists, suffering remained a potential source of redemption. Through fiction, they created worlds complex enough to contain both salvific and destructive suffering, and to explore the subtle distinction between the two in ways that engaged with the century’s most prominent theological tensions. For the English mystic, writer, and artist Caryll Houselander, personal suffering was a means by which Christians could ‘give birth to Christ’ in the lives of others. Like many writers, she understood that the novel is itself a vehicle for understanding suffering. The Catholic Literary Revival occurred in tandem with a new resurfacing of one of Catholicism’s most fundamental theological questions: is God to be sought primarily in detachment from this world, a world understood as a ‘vale of tears’ that is destined to pass? Or is divine reality to be found in the created world, its beauties and pleasures? The first of these propositions urges an acceptance of suffering as a source of redemption, an opportunity for self-denial and unity with God. It can be located in Catholicism’s long tradition of asceticism. The second calls for an investment in the material and social world and, though it ²⁸ Coll and Harris, ‘The Path to Rome’. ²⁹ Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretations in Context (Boston, 1998), p. 151.

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also has a long history in Catholic theologies of beauty (material devotional practices) and charity (providing for the material needs of the other), it became especially pronounced in modern articulations of Catholic Social Teaching. In truth, these two positions are not at odds—both extend from the reality of the incarnation and of Christ as human and divine—but the potential for distinction was sharpened by the events of the twentieth century. The novel itself—a form in which the individual must navigate a social and spiritual world of conflicting needs and demands—became a vibrant location for thinking through these problems. The Catholic experience articulated in the novels of the early pre-conciliar period tended to endorse the more ascetic acceptance of suffering as a source of redemptive truth, while those of the later century either questioned this view or affirmed it more indirectly, for instance by assuming the presence of the divine in the material and every-day. One further reaction to theological tensions can be detected in the postmodern Catholic novel, in which authors deployed the form’s decharacterization, authorial self-reflexivity, and non-realist uses of time and voice to create a fictional world governed by ‘divine’ reality. In the novels of Spark and Ellis especially, postmodernist literary techniques enable a way of seeing the earthly struggle from the divine viewpoint, even if this strategy can only ever be deployed ironically. Sheila Kaye-Smith’s The End of the House of Alard (1925)³⁰ depicts the choices made by the final generation of the Alard family, all of whom, in their different ways, renounce the earthly and secular duties of their aristocratic title and lands. The novel’s portrayal of Christianity as a ‘hard faith’ applies especially to the notion that human suffering is often a crucial part of our redemption. As he is about to enter the religious life as a monk, Gervase Alard realizes the considerable suffering he has endured precisely on account of his faith in Jesus Christ: He felt rather forlorn as the lorry’s lights swept up the Vinehall road. During the last few months he had been stripped of so many things—his devotion to Stella, his comradeship with Jenny—he knew that he could never be to her what he had been before she married—and now his family and his home. And all he had to look forward to was a further, more complete stripping, even of the clothes he wore, so that in all the world he would own nothing.³¹

Another character, Stella, also undergoes great suffering—the permanent loss of the man she loves, and a sense of forsakenness even by God. And yet, their ³⁰ Sheila Kaye-Smith, The End of the House of Alard (Washington, [1923] 2022). Kaye-Smith, who joined the Roman Church in 1929, wrote The End of the House of Alard while still an Anglo-Catholic but the book can be classified as a Catholic novel insofar as its doctrinal presuppositions are indistinguishable from those of Roman Catholicism. ³¹ Kaye-Smith, Alard, p. 375.

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sufferings are bearable compared to the despair of those who seek to avoid suffering by clinging to earthly happiness. Gervase and Stella suffer for the sake of a higher purpose and their suffering indeed draws them towards God. In effect, it unites them also with one another, such that their suffering loses its isolating qualities and instead becomes a source of spiritual communion. Instead of despairing of his unreciprocated love for Stella, Gervase sees that by becoming a priest, he ‘shall be able to help [Stella] more’ and that ‘it isn’t every man who’s given the power to do so much for the woman he loves.’³² Alard emphasizes not only the redemptive potential of human suffering but also the fact that suffering is often incurred on account of the human quest for God. Kathleen Coyle’s A Flock of Birds (1930) looks at things the other way round: it illustrates God’s quest for the human being amidst his or her suffering. Where in Alard suffering is the consequence of faith in God in the midst of a fallen, finite world, Coyle’s novel instead shows suffering as the very occasion in which a nonbeliever can find God for the first time. A Flock of Birds follows the torment of an Anglo-Irish mother whose son has converted—religiously and politically—and been condemned to death for the murder of an Ulster man. The son is called Christy and the novel makes clear the Marian nature of the mother’s spiritual trial. Faced with losing Christy, the a-religious Catherine begins to lose touch with ordinary reality: the comfort and status of her former life suddenly appear as nothing. But in fact Catherine’s emptiness turns out to be a life-saving opportunity. It unleashes in her a desperate quest for a more solid spiritual foundation. Unlike Christy’s siblings and fiancée, Catherine understands the futility of seeking to escape the great suffering they are about to undergo. Like Jesus’s crucifixion, Christy’s death leads Catherine towards a higher truth of a different order. This truth is found, not through the arguments of lawyers, journalists, and political agitators, but through a spiritual vision of the world afforded to her and Christy through prayer. Catherine’s unconscious quest to save her son by saving his soul leads them both to view things with ‘heavenly’ eyes. Christy realizes he is a sinner in need of redemption (‘They are not hanging me for murder, you know, but because I am a felon’).³³ Catherine, faced with the unspeakable sum of human suffering, comes to see that, while there is no worldly redemption of such inescapable pain, it ultimately washes our souls ‘in the blood of the Lamb’.³⁴ It is this almost unconscious, unarticulated realization which allows Catherine to gradually break through the walls of her earthly desire and to join her suffering with that of all mothers, all criminals, all humanity: ‘She took all criminals into the lap of her pity and enfolded them as though they, too, had sprung from her womb

³² Kaye-Smith, Alard, p. 374f. ³³ Kathleen Coyle, A Flock of Birds (Dublin, [1930], 1995), p. 157. ³⁴ Coyle, A Flock of Birds, p. 115.

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and were flesh of her own flesh’.³⁵ Much like Martha in Houselander’s The Dry Wood, Catherine becomes Mary under the cross. By opening herself fully to the reality of her own suffering, she is able to assist the other mourners to face reality: It was not visibly that she was of use to them . . . It was in her soul. They were all there: Christy and Kathleen and Dédé and Cicely and even Valentine . . . They were in her soul as in a rock. They were the miraculous roses in the rock of her soul.³⁶

Catherine’s hell lay in the total isolation into which her sorrow initially cast her. Her redemption, which is not yet heavenly but decidedly purgatorial, lies in her ability to unite her suffering with Mary’s and, thereby, to let God into it—almost unconsciously, but enough for her to enter a mystical union with God that unites her also with her otherwise unattainable son. And that mystical union is shown to facilitate his redemption also. The Catholic novel in the early decades of the twentieth century successfully manoeuvred the tension between accepting both the reality of suffering and the knowledge that God wants to overcome it. Rather than romanticizing or sanitizing suffering, it was brutally honest about the difficulty of bearing it and about its affording, at best, mere glimpses of God. Yet these glimpses were enthusiastically portrayed as acquiring a life-giving power. As the century progressed, this relatively unambiguous embrace of suffering gave way to a more questioning and critical voice. One of the most prominent ways in which this shift occurred was in novels that depicted Catholic institutional life as itself a source of destructive, because wilfully imposed, suffering. The protagonist in such a novel must emancipate herself from a Catholic institutional life that no longer possesses salvific truth as fully as it ought. Antonia White’s Frost in May (1933) is probably the most well-known novel of this kind. It tells the story of the young convert Nanda, and her experiences at Lippington, a convent school under the excessively strict regime of a French order of nuns in 1920s England. Lippington girls are forced to carry out an array of austere religious obligations: their daily life is tightly scheduled around lessons and the Divine Office, their learning and achievements are recognized by a complex system of punishment and reward, and their social behaviour and relationships are rigidly governed. Yet while this life of routine and tradition is in many ways experienced by the girls as oppressive, it also contains exhilarating qualities. For all the complexity of daily ritual, the nuns use simple materials like beeswax, flowers, linen, and incense to infuse the school with a supernatural beauty that is deeply formative for the girls’ imagination and character. And the relative austerity of

³⁵ Coyle, A Flock of Birds, p. 148.

³⁶ Coyle, A Flock of Birds, p. 137.

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everyday Catholic life is occasionally interrupted by displays of burning passion and sensuality, such as when, at the feast of their foundress’s canonization, the children dance around a fire in a wild frenzy to the point of desiring a return to their normal, orderly routine; or when Nanda finds out about the lavish balls certain novice nuns celebrate the night before they enter the convent.³⁷ The novel is able to present a classic Catholic balancing of asceticism and passion, austerity and sensual beauty. And yet, underlying Nanda’s attraction and attachment to the faith and the school is a growing sense that the Catholicism offered at the school is antithetical to much that is good in life. As the plot unravels, it becomes evident that the nuns’ fanatical ambition to order everything to the glory of God blinds them to the goodness of creation and thus leads them to sacrifice—and destroy—fundamental human goods like friendship, intellectual and artistic pursuits, and aesthetic pleasure. Catholicism’s embrace of suffering as potentially redemptive is of critical importance in this regard. At Lippington, this understanding appears to have been corrupted into a belief that suffering must be sought out rather than simply borne when it naturally occurs. The nuns interpret the Catholic belief that everything should be ordered to the glory of God to mean that nothing can be enjoyed for its own sake, indeed that the beauty and joys of natural pleasures are to be mistrusted, even avoided: Nanda is taught that worldly pleasures ‘tend to interfere with spiritual life. Things not in themselves harmful may be harmful to soul . . . Even beauty often poisoned’.³⁸ And in one of the novel’s most shocking scenes, the mother abbess removes two girls from their lead roles in an enactment of Dante’s Divine Comedy because they enjoy the experience too much or, perhaps, because they do it too well. Nanda herself ‘was interested, as were all the literary romantics of Lippington, in the mechanics of sorrow’.³⁹ Yet unlike the Church’s ‘official’ representatives, Nanda sees the dehumanizing, loveless inadequacy of such a view and cries out against it: ‘Why can’t we for once do something for its own sake, instead of tacking everything on to our eternal salvation.’ She points out that ‘It’s impossible to think about God and Religion every minute of one’s day. . . . I don’t want poetry and pictures and things to be messages from God. I don’t mind their being that as well, if you like, but not only that.’⁴⁰ Frost in May has been read as a critique of Catholicism’s oppressive nature but this is a simplistic reading. It is important that Nanda’s rebellion does not come from a place of aversion to the school, the nuns, or the faith, but instead from profound attraction to the divine reality which they present to her. Crucially, Nanda is known for her excellent knowledge of Catholic doctrine. It is this, as well as her artistic temperament, which facilitates her critique of the nuns’ reasoning. Nanda’s well-argued objections to the nuns’ distrust of pleasure resonate not only ³⁷ Antonia White, Frost in May (London, [1933], 2018). ³⁸ White, Frost in May, p. 116. ³⁹ White, Frost in May, p. 106. ⁴⁰ White, Frost in May, p. 154.

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with contemporary insights into psychology but also, and importantly, reflect twentieth-century intuitions about classical Catholic accounts of nature and the Good. Far from being an anti-Catholic novel, Frost in May is an indictment of the aberrations of the ultramontane Catholicism present in some Church institutions, and a plea for a more educated and charitable faith. White’s own biography of leaving and then returning to the Church underlines this view.⁴¹ In criticizing a puritanical Catholicism, White moves beyond a spiritual meditation on suffering. Frost in May is part of an emergent trend in which the Catholic novel offers a critique from within: both of distorted theological opinions and of Catholic institutions and their practices. The Catholic novel can in this way be seen as reflecting and, arguably, helping to develop wider theological and ecclesial shifts taking place in British and Irish society. In the 1930s and 1940s, French and Belgian theologians such as Gustave Thils (1909–2000) were beginning to question the theological adequacy of representations of the Catholic faith that seemed to focus so exclusively on its so-called ‘eschatological’ aspects that they ran the risk of distorting the Catholic faith. According to such a view, life is portrayed primarily as a vale of tears to be cast off. It insists on the absolute transcendence of the kingdom of God and, against any latter-day Pelagianism, emphasizes that this kingdom is God’s work, not man’s. Though perhaps laudable, human achievements and ambitions—social, cultural, political—are seen as less important than the human being’s ultimate destination. The reader of Frost in May is invited to recognize (with unease) this ‘eschatological’ view in the lessons given to Nanda at a school retreat: ‘Poverty,’ she is told, ‘does not matter.’⁴² For theologians like Thils, this view was ill-suited to addressing and responding to the widespread secularization of western European society, especially within the working classes to whom the Church increasingly seemed a bourgeois institution, uninterested in the pursuit of a more just society.⁴³ This sense of theological inadequacy was further reinforced by the rise of Marxism with its energetic concern for the plight of the working man. If in France the focus was on the loss of working-class Catholics, in Britain there arose a need to rethink the Church’s stance towards an increasingly secularized world, both for the sake of retaining the faithful and in order to make the newly re-established Catholic Church more publicly credible. These theologians argued that if the Church had any hope of speaking to its increasingly secular context, it needed to concentrate on other aspects intrinsic to classical Christianity—such as the goodness of creation and the affirmation of man’s creative cooperation with God’s Providence. This ‘incarnationalist’

⁴¹ Antonia White, As Once in May: An Early Autobiography of Antonia White and Other Writings, ed. Susan Chitty (London, 1983). ⁴² White, Frost in May, p. 118. ⁴³ Gustave Thils, Théologie des réalités terrestres (Burges-Paris, 1947 and 1949).

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alternative to the Church’s long-standing ‘eschatological’ emphasis suggested that cultural and artistic endeavours, social and political work, and scientific and technological pursuits in fact held a redemptive potential formerly reserved only for more narrowly ecclesial acts.⁴⁴ The twentieth-century Catholic novel reflects, engages with, and, occasionally, promotes this shift—and yet it is this same shift towards the human that has also been cited as having caused the demise of the Catholic novel, since it seemed to minimize the need for a distinctive Catholic character to find herself at odds with her social world. However, not all Catholic novelists have felt compelled to pick sides in this debate. Caryll Houselander’s The Dry Wood (1947) is an example of the ‘eschatological’ and ‘incarnationalist’ views held in balance.⁴⁵ Writing in the 1940s, Houselander, who was an immensely popular spiritual writer, artist, and mystic, developed a profoundly incarnational spirituality that corrected an overly eschatological orientation not so much by replacing it but by complementing and completing it. The Dry Wood, like Houselander’s writing as a whole, is not only rooted in the unglamorous reality of the here and now but embraces this as the place where God is encountered and the human being is redeemed. In authentically Catholic fashion, this world is neither to be rejected nor to be accepted uncritically, but to be gratefully received and sanctified. The immanent realities of this world are sacramental—doors to the transcendent—precisely in their brokenness or inadequacy. This becomes evident in Houselander’s protagonists, who are struggling, deeply human, and yet saint-like figures working to alleviate the suffering of others by accepting it for themselves. Holiness is given a more credible and achievable face: it consists not in the outward rigidity and righteousness advocated by the Lippington nuns but in a humility and genuine love for neighbour. With this balanced Catholic approach, Houselander explicates the redemptive quality of human suffering. The Dry Wood is, in this regard, not unlike Coyle’s A Flock of Birds. Rather than striving for an austere moral righteousness in the manner of the Lippington nuns, Houselander looks upon human brokenness forgivingly and even reverently: God’s use of human suffering for our redemption does not require an overall mistrust of pleasure but a willing acceptance of inevitable suffering, and an entering into the suffering of others, where it occurs. Written in the middle of the century, The Dry Wood possesses a more incarnationalist perspective and has, in that sense, taken White’s critique to heart. At the

⁴⁴ Bernard Besret, Incarnation ou Eschatologie? Contribution a l’histoire du vocabulaire religieux contemporain (1935–1955) (Paris, 1964); Dries Bosschaert, ‘Gustave Thils’ “Théologie des réalités terrestres” in Dialogue with Marrou, Maritain and de Montcheuil: Louvain Theology at the Crossroads of Christianity and Culture’, in Cristianesimo nella Storia. Ricerche Storiche, Esegetiche, Teologiche, 36:1 (2015), pp. 65–83. ⁴⁵ Caryll Houselander, The Dry Wood (Washington, [1947] 2021).

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same time, The Dry Wood has not yet lost Catholicism’s pursuit of eternal life. In this way, the novel is neither immanentist nor escapist or transcendentalist, but thoroughly sacramental. The Irish Catholic novel of the twentieth century charts a slightly different development. Whereas the first half of the century saw Catholicism around the world under serious duress, Irish Catholicism was, in some ways, in its prime, enjoying a country-wide following and untold political power. As Kate O’Brien’s The Land of Spices reveals, the kind of Catholicism promoted by White’s nuns was flourishing also in Ireland. This is unsurprising given that—like the nuns at Lippington—many of the Irish orders hailed from France or Belgium and brought with them the late Tridentine Catholicism then popular on the Continent. In Ireland, the legalistic and moralistic features of this version of the faith were fatally compounded by the loss of the Irish language, the Victorian puritanism left behind by British rule, and the temptations of political power.⁴⁶ Nonetheless, the Catholic novel in Ireland tells more than the well-rehearsed story of doctrinal distortions, physical and religious abuse, and spiritual emptiness. Maura Laverty’s Never No More (1944)—like Mary Beckett’s Give Them Stones (1989)—describes the ordinary and domestic life of Ireland. Concerned with the practical realities of cooking, child-bearing, courtship, and work, Laverty does not engage in direct theological commentary or critique. Nonetheless, just as Catholicism formed the backdrop or framework of any Irish life at the time, it pervades the novel and its atmosphere. Laverty portrays Catholic life as lying precisely in a deeply sensual existence in which material things take on a holy, sacramental quality. The domestic life in Beckett’s Give Them Stones is more explicitly constructed amid the Troubles but nonetheless demonstrates the faith as it is lived in the ordinary struggle to birth babies, feed one’s family, love one’s neighbour, and find hope in the midst of suffering. Far from devaluing the human body or dismissing sensual delights, these novels manifest an earthy spirituality that illustrates Catholicism’s complex relationship with the natural world. Laverty’s enthusiastic—though not reductionist—affirmation of nature and the life of the senses was not looked upon favourably by the Irish Church.⁴⁷ Yet the novel’s content and its popularity at the time confirms that its intuitions were firmly embedded in the Catholic sensibility. As the century moved into its second half, the Catholic Church turned increasingly to the world—a shift confirmed, of course, at the Second Vatican Council— and the world became increasingly questioning of religious faith. The Catholic

⁴⁶ Desmond Fennell, Irish Catholics and Freedom since 1916 (Dublin, 1984), p. 18; Vincent Twomey, The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin, 2003), p. 53. ⁴⁷ Caitríona Clear, ‘ “The Red Ink of Emotion”: Maura Laverty, Women’s Work and Irish Society in the 1940s’, Saothar, 28 (2003), pp. 90–7.

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novel continued to reflect and shape these developments. Catholic women novelists (Houselander, Spark, Ellis) were at the forefront of literary innovation and can be read as using the techniques—first of literary modernism, then of postmodernism—to explore a life of belief. In The Dry Wood, Houselander uses each chapter to focus on a different member of the parish community, enabling her to interleave the prayers of the community through each character’s individual personal suffering. All of these separate struggles are then drawn together in the book’s final Mass, where we see the great prayer of the Church depicted both in its earthly and heavenly dimensions. In this way, Houselander draws upon some of the technical innovations developed by her literary peers, for whom narrative experimentation with time, place, multi-vocalism, and metonymic characterization, and even a kind of spiritualism, were shaping the nouveau roman. English Catholics of Houselander’s generation were often highly critical of modernity. But Houselander was open to new artistic movements. She felt that ‘the modernist writers are not the contemptible egoists which they are too often supposed to be.’⁴⁸ However, she used modernist literary techniques to specifically Catholic ends. Through its development of these methods, particularly in its structure and voice, The Dry Wood is able to show the movement of suffering and redemption within a whole community. The reader is invited to see with the intimate eyes of each individual consciousness but also with the eyes of God. Published in 1957, Spark’s The Comforters is one of the finest postmodern novels in the English language. Spark went on to write more Catholic fiction and influenced Alice Thomas Ellis, who wrote throughout the 1980s and 1990s.⁴⁹ In their post-Vatican II novels, Spark and Ellis frequently aligned the wit and style of their own novelistic voice with the pre-conciliar Catholicism they loved, and bad style with the liturgical innovations that followed the Council. For these writers, the avant-garde in literature was a niche, chic world that belonged—after Vatican II— with the now similarly maligned but stylish beauty of the Tridentine Mass.⁵⁰ For all its postmodern authorial detachment, The Comforters is nonetheless peopled with characters who find themselves suspended between good and evil, sin and grace. Suffering, too, is a central element in the protagonist’s quest for God. Caroline is a student of postmodern literature, who has experienced a mental breakdown and converted to Catholicism. Now seemingly in her right mind, she begins to hear the voice of the ‘typing ghost’ narrating her very own thoughts. Caroline eventually comes to realize that she is a protagonist in a novel but no one believes her. However, the ‘typing voice’ is real (indeed, it is the voice of God) and

⁴⁸ Houselander’s journal, quoted in Maisie Ward, Caryll Houselander: That Divine Eccentric (London, 1962), pp. 108–9. ⁴⁹ Diane Spencer, ‘The Second Vatican Council and the English Catholic Novel’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Liverpool, 1996). ⁵⁰ Thomas Woodman, Faithful Fictions (Washington, 2021).

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there are other truths in the novel that only Caroline perceives: the moral disposition of those around her, for instance. Among the illusions that Caroline sees through is the piety of an old Catholic woman who, it transpires, is a devil worshipper. In Caroline’s struggle, we are invited to consider the experience of a ‘believer’ as one who must suffer madness, social isolation, and ridicule in order to perceive the truth. But this claim is playfully inverted at the end of the novel when the typing voice turns out to be Caroline herself, authoring her own life in postmodern form. Yet even this ironic distancing is overturned: specifically, through inclusion in the novel of information beyond Caroline’s knowledge and, more broadly, through postmodern literature’s interest in the capacity of omniscient narrative voice to represent the divine.⁵¹ For all the novel’s joking about literary style and the impossibility of a realist depiction of human epiphany, Caroline articulates that she and God are both the authors of her life. Her sense of being written into the novel was painful. Of her constant influence on its course she remained unaware and now she was impatient for the story to come to an end, knowing that the narrative could never become coherent to her until she was at last outside it, and at the same time consummately inside it.⁵²

Conclusion The social and religious landscapes of Britain and Ireland may have changed significantly since the Second Vatican Council, but these changes have in no way diminished the need for fictional accounts of human struggle. The modern Catholic novel has consistently engaged with these changes because for Catholic writers, human experience is always in some way accountable to divine truth. Throughout the twentieth century, Catholic novels by British and Irish women were numerous and varied. By granting these books their due place in the Catholic Literary Revival we come to see that both before and after the Council, the Catholic novel has grappled with an account of human existence as suspended between good and evil, sin and grace, this life and the next. The female writers of the Revival found means to pose urgent theological questions through the most modern literary techniques, thereby ensuring that fiction and Catholicism remained—and continue to remain—close companions, equally concerned with human struggle and equally unafraid of divine reality.

⁵¹ Gerard Carruthers, ‘Muriel Spark as Catholic Novelist’, in Michael Gardiner and Willy Maley (eds.), Edinburgh Companion to Muriel Spark (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 74–84, 82. ⁵² Muriel Spark, The Comforters (London, [1957] 2009), pp. 165–6.

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Select Bibliography Bosco, Mark, Graham Greene’s Catholic Imagination (Oxford, 2005). Cronin, Michael G., Impure Thoughts: Sexuality, Catholicism and Literature in Twentieth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 2012). Fallon, Brian, The Age of Innocence: Irish Culture 1930–1969 (New York, 1998). Hastings, Adrian (ed.) Bishops and Writers: Aspects of the Evolution of Modern English Catholicism (Wheathampstead, 1977). Kellogg, Gene, The Vital Tradition: The Catholic Novel in a Period of Convergence (Chicago, 1970). Lothian, James R., The Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community, 1910–1950 (Notre Dame, IN, 2009). Reichardt, Mary R. (ed.), Between Human and Divine: The Catholic Vision in Contemporary Literature (Washington, 2010). Sherry, Perry, ‘The End of the Catholic Novel?’, Literature and Theology, 9 (1995), pp. 165–78. Thomas Woodman, Faithful Fictions (Washington, 2021).

11 Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations Maria Power

The history of Catholic involvement in ecumenism and interfaith relations in twentieth-century Britain and Ireland is a narrative of ecclesiological transformation—in seeking to overcome a conflict between the teachings on reconciliation in gospel and the reality of divided institutions undermining the credibility of Christianity.¹ In the course of the century, the Catholic Church altered its understanding of its mission both within the lives of the faithful and within society at large. In terms of ecumenism and interfaith relationships, the Church in Britain and Ireland moved from a position prioritizing reunification of Christianity under Rome towards a spirit of greater openness and appreciation of the Church of Christ in the ecclesial communions of other churches, and even strains of truth in other faiths—a reorientation characterized by a ‘recognition of one another as travelling companions, truly brothers and sisters.’² In 1965, the Second Vatican Council in its Declaration on the Relation of the Church to NonChristian Religions stated that it ‘rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for their manner of life and conduct, their precepts and doctrines which . . . often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men and women.’³ In terms of Church teaching, conversation rather than conversion became the key task for the Catholics who viewed ecumenism and interfaith relations as their vocation. This chapter will therefore argue that the history of ecumenism and interfaith relations in the twentieth century was one of a sea change in Catholic attitudes. By exploring issues such as mixed marriage, relationships with other faiths, and the role of the churches in the Northern Irish Troubles, it will demonstrate that the Catholic Church moved from a fear of indifferentism or relativism and a desire for all to ‘return to Rome’, to a focus on working together with Christians and those of other faiths to create a more just society. This was not an easy mission. As Kester Aspden notes ‘the early 20th century popes promoted a vision of the church that would brook no compromise with the ¹ The author thanks her colleagues at the Las Casas Institute for Social Justice and the late Professor Rosemary Mitchell. ² Francis, Pope, Fratelli Tutti—On Fraternity and Social Friendship (Vatican City, 2020), §274. ³ Second Vatican Council, Nostra Aetate—Declaration on the Relation of the Church to NonChristian Religions (Vatican City, 1965), §2. Maria Power, Ecumenism and Interfaith Relations In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0012

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modern world’⁴ and both the British and Irish leaderships needed little encouragement in implementing this policy. Understandings of the nature and purpose of the Catholic Church were ‘sealed’, theology was framed entirely within neoscholasticism, and Christian Unity—the ultimate aim of any ecumenical dialogue—could only be advanced through the ‘complete and unconditional return to Rome’ of non-Catholics.⁵ Examples of this protectionist and triumphalist attitude abound. In 1896, Pope Leo XIII issued the papal bull Apostolicae Curae, which declared Anglican orders ‘absolutely null and utterly void’.⁶ In 1909, Pope Pius X sanctioned the Octave of Prayer for Christian Unity, but once more, the intention of unity under Rome meant that most Protestants found it unsuitable and would not engage with it. That is not to say that more progressive and receptive elements did not exist with the Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council.⁷ They did, but they were frustrated by those who saw reunification under Rome as the only issue that mattered. Attempts to encourage a form of ecumenical cooperation towards social reconstruction in the interwar years failed—despite the best efforts of Cardinal Francis Bourne who in his pastoral letter The Nation’s Crisis (1918) had encouraged Catholics to become more involved in national life. Resistance to such cooperation was signalled with the resignation of the Catholic delegation in 1924 from the Conference of Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC).⁸ Meanwhile in Ireland, the Catholic Church declined to be officially involved in the Life and Work movement⁹ which had broadly similar aims to COPEC. The Malines Conversations, unofficial talks which developed from a friendship between Lord Halifax, an Anglican, and Fr Ethene Fernand Portal, a Catholic Vincentian priest, were greeted with similar distrust and alarm.¹⁰ It was believed that such an initiative could ‘halt the flow of individual Anglicans joining the Catholic Church’¹¹ and with high-profile receptions into the faith in 1920s, especially through the work of the Jesuits at Farm Street, London, this was a fast-flowing current until the 1960s.¹² In 1928, Pius XI issued the encyclical, Mortalium Animos, generally seen as a rebuke to the Malines Conversations,¹³ which strongly discouraged

⁴ Kester Aspden, Fortress Church: The English Roman Catholic Bishops and Politics, 1903–1963 (Leominster, 2002), p. 4. ⁵ Ian Ellis, Vision and Reality: A Survey of Twentieth Century Irish Inter-Church Relations (Belfast, 1984), p. 11. ⁶ Leo XIII, Apostolicae Curae—On the Nullity of Anglican Orders (Vatican City, 1896), §12. ⁷ Mark Vickers, Reunion Revisited: 1930 Ecumenism Exposed (Leominster, 2017). ⁸ Aspden, Fortress Church, pp. 146–54. ⁹ Ellis, Vision and Reality, p. 20. ¹⁰ Aspden, Fortress Church, p. 147. ¹¹ Keith Pecklers, ‘United Not Absorbed: The Malines Conversation Revisited’, in Virginia Miller, David Moxon, and Stephen Pickard (eds.), Leaning into the Spirit: Ecumenical Perspectives on Discernment and Decision Making in the Church (London, 2019), pp. 131–7, 132. ¹² In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Conversions’, table A8.1. ¹³ Pius XI, Mortalium Animos—On Religious Unity (Vatican City, 1928), §2.

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Catholics from engaging with non-Catholics from a fear of the indifferentism that would emerge from such contact. However, by the close of the century: Catholics in both Britain and Ireland were regularly taking part in ecumenical prayer groups, and meeting and praying with members of other faith traditions; the Catholic Church in Britain was a full member of the British Council of Churches; the founding chair of Action of Churches Together in Scotland was a Catholic archbishop; the Irish Catholic Church had founded the Irish Inter-Church Meeting (IICM) with the Irish Council of Churches; local churches were working in partnership with their fellow Christians to overcome issues of social injustice, such as food poverty, people trafficking, and homelessness. The transformation was such that a report on the future of the ecumenical movement, surveying these changes, stated that ‘the 20th century became known as the ecumenical century during which many Christians became convinced that Christian unity is the will of God.’¹⁴ The evolution of such attitudes was slow and required perseverance on the part of those members of the clergy, laity, and hierarchy who contended that dialogue should not be undertaken with the immediate and sole aim of reunification under the umbrella of Rome. Groups such as the Sword of the Spirit movement in Britain and members of the Glenstal and Greenhills meetings in Ireland showed that an alternative approach to ecumenical dialogue and Christian Unity was possible. Thus, whilst reunification may have been the ultimate goal, working together on matters of social reconstruction and the creation of mutual understanding and reconciliation were just as important as the conversion of nonCatholic participants. This was motivated, in part, by a renewed interest in Catholic Social Teaching (CST) which provided a framework for social engagement from the late nineteenth century onwards.¹⁵ Such endeavours showed that Catholicism needed to be outward facing in order to fulfil its ultimate mission of preaching the gospel and embedding its teachings and values within the structures of society. In this, such ideas were confirmed by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council which defined ecumenism as a process of reconciliation undertaken as an antidote to the scandal of disunity which ‘damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel to every creature’¹⁶ and as an adjunct to religious freedom.¹⁷ The fullness of Christian Unity became, it could be argued, an eschatological goal and in the meantime, Unitatis Redintegratio taught that ‘all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are members of Christ’s body, and have a right to

¹⁴ Churches Together in England (CTE), Called to Be One (London, 1996), p. 19. ¹⁵ Edward Hadas, Counsels of Imperfection: Thinking Through Catholic Social Teaching (Washington, DC, 2021); Anna Rowlands, Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (London, 2021). ¹⁶ Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio—Decree on Ecumenism (Vatican City, 1964), §1. ¹⁷ Second Vatican Council, Dignitatis Humanae—Decree on Religious Freedom (Vatican City, 1965).

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be called Christian, and so are correctly accepted as brothers [sic] by the children of the Catholic Church.’¹⁸ Therefore all efforts to work with members of other Christian denominations became a fundamental part of the mission, nature, and purpose of the Catholic Church because ‘cooperation among Christians vividly expresses the relationship which in fact already unites them, and it sets in clearer relief the features of Christ the Servant.’¹⁹ Ecumenism then became about a search for truth through dialogue and action because, as Cardinal Basil Hume stated to the British Council of Churches, ‘Dialogue with other churches is not just idle conversation, the airing of what is negotiable. It is getting to know the truth about each other as we search further for truth.’²⁰ Consequently, ecumenism and later interfaith relations became a defining characteristic of post-conciliar Catholicism in Britain and Ireland. Their nature and purpose were fashioned by their context: with the Troubles in Northern Ireland shaping dialogue on the island of Ireland; the arrival of new archbishops in Westminster and Glasgow instigating processes that would see Catholicism ‘moving into the mainstream’ and committing itself to the search for institutional unity through the Swanwick process; and patterns of migration on both islands, often prompted by the end of empire and decolonization, determining the evolution of interfaith encounter and conversations.

Mixed Marriage Nowhere can the changing nature of the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church and its attitude to and relationships with others be seen more clearly than in the issue of mixed marriage.²¹ Although mixed marriage and fears of ‘leakage’ caused ‘deep anxiety’²² in Britain, it was in Ireland that the implications for the ecumenical movement can be most clearly seen. Throughout the twentieth century, this issue, more than any other, overshadowed any meaningful ecumenical endeavour. In a documentary broadcast in 1974, after a relaxation of the regulations concerning mixed marriages, Fr Michael Hurley, SJ, stated that even in the mid-1970s ‘mixed marriages [were] the single most divisive issue in Ireland.’²³ Anxieties regarding the issue of mixed marriage were heightened by two factors. In the Republic of Ireland, they were blamed (without much

¹⁸ Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio,§3. ¹⁹ Second Vatican Council, Unitatis Redintegratio, §12. ²⁰ Peter Stanford, Cardinal Hume and the Changing Face of English Catholicism (London, 1993), p. 81. ²¹ Such marriages are now more commonly known an interchurch or cross-community marriages (to the extent that they are commented upon at all), but ‘mixed marriage’ terminology—with its perjorative overtones—was used before (and for some time after) the Second Vatican Council and will be used within this discussion. ²² Aspden, Fortress Church, p. 8. ²³ RTÉ, Interchurch Marriages, Documentary on One, Radio 1, 22 September 1974.

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legitimization) for the decline of the Protestant community.²⁴ In 1911, the Church of Ireland parish priest of Blackrock, Cork, John Gregg, who was to become the archbishop of Armagh in 1939, told the Young Men’s Association that ‘Every Protestant who has children, and consents to let them go to the other side, is a traitor to the cause . . . Mixed marriages tend to rob us of the next generation, and we need to band ourselves to stop the leakage.’²⁵ In Northern Ireland the issues were ‘magnified and augmented by the significance of a “mixed marriage” for the family and the community and by the entanglement of the theological implications with the coincident secular divisions in Northern Ireland.’²⁶ Through the act of marrying someone from a different denomination, newlyweds came to embody the political and religious threats and tensions that characterized ecumenical relationships in both the Republic and Northern Ireland. Pope Pius X’s 1907 Ne Temere decree became a shorthand for this. ‘The conditions [it] imposed on “mixed marriages” between Protestants and Catholics poisoned inter-church relations’,²⁷ emphasizing fundamental doctrinal disagreements regarding the nature of marriage, the socialization of children in ‘the faith’, and the Church’s authority within interchurch unions. Furthermore, it highlighted Catholicism’s triumphalist belief that it was the one true Church. Ne Temere stipulated that a marriage between a Catholic and member of another Christian denomination was not invalid but irregular, and that dispensation of this impediment had to be granted before the marriage could take place. This dispensation could only be received if the non-Catholic partner signed a document in front of the parish priest promising to raise any children resulting from the marriage as Catholics. The ceremony itself could not be celebrated in a consecrated building and was therefore generally conducted in the sacristy. The consequence of non-compliance for the Catholic party was excommunication. Ne Temere was particularly odious to the Church of Ireland and in 1951, John Gregg, archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland (1939–59) stated that marriages made under its conditions were ‘a grave injury to our church’.²⁸ The Tilson Case (1950–1) and the Fethardon-Sea Boycott (1957) both provided evidence of the strength of the Catholic Church when it came to imposing its will upon mixed couples, especially regarding the upbringing of their children.²⁹ In both cases, the Protestant partners in the ²⁴ Alan Fernihough, Cormac Ó Grada, and Brendan M. Walsh, ‘Intermarriage in a Divided Society: Ireland a Century Ago’, Explorations in Economic History, 56 (2015), pp. 1–14. ²⁵ Daithí Ó Corráin, Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–1973 (Manchester, 2006), p. 185. ²⁶ Valerie Morgan, Marie Smyth, Gillian Robinson, and Grace Fraser, Mixed Marriages in Northern Ireland Institutional Responses (Coleraine, 1996), p. 6. ²⁷ Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, p. 184. ²⁸ ‘Primates Address, Report of the General Synod, 1951’, cited in Catherine O’Connor, ‘Mixed Marriage, “a Grave Injury to Our Church”: An Account of the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott’, History of the Family, 13 (2008), pp. 395–401, at p. 395. ²⁹ In 1998, during a service held to commemorate the 1798 Rebellion, Bishop Comisky of Ferns publicly sought the forgiveness of his Church of Ireland counterpart for these events.

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marriages changed their minds about raising their children as Catholics and became subject to pressure from both the Church and the Irish State to maintain the promise made at the time of the marriage. Consequent events ‘awakened old wounds around interchurch marriage and a deep sense of resentment and defence of the obligation imposed by Ne Temere.’³⁰ Such attitudes, which amounted to a standoff between the institutions of Protestant and Catholicism remained in place until the 1960s, making ‘the achievements of the ecumenical rapproachment in the following years all the more remarkable.’³¹ It was with great relief then that changes instituted by Paul VI in the 1960s were welcomed in Ireland. Matrimonii Sacramentum (1966) and Matrimonia Mixta (1970) replaced Ne Temere and represented a relaxation of attitudes to mixed marriage by the Catholic Church. At the Ballymascanlon Inter-Church Meeting of 1973, then bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, Cahal B. Daly framed these documents thus: ‘[They] certainly did not satisfy Protestant wishes in respect of Inter-Church marriages; but it is important to recognise just how genuine was the Catholic Church’s desire to detect and remove what caused offence to Protestants.’³² As a result of Matrimonia Mixta, Mass could now be celebrated at mixed marriage ceremonies; non-Catholic marriages were recognized; and the Catholic partner instead made a verbal promise to do ‘all in their power’ to bring the children of the marriage up as Catholics. The changes instituted by these documents were significant but unfortunately for those seeking a mixed marriage in Ireland, interpretation and implementation was dependent upon the wishes of the local bishop. The diocese of Dublin took a pastoral approach supporting interchurch couples and involving clergy of both denominations in the marriage ceremony. But in other parts of the island, the new regulations were interpreted in a juridical manner with couples being refused a nuptial Mass and Bishop Lucey of Cork, for example, requiring a written promise on the upbringing of children until 1980.³³ A study carried out by Brian Lennon, SJ, in 1980 showed that ten years on from Matrimonia Mixta, pastoral support for Irish interchurch couples was completely dependent upon the ecumenical temperament of the parish priest.³⁴ The history of mixed marriages and in particular the localized nature of a couple’s experience tells us a good deal about attitudes to ecumenism and their slow evolution. Whilst the story is seemingly one of transformation from active discouragement to the provision of structures for pastoral care, including ecumenical marriage preparation, some of the old triumphalism remained. Much was dependent upon the attitude of the local bishop, and late into the century some ³⁰ O’Connor, ‘Mixed Marriage’, p. 399. ³¹ Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, p. 188. ³² Cahal B. Daly, ‘Inter-Church Marriages: The Position of the Irish Episcopal Conference’, The Furrow, 25 (1974), pp. 29–30. ³³ RTÉ, Interchurch Marriages. ³⁴ Brian Lennon, ‘Interchurch Marriages: Torn between Divided Churches’, The Furrow, 31 (1980), pp. 309–21.

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couples still found themselves being discriminated against as a result of conservative attitudes (lay and clerical) regarding ecumenical contact and the upbringing of children.

Sword of the Spirit The end of the First World War prompted a renewed interest in social reconstruction within the Catholic Church, the ecumenical aspects of which, as reactions to COPEC³⁵ in the 1920s demonstrate, were not welcomed by the elements of the hierarchy who held more rigid views concerning the nature and purpose of contact with non-Catholic churches. Renewed attempts at ecumenical involvement regarding social issues came during the early years of the Second World War which Cardinal Heenan was later to call ‘the opening chapter of the history of religion in Great Britain.’³⁶ Such comments were made against the backdrop of increasing faith-based discussions, led by Archbishop William Temple, regarding the post-war settlement which were to later shape the development of the welfare State.³⁷ This ‘spirit of harmony’ between the Christian churches was reinforced ‘a few months later by two joint meetings which were each addressed by both Catholic and Protestant leaders.’³⁸ August 1940 saw the foundation of the Sword of the Spirit (an organization that was later to become known as the Catholic Institute for International Relations and subsequently Progressio). It was created to counter European fascism. Inaugurating the Sword on the Spirit on 1 August 1940, Cardinal Arthur Hinsley described it as ‘a movement for a more united and more intensive Catholic effort in support of the struggle which our country has been forced to enter.’³⁹ Sword was an English initiative, with no similar counterparts in either Ireland or Scotland, and was lay led, in particular by Barbara Ward,⁴⁰ A. C. F. Beales,⁴¹ Letitia Fairfield⁴² and Christopher Dawson,⁴³ with support from certain bishops, such as Cardinal Arthur Hinsley and Bishop David Mathew. It has been framed in different ways by historians. Stuart Mews sees it as a ‘dramatic demonstration of

³⁵ See Matthew Grimley, Citizenship, Community and the Church of England: Liberal Anglican Theories of State between the Wars (Oxford, 2004). ³⁶ Quoted in Stuart Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit: A Catholic Cultural Crusade of 1940’, Studies in Church History: The Church and War, 20 (1983), pp. 409. ³⁷ William Temple, Christianity and Social Order (London, 1942). Earlier iterations of these ideas can be found in William Temple, Christianity and the State (London, 1928). See also F. A. Iremonger, William Temple Archbishop of Canterbury: His Life and Letters (Oxford, 1948), pp. 540–68. ³⁸ Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit’, p. 409. ³⁹ Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit’, p. 420. ⁴⁰ Michael J. Walsh, ‘Barbara Ward’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. ⁴¹ James Scotland, ‘Professor A. C. F. Beales: A Memorial’, British Journal of Educational Studies 23 (1975), pp. 5–6. ⁴² M. A. Elston, ‘Letitia Fairfield’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004. ⁴³ William Kingston, ‘Christopher Dawson’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004.

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Catholic loyalty’⁴⁴ to the national interest in the atmosphere of mobilization during the early years of the Second World War. Whilst Michael J. Walsh views it as a lay-led movement confident in its ability to reach out to non-Catholics, powered by theories of Catholic Action and CST to propel Christian initiatives for social reconstruction.⁴⁵ In their analyses both are correct, and the story of the Sword of the Spirit also shows the difficulties inherent in ecumenical contact and social initiatives before the changes initiated by the Second Vatican Council.⁴⁶ The history of this organization’s foundation therefore demonstrates two elements regarding the ecumenical movement in twentieth-century Britain. First, that the Catholic Church was keen to become involved in national life and saw ecumenical cooperation as a means to ‘unite on practical measures to defend the inheritance of Christian principles on which our civilisation has been built against the tyranny of Godless or pagan forces that seem to rob us of our heritage.’⁴⁷ Hinsley’s desire for interchurch cooperation around social issues was further demonstrated when, alongside Archbishop William Temple of Canterbury and George Armstrong (moderator of the Free Church Federal Council), he signed a letter to The Times on 21 December 1940 supporting the Pope’s Peace Points and adding five more, namely ‘the abolition of extreme inequality in wealth and possession; equal opportunity of education regardless of race and class; the safeguarding of the family as a social unit; the restoration of the sense of divine vocation to man’s daily work’; and stewardship of the earth’s resources.⁴⁸ Second, the early history of Sword shows that the laity took a much broader and proactive approach to ecumenical activity but was frustrated in their attempts by cautious elements within the episcopacy. They thus had to engage in delicate diplomacy within their own church structures in order to extend the hand of cooperation to other Christians⁴⁹ cuts against flattening depictions of a uniformly ‘fortress church’. Throughout its operation, a power struggle emerged regarding the structure of the organization and particularly the issue of joint prayer, compounded by questions of non-Catholic membership of the movement’s committees. Thus, whilst the issue of the legitimacy of social engagement was not contested, Vatican focused concerns about lay accountability and a tacit, practical critiques of the axiom of extra ecclesiam nulla salus undermined the movement’s operation as an interchurch entity.

⁴⁴ Mews, ‘The Sword of the Spirit’, p. 420. ⁴⁵ Michael J. Walsh, ‘Ecumenism in War-Time Britain: The Sword of the Spirit and Religion and Life, 1940–1945 (1)’, Heythrop Journal, 23 (1982), pp. 243–58; and Michael J. Walsh, ‘Ecumenism in War-Time Britain: the Sword of the Spirit and Religion and Life (2)’, Heythrop Journal, 23 (1982), pp. 365–76. ⁴⁶ See also Catholicism To-Day: Letters to the Editor Reprinted from The Times (London, 1949). ⁴⁷ Walsh, ‘Ecumenism in War-Time Britain (1)’, p. 248. ⁴⁸ Aspden, Fortress Church, p. 241. ⁴⁹ Walsh, ‘Ecumenism in War-Time Britain (1)’, p. 247.

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National Council of Christians and Jews Interfaith relations⁵⁰ were subject to the same pressures as those between the Christian churches and the bishops found themselves walking a fine line between edicts from the Vatican and a desire to engage in social cooperation. Once more, it was the laity who initiated such contacts which were then translated into more formal involvement by the British Catholic hierarchy. For instance, as Anne Summers points out: ‘the Society of Jews and Christians drew on relationships formed before 1918 in urban social work, the suffrage campaign and pacifist organisations.’⁵¹ These relationships sought to bring religious values into secular society and showed that it was a common enterprise rather than more abstract understandings of theological convergence or conversation, which provided the real purpose and goal of ecumenism and interfaith contact. It was not until the rise of anti-Semitism throughout Europe and Nazism that the hierarchy of England and Wales began to become more seriously involved in interfaith relationships, and in particular, the National Council of Christians and Jews which was founded in 1942 to combat anti-Semitism.⁵² Their behaviour shows the tension that existed between the triumphalist belief that the Catholic Church was the one true Church and a desire to deal with the political issues facing society—clearly manifest in Cardinal Arthur Hinsley’s response to the invitation extended to him to become joint president of the organization. A message was sent to the conference delegates from the archbishop of Westminster to explain that ‘although he did not feel at this stage that he could accept an invitation to become one of the joint presidents, should such an invitation be extended to him he was most anxious to do anything he could to cooperate in the checking of anti-Semitism and racial persecution’.⁵³ Eventually, Hinsley’s desire to combat the evil of anti-Semitism overcame his hesitations as a ‘Prince of the Church’ and he became joint president of the organization ‘as a mark of his strong protest against all persecution of the Jewish people.’⁵⁴ However in 1951, the Vatican issued a declaration against contact with the International Council of Christians and Jews, which was based upon a fear of indifferentism. Cardinal Bernard Griffin sought clarification and in 1954 was told by the Pope to withdraw from the organization, taking all Catholic members with him. Ten years later and with the imprimatur of the Second Vatican Council declaration Nostra Aetate (1965) behind him, Cardinal John ⁵⁰ For the purposes of this chapter, interfaith relations or dialogue are defined as being ‘where parties agree to respect each other’s differences while sharing the search for common ground.’ Anne Summers, ‘False Start or Brave Beginning? The Society of Christians and Jews, 1924–1944’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 65 (2014), pp. 827–51, 828. ⁵¹ Summers, ‘False Start or Brave Beginning?’, p. 827. ⁵² William W. Simpson, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations since the inception of the Council of Christians and Jews’, Transactions and Miscellanies Jewish Historical Society of England, 28 (1981–2), pp. 89–101. ⁵³ Simpson, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, p. 89. ⁵⁴ Simpson, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, p. 94.

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Heenan rejoined the Council—becoming a joint president in 1966 after ‘merely informing the powers-that-be that he assumed that the ban no longer applied and that he would act accordingly unless he heard to the contrary.’⁵⁵

The Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences The Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences were the most significant ecumenical initiatives undertaken in Ireland in the twentieth century, especially as they coincided with the Second Vatican Council. John Barkley describes their enduring importance through the Troubles: ‘it should not be forgotten that, had it not been for the Glenstal and the later conference modelled upon it a Greenhills, the establishment of the Ballymascanlon talks would have been much more difficult.’⁵⁶ The Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences were annual interdenominational conferences founded in 1964 and 1966 respectively which were designed to be multi- rather than bilateral, including members of the Presbyterian and Methodist Churches as well as the Church of Ireland.⁵⁷ Their establishment signalled an end to Catholic antagonism and isolationism and saw the participants engage with one another to discover commonalities and move towards reconciliation through a shared faith in Christ. Each Glenstal Conference would focus on a particular issue, for example prayer and Christian marriage. The commitment to ecumenism was such that at Glenstal ‘the custom developed whereby if a paper was read by a member of one denomination, then the discussants would be of different denominations.’⁵⁸ These conferences resulted from an atmosphere of enquiry and acceptance that had developed in Irish Catholic theological circles from the 1940s onwards which was, according to Ellis, pioneered by members of religious orders who ‘were more visionary in their thinking’ and who had ‘more time to think and reflect’.⁵⁹ Fr Michael Hurley, SJ, stands out as being particularly instrumental in the development of this drive towards ecumenical dialogue during the 1960s, publishing Praying for Unity in 1963 with a forward by the Bishop of Down and Connor (William Philbin) which was outward facing: ‘The world would be able with something like a good conscience to hold aloof from Christians as long as Christians hold aloof from one another.’⁶⁰ Such ideas were to become the touchstone for later ecumenical ventures in Ireland. The result of the work of individuals such as Hurley, and groups such as Christus Rex and the Mercier ⁵⁵ Simpson, ‘Jewish-Christian Relations’, p. 99. ⁵⁶ John Barkley, Blackmouth and Dissenter (Belfast, 1991), p. 161. ⁵⁷ Michael Hurley, SJ, ‘The Preparation Years’, The Irish Inter-Church Meeting: Preparation and Development (Belfast, 1998). ⁵⁸ Ó Corráin, Rendering to God, p. 211. ⁵⁹ Ellis, Vision and Reality, p. 108. ⁶⁰ Eric Gallagher and Stanley Worrall, Christians in Ulster 1968–1980 (Oxford, 1982), p. 29.

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Society was a spirit of dialogue and honesty which challenged the perceptions that Protestants and Catholics held about each other’s beliefs and motivations. This was reflected in the pages of the Irish Theological Quarterly and The Furrow, and resulted in the foundation of the Irish Theological Association and the Irish Biblical Association, with the approval and support of the Irish hierarchy in 1966. The Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences in effect acted as a hinge point in the development of ecumenism in Ireland. These initiatives demonstrated a willingness amongst the bishops, clergy, and laity to engage in dialogue and a desire to build upon their common aims, such as the eradication of sectarianism and the alleviation of poverty, that were discovered through this process. By providing an informal and relaxed annual venue for conversations that had previously happened on a one-to-one basis or in the pages of theological journals, these conferences normalized ecumenical dialogue, provided a safe arena in which to air new ideas, and most importantly ‘provided those involved with a platform to build the trusting, informal relationships with one another that would prove so crucial to the success of later ventures’⁶¹ and the quest for peace through the cessation of nationalist violence.

Interfaith Relations Interfaith dialogue and mission, especially following Nostra Aetate (1965) and Dignitatis Humanae (1965)—which affirmed the inviolable rights of the human person, including freedom of religion—took on a different meaning and complexion from its 1940s iterations. From the 1960s onwards, it became intertwined with migration and race relations issues and therefore became a way for local authorities and faith groups to work together to improve community relations in a low-key manner.⁶² In Britain this was a direct result of changing demographics, especially within large urban centres such as London, Birmingham, and Glasgow. The mid-century process of decolonization which had led to significant migration from Commonwealth countries to Britain meant that encounters with people of other faiths became a much more widespread occurrence. This inevitably led to a growth in racism resulting in an initial focus upon race rather than religious belief as the defining characteristic of these tensions. Church leaders such as Anglican Archbishop Michael Ramsey however understood the importance of religion in the formation of migrant identities. A newly emergent multi-racial society, when ⁶¹ Maria Power, From Ecumenism to Community Relations: Inter-Church Relationships in Northern Ireland 1980–2005 (Dublin, 2007), p. 12. ⁶² Matthew Grimley, ‘The Church of England, Race and Multiculturalism’, in Jane Garnett and Alana Harris (eds.), Rescripting Religion in the City: Migration and Religious Identity in the Modern City (Farnham, 2013), pp. 207–21.

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combined with the rapid secularization of British society, provided an impetus for interfaith conversations. In response, the Catholic philosopher, Michael Dummett attempted to establish a national council of faiths in the 1960s which would complement the work of the British Council of Churches as, ‘in a secularized context, Dummett argued, the threat to any one faith was not conversion from one to another, but unbelief.’⁶³ Consequently, ‘faith leaders, and Christians in particular, pursued dialogue and encounter to improve fraught relations with increasingly diverse neighbourhoods and to talk about difference in respectful ways.’⁶⁴ It was not until the 1980s, however and the controversy surrounding the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, that Muslims became fully involved in dialogue. The result is that Britain has what the Woolf Institute calls a ‘highly developed’⁶⁵ interfaith context which is focused upon cooperation around areas of mutual concern, with practical issues such as immigration, terrorism, and reactions in the immediate aftermath of events, such as the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, characterizing relationships rather than doctrinal dialogue. Here, faith leaders worked together to voice the concerns of the entire community around a framework of the ‘common good’, and to emphasize the dignity of the human person, an understanding of which was central to all religious traditions.⁶⁶ As a result, ‘inter-faith relations are seen as a way of putting religious identity and inter-faith issues onto the public agenda and ensuring that faith communities are consulted on matters of public policy.’⁶⁷ However, whilst within the Catholic tradition Nostra Aetate (1965) provides the basic framework for interreligious dialogue,⁶⁸ the direction taken by interfaith networks in Britain has meant that the Church of England (as the Established Church) has driven this process with nominal involvement at the hierarchical level from the Catholic Church.⁶⁹ In Ireland, ‘apart from a few regrettable exceptions, relationships between Jews and Christians have been positive, and the Dublin Jewish community has a long tradition . . . [but] Ireland has not had a traditional Islamic community, with the exception of a small and changing student population’.⁷⁰ The Northern Ireland ⁶³ Peter Webster, ‘Race, Religion and National Identity in Sixties Britain: Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his Encounter with Other Faiths’, Studies in Church History, 51 (2015), p. 389. ⁶⁴ John Fahy and Jan-Jonathan Bock, Beyond Dialogue? Interfaith Engagement in Delhi, Doha, and London (Cambridge, 2018), p. 7. ⁶⁵ Living with Difference: Report of the Commission on Religion and Belief in British Public Life (Cambridge, 2015). ⁶⁶ Francis, Fratelli Tutti, §§271–6. ⁶⁷ The Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom, 20 Years Milestones on the Journey Together Towards Greater Inter Faith Understanding and Co-operation (London, 2007), p. 9. ⁶⁸ Christopher Hrynkow and Maria Power, ‘Transforming the Centre: Popes on Inter-Religious Dialogue as a Path to Multi-Track Peacebuilding’, International Journal for Peace Studies, 23 (2019), pp. 33–47. ⁶⁹ Webster, ‘Race, Religion and National Identity’. ⁷⁰ Billy O’Sullivan, ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue in Ireland: A Catholic Perspective’, The Furrow, 58 (2007), p. 295.

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Inter-Faith Forum was founded in 1993 and the issue was not addressed at Greenhills Ecumenical Conference until 2007 when the theme was ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue—an Opportunity for Ireland.’⁷¹

Ecumenism during the Troubles in Northern Ireland The nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 onwards added a new urgency to ecumenical relationships on the island. These relationships consequently carried a heavy burden and were subject to criticism from many quarters. Not only was dialogue ‘required to deal with issues of doctrinal importance but it was expected to act as a proxy for the peace process, with the leaders of the churches⁷² in Northern Ireland achieving agreement in areas where politicians could not.’⁷³ Despite this inordinate pressure, the church leaders sought to create a counter-culture of conversation, acceptance, and reconciliation for the communities in the region. As Cardinal Cahal Daly, a leading figure in the ecumenical movement, put it: The Churches should be providing a model to the wider community in that it is an essential defining characteristic of the Christian Gospel, namely that is the Gospel of reconciliation. St Augustine said that the church is the reconciled world. The church should be that section of humanity which is already reconciled and therefore can be a reconciling influence in the human community. Unless the churches are working positively and courageously for reconciliation between themselves and within society, then they are failing the Gospel of Christ. It is not that Christianity is failing but that we are failing to be Christian.⁷⁴

The key aim of ecumenical relationships in Ireland from a Catholic perspective was then reconciliation, which took an institutional form first in the Ballymascanlon meetings, and subsequently through the IICM. Both of these organizations consisted of representatives of the Catholic Church working alongside members of the Irish Council of Churches. In terms of developing ‘official relationships’, the 1970s represented a steep learning curve for the Catholic Church as it sought to implement the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. In 1969, the Irish Catholic hierarchy produced the Directory

⁷¹ O’Sullivan, ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue in Ireland’. ⁷² It is generally accepted that within the Irish context ‘the churches’ are the four largest denominations: the Catholic Church, the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, and the Methodist Church. ⁷³ Maria Power, Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland: Cardinal Cahal Daly and the Pursuit of the Peaceable Kingdom (Abingdon, 2021), p. 48. ⁷⁴ Power, Catholic Social Teaching, pp. 47–8.

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on Ecumenism with a second edition in 1976. Both had an underlying tone of the triumphalism of the past.⁷⁵ However, the second edition did contain the following statement which showed an openness and commitment to ecumenism: ‘There is in Ireland new endeavour among Christians of different denominations to live in harmony and peace. It is to be devoutly hoped that this movement will grow and become even more permanently permeated by the truth and love of Christ.’⁷⁶ Apart from the actual day-to-day work of the IICM,⁷⁷ from a Catholic perspective there were two main achievements which demonstrated that the counter-culture of ecumenical friendship and dialogue required for reconciliation in Northern Ireland was present in some quarters, if not always acknowledged. These achievements involved directly addressing the often painful and difficult issue of the causes and consequences of the conflict and resulted in two ground-breaking documents—Violence in Ireland⁷⁸ and Sectarianism.⁷⁹ Both reports showed a long-term commitment to work together to challenge the structures and mindsets that had led to the conflict, and therefore impeded ecumenism,⁸⁰ but it is the very fact that the churches were willing to discuss these matter that was significant. In the context of Northern Ireland these were hard and, sometimes dangerous, questions to pose let alone address. By addressing taboos such as how the churches had contributed to the conflict in the first place and how they could help to end it, members of the IICM were demonstrating a level of commitment to the ecumenical process which took them beyond the boundaries of their own theological formation and religious communities, and into meaningful and reconciled relationships with others. How far this challenged the inconsistencies of the teachings of the gospels, and the behaviour of the institutional churches is open to question, and the decades of violence (and its socio-religious legacies of the conflict outlined in Ó Corráin’s Chapter 16 in this volume) illustrate the challenges—and stymied efforts—of the ecumenical movement on the island of Ireland with ripple effects across the Irish Sea.⁸¹

⁷⁵ For example the first edition contained the following warning to Catholics seeking to become ecumenically involved: ‘Catholics are reminded that they must remain fully loyal to the truth handed down by the Apostles and professed throughout the centuries by the Catholic Church, for it is through Christ’s Catholic Church alone, which is the all-embracing means of salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained’, cited in Gallagher and Worrall, Christians in Ulster, p. 132. ⁷⁶ Cited in Norman Taggart, Conflict, Controversy and Cooperation: The Irish Council of Churches and ‘The Troubles’, 1968–1972 (Dublin, 2004), p. 94. ⁷⁷ Power, From Ecumenism to Community Relations, pp. 27–71. ⁷⁸ Violence in Ireland: A Report to the Churches (Belfast, 1976). ⁷⁹ IICM, Sectarianism, a Discussion Document: The Report of the Working Party (Belfast, 1993). ⁸⁰ Power, From Ecumenism to Community Relations, pp. 19–20 and 44–9. ⁸¹ Margaret M. Scull, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles 1968–1998 (Oxford, 2019).

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Visiting One Another and the Power of the Symbolic Gesture: Popes and Archbishops of Canterbury The power of the symbolic gesture in ecumenical relationships should not be underestimated as it renders support and motivation for everyone working towards reconciliation and institutional unity. It also provides a counter-balance to the hesitancies, retractions, and contradictions that have plagued ecumenical relationships in the British Isles. The period after the Second Vatican Council was to provide occasions for a number of such gestures, informal contacts, and close working relationships which would eventually lead to more structured and grassroots progress. Such signals of good will and open conversation, a desire for reconciliation and some forms of rapprochement were carried out by the papacy and archbishops of Canterbury, Glasgow, Armagh, and Westminster. For instance, a team of Anglican observers were invited to attend sessions of the Second Vatican Council in ‘an invitation’ acknowledged then and thereafter ‘of the greatest symbolic importance’.⁸² Thomas Winning, the archbishop of Glasgow became the first Catholic priest to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1975, and commented that ‘ecumenical gestures had to be made’.⁸³ When Benedictine monk Basil Hume was consecrated as archbishop of Westminster in March 1976, he left the altar to embrace the leaders of other Christian denominations present, and he subsequently visited Westminster Abbey that evening. Powerful symbols of rapprochement were enacted on Irish shores a decade later, when the archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, preached in Dublin in November 1994 apologizing and asking the Irish to forgive British wrongs. The following year, Cardinal Cahal Daly, primate of Ireland, preached in Canterbury Cathedral asking the British to forgive the wrongs perpetrated by the Irish. The genuine friendships that developed between the popes and the archbishops of Canterbury since Geoffrey Fisher’s first visit to Rome in 1960 and the visits of John Paul II to Ireland in 1979 and Britain in 1982 show us just how important these acts of episcopal and pontifical leadership and public displays of fraternity and unity are in deepening institutional relationships. The relational (and immensely influential) ecumenism of the Anglican bishop of Liverpool David Sheppard and his Catholic counterpart Derek Worlock was transformative and has been rightly subject to historical commentary.⁸⁴ Relationships between the archbishops of Canterbury and the papacy became increasingly important in the second half of the century. The meetings between ⁸² Peter Webster, Archbishop Ramsey: The Shape of the Church (Abingdon, 2015), p. 31; John R. Moorman, Vatican Observed: an Anglican Impression of Vatican II (London, 1967). ⁸³ Keith Robbins, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales: The Christian Church, 1900–2000 (Oxford, 2008), p. 437. ⁸⁴ Maria Power, ‘Reconciling State and Society? The Practice of the Common Good in the Partnership of Brish David Sheppard and Archbishop Derek Worlock’, Journal of Religious History, 40 (2016), pp. 545–64; Andrew Bradstock, David Sheppard: Batting for the Poor (London, 2019).

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Paul VI and Archbishop Michael Ramsey are particularly emblematic of this, as they showed growing understanding between the two communions but also the challenges that Canterbury in particular had to face. These were not related to the content of these meetings, but the perception presented particularly to the Anglican Communion. Thus, on his first visit to Rome in 1966: ‘Ramsey took pains to make sure that relations with Rome were visibly a global matter—a meeting between the Pope and representatives of the Anglican Communion— and not a playing-out of English domestic ecumenism on foreign fields.’⁸⁵ This meeting led to the formation of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC), and its English counterpart the Anglican-Roman Catholic Commission (ARC).⁸⁶ Both organizations began their work in 1970 ‘seeking to move towards “the restoration of full organic unity” based “on the gospels and ancient common traditions” and eschewing controversy “to discover each other’s faith as it is today.” ’⁸⁷ These organizations have made a significant contribution to the ecumenical process through their consideration of the doctrinal and ecclesiological issues, such as ministry and ordination, and the Eucharist, and more recently the role of the mother of God and the Petrine doctrine, which have historically been the heartlands of division between Christian institutions.⁸⁸

The Swanwick Declaration and the Ministry of Women The translation of Basil Hume, OSB, to Westminster in 1976 brought a sea change in Catholic endeavours towards ecumenism. Whilst ‘Heenan recognised that the time had come for a change of heart . . . and extended the hand of friendship and cooperation to other churches’,⁸⁹ Hume’s leadership saw the creation of practical structures that sought to overcome the tendency to ‘flounder on theological differences’⁹⁰ that had been the hallmark of Catholic attitudes towards ecumenical efforts before the mid-1970s. This led for example to the creation of ‘joint church schools’—the first being St Cuthbert Mayne in Torquay in 1973, followed by St Bede’s in Redhill and more than twenty such schools including Christ the King in Macclesfield, and St Chad’s in Runcorn.⁹¹ Father Kevin Kelly has also written ⁸⁵ Webster, Archbishop Ramsey, p. 33. ⁸⁶ William Purdy, The Search for Unity: Relations between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches from the 1950s to the 1970s (London, 1996). ⁸⁷ Paul Avis, ‘Anglicanism and Christian Unity in the Twentieth Century’, in Jeremy Morris (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, vol. IV: Global Western Anglicanism, c. 1910–present (Oxford, 2017), pp. 186–213, at p. 196. ⁸⁸ https://www.anglicancommunion.org/ecumenism/ecumenical-dialogues/roman-catholic/arcic. aspx (accessed 29 December 2021). ⁸⁹ Stanford, Changing Face of English Catholicism, p. 82. ⁹⁰ Stanford, Changing Face of English Catholicism, p. 84. ⁹¹ https://www.cbcew.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2019/07/English_ARC_Joint_Schools_final_ 100310.DOC (accessed 21 December 2021).

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about his parish ministry in shared Anglican and Catholic Church of St Basil and All the Saints, Widness.⁹² The last quarter of the twentieth century saw the Catholic Church in England and Wales join the British Council of Churches as a full member, and when Action of Churches Together in Scotland was founded in 1990, the Catholic Church was a full member and Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow its first convenor.⁹³ The Local Ecumenical Partnerships that had been the vanguard of local ecumenical contact grew in number with 900 in existence by 2020. In 1992 Milton Keynes Central Church opened for use by all denominations, with the clergy and ministers working together as an integrated team under the leadership of a moderator. However, it was the Swanwick Declaration which demonstrated the ‘mainstreaming’ of an ecumenical orientation in Britain and a desire to reconcile with fellow Christians in order to embed gospel values in society. The 1982 papal visit and subsequent visit by Scottish, English, and Welsh Protestant church leaders to Rome in 1983 to discuss further progression towards Church unity led to the ‘Not Strangers but Pilgrims Inter-Church Process’. This was designed to be ‘a wide consultation with people at a local level and diocesan or district level . . . Anglican, Free Church and Roman Catholic’.⁹⁴ The process culminated in a conference held at Swanwick in September 1987 which manifested a commitment to overcoming the disparity between the message of the gospel and divisions between churches which was undermining the credibility of British Christianity, as a well as a growing awareness that Church unity need not necessarily mean institutional unity. Indeed, this entire process could be characterized as a celebration of unity in diversity, especially through a theological understanding that the full manifestation of unity can only be realized with the coming of the kingdom of God. One paragraph of the Declaration summarizes its overarching intent: We now declare together our readiness to commit ourselves to each other under God. Our earnest desire to is to become more fully, in his own time, the one Church of Christ, united in faith, communion, pastoral care and mission. Such unity is the gift of God. With gratitude we have truly experienced this gift, growing amongst us in these days. We affirm our openness to this growing unity in obedience to the Word of God, so that we may fully share, hold in common and offer to the world those gifts which we have received and still hold in separation. In the unity we seek we recognise that there will not be uniformity but legitimate diversity.⁹⁵ ⁹² Kevin T. Kelly, 50 Years Receiving Vatican II: A Personal Odyssey (Dublin, 2021), pp. 60–78. ⁹³ Sheilagh M. Keating, ‘Ecumenism in Scotland’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 14 (2014) pp. 175–92, at p. 182. ⁹⁴ Colin Davey and Martin Reardon, ‘ “Not Strangers but Pilgrims”, The 1980s Inter-Church Process: From Councils of Churches to Churches Together’, https://www.cte.org.uk/Groups/276931/ Home/About/Our_history/Why_and_how/Why_and_how.aspx. ⁹⁵ Cited in CTE, Called to be One, p. 7.

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Although Cardinal Hume did warn Catholic participants at the Swanwick Conference ‘not to betray their Catholic tradition’,⁹⁶ the participation of English and Welsh Catholics in the process showed a clear commitment to interchurch relationships. These ecumenical advances were, however, destabilized by profound changes relating to the formal ministry of women within the Church of England. The ordination of the first female deacons in 1987, followed by the 1992 decision of the General Synod to allow women access to the priesthood culminated in the ordination of 1,500 women priests in 1994.⁹⁷ Rome had spoken definitively on these issues with Mulieris Dignitatem (1988), so Cardinal Hume had little alternative but to respond to the Synod vote ‘with expressions of regret’ and reservations about this ‘grave obstacle to unity’.⁹⁸ The implications of these developments for the Catholic Church in England and Wales were profound, exacerbating the discouragement occasioned by the Vatican’s Catholic Response to the ‘Final Report’ of ARCIC I (1991), which rejected the notion of ‘substantial agreement’ in theology and practice between both communions.⁹⁹ While Catholic feminist organizations such as St Joan’s Alliance (founded in 1911 to address women’s suffrage) rediscovered fresh impetus through collaboration with the Anglican Movement for the Ordination of Women (MOW),¹⁰⁰ the National Board of Catholic Women examined the ways in which women’s roles and responsibilities outside of ordination could be acknowledged and enhanced. The exodus of large numbers of Anglicans disaffected by ‘women priests’, including some married vicars who ultimately became (non-celibate) Catholic priests, had the potential to derail Christian relations. Cardinal Hume nevertheless sensitively negotiated these fraught ecumenical and ecclesiological waters without resurgent sectarianism or undue interference from Rome. Benedict XVI’s issuance of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus in November 2009—which created a Personal Ordinariate for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church—nevertheless reopened wounds. Its terms, paradoxically acknowledging elements of convergence between both Church traditions whilst sharpening denominational distinctions with the Anglican Communion, led more traditionally minded clergy and several Church of England bishops to ‘cross the Tiber’. So where have these developments left ecumenical relationships into the third millennium? The twenty-first century has mostly been characterized by a blossoming of ecumenical relationships in Britain and Ireland with the decision to ⁹⁶ Davey and Reardon, ‘ “Not Strangers but Pilgrims” ’. ⁹⁷ Ian Jones, Women and Priesthood in the Church of England: Ten years On (London, 2004); Ian Jones, Kirsty Thorpe, and Janet Wootton (eds.), Women and Ordination in the Christian Churches: International Perspectives (London, 2011). ⁹⁸ Peter Stanford, Cardinal Hume and the Changing Face of the English Church (New York, 1999), p. 92. ⁹⁹ Stanford, Changing Face of the English Church, pp. 93–4. ¹⁰⁰ Jenny Daggers, The British Christian Women’s Movement: A Rehabilitation of Eve (Abingdon, 2002).

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focus on the twin goals of understanding one another’s beliefs and working together to overcome injustice. The significance of this shift to ‘practical ecumenism’ should not be underestimated, as it has allowed grassroots concerns around issues of justice and peace to acquire a focused national voice. It has also done much to highlight the teachings of the gospel regarding human dignity (though women’s ministry remains a flash point) as well as continuing the doctrinal discussions that underpin all ecumenical contact. The action of Churches Together in Scotland provides an excellent example of such work. In the past twenty years, as well as discussions surrounding understandings of the nature of the Trinity, the umbrella body has also created social justice schemes which advocate for the most marginalized members of society as Christian social thought teaches. Thus, projects focusing on racial justice,¹⁰¹ housing,¹⁰² combatting climate change,¹⁰³ and supporting prisoners¹⁰⁴ have allowed Christian communities to work together in a manner which makes use of their shared goals and which realizes the aspirations of the ecumenical pioneers who understood the potential of a focus on social issues for the movement for Christian Unity.

Conclusion The story of ecumenism and interfaith relationships in Britain and Ireland during the twentieth century has been one of change: in definition; understandings of the nature of the Church and its place in society; and changes in attitudes towards those of other faiths. At the start of the twentieth century, any discussions that did not focus on a return to Rome were deemed anathema to the Catholic Church, a position emphatically underlined by the hierarchies of the British and Irish Churches. But by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, it was expected that faiths would work together on matters of common concern whilst engaging in dialogue with one another to understand their differences. Diversity of belief and practice was no longer a dividing, paralysing issue and was in fact accepted as natural and potentially fruitful.¹⁰⁵ However, such ideas though now uncontroversial were not inherently new, and as we have seen were expressed by some Christians long before Vatican II reoriented the Catholic Church’s focus outwards. Groups such as Sword, and the Glenstal and Greenhill Conferences demonstrated how important social justice issues and practical Christian action

¹⁰¹ https://cte.org.uk/about/whos-who/working-groups/racial-justice-working-group/ (accessed 21 December 2021). ¹⁰² Housing Justice, https://housingjustice.org.uk (accessed 21 December 2021). ¹⁰³ Operation Noah, https://operationnoah.org (accessed 21 December 2021). ¹⁰⁴ Prison Fellowship, https://prisonfellowship.org.uk (accessed 21 December 2021). ¹⁰⁵ Paul D. Murray, ‘Catholicism and Ecumenism’, in Lewis Ayres and Medi Ann Volpe (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (Oxford, 2019).

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were to the ecumenical and interfaith movements. In doing so, they moved the focus away from full unity, transforming it into an eschatological goal. The result was a flourishing of cooperation, with some residual tension over women’s ordination and sexual ethics, which changed not only the Catholic Church’s understanding of the term ecumenism itself, but contributed to it seeking to embed gospel values more firmly in society.

Select Bibliography Aspden, Kester, Fortress Church: The English Roman Catholic Bishops and Politics, 1903–1963 (Leominster, 2002). Cavanagh, William T. (ed.), Gathered in my Name: Ecumenism in the World Church (Eugene, 2020). Gallagher, Eric and Stanley Worrall, Christians in Ulster 1968–1980 (Oxford, 1982). Keating, Sheilagh M., ‘Ecumenism in Scotland’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 14:2 (2014), pp. 175–92. Latinovic, Vladimir, Gerard Mannion, and Jason Wells (eds.), Catholicism Opening to the World and Other Confessions: Vatican II and Its Impact (New York, 2018). Murray, Paul D., ‘Catholicism and Ecumenism’, in Lewis Ayres and Medi Ann Volpe (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology (Oxford, 2019). Power, Maria, From Ecumenism to Community Relations: Inter-Church Relationships in Northern Ireland, 1980–2005 (Dublin, 2007). Worlock, Derek and David Sheppard, Better Together: Christian Partnership in a Hurt City (London, 1988).

12 Ireland’s Missions and Missionaries in the Twentieth Century Fiona Bateman

As emigration soared in the nineteenth century, the priority for the Irish Catholic Church was the spiritual welfare of the Irish diaspora in the settler colonies. Some adventurous individuals had joined non-Irish missionary orders in efforts to convert the ‘pagan’ world, but it was not until the twentieth century that a distinctly Irish modern missionary movement developed. The foreign missions soon supplanted the traditional and ‘less spectacular’ English-speaking evangelizing destinations in the popular imagination: ‘Accounts of the priest’s life in the bleak Birmingham slum have seldom the human interest of stories of treks through the bush in darkest Africa, yet the industrial jungles too have their mysteries and more frequently their tragedies’.¹ Drawing on existing structures and local networks, this undertaking exploited the domestic mood to establish the ‘foreign missions’ as a national project, resulting in a popular cultural movement that required the support and participation of all good Catholics. From the 1920s to the 1950s missionary rhetoric was ubiquitous and missionary activity was celebrated as evidence of the strength of the Irish Church. An editorial in St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin in 1935 declared that ‘zeal for the pagan missions is the best criterion of a country’s spiritual fervour’ and concluded that ‘Irish Faith at present is gloriously triumphant’.² However, by the 1960s, public interest in the missions was waning; ‘saving souls’ and ‘rescuing the heathen from darkness’ were anachronistic concepts in a modernizing Ireland. Within the Church too, the weakness of Irish missiology was increasingly recognized and a fundamental reimagining of the nature of missionary work began. By the early 1970s, the rhetoric of conversion gave way to a new focus on humanitarianism, development, and social justice.

The Emergence of a Modern Irish Missionary Movement In the nineteenth century, religious who were surplus to requirements at home left Ireland to oversee the spiritual welfare of the Irish diaspora, but by the twentieth ¹ P. J. Brophy, ‘Irish Missionaries’, The Furrow, 3 (1952), pp. 22–7, 22. ² ‘Editorial’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, April 1935, p. 3. Fiona Bateman, Ireland’s Missions and Missionaries in the Twentieth Century In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0013

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century settler communities were producing their own clergy. In 1915, Galvin wrote to Maynooth students: ‘Ireland is comparatively free to turn her attention to the heathen world. What glorious conquests await her!’³ At the same time the British colonies in Africa were in search of English-speaking priests, and the Vatican was urging missions to the pagan.⁴ Irishmen were joining the British Army to fight in a world war; and in 1916, the anti-colonial struggle culminated in the Easter Rising, an event that ‘aroused many young people into a “state of heroism and zeal” ’, according to John Blowick, who stated: ‘when we put our message before the young people of the country, it fell on soil which was far better prepared to receive it than if there had never been an Easter week’.⁵ The subsequent War of Independence (1919–21) and the Civil War (1922–3) created division and unrest in Ireland; the emergence of a project that would unite the country was timely. The discourse was insistent on the difference between missionary activity and ‘imperialism’ as practiced by other nations, although missionaries were, for all intents and purposes, engaged in an ideological scramble ‘to seize the souls of the unconverted Africans’.⁶ Irish missionaries often emphasized that they were not imperialists claiming territory or extracting raw materials, however, lines drawn on maps defined which missionary organization controlled each area and created territories with borders which might be breached or challenged. It was not unusual for a missionary magazine to make reference to ‘this picturesque nook of our huge African territories’.⁷ Ireland was framed as a ‘mother’ to Africa, with the continent looking to Ireland for sustenance (Figure 12.1). The foreign missions provided an opportunity to demonstrate that the Irish were capable not only of self-rule, but of civilizing others, though it was stressed that the project was wholly benevolent and devoid of economic self-interest: ‘it is not for Irish trade nor a far-flung Irish empire the missionaries are working’.⁸ The missions provided international standing, separate from Great Britain and distinct from the British Empire, but the discourse drew on many of the tropes of imperialism—foreign lands, heroic figures, and a duty to civilize the ‘Other’. The history of Ireland’s ‘Golden Age’ as a land of saints and scholars provided additional motivation in promoting this new endeavour as a ‘reawakening of missionary spirit’, with modern Irish missionaries ‘following the footsteps’ of

³ Quoted in Bernard T. Smyth, The Chinese Batch (Dublin, 1994), p. 44. ⁴ Maximum Illud, Benedict XV, 30 November 1919. ⁵ Frank Hoare, ‘The Influence of the Crusade Symbol and War Metaphor on the Motivation and Attitudes of the Maynooth Mission to China, 1918–1929’, 24 U.S Catholic Historian (2006), p. 60. ⁶ ‘The Place of the Church in Africa’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, August 1935, p. 12. ⁷ Maurice Slattery, ‘The Provincial’s Page: Bathurst, Freetown and Kruland’, The African Missionary (March–April 1928), p. 148. ⁸ ‘Dymphna’s Page’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, April 1935, p. 4.

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Figure 12.1 ‘Africa is Awaiting Ireland’s Message!’, The African Missionary, 80 (1927), p. 79. Image with permission of the National Library of Ireland.

St Patrick.⁹ The endeavour was invoked as evidence of the strength of the Catholic Church and the state: ‘Dark Rosaleen [was] standing erect again and about . . . to take her place again among the nations of the earth.’¹⁰ ⁹ James J. Walsh, The World’s Debt to the Irish (Boston, 1927), p. 399. ¹⁰ Irish Press, 26 June 1932, p. 7.

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Missionary Heroes Early on the venture was defined by ideals of heroism and sacrifice, with the work of a few high-profile missionaries being lauded and amplified. Joseph Shanahan, CSSp (1871–1943), a member of the French Holy Ghost order, brought the foreign missions high-profile attention in Ireland. His first mission to Nigeria in 1902 to ‘the most abandoned souls’,¹¹ caught the public imagination. Just as British children’s interest in empire was stirred by stories of imperial heroes, Irish children were inspired to support the missions by tales of Shanahan’s adventures. Early in his career, he concluded that ‘the key to the heart of the African would be held in tiny hands’¹² and decided that education should be the main weapon in his attack on paganism; subsequently, schools became central to the Irish operation, placing children at the core of the missionary project. Shanahan also founded a missionary order of nuns, the Sisters of the Holy Rosary (1924), based in Killeshandra. Ireland’s best-known missionary in India was Thomas Gavan Duffy (1888–1942). Born into a distinguished Irish family, he joined the Paris Foreign Mission Society in 1906, and worked in Pondicherry following ordination in 1911.¹³ He promoted the use of lay catechists to augment the work of the priests and women religious, and set up a catechist training school in Tindivanam. Like Shanahan, Gavan Duffy recognized the importance of communication to create and sustain support for missionary work and wrote prolifically ‘in doggerel, in fine verse, in amusing anecdote, in characteristically clipped, lucid prose’¹⁴ about his mission and his travels. Let’s Go!¹⁵—his account of driving from Kampala to Kano in nineteen days—was lauded for ‘breaking the tradition that “nobody reads books about the Missions, except the Missioners” ’.¹⁶ Taking advantage of new technologies, Gavan Duffy also ventured into film-making; he wrote, produced, and acted in The Catechist of Kil-Arni (1923).¹⁷ The French SMA (Societas Missionum ad Afro) established a branch in Cork in 1878 to recruit for its missions in the English-speaking colonies. In 1912, as a response to the growing support to convert the pagan world, Maurice Slattery (1874–1957) was appointed vice-provincial of the new Irish Province, later

¹¹ John P. Jordan, CSSp, Bishop Shanahan of Southern Nigeria (Dublin, 1949), p. 18. ¹² Jordan, Shanahan, p. 31. ¹³ He was the youngest child of Charles Gavan Duffy, co-founder of The Nation, Young Irelander, poet and journalist, and premier of Victoria in 1871. ¹⁴ Catholicauthors.com/duffy.html (accessed 29 December 2021). ¹⁵ T. Gavan Duffy, Let’s Go! (London, 1928), pp. 165–6. ¹⁶ T. Corcoran, SJ, ‘The Catechist in Pagan Missions’, Studies, 17 (1928), pp. 679–83. ¹⁷ Fiona Bateman, ‘An Irish Missionary in India: Thomas Gavan Duffy and The Catechist of Kil-Arni’, in Tadhg Foley and Maureen O’Connor (eds.), Ireland and India: Colonies, Culture and Empire (Dublin, 2006), pp. 117–28.

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becoming the first Irish superior general (1937). On 15 October 1913, the first group of young priests ordained for the Province set off for Liberia.¹⁸ In the early twentieth century, with interest in the foreign missions being fuelled by stories from Irish missionaries in distant locations, the potential for a distinctly Irish missionary project to harness the support and enthusiasm of Irish Catholics (including the diaspora) became apparent. The first indigenous organization given approval was the Maynooth Mission to China in 1916, subsequently known as the Missionary Society of St Columban. The bishop of Cork’s address in 1909 to an ordination ceremony audience is indicative of the numbers of vocations:¹⁹ ‘I won’t be needing any of you for some time. Meanwhile I give you permission to preach the gospel in any part of the world you choose’.²⁰ One of those newly ordained priests, Edward Galvin (1882–1956), went to Brooklyn, where a chance meeting with Canadian Fr John Fraser led him to go to east Asia in 1912. In 1916, he and theologian Fr John Blowick (1888–1972) sought and gained approval for an Irish missionary order dedicated to China. Soon Blowick identified the need for women to work alongside the priests and he worked with a young widow, Frances Moloney (1873–1959), to establish an order of missionary sisters. In 1920 the first Columban missionaries travelled to Hanyang in central China, followed in 1926 by the first group of the Missionary Sisters of St Columban. Patrick Whitney (1894–1942) was inspired by Shanahan’s example, and his interest in Nigeria led to his being charged with the responsibility of establishing the Sisters of the Holy Rosary. He subsequently campaigned for a formal structure to enable diocesan priests trained in Maynooth to volunteer as missionaries in Africa and, in 1932, St Patrick’s Missionary Society was formally constituted. Based in Kiltegan, Co. Wicklow, Whitney was the first superior.²¹ Schoolchildren were encouraged to consider missionary vocations. Articles recommended that ‘heroic examples should be held up’ and illustrated lectures be provided; priests were advised to use their influence on parents. It was also suggested that efforts should be made to ‘keep the boys in touch with past students who are now in missionary colleges or on the mission-field’.²² Missionary organizations had to address a perception that volunteers were not required to be intelligent; that ‘the foreign missions [were] a refuge for the cast-offs and the second best’.²³ Fr Michael Glynn challenged the idea ‘that a missionary, because he works among simple, unlettered, pagan people, does not need to be quite as

¹⁸ Edmund M. Hogan, Catholic Missionaries and Liberia (Cork, 1981). ¹⁹ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Ordinations’, table A7.3. ²⁰ Smyth, Chinese Batch, p. 14. ²¹ Thomas Kiggins, Maynooth Mission to Africa (Dublin, 1991). ²² Revd H. Finnegan, ‘Thy Kingdom Come’, Pagan Missions, 5 (1926), p. 17. ²³ Very Rev. Fr Ryan, OP, The Logic of I Believe: Ireland and the Missions, A Symposium (Dublin, 1934), p. 3.

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well educated as, say, a priest who works among races with centuries of culture behind them’.²⁴ The emphasis in the discourse was on the physical strength and good health required of a missionary. Stories of missioners’ strength abound: Joseph Shanahan ‘was a fine upstanding specimen of Irish manhood; tall, broadshouldered, erect of figure and carriage . . . a real statue of St Patrick come to life.’²⁵ Pat Whitney had a ‘fine physique’ and a ‘towering physical presence’,²⁶ and Galvin was ‘[t]all, burly, broad-shouldered’.²⁷ James Moynagh advised the superior general in 1940 to avoid having ‘townies’ in the Society; he believed that a traditional rural childhood would result in a more robust constitution, fit for the privations of missionary life.²⁸

Women Missionaries and Practical Missionary Activity In missionary literature the stamina of the female missionaries is also acknowledged, but their physicality is rarely described, though Galvin made a point of requesting only ‘strong healthy sisters’ for the Chinese mission.²⁹ Lady Frances Moloney, co-founder of the Missionary Sisters of St Columban, who took the name Sr Mary Patrick, was described as ‘a woman of considerable culture’ with ‘aristocratic bearing’.³⁰ Marie Martin (1892–1975) trained and worked as a nurse during the First World War, subsequently developing an interest in the missions as mentored by the Reverend Thomas Ronayne. She had supported Shanahan in the early days of his plan for a congregation of female religious for Nigeria, however she did not seem suited to the travails of missionary life; her health was poor and she was on the brink of death on many occasions.³¹ She persevered and, in 1937, Martin, who became known as Mother Mary, established the Medical Missionaries of Mary. In the tradition of imperial masculinity, the mission territories were perceived as dangerous and unsuitable places for women. However, the presence of missionary nuns was essential to reach the native women and educate the girls for their future roles as Catholic wives and mothers. The recreation of the model of the Irish Catholic family in Africa was the goal: ‘Manhood is already sacred in Africa—but without the Christian mother there could be no true Christian family’.³² Female missionaries were especially important in areas of practical activity and the need for medically-qualified missionary sisters had been raised

²⁴ Michael Glynn, ‘Invitation to Study’ (1955), Why Not Be a Missionary (Dublin, 2000), p. 19. ²⁵ Jordan, Shanahan, p. 18. ²⁶ Kiggins, Maynooth, pp. 25, 74. ²⁷ Smyth, Chinese Batch, p. 12. ²⁸ Kiggins, Maynooth, p. 193. ²⁹ Edward Fischer, Maybe a Second Spring (New York 1983), p. 65. ³⁰ Smyth, Chinese Batch, p. 101. ³¹ Mary Purcell, To Africa with Love (Dublin, 1987). ³² Sr Mary Brigid, ‘The Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary: Origin and Growth’, Capuchin Annual (1955), p. 313.

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in relation to China, where only women doctors were permitted to attend the women. In India, the Mill Hill missionaries were faced with a similar problem. However, the provision of medical care was contentious and a prohibition in the Code of Canon Law of 1917 forbade female religious from practicing obstetrics and surgery. There was ‘a fear that the practice of certain medical and nursing skills could constitute a threat to chastity and consequently to vocation’ and that ‘the people would not like the idea of nuns doing maternity work’.³³ The Sisters themselves disagreed that it was ‘an indelicate and unsuitable occupation for nuns’,³⁴ and campaigned to be permitted to provide these services. Apart from the specific issue of maternity care, there was opposition to missionaries ministering to the body rather than the soul; some Catholics viewed the provision of medical care as a distortion of the missionary ideal. The abject state of the native and the prevalence of disease were blamed on the darkness of paganism and superstition; theoretically conversion would heal both body and soul. An editorial in 1930 declared: ‘For ignorance can never be eliminated with a pill, superstition cannot be retrenched with a knife, and least of all, can a man’s moral sense, his sense of responsibility, be awakened or kept alive by hygienic endeavour’.³⁵ However, the practical advantages of mission-run hospitals were obvious to the missionaries on the ground: the Protestant missionaries were achieving large numbers of converts through their hospitals. Effective medical care could bring ‘healing to Christ’s suffering, black people of the forest, injecting the first flood of Christ’s charity through the chinks in their pagan souls’.³⁶ Those arguing for Catholic hospitals emphasized the conversion opportunities of access to native women during childbirth, and particularly to new-born babies. Rome took some persuading. In 1917 Shanahan urged: ‘Why not missionary Catholic Sisters to emulate the zeal and self-sacrifice of these Protestant ladies?’³⁷ In 1923, he was forging ahead with his plans for a new congregation for his vicariate in Nigeria, having found a suitable location for a convent in Killeshandra, Co. Cavan. A group of seven novices began their preparation with the Dominican Sisters in Cabra, Dublin. The first ten Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary were professed in 1927; but demonstrating how personnel were divided between the organization’s needs in Ireland and those on the mission fields, five stayed to work at home. The others travelled to Nigeria in 1928 and opened their first girls’ school in Onitsha later that year. By 1933 it seemed that the obstacles to nuns practicing obstetrics and surgery were likely to be removed and plans for a medical missionary society began to take shape. In 1936 the prohibition was lifted and Martin established the Medical Missionaries of Mary the following year. A documentary ³³ ³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷

Purcell, To Africa, p. 73. Edmund M. Hogan, Irish Missionary Movement (Dublin, 1990), p. 114. ‘Editorial’, Missionary Annals, 12 (1930), p. 146. Fr Michael Glynn, ‘Saint Patrick’s Missions’, Capuchin Annual (1955), p. 379. Purcell, To Africa, p. 32.

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film Visitation (1948) describing the history and the work of the order ‘in primitive Africa’³⁸ was well received. One reviewer commented that the stars of the film were the Irish ‘girls’ shining ‘through the terrible night that still darkens the jungle continent of Africa’.³⁹ Hospitals rapidly became an accepted part of Catholic missionary practice; in ‘the evening the Sister gives the patients holy water’ and ‘after the first night even the pagans are able to make the Sign of the Cross’.⁴⁰ Medicine could heal ‘the many ills prevalent in this land of tropical heat, breeding rampant disease and fever’, and was ‘one of the most powerful means of weaning the allegiance of these people from their time honoured but often barbaric practices, and of replacing their spirit worship by the Christian faith’.⁴¹ In 1948, Bishop Kelly reported that the maternity centres were doing well (spiritually), noting that ‘through them many babies are sent to Heaven each year’.⁴² Female missionaries also rescued and cared for orphaned and abandoned children in orphanages and in Christian villages (Mill Hill in India). For Irish women, the missions provided opportunities beyond the limited choices available to them at home but in addition to the practical skills they contributed, female religious were expected to be models of Catholic womanhood. Modest and lady-like behaviour was deemed as important as teaching hygiene and domesticity: ‘by their teaching and the silent example of their lives, [they] should win these people, women as well as men, from the ways of paganism, and show them the Catholic life lived in its beauty and integrity.’⁴³ Nuns had relevant qualifications in the care of diseases such as tuberculosis and leprosy, as well as in obstetrics and maternity care, but they could not administer the sacraments (other than baptism in cases of necessity, as any layperson). Despite their practical training, their main role was to assist the work of male missionaries. Theirs was not ‘the glory of a thousand baptisms nor even in many cases the opportunity of instructing would-be catechumens, but their work [was] to prepare the way for the Grace of salvation’.⁴⁴ Reflecting the gender roles of the time, some sisters found on arrival that the priests expected them to do housekeeping, but that issue was quickly addressed. They were referred to as ‘silent heroines’ in one magazine, due to their lack of self-promotion,⁴⁵ but the Sisters published their own magazines, which inclined to less dramatic narratives and

³⁸ Andrew Buchanan, Visitation: The Film Story of The Medical Missionaries of Mary (Drogheda, 1948), p. 81. ³⁹ L. MacG., ‘A Great Documentary’, Irish Press, 27 September 1948, p. 4. ⁴⁰ ‘A Day in the Catholic Mission Hospital at Emekuku’, African Rosary, 1 (1937), p. 12. ⁴¹ Sr Mary Anastasia, ‘Growth of Medical Work on the Missions’, Capuchin Annual (1955), p. 365. ⁴² Michael O’Shea, Bishop Kelly of Western Nigeria (Cork, 2006), p. 193. ⁴³ Brigid, ‘The Congregation of the Missionary Sisters’, p. 313. ⁴⁴ Anastasia, ‘Growth of Medical Work on the Missions’, p. 364. ⁴⁵ J. P. Mullen, ‘Ireland’s Missionaries, Ancient and Modern’, The Student Missionary: Organ of the Students’ Mission Crusade (1931), p. 17.

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more humorous and self-deprecating stories. Despite the levity, the danger they faced was real. Those who went to China would face ‘a civil war, bandits, war lords, Communist guerrillas, and Japanese invaders, to say nothing of opium addicts, lepers, floods, famine, and plague’.⁴⁶ Inflexibility about ‘the rule’, which was enforced as it had been in Ireland, created other challenges. Decisions that were made in Ireland without any real understanding or consideration of differences in climate or culture had impacts in mission territories. The first Holy Rosary Sisters were sent out ‘dressed in cumbersome habits and with the injunction not to take water between meals’.⁴⁷ However, discomfort, thirst, hunger, and tiredness were welcomed due to the belief that it was beneficial to one’s spiritual life to suffer physically; the ill health that often resulted and the impact on the missionary endeavour were an obvious disadvantage of this approach.

Communicating the Missionary Message Even young, healthy men had few defences against the malaria, dysentery, typhus, and yellow fever to which they were exposed. In the early decades, many missionaries died or were invalided home, justifying West Africa’s reputation as the ‘White Man’s Grave’.⁴⁸ In Fr Thomas Mulvanney’s last communication he assured readers that Nigeria is not a ‘deathtrap’, and explained that he had been diagnosed with TB before he left Ireland.⁴⁹ Drinking ‘uncooked’ water, overwork, and poor hygiene are all mentioned as leading to illness and death, but others conjected that ‘the Irish hovel seems to pursue some of our men’,⁵⁰ implying that the young missionaries were poorly equipped to care for themselves. Their welfare was secondary to their mission, and basic precautions and hygiene were often ignored. The resulting level of attrition meant that a steady supply of new vocations was necessary in order to maintain numbers. However, rather than being a deterrent to vocations, the possibility of ‘the martyr’s crown’ was sold as part of the attraction.⁵¹ O’Shea remarks that ‘deaths did not discourage the missionaries; if anything they stimulated them’, because they believed their deceased brothers interceded for them in Heaven.⁵² Not all Irish bishops supported the missions, believing the pastoral care of the Irish, whether at home or abroad, should remain a priority.⁵³ Addressing this dissent, Ronayne posed the rhetorical question: ‘Why seek to save souls afar off

⁴⁶ Fischer, Maybe, p. 9. ⁴⁷ Kiggins, Maynooth, p. 33. ⁴⁸ For example, O’Shea, Kelly, pp. 58–60, 81, 112. ⁴⁹ Revd Thomas Ronayne, ‘Father Thomas Mulvanney, Missionary Apostolic’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 28 (1926), p. 505. ⁵⁰ O’Shea, Kelly, pp. 57–8. ⁵¹ Jordan, Shanahan, p. 7. ⁵² O’Shea, Kelly, p. 60. ⁵³ E.g., the Bishop of Kilmore would not allow any of his priests to go to Nigeria. T. McGettrick, Memoirs of Bishop T. McGettrick (Sligo, 1988), p. 77.

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when souls are being lost at our own doors?’⁵⁴ He concluded that in sacrificing priests to the missions, Ireland would inspire more vocations. All of those in leadership roles understood the importance of good communications, and some like Gavan Duffy excelled, exploiting every available medium. Missionary magazines were launched as soon as an organization was established and they became staple reading material, reiterating the continuity of a tradition and the natural development of the Irish foreign missions as the ‘glorious destiny of our race’.⁵⁵ Both the centenary of Catholic emancipation in 1929 and the Dublin Eucharistic Congress in 1932 provided opportunities to frame the modern missionary movement as the revival of an ancient instinct. At the Congress Ireland’s missionaries were lauded and foregrounded in many of the addresses. A popular ‘Missionary Exhibition’ revealed ‘in a highly interesting manner the magnificent work done by the modern inheritors of the glorious missionary tradition of the Gael’.⁵⁶ Once public interest and enthusiasm for the missions had been kindled, the challenge of creating and sustaining support was immense; the war had to be fought on two fronts—home and abroad. Money was needed for buildings, staff, and training expenses; investment was also essential to promote the missionary project and ensure a constant supply of vocations. There was little surplus to spend abroad and the intention was to make the mission territories selfsupporting. Travel was a huge cost, so trips home were discouraged. Some missionaries taught in the missionary-run schools, where they could draw a government salary, but that made them unavailable for pastoral work.⁵⁷ There were tensions between missionaries ‘on the ground’ and those at home advising and instructing. That the men ‘at home’ did not understand the realities of missionary life was a common refrain. As early as 1928, Gavan Duffy described conferences where the two groups clashed, and ends his account scathingly: ‘so the Missiologists dispersed to their laborious investigations, and we Missioners to our easy-going missions’.⁵⁸ Kiggins details conflicts between the effort which was invested in establishing, promoting, and running St Patrick’s Missionary Society compared with that dedicated to the work on the missions.⁵⁹ At home, the ‘Irishness’ of the project was the primary selling point and the form of Catholicism the missionaries exported was particularly Irish, as explored in Chapter 7 by Heimann and Delay in this volume. Despite frequent reference to Ireland’s period of oppression as a colonized nation, they did not ‘noticeably contribute any special sympathy with the colonized’.⁶⁰ Linehan notes that ‘articulate advocacy for African independence in the missionary magazine archive is a ⁵⁴ ⁵⁶ ⁵⁸ ⁵⁹ ⁶⁰

Ronayne, ‘Father Thomas Mulvanney’, p. 502. ⁵⁵ Mullen, ‘Ireland’s Missionaries’, p. 32. Irish Press, 20 June 1932. ⁵⁷ O’Shea, Kelly, p. 208. T. Gavan Duffy, ‘A Muster of Missiologists’, Studies, 17 (1928), p. 412. Kiggins, Maynooth, pp. 94, 133. See pp. 119ff for description of fundraising projects. Adrian Hastings, The Church in Africa (Oxford, 1994), p. 418.

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rare item until the late 1950s’.⁶¹ The campaign of proselytization during the Famine, when soup was provided as an enticement to convert to Anglicanism, was echoed unself-consciously in accounts of baptizing multitudes during crises such as disease epidemics in Africa. The damage to Irish language and culture caused by the imposition of a British educational system at odds with tradition did not influence their own teaching methods or curricula; for decades, missionaries enthusiastically taught Irish dancing, Irish songs, Irish tunes, and even Irish history to young African children. Hearne, whose writings are based on his experience as a missionary in East Africa, declared: ‘It has stunned me that we Irish, so keen to protest about our independence from Britain, should have fitted so abjectly into the colonial and neo-colonial systems’.⁶² In Ireland, the Church transformed rural folk customs to make them acceptable as Catholic practice, however there was little such adaptation in Africa— customary traditions, pagan rituals, and juju were condemned as Satanism. Another aspect of the devotional revolution in Ireland was to centre the child ‘as a link between the moralising forces of the Church and the isolated homes of Ireland’,⁶³ an approach that provided access to the ‘family’ unit and gave mothers responsibility as ‘civilizers’ in partnership with the priests. Echoes of this strategy may be identified in Shanahan’s approach to his work in Nigeria, and children were also at the centre of efforts at home.

Irish Children and ‘Black Babies’ Missionary magazines aimed to nurture a sense of ownership and pride. Widely disseminated in schools and parishes, and available by subscription, they brought the mission territories into Irish homes and made faraway countries familiar.⁶⁴ The content had a cumulative effect; the emphasis on darkness and the savagery of paganism was intended to inspire pity, but also hope. They typically included stories and letters from missionaries; articles on the tradition and culture of missionary territories; photographs of missionaries with their ‘flocks’; biographical pieces; missionary history; anthropological accounts; fiction with missionary or moral themes; as well as specific content for children. In 1926, The Far East had a circulation of 75,000 in Ireland and 60,000 in America.⁶⁵ Elizabeth Russell notes that in 1935, the bestselling magazine in Ireland ‘was Saint Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, which cost 2d’.⁶⁶ ⁶¹ Denis Linehan, ‘Irish Empire: Assembling the Geographical Imagination of Irish Missionaries in Africa’, Cultural Geographies, 21 (2014), p. 438. ⁶² Brian Hearne CSSp, ‘Reverse Mission: Or Mission in Reverse’, The Furrow, 42 (1991), p. 285. ⁶³ Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly (Dublin, 1998) p. 191. ⁶⁴ Hogan, Irish Missionary Movement, ch. 12. ⁶⁵ Stephen J. Brown, SJ, ‘Foreign Missions: A Survey’, Studies, 15 (1926), p. 113. ⁶⁶ Elizabeth Russell, ‘Holy Crosses, Guns and Roses: Themes in Popular Reading Material’, in Joost Augusteijn (ed.), Ireland in the 1930s (Dublin, 1999), p. 21.

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The Black Babies Crusade, a fundraising drive targeted at children, was a popular and enduring campaign. Children were encouraged to save their ‘Pennies for Black Babies’ until they had half a crown to purchase and name a recipient ‘who would escape being sent to Limbo’.⁶⁷ They were also invited to sew clothing ‘for our little and big black cousins in Africa’⁶⁸ and to work for the missions by collecting postage stamps and tinfoil, saving pennies, and praying.⁶⁹ The classroom was an environment where the seeds of missionary vocations could be sown and nurtured. A familiarity with Africa was fostered there, but it was an Africa defined by darkness, pagans, and leper colonies. Irish missionaries appreciated the value of the visual image; schools displayed maps of missionary activity so that students were ‘as conscious of being part of a worldwide empire as the most patriotic British child would have been a generation earlier’.⁷⁰ In their memoirs, numerous missionaries recount their recollections of magic lantern displays, which captured their imagination and inspired their vocations; they were ‘the first pictures of Africa seen in most places and they made a powerful impression’.⁷¹

Challenges and Conflict Exciting stories of missionary adventure, wild animals, and proximity to lepers entertained children but alarmed parents. Unsupportive parents were accused of being selfish and preoccupied with social status. An editorial writer in Missionary Annals noted that ‘the youth’ were taking up the cause of the missions with genuine zeal, but that the one thing lacking for entire success was more wholehearted encouragement from Catholic parents, whom he accused of having ‘strange and abnormal ideas about the Foreign Apostolate’. He imagined their opposition: ‘I cannot see why boys should be sent out to die in an awful place like Africa,’ . . . ‘What good is it for us to have our boy a priest if he is going to go away like that?’ and concluded that they had a ‘lamentable ignorance of supernatural realities’.⁷² Another feared threat to the success of the missionary project were the young women ‘distracting’ young men from their vocations. References to men being led astray accord with the Church’s repressive attitude towards women and their sexuality, evidenced by institutions including Magdalene Laundries and Mother and Baby homes. The solution to safeguard missionary vocations was to shelter young men from any contact with females. McGettrick describes the phenomenon ⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰ ⁷¹ ⁷²

Garreth Byrne, The Afro-Irish Connection (Dublin, 1974), p. 1. ‘Love and Knickers’, The African Missionary, 86 (July–August 1928), p. 199. T. A. Johnston, SJ, ‘Catholic Missions and Our Schools’, Irish Monthly, 56 (May 1928), p. 241. Tom Dunne, ‘Seven Years in the Brothers’, The Dublin Review, 6 (2002), p. 17. Fr James Mellett, CSSp, If Any Man Dares: Missionary Memoirs (Dublin, 1963), p. 62. ‘Editorial’, Missionary Annals, 11 (1929), pp. 205–6.

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of the ‘voco burster’, which he explains as ‘vocation spoiler’, noting that the seminarians should have no contact with any females other than ‘the good Sisters with the butterfly bonnets’ during term time.⁷³ Special precautions were taken in regard to young female staff in the office and kitchen in training colleges: ‘morning and evening the office girls followed a route through the woods which was nowhere near the students’ quarters’.⁷⁴ The public face of the missionary project—primarily communicated via the magazines—portrayed a cohesive national effort. However there was dissent within missionary organizations, as well as competition between missionary orders for territories and souls.⁷⁵ Young missionaries who had hoped for some freedom and independence found themselves under the tight control of their superiors, far from home, and lacking funds and resources. An emphasis on numbers of souls—with no qualitative distinction between dying babies or healthy adults—remained the priority in the 1950s. When pleas for more priests were made, it was pointed out that Propaganda Fide was not so much concerned about numbers of Catholics to be ministered to as numbers of people to be converted.⁷⁶ The priority was always expansion, but there were insufficient means to oversee the spiritual welfare of the converts. One solution was to train catechists who could supplement pastoral work by travelling to outlying villages to monitor the converts. Mellett describes the use of ‘baptising catechists’ in China and he resolved to adopt this strategy in Africa, by which he would ‘at least gain a harvest through the baptism of the dying’.⁷⁷ Money was a constant problem, the new mission territories were expected to be self-funding, but the missionaries had scarcely enough money for food. In 1935, a plea to Irish children to ‘ADOPT’ one of the ‘fine young lads’ being trained as catechists, threatened that they might otherwise have to be sent ‘back to the bush’.⁷⁸ The reliance on fundraising by schoolchildren was unsustainable and while the public face of the movement celebrated Irish success, there was unrest and dissent behind the façade. An old-fashioned authoritarianism, requiring obedience and unquestioning dedication, was ill-prepared for the challenges that vocations forged in a more modern Ireland entailed; unsurprisingly there was growing tension between mission and home administrations over missionary appointments, withdrawals, and delays. The personality clashes, inexperience, and overambitious targets that also undermined the effort were not aired publicly. The only rivalry that was acknowledged was the competition with the Protestant ‘sects’ for souls. Hostility between the Catholic and Protestant churches in Ireland was a notable feature of missionary discourse, with short stories describing the misery of ‘mixed marriages’ and ⁷³ McGettrick, Memoirs, p. 66. ⁷⁴ Kiggins, Maynooth, p. 118. ⁷⁵ Kiggins, Maynooth, p. 49. ⁷⁶ O’Shea, Kelly, p. 253. ⁷⁷ Mellett, If Any, p. 68. ⁷⁸ Revd S. Caraher, ‘Missionary Life: Catechist Training School, St Benedict’s Ogoja’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, May 1935, p. 8.

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articles referring to Protestantism with venom. This antipathy had cultural and historical roots in the long experience of Catholic oppression during the penal laws and the campaign of proselytization in the mid-nineteenth century. In accounts reminiscent of the 1850s, Protestantism is presented as equally pernicious as indigenous juju and superstition.⁷⁹ In missionary magazines, saving Africans from the darkness and degradation of paganism is interchangeable with saving them from the scourge of Protestantism or Islam; some missionaries seem more motivated by the struggle with rival missionaries than the conversion of ‘pagans’. McGrath claimed that in Anua, ‘non-Catholic missions have been crowded out of the immediate vicinity, and year by year their lines are being pushed further back’. He boasted that a non-Catholic hospital, 10 miles away, was now closing down due to the success of ‘our’ hospital,⁸⁰ vindicating the use of medicine as a missionary tool. The standard of mission buildings was used as a measure of status, so anti-Protestant invective was employed to raise funds for buildings that would reassure the Africans of the importance of the Church. Protestant churches were described as ‘edifices of cement and zinc that serve to propagate heresy’.⁸¹ In an effort to raise money to replace an inadequate church building, Kelly wrote: ‘How the heretics with their Cathedral-like places of worship not more than a few hundred yards away will point their fingers in derision!’⁸² Protestant missionaries were accused of spreading anti-Catholic propaganda, telling the Africans that at home ‘only the poor and the ignorant are Catholics’.⁸³

Education The mission schools were a core element of the missionary project and also another symbol of permanence and commitment. Shanahan’s biographer admitted that on the introduction of the Government Code of Education in 1926 there were too many teachers who: were really unfit to look after children by any academic standards . . . they were quite devoted in obeying, and many of them did excellent work from the religious standpoint. But there was no denying the fact that they lacked even minimum qualifications.⁸⁴ ⁷⁹ Fiona Bateman, ‘Defining the Heathen in Ireland and Africa: Two Similar Discourses a Century Apart’, Social Sciences and Missions, 21 (2008), pp. 73–96. ⁸⁰ Revd H. McGrath, ‘Anua Mission Station’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, June 1934, p. 11. ⁸¹ Revd J. Walsh, ‘Essene Parish—Past, Present and Future’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, June 1934, p. 13. ⁸² O’Shea, Kelly, pp. 73–4. ⁸³ Fr C. Meehan, ‘The Church of the Sacred Heart Calabar’, St Patrick’s Missionary Bulletin, March 1935, p. 8. ⁸⁴ Jordan, Shanahan, pp. 235–6.

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This suggests that high-quality education was not their main concern; schools were primarily a way to reach the children and, through them, to influence the parents and families—to deploy ‘little fellows’ in battle with parents and juju men⁸⁵ by ‘ “shov[ing] in a wedge” in the shape of a Catholic school in every unoccupied town and village possible’.⁸⁶ Children were viewed as ‘tiny apostles’ in pagan homes.⁸⁷ The strategy was to get the children before other influences, primarily the parents, had time ‘to play on them’,⁸⁸ and schools for boys were the priority. The eventual arrival of girls’ education was heralded as a force for change, but it was more ‘domestic’ than that offered to their male peers, including lessons in cooking, cleaning, sewing, laundry work, and hygiene. Ultimately, education for women was to form good Christian wives and mothers: ‘Clever boys . . . must be able to look forward to educated mates’.⁸⁹ While the use of schools to spread the missionary message was successful in Africa, especially in Nigeria, the strategy did not succeed as easily in China, where there was resistance to religious instruction being taught in schools.⁹⁰

A Changing World The fear that encroaching modernity would spoil the innocence of the ‘natives’ had lent urgency to appeals for support. Gradually, that same modernity was influencing attitudes towards the foreign missions at home. By the 1950s, while the Catholic Church still held a position of authority in Ireland, the idea that religious practice was ‘an index of the nation’s spiritual health’ was being challenged by contributors to Catholic publications such as The Furrow and Christus Rex. They anticipated that a superficial faith could not withstand the ‘secular ideas and culture, and the era of mass communications’ that was coming.⁹¹ Increasing exposure to alternative ideas and narratives was affecting faith in general, but this decade introduced particular questions of how Ireland should relate to other cultures and other races and, as African countries moved towards independence, it became apparent that the continent was more than simply a destination for Ireland’s largesse. A more progressive discourse suggested that the representations of ‘darkness’ should be revisited and that the African people had history, languages, oral culture, art, traditions, social organization, and religions. Resistance to the missionaries had been explained as a result of ignorance, satanic influence, or ⁸⁵ P. J. Whitney, An Irish Missionary in Central Africa (Dublin, 1922), p. 72. ⁸⁶ Whitney, An Irish Missionary, p. 45. ⁸⁷ Jordan, Shanahan, p. 31. ⁸⁸ Jordan, Shanahan, p. 224. ⁸⁹ Gavan Duffy, Let’s Go!, p. 417. ⁹⁰ Fischer, Maybe, p. 102. ⁹¹ Louise Fuller, ‘Church’s Loss of Authority Started in 1950s, Says Academic’, Irish Times, 18 August 2004.

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ingratitude; now it might be understood as a valiant defence of tradition. With the changing political environment, a new confidence in the value of indigenous culture was also emerging in those countries aspiring to independence, and some rejected the ‘European’ version of Christianity for a new indigenous form that incorporated aspects of pre-colonial history and native culture. Having persevered through two world wars, the missions were being impacted by international developments. In China, in 1949, the communists returned. The campaign to purge the churches of ‘imperialistic elements’ began in 1950, with church buildings destroyed and requisitioned; schools were taken over and Catholics were persecuted. As the situation grew increasingly hostile, Bishop Galvin dispensed the majority of local sisters from their vows, instructing them to lay aside their habits and veils. He advised his priests that there were to be ‘no heroics’ and that no one was to ‘invite martyrdom’,⁹² but he was determined to stay as long as possible so that the Catholics would be better prepared ‘to carry on, on their own’.⁹³ A personal campaign against Galvin culminated in his expulsion from China in 1952, and the end of the Columban Mission. By the end of 1960, twenty-three African countries were celebrating their recent independence. Missionaries continued to work there, but the nature of their work was gradually changing, supported by an increasing number of lay missionaries. A new generation of evangelists was interested in learning about the cultures they were encountering and, as Irish laity, were bemused or shocked by occasional accusations of imperialism. In his memoir Dúdhúchas (written in Irish), Pádraig Ó Máille (1931–2017) recounted being amused when he was described as ‘the expatriate, imperialistic principal’ in a local paper.⁹⁴ A member of St Patrick’s Missionary Society, he worked in Nigeria (from 1957 until events in Biafra forced an exodus) and later Malawi. His delight in learning about new African writing and drama, and traditional art forms, was tempered by an awareness of what had been lost in the process of conversion and western education. He admitted his own ‘barbarism’ at having repeatedly destroyed a pagan altar; describing his shame when he realized that it was an offering to the spirits of fertility, constructed by a woman who was desperate for a child.⁹⁵ His musings in Dúdhúchas represented the challenges faced by young missionaries. Motivated by a clear mission to save the pagans from darkness, experience revealed how crude this presentation had been and led some to a more reflexive reappraisal of their work. However, in critiquing elements of past and present practice, Ó Máille defended the missionary endeavour, arguing that the ‘old traditional life of Africa and the new life that came from the wide world outside’ settled side by side.⁹⁶

⁹² Robert T. Reilly, Christ’s Exile: Bishop Edward J. Galvin Co-founder of the Maynooth Mission to China (Dublin, 1958), p. 48. ⁹³ Reilly, Christ’s Exile, p. 49. ⁹⁴ Pádraig Ó Máille, Dúdhúchas (Baile Átha Cliath, 1972) p. 38. ⁹⁵ Ó Máille, Dúdhúchas, p. 76. ⁹⁶ Ó Máille, Dúdhúchas, pp. 152–3.

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While countries were gaining political independence, missionary organizations remained reluctant to hand over control to the young churches. Preoccupied with the practicalities of fundraising and organizational matters in the preceding decades, developments in missiology had been ignored and indigenous vocations were few. Kevin Doheny, CSSp, who went to Nigeria in 1954, admitted: ‘We ignored inculturation for the most part, and we were very wrong to do so’.⁹⁷ The emphasis on ‘home-supplied missions’ remained and there were still Irish bishops in many dioceses in Africa into the 1970s, and up to and after the 2000s.

The Growth of the Laity, Ecumenism, and Developments in Missiology Ireland opened her first embassy on the African continent in Lagos, in a newly independent Nigeria, in 1960. It formalized a changing relationship; African countries were now being cultivated as potential markets for Irish goods and services. Those countries were also exploring opportunities in Ireland, and an increasing number of African students were attending Irish universities with Irish governmental support.⁹⁸ At the same time, more Irish people were taking the opportunity to live and work in Africa. Organizations like Viatores Christi, which facilitated voluntary work in developing countries, sent its first members on assignment to Nigeria in 1960; the following year, members travelled to Peru, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Lay volunteers brought the benefit of their qualifications in nursing, teaching, engineering, and agriculture, and shared their expertise to improve living conditions in those countries. The focus was changing from evangelization to humanitarian engagement, but there was still a close relationship between the work of these Catholic volunteers and the spiritual activities of the religious missions. Commenting on the drop in vocations from the late 1950s onwards, Conway suggested that ‘the increasing availability of secular occupations with a prosocial orientation—in the public sector and in the teaching profession, for example—attracted young men away from the priesthood’.⁹⁹ Men and women could now experience the adventure of the missions without committing to a lifetime of exile and celibacy. Around the same time, the hierarchy was apprehensive about the imminent arrival of television in Ireland and the broadcast of foreign and immoral ideas. To resist this threat, Archbishop McQuaid determined that religious programming would have a presence on Irish television. His plan resulted in a series of ⁹⁷ Kevin Doheny, No Hands but Yours: Memoirs of a Missionary (Dublin, 1997), p. 53. ⁹⁸ In 1962/3 at least 626 students from African countries (of a total student population of 11,000) were studying in Ireland. Investment in Education: Report of the Survey Team appointed by the Minister of Education in October, 1962 (Dublin, 1962), p. 359. ⁹⁹ Brian Conway, ‘The Vanishing Catholic Priest’, Contexts, 10 (2011), p. 64.

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documentaries called Radharc directed by Fr Joseph Dunn, which was screened on RTÉ, the new Irish television station.¹⁰⁰ Missionary topics provided entertaining subject matter; a trip to Kenya in 1965 resulted in five programmes, and South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific regions featured in subsequent productions. The documentaries provided insight into contemporary missionary work; religious personnel were to the fore but the main focus was on humanitarian activity and liberation theology. Nightflight to Uli (1969) told the story of the CARITAS airlift of supplies to Biafra. In 1967 when the Biafra war broke out, Irish missionaries remained and took a central role in communicating the events internationally and in the provision of humanitarian aid. Media coverage of the conflict rekindled enthusiasm for missionary idealism. For diplomatic reasons, the missionaries and the Irish government downplayed the story, but there was a tumultuous welcome at Dublin airport when the last deported missionaries arrived home safely in February 1970. Member of Dáil Éireann Anthony Esmonde declared that missionaries had blazed a trail of glory and pronounced them ‘national heroes’.¹⁰¹ Ad Gentes, the Conciliar decree on missionary activity, described the Christian laity as ‘most important and therefore worthy of special attention’¹⁰² and reminded them of a vocation ‘to announce Christ to their non-Christian fellow’. Many of the emerging humanitarian initiatives were from faith-based organizations, whose knowledge of and interest in the developing world had originated in the foreign missions.¹⁰³ The aid organization Africa Concern, now called Concern Worldwide, was founded in early 1968 in anticipation of the famine developing in Biafra.¹⁰⁴ In 1973, the Irish Bishops founded Trócaire in response to poverty and injustice in the developing world,¹⁰⁵ followed a year later by the Irish government’s overseas aid programme. The choice of programme countries in the early years was influenced by the location of Irish missionaries, and the nascent nongovernmental development community they already constituted.¹⁰⁶ Vatican II also advocated ecumenical activity insofar ‘as religious conditions’ allowed and ‘unhealthy rivalry’ was discouraged. Cooperation between missionaries ¹⁰⁰ Joseph Dunn, No Tigers in Africa: Recollections and Reflections on 25 Years of Radharc (Dublin, 1968). ¹⁰¹ Irish Independent, 21 February 1970. ¹⁰² ‘Decree Ad Gentes on the Missionary Activity of the Church’ (1965), https://www.vatican.va/ archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decree_19651207_ad-gentes_en.html (accessed 2 March 2022). ¹⁰³ CAFOD was founded by a group of Catholic women who organized the first Family Fast Day in 1960, and subsequently registered as an official charity by the bishops two years later. ¹⁰⁴ Fr Raymond Kennedy, CSSp, was the source of the information. His brother and sister-in-law, John and Kay O’Loughlin Kennedy, spearheaded the movement. ¹⁰⁵ Trócaire is the Irish word for compassion. Other Irish non-governmental organizations (NGOs) include GOAL founded by journalist John O’Shea in 1977. ¹⁰⁶ Éamonn Casey and Helen O’Neill, ‘Irish Development NGOs and the Official Aid Programme of Ireland: A Special Relationship?’, in Paul Hoebink and Lau Schulpen (eds.), Private Development Aid in Europe: Foreign Aid between the Public and the Private Domain (Basingstoke, 2014).

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was a big change from what Hearne described as ‘the offering of our bigotry as well as our benevolence’.¹⁰⁷ In fact, despite the fractious relationship commonly enacted in the pages of missionary magazines, missionaries of different faiths often had friendly relationships, anticipating the growth of ecumenism.¹⁰⁸ The Irish Missionary Union, an umbrella body set up in 1970, represented another radical shift towards coordination and cooperation. A change in missionary training addressed the absence of serious missiology and new radical liberation theology began to influence the approach to missions. In 1974, Fr Bede McGregor, OP, was appointed to a new chair of mission studies in Maynooth and ‘courses in mission studies, languages and cultural studies for intending missionaries were provided, as well as in-service courses for priests, sisters and brothers home on leave’.¹⁰⁹ Until then, priests training for the foreign missions had typically received the same preparation as any parish seminarian, learning from manuals without any encouragement to ‘respond to, react to, or question the knowledge’.¹¹⁰ The National Mission Council was set up by the bishops in 1977 in response to Paul VI’s Ecclesiae Sanctae (1966), and two years later a National Mission Congress was held in Knock. Laudable though these advances were, the popular ‘idea’ of Africa that the discourse had established was hard to shift; the continent was still perceived as needy and looking to the developed world for aid and guidance. The decades of propaganda insistent on darkness and the evils of paganism were to have lasting effects.

New Perspectives and Questioning of the Missionary Project In 1984, Brian Hearne, CSSp, asked whether the missionary was an ‘endangered species’.¹¹¹ He suggested that it was a time of major transition, acknowledging the ‘widespread feeling that African culture and tradition has been ignored if not despised in the whole process of evangelisation’. He stated: ‘What is clear is that cultural, economic, and psychological paternalism has to be expunged from all missionary effort’.¹¹² Hearne (1939–96) worked as a missionary in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia, and was deeply influenced by the Second Vatican Council. He did not refrain from engaging in an interrogation of the missionary activity that was too often seen as beyond criticism, even daring to use the word ‘racism’ in his assessment.¹¹³

¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁹ ¹¹⁰ ¹¹¹ ¹¹² ¹¹³

Hearne, ‘Reverse Mission’, p. 282. ¹⁰⁸ Reilly, Christ’s Exile, p. 39. Louise Fuller, Irish Catholicism since 1950: The Undoing of a Culture (Dublin, 2002), p. 223. Fuller, Irish Catholicism, p. 84. Brian Hearne, ‘The Missionary: An Endangered Species?’, The Furrow, 35 (1984), pp 704–11. Hearne, ‘The Missionary’, p. 708. Brian Hearne, ‘Mission in East Africa’, The Furrow, 34 (1983), p. 33.

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Hearne suggested that Ireland was in need of ‘black missionaries from the third world, not to “convert” Ireland to the faith, but to open up Irish Catholicism (and Protestantism) to a more universal understanding of its faith—to “interculturation” ’.¹¹⁴ Crucially, he proposed that ‘mission’ should be a willingness to reach out and be open to learn from other cultures, and that ‘reverse mission’ should not imply failure (or shortage of vocations), but would address the weaknesses in the Irish Church and reinvigorate it.¹¹⁵ In 1985, Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich also anticipated that Dublin would soon be ‘missionary territory’ and that it would take priests from Africa to reconvert Irish people to their Catholic faith.¹¹⁶ It is unsurprising the Ó Fiaich’s comments were made ‘off the record’; the idea of ‘an outsider’ being welcomed to evangelize or ‘save’ the Irish seemed unlikely. Ironically, the same year that Ó Fiaich made his prediction, Bob Geldof, a former pupil of the Holy Ghost order in Blackrock, spearheaded Live Aid, appealing to the same old missionary sentiment to ‘save the world’. Ireland responded to that appeal, secure in the role of saviour rather than supplicant. From the early decades of the century, the foreign missions and the achievements of Irish missionaries had been emblematic of the Church’s strength. More than simply a project of religious expansionism, the missions became embedded in representations of Ireland and manifested in popular culture beyond the religious arena. By mid-century, popular support for the missions was beginning to wane due to growing secularization and an increasingly questioning population. Extensive changes in the 1970s re-imagined a more modern missionary project to incorporate greater lay involvement and embrace ‘international development’, promoting partnership rather than paternalism. By the end of the century the Irish Catholic Church’s reputation was being undermined by revelations of abuses of power, but the missions remained a positive story. The twentieth-century foreign missions are celebrated as having laid the foundations of Ireland’s modern aid programme, and the work of Irish missionaries is often invoked to stir national pride—despite memories of the propaganda that encouraged children to save pennies to buy ‘Black Babies’.¹¹⁷

Select Bibliography Fischer, Edward, Maybe a Second Spring: The Story of the Missionary Sisters of St. Columban in China (New York, 1983). ¹¹⁴ Hearne, ‘Mission in East Africa’, p. 34. ¹¹⁵ Hearne, ‘Reverse Mission’, p. 284. ¹¹⁶ See https://www.independent.ie/regionals/herald/news/cardinal-predicted-decline-of-the-church29075785.html (accessed 29 December 2021). ¹¹⁷ For example: ‘President Pays Tribute to Missionaries’ Selfless Work’, catholicireland. net/president-higgins-misean-cara/ (accessed 25 February 2022). Also, books such as Aidan Clerkin and Brendan Clerkin, A Road Less Travelled: Tales of the Irish Missionaries (Dublin, 2011); Joe Humphreys, God’s Entrepreneurs: How Irish Missionaries Tried to Change the World (Dublin, 2010).

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Hastings, Adrian, The Church in Africa (Oxford, 1994). Hogan, Edmund M., The Irish Missionary Movement: A Historical Survey, 1830–1980 (Dublin 1990). Kiggins, Thomas, Maynooth Mission to Africa: The Story of St Patrick’s, Kiltegan (Dublin, 1991). Linehan, Denis, ‘Irish Empire: Assembling the Geographical Imagination of Irish Missionaries in Africa’, Cultural Geographies, 21:3 (2014), pp. 429–47. O’Shea, Michael, Bishop Kelly of Western Nigeria (Cork, 2006). Purcell, Mary, To Africa With Love: The Biography of Mother Mary Martin, Foundress of the Medical Missionaries of Mary (Dublin, 1987). Smyth, Bernard T., The Chinese Batch: The Maynooth Mission to China 1911–1920 (Dublin 1994).

13 Women Religious, Charitable Ministries, and the Welfare State Carmen M. Mangion

The role of religious institutes for much of the twentieth century was aligned to creating and maintaining a Church body centred on Catholic devotions and the sacraments.¹ Religious institutes became dominant in the formation and enforcement of a pious and obedient, associational Catholic culture: religious sisters and brothers managed schools, hospitals, and welfare institutions, and organized sodalities and confraternities for young and old.² They were central to the socialization of the Catholic faith. The dynamic growth and spread of religious life, especially among women, was critical to the Catholic Church; by 1914, religious communities were well established in British towns and cities. A revived interest in the overseas missions led to the development of new congregations, as explored in Bateman’s Chapter 12 in this volume, that joined the landscape of twentieth-century religious life. Religious institutes followed the lead of the Holy See, whose own project of centralization and control included the crushing of modernism and the consolidation and codification of religious life via Conditae a Christo (1900), Normae (1901), and finally the 1917 code of canon law.³ Strengthened structures of internal governance were thought to better wage war against the lures of modernity, materialism, and communism. By the mid1940s the Holy See, concerned that religious life had become less attractive to modern youth, encouraged the removal of antiquated customs and advanced the cause for the further education of religious: the journey of aggiornamento had begun. By the Second Vatican Council, renewal was obligatory. Religious institutes re-examined all facets of religious life—for both female and male religious, this included participative governance, alternative ways of living community life, ¹ The author offers grateful thanks to Susan O’Brien, Maria Power, and Maria Patricia Williams for comments and feedback on her chapter. ² Canonically, there are two main forms of religious life: enclosed, contemplative nuns take solemn vows and live a life of prayer as part of a religious order; sisters, belonging to religious congregations, engage in active ministries such as education, nursing, and social welfare. Collectively, nuns and sisters are referred to as women religious (or religious) and are members of religious institutes. This chapter examines the changing ministries of religious sisters, rather than nuns. There is a need for similar research on enclosed religious life as nuns too rethought in more subtle ways their ministries. ³ See Pierce’s Chapter 16 on modernism in Volume IV. Carmen M. Mangion, Women Religious, Charitable Ministries, and the Welfare State In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0014

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and reframed understandings of celibacy.⁴ The more lengthy and long-lasting discussions, however, involved rethinking religious ministries: this required a revisioning of their corporate identities. Difficult decisions were made to modify, close, and embrace new ministries. Newer ministries took religious outside of the confines of Catholic environs, entangling them within a secular, social world. This chapter examines the post-war changing ministries of women religious in England, in large part because of the more developed historiography of female religious life in England (compared to the paucity of material on Scotland and Wales) but also to acknowledge the distinctive national contexts, educational frameworks, and medical and welfare systems.⁵ Men religious are regrettably absent from this chapter. They were smaller in number with fewer ministries that engaged directly with the Welfare State apparatus. Despite the numerous histories of male religious institutes, few address in detail the renewal experience for men religious as does James Sweeney’s sociological study on the Passionists.⁶ The historiographical framework of this chapter charts the journey of words from caritas to (religious) charity to (professional) philanthropy to voluntary action and the ‘third sector’. This chapter, as does the work of revisionist historians, complicates claims of secularization and the evaporation of the religious heritage of charity by directly addressing the interrelationship between Catholic religious ministries and the Welfare State. Religious were influenced from within and without the Catholic world, by Catholic understandings of caritas and social justice and by developments within the State and the voluntary sector around expanded, welfare safety-net provision. In examining the shift in women’s ministries, this chapter scrutinizes the relinquishment of institutional religious ministries, particular those relating to education and medical care, by exploring how existing ministries were reshaped and new ministries were established. These shifts were often a move from Catholic-centred, identity-laden, instrumental ‘fortress-church’ ministries to forms of service that acknowledged and engaged with those marginalized by society.

From Caritas to Voluntary Action The nineteenth century is often identified as a ‘golden age’ of philanthropy: the provision of education, medical, and welfare services were organized and supplied ⁴ Carmen M. Mangion, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age: Britain, 1945–90 (Manchester, 2020); James Clifton, ‘Celibacy and Religious Renewal’, The Way Supplement 21 (1974), pp. 27–38. ⁵ There is very little research on women religious in Wales and Scotland and what exists barely addresses the post-Vatican Council period, e.g. Josephine Egan, A Century of Service in Wales: The Story of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit 1902–2002 (Abergavenny, 2005), pp. 252–62. ⁶ James Sweeney, The New Religious Order: A Study of the Passionists in Britain and Ireland, 1945–1990 and the Option for the Poor (London, 1994), particularly ch. 5; Aidan Bellenger, Monastic Identities (Bath, 2014).

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by numerous charitable bodies. Women were at their epicentre though their range of action was often bounded by gendered norms. Faith remained at the heart of the charitable moment; Victorians saw Christianity as the ideal vehicle for providing ‘essential services and a moral training’ linking religion and the public good. Yet, by the early twentieth century, the sputtering of the Welfare State into existence suggested the concomitant decline of philanthropy. And perhaps more fatally, according to Frank Prochaska, the Victorian spirit of charity which married religious principles, community action, and associational culture was replaced by the secular and centralizing Welfare State led by State bureaucrats.⁷ Some welcomed its waning and the collective social action of the emerging Welfare State.⁸ Despite the shifting language of benevolence that signalled the distancing of caritas from its Christian underpinnings, religion’s continuity remained a thread to the re-enacting of philanthropy. Eve Colpus suggests religious women’s interwar philanthropy involved a ‘newly calibrated ideal of service that emphasized the mutuality of self-fulfilment and community development, not self-sacrifice or the neglect of the self ’.⁹ Caitríona Beaumont’s research on conservative, religious women’s groups suggest philanthropic action in a more quotidian setting and equally embedded in faith: they politicized their faith and Christianized their politics, directing their philanthropic efforts to ensure women benefited from the rights of equal citizenship bestowed by the universal franchise in 1928.¹⁰ But for many, philanthropy remained ‘yesterday’s solution’. William Beveridge’s attack on the five ‘giants’ (Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor, and Idleness) through State social security provision was for some the corrective response. His reforms, along with Education Acts, and the National Health Service Act (1946), formed the three pillars of the Welfare State and became not simply a set of economic policies but an ideology with the promise of care for its citizens from ‘cradle to grave’. Some have even suggested that the Welfare State, now enmeshed in national identity, became a secular, civil religion.¹¹ Yet, the Welfare State did not magically eliminate the five giants. The response to the subsequent ‘rediscovery of poverty’ was a re-invigorated philanthropy, retitled the voluntary sector. The Welfare State remained indebted to its religious antecedents, intellectually but also through the faith commitments of some of its key

⁷ Frank Prochaska, Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford, 2006), pp. 2–3, 154–5. See also Leen Van Molle (ed.), Charity and Social Welfare: The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Northern Europe, 1780–1920 (Leuven, 2017). ⁸ Barry Knight, Voluntary Action (London, 1993), p. 22. ⁹ Eve Colpus, ‘Women, Service and Self-Actualization in Inter-War Britain’, Past & Present, 238:1 (2018), p. 199. ¹⁰ Caitríona Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1928–64 (Manchester, 2013). ¹¹ Linda Woodhead, ‘Introduction’, in Linda Woodhead and Rebecca Catto (eds.), Religion and Change in Modern Britain (Abingdon, 2012), p. 10.

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architects.¹² From the 1950s, new voluntary organizations were formed: these were campaigning bodies whose focus was to critique and improve public policies, entities that aided and supported constituents navigating the statutory sector, and overseas development organizations. Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government (1979–90) cuts to welfare programmes created additional crises; calls for ‘Active Citizenship’ urged voluntarism to make up for the shortfall in social services. By the 1980s, partnerships between the voluntary sector and State and local authorities became commonplace.¹³ This turn to the voluntary sector was enacted again three decades later, repackaged by the Coalition government (2010–15) as the ‘Big Society’ and intended to balance their scaling back of the State. Missing from the rich seam of historiography on philanthropy is the immense Catholic network of charities, embedded in local, national, and international circles. This is even more surprising given Catholic philanthropy’s place in the ‘battle for souls’ in Victorian Britain.¹⁴ A Catholic understanding of caritas was distinctive as a sacramental act informed by the supernatural, motivated by divine inspiration rather than humanitarian aims, and linked to the salvation of benefactor and recipient. By the late nineteenth century, the understanding of caritas was being influenced by Catholic Social Teaching (CST) evolving from a series of papal documents addressing social, political, and economic issues.¹⁵ The family was at its heart, assuming the head of the family, not the State, would make decisions on education, medical care, and planning for the future. Thus, the introduction of the Welfare State created a dilemma for Catholics. The intent of the Beveridge report was cautiously welcomed by some of the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop of Westminster, Arthur Hinsley is said to have thought the ‘security to the aged and the unemployed . . . outweighed its less wholesome features’.¹⁶ Working-class Catholics were less tentative; they applauded the Welfare State as a safety net to the continued uncertainties of their lives.¹⁷ But, the detailed implementation of the Beveridge report was problematic; fervent proponents of CST saw the Welfare State as its antithesis. A fair wage or a family allowance paid by the employer would be more in accord to Catholic thought than State-distributed family allowances.¹⁸ New legislation relating to education, medical care, and social welfare was thought to deprive the head ¹² Woodhead, ‘Introduction’, p. 14. See also Phil Child, ‘Blacktown, Mass-Observation, and the Dynamics of Voluntary Action in Mid-Twentieth-Century England’, The Historical Journal, 63:3 (2020), pp. 754–76. ¹³ Marilyn Taylor, ‘Voluntary Action and the State’, in David Gladstone (ed.), British Social Welfare (London, 1995), pp. 216–18, 222. ¹⁴ See Ciarán McCabe’s Chapter 6 on Caritas in Volume IV in this series. ¹⁵ Anna Rowland, Towards a Politics of Communion (London, 2021). ¹⁶ John C. Heenan, Cardinal Hinsley (London, 1944), p. 171. ¹⁷ Jay P. Corrin, Catholic Progressives in England after Vatican II (South Bend, IN, 2013), pp. 54–5. ¹⁸ Joan E. Keating, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility’, Twentieth Century British History, 9:1 (1998), p. 91. Many linked the Welfare State to Hilaire Belloc’s influential The Servile State (London, 1912).

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of the family of his rights and responsibilities and the Catholic Church of their influence on the moral development of their flock. State incursions into matters of faith were closely monitored by Catholic commentators. Warnings of the ‘remorseless advance of state power’, welfare dependency as a threat to the autonomy of the family, and welfare utopianism—diminishing the significance of the religious impetus for caritas—were common critiques.¹⁹ Over time, the Catholic hierarchy came to accept the Welfare State as a necessary evil, though not without a series of political battles to maintain the infrastructure of Catholic schools and hospitals. Women religious were entrenched in this Catholic charitable and social world as providers of education, medical care, and social welfare in a distinctive vein which was intended to protect and reinforce the faith of the laity. The intent of religious congregations, however, was never to become charitable entities. Their governing documents outlined their primary aim—their own salvation and through their efforts, the salvation of others. Spiritual and evangelical aims guided their engagement in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. Though mostly remembered for their schools and hospitals, their informal works of mercy were as important to the local Church. As novices, young sisters would work with more experienced sisters visiting the aged, the sick, the struggling, and those in prisons, workhouses, and hospitals. Integrated into local economies, sisters carried in their large pockets food and medicine needed by some they visited. Sometimes acts of mercy were embodied in their labour—washing dishes or keeping children occupied allowing exhausted mothers brief moments of respite.²⁰ Sisters also embodied the local, watchful eye of the Church on the lookout for signs of immorality and chastising irregular church attendance. Some recall kindness in these corporal acts of mercy, others found them intrusive and judgemental. The relationship with those they served was complex, but through their ministries of education, medical care, and social welfare, religious institutes contributed to Catholic community, identity, and moral authority.

Letting Go Changes in the way religious life was lived were introduced in many religious institutes from the 1940s, but it was during the Second Vatican Council that religious were given permission to live in new, more radical, and experimental ways. The decree Perfectae Caritatis (Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life; 1965) spurred sisters into rethinking (amongst other things) their religious

¹⁹ Peter Coman, Catholics and the Welfare State (London, 1977), p. 46. ²⁰ Susan O’Brien, Leaving God for God: The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, 1847–2017 (London, 2017), pp. 191–7.

 ,  ,  

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ministries. Some religious institutes moved away from the institutionally based work that had become so intrinsic to their mission and identity to new works encouraged by ressourcement (a return to the sources), such as concerns about social justice, and a wish to serve the marginalized. Embedded in these decisions were also the practical issues associated with ageing sisters, complex structural shifts in the (professionalizing) education and health sector, and the increasing costs of running schools and hospitals. The two studies below examine the complex process of ‘letting go’ of two of the most significant forms of ministry: schools and hospitals.

Schools The explicit goal of the Catholic Church was that every Catholic child would be taught in a Catholic school by Catholic teachers.²¹ The core philosophy underpinning Catholic education was that religious faith was to be infused into all parts of the school curriculum. Noted educationalist Sister Mary Linscott explained the ‘most effective means’ of ‘moral education’ was ‘the constant, general formation that goes with Christian living’.²² The shortage of Catholic schools was a persistent concern communicated routinely in the Catholic press and in bishops’ pastorals. In 1936, Archbishop Hinsley wrote of the diocese of Westminster’s ‘Urgent Need of Catholic schools’ reporting that sixty-five parishes were without local schools and their 10,000 Catholic children needed rescuing from ‘grave and unnecessary dangers that beset their lives’.²³ This ‘urgent need’ was never fully met as the Catholic population in England swelled from 2.3 million in 1939 to four million in 1971.²⁴ One 1971 study of England and Wales reported only enough school places for two-thirds of Catholic children.²⁵ Women’s religious institutes had been responding to pleas for more schools since the nineteenth century. ‘Instructing the poor’ was a spiritual ‘work of mercy’, thus a charitable act and a religious duty taken up by numerous religious congregations. In 1937, three-quarters of the 175 female Catholic religious institutes managed and taught in a diverse range of schools, including free and fee-paying ²¹ George Andrew Beck, ‘To-day and To-morrow’, in George Andrew Beck (ed.), The English Catholics, 1850–1950 (London, 1950), p. 598. ²² Mary Linscott, Quiet Revolution: The Educational Experience of Blessed Julie Billiart and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (Glasgow, 1966), pp. 41, 294. With grateful thanks to Maria Patricia Williams for her comments and feedback on this section. ²³ Maurice Whitehead, ‘A View from the Bridge: The Catholic School’, in V. Alan McClelland and Michael Hodgetts (eds.), From without the Flaminian Gate: 150 Years of Roman Catholicism in England and Wales: 1850–2000 (London, 1999), pp. 227–8. ²⁴ In this volume, the Statistical Appendices by Kinnear, ‘Catholic Population Estimates’, tables A2.3 and A2.4. ²⁵ A. E. C. W. Spencer, The Future of Catholic Education in England and Wales (London, 1971), p. 31.

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schools, all-age parish schools, special education schools, industrial schools, and reformatories.²⁶ After 1944, they ran grammar and secondary modern schools and later comprehensive schools, academies, and sixth form colleges. They contributed significantly to the national infrastructure of Catholic education through their inexpensive labour which kept Catholic schools solvent, and also fundraised for (and sometimes funded) the building of schools when State aid was inadequate. In addition, they built and staffed eleven female teacher training colleges between 1850 and 1950, educating future generations of lay Catholic teachers.²⁷ Even with the financial advantages of employing female religious, the funding of Catholic schools remained a burden and the collective responsibility of each local Catholic community. It was an especially heavy charge for the smaller parishes in rural parts of England and Wales. The unrelenting efforts to provide Catholic education was in part because Catholic schools, along with the parish and home, was one of the three vectors of faith thought to cement Catholic faith and morality, and the local and the global Catholic Church into daily life. The home, with the family at its centre, is what Alana Harris has identified as the ‘domestic church’ and ‘site for religious formation’.²⁸ Bishops, clergy, and religious considered it under siege: reports of the family unit being swayed by materialism and leisure activities along with the prevalence of ‘mixed marriages’ were constantly recounted in the Catholic press.²⁹ The parish was the centre of religious and social life for many Catholics. Peter O’Brien recollected his childhood Catholicism as a yearly cycle of the quotidian that linked his family to his parish in suburban Nunhead in south London: weekly Sunday Mass, along with celebratory First Communions, confirmations, Christmas and Easter services, and May processions. These, he recalls, ‘satisfied my instincts of domestic peace’.³⁰ As a vector of faith, the parish could provide a complete religious and social environment though not everyone appreciated its potential intrusiveness. As the third vector of faith, the Catholic school became ideologically central to this world of Catholic belonging. Idealized as an extension of the home and parish, it was expected to encourage ‘bonding, solidarity and a sense of mutual obligation’.³¹

²⁶ Barbara Walsh, Roman Catholic Nuns in England and Wales 1800–1937: A Social History (Dublin, 2002), p. 172. ²⁷ Mary Eaton, ‘Mission into the Millennium’, in Mary Eaton, Jane Longmore, and Arthur Naylor (eds.), Commitment to Diversity: Catholics and Education in a Changing World (London, 2000), pp. 281–3. ²⁸ Alana Harris, Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945–1982 (Manchester, 2013), pp. 12, 106. ²⁹ See for example John FitzSimons, ‘Ministering to Growing Numbers’, The Tablet, 4 July 1953, p. 5. ³⁰ Peter O’Brien, Evacuation Stations: Memoir of a Boyhood in Wartime England (Woodstock, 2012), p. 30. ³¹ Bernadette O’Keeffe, ‘Reordering Perspectives in Catholic Schools’, in Michael P. Hornsby-Smith (ed.), Catholics in England 1950–2000 (London, 1999), p. 243.

 ,  ,  

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Given the Church’s concerns regarding the family, schools were seen as essential vehicle for immersion into and socialization into the faith. Archbishop Heenan writing in the Catholic Teachers Journal in 1963 suggested that the Catholic school compensated for inadequacies in the home.³² This claim was much disputed—but the money invested in Catholic education suggests the Church’s reliance on the Catholic school as a means of staving off secular influences.³³ Some questioned the effectiveness of the secondary school (with its geographical intake wider than the parish) as a vector of faith,³⁴ but Catholic boarding schools offered an often idealized, enclosed environment—an alternate ‘household of faith’ immersed in the sacraments and devotions. Former New Hall student Tessa Trappes-Lomax described her 1950s experiences as a ‘tight, self-contained cat’s cradle of a universe . . . the rest of the world vanished almost completely. Day-to-day School life was interwoven with age-old religious rhythms’.³⁵ Of course, Catholic school environments were not all so benign. Testimony to the British and Irish independent inquires on child abuse provide ample evidence of emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse in these settings.³⁶ Social class distinctions were embedded in the education sector in Britain. Feepaying schools like New Hall, built, managed, and taught by religious sisters, were often the choice of the better off middle classes. Writing in the 1950s, one educationalist made clear that the vocational aim of convent schools was to create ‘cultured’ women.³⁷ Along with a focus on music, dance, and languages was a long tradition of preparing students for public examinations for Oxford, local, and higher examinations.³⁸ Congregations such as the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Society of the Holy Child Jesus, and the Society of the Sacred Heart had a long tradition of preparing students for university exams and providing former students accommodation in Houses of Study in Oxford and Cambridge.³⁹ These same congregations, well-known for their elite convent boarding schools, also taught in voluntary-aided parish and secondary schools. Even here, parents were aware of subtle class distinctions. Novelist Hilary Mantel’s mother considered

³² John C. Heenan, ‘Point of View’, Catholic Teachers Journal, 6:3 (1963), pp. 8–9; ‘Correspondence’, Catholic Teachers Journal, 6:4 (1963), pp. 34–5. ³³ Michele Dowling, ‘Propagation of the Faith: St Mary’s College and the Training of Catholic Teachers, 1944–72’, in Eaton, Longmore, and Naylor (eds.), Commitment to Diversity, p. 171. ³⁴ Joan Brothers, Church and School: A Study of the Impact of Education on Religion (Liverpool, 1964), pp. 61–104, 145–7. ³⁵ Fishy Tales: Living Memories of New Hall 1930–2012 (Colchester, Essex, 2012), p.138. New Hall was managed by the Canonesses of the Holy Sepulchre. ³⁶ See Mary Daly and Marcus Pound’s Chapter 15 in this volume. ³⁷ W. J. Battersby, ‘Educational Work of the Religious Orders of Women: 1850–1950’, in Beck (ed.), The English Catholics, p. 343. ³⁸ Catholic Directories include numerous examples of convent-run secondary schooling promoting their tutoring for university exams. ³⁹ ‘Archives: Oxford and the work of SHCJ in Further Education’, https://www.shcj.org/ european/archives-oxford-and-the-work-of-shcj-in-further-education/ (accessed 19 September 2021).

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Manchester convent schools as ‘unfit establishments’ and sent her daughter to a Cheshire convent school where girls turned out ‘well-spoken, polite and poised’.⁴⁰ School reminiscences are subjective, offering a wide range of experiences. Former students of St Joseph’s in Bermondsey (1940s–1960s), in what was then a deprived, heavily Irish borough of south-east London, recollected the discipline of the sisters: ‘the nuns used to remind the class that they wanted to hear a pin drop’.⁴¹ Other students placed this discipline in the wider context of the times: ‘the last thing you would have thought about doing was to tell your parents you had been punished because your reward would have been another wallop for misbehaving at school’. Students also remembered fearing ‘Nitty Nora’, the regular nurse visitor and intimidating dinner ladies. Fond memories were evident too: ‘My earliest memories are of the kindness of the sisters . . . We were given malt and vitamins on a daily basis and our milk was placed in a crate . . . as tiny infants we were allowed to doze at our desks during a rest period just after lunch.’ Some sisters even rated as ‘favourite teachers’.⁴² Convent boarding school experiences were diverse as well, even the reminiscences of religious sisters offered some critique.⁴³ Sister interviewees often named sister teachers they found ‘warm and approachable’⁴⁴ but also acknowledged regular ‘humiliations’, perhaps not peculiar to convent schools, when the sister head teacher called out the marks by student in collective assemblies, from first in class to last in class.⁴⁵ One sister in discussing the two convent schools she had attended in the 1930s, remarked that she hated the first one, ‘I couldn’t get on’ and said of the second one ‘I simply loved it’.⁴⁶ Another sister recollected her elite convent school experience with ambivalence: I don’t think the Sisters were very interested in the academic side of school life, unless the parents put the pressure on them. It was much more on the Catholic, Catholicism and the moral and the good education. And I mean I can remember still . . . having a Sister say to me, ‘Well, of course the purpose of this school is the education of good wives and mothers’. That would have been in the early sixties and really, life had moved on by then.⁴⁷

⁴⁰ Hilary Mantel, Giving up the Ghost: A Memoir (London, 2003), pp. 130–3. ⁴¹ Alan F. Parkinson, Faith, Community and Education (London, 2012), p. 34. ⁴² Parkinson, Faith, Community and Education, pp. 44–6. ⁴³ Interviews used in this chapter came out of the ‘Changes in Religious Life Post 1945’ (2012–20) project which used a life history approach to ask open-ended questions about experiences of religious life. The testimonies I heard were personal and sometimes emotional, and some participants wished to remain anonymous, so all the oral narratives have been anonymized for consistency. Some interviewees have given permission to deposit their oral recordings into the British Library Life History collection. ⁴⁴ Interview with author dated 23 October 2014. ⁴⁵ Interview with author dated 12 February 2014. ⁴⁶ Interview with author dated 14 February 2014. ⁴⁷ Interview with author dated 12 February 2014.

 ,  ,  

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Convert Antonia Fraser in her published memoir recalls the 1940s at St Mary’s in Ascot, a fee-paying school run by the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where she was ‘extremely happy’ and writes of history teacher Mother Mercedes as ‘a teacher of genius and furthermore a teacher with a love of History that matched by own—except that she knew far more about it and in a far more disciplined fashion’.⁴⁸ She also remembered being given Antonia White’s Frost in May (1933) by her former Godolphin teacher as a warning of the perils of convent schooling. Instead of being disconcerted by the tightly controlled convent school world of rules and rituals where ‘every will must be broken completely and re-set’,⁴⁹ Fraser was enchanted by the convent schoolgirl’s life.⁵⁰ Former 1980s convent schoolgirl and literary theorist, Elizabeth Cullingford found herself in a ‘happy and empowering female community of my English convent’ but also suggests her positive experience reflected ‘money and class’.⁵¹ The dominance of women religious in the Catholic education sector was buttressed by the large number of women entering religious life. Studies have suggested that numbers of new entrants had been decreasing in European congregations since the 1930s.⁵² This, along with an exodus of sisters in the 1960s and 1970s, resulted in ageing and smaller congregations. The decline in religious (both male and female) teaching in Catholic schools was precipitous: from 5,857 in 1964 to 3,813 in 1974 to 582 in 1996.⁵³ As sisters retired from voluntary-aided parish schools, they were replaced by (university trained) lay teachers who increasingly took on significant administrative and management roles becoming head teachers and deputy heads. Younger sisters were often pushed into heavy responsibilities. One sister recollected being requested to apply for the headship of a Catholic voluntary-aided east London school in the late 1960s when she was in her early 30s. She explained: I was very young and inexperienced, I can assure you. But, I was a nun. . . . That carried weight with the board of governors and they wanted a nun to continue after a nun. I had done further studies as well in education as a young teacher, so my papers were, you know, good enough for that.⁵⁴

⁴⁸ Antonia Fraser, My History: A Memoir of Growing Up (London, 2015), pp. 172–3. ⁴⁹ Antonia White, Frost in May (London, [1933] 1978), p. 206. ⁵⁰ Fraser, My History, p. 172. Mother Mercedes studied mathematics, Latin and history at Royal Holloway College. ⁵¹ Elizabeth Cullingford, ‘ “Our Nuns Are Not a Nation”: Politicizing the Convent in Irish Literature and Film’, Éire-Ireland, 41:1–2 (2006), pp. 14, 34. ⁵² Mangion, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age, pp. 52–5; cf. Ireland as per Daly and Pound’s Chapter 15 in this volume. ⁵³ Statistics from Catholic Education Service reports cited in O’Keeffe, ‘Reordering Perspectives in Catholic Schools’, pp. 245–6. ⁵⁴ Interview with author dated 25 September 2018.

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Her story was not uncommon and suggests that for trustees and Catholic parents, the presence of a sister as head teacher was linked to the experience and articulation of the Church. There is considerable scope for further analysis of this transition from religious- to lay-led Catholic voluntary-aided parish schools. In independent, fee-paying schools managed by religious congregations, the departure from school ministries was not only about staffing, it was also a matter of financial precariousness. Staff salaries increased dramatically as sisters retired and were replaced by lay teachers needing living wages. Increasingly, concerns of the ‘inferiority’ of dilapidated buildings and outmoded equipment, along with increasing running costs led many fee-paying convent schools to transition their secondary provision, particularly after the 1944 Education Act, into voluntaryaided schools.⁵⁵ St Anne’s Convent School in Southampton, managed by the congregation of La Sainte Union became the first direct grant grammar school to ‘go comprehensive’.⁵⁶ The Congregation of the Daughters of the Holy Spirit closed their fee-paying Welsh convent schools, and were redeployed to the new Catholic secondary schools in the 1960s and 1970s.⁵⁷ Amalgamations were another option. In 1974, St Vincent’s School in Westminster (run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul) amalgamated with St Aloysius (run by the Faithful Companions of Jesus) to form Maria Fidelis Comprehensive School.⁵⁸ Such creative transformations were replicated in numerous religious institutes, both male and female, across Britain. Transitioning fee-paying convent schools to lay management was a fraught financial, administrative, and emotional process. Convent and school had historically been managed as one unit. One sister responsible for a convent school transition in the 1980s remembered opposition amongst her sisters: ‘the whole of religious life is bound up with there shall be no change, because things have been so static for so long. And it was resisting change of any sort.’ Convent schools were often closely intertwined into the congregation’s corporate identity. Another sister recalled being told: ‘And what is that going to do to the reputation of the [congregation]? And what does that say about what our predecessors gave their lives for?’ These were emotive discussions.⁵⁹ The management of expectations of all invested parties - diocese, sisters and parents - was a minefield that sisters negotiated, sometimes successfully, other times less so. Discussions about ministries were spurred on by the renewal process required by the Second Vatican Council and sisters opened out an extensive reflection process questioning if their existing ministries still met the original aims of their ⁵⁵ Battersby, ‘Educational Work’, pp. 361–2. ⁵⁶ LSU 100: 100 Years of La Sainte Union in Southampton (Southampton, 1980), p. 62. Grateful thanks to Susan O’Brien for alerting me to this reference. ⁵⁷ Egan, A Century of Service in Wales, pp. 254–5. ⁵⁸ O’Brien, Leaving God for God, pp. 388–9. ⁵⁹ Interview with author dated 12 February 2014.

 ,  ,  

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congregation.⁶⁰ Women had entered religious life to develop a relationship with God and to serve the needs of the Church —they did not enter to become teachers, nurses, or social workers. Some sisters identified professional demands and standards as hindering the spiritual aims of religious life. One sister recollected discussions with her peers asking: ‘how we could actually balance our life with our tasks as the school was becoming more and more professional and sort of allconsuming really . . . [W]as the school really compatible with that?’⁶¹ Bishops had always insisted that sisters were not civil servants, yet, in practice, government requirements enforced a professionalization and bureaucratization that some felt left little time for prayer and introspection. One sister recalled conversations in the 1990s with her cohort who had entered in the 1960s and 1970s: ‘the question we were asking ourselves was, do we want to continue to run independent and often boarding schools as a congregation that now has a much broader understanding of our Ignatian charism. Do we want to? And the second question is, can we?’⁶² Sisters questioned their mission as educators of the middle and upper classes with: ‘And then who were we educating and why, and what about the rest . . .’.⁶³ Educational ministries were not completely abandoned.⁶⁴ Sisters had a long history of being catechists and teaching religious education; many continued to do this work as ‘parish sisters’. Some experienced teaching sisters took on educative roles outside the classroom. After thirty years of teaching at primary, secondary, and boarding schools, one sister joined the East London Schools Funds (now School-Home Support) begun by Education Welfare Officer Bridget Cramp who identified the needs for pupil support outside the classroom. This sister recollected being drawn to the pastoral side of ‘school/home support’: So she [Cramp] put me working with one of their workers in a huge big comprehensive in the middle of Poplar. . . . And we visited flats, tenants, Somalis, Bangladeshis, Afro-Caribbeans, poor whites, etc, and all the time it was about getting the children back into school or working with the parents to see why they weren’t in school or why they weren’t achieving in school, whatever. . . . And I just loved it, absolutely loved it. . . . I could either find them or persuade them or talk to the families about why it was important for girls to come to school . . . .⁶⁵

The decision to relinquish or rethink educational ministries were influenced by very practical concerns: declining numbers and the ageing of their members, the

⁶⁰ Mangion, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age, pp. 202–7; O’Brien, Leaving God for God, pp. 335–42. ⁶¹ Interview with author dated 11 December 2013. ⁶² Interview with author dated 3 December 2013. ⁶³ Interview with author dated 11 December 2013. ⁶⁴ Mangion, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age, pp. 214–16. ⁶⁵ Interview with author dated 12 February 2014.

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financial precariousness of the schools they managed, and the increased professional demands and standards. These shifts were influenced from within and without the Catholic world, by developments in the education sector and the Church itself. A similar discernment process occurred in the reappraisal of healthcare ministries.

Hospitals Medical care also has a long history associated with caritas; up to the middle of the twentieth century the medical marketplace in Britain included voluntary hospitals, both general and specialist, which were some of Britain’s largest philanthropies. Funding was always a struggle, even more so when medical science and technology altered treatment from attentive care, minor operations, drugs, and poultices to increasingly complex surgeries and preventative treatments which required the specialist skills of pathologists, radiologists, and anaesthesiologists as well as doctors and nurses. At the introduction of the National Health Service Act (1946), State and voluntary hospitals were claimed as part of the national provision of healthcare introduced in 1948. Most voluntary hospitals acquiesced to this take-over. They were not inclined to negotiate with the State, aware that charitable benefactions could not fund the rebuilding and reprovisioning of hospitals damaged by the war and/or continuous updating of medical equipment and therapeutic regimes.⁶⁶ There is little research on twentieth-century Catholic medical provision in Britain, so the quality, quantity, and medical ethics of Catholic hospitals remain a lacunae, awaiting their historians. Women religious were a part of the voluntary medical marketplace from the nineteenth century running small hospitals, infirmaries, dispensaries, and providing healthcare in the home. In the first half of the twentieth century, religious congregations opened an estimated a hundred hospitals and allied institutions (convalescent and nursing homes, hospices, and other specialist provision).⁶⁷ The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, one of Britain’s largest female religious institutes, ran sixteen hospitals, sanitoria, hospices, clinics, and dispensaries in the first half of the twentieth century.⁶⁸ Some of the hospitals run by religious were private. Claremont Hospital (Sheffield), founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1921, opened as a thirty-bed nursing home with a surgical and medical ward. By 1959, it had been rebuilt to include an x-ray department and a maternity ward. The shortage of nursing Sisters of Mercy and

⁶⁶ F. K. Prochaska, Philanthropy and the Hospitals of London: The King’s Fund, 1897–1990 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 157–62. ⁶⁷ Basil Gingell, ‘Money Worries Beset Catholic Hospitals’, The Times, 15 July 1971, pp. 4, 10. ⁶⁸ O’Brien, Leaving God for God, calculated from appendix 1.

 ,  ,  

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the ‘changing climate of health care’ led to the sale of the then-sixty-bed private hospital in 1995.⁶⁹ The hands-on control of the sisters in the day-to-day workings in hospitals may have varied by the type of medical institution they ran. Their voices often remain hidden in annual reports and funding brochures; public reporting was often relayed in the voice of the governing board of the hospitals. In 1949, the board of management of the 150-bed Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth (St John’s Wood, London) included only two sisters, Sister Mary Justin and the unnamed Reverend Mother Prioress as an ex-officio member.⁷⁰ The nationalization of voluntary hospitals threatened the integrity and identity of Catholic hospitals. Bishops portrayed this threat as a moral battle identifying medical interventions such as contraception and abortion as ‘practices in the field of sexual and marital conduct incompatible with Catholic moral teaching’. Their successful negotiations on behalf of all Catholic hospitals exempted (‘disclaimed’) Catholic hospitals from the 1946 National Health Service Act and preserved their independence.⁷¹ A high cost was paid for this independence as hospital funding brochures and annual reports make clear. The governing body of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth explained with pride that rather than take ‘the line of least resistance’ by joining the National Health Service (NHS) and being ‘rid of all further financial anxiety’, the hospital had maintained its status as a Catholic hospital. However, it now desperately needed the financial support of its benefactors.⁷² Grants from the King Edward’s Hospital Fund, Hospital Saving Association, Metropolitan Hospital Sunday Fund, and the Hospital Saturday Fund that had routinely provided revenue streams for many Catholic hospitals disappeared. Marketing and publicity became a priority. New sources of funding were found but none were guaranteed revenue streams. The Daughters of Charity relied more heavily on sponsorships by employers, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and Ladies of Charity, religious institutes, and war pensions.⁷³ Another source of finance was contracting out beds to the Regional Boards of the NHS; the Hospital of St John and Elizabeth contracted out 50 per cent of the maternity beds to NHS patients, and sought and received the permission of the Charity Commissioners to convert some of their beds into paying beds.⁷⁴ By the 1930s, philanthropic giving to hospitals was in serious decline; and paying beds made up 13 per cent of the hospital income of both voluntary and State-run hospitals.⁷⁵

⁶⁹ Sr Brendan Murphy, History of Sisters of Mercy Sheffield 1883–2002 (Sheffield, 2002), pp. 25–30. ⁷⁰ Wellcome Collection, Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth annual report, 1949, pp. 4, 10. ⁷¹ Coman, Catholics and the Welfare State, pp. 40–1, 60–1. ⁷² ‘Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth’ (c.1948), unpaginated, Archives of the Union Sisters of Mercy, Great Britain (hereafter RSM Union), GB 1856/0/200/15/4. With grateful thanks to Archivist Jenny Smith who brought this to my attention. ⁷³ O’Brien, Leaving God for God, pp. 293–4. ⁷⁴ RSM Union, ‘Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth’. ⁷⁵ George Campbell Gosling, Payment and Philanthropy in British Healthcare, 1918–48 (Manchester, 2017), pp. 5–6.

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By the 1970s, Cardinal John Heenan speaking at a Catholic nursing seminar at St Mary’s College, Twickenham, indicated he was ‘not very optimistic about the future of private hospitals’ and emphasized the value of sister nurses working in State hospitals.⁷⁶ He reflected on the report from the recently commissioned Catholic Hospitals Committee which concluded that most hospitals had serious financial problems due to insecure contractual arrangements with the NHS and were relying more and more on private patients. Updating hospitals to modern standards was expensive. The committee disappointedly noted that ‘the existence of Catholic hospitals and training schools where Christian medical ethics were safeguarded had not influenced national policy to any demonstrable extent’.⁷⁷ Ireland and the United States, where female religious ran numerous Catholic hospitals, operated in very different circumstances as part of a commercial medical marketplace with a mix of paying and non-paying beds within the same hospital.⁷⁸ The question of how a Catholic charitable institution taking payments from patients fit into the model of caritas and the balancing of medical, welfare, and evangelization functions remains to be analysed. The sale, closure, or transfer of Catholic hospitals in England became commonplace from the 1970s. St Andrew’s Hospital in Dollis Hill (London) which opened in 1913 struggled financially for years. After a failed amalgamation with St John and St Elizabeth Hospital, the hospital was sold to Brent Council in 1972.⁷⁹ By the 1970s, the board of management of the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth decided that free treatment was no longer viable; they developed additional facilities for private patients and became a private Catholic hospital. In 1988, the Sisters of Mercy made the decision to remove themselves from the management of the hospital, referencing their desire to return to the ideals of their foundress and work with the poor and marginalized.⁸⁰ The Poor Servants of the Mother of God, in reviewing the status of Providence Free Hospital in north-west England in the late 1960s, noted the eventual discontinuance of contractual arrangements with the NHS and the ‘impossibility of expansion’ asking whether the ‘purpose of the Sisters at St. Helens has been fulfilled’. Sisters were reminded of the aims of the congregation: ‘the sanctification of its members, the perfection of the talents discovered in its candidates, for the glory of God and the extension of His Kingdom, their own self-support and whole-hearted dedication to the poor

⁷⁶ Erfgoedcentrum Nederlands Kloosterleven, Sint Agatha, Archiefinventaris Zusters van Liefde, Letter from Anne-Marie Newsham to Therese Mary [Barnett] dated 30 April 1970. ⁷⁷ Gingell, ‘Money Worries’, p. 4. ⁷⁸ Donnacha Seán Lucey and George Campbell Gosling, ‘Paying for Health: Comparative Perspectives on Patient Payment and Contributions for Hospital Provision in Ireland’, in Donnacha Seán Lucey and Virginia Crossman (eds.), Healthcare in Ireland and Britain from 1850–1970: Voluntary, Regional and Comparative Perspectives (London, 2014), pp. 93–4. ⁷⁹ ‘Lost Hospitals of London’, https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/standrewsdh.html (accessed 22 September 2021). ⁸⁰ Louis Marteau, Hospital of St. John and St. Elizabeth 1856–1992 (1992), pp. 108–9.

 ,  ,  

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and the unfortunate’. The decision was to rely on God’s providence.⁸¹ The hospital shut its doors in 1982.

Rethinking Charity As older institutional ministries were being let go, others were being re-imagined and new ministries, large and small, long term and short term, were being initiated. Several patterns have been identified: new ministries were often championed by individual sisters; ministries were more collaborative and aligned to local needs, and ministries often addressed the poverty of those on the margins of society. Sisters were influenced by theological thinking that foregrounded a ‘preferential option for the poor’, social justice, and liberation theology.⁸² In many religious institutes, ‘ministries from below’ were discussed in institute, province, or community-wide reassessment processes that took a hard look at old and new ministries in line with corporate mission and numerical diminishment. Houses closed and opened, and strategic plans were developed and sometimes redeveloped.⁸³ The following section examines how homelessness, advocacy, and protest became a core ministry for some religious institutes.⁸⁴ Homelessness has been and remains a key focus of State and philanthropic attention. In earlier times, homeless provision was often the responsibility of local and State bodies such as the parish and the Poor Law. Religious bodies responded to the inadequacies of this provision by creating charities such as alms-houses, refuges, and asylums that housed the homeless.⁸⁵ The 1948 National Assistance Act was a national response meant to eliminate the need for such private charitable action, but homelessness remained a pervasive issue. After the Second World War, it was often identified as an urban experience linked to the post-war shortage of housing and the dislocation of returning soldiers.⁸⁶ In the 1960s, Cathy Come Home—Ken Loach’s 1966 BBC documentary of a young woman and her two children’s journey to homelessness—exposed Cathy’s downhill spiral and suggested (to some) that the Welfare State was complicit in the expansion of homelessness. Shelter (1966), Crisis (1967), and St Mungo Community Housing Association (1969), initially faith-based initiatives, commenced in the aftermath of ⁸¹ Archives of the Generalate of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God, C.L.9, Anonymous history of the Providence Hospital possibly prepared for the SMG Special General Chapter, 1969, p. 61. Reproduced with permission. With grateful thanks to Archivist Paul Shaw who brought this to my attention. ⁸² Mangion, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age, pp. 225–7. ⁸³ See for example, O’Brien, Leaving God for God, pp. 354–71. ⁸⁴ Other ministries included initiatives engaging with refugees, sex trafficking, drug abuse, AIDS, ecumenism, and ecology all of which deserve sustained research. ⁸⁵ The Homeless Poor of London: Report of a Special Committee of The Charity Organisation Society (London, 1891), p. xiv. ⁸⁶ Jamie Harding, Post-War Homelessness Policy in the UK: Making and Implementation (Cham, 2020), p. 54.

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the uproar that Cathy Come Home elicited. Religious organizations have remained influential in the development and evolution of Britain’s homelessness services, often with the express encouragement of the Catholic hierarchy (e.g. the Cardinal Hume Centre in Westminster), with both large and small enterprises creating what one scholar has problematized as ‘spaces of care’.⁸⁷ Another ‘Cathy’ featured inside a 1970s Sisters of Mercy vocation brochure in a spread entitled ‘Homelessness . . . is to-day’s problem’.⁸⁸ This ‘Cathy’ and her children reflected the congregation’s awareness of the ‘modern’ problem of homelessness and emphasized their work at Providence Row in the East End of London. This was not a new ministry; the Sisters of Mercy had managed Providence Row in London from 1861 initially as a homeless shelter. When hostel usage declined, the property was redeveloped to provide temporary free housing for families who were later to be rehoused in permanent accommodation. The Providence Row Family Housing Association was formed in the 1970s as an adjunct to Providence Row Night Refuge and Home which built two blocks of flats to house twelve families. When nearby Mercy-run St Joseph’s school closed in 1972, the sisters redeveloped the property into additional flats and hostel rooms.⁸⁹ Expansion was funded by sales of property and charitable benefactions, but this was not enough to ensure the future of the work. Partnerships with the Charity and Housing Association and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets provided local government funding.⁹⁰ Responding initially to the need for temporary housing, by the 1980s the complex expanded services to address some of the causes of homelessness adding drop-in-centres, medical care, counselling, rehabilitation, and referral services. Providence Row collaborated with other agencies (and across ecumenical lines) such as St George’s Men’s Care unit, Spitalfields Crypt, the Salvation Army de-toxification Unit, and Bow Single Homeless Alcoholic Recovery Project in order to ‘play our part in helping men to recover from their addiction and return to more ordered life’.⁹¹ The sisters reacted to the changing ethnic makeup of the locale also. One Ursuline volunteer recalled teaching English: I remember having two books and two ladies, one each side of me, and they had a copy of the English there. In the middle was a picture and their own language was here, you know. You’d tell them ‘house’. They knew the name of this, I knew it by the name of a house and they knew it by the name of whatever they knew it by, you know, and different things like that, we used to teach them.⁹²

⁸⁷ Sarah Johnsen, Paul Cloke, and Jon May, ‘Transitory Spaces of Care: Serving Homeless People on the Street’, Health & Place, 11:4 (2005), pp. 323–36. ⁸⁸ ‘The Sisters of Mercy’ brochure (London, n.d.), unpaginated, RSM Union, NOT/200/5/13. ⁸⁹ Anon., ‘Providence Row’ (1989). With grateful thanks to Liz Pillar who provided this to the author. ⁹⁰ See ‘Nuns Pull Out of Providence Row Hostel’, Catholic Herald, 12 August 1983, p. 1. ⁹¹ Providence Row Annual Report (London, 1978), p. 6, RSM Union, GB1858/10/200/6/3. ⁹² Interview with author dated 7 August 2019.

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These services and collaborations addressed some of the interrelated causes and outcomes of poverty. By the 1980s, the sisters explained the problem of homelessness as structural and pertaining to poverty levels, unemployment, domestic violence, lack of affordable housing, and social policies. The sixties influx of homeless families was described as ‘caused by landlords refusing to let to (and in some instances actually evicting) couples with children, and also because of the very high rents asked for substandard accommodation’. By the 1980s, homelessness was blamed on unemployment or drug addiction; sisters defended those who used their services by refuting claims that they were ‘dossers’ or ‘lay abouts’ and noting they were ‘highly skilled and highly intelligent people, worn from going the rounds of Job Centres and agencies’.⁹³ By 1983, Providence Row was no longer managed by the sisters, though some Sisters of Mercy work there as volunteers and they still have an advisor role on the board of directors of the Providence Row Housing Association. Analogous initiatives by women religious (often working with ecumenical partners and trained lay professionals) from the 1980s can be found across the country—in Derby (Padley Day Centre),⁹⁴ Birmingham (Fireside Centre), and Grimsby (Harbour Place Day Centre). In the midst of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Passage (a Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul initiative founded in 1980 at Carlisle Place, by Westminster Cathedral) collaborated with Crisis in advocating for the homeless by pressing government and local councils to fund accommodation and educate tenants as to their rights if facing eviction.⁹⁵ These were often considered ‘new’ ministries, yet their novelty is open to question. The process of ressourcement allowed religious to evaluate and assess their ministerial histories. One teaching sister reflected on ‘going back to the original documents’ with ‘some congregations, in particular, there was a sense that what they were doing didn’t reflect what their original founder or foundress [intended] . . .’⁹⁶ She recalled writing a report in the 1980s for her religious superior ‘saying we actually need to have some experience of a poorer area and let’s try looking at that. I think that probably, I hadn’t realised how scary that would be for people, and so I put it back in my drawer for a couple of years.’⁹⁷ The discussions that followed were recollected by other sisters in the same community as ‘[a] great decision, talk, turmoil’⁹⁸ and ‘a very, very difficult time. You know, emotionally, physically, educationally’. Finally, the sisters in discerning what was at the heart of their ministries, reframed their educational ministry as ⁹³ Anon., ‘Providence Row’. ⁹⁴ Carmen M. Mangion, ‘Mercy Ministries’, https://ourladyofmercy.org.uk/archives/mercyministries/ (accessed 22 September 2021). ⁹⁵ The Passage blog, https://passage.org.uk/no-going-back-preventing-street-homelessness-thiswinter/ (accessed 22 September 2021). ⁹⁶ Interview with author dated 3 December 2013. ⁹⁷ Interview with author dated 3 December 2013. ⁹⁸ Interview with author dated 6 December 2013.

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caring for the people in England who were on the margins because they would be persecuted. So for me there is a theme in the work I do now, because I work with refugees now, and [Sister] is out there working with mental health. These are today’s people on the margin. And [Sister] is visiting people, she’s helping the disabled.⁹⁹

Unlike their predecessors, post-war religious were not averse to politicizing their homeless agenda. In 2005, a group (from 250 to a few thousand persons according to various press sources) of Catholic and Anglican female and male religious representing fifty-seven constituencies protested in front of the Westminster Houses of Parliament.¹⁰⁰ They were part of a global campaign ‘Make Poverty History’ which in Britain brought together the voluntary sector, faith groups, trade unions, and celebrities to increase awareness and to pressure Westminster politicians to take action on trade justice, ‘drop the debt’, and provide more and better aid. Sister Pat Robb, CJ, who had initiated the protest explained ‘so many Sisters have experience of poverty in this country and abroad and so we can speak with authority about it’. Robb’s own story of political awakening in working with survivors of the Rwandan genocide led her to acknowledge the injustice that motivated her advocacy: ‘Why? Why should the man who cleans the toilets not get enough to live off? The man who sweeps the streets not get enough to live off unless he does overtime? Why? Is that fair? He’s doing what he can, he’s contributing.’ Interviewed in her 80s, her work had transitioned from active charity to ‘activat[ing] others, I give talks and I go to schools and things like this, to try . . . to help people to see ways that they can do things, ways that they can turn charity into justice’.¹⁰¹ In these case studies, some of the homelessness enterprises intended a return to institution-building, but these were not sole Catholic enterprises. They incorporated professional and volunteer staffing, and partnerships with local government bodies and other organizations in the voluntary sector to ensure long-term viability. Scholars researching faith-based initiatives of this kind have questioned the religious distinctiveness of the work, suggesting that the ‘the outward expression of faith, has apparently diminished in many’.¹⁰² More research is needed to identify how such ‘religious distinctiveness’ is negotiated for the institutions founded by religious sisters. Significant too for religious has been addressing the structural causes of homelessness through advocacy, policy intervention, and

⁹⁹ Interview with author dated 6 December 2013. ¹⁰⁰ Tania Branagan, ‘Monks and Nuns Take Their Fight Against Poverty to Westminster’, The Guardian, 19 May 2005, https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/may/19/internationalaidand development.development (accessed 22 September 2021). ¹⁰¹ Author’s interview with Pat Robb, CJ, dated 30 January 2014. ¹⁰² Sarah Johnsen, ‘Where’s the “Faith” in “Faith-Based” Organisations? The Evolution and Practice of Faith-Based Homelessness Services in the UK’, Journal of Social Policy, 43 (2014), p. 419.

 ,  ,  

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public protest. The rethinking of mission and ministry in the midst of numerical diminishment has been one of the most surprising features of the evolution of female religious life.

Concluding Thoughts: Turning Charity into Justice? After the Second Vatican Council, congregations of women religious questioned the viability of their institutional ministries. These shifts were influenced from within and without the Catholic world by developments in the education and healthcare sector and within the Church itself. What were once ventures that had at their essence caritas and evangelization were now embedded in the Welfare State apparatus. Ressourcement and the Council decree, Perfectae Caritatis, the persuasiveness of social justice and liberation theology, along with the practical considerations of declining numbers, the financial precariousness of running large institutions, and the increasing professional demands led many religious institutes to rethink their religious ministries. Redirecting their focus from charity to justice spurred some religious institutes to move away from the institutionally based work in favour of serving those stigmatized, ostracized, or underserved by the Welfare State. The work of (rarely full-habit-wearing) sisters today is perhaps less visible and is certainly more varied, but it fits more closely to their renewed religious identity—they work in the parishes, offering catechesis; or give spiritual direction; or work in social justice ministries. The move was a significant one, one that allowed them to leave structured ministries with regulated State oversight, to embrace the flexibility of ministries that offered aid to those marginalized by society. Their concerns often became broader than charity. They worked within a social justice framework contemplating the need for systemic change and remediation, moving away from the more paternalistic and preventative characteristics of charity. Their collaborations with other secular entities lobbying the State for ‘justice’ and change has made them a more influential force.

Select Bibliography Beck, George Andrew (ed.), The English Catholics, 1850–1950 (London, 1950). Coman, Peter, Catholics and the Welfare State (London, 1977). Keating, Joan, ‘Faith and Community Threatened? Roman Catholic Responses to the Welfare State, Materialism and Social Mobility, 1945–62’, Twentieth Century British History, 9 (1998), pp. 86–108. Mangion, Carmen M., Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age: Britain, 1945–90 (Manchester, 2020).

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O’Brien, Susan, Leaving God for God: The Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul in Britain, 1847–2017 (London, 2017). Prochaska, Frank, Christianity and Social Service in Modern Britain: The Disinherited Spirit (Oxford, 2006). Woodhead, Linda and Rebecca Catto (eds.), Religion and Change in Modern Britain (Abingdon, 2012).

14 Migration, Migrant Chaplaincy, and Multi-Ethnic Britain Breda Gray and Louise Ryan

When they come to write the history of twentieth century English Catholicism, ‘Kilburn Cathedral’ will merit a chapter all of its own. In its 1960s heyday, Sacred Heart, Quex Road . . . in north-west London . . . boasted the largest congregation of any church in the country. There were thirteen Masses on a Sunday for the 13,000 who queued to worship . . . For hundreds of thousands of Irish émigrés, Sacred Heart, in what was then known as County Kilburn, provided a home away from home . . . Fewer than twenty per cent of those who [now] attend, however, are ethnically Irish, and they are an ageing group . . . Those who fill the pews at Quex Road are from every corner of the globe . . . There are currently fify-eight nationalities in the parish and 38 languages spoken.¹ The story of migrant or ‘ethnic’ chaplaincies is central to understanding the Catholic Church in Britain as it evolves and becomes increasingly diverse through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Based on the theological concept of life itself as migration or pilgrimage, the Church provides pastoral and social care to migrants via a transnational infrastructure of ‘migrant chaplaincies’.² Despite the significance of these chaplaincies, they have received little historical attention, especially in the post-conciliar ‘era of migration’. Therefore, this chapter adopts an empirically based sociological approach to migrant

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the Irish Research Council (IRC) and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales. ¹ Peter Stanford, ‘150th Anniversary of the “Kilburn Cathedral” ’, Oblate Communications, 21 March, 2015. ² Daniel G. Goody, ‘Migration: A Theological Vision’, in Jennifer B. Saunders, Elena FiddianQasmiyeh, and Susanna Snyder (eds.), Intersections of Religion and Migration (New York, 2016), pp. 225–40.

Breda Gray and Louise Ryan, Migration, Migrant Chaplaincy, and Multi-Ethnic Britain In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0015

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chaplaincy bringing together recent research on the Irish in Britain³ and other ethnic chaplaincies.⁴ Analysis of these migrant chaplains highlights the entanglement of chaplaincy work with secular welfare State histories, migration policies, and pluralization within the Church. As the most religious region in Britain, London is significant in chaplaincy efforts to integrate newcomers and is the focus of most discussion in this chapter.⁵ The chapter begins with a brief overview of immigration and demographic changes in Church membership in Britain. This is followed by an overview of the Irish chaplaincy in Britain, and then proceeds to consider the increasingly diverse profile and pastoral focus of ethnic chaplaincies as the Church comes to terms with itself in a diverse and multi-ethnic context and responds to the harshening conditions of twenty-first-century migration.

Immigration and Demographic Change During the nineteenth century and right up to the 1950s, the Irish were the main source of migrant labour in Britain.⁶ The nearly five million Irish who migrated to Britain between 1852 and 1911 were officially defined as internal movers within the United Kingdom.⁷ Unrestricted movement continued after Independence and the creation of a UK border in Ireland, through the ‘Common Travel Area’ arrangements. Despite the demographic dynamics of decolonization, including British post-war labour recruitment drives in south Asia and the Caribbean, the Irish remained the largest immigrant group in 1961 and were still the largest foreign-born group in 2001.⁸ However, by the time of 2011 Census, the Irish were overtaken by Poles, Indians, Pakistanis, and Romanians who contributed to the diversification of Church membership in Britain.⁹

³ See Breda Gray and Ria O’Sullivan Lago, ‘Migrant Chaplains: Mediators of Catholic Church Transnationalism’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 19:2 (2011), pp. 93–109; Breda Gray, ‘The Politics of Migration, Church, and State: A Case Study of the Catholic Church in Ireland’, International Migration Review, 50:2 (2016), pp. 315–51; Breda Gray, ‘Making Migration a Public Issue: The “Network-Making Power” of the Irish Catholic Church’, in Mary Gilmartin and Allen White (eds.), Ireland and Migration (Manchester, 2013) pp. 55–79. ⁴ Louise Ryan, ‘Building Bridges to Parishes: The Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Role of Ethnic Chaplains’, in Dominic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal (eds.), Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism (London, 2016), pp. 291–315. ⁵ Paul Bickley and Nathan Mladin, Theos Report: Religious London. Faith in a Global City (London, 2020). ⁶ Bronwen Walter, Outsiders Inside: Whiteness, Place and Irish Women (London, 2001). ⁷ Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘A Note on Nineteenth-century Irish Emigration Statistics’, Population Studies, 29:1 (1975), pp. 143–9. ⁸ Bronwen Walter, ‘The Irish Community—Diversity, Disadvantage and Discrimination’. Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain Paper, 18 June 1999. ⁹ Ciara Kenny, ‘Britain’s Shrinking, Ageing Irish Population’, The Irish Times, 9 March 2019.

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From the end of the Second World War through to the beginning of the twenty-first century, diverse migration flows have resulted in eight million people, or 14 per cent of the population of England and Wales, belonging to ethnic minority groups.¹⁰ The population of cities like London and Birmingham have been described as ‘super-diverse’.¹¹ This ethnic diversification was also apparent within the Catholic Church in Britain, and to a much lesser extent since the mid1990s in Ireland,¹² often making visible, at a local level, the global nature of the Church.¹³ In Britain there has been a proliferation of immigration controls from the 1990s through to the 2010s.¹⁴ Although the policy of ‘hostile environment’ is associated with Theresa May during her time as home secretary (2010–16), in fact, there was an increasingly punitive policy towards migrants and refugees from the 1990s under the New Labour government.¹⁵ Analysing the intensified anti-immigration discourses into the twenty-first century, Wemyss et al. point to an ‘intensification and growing hegemony of everyday/everywhere discriminatory bordering technology’ that threatens to undermine the vision of a multicultural London.¹⁶ This immigration regime has consequences for the Catholic Church throughout the UK and Ireland, and for the work of ethnic chaplains in particular. Moreover, the coincidence of public welfare cut backs and the diversification of the Church is potentially opening up new spaces for ministry and service in areas related to welfare and migrant integration. Before turning to a discussion of the specific chaplaincies, we briefly contextualize their role in the Church’s social teaching on the pastoral care of migrants from the early twentieth century. The Church has a long history of engaging with migrants, especially throughout the twentieth century.¹⁷ Its teachings are summarized by the Vatican’s ‘Letter to Episcopal Conferences—Church and Human Mobility’ (1978) which reasserts the responsibility of the receiving Church to speak out about migrant rights with ‘the pastoral collaboration of the laity’. As well as emphasizing the role of migrant chaplains and pastoral workers, Pope John Paul II’s post-synodal Apostolic

¹⁰ Population Estimates, Office for National Statistics, August 2020, https://www.ethnicity-factsfigures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-ofengland-and-wales/latest (accessed 6 January 2022). ¹¹ Steven Vertovec, ‘Super-Diversity and Its Implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30:6 (2007), pp. 1024–54. ¹² Gray and O’Sullivan Lago, ‘Migrant Chaplains’. ¹³ Pasura and Bivand Erdal (eds.), Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism, pp. 291–315. ¹⁴ Lucy Mayblin, Impoverishment and Asylum: Social Policy as Slow Violence (London, 2019). ¹⁵ Yuval-Davis, Nira, Georgie Wemyss, and Kathryn Cassidy, Bordering (London, 2019). ¹⁶ Georgie Wemyss, Nira Yuval-Davis, and Kathryn Cassidy, ‘ “Beauty and the Beast”: Everyday Bordering and “Sham Marriage” Discourse’, Political Geography, 66 (2018), pp.159–60. ¹⁷ Isacco Turina, ‘Centralized Globalization: The Holy See and Human Mobility since World War II’, Critical Research on Religion, 3:2 (2015), p. 191; Ezio Marchetto, CS, ‘The Catholic Church and the Phenomenon of Migration: An Overview’, CMS Occasional Paper 10 (New York, 1989).

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Exhortation, No. 103, Ecclesia in Europa (2003), insists on engagement with public authorities to protect migrant rights. The idea of the migrant as a resource rather than a problem continues in the Dicastery Instruction Erga Migrantes Caritas Christi (2004)¹⁸ which details the roles of churches of origin and those ‘chaplains/missionaries for migrants’ designated to act as ‘a bridge, linking the community of migrants to the host community’.¹⁹ More attention is paid to migrants of eastern rites whose integration is to be supported by receiving and sending Episcopal Conferences and hierarchies.²⁰ Pope Francis’s papacy has advanced Church teaching on migration by locating it within globalized capitalism and what he calls ‘a globalisation of indifference’.²¹ To counter this, he calls for Church, State, and media to work together in ‘welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating’ migrants.²² In the following sections we consider how Catholic teaching on migration manifests on the ground, starting with the Irish chaplaincy.

The Irish Chaplaincy Scheme This section considers the work of the Irish chaplaincy from its highpoint in welfare development throughout the 1960s–70s and justice campaigns in subsequent decades, to the questioning of its role in the 1980s–90s, its laicization, and finally its restructuring at the turn of the twenty-first century. Discussion of migrant welfare between the episcopacies in Britain and Ireland was prompted by concerns about the faith and moral welfare of Irish women migrants from the 1930s onwards.²³ This led Archbishop McQuaid to set up the Catholic Social Welfare Bureau (CSWB) in Dublin in 1942 and the Emigrant Chaplaincy scheme in Britain in 1957. In addition, both hierarchies facilitated the establishment of Irish Centres in urban areas of large Irish settlement. Although separate initiatives, there was considerable overlap between the chaplaincy and the Irish Centres, but it is the chaplaincy that is the focus of discussion here.²⁴ The Emigrant Chaplaincy was launched in 1957 when nine Columban priests arrived in England to work with those deemed difficult to integrate into existing

¹⁸ The Irish Episcopal Council for Immigrants, What Catholic Social Teachings Tells Us about Migration—Parish Resource (Maynooth, Co Kildare, n.d.). ¹⁹ Pontifical Council, Erga Migrantes, II, Art. 4: 1; and III p. 77. ²⁰ Pontifical Council, Erga Migrantes, V: Art. 19. ²¹ Pope Francis, ‘Apostolic Exhortation’, Evangelii Gaudium (26 November 2013); and Pope Francis, ‘Mass Homily’, Visit to Lampedusa (8 July 2013). ²² Pope Francis, Message on 104th World Day of Migrants and Refugees (14 January 2018). ²³ Henrietta Ewart, ‘Caring for Migrants: Policy Responses to Irish Migration to England, 1940–1972’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Warwick, 2012). ²⁴ Gerry Harrison, The Scattering: A History of the London Irish Centre (London, 2004); Fr Kieran O’Shea, The Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy Scheme in Britain 1957–82 (Dublin, 1985).

,  , - 

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parish structures.²⁵ These priests worked as ‘camp chaplains’ on construction sites and ‘hotel chaplains’ in the hospitality industry.²⁶ Parish chaplaincies were added following agreement by both hierarchies in 1958.²⁷ Motorway chaplaincies, a Mission to the Travelling People and Gypsies in Birmingham, and a chaplaincy for Irish-speaking migrants in Huddersfield followed.²⁸ On temporary loan to the Church in England, priest chaplains were managed by the local diocesan bishops but responsible to the Irish Episcopal Commission for Emigrants (IECE).²⁹ The Irish chaplaincy can be distinguished from most others by its size (in its early stages), and its strong welfare role beyond parish structures.³⁰ Many postwar Irish immigrants described encountering signs stating ‘No blacks, no dogs, no Irish’, especially when seeking accommodation.³¹ Although central to the post-war economy, migrant workers were linked with social problems and discriminated against by building societies and local authorities in the funding and allocation of housing. The only accommodation available to ‘many single men, especially those from India, Pakistan and Ireland’ was the ‘lodging house’.³² The chaplaincy therefore acted to tackle these housing and welfare issues. Fr Eamonn Casey saw support with housing and welfare as the best means of sustaining faith.³³ To this end, he worked closely with banks and migrants in Slough to establish a parish savings and housing scheme, launched the London-based Marian Employment Agency, and fostered ‘emigrant bureaux’ in parishes across Ireland as referral points for these agencies in the early 1960s.³⁴ Fr Eamonn subsequently became national director of the Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS)—established initially by laywomen Maisie Ward and Molly Walsh. Under his directorship, CHAS, grew to sixty-three parish-based offices countrywide,³⁵ and many of these were run by Irish chaplains. With others, Fr Eamonn established the national housing organization Shelter in 1966, to be followed by Shelter’s Housing Aid Society (Shac) in 1969. The aim of Shac was ‘to raise

²⁵ Ewart, ‘Caring for Migrants’, p. 89. Mary E. Daly (ed) ‘Arrangements for the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales’, Irish Manuscripts Commission (Dublin, 2012). ²⁶ Patricia Kennedy, Welcoming the Stranger: Irish Migrant Welfare in Britain Since 1957 (Dublin, 2015), p. 71. ²⁷ Kennedy, Welcoming the Stranger. ²⁸ Kennedy, Welcoming the Stranger. ²⁹ Ewart, ‘Caring for Migrants’, p. 89. ³⁰ Invitations to nuns to participate in this IRC study were turned down. Anecdotally, this is linked to negative publicity about institutional abuse. ³¹ John Corbally, ‘The Othered Irish: Shades of Difference in Post-War Britain, 1948–71’, Contemporary European History, 24:1 (2015), p. 113; Ryan et al., ‘Analysing Migrants’ Ageing in Place as Embodied Practices of Embedding through Time: “Kilburn Is Not Kilburn Any More” ’, Population, Space and Place, 27:3 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2420 ³² Robert Moore, ‘Forty Four Years of Debate: The Impact of Race, Community and Conflict’, Sociological Research Online, 16:3 (2011), pp. 194–201. ³³ Fr Eamonn Casey, ‘The Pastoral on Emigration’, The Furrow, 18:5 (1967), pp. 245–56. ³⁴ Ewart, ‘Caring for Migrants’, p. 32. ³⁵ Mildred Nevile, ‘The Changing Nature of Catholic Organizations’, in Michael P. Hornsby-Smith (ed.), Catholics in England 1950–2000 (London, 1999), pp. 99–121.

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awareness and fundraise for housing associations and housing aid centres’.³⁶ The director of CHAS was the only Catholic on the archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Priority Areas, which published the influential report Faith in the City (1985) and CHAS continued to develop interdenominational housing initiatives throughout the 1990s.³⁷ Through these initiatives the Irish chaplaincy became a mainstreamed actor in British welfare and helped shape the provisions of the 1977 Housing (Homeless Persons) Act.³⁸ Fr Paul Byrne was publicly recognized for this work by an appointment to the board of the Housing Corporation (now Homes England) and awarded an OBE in 1976.³⁹ The chaplaincy’s work on housing continued via its co-founding of Cara Housing Association in 1984. So, while the institutional Church focused mainly on ‘religious practice, [and] the maintenance of the Catholic community and sexual morality’,⁴⁰ the chaplaincy championed the interests of working-class migrants. Rather than being replaced by a secular rights-based welfare State, or co-opted by State welfare objectives, the chaplaincy engaged with State and civil society agencies to pursue its distinct goals. However, by the 1990s, the government’s contracting out policy turned civil society organizations into key service providers and mainstreamed faith-based organizations, such as the chaplaincy, as ‘partners’ in provisioning.⁴¹ If the chaplaincy was mainstreamed via its work on welfare and housing, its response to the Northern Ireland Troubles and miscarriages of justices ruffled feathers within the Irish hierarchy and British society. Following the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) after the Birmingham pub bombing in 1974, the Irish in Britain became a ‘suspect community’ in Britain.⁴² The effects of the legislation and subsequent miscarriages of justice in misidentification of the terrorist perpetrators, were taken up by the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB. His standing in addressing British government ministers and the judiciary during the 1980s proved significant.⁴³ In 1985, the IECE responded by establishing the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas (ICPO) to provide pastoral support to Irish prisoners and their families. An appeal by Sr Sarah Clarke, an Irish religious long involved in supporting Irish prisoners in England, ³⁶ Nevile, ‘The Changing Nature of Catholic Organizations’, p. 118; and O’Shea, The Irish Emigrant Chaplaincy, p. 45. ³⁷ Nevile, ‘The Changing Nature of Catholic Organizations’, p. 109; Michael Fogarty, ‘Catholics and Public Policy’, in Hornsby-Smith (ed.), Catholics in England, pp. 122–38. ³⁸ Nick Raynsford, ‘Obituary Fr Paul Byrne’, The Guardian, 9 April 2019. ³⁹ A Shelter report in 2000 stated that ‘almost a quarter of those who use homeless day centres in London are Irish and single’ and called for recognition of the Irish as an ‘ethnic group’—‘One in Ten Homeless Are Irish’, RTÉ News, 25 May, 2000. ⁴⁰ Nevile, ‘The Changing Nature of Catholic Organizations’, p. 101. ⁴¹ Fr Gerry French, ‘The Irish Chaplaincy in Britain Today’, The Furrow, 49:4 (1998), p. 245. ⁴² Paddy Hillyard, Suspect Community: People’s Experience of the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in Britain (London, 1993). ⁴³ Peter Stanford, ‘Basil Hume’s Long Fight for the Truth’ The Tablet, 9 June 2016.

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at the IECE Conference in 1983 helped to get this organization over the line. Although initially constituted separately, the ICPO became part of the chaplaincy in the early 2000s.⁴⁴ In the late 1980s, the ICPO’s organizational campaign on miscarriage of justice cases (Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, and Maguire Seven) gained the united support of the Church in Ireland, England and Wales, and Scotland.⁴⁵ Since the 2000s, the focus of ICPO’s work has shifted to supporting the disproportionate numbers of Irish Travellers in British prisons and addressing challenges arising from the privatization of the prison system.⁴⁶

Waning Church Authority, Laicization, and Restructuring of the Chaplaincy The authority of the chaplaincy and its welfare approach came under pressure in the 1980s.⁴⁷ One management committee member suggests that although ‘well intentioned’, it ‘could have done a lot more to up-skill people to . . . actually reduce their dependency on the organisations’.⁴⁸ This interviewee, Mary, noted that issues like abortion ‘were rarely touched on’, so alternative groups ‘were almost set up in opposition’ to the Church. These include the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group formed in 1981, the London Irish Women’s Centre founded in 1982 as an alternative feminist space to the London Irish Centre, and Women against Fundamentalism (WAF) which came together in 1989 after the Rushdie Affair to highlight the gender and racialized politics of fundamentalism across different religions, including Catholicism.⁴⁹ In the late 1990s, the chaplaincy’s authority was also undermined by Irish Church abuse scandals. Thirty per cent of those interviewed by the Commission Inquiry into Child Abuse were resident in England and had little trust in Church support services.⁵⁰ The Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (ICAP), already established in London in the 1990s, was awarded the Irish

⁴⁴ Interview Fr Gerry McFlynn with Breda Gray, 2020. All interviews conducted by Gray are held in her personal collection unless stated otherwise. ⁴⁵ Margaret M. Scull, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998 (Oxford: 2019), pp. 135–6. Fr Joe (Birmingham Irish Centre) was also a campaign leader and worked to get the Birmingham’s St Patrick’s Parade restored in 1996 after twenty-two years. ⁴⁶ Fr Gerry McFlynn, ‘The Importance of a Pastoral Outreach to Prisoners Overseas’, ICPO 30th Anniversary Conference Address, 1 December 2015, https://www.icpo.ie/wp-content/uploads/2015/ 12/Fr-Gerry-McFlynn-.pdf (accessed 6 January 2022). ⁴⁷ Harrison, The Scattering, pp. 156, 171. ⁴⁸ Interview with Breda Gray, 2015. ⁴⁹ Michelle Deignan, Breaking Ground—The Story of the London Irish Women’s Centre, Toy Factory Films (2013); Ann Rossiter, Ireland’s Hidden Diaspora: The ‘Abortion Trail’ and the Making of a London-Irish Underground, 1980–2000 (London 2009); Breda Gray, ‘From “Ethnicity” to “Diaspora”: 1980s Emigration and “Multicultural” London’, in Andrew Bielenberg (ed.), The Irish Diaspora (Essex, 2000), pp. 65–88. ⁵⁰ Ewart, ‘Caring for Migrants’.

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government contract to provide counselling services to abuse survivors in Britain. Its founding director, a former nun, resisted offers of Church funding and attempts by the chaplaincy to incorporate ICAP.⁵¹ However, ICAP did avail itself of the former chaplaincy building provided free of charge by Westminster diocese between 1998 and 2006. The recent restructuring and laicization of the chaplaincy came about due to a combination of factors, including the fall in vocations in Ireland and the introduction by the Irish government of its Emigrant Support Programme.⁵² The first lay director, Philomena Cullen, was appointed to the chaplaincy in 2008. According to a priest working with the chaplaincy at the time (Fr Paul), ‘letters starting coming in all from the bishops, from the right wing, saying you can’t appoint this woman, she’s a feminist theologian and they hesitated about it’.⁵³ While the chaplaincy is now a relatively small player within the international chaplaincy of the Church in England and Wales, another pastoral supporter Fr Jerry emphasizes the difficulties in establishing Irish cultural ‘difference’ as the Church attempts to raise ‘awareness about people from different backgrounds’.⁵⁴ For most of the twentieth century, Irish governments took the view that the welfare of Irish emigrants was more effectively addressed by the Catholic Church than the State.⁵⁵ However, the coincidence of a joint IECE, ICPO, and chaplaincy report on the needs of emigrants and the Good Friday Agreement created the conditions for change.⁵⁶ The government set up a ‘Task Force on Policy regarding Emigrants’ in 2002 which included Fr Paul in his capacity as director of the IECE (and former migrant chaplain in Britain). Although the task force recommendations were slow in coming, both Fr Paul, and his successor as IECE director, Fr Alan, claim that their lobbying put the Emigrant Support Programme (originally launched in 2005) at the centre of the Irish government’s diaspora policy.⁵⁷ The transfer of responsibility from Church to State is clear in the manner in which Eddie, the chaplaincy’s third lay director, depicts the chaplaincy in 2020: ‘We are a small charity with not a very high income. About two-thirds of our funding is from the Irish Government’s Emigrant Support Programme and we receive some from the Irish Episcopal Council for Emigrants and from one or two trust funds’.⁵⁸

⁵¹ Interview with Breda Gray, 2020; French, ‘The Irish Chaplaincy in Britain Today’, pp. 245–7. ⁵² Ian Linden, ‘Social Justice in Historical Perspective’, in Hornsby-Smith (ed.), Catholics in England, pp. 138–57. ⁵³ Interview with Breda Gray, 2015. ⁵⁴ Interview with Breda Gray, 2020. ⁵⁵ Enda Delaney, Demography, State and Society (Liverpool, 2000) pp. 258–9. ⁵⁶ Brian Harvey, Emigration and Services for Emigrants: Towards a Strategic Plan (Dublin, 1999). ⁵⁷ Interview (Fr Paul) with Breda Gray, 2008; and with Ria O’Sullivan Lago 2010. Interview (Fr Alan) with Breda Gray, 2008, accessible within the ‘Interviews with Migrant Chaplains Archive’, Glucksman Library, University of Limerick. Breda Gray, ‘The Network State’ and Diaspora ‘Netizen’ Members’, Éire/Ireland, 47(1&2)(2012), pp. 244–70. ⁵⁸ Interview with Breda Gray, 2020.

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This funding enables the chaplaincy to employ nine paid staff (seven full-time and two part-time) and eighteen volunteers. Although the post-war welfare State potentially replaced a long tradition of Church responsibility for social welfare, the work of the Irish chaplaincy demonstrates the ongoing entanglement of the Church with both the British and Irish States in social provision. This Chaplaincy’s multi-agency collaboration in the development of housing initiatives was supported by a concurrent faith-related and secular determination to address inadequate housing and welfare. The effect is a melding of religious and secular values to produce new forms of praxis that accommodate both Church and State agencies and agendas.⁵⁹ However, as Church authority declined and vocations fell in the latter decades of the twentieth century, the laicization of the chaplaincy was inevitable and, given its remit, perhaps desirable. Ironically, this might lead to a greater emphasis on its faith-based contribution.⁶⁰ Furthermore, the combination of increasing migration globally, increasingly harsh immigration policies, welfare State retrenchment, and relatively scarce migrant chaplaincy resources represent huge challenges at a time when Church membership has never been so diverse.

Ethnic Chaplains in a Diversified Church Over the last fifty years, the Church has been mindful of the social impact of changing immigration regimes: Through a long and constant process . . . Britain has become irreversibly a multiracial, multi-cultural society. Any new nationality law should state as a matter of principle that our national identity is multi-racial, thereby avoiding any potentially racialist conception of national identity which could lead to racial discrimination in the law or its interpretation.⁶¹

While many of the economic, welfare, housing, and social issues experienced by the Irish remain salient for recently arrived migrants, these problems are exacerbated by racism and an increasingly hostile immigration regime. For example, many ethnic chaplains discussed restrictions around entitlements to marry.⁶² Migrants are often shocked to discover that they cannot get married in a Catholic Church without first informing the local registrar and due to changes in immigration policies, there is a direct link between registrars and the Home

⁵⁹ Woodhead, ‘Introduction’. ⁶⁰ Interview, chaplaincy director, Eddie, 2020. ⁶¹ Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales, statement in relation to the 1981 Nationality Bill, cited in Zipfel, ‘The Catholic Church and Race Relations’, p. 12. ⁶² Ryan, ‘Building Bridges to Parishes’.

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Office. Marriage, especially when it involves a non-UK citizen, has long been an area of immigration scrutiny and control. However, in the last decade or so, associated with the Home Office policy of ‘hostile environment’, this process of scrutiny has intensified. As Wemyss and her co-authors have argued, these policies have transformed marriage, especially when involving ‘racialized migrants’ from a ‘celebration to a security interrogation’.⁶³ Along with other social actors, the role of priests has also been shaped by specific aspects of recent immigration legislation through processes that have been described as ‘everyday bordering’.⁶⁴ Within sociological and ethnographic work undertaken by the authors, several chaplains discussed this problem at length. For example, Fr Ephraim, the Eritrean chaplain, said that there are many asylum seekers among his community and their insecure status affects the whole spectrum of their lives, and especially regarding matrimony: ‘We cannot marry people unless they have papers. They may not have any documents and they want to live a sacramental life, but there is nothing I can do for them’.⁶⁵ The genuine distress for clergy negotiating these bordering obligations has been noted in other studies.⁶⁶ Some migrants have tried to find ways around this obstacle. The Tamil chaplain, Fr Eugene, says that ‘some of our people have gone for an Anglican marriage and then I have afterwards con-validated those marriages. We are here to help them in any way we can’.⁶⁷ However, that avenue was also closed in 2015.⁶⁸ Beyond marriage, other migration-related challenges confront ethnic chaplaincies in the twenty-first century. The French-speaking chaplaincy, which runs a refugee centre in central London, observed that many asylum seekers have insecure status and, hence, reduced access to services: ‘schools don’t want to take them in, health centres don’t want them; there are real issues around the care of those individuals’.⁶⁹ Undocumented migrants and those with limited English language are vulnerable to exploitation and economic hardship—for, as a Chinese chaplain describing the ‘sad situation’ involving exploitation, unfair pay, lack of access to healthcare said: ‘if you are not legal, you are non-existent’. While the specificity of being ‘not legal’ raises unique challenges, it is also apparent that there are continuities with earlier generations of migrants.⁷⁰ Like the Irish in the past, many migrants continue to turn to faith leaders for social support and ⁶³ Wemyss, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, p. 151. ⁶⁴ Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy, Bordering. ⁶⁵ All quotes by ethnic chaplains are taken from Louise Ryan, Panos Hatziprokopiou and Adriana Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. Report commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales and completed by the Social Policy Research Centre (London, 2009). ⁶⁶ Wemyss, ‘Beauty and the Beast’, p. 157. ⁶⁷ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁶⁸ Wemyss, ‘Beauty and the Beast’. ⁶⁹ Fr Martin, from the French-language chaplaincy—Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁷⁰ Louise Ryan, ‘Exploring Religion as a Bright and Blurry Boundary: Irish Migrants Negotiating Religious Identity in Britain’, in D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary J. Hickman (eds.), Women and Irish Diaspora Identities: Theories, Concepts and New Perspectives (Manchester, 2016), pp. 55–71.

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advice in unfamiliar and difficult situations. Moreover, language may be an additional challenge, as many recent waves of migrants do not speak English: ‘not a single word of English, that’s why some people come all the way from Newcastle, Manchester, Leeds, York, Birmingham, they phone me up “Father, can I come to confession”.’⁷¹ Several chaplains highlighted the severe economic problems facing many migrant communities and the responsibility of the Church to address the conditions of these people. The Latin American chaplaincy, for example, raised concerned about undocumented migrants whose children are likely to have insecure status and face multiple challenges growing up in Britain. While the Irish chaplaincy addressed key social issues such as housing in the 1960s–1980s, becoming instrumental in shaping mainstream service provision, most of the ethnic chaplaincies today are individual priests without the time, support, or financial means to address deep-rooted socio-economic problems. Their work is therefore intensely local, pastoral, and piecemeal. There are also emerging questions, given the multiethnic nature of the Church today, whether the spiritual and cultural needs of migrants should be most appropriately recognized and supported within existing structures (or through these nationally focused chaplaincies).

Bridges to Integration As noted earlier, Vatican thinking on migration and integration has changed over time. At the heart of the matter is the question of whether migrants should be assimilated into the local parish communities or encouraged to maintain their separate ethnic and linguistic identities, and distinct religious ceremonies and rites. The role of ethnic chaplaincies within the Catholic Church exemplifies these dilemmas.⁷² Through the twentieth century, the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics in many British cities meant that ‘Irish’ parishes (such as Sacred Heart Church on Quex Road, Kilburn) over time became ‘mainstream’ parishes. By contrast, the increasing diversity of recent waves of Catholic migrants has raised particular questions about how the needs of these linguistically and culturally diverse migrants should be addressed within multi-ethnic parishes.⁷³ Ethnic chaplains themselves agree that their role is to facilitate the integration of migrants into local parishes. For example, Fr Ed (Chinese chaplain) said: ‘The key role of the chaplaincy is help my people to integrate into the local church’, and Fr Austin agreed, noting that ‘the job of the chaplain is to be a bridge’ to integrate

⁷¹ Chinese chaplain from Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁷² Ryan, ‘Building Bridges to Parishes’; Gray and O’Sullivan Lago, ‘Migrant Chaplains’. ⁷³ Ryan, ‘Buildin Bridges to Parishes’; Zipfel, ‘The Catholic Church and Race Relations’.

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migrants into local parishes.⁷⁴ For some migrant communities, language is a barrier to engaging in local parishes. The Latin American chaplain argued that ‘English’ parishes need ‘to open up and welcome our people’ but this required an acknowledgement of linguistic diversity. Of course, in several churches Masses are held in different languages but there is a risk that separating parishioners by language group may undermine the integration of newcomers into parish life.⁷⁵ Instead, Fr Jesus called for a more integrated approach to celebrating linguistic diversity.⁷⁶ Rather than simply incorporating newcomers into existing ways of doing things, many clergy felt that there is a need to celebrate the culture, energy, and diverse liturgical traditions they bring to parish life. This means opening up discussion about how things are done, at local parish level, and how things could be done differently, so that in this way the experiences for all parishioners could be enriched. Thus, integration has to be seen as a two-way process.⁷⁷ Clearly, there are churches that work hard to be inclusive and open to different traditions. For example, Harris’s ethnographic study of St Antony’s in east London, reveals a place of encounter where migrants of different ethnicities and faith traditions come together with local, white parishioners to worship at the shrine of St Antony every Tuesday night. But, as Harris shows, these are often parallel forms of devotional worship rather than signalling a truly multi-ethnic unity within the parish.⁷⁸ Aspirations for integration raise questions about the extent to which different needs can be met within local parishes. As an African chaplain explained: ‘We have special pastoral needs which cannot be met by our parishes’, for example, burial rites and the tradition of having an open casket. In some churches, according to this deacon, open caskets are not allowed. Several ethnic chaplains expressed concern that if cultural celebrations were not accommodated within Catholic churches, migrants would turn Pentecostal churches instead.⁷⁹ As many ethnic chaplains highlighted, migrant groups were often the largest and fastest growing sections of the Catholic Church in some parts of the country. Thus, if ethnic groups absented themselves from local parishes there would be few parishioners left in some churches.

⁷⁴ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁷⁵ Susan B. Reynolds and Andrew D. Reynolds, ‘The Integration of Hispanic Parishioners in US Catholic Parishes with Hispanic Ministry: Results from a National Survey’, Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 46:4 (2018), pp. 355–71. ⁷⁶ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁷⁷ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁷⁸ Alana Harris, ‘ “They Just Dig St Antony, He’s Right Up Their Street, Religious Wise”: Transnational Flows and Inter-Religious Encounters in an East London Parish’, in Pasura and Bivand Erdal, Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism, pp. 95–120. ⁷⁹ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’.

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The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has made some efforts to address racism and include African and black Catholics within parishes since the 1970s when it established a Race Relations Committee and supported the establishment of the lay and black-led Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ) in 1984. CARJ’s 1990 Black Catholic Charter recommended anti-racist training for all in positions of authority, challenging white, European structures as the Christian norm, protesting the power of the parish priest, and calling for active participation in the liturgy and parish life, noting ‘we are the Church’. The bishops welcomed this charter and made CARJ an agency of the Bishops’ Conference in 2002. However, CARJ returned to its independent status in 2017 when the bishops declared that ‘[s]upporting and integrating migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and victims of human trafficking’ was a key Church priority and pointed to ‘the presence of more than 60 ethnic chaplains in London [as] testimony to that’.⁸⁰ The bishops’ statement ‘Mission of the Church to Migrants in England and Wales’ (2008) called for elements of ‘diverse cultures [to be incorporated] into the parish liturgy . . . with care and attention’, including the incorporation of other languages.⁸¹ Nonetheless, some migrants do not feel included in local parishes and instead turn to Pentecostal churches which they see as more exciting, more invigorating, and closer to the type of exuberant liturgical celebration they are used to. The question of institutional racism in the Church was the focus of CARJ’s Annual General Meeting in 2020.⁸² While many chaplains suggested that music, dancing, and overall vibrancy underpinned the appeal of Pentecostalism, there may be more complex explanations for why Catholic migrants might drift towards these new churches.⁸³ Pentecostal churches may offer members opportunities to counter the anonymity, marginality, and exclusion they face within the power-geometry of (post-colonial) national regimes,⁸⁴ reinforced within ‘establishment’ churches. In other words, migration may transform the meaning and significance of religious worship, especially in contexts of socio-economic disadvantage and discrimination.⁸⁵ Therefore, simply adding more vibrant music into Sunday Masses is not addressing the fundamental challenges faced by migrants or seeking to create structures to empower them to feel active participants in local Catholic parishes. ⁸⁰ Paul Donovan and Ruth Gledhill ‘Catholic Racial Justice Association Gains Independence from Church’ The Tablet, 17 November 2017. ⁸¹ Donovan and Gledhill ‘Catholic Racial Justice Association’. ⁸² CARJ Annual Report, 31 March 2021, https://www.carj.org.uk/2021/11/04/carj-annual-generalmeeting-papers-for-the-meeting/ ⁸³ Leslie Fesenmyer, ‘Bringing the Kingdom to the City: Mission as Placemaking Practice amongst Kenyan Pentecostals in London’, City & Society, 31:1 (2019), pp. 34–54. ⁸⁴ David Garbin, ‘The Visibility and Invisibility of Migrant Faith in the City: Diaspora Religion and the Politics of Emplacement of Afro-Christian churches’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39:5 (2013), p. 692. ⁸⁵ Nazneed Ahmed, Jane Garnett, Ben Gidley, Alana Harris, and Michael Keith, ‘Shifting Markers of Identity in East London’s Diasporic Religious Spaces’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39:2 (2016), pp. 223–42.

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Nonetheless, even accommodating the particular liturgical and music traditions of one ethnic group may result in other, older parishioners, who may also have a migrant background, feeling alienated. As a recent lay director of the Irish chaplaincy observed: I used to live in Camberwell and the parish there was very Irish but now it’s a Nigerian priest and he’s attracting a Nigerian congregation so the elderly Irish there are either sitting in the back pews or not coming at all . . . [they are experiencing] spiritual alienation because they don’t have the home that they used to.⁸⁶

Despite the Church’s goal of integrating migrant groups into local parishes, there was also a shared view among the ethnic chaplains that they had a role in preserving distinctive traditions and celebrations for the next generation. The Vietnamese chaplain, for example, spoke about the different levels of integration for different generations and indicated that although the second generation, British-born Vietnamese tend to speak English fluently, they still attend Vietnamese Mass on Sundays to celebrate their cultural roots. Furthermore, some chaplains were concerned about protecting the specific rites of their ethnic group. The Chaldean chaplain said ‘I feel angry when I see my people losing their culture . . . They flee from Iraq but now here they are physically safe, good health, but they are afraid for the second generation’—that they will lose their identity.⁸⁷ Conflicts around the world trigger population displacement and underline the wider geo-political backdrops against which chaplaincies are operating. In a similar way to the Northern Irish Troubles, in earlier decades, these political conflicts raise specific challenges for migrants and consequently for the chaplains who serve them. Eritreans are another group with recent experiences of displacement caused by war. Moreover, like the Iraqi Chaldeans, Eritreans practice a different rite (Gheez Rite). While, many also wish to preserve their distinct traditions, their chaplain was confident that this could be done while also integrating into local parishes. ‘They go to the Latin rite Mass every week, but for big celebrations like Christmas, Easter, Lent, the Assumption of our Lady, they like to have their own rite. Also for weddings, baptisms, they also prefer to have those in their own rite’.⁸⁸ However, the extent to which different rites, their distinctive traditions, can be blended into Latin rite parishes cannot be taken for granted. Several challenges were highlighted by the Chaldean chaplain: ‘sometimes we have a bad experience, especially with Catholic schools—the local priest may force the parents to go to the Latin ⁸⁶ Interview with Breda Gray, 2014. ⁸⁷ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’. ⁸⁸ Ryan, Hatziprokopiou, and Castro-Ayala, ‘Ethnic and Linguistic Chaplains’.

,  , - 

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Rite masses.’ Thus despite the Church’s formal commitment to welcome and respect those from other rite traditions, it is apparent that practical challenges remain in relation to how this is managed at local, parish level.

Conclusion As discussed in this chapter, the conditions of migration and the response of migrant chaplaincies have changed greatly since the 1950s. The work of migrant or ethnic chaplains is informed by the Catholic principle of solidarity, and a longer tradition of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) which assumes the fundamental oneness of humanity. This position challenges the realities of migration as marked by national boundaries and barriers to citizenship. However, it is because this oneness of humanity is seen as enriched by cultural diversity that migrant chaplaincies are tasked with the sometimes conflicting tasks of simultaneously fostering cultural traditions and promoting integration. The chaplaincies also facilitate the Church’s work on informing public debate on migration.⁸⁹ Thus, migrant chaplains translate CST on migration via direct work with migrants and engagement with secular State and supra-State policies. Although limited by available resources, they seek to address State gaps in migrant care and protection, and advocate on their behalf in States of origin and receiving States.⁹⁰ The Church’s transnational infrastructure of pastoral care for migrants is nowhere more evident than in global cities such as London. In such city contexts, mobile Church actors such as ethnic chaplains and migrants themselves contribute to the cross-border circulation of religious rites and rituals, artefacts, communities, social action agendas, and identity politics. The discussion of diverse migrant chaplaincies in this chapter highlights internal diversity within and across national churches and how the Church is shaped by mobilities and shifting demographies. The experiences of these chaplains provide insights into the intersections between Church and migration across borders and in this specific locale. It is clear that migration has always shaped Catholic communities in London,⁹¹ though recent decades have seen increased diversification. Recent scholarship on the ‘postsecular city’ and ‘enlightened city’ is optimistic about how new ethical and political imperatives arising from exclusion and racism might help decolonize modern western State and Church assumptions by opening up assumptions about

⁸⁹ Benjamin Schewl, ‘The Moral Relevance of Borders: Transcendence and the Ethics of Migration’, in Saunders, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, and Snyder (eds.), Intersections of Religion and Migration, pp. 241–57. ⁹⁰ Breda Gray and Peggy Levitt, ‘Social Welfare versus Transnational Social Protection Regimes: The Changing Roles of Church and State’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48:11 (2022), pp. 2721–39, 10.1080/1369183X.2020.1733946 ⁹¹ For a discussion of Italian Catholics in London, see Anne-Marie Fortier, ‘Re-Membering Places and the Performance of Belonging(s)’, Theory, Culture & Society, 16:2 (1999), pp. 41–64.

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borders and about a universal human condition in order to cultivate respect for context-specific negotiations of faith, belonging, and welfare.⁹² However, in the absence of the kind of resources available to the Irish chaplaincy in the midtwentieth century it is difficult to see how ethnic chaplains within the Church today can impact such an agenda. Many of the chaplains interviewed see chaplaincies as having a role to play in meeting the ongoing spiritual needs of migrants and their children, but also highlight a wider role for chaplaincies in meeting some of the social needs of their parishioners as migrants and ethnic minorities in British society. As several chaplains emphasized, they have an understanding of these particular challenges that may go beyond the knowledge and experience of local parish priests. The issues mentioned here indicate the diversity of needs within migrant communities. While not all migrants experience precarious and vulnerable conditions, it is important to be mindful of the needs of the most disadvantaged groups and ensure that those needs are acknowledged by the Church. Alongside the increasing diversity of migrants, and the multiplicity of immigration regulations, it is apparent that the Church has to confront an ever more complex and challenging landscape especially as the immigration regime changes again in the context of Brexit,⁹³ plunging many more migrants into uncertain conditions. While ethnic chaplains are all too familiar with these challenges, they cannot be expected to address the diverse and difficult challenges faced by many of their congregations. Therefore, it is imperative that the necessary services are put in place by the Church hierarchy to ensure that Catholic migrants in Britain receive appropriate support and information. With only 5 per cent of Catholics in Britain reporting adherence to key Church teachings, Woodhead argues that the religious authority of the Catholic Church is in question.⁹⁴ Although the Church has addressed modern processes of globalization, it has been less agile in responding to other modern trends including democratization, gender diversity, LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) rights and racism. So at a time of advanced secularization and attempts to re-assert authority, migrant members are a potential resource for shoring up Church identity and membership. Nonetheless, ‘the old religions of modernity’, including the Catholic Church—not least through their welfare and voluntarist contributions and efforts around ‘social cohesion’—continue to be recognized as institutional authorities in the eyes of States and in civil society initiatives, and therefore play a continuing role in addressing social inequalities, integration, and ‘interfaith’ initiatives.⁹⁵ ⁹² Jason Beaumont, Klaus Eder, and Eduardo Mendieta, ‘Reflexive Secularization? Concepts, Processes and Antagonisms of Postsecularity’, European Journal of Social Theory, 23:3 (2020), p. 305. ⁹³ Britain’s departure from the European Union. ⁹⁴ Linda Woodhead, ‘Intensified Religious Pluralism and De-Differentiation’, Society, 53:1 (2016), p. 45. ⁹⁵ Woodhead, ‘Intensified Religious Pluralism’.

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Select Bibliography Daly, Mary E (ed.), ‘Arrangements for the Integration of Irish Immigrants in England and Wales’, Irish Manuscripts Commission (Dublin, 2012). Fesenmyer, Leslie, ‘Bringing the Kingdom to the City: Mission as Placemaking Practice amongst Kenyan Pentecostals in London’, City & Society, 31:1 (2019), pp. 34–54. Garbin, David, ‘The Visibility and Invisibility of Migrant Faith in the City: Diaspora Religion and the Politics of Emplacement of Afro-Christian Churches’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39:5 (2013), pp. 677–96. Gray, Breda, ‘The Politics of Migration, Church, and State: A Case Study of the Catholic Church in Ireland’, International Migration Review, 50:2 (2016), pp. 315–51. Gray, Breda and O’Sullivan Lago, Ria, ‘Migrant Chaplains: Mediators of Catholic Church Transnationalism’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 19:2 (2011), pp. 93–109. Gray, Breda and Peggy Levitt, ‘Social Welfare versus Transnational Social Protection Regimes: the Changing Roles of Church and State’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48:11 (2022), pp. 2721–39, doi: 10.1080/1369183X.2020.1733946 Ryan, Louise, ‘Building Bridges to Parishes: The Catholic Church in England and Wales and the Role of Ethnic Chaplains’, in Dominic Pasura and Marta Bivand Erdal (eds.), Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism (London, 2016), pp. 291–315. Ryan, Louise, ‘Exploring Religion as a Bright and Blurry Boundary: Irish Migrants Negotiating Religious Identity in Britain’, in D. A. J. MacPherson and Mary Hickman (eds.), Women and Irish Diaspora Identities: Theories, Concepts and New Perspectives (Manchester, 2016), pp. 55–71. Yuval-Davis, Nira, Georgie Wemyss, and Kathryn Cassidy, Bordering (London, 2019).

15 Clerical Abuse Mary E. Daly and Marcus Pound

From the 1990s onwards a series of child sexual, physical, and emotional abuse allegations and convictions involving male and female Catholic clergy and religious began to gain public attention in Britain, Ireland, and internationally. Between 1970 and 2015, the Catholic Church in England and Wales received more than 3,000 complaints involving over 1,750 victims against more than 900 individuals connected to the Church. Between January 2012 and April 2021, Church authorities in Ireland submitted 258 cases relating to priests and other religious to the National Board for Safeguarding Children.¹ In many cases, the abused were not merely children who were vulnerable by virtue of being children but the most vulnerable amongst them, and the abuse was carried out by those in positions of authority within the Church’s parishes, schools, care homes, and sanctuaries. Abuse is born under a veil of secrecy, often only coming to light in later adult years. Many of the incidences reported in the 1990s related to earlier decades, conferring an emergent pattern with long-established traditions of religious migration from Britain and Ireland—including Canada, Australia, and the United States.² The drip-feed of accounts of clerical abuse in the form of personal memoirs, documentaries, and government inquiries is widely seen as the primary reason for the steep decline in religious practice in Ireland since the 1990s. What is certainly true across Britain and Ireland is that the nature and scale of the abuse profoundly challenged Church hierarchies and individual bishops; embarrassed and shamed many religious and clergy (with cascading implications for vocations); and angered and alienated the laity—prompting vocal calls for repentance and reform, while some have abandoned religious practice altogether. This chapter examines the role of the media, and Church and State responses: the safeguarding measures introduced, and how these were implemented; and the relationships between civil law and canon law, and between the Vatican and the

¹ ‘The Roman Catholic Investigation Report: Executive Summary’ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) (London, 2020); ‘The National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church in Ireland Annual Report 2020’ (London, 2020), pp. 20–1. ² IICSA Research Team, ‘Child Sexual Abuse within the Catholic and Anglican Churches: A Rapid Evidence Assessment’ (London, 2017), https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/3361/view/iicsa-reachild-sexual-abuse-anglican-catholic-churchesnov-2017–.pdf (accessed 27 December 2021), §4.2.1, p. 28. Mary E. Daly and Marcus Pound, Clerical Abuse In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0016

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national hierarchies. One issue that has frequently been raised about the Catholic Church since the Reformation is the fact that its members, especially the clergy, owe an allegiance to an extra-territorial authority—the Vatican. The responses in various countries to clerical sexual abuse have reignited that topic, and reports that some children were abused during confessions uncannily echoed historic allegations relating to the powers of Catholic priests. The concluding section of this discussion reflects on how the deformation of Catholic practices has contributed to the perception of a ‘crisis’ of abuse within the Catholic Church, both in Britain and Ireland, and globally.

Mapping the Definitional Field of Inquiry Most physical and sexual abuse of children occurs within family settings and the abuser is generally a relative or close acquaintance. A 2003 survey of child sexual abuse in Ireland indicated that 5.8 per cent of boys and 1.4 per cent of girls were abused by a religious figure. Despite popular belief that up to one-quarter of priests have abused children, a more accurate figure (from scholarly analysis to date) is between 4 and 8 per cent; while international data suggest that 6 per cent of all adult males have sexually abused children.³ Nevertheless, a survey of 40,000 adults in the Netherlands, aged over 40, commissioned by the Catholic Church concluded that children were twice as likely to undergo sexual abuse in institutional settings as in the home, and there was no difference between the rate of abuse in Catholic and that in non-Catholic institutions.⁴ When the first reports emerged of child sexual abuse by priests, there were suggestions that this was either an Irish problem or one confined to the Englishspeaking world, reflecting the fact that the early investigations were concentrated in English-speaking countries where a significant proportion of priests were of Irish birth or ancestry.⁵ Monsignor Denis O’Callaghan, the vicar general of Cloyne, noted that Irish clergy were following the reports of clerical sexual abuse in North America closely, because ‘a lot of the priests who were being accused of sex abuse were Irish. A lot of them had been ordained in Ireland’.⁶ In 2007 however, one author claimed to have collected newspaper reports of sexual

³ Helen Goode, Hannah McGee, and Ciaran O’Boyle, Time to Listen: Confronting Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy in Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp. 25–6; Marie Keenan, ‘Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church’, in Tom Inglis (ed.), Are the Irish Different? (Manchester, 2014), pp. 101–2. ⁴ David Quinn, ‘The Church’s Child Sexual Abuse Crisis in Retrospect’, Studies, 102 (2013), pp. 419–20. ⁵ In the 1990s, one-third of Catholic priests in the USA and half of the bishops were of Irish descent—Boston Globe, Betrayal: The Crisis in the Catholic Church (Boston, MA, 2002), pp. 144–5. ⁶ Report by Commission of Investigation into Catholic Diocese of Cloyne, December 2010, §1.5, https://jobs.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/Cloyne-Rpt.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022).

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abuse by Catholic clergy in twenty-eight countries.⁷ Rashid and Barron concluded that clerical sexual abuse is not confined to the Catholic Church. They document many instances of abuse in other Christian denominations, and by non-Christian religious leaders, and suggest that they share common features that are not necessarily found where child abuse occurred within the family or other settings: the response of clerical authorities from a variety of clerical and religious denominations towards victims appears similar in silencing victims, predominantly for institutional reputation, often resulting in support for perpetrators. The religious context and the power dynamics of religious institutions appear to have provided a space for perpetration to thrive because of the trust accorded to clerics in the society and use of threats and blame in the name of God on children by the perpetrators.⁸

They highlight the fact that religious ministry facilitates unfettered access to children and that many religious figures have historically regarded abuse as a ‘sin’ rather than a crime.⁹ Throughout the 1990s many reports in British and Irish newspapers carried headlines referring to ‘paedophile priests’. Research has highlighted two anomalies in the data on clerical abusers compared to child abuse in the general population. Boys constituted 70 to 80 per cent of victims, whereas girls are more likely to be victims of sexual abuse in the community,¹⁰ and most victims were postpubescent boys. Keenan notes that eight of the nine offenders that she worked with abused post-pubertal boys; only one sexually abused a pre-pubertal boy, leading her to conclude that the technical, psychological categories of ‘paedophile’ did not fit the patterns disclosed.¹¹ The arguments quickly refocused on sexual orientation within the clergy and the place of mandated celibacy. Given the overwhelming reports of young male victims, this raised the ill-founded suspicion of a causal relation with homosexuality, and this correlation has been ‘weaponized’ across the theological spectrum by those advocating for married clergy alongside others blaming ‘permissiveness’, ‘gender theory’, and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, ⁷ Anson Shupe, Spoils of the Kingdom: Clergy Misconduct and Religious Community (Champaign, IL, 2007), p. 23. ⁸ Faisal Rashid and Ian Barron, ‘Why the Focus of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse Has Largely Remained on the Catholic Church amongst Other Non-Catholic Christian Denominations and Religions’, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 28 (2019), pp. 564–5. ⁹ Rashid and Barron, ‘Why the Focus’, pp. 567–76. ¹⁰ Liz Kelly and Kairika Karsna, ‘Measuring the Scale and Changing Nature of Child Sexual Abuse and Child Sexual Exploitation: Scoping Report’, https://www.csacentre.org.uk/documents/scale-andnature-scoping-report-2018/ (accessed 8 January 2022). ¹¹ Marie Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organisational Culture (Oxford, 2012), p. 14; Jennifer A. Tallon and Karen J. Terry, ‘Analyzing Paraphilic Activity, Specialization and Generalization in Priests who Sexually Abused Minors’, Criminal Justice and Behavior 35 (2008), pp. 615–28.

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gay, bisexual, transgender, queer plus) lobbies for the crisis. Research has highlighted that the predominant sexual orientation of adult men who abuse pre-pubescent boys is heterosexual.¹² This has posited the abuse as a ‘return of the repressed’, although comparative research into abuse in the Anglican context has shown that non-celibate clerics also abuse.¹³ In a key respect, sexual orientation has little bearing, because sexual abuse is about power and authority, including the power to conceal; yet the place of sexuality within the culture has a critical bearing, because it is an expression of power when power overtakes authority. Child abuse in institutions was not confined to religious establishments; it emerged wherever institutions of mass care were found, such as local authority children’s homes in north Wales,¹⁴ and there is a growing body of evidence around the sexual abuse of children and young people in sporting and voluntary organizations with features in common with clerical sexual abuse. In such settings, respected adults cultivated cultures which removed them from immediate scrutiny and were further shielded by structures predisposed to protect organizational reputation. When British Home Secretary Theresa May launched the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in 2015, it was in response to failings in Catholic institutions alongside disclosures and allegations within Anglican institutions, the British Broadcasting Company, the National Health Service, and even parliament.¹⁵ The term abuse covers a spectrum, from emotional abuse—denigration and lack of empathy—to physical abuse and sexual violence. Although the primary focus of this chapter is child sexual abuse, it is important not to dismiss other forms of abuse and their compounding effects. Reports on the treatment of children in residential institutions have documented serious instances of emotional and physical trauma alongside sexual abuse. Physical abuse and emotional cruelty were more common than sexual abuse—though there is often an element of sexual gratification involved in physical abuse and the boundaries between physiological, emotional, and physical abuse defy neat delineation. For many within the Catholic Church and beyond, the revelations have rendered visible something to which they were blinded: the unthinkable, even if hidden in plain sight.¹⁶ The process of understanding has laboured under the emergent cultural understandings of both the category of ‘childhood’ and shifting understandings of ‘violence’ and ‘abuse’.¹⁷ Childhood is a biological life stage—but ¹² Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse, p. 13. ¹³ IICSA Research Team, ‘Child Sexual Abuse within the Catholic and Anglican Churches’, §4.5.3, p. 38. ¹⁴ ‘Accountability and Reparations Investigation Report’, IICSA, September 2019, pp. 8–12. ¹⁵ BBC News, ‘Savile Abuse Claims: Met Police Launch Criminal Inquiry’, 19 October 2012, https:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20006049 (accessed 8 January 2022). ¹⁶ Adrian Bingham, ‘It would be Better for Newspapers to Call a Spade a Spade: The British Press and Child Sexual Abuse’, History Workshop Journal, 88 (2019), pp. 89–110. ¹⁷ Ute Haring, Reesa Sorin, and Nerina J. Caltabiano, ‘Reflecting on Childhood and Child Agency in History’, Palgrave Communications, 5 (2019).

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the cultural idea of the child is a social construct, variously related to the way adults define themselves and bestow the category of childhood as a means to exercise the power they (rightly or wrongly) hold over children. At the beginning of the twentieth century, children were deemed to lack agency and viewed merely in respect of their progress along the path to adulthood, the idea of childhood autonomy only slowly emerged through a process of legislative change at national and global levels. The adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC; 1989), to which the Holy See was a State party, was a landmark in these wider cultural shifts and legal protections. It came into force in the UK and Ireland in 1992. Relatedly, corporal punishment of children was societally accepted and widely practised until the second half of the twentieth century. In Ireland, two campaigns for the abolition of corporal punishment in State primary schools in the 1950s, and again in the late 1960s proved ineffective, primarily because of lack of parental support and opposition from teachers. Ireland banned corporal punishment in schools in 1982 and in the home in 2015. The use of the tawse (a strip of leather split into tails) in Scottish schools was challenged by two mothers in the European Court of Human Rights in 1982, and the cane and other forms of corporal punishment outlawed in 1987. Corporal punishment in all State and private schools in the UK finally ended in 2003.¹⁸ Henry Kempe’s ground-breaking paper on ‘the battered child syndrome’ published in the US in 1962 is largely credited with raising clinical awareness of non-accidental injuries to children¹⁹— although it was not until 1977 that the Irish Department of Health issued guidelines for health practitioners relating to the non-accidental injury of children. In 1983 these were extended to include sexual abuse, but only applied to family settings, where the first Irish cases of child sexual abuse to attract widespread attention occurred: the Kilkenny incest case (1993), and the West of Ireland Farmer Case/ McColgan (1995).²⁰ While these cases highlighted the danger within families, along with failures in social services, the abuse of children by priests posed the danger of third parties in positions of authority and social respectability.

Institutional Abuse For centuries religious organizations of all denominations have provided care for vulnerable children and many of these institutions (industrial schools, children’s homes, and baby homes) survived into the late twentieth century, often receiving ¹⁸ Mary E. Daly, ‘The Primary and Natural Educators? The Role of Parents in the Education of their Children in Independent Ireland’, in Maria Luddy and James Smith (eds.), Children, Childhood and Irish Society 1500 to the Present (Dublin, 2014), pp. 65–81. ¹⁹ Goode, McGee, and O’Boyle, Time to Listen, p. 33. ²⁰ Goode, McGee, and O’Boyle, Time to Listen, pp. 274–6.

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substantial public funds as part of a wider ‘architecture of containment’.²¹ As a result of the moral and social stigma pushing these institutions to peripheral view, there was also a lack of public oversight and a belief that they could be entrusted with a considerable degree of autonomy. This fostered cultures of secrecy, denial, and a lack of accountability. The Industrial Schools were particular to the Irish context, having largely disappeared from the UK by the 1920s and 1930s, where child welfare policy favoured fostering and the family environment along with State-run reformatories. However, English and Scottish charities were able to exploit the child migration schemes through the Empire Settlement Act of 1922. The British Statefunded initiative was primarily presented as a long-term strategy for better imperial integration and only tangentially provided an opportunity to address social problems at home, and the number of British child migrants sent primarily to Australia and Canada after 1922 was comparatively small—approximately 7,000—compared to those who passed through the gates of the industrial schools of Ireland.²² For those children sent by Catholic charities in Britain and Northern Ireland under the empire migration schemes,²³ a few fared well; some endured emotional and psychological abuse having been told that they were not wanted by their mothers; some were subjected to horrific sexual abuse in their host institutions. Things began to shift in Ireland in the 1970s. The Kennedy report on Irish Reformatory and Industrial Schools condemned the system as inadequate and demanded its abolition, but their criticism did not extend to the personnel who ran these institutions: it may seem that we are criticising those responsible for running the schools. This is not the intention of this Committee; indeed we are very much aware that if it were not for the dedicated work of many of our religious bodies the position would be a great deal worse than it is now.²⁴

By 1970 there was substantial evidence of gross physical abuse of children in industrial schools. In 1963 one boy in Glin industrial school spent eight days in hospital with a broken jaw. The resident manager, a member of the Irish Christian Brothers told the Department of Education that this happened ‘accidentally . . . in the administration of punishment’.²⁵ There is no indication that they took any ²¹ James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (Manchester, 2008). ²² ‘Child Migration Programmes Investigation Report’, IICSA, March 2018, pp. 6, 9. ²³ Gordon Lynch, ‘The Church of England Advisory Council of Empire Settlement and Post-War Child Migration to Australia’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 71 (2020), pp. 798–826. ²⁴ ‘Reformatory and Industrial Schools System Report’, 1970 (Chair: Miss Justice Eileen Kennedy), 4.1. ²⁵ Mary Raftery and Eoin O’Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children: The Inside Story of Ireland’s Industrial Schools (Dublin, 1999), pp. 220–4.

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further action; parents or foster parents who complained of excessive corporal punishment were dismissed as ‘having a record of trouble-making’.²⁶ When three girls (sisters) in St Martha’s Industrial School in Bundoran (run by the St Louis Order) were punished by having their heads shaved in 1963, headlines and photographs in the English newspaper The People prompted questions in Dáil Éireann. Although the Department of Education determined that the punishment breached official regulations, no action was taken.²⁷ In 1967, Peter Tyrell, a resident from 1925–33 in the notorious Letterfrack Industrial School (Irish Christian Brothers) set fire to himself on Hampstead Heath and died from his injuries. Tyrell had written a harrowing memoir. In an excerpt published in 1964 in the periodical Hibernia, he described beatings, starvation, and repeated humiliations. ‘We are always being told that our parents were not good because they didn’t look after us and that we were not good either . . . My experiences there have haunted me all my life and even now I find it difficult to talk about them’.²⁸ His story attracted little attention at the time, and the full memoir was not published until 2006.²⁹ In the early 1960s the archbishop of Dublin, Dr McQuaid, asked the chaplain to Artane industrial school Fr Moore to report on the institution. His account highlighted the excessive use of physical punishment: The administration of punishment is in the charge of a disciplinarian, but in practice is not confined to him. There seems to be no proportion between punishment and the offence. In my presence a boy was severely beaten on the face for an insignificant misdemeanour. Recently, a boy was punished so excessively and for so long a period that he broke away from the Brother and came to my house a mile away for assistance. The time was 10.45 p.m., almost two hours after the boys retired to bed. For coming to me in those circumstances he was again punished with equal severity. Some time ago, a hurley stick was used to inflict punishment on a small boy. The offence was negligible.³⁰

The regulations governing industrial schools and reformatories included maintenance of a register of punishments, but the 2010 Ryan Report concluded that these were not examined during government inspections. The Ryan Report revealed that the Department of Education had been concerned about sexual activity between boys in Artane (and elsewhere), but there is no indication of ²⁶ Raftery and O’Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children, p. 229. ²⁷ Mary E. Daly, Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–73 (Cambridge, 2016), p. 174. ²⁸ Peter Tyrrell, ‘Early Days in Letterfrack’, Hibernia, June 1964. ²⁹ Peter Tyrrell, Founded on Fear: Letterfrack Industrial School, War and Exile (Dublin, 2006). ³⁰ Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (CICA), Report of Chair Mr Justice Sean Ryan, vol. I: Artane, §7.234, p. 143, http://www.childabusecommission.ie/rpt/pdfs/CICA-VOL1–07.PDF (accessed 6 January 2022).

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knowledge of sexual abuse perpetrated by the religious. Raftery and O’Sullivan are correct that, despite the ‘damning indictment’ of industrial schools in the Kennedy Report and while the rhetoric associated with child care had changed . . . the closed and secretive practices which had allowed so much past abuse were still very much in existence’. They record instances after the 1970s of sexual abuse in boy’s homes, by male religious, lay workers, and visitors, and some horrific incidents of sexual abuse in homes run by religious sisters. When a woman civil servant expressed concerns in the late 1980s about the sexual abuse of boys in a De La Salle brothers’ home, in the words of one politician she was ‘sent to the Gulag’.³¹ The abusive regimes documented by Ryan were replicated in Catholic, Protestant, and Statecontrolled institutions in Northern Ireland investigated by the Hart Report, though most cases were in Catholic institutions. In Scotland, boys and girls under the care of the Sisters of Nazareth were sexually abused by staff, volunteers, visitors, priests, and sisters. Helen was 8-years-old; she was violently and sexually assaulted by a sister with a broom.³² In Northern Ireland some sisters publicly inspected children’s underwear with a view to determining signs of sexual activity among the girls. There is a disturbing voyeurism in these accounts and such surveillance could only serve to humiliate and instil fear among the girls. For those who were found with stains, beatings would inevitably follow. Boys reported having their pockets sewn up to prevent them fondling themselves.³³ In Britain, Catholic fee-paying schools were no less sites of abuse. The Scottish Inquiry into the provision of residential care for children by the Benedictine monks at two boarding schools: Fort Augustus Abbey School (Inverness-shire) and Carlekemp Priory School (North Berwick) revealed similar patterns of abuse. Fort Augustus was founded in the early 1920s as a kind of high-class boarding school to generate an income for the abbey; Carlekemp Priory School was subsequently established in 1931 as feeder school. Lady Smith’s report highlighted not only the cruel beatings by sadistic monks but also monks who were serial sexual predators and able to move between Fort Augustus and Carlekemp, grooming victims at both schools.³⁴ In England, the abbot of Ealing Abbey asked Lord Carlile to carry out an independent inquiry into St Benedict’s

³¹ Raftery and O’Sullivan, Suffer the Little Children, pp. 381–90. ³² Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry, ‘Case Study No. 2: The Provision of Residential Care for Children in Scotland by the Sisters of Nazareth between 1933 and 1984 Evidential Hearing’ (2018), pp. x and 84–5, https://www.childabuseinquiry.scot/media/2146/findings-s0n-case-study-2_p7–190628.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ³³ Anthony Hart, David Lane and Geraldine Doherty, Inquiry into Historical Institutional Abuse 1922–1995 (IHIA), vol. 2: Sisters of Nazareth Derry/Londonderry, §47, https://www.hiainquiry.org/ sites/hiainquiry/files/media-files/Chapter%205%20-%20Module%201%20-%20Sisters%20of %20Nazareth%20Derry-Londonderry.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ³⁴ https://www.childabuseinquiry.scot/news/scottish-child-abuse-inquiry-publishes-fifth-casestudy-findings/ and ‘Evidence Statement of Abbot Geoffrey Scott OSB’, 16 Sept. 2019, https:// www.childabuseinquiry.scot/media/2647/abbot-geoffrey-scott-witness-statement.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022).

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following the disclosures of abuse in the previous years by monks who were members of the monastic community at the Abbey’s Benedictine monastery. As a result, St Benedict’s School was formally separated from the Abbey in 2012.³⁵ In November 2022, the Irish media reported many cases of boys being abused by religious, and some lay staff, in elite Catholic secondary schools run by the Spiritans, the Carmelites, Society of Jesus, Benedictines, Franciscans, and Vincentian orders. Some Spiritans also abused pupils in schools in east and west Africa.³⁶

Abuse in the Parish and Community The inquiries into the handling of clerical sexual abuse by the dioceses of Ferns and Dublin document cases dating from the late 1950s, with numbers rising in later decades. In Dublin, as in the Boston archdiocese, the abuse appears to have been most common in working-class parishes, where parents often welcomed a priest giving attention to their children and bringing them on holidays or outings, but children in middle-class families were also abused. The deference and trust accorded to priests enabled them to continue their abuse unchecked, often for decades. Rashid and Barron claim that disclosure of clerical sex abuse by a child could lead to distrust between the child and her/his family, especially in families where religiously minded parents might question the child’s story.³⁷ When the parents of a Dublin boy discovered in 1974 that he had been sexually assaulted by a priest, they decided not to go to the gardaí because ‘they had never heard anything like this before’, and they also wished to protect the priest: ‘you don’t give scandal’.³⁸ When another boy tried to tell his mother about his abuse by the notorious Fr Payne, she rebuked him, and told him ‘not to be talking like that about a priest’.³⁹ In 1981 the archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan (whose handling of child abuse cases was condemned by the Dublin Inquiry), wrote that parents whose children were abused by the notorious serial abuser Fr Patrick McCabe ‘have for the most part, reacted with what can only be described as incredible charity. In several instances, they were quite apologetic about having to discuss the matter and were

³⁵ https://www.bishop-accountability.org/news2011/11_12/2011_11_09_UnitedKingdom_Independent Report.pdf (accessed 20 January 2022). ³⁶ Irish Times, 26 November and 3 December 2022. ³⁷ Rashid and Barron, ‘Why the Focus of Clerical Child Sexual Abuse’, p. 568. ³⁸ Commission of Investigation, Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (Dublin Inquiry), July 2009, §17.4, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/reports/2009_11_26_Murphy_Report/17_Fr_ Ioannes.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ³⁹ Commission of Investigation, Dublin Inquiry, §24.50 https://www.bishop-accountability.org/ reports/2009_11_26_Murphy_Report/24_Fr_Ivan_Payne.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022).

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as much concerned for the priest’s welfare as for their child and other children’.⁴⁰ The archdiocese received the first complaint about this priest in 1977; he continued to abuse children in Ireland and the US for approximately forty years, and was finally brought to trial in 2013.⁴¹ The parents of one child were ‘upset’ because ‘the priest is someone you put your trust in’. Sisters who ran children’s homes appreciated the interest shown in their work by the one-time priest Bill Carney, and although some nuns and social workers were concerned about his relationships with individual boys and girls, they did not suspect sexual abuse.⁴² One mother whose son was abused by Carney was afraid to report him to the gardaí lest she was ostracized by her neighbours.⁴³ Yet reactions varied. When Fr Grennan (Ferns), who was alleged to have abused ten girls in his parish while hearing confessions, turned up at their confirmation ceremony, the local newspapers reported that many girls were upset and two families walked out.⁴⁴ The chapter in the Hart Inquiry relating to the Norbertine priest Brendan Smyth states that: Central to any consideration of Fr Smyth’s ability to abuse children, whether in their own homes, in schools, on holiday trips or in children’s homes such as Nazareth Lodge and Nazareth House was his status as a priest. We are satisfied that unless an individual, or those responsible for children in such situations, had reason to suspect that Fr Smyth was a serial child abuser, they would never have imagined that a priest could be capable of such behaviour.⁴⁵

For many people it was ‘instinctive to place absolute trust and confidence in priests such as Fr Smyth’, and many welcomed the interest that he showed in the children. Some accounts reveal a disconcerting naïveté and trust on the part of parents. The mother of one girl abused by Fr Grennan permitted him to spend the night in her bedroom; she believed that if he had engaged in inappropriate behaviour her daughter would have told her. Following ‘a troubled and unstable adolescence’, which this girl attributed to her abuse by Fr Grennan, Deborah committed suicide.⁴⁶ A Dublin mother who found a priest who was staying in her home in ⁴⁰ Commission of Investigation, Dublin Inquiry, §20.2. https://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Material %20redacted%20from%20Murphy%20Report.pdf/Files/Material%20redacted%20from%20Murphy %20Report.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ⁴¹ Commission of Investigation, Dublin Inquiry, ch. 20. ⁴² ‘Fr William Carney’, Murphy Report, §§28.8–28.26, https://www.bishop-accountability.org/ reports/2009_11_26_Murphy_Report/28_Fr_William_Carney.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ⁴³ ‘Fr William Carney’, §28.38. ⁴⁴ The Ferns Report: Presented to the Minister for Health and Children, October 2005, pp. 146–8, https://www.lenus.ie/bitstream/handle/10147/560434/thefernsreportoctober2005.pdf;jsessionid= 8FBC54495DCAF018316BA2C824A4149E?sequence=2 (accessed 8 January 2022). ⁴⁵ Hart, Lane, and Doherty, IHIA, §§92–3, pp. 40–1, https://www.hiainquiry.org/sites/hiainquiry/ files/media-files/Chapter%2010%20–%20Module%206%20–%20Father%20Brendan%20Smyth.pdf ⁴⁶ Ferns Report, p. 85.

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bed with her son simply told him to return to his own room; a woman whose nephew had refused an invitation to visit the home of Fr Fortune, put pressure on him to visit this notorious abuser. Colm O’Gorman first met Sean Fortune at a youth event when he was 14. The priest turned up at Colm’s house unannounced and told his mother that Colm showed great potential for a local folk group he was organizing. The following week he took Colm to his house for the weekend and abused him. In his book, Beyond Belief (2010), O’Gorman describes that when he confronted his abuser, Fortune replied ‘It was wrong and must never happen again. You must never do such a thing again’. Colm explains: ‘In that moment his agreement offers me salvation’. As Fortune drove Colm home, he said ‘I’m worried about you [Colm], you have a problem . . . I’m a priest and I have a duty to do something about it . . . I could talk to your father . . . that might be best’. Inside Colm was screaming: ‘it would kill him to know what I’d done, what I was’.⁴⁷ Colm is handed responsibility for the abuse in such a way as to shift culpability and open him to further manipulation. Fr Fortune continued to abuse him for a further two and a half years. This story highlights the interdependent nature of guilt and shame (especially sexual shame) in the complex intertwining of family and church life, and the cover provided by parish-based structures and valorized ‘piety’, which all play into the situation. The idea that a grown man might turn up unannounced at your house and take your 14-year-old son away unquestioned may seem insane by today’s standards, but as Colm says, ‘back then we were ignorant and blind’.⁴⁸ However, there is also anecdotal evidence that local adults and sometimes children were aware of abuse. One man who was abused by Fr Fortune claimed that ‘half the village was pro-Fortune and half was anti-Fortune’. He believed that most people were aware of the allegations. Canon Clancy (Ferns) abused a succession of girls aged from 9 to 15 between 1965 and 1992, and at various times medical professionals, teachers, gardaí, and clergy became aware of this but they took no action.⁴⁹ The Ferns Report described the abusing priests: in certain respects many of these men were successful, spiritual and even caring human beings. Some were known to be excellent teachers who elicited high academic standards from the young people they taught; most were considered pious and holy; some were outstanding managers and fundraisers while others were described as gentle and inoffensive. Many of these priests were readily accepted in their communities and befriended the families of their victims with ease. The verbal or pictorial portrayal of the perpetrator as a man of unmitigated evil is often misleading, resulting in parents failing to appreciate that the child

⁴⁷ Colm O’Gorman, Beyond Belief, Beyond Belief (London, 2010), pp. 51–2. ⁴⁸ O’Gorman, Beyond Belief, p. 46. ⁴⁹ Ferns Report, p. 197.

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abuser may be someone with a kind and pleasant appearance, capable of warmth affection and generosity and of intellectual and professional worth.⁵⁰

The report concluded that these characteristics often prevented an abuser from being detected,⁵¹ and even when identified, could subtly influence the ways in which allegations were handled across various lines of accountability. The gradual emergence over the last decade of memoirs explicitly discussing clerical abuse is beginning to provide an archival foundation for understanding and contextualizing these experiences.

Public Awareness and the Media The media have played a key role in raising public awareness of clerical sexual abuse of children and enabled western Europeans ‘to see churches—once sacred institutions—as potentially profane, and to investigate, analyse, and document their activities and personnel’.⁵² The first case to attract widespread attention from 1985 was broken by the investigative journalist Jason Berry—a Catholic himself— relating to the Louisiana priest, Thomas Guathe.⁵³ Institutional attention to the issues, including legal and reputational exposure, emerged at a similar time in Britain and Ireland. In 1986, the archbishop of Dublin Kevin McNamara consulted legal advisors about the archdiocese’s potential liability in cases where a minor was sexually abused by a diocesan priest. Counsel advised that if an abusing priest was reinstated in a pastoral ministry following treatment, and re-offended, the archdiocese would be liable for negligence. The archdiocese took out additional insurance cover against claims of sexual abuse, and most Irish dioceses followed suit.⁵⁴ The policy held by the diocese of Ferns obliged a bishop who was aware that a priest was abusing children to arrange for his immediate removal from ministry. In 1990 the Irish bishops established a group to prepare guidelines for handling allegations of clerical sexual abuse, but this work proceeded slowly. Cardinal Connell told the Dublin Inquiry that the case of the Norbertine Belfast priest, Brendan Smyth, which unfolded following his arrest in 1991, was ‘a major catalyst’ for developing these guidelines.⁵⁵ Across the Irish Sea, a 1994 report commissioned by English and Welsh hierarchy situated itself as a response to ⁵⁰ Ferns Report, p. 17. ⁵¹ Ferns Report. ⁵² Susie Donnelly and Tom Inglis, ‘The Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland: Reporting Clerical Child Sex Abuse’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25 (2010), p. 4. ⁵³ Jason Berry, Lead Us Not into Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse of Children (New York, 1992). ⁵⁴ Gerard Mannion, ‘Haze of Fiction: Legitimation, Accountability, and Truthfulness’, in Francis Oakley and Bruce Russett (eds.) Governance, Accountability, and the Future of the Catholic Church (New York, 2004), pp. 161–77. ⁵⁵ Commission of Investigation, Dublin Inquiry, §§7.2 and 7.3, p. 119.

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growing social awareness of child sexual abuse in the community and statutory obligations, and only second in relation to increasing awareness of abusers within the Church. Critically the document committed to the ‘paramountcy principle’, i.e. that ‘the welfare of the child is the primary consideration in proceedings concerning children’.⁵⁶ The fall-out from the handling of Smyth’s conviction played a pivotal part in wider British and Irish politics. In 1994 the Irish government collapsed because of allegations that the attorney general had delayed acting on a warrant issued by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for Smyth’s extradition to Northern Ireland. This priest had ministered in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the North American states of North Dakota and Rhode Island. He had abused boys and girls; altar boys and catechumens, and children in homes and hospital wards across Ireland and elsewhere. His abuse, which appears to have commenced when he was a seminarian in Rome, was known to many clergy including a future archbishop of Armagh (Sean Brady) and his abbot. In 1968 he had received aversion therapy in a psychiatric hospital in Northern Ireland; further treatment in Dublin and also in Stroud (1973–4), where the US religious order, the Servants of the Paraclete had developed a clergy treatment programme for those with addiction problems. Brendan Smyth was frequently moved between countries and duties, and forbidden from hearing confessions (though that was not enforced). Under pressure from Church authorities, he returned to Northern Ireland, pleaded guilty to a limited number of charges, and was sentenced to prison. On his release in 1997 he pleaded guilty in the Irish courts to a further seventy-four offences against twenty boys and girls in the years 1954–89; he died in prison later that year and was secretly buried at Kilnacrott Abbey.⁵⁷ The publicity given to Brendan Smyth and the impact of statements given in court by his victims transformed Irish awareness of clerical sexual abuse.⁵⁸ In 1995 Andrew Madden, who was sexually abused by Fr Payne in 1981, told his story in the Sunday Times—the first Irish victim to go on public record. A 1996 television documentary, then book, Dear Daughter told the story of Christine Buckley, a child of Afro-Irish parentage, who was raised in the Irish Sisters of Mercy industrial school at Goldenbridge. States of Fear (1999), a documentary series by Mary Raftery, exposed the extent of child abuse in industrial schools. In March 2002, a BBC documentary, Suing the Pope, focused on Sean Fortune, and the failure by Church and State to investigate complaints of abuse. In November 2002, the RTÉ documentary, Cardinal Secrets examined the mishandling by the Dublin archdiocese of complaints of clerical child abuse. The outrage following these ⁵⁶ Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, Child Abuse: Pastoral and Procedural Guidelines (London, 1994), pp. 4, 12. ⁵⁷ Patrick Maume, ‘Smyth, Brendan, 1927–1997, Catholic Priest and Paedophile’, Dictionary of Irish Biography. ⁵⁸ Donnelly and Inglis, ‘Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland’, p. 8.

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documentaries led to the establishment of three Commissions of Investigation: Laffoy (later Ryan)—Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (reported 2010); the Ferns Inquiry—a non-statutory inquiry—chaired by Justice Frank Murphy (reported 2005); and the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, chaired by Judge Yvonne Murphy which reported in 2009. In 2000 the archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, invited Lord Nolan to conduct a review of the 1994 child protection policy adopted by the Church in England and Wales, with a view to creating new structures to oversee safeguarding. The conviction of Fr Michael Hill in 2002 then led to calls for the archbishop’s resignation. Hill, a manipulative and calculated abuser, had entered a seminary in 1952 and pursued a career in Catholic children’s services, receiving a Home Office letter of recognition for childcare.⁵⁹ Following a detailed complaint in 1980 to Murphy-O’Connor (then bishop of Arundel and Brighton), Hill was sent for counselling. He withdrew from therapy, spent several years in secular employment and in 1985 he requested a second chance. He was sent as a chaplain to Gatwick on the misplaced assumption that he was unlikely to come into contact with children. He befriended a vulnerable family leading to the abuse of a very young wheel-chair user. Writing later, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor would reflect, ‘I should have reported him to the police and the social services. I will always look back on my decision with sorrow and shame.’⁶⁰ Hill’s story is not dissimilar to other cases where manipulative priests were pardoned, sometimes repeatedly, offered treatment in a conflation of remedies related to sin (confession) and medicalization (conversion therapies), but therefore given further opportunities to abuse. The Dublin Report concluded that: the Archdiocese’s pre-occupations in dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, at least until the mid-1990s, were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the Church, and the preservation of its assets. All other considerations, including the welfare of children and justice for victims, were subordinated to these priorities.⁶¹

It dismissed the argument that the archdiocese was on a ‘learning curve’, highlighting extensive evidence, dating back decades, of priests being removed from parishes following allegations of abuse, but often placed in another pastoral role giving them continuing access to children. The Ferns Inquiry determined that between 1960 and 1980 the bishop had treated allegations of clerical sexual abuse ⁵⁹ Richard Scorer, Betrayed: The English Catholic Church and the Sex Abuse Crisis (London, 2014), p. 144. ⁶⁰ Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, An English Spring: Memoirs (London, 2015), pp. 143–54, at p. 145. ⁶¹ Dublin Report: Yvonne Murphy, Ita Mangan, Hugh O’Neill, Commission of Investigation: Report into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin, 2009–11. Access on Lenus. The Irish Health Repository http:// hdl.handle.net/10147/89453 §1.15, p. 4.

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as ‘exclusively as a moral problem’, seemingly solved by temporary transfer of the alleged offender before returning him to his former position.⁶² Likewise in England priests were moved to a different parish, or sent for support and counselling, including in New Mexico.⁶³ Others were treated by psychiatrists, but many of these medical professionals were not fully informed about the scale of their abuse and the effectiveness of these therapies is unclear. There appears to have been a high rate of recidivism. Many repeat abusers failed to acknowledge their guilt. One Dublin psychiatrist concluded that psychotherapy had merely given an abuser a language to provide more elaborate rationale and purported justification for his behaviour.⁶⁴ There are many instances where abusers failed to observe the restrictions prescribed, such as close monitoring by a fellow priest, living in a communal setting or with a fellow priest, and having no access to children.⁶⁵ Many parents of abused children contacted the Church but they were often reluctant to report it to the police out of a desire to protect their children. The Leeds diocese discouraged the parents of a 9-year-old from reporting a crime, claiming that the abusing priest was suffering from sexual and emotional immaturity.⁶⁶ In 1960, a commercial company in Scotland informed the gardaí in Ireland that they had discovered photographs of children’s sexual organs on film sent for processing by Paul McGennis (a chaplain at Dublin’s Crumlin Children’s Hospital). The garda commissioner gave the photographic evidence to Archbishop McQuaid, who appears to have taken no further action. McGennis continued to serve in pastoral roles until 1997 when he pleaded guilty to charges of child sexual abuse. This was not an isolated incident. Parents who contacted the police about McCabe were persuaded to withdraw their complaint by Dr Kavanagh, an auxiliary bishop of the Dublin archdiocese, on the promise that he would be moved and receive treatment. When another assault by this priest was formally reported in 1986, the Dublin Report described their initial response as ‘exemplary’, but the abuser was friendly with a senior member of the gardaí, who determined that it was a matter for the archdiocese which enabled the perpetrator to escape to the United States. The archdiocese also received a copy of the director of public prosecution’s file on Bill Carney, probably through Bishop Kavanagh’s friendship with a chief superintendent. Carney’s 1983 prosecution for the sexual abuse of six boys in a Dublin parish was held in camera, following intervention by the bishop and a friendly chief superintendent, and the hearing was reportedly moved to a local golf club ‘to avoid publicity’.

⁶² Ferns Executive Summary: Francis D. Murphy, Helen Buckley, and Laraine Joyce, The Ferns Report: Presented to the Minister for Health and Children October 1995 (London, 1995), p. 1. Available on Lenus, The Irish Health Repository, http://hdl.handle.net/10147/560434 ⁶³ Boston Globe, Betrayal, pp. 172–5. ⁶⁴ Dublin Report, §20.151, p. 336. ⁶⁵ Ferns Executive Summary, p. 1. ⁶⁶ Scorer, Betrayed, p. 81.

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He pleaded guilty and was given the Probation Act, on the basis that he was receiving medical treatment.⁶⁷

Church and State, Commissions, and Canon versus Civil Law The Ferns and the Dublin Inquiries concluded that Church authorities gave priority to canon law over civil law in clerical abuse cases. The Dublin Inquiry determined that canon law provided ‘a means not only of dealing with offending clergy, but also with a means of doing justice to victims’, however ‘for a significant part of the period . . . canon law was used selectively . . . to the benefit of the cleric and the consequent disadvantage of his victims’.⁶⁸ The first Codification of Canon Law in 1917 and the post-Vatican II revision in 1983 outlined procedures to be followed where clergy were accused of child sexual abuse. Canon 1395: 2 (1983 code) stated that a cleric who had offended against the sixth commandment with a person under the age of 16 should be punished ‘with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state if the case so warrants.’ In 1996 the age was raised to 18. The Vatican issued instructions in 1922 for dealing with allegations of solicitation within the confessional or, what it described as ‘the worst crime’—sexual abuse of minors: crimen sollicitationis. A 1962 version of this document extended its remit to members of religious orders. Instructions accompanying both texts stipulated that they should be held in a secret diocesan archive that was only accessible by the bishop. Both documents imposed stringent rules of secrecy on complainants and Church officials, and absolute secrecy was imposed on the documents themselves.⁶⁹ Canon 1717:1 required a bishop to investigate all complaints with ‘the semblance of truth’, and if they withstood that test, to initiate a formal investigation. However, while Canon 1741 provides an illustrative list of reasons why a priest can be lawfully removed, there is little power for bishops to require a priest to stand aside from his ministry based on an initial allegation of sexual abuse: they can only request him to do so. Furthermore, the investigation should not ‘call into question anyone’s good name’. Canon 1341 stated that a bishop should only embark on a formal judicial investigation ‘when he perceives that neither by fraternal correction or reproof, or any methods of pastoral care, can the scandal be sufficiently repaired, justice restored and the offender reformed’. This appears to have been interpreted as giving priority to reforming the offender rather than rendering justice to victims. The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland suggested that under canon law a person’s imputability (guilt) could be ⁶⁷ Dublin Report, §28.52, p. 428. ⁶⁸ Dublin Report, §4.3, p. 57. ⁶⁹ Dublin Report, §§4.22–4.28, pp. 62–4.

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diminished if he was diagnosed as a paedophile.⁷⁰ Two of three Dublin priests, who appealed to Rome, having been convicted by a court of canon law in Ireland, had their sentences reduced; both were diagnosed as paedophiles.⁷¹ The application of the medical model to the canonical issue of imputability accounts in part for why abuse has not been treated as a crime, with abusers sent instead for therapeutic intervention.⁷² Cases of child sexual abuse were historically statute barred under canon law after five years from the incident, in contrast to the civil law, meaning that complaints made after the relevant time could not be investigated. It was only in 2001 that canon law made it possible to consider a complaint made within ten years, and in the case of a minor, this also runs from the complainants’ 18th birthday. Canon law placed considerable emphasis on the sin of ‘scandal’, and the severe consequences of damaging a priest’s good name; this was used to put pressure on complainants not to report allegations to the civil authorities. The Dublin Inquiry noted that Desmond Connell (archbishop of Dublin 1988–2004) ‘was one of the first bishops in the world to initiate canonical trials in the modern era’, holding trials in 1990 and again in 1996 ‘in the face of strong opposition from one of the most powerful canonists in the Archdiocese’.⁷³ A third priest was tried by his religious society in 1999. During the 1990s, the Catholic hierarchies in England and Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand issued similar documents highlighting the obligation on the Church to cooperate fully with civil authorities, develop procedures for child protection, and report abuse in accordance with State guidelines and legislation.⁷⁴ The most significant recommendation—in respect of a framework developed by the Irish hierarchy in 1996—was that all known or suspected cases of abuse should be reported without delay to the senior ranking police officer for the area, and to the local health authority if the complainant was a minor. A year before the Child Sexual Abuse: Framework for a Church Response was published, Archbishop Connell of Dublin gave the gardaí the names of seventeen priests who had been accused of sexual abuse. He told the Dublin Commission that this decision ‘created the greatest crisis in my position as Archbishop’. By 1995 there had been complaints against at least twenty-eight priests. Some names were omitted because the alleged abuser had been laicized. From 1996 it seems that the gardaí were notified of all allegations of clerical abuse in the Dublin archdiocese, but this came too late for many victims. The Commission of Investigation into the Irish diocese of Cloyne examined the handling of allegations of clerical sexual abuse from 1996 until 2009—i.e. ⁷⁰ Canon Law: Letter and Spirit—A Practical Guide to the Code of Canon Law (London, 1995). ⁷¹ Dublin Report, §§4.30–4.61, pp. 65ff. ⁷² Helen Costigane, ‘Vos Estis Lux Mundi: Too Far or Not Far Enough?’, Ecclesiastical Law Journal, 22 (2020), pp. 300–13. ⁷³ Dublin Report, §1.26, p. 8. ⁷⁴ Goode, McGee, and O’Boyle, Time to Listen, pp. 131–2.

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following the publication of the Framework Document. It determined that ‘the standards adopted by the Church were high standards which, if fully implemented, would afford proper protection to children. The standards set by the State are less precise and more difficult to implement’.⁷⁵ However a number of bishops who claimed to have adopted the 1996 Framework Document failed to implement it fully. In Ferns, there were failings until 2002 when Bishop Comiskey resigned. Cloyne failed to report cases to the civil authorities; they did not provide a support person for victims of child abuse, and they failed to appoint an oversight committee. Although Cloyne’s failures became known in 2004, the diocese only began to report allegations of clerical sexual abuse to the civil authorities in 2008.⁷⁶ The position was broadly similar in England and Wales. The 2001 Nolan Inquiry recommended establishing an agency with responsibility for child protection that would be independent of individual bishops. More than a decade later, Rashid and Barron concluded that authority and independence of action still defaulted to the diocesan bishops or religious superior and there was not yet ‘an agreed definition of “the culture of safeguarding” ’.⁷⁷ In 2018 the Independent Inquiry into Child Abuse found evidence of systematic sexual abuse in schools run by the English Benedictine Congregation and noted that the Congregation had not adopted safeguarding measures; furthermore there was evidence that they had treated the recommendations in the Nolan Inquiry as ‘non-obligatory and nondesirable’; the reputation of the schools and the Congregation had taken precedence over child welfare.⁷⁸ In 2001 the secretive 1962 Vatican instruction Crimen Sollicitationis was superseded by a new document: Sacramentorum, Sanctitatis Tutula: protection of the Holiness of the Sacrament. It stated that all allegations of child sexual abuse, which were determined to have ‘a semblance of truth’ should be referred to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, who would either investigate the allegations or advise the bishop on the appropriate actions. On the one hand, this could be seen as an attempt by the Vatican to retain authority over these cases in the face of increasing involvement by the civil authorities internationally; on the other, it was also an attempt to ensure that bishops received the appropriate advice. In 2014, Pope Francis established a Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, whose members included Marie Collins, who had been abused by a priest of the Dublin archdiocese. She resigned after three years because of her frustration at the failure to respond to abuse survivors and the

⁷⁵ Cloyne Report, §1.15, p. 4, https://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Cloyne_Rpt.pdf/Files/Cloyne_Rpt.pdf (accessed 8 January 2022). ⁷⁶ Cloyne Report, §1.71, p. 19. ⁷⁷ Faisal Rashid and Ian Barron, ‘Safeguarding Culture in the Catholic Church of England and Wales in the Twenty-First Century: An Examination of Progress’, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 28 (2019), p. 886. ⁷⁸ Rashid and Barron, ‘Safeguarding Culture’, p. 896.

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Commission’s work practices.⁷⁹ In response to the Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report, Pope Francis wrote a direct response—‘People of God’ (2018)—on the topic of sexual abuse which condemned clericalism and expressed shame on the part of the Church: ‘We showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them’.⁸⁰ This was followed in 2019 by summoning senior Catholic clergy to Rome to discuss the continuing crisis regarding child abuse, but it has been suggested that bishops in Asia and Africa regard this as a crisis of ‘western decadence’.⁸¹ Francis’ closing speech gave a commitment that ‘no abuse would be covered up’ and abusers would be brought to justice, but survivors of clerical abuse dismissed his response as defensive, because his speech emphasized that the perpetrators were ‘primarily parents, relatives, husbands of child brides and teachers’.⁸² Three months after the meeting Francis promulgated a motu proprio, which extended the scope of application to members of Institutes of Consecrated Life or Societies of Apostolic Life, established new and more transparent procedures, made the attempt to cover up a reported delict equally culpable, and gave protection to whistle blowers.⁸³ In her review of the Nolan Report for the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales—Safeguarding with Confidence (2007)—Lady Cumberlege noted the conflict between canon law and the procedures set out in the Nolan Report, in particular the ‘paramountcy principle’ foregrounding the child’s welfare. While the principle was well established in family law, it is not unequivocally accepted within the Church, particularly regarding accusations against priests. In one of her central recommendations, she urged the Bishops’ Conference to draw up a general decree to be given official recognitio from the Holy See to allow this principle to become part of the law of the Church in England and Wales. However, it was not until 2019 that the final draft text of the general decree was approved by the Bishops’ Conference and delivered to the Holy See. In 2021, Pope Francis announced a major reform to Book VI of the 1983 code of canon law—Pascite Gregem Dei—which is a new chapter dedicated to the issues of abuse which defines abuse as a crime against human dignity rather than simply chastity. The code accepts that adults, and not only children, can be victimized by priests, and also orders penalties for offending lay people. For the first time, the use of pornography in grooming minors or vulnerable adults was ⁷⁹ Derek Scally, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Dublin, 2021), p. 249. ⁸⁰ Pope Francis, ‘Letter of His Holiness to the People of God’, Vatican City, 20 August 2018. ⁸¹ Scally, Best Catholics, p. 243. ⁸² ‘Pope Francis Calls for All Out Battle against Abuse of Children’, The Guardian, 24 February 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/24/pope-francis-calls-for-all-out-battle-against-abuse-ofchildren (accessed 6 August 2021). ⁸³ Pope Francis, Vos Estis Lux Mundi, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/ documents/papa-francesco-motu-proprio-20190507_vos-estis-lux-mundi.html (accessed 24 February 2022).

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criminalized, and a bishop can be removed from office if he is found negligent in reporting allegations about sexual crimes to Church authorities, although there is still no punishment if a bishop fails to report the crime to police.⁸⁴ Simultaneously, Pope Francis has also called on dioceses to embrace the Synod on Synodality (2021–23) in addressing the issue of sexual abuse in the Church, a process involving various representatives from religious orders, lay movements, dioceses and parishes, universities, consultants from other churches and experts in the fields discussing the issues along with Bishops.⁸⁵ In 2022 the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse released its final report, calling for non-State actors to contribute to a UK redress schemes for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and exploitation, and mandatory reporting in the context of sacramental confession.⁸⁶

The Impact of Abuse Over the last twelve months, we as a family have been to Hell. On many occasions Arthur cut himself, overdosed and all we could do was to stand by him, just to be there for him while we watch his family fall apart, knowing that Arthur did not understand what was happening to him. All he seemed to want to do was leave this earth because of this dreadful abuse that happened and the control that this man had over him, the terror that it caused, also, the physical things. As I write this, I can only say I have utter revulsion. Why? Because this man is still celebrating mass.⁸⁷ The abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy and institutional efforts to protect the abusers have damaged countless lives. Children who were abused in the diocese of Ferns later attempted or did commit suicide, suffered from depression, and developed addiction problems. They and their families believe that the abuse was the determining factor. Several teenage girls became pregnant as a result of sexual abuse by priests. Marie Collins, who was abused by Paul McGennis in Crumlin Children’s hospital at the age of 13, experienced ‘mental breakdown, medication, repeated hospital stays and four years of agoraphobia’. Her mental ⁸⁴ Pope Francis, Pascite Gregem Dei, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_constitu tions/documents/papa-francesco_costituzione-ap_20210523_pascite-gregem-dei.html (accessed 24 February 2022). ⁸⁵ Vatican, Preparatory Document, ‘For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission’ (2021), pp. 8–9, https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/it/bollettino/pubblico/2021/09/ 07/0541/01166.html (accessed 24 February 2022). ⁸⁶ IICSA Research Team, ‘The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse’ (London 2022), §109, p. 230. ⁸⁷ Alan Hawkins Papers, Palace Green Library, Durham, CSU/D17/2.

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illness was doubtless aggravated by successive failures by the Dublin archdiocese to respond to her complaints.⁸⁸ It is difficult to examine the story of clerical child abuse and not be affected by what Kathryn Lofton calls ‘its circulating effects’.⁸⁹ To write academically is to imply a detachment, yet there is a danger that the academic style can sanitize its subject. We need also to account for the damage that aspects of Catholic religious practice have inflicted.⁹⁰ There is a danger in historicizing accounts of abuse that it prompts the belief that the danger has passed. While some of the contextual features such as the industrial schools and care homes no longer exist, abuse can be found where children or adults are placed in vulnerable positions. Since the 1970s, our understanding of child abusers and trauma has developed considerably, not least in terms of the resulting long-term health issues (addiction, depression, suicide, etc.). What is striking is the way the social discourse of child sexual abuse has been in a continuous cycle of discovery and suppression in which new findings are met with significant resistance.⁹¹ Some of this is born out of defence of a given institution or political motivation, other times out of denial or sheer disbelief.⁹² For many decades, the Church’s response to clerical child abuse displayed an ecclesiastical thoughtlessness towards safeguarding and victims, enabling perpetrators to operate for long periods at the core of institutions. Commentators have called this ‘clericalism’: the sense that priests live in a hermetically sealed world and were set apart from the laity by virtue of ordination, which in turn has given them an aura of divine sanctity. The clerical world, composed of an all-male, unmarried subculture, has arguably, unofficially, defined the Church.⁹³ Much has been written on the way Catholic theology has turned sexuality into something dark and secret through its emphasis on human depravity of the flesh and the need to repress sexual urges.⁹⁴ The psycho-sexual development of priests took place within the Church’s negative attitudes to sexuality and the body, and in particular the female body. Many male religious had entered junior seminaries at

⁸⁸ Scally, Best Catholics, p. 142. ⁸⁹ Kathryn Lofton, ‘Revisited: Sex Abuse and the Study of Religion’, The Immanent Frame, 24 August 2018, https://tif.ssrc.org/2018/08/24/sex-abuse-and-the-study-of-religion/ (accessed 19 December 2019). ⁹⁰ Lauren F. Winner, The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Waywood Gifts, Characteristic Damage and Sin (London, 2018), pp. 1–17. ⁹¹ Erna Olafso, David Corwin, and Roland C. Summit, ‘Modern History of Child Sexual Abuse Awareness: Cycles of Discovery and Suppression’, Child Abuse & Neglect, 17 (1993), pp. 7–24; Sarah Nelson, Tackling Child Sexual Abuse: Radical Approaches to Prevention, Protection and Support (Bristol, 2016), p. 91. ⁹² Jo Lovett, Maddy Coy, and Liz Kelly Child, ‘Deflection, Denial and Disbelief: Social and Political Discourses about Child Sexual Abuse and their Influence on Institutional Responses’, pp. 8–9, https:// www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/research/social-political-discourses (accessed 24 February 2022). ⁹³ Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse, pp. 42–2. ⁹⁴ As an introduction to the debates, Richard Sipe, Celibacy in Crisis: A Secret World Revisited (London, 2003).

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the immature age of 13 or 14.⁹⁵ Those who underwent seminary formation in Ireland emerged with no experience of the opposite sex and little sexual maturity. As late as the 1960s, the Church’s teaching about marriage emphasized that its primary purpose was the procreation of children, suggesting that intercourse that did not permit procreation might be sinful.⁹⁶ Keenan’s work with former offenders highlights their narratives of guilt and anxiety around sex and sexual suppression during their adolescence and in the seminary years; she notes the link to their reception of Church teachings on sexuality.⁹⁷ Further studies with former Irish offenders have highlighted their experience of a clerical training that prevented remediation, often compounding earlier psycho-social and psycho-sexual difficulties.⁹⁸ However, it is important not to simply localize the problem of abuse in terms of individual psychology, such as a clinical diagnosis of paedophilia. It is also vital to question the cultural practices within the Church and society in general that gave rise to the situation in which a priest could variously offend. In his pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland following the Ryan Report, Pope Benedict made the causal connection between child abuse, Vatican II, and secularism. Priests, he argued, had abandoned their sacramental and devotional practices in favour of ‘secular realities’ and ‘misinterpreted’ the Second Vatican Council in their reluctance to address the penal issues.⁹⁹ The liberalizing effects of the sixties are being indicated here, the suggestion being that canon law could easily be regarded as overtly legalistic, and contrary to the prevailing spirit of mercy and compassion, thereby falling into disuse. But blaming secularism and Vatican II in this way is highly questionable; some notorious abusers, such as Brendan Smyth and Paul McGennis, began their abuse well before the Council. Complaints that the Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien had engaged in predatory sexual conduct towards priests and seminarians under his jurisdiction had been lodged before Pope Benedict resigned, but the furore around his right to vote in the 2013 papal conclave underlined the ways in which clerical abuse and its disclosure, can also function as a means of exploiting the cultural wars within Catholicism. There is no clinical evidence to suggest that either the practice of celibacy or homosexuality are positively correlated with child sexual abuse.¹⁰⁰ More likely are ⁹⁵ CICA, Report, vol. 1, §6.17, p. 71. ⁹⁶ Linda Hogan, ‘Clerical and Religious Child Abuse: Ireland and Beyond’, Theological Studies, 72 (2011), pp. 170–86; Nancy Scheper-Hughes. Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: Mental Illness in Rural Ireland, 2nd edn (Berkley, CA, 2001), p. 207. ⁹⁷ Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse, p. 235. ⁹⁸ P. D’Alton, M. Guilfoyle, and P. Randall, ‘Roman Catholic Clergy Who Have Sexually Abused Children: Their Perceptions of Their Developmental Experience’, Child Abuse & Neglect, 37 (2013), pp. 698–702. ⁹⁹ ‘Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland’, 19 March 2010, https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20100319_ church-ireland.html (accessed 24 February 2022). ¹⁰⁰ IICSA Research Team, ‘Child Sexual Abuse within the Catholic and Anglican Churches’, §4.5.3, p. 38.

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the particular socializing effects of the ordained life that gave rise to a culture of secrecy. The issue for celibates is the degree to which this state was freely chosen or was mandated.¹⁰¹ The issue for gay priests is that the Catholic Church has long considered homosexuality an ‘evil tendency’ and a bar to priestly and religious ordination,¹⁰² although this bar was rarely enforced with bishops or superiors holding homosexuals and heterosexuals to the same standards of a chaste and celibate life.¹⁰³ Nonetheless, gay priests would have to contend with the inner sense of being ‘intrinsically disordered’,¹⁰⁴ and learn to fit into a system that demanded intellectual conformity to a theology in which being male was secondary to their clerical identity.¹⁰⁵ Within this climate it was possible for celibates— regardless of sexual orientation—to foster a double life, maintained by an underworld of sexual desire and under this generalized culture of secrecy, child abuse could also hide and prosper.¹⁰⁶ The Ryan Commission suggested that the routine of religious life in institutions such as industrial schools imposed strict religious observance upon the children.¹⁰⁷ The emphasis on silence as a means of focusing attention on ‘God and the things of God’ had a significant impact on the ways individual sisters and religious brothers interacted with each other and with the children. Silence often precluded the wider exchange of information about a child’s well-being. Work played a large role in religious observance, and neither children nor the sisters were expected to complain; complaining was a sign not merely of personal failing, but an inability to cope with the challenges of religious life. In brief, we can conceptualize abuse as a partial result of the religious colonization of the children’s lives by (repressive and sometimes punitive) adult religious practices, leaving intergenerational scars. Mary Smith was born around 1952; her mother was admitted to a mental hospital shortly after her birth and when Mary was 2 and a half she was ‘sentenced’ to Clonakilty Industrial School, operated by the Sisters of Mercy, before being moved to their laundry. ‘We had no birthdays, we were . . . we were called by numbers actually and also there was . . . we weren’t allowed to

¹⁰¹ Nancy Scheper-Hughes, ‘Institutionalized Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church’, in Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent (eds.), Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (Berkeley, CA, 1999), pp. 295–317; Stephen Rossetti, ‘A Recent Study of Celibacy and the Priesthood’, in John Cavadini (ed.), The Charism of Priestly Celibacy: Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Reflections (Notre Dame, IN, 2012), pp. 143–62. ¹⁰² Sacred Congregation for Religious, Careful Selection and Training of Candidates for the States of Perfection and Holy Orders, 2 February 1961. ¹⁰³ ‘Witness Statement of Canon David Oakley’, IICSA, 24 September 2018, §§4.11, 4.12.4. ¹⁰⁴ Catechism of the Catholic Church (London, 1994), p. 556. ¹⁰⁵ Keenan, Child Sexual Abuse, pp. 244–5. ¹⁰⁶ For example, Frederic Martel, In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy (London, 2019). ¹⁰⁷ CICA, Report, vol. II, §6.42, p. 242.

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speak to the outside world.’¹⁰⁸ Little wonder the system was described as the Irish equivalent of a gulag.¹⁰⁹

Conclusion If there is a common denominator between the various reports and survivor testimonies about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, it is the failure of wider social oversight and self-regulation in caring for the most vulnerable. Within this environment, an unforeseen consequence with longstanding implications has been that the excesses of Catholic exceptionalism have contributed to the overturning of long-held Church-State relations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Catholics in Britain and Ireland were able to enjoy the fruits of emancipation as a trusted associate in the provision of social care. The emergence of an independent Irish State in the 1920s gave the Catholic Church significant influence over legislation and social policies. The revelations of clerical sexual abuse have precipitated a fundamental review of the relationship between Church and State, a jettisoning of long-established practices, and an accelerating decline in church attendance. In England, Wales, and Scotland, where Catholicism has existed more under the parapet, the abuse has also thrown into question its relation to State powers, encapsulated by the calls for mandatory reporting and the establishment of a safeguarding body wholly independent of the bishops. The evidence of sexual abuse in the Church is now impossible to deny and has arguably facilitated a profound cultural and moral shift in the consciousness of most Catholics. In the light of Humanae Vitae (1968), many Catholics learnt to follow their own conscience in interpreting and applying Church teaching around sexuality. The disclosures of systematic abuse and its cover-up has undoubtedly given way to sense of complete distrust and antipathy for many towards the institution.¹¹⁰ As the Catholic Church in Ireland found, people were less able to contend with the violation to their sense of meaning and the moral injury it incurred, a sentiment shared by laity and priests of good standing alike. Some laypeople have dropped the pre-fix ‘Father’ when addressing their priest, as a reminder that the authority invested in the clergy does not give licence for their exercising of raw patriarchal and hierarchical power.

¹⁰⁸ K. O’Donnell, S. Pembroke, and C. McGettrick, ‘Oral History of Mary Smith’, Magdalene Institutions: Recording an Oral and Archival History. Government of Ireland Collaborative Research Project, Irish Research Council (Dublin, 2013), pp. 1–76, at p. 3, http://jfmresearch.com/wp-content/ uploads/2017/04/MAGOHP31_Mary-Smith.pdf ¹⁰⁹ Bruce Arnold, The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed its Innocent Children (Dublin, 2009). ¹¹⁰ Mark Simpson, ‘Pope’s Ireland Visit: Church “No Longer Has Trust” ’, 22 August 2018, BBC News, NI, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45,275,721

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The Catholic Church in Britain and Ireland has made considerable progress in developing safeguarding structures following numerous national inquiries and independent reviews. However, safeguarding can never be a matter of mere policy, it must be enforced within the practices of communities. And while priestly, episcopal, and religious formation now needs to be undertaken with a focus on the obvious lessons, including a new spiritual attitude to the sexual body, the dangers of a new Donatism are challenged by the tensions involved in taking the position of being a forgiving Church while maintaining a theological and societal imperative for the paramountcy of the child. The historian of American Catholicism, Robert Orsi, has suggested that we are misguided if we perceived the abuse crisis as just that, i.e. a crisis.¹¹¹ By crisis, he means, a notion of the exceptional, unforeseen, or unusual nature in either the abuse or its denial and cover-up. For many Catholics, this is precisely how the events have been received—casting a powerful retroactive light on Catholic narratives, histories, and theologies that have gone before, and rendering an uncertain light on the future of the Church in its parishes, religious life, and educational institutions. But this is to miss Orsi’s point. This shadowy underside of modern Catholicism has not been an exception to an otherwise pristine religious culture; on the contrary, it has exposed aspects of the normal, everyday life of modern Catholicism. From the standpoint of sociology and indeed the history of the modern Church explored in this volume, abuse is part of the story of Catholicism, and it is now out in the open for all to see. As one of England’s leading victim’s lawyers Richard Scorer has argued that from one perspective there is nothing unique about the Church; the problem pertains to the deep-rooted nature of these issues in the structures, power dynamics, and forms of authority and deference on which the Church is based.¹¹² Part of that foundational, fundamental nature might be, as Mark Jordan has suggested, the conflation of secrecies around a trinity of sacramentality, sexuality, and bureaucracy.¹¹³ The cultural capital which has surrounded the sacraments, not least the transformative power of the Eucharist, has contributed to the general sense of clerical supremacy, and enabled offenders to use their power and authority to isolate child victims and pressure them into keeping secret behaviour they have been forced to share in. When priests were found to have abused, they were secretly sent on the clerical equivalent of a Victorian rest-cure¹¹⁴ and the priestly deck simply reshuffled to mask, hide, and further avoid the issues.

¹¹¹ Robert Orsi, ‘The Study of Religion on the Other Side of Disgust’, Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Cambridge, MA, 2019), https://bulletin.hds.harvard.edu/the-study-of-religion-on-the-other-side-ofdisgust/ (accessed 24 February 2022). ¹¹² Richard Scorer, ‘The Stain that Remains’, The Tablet, 5 March 2016, p. 4. ¹¹³ Mark Jordan, ‘The Confusion of Priestly Secrets’, in Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea and Virginia Goldner (eds.), Predatory Priests, Silenced Victims: The Sexual Abuse Crisis and the Catholic Church (New York, 2007), pp. 231–48. ¹¹⁴ Scheper-Hughes, ‘Institutionalized Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church’, p. 310.

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It is thanks to the resilience of survivors like Colm, Helen, to the sharing of stories of victims like Arthur, all of whose testimonies we have sought to foreground in this chapter, that cultures of abuse and their cover up have come to light. Colm went on to form a survivor advocacy group, which operated in Britain and Ireland called One in Four.¹¹⁵ After her experiences in Nazareth House, Helen became a nun before leaving the order to establish survivor groups in Scotland. Arthur lost the struggle with his mental health and took his life shortly after receiving a payout from an English diocese. As we look to the future of the Church in the twenty-first century and beyond, we might recall Simone Weil’s words: ‘when a contradiction is impossible to resolve except by a lie, then we know it is really a door’.¹¹⁶

Select Bibliography Goode, Helen, Hannah McGee, and Ciaran O’Boyle, Time to Listen: Confronting Child Sexual Abuse by Catholic Clergy in Ireland (Dublin, 2003). Keenan, Marie, Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church: Gender, Power, and Organisational Culture (Oxford, 2012). Scally, Derek, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Dublin, 2021). Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, ‘Institutionalized Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church’, in Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent (eds.), Small Wars: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (Berkeley, CA, 1999), pp. 295–317. Scorer, Richard, Betrayed: The English Catholic Church and the Sex Abuse Crisis (London, 2014).

¹¹⁵ https://oneinfour.org.uk/about-one-in-four/ and https://www.oneinfour.ie (accessed 3 August 2021). ¹¹⁶ Simone Weil, First and Last Notebooks, trans. Richard Rees (London, 1970), p. 269.

16 The Travails of Contemporary Irish Catholicism from John Paul II to Pope Francis Daithí Ó Corráin

In Ireland Awaits Pope John Paul II, a pastoral letter read at Masses on 2 September 1979, the Irish Bishops’ Conference emphasized the need for Irish Catholics to rededicate themselves so that Ireland might proceed into the twentyfirst century ‘with no diminution of her faith or her religious practice’.¹ Despite indications of faltering levels of doctrinal adherence, even the most pessimistic bishop could not have foreseen the magnitude of the crisis that engulfed Irish Catholicism as the twentieth century closed. Vocations, so plentiful in earlier decades, had dried up; the number of practising believers declined sharply; reevangelization was the key Church theme for 2000; and the institutional Church’s inept response to sex abuse scandals occasioned unprecedented public anger and a dramatic loss of credibility and moral authority. The scandal of sexual and institutional crimes and abuse dominated the two-day visit of Pope Francis in August 2018, during which the pontiff asked for ‘forgiveness for the abuses in Ireland, abuses of power, of conscience, and sexual abuses perpetrated by members with roles of responsibility in the church’.² Using the 1979 and 2018 papal visits as bookends, this chapter traces the trajectory of the Irish Catholic Church during a period when a buoyant and confident Irish Catholic culture came to an end. For most of the twentieth century, Irish Catholicism was characterized by exceptional levels of popular religious practice, a vast institutional presence (including across the globe), strong allegiance to Rome, and a pervasive culture of clericalism, denominational loyalty, and resistance to change. The displacement of this religio-cultural milieu and the movement towards a more individualized ‘mixed religious market’ in Ireland has

The author is grateful to the staff of the Central Catholic Library (Dublin) and the National Library of Ireland for facilitating research despite the pandemic, and thanks Noel Carolan, Mary E. Daly, Gerard Hanley, John Hogan, Tony Murray, and the indefatigable Alana Harris who deserves special recognition for her support, encouragement, and advice. ¹ Ireland Awaits Pope John Paul II (Dublin, 1979), pp. 7–8.

² Irish Times, 26 August 2018.

Daithí Ó Corráin, The Travails of Contemporary Irish Catholicism from John Paul II to Pope Francis In: The Oxford History of British and Irish Catholicism, Volume V: Recapturing the Apostolate of the Laity, 1914–2021. Edited by: Alana Harris, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198844310.003.0017

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been described as ‘post Catholic’.³ As this chapter argues, far from being a celebration of Catholic Ireland, Pope John Paul’s 1979 visit might be better viewed as an attempt to shore it up. Nevertheless, the scale of the Church’s diminishment in the decades that followed was startling, as indicated by dwindling clerical personnel and presence, religious practice, and self-identification on census returns. This picture has been both compounded and complicated by the role of the institutional Church in the public square, in particular its advocacy for peace during the Northern Ireland Troubles and its social justice platform. Into the new millennium, Ireland’s ‘special relationship’ with institutional Catholicism is no longer notable, and the close embrace of Church and State, Irish culture, and a Catholic imaginary no longer taken for granted.⁴

Concerns for the Future of Catholic Ireland, 1969–1979 For a decade before the 1979 papal visit, the Irish bishops reflected at length on their pastoral priorities during two episcopal ‘think-ins’, at Maynooth in 1969 and five years later at Mulranny, County Mayo. ‘Ireland in the Seventies’ was the theme of the first gathering which considered pastoral, socio-economic, resource, and organizational questions. Many of the issues identified remained key challenges into the twenty-first century. Although the practice of the faith was deemed ‘very widespread and very deep’, there was concern about adherence to Church doctrine, particularly among those under 30 and even among some priests.⁵ Cardinal William Conway, archbishop of Armagh from 1963 to 1977, believed the number of lapsed Catholics, while relatively small, was growing, especially in urban areas. Pastoral priorities were therefore identified around religious instruction; standards of preaching and liturgical celebration; and the establishment of pre- and post-marriage courses, staffed by qualified lay people and priests, to address increasing marital breakdown. In the socio-economic domain, the bishops expected that the State would play a more prominent role in the traditional Church spheres of education, health, and social welfare during the 1970s against a background of increasing industrialization and urbanization.⁶ Indeed, several submissions to the 1969 special meeting ³ Gladys Ganiel, Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity (Oxford, 2016), p. 42. ⁴ See Derek Scally, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Dublin, 2021). ⁵ ‘Comment by Bishop Philbin of Down and Connor on the State of Catholicism’, November 1969, Kilmore Diocesan Archives, Austin Quinn papers, AQ/55; ‘Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Irish Episcopal Conference’, Maynooth, 24–28 November 1969, Dublin Diocesan Archives, John Charles McQuaid papers, Hierarchy Meetings 1969, XV/29/72. ⁶ ‘Memorandum by Bishop Henry Murphy of Limerick on “Ireland in the Seventies” ’, n.d. [October 1969]; ‘Minutes of General Meeting of the Irish Episcopal Conference, 7–8 October 1969, Dublin Diocesan Archives, John Charles McQuaid papers, Hierarchy Meetings 1969, XV/29/59.

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recognized the need for clerical training and for pastoral planning to move beyond theological considerations and utilize sociological survey evidence. Two studies of religious practice were subsequently commissioned. The first surveyed 2,311 adults, the vast majority Catholic, in the greater Dublin area in 1972–3. It found that 88 per cent attended Mass at least once a week, 63 per cent received Holy Communion at least once a month, and 81 per cent confessed a few times a year. The disparity between weekly Mass attendance and weekly communion was striking, with only 30 per cent participating in the sacrament. The survey revealed the growing indifference of the young. One-quarter of 21–25-year-olds did not attend weekly Mass, 37 per cent rarely or never went to confession, and almost 29 per cent rarely or never received Holy Communion.⁷ The Dublin results were largely confirmed by a pioneering national survey of religious practice, attitudes, and beliefs in 1973–4. Behind astonishingly high weekly Mass attendance of almost 91 per cent, monthly confession was 46.5 per cent, and weekly communion just 29 per cent.⁸ Tellingly, while Pope John Paul praised ‘Ireland’s devotion to the Mass’ in his Phoenix Park homily on 29 September 1979, he also emphasized that ‘full participation in the Eucharist is the real source of the Christian spirit’.⁹ Just as in the Dublin survey, the adherence of the young was concerning. Some 30 per cent in the 21–25 age category, and a quarter of young single men and women aged 18–30 had abandoned the minimal obligations of weekly Mass and annual sacraments. Some 47.5 per cent of those aged 18–30 had difficulty with orthodox Church teaching.¹⁰ Moreover, the national survey presciently forecasted that many parents of the next generation would not return to religious practice with marriage and middle age. For the bishops this was a bleak prognosis given that Ireland then had the youngest population in western Europe. John Paul II addressed the issue at a youth Mass in Galway attended by 300,000. He warned that ‘the religious and moral traditions of Ireland, the very soul of Ireland, will be challenged by temptations that spare no society in our age’ before famously declaring: ‘Young people of Ireland, I love you.’¹¹ The preliminary findings of the Dublin and national surveys were considered by the bishops at a second ‘think-in’ in April 1974 which considered pastoral strategy for the remainder of the decade. The bishops took comfort in high Sunday Mass attendance and the positive standing of priests. Unlike the 1969 meeting, the views of clerical and lay experts were actively sought and thirty-one position papers on a wide range of subjects were prepared. Several recommendations ⁷ Mícheál Mac Gréil and Mícheál Ó Gliasáin, ‘Church Attendance and Religious Practice of Dublin Adults’, Social Studies: The Journal of Irish Sociology, 3:2 (1974), pp. 177–81. ⁸ Máire Nic Ghiolla Phádraig, ‘Religion in Ireland: Preliminary Analysis’, Social Studies: Irish Journal of Sociology, 5:2 (1976), p. 129. ⁹ The Pope in Ireland: Addresses and Homilies (Dublin, 1979), p. 11. ¹⁰ Nic Ghiolla Phádraig, ‘Religion in Ireland’, p. 135. ¹¹ Pope in Ireland, pp. 46–7.

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echoed concerns raised in 1969. These included the need for greater lay involvement in the spiritual mission of the Church; the continued education of clergy; and the acute need for adult religious education.¹² Some problems were subsequently addressed. The Catholic Communications Institute of Ireland developed a parish renewal programme and a family resource department. Refresher courses for priests became common. In April 1982, for example, over 230 priests of the Dublin diocese attended a week-long programme in Killarney, the third such course organized by the diocese.¹³ But on the more formidable challenges, as one participant at Mulranny put it, ‘many of the decisions became lost in translation from aspiration to reality’.¹⁴ The Irish Times aptly described the character of the Mulranny meeting as ‘conservationist’.¹⁵ Pastorally, the bishops hoped that high Mass attendance would maintain the Catholic Church as a people’s church. But large congregations once a week did not guarantee depth of religious engagement or internalized faith, nor avert the disengagement of the young. Just before the 1979 papal visit, to the hierarchy’s alarm, a survey of university students found that one in seven who were raised Catholic no longer regarded themselves as such.¹⁶ Unsurprisingly then, pastoral revitalization was one of the main motifs of the first papal visit. In Ireland Awaits Pope John Paul II, the bishops counselled that ‘one cannot be a Christian only on Sundays’, underlined the responsibility of parents to hand on the faith to the young, and warned of the ‘dangers of contamination by materialism’.¹⁷ Each of these injunctions was addressed by the pope while in Ireland and subsequently by the Irish hierarchy. For example, in March 1980 a pastoral called Handing on the Faith in the Home highlighted the importance of the family in creating and sustaining faith commitment, with initiatives concentrated at parish level to promote better understanding of doctrine, pastoral care of marriage, and family prayers.¹⁸ That all these concerns had been discussed in 1969 is striking. They were repeated frequently in the decades that followed.

The 1979 Papal Visit: A Peroration for Catholic Ireland? Pope John Paul II was the first reigning pope to visit Ireland in 1979 and Britain three years later. Both visits were pastoral, and they drew extraordinary crowds. The 1979 visit stands as one of the great public events in the history of Irish

¹² ‘Pastoral Guidelines: Report of Special Meeting of Irish Bishops, Mulranny: April 1974’, Clogher Diocesan Archives. ¹³ Irish Catholic Directory [hereafter ICD] 1983, p. 331. ¹⁴ Edward Daly, A Troubled See: Memoirs of a Derry Bishop (Dublin, 2011), p. 59. ¹⁵ Irish Times, 29 April 1974. ¹⁶ Liam Ryan, ‘Faith under Survey’, The Furrow, 34:1 (1983), p. 12. ¹⁷ Ireland Awaits Pope John Paul II, pp. 7–8. ¹⁸ ICD 1981, p. 333; Irish Times, 17 March 1980.

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Catholicism.¹⁹ An estimated 2.7 million people greeted the Pope over three days in six centres in late September to early October. At the time, the choice of Ireland was viewed as a tribute to Irish Catholic fidelity. Despite the magnitude of the crowds and widespread sense of euphoria, the visit was less a salute to Catholic Ireland than an appeal, as the bishops’ concerns and the pontiff ’s exhortations made clear, to reject the steady advance of materialism and secularism. The visit arose due to a confluence of circumstances: an Episcopal Conference diminished in influence and uncertain of how to address the erosion of Catholic belief and practice; a steady contraction of vocations and with it the presence of the institutional Church; and a conflagration in Northern Ireland that showed no sign of abating. The papal visit may have slowed but it did not forestall an increasing detachment from the institutional Church and its teaching, which intensified as social change subsequently gathered pace.

Episcopal Immobilism? The episcopal reflex to stock-take raises a question about the effectiveness of episcopal leadership between the papal visits. The Bishops’ Conference exhibited a sense of uncertainty in the late 1970s. This was due, in part, to significant changes in personnel, none more so than the death of Cardinal Conway on 17 April 1977 at the age of 64. As chairman of the Episcopal Conference, he had combined vision with organizational skills, a zest for work, and a desire for the broadest participation by his fellow bishops.²⁰ Cahal Daly recalled ‘a sense of anxiety’ as the Episcopal Conference ‘faced the future without the leadership which we bishops had depended so much upon’.²¹ There was no obvious successor as archbishop of Armagh and primate of all Ireland. Both the British and Irish governments favoured Cahal Daly because he was a northerner and because of his unflinching condemnation of violence in Northern Ireland. In the event, Tomás Ó Fiaich, president of Maynooth College since 1974, was appointed. He was the first cleric for 110 years to be elevated to Armagh without any prior episcopal experience, a decision which in retrospect looked deeply flawed at such a critical juncture for the Irish Church. Ó Fiaich later recalled how he turned to Archbishop Dermot Ryan of Dublin for advice and support as he ‘knew absolutely nothing about the internal workings of the Episcopal Conference’ and depended on him ‘for the most elementary

¹⁹ See Daithí Ó Corráin, ‘Why Did Pope John Paul II Visit Ireland? The 1979 Papal Visit in Context’, British Catholic History, 35:4 (2021), pp. 462–85. ²⁰ Cahal Daly, Steps on My Pilgrim Journey (Dublin, 1998), pp. 376–8. ²¹ Daly, Steps on My Pilgrim Journey, pp. 381–2.

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information’.²² By contrast, when Cahal Daly was installed as archbishop of Armagh in December 1990 he was the second longest serving member of the Episcopal Conference, having been first appointed a bishop in 1967. In a perceptive obituary of Ó Fiaich in May 1990, following his death in Toulouse while leading a diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes, it was suggested that for all of his qualities and personal warmth he did ‘not appear to have any strong ideas on how to tackle effectively the problems which beset the Church’.²³ During the 1980s there was an unmistakeable sense of the hierarchy favouring a strategy of maintenance rather than mission, of clinging to the status quo rather than promoting an agenda of meaningful change, of routinely calling for greater lay involvement but doing little to give this any practical effect. This was despite an abundance of survey evidence that captured the waning triumphalist model of Irish Catholicism. One explanation for the apparent episcopal immobilism of the period was the type of prelate appointed. When the episcopal archives covering the late 1970s and 1980s are opened, it may be possible to discern whether there were deflected voices demanding real post-conciliar reform, a meaningful sharing of authority, honest confrontation of the emerging abuse crisis, or strategies for meaningful evangelism. A key function of a papal nuncio is to recommend to the pope candidates to fill episcopal vacancies. Gaetano Alibrandi, a Sicilian, presented his credentials in May 1969 and remarkably remained in Dublin until January 1989. He had served as counsellor in the nunciature in Dublin from 1953 until 1956 and his sepiatinted conception of Irish Catholicism remained rooted in that experience, despite the rapid pace of social change from the 1960s onward. By advising on the appointment of thirty-one Irish prelates, Alibrandi had a significant influence on the composition of the hierarchy and the direction of the Irish Catholic Church.²⁴ By the end of his tenure, only three serving bishops had not been nominated by him.²⁵ Alibrandi’s recommendations included no less than three archbishops of Dublin, Ireland’s most populous diocese with just under 200 parishes by the early 1980s. All three appointees—Dermot Ryan, Kevin McNamara, and Desmond Connell—had a deeply orthodox view of the Church’s traditional role and teaching, had little pastoral experience, and were probably happiest in the lecture hall. Ryan had been professor of Semitic languages in University College Dublin before succeeding John Charles McQuaid in 1972. Like his predecessor, Ryan had considerable organizational and administrative abilities and oversaw the establishment of fifty-six new parishes, but unlike McQuaid was a committed ²² ‘Tribute to the Late Archbishop Dermot Ryan by Cardinal Ó Fiaich’, 21 February 1985, ICD 1985, p. 355. ²³ Irish Times, 9 May 1990. ²⁴ This figure excludes auxiliary and coadjutor bishops. ²⁵ These were Bishops Michael Russell of Waterford (1965–93), Michael Harty of Killaloe (1967–94), and John McCormack of Meath (1968–90).

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ecumenist. Although the Irish Episcopal Conference issued an agreed statement recognizing the right of each person to vote according to conscience ahead of the eighth amendment in 1983 (giving explicit protection to unborn life), Ryan issued a pastoral calling unequivocally for a yes vote.²⁶ In April 1984 he was appointed pro-prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the first Irishman to hold such a senior Vatican post. Ryan died suddenly in February 1985 at the age of 60 and was given a cardinal’s funeral at which the Pope was the principal concelebrant. Outspoken in his opposition to contraception, divorce, and abortion, McNamara had been professor of dogmatic theology in Maynooth and vice-president of the College before becoming bishop of Kerry in 1976. Despite suffering from terminal cancer and disregarding significant disquiet among Dublin clergy at Alibrandi’s lack of consultation, McNamara’s translation to Dublin in November 1984 was largely in preparation for the anticipated referendum on divorce.²⁷ In an obituary, the Irish Times maintained that McNamara’s ‘spirited opposition’ was a principal factor in the defeat of the divorce measure and that this gentle but single-minded churchman accepted the sobriquet of an inflexible conservative on traditional values ‘with some pride’.²⁸ Connell, a professor of general metaphysics for thirty-five years in University College Dublin, became archbishop in March 1988 and cardinal in February 2001. Theologically orthodox and frequently impolitic, he was profoundly ill-equipped to deal with the shocking scale of clerical child abuse. In an obituary in 2017, the Irish Times contended that Connell will be remembered by history less for the brilliance of his mind and teaching, or for the case he made trenchantly on social issues from abortion to homosexuality to unemployment or the treatment of refugees than for the belatedness of his apology and appreciation of the pain created by abuse.²⁹

Through these appointments across more than four decades, there was not only stasis but increasing intransigence around some of the key fault lines for the younger generations of Irish Catholics.

A Shrinking Institution A plethora of further surveys made grim reading for the Irish bishops. In 1967, the Vatican requested that the Irish Episcopal Conference undertake a statistical study

²⁶ Bridget Hourican, ‘Ryan, Dermot Joseph’, in James McGuire and James Quinn (eds.), Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge, 2009), DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.007861.v1. ²⁷ Joseph Dunn, No Lions in the Hierarchy: An Anthology of Sorts (Dublin, [1994] 2012), p. 34. ²⁸ Irish Times, 9 April 1987. ²⁹ Irish Times, 22 February 2017.

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of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. The resultant report in 1971 revealed for the first time in the twentieth century a decline in the total number of priests, brothers, and nuns from 1968. The coincidence with the introduction of free secondary education in the Republic of Ireland was notable. By 1978 for every ten who entered all forms of religious life, seven others died and eight departed.³⁰ It was therefore unsurprising that while in Ireland John Paul II called for the fostering of vocations. The papal visit fleetingly boosted vocations before a pattern of long-term decline set in. This was particularly evident from the 1990s as deaths, withdrawals, and retirements far outstripped new entrants. At the time of the first papal visit, the average annual number of ordinations was seventy. This increased to seventy-five during the second half of the 1980s before dwindling to an average of eighteen for the period 2001–5.³¹ In 2019 the national seminary welcomed thirteen new seminarians, which brought the number of full-time residential seminarians to thirty-three, of which twenty-seven were in formation for Irish dioceses. One manifestation of declining vocations was the closure of diocesan seminaries, such as St Kieran’s in Kilkenny, St Peter’s in Ferns, and St Patrick’s in Thurles. Only the national seminary—St Patrick’s College at Maynooth—now remains, along with the Irish College in Rome. Many prominent religious boarding schools and monasteries also announced their closure in the 1990s. A shortage of vocations forced the Carmelite Sisters to close their 174-year-old Blackrock monastery in Dublin in 1997 when only seven sisters remained.³² Loreto Abbey in Rathfarnham, where Mother Teresa of Calcutta spent six weeks as a novice, shut its gates in 1999 after 178 years.³³ Closures have continued unabated. In May 2019 the Franciscans bid farewell to Waterford city after an 800-year association with the closure of their friary and the departure of the last four elderly friars.³⁴ The implications for the Church of a shrinking body of priests and religious have been stark. In 2015 there were 1,966 active priests assigned to parish ministry, a fall of 1,010 since 2000.³⁵ By the time of Pope Francis’s visit, the average age of an Irish priest was 67 and a reduction in the number of Mass services, the sharing of priests, the clustering of parishes, and an increased role for deacons had become commonplace. The first permanent deacons in Ireland were ordained in June 2012, over thirty years after their introduction in England and Wales. In the Diocese of Kerry in 2018 there were just fifty-four priests (including four non-diocesan clergy and two assistant priests) for fifty-three parishes, of

³⁰ Tom Inglis, ‘Decline in Numbers of Priests and Religious in Ireland’, Doctrine and Life, 30:2 (February 1979), pp. 81, 84. ³¹ John A. Weafer, Thirty-Three Good Men: Celibacy, Obedience and Identity (Dublin, 2014), p. 228, table A3. ³² ICD 1998, p. 9. ³³ ICD 1995, p. 12. ³⁴ Irish Times, 10 May 2019. ³⁵ ICD 2001, p. 284; ICD 2016, p. 329.

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which six had no resident priest, and only six diocesan priests were under fifty.³⁶ To meet the shortfall in personnel, many dioceses have sought priests from eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia, reversing a pattern explored in Fiona Bateman’s Chapter 12 where Ireland was a net exporter of priests. The contraction in the number of religious has been even more pronounced. Between 1989 and 2012, the number of religious sisters fell from 12,981 to 6,912; brothers from 1,440 to 628; and clerical religious from 6,325 to 1,888.³⁷ Some orders will cease to exist, and many have withdrawn from traditional areas of activity such as education and health. A high-profile example was the decision of the Sisters of Charity to leave healthcare in 2017, one hastened by negative public reaction to reports that the order would own the new national maternity hospital and the subsequent decision to transfer the site to a new charitable body. The decline in religious vocations reflected the growth in opportunities for careers in education and other prosocial fields outside religious life. Efforts by the hierarchy to encourage vocations by means of pastoral letter, advertising campaigns (such as the ‘Men in Black’ campaign in the Dublin diocese in 1997), vocations workshops, a vocations year from April 2008 to May 2009, the celebration of priesthood Sunday from 2008 onward, and the development of a vocations app in 2011 have not arrested the decline.

Being a Priest in Despondent Times In his pioneering 2014 qualitative study, John Weafer has examined the lived experience of thirty-three Irish priests or former priests under the themes of celibacy, obedience, and identity. The sample is divided into three categories: pre-Vatican II priests in seminary before or during the Council, those ordained in the 1970s and 1980s, and those ordained in the 1990s and 2000s. Weafer posits that the diocesan priesthood, as opposed to the Church, is not yet in crisis but does exhibit a division between competing paradigms of priesthood. The servant-leader model prevailed for about two decades after the Vatican Council before being challenged by a neo-orthodox model of priesthood.³⁸ A majority of those interviewed disagreed with mandatory celibacy; the older cohorts—‘company men with attitude’—were more pragmatic in terms of following the direction of their superiors and tended to devise pastoral solutions to individual problems as they arose, whereas the younger cohort were more unquestioningly obedient; all had a clear sense of their identity and mission.³⁹

³⁶ ‘The State of the Catholic Church on the Island of Ireland Today: Special Report’, Irish Examiner, 3 April 2018. ³⁷ ICD 1992, p. 229; ICD 2016, p. 329. ³⁸ Weafer, Thirty-Three Good Men, p. 14. ³⁹ Weafer, Thirty-Three Good Men, pp. 217–19.

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The National Conference of Priests of Ireland was established in 1975 and grew out of the formation of diocesan priests’ councils. Until its disbandment in 2007, its annual meetings voiced clerical concerns. Pastoral renewal, partnership with the laity, and renewal of the clergy were perennial themes. From the 1990s, there was growing anxiety about the image of the Church in the wake of various scandals and the stresses that this placed on individual priests who were deemed, in some quarters, as guilty by association. In 2010 Sr Marianne O’Connor, director general of the Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI),⁴⁰ claimed her members ‘felt tainted by association. It’s not an easy time to be in religious life’.⁴¹ Weafer’s study and contributions by individual priests have highlighted the absence of adequate pastoral support structures for priests. This issue has been articulated by the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP), established in 2010 as a forum for debate which represents about 1,000 priests. It achieved prominence in 2011 for intervening in the case of Fr Kevin Reynolds who was notoriously libelled in a Prime Time Investigates programme. This was one of several cases of false accusations against priests who had to go to court to clear their names. The ACP has also drawn attention to the increasing workload on an ageing cohort of priests who feel increasingly isolated and despondent. It revealed in 2017 how eight priests had committed suicide over the previous decade.⁴² Alongside this crisis of vocations, census data revealed a steady decline in Catholic self-description amongst the laity. In 1981 the proportion of the population self-ascribing as Catholic was 93 per cent, falling to 84.2 per cent in 2011, and more sharply to 78.3 per cent in 2016, the lowest on record. The absolute number of Catholics in 2016 (both Irish and non-Irish) also fell from 3.86 million to 3.73 million, the first such decline in half a century. The most noticeable finding in 2016 was that 9.8 per cent identified as ‘No Religion’—the second largest group ahead of the next largest categories of Church of Ireland (2.8 per cent) and Muslim (1.3 per cent).⁴³ The 2016 figure of 468,421 under no religion, 45 per cent of whom were aged 20–39, represented an increase of 74 per cent on the 2011 total of 277,237 and a sevenfold increase on the 1991 figure of 67,413.⁴⁴ The trends revealed in 2016 suggested a movement towards a loosely felt cultural Catholicism rather than a tight-knit, all-embracing habitus in which clergy and religion occupied a powerful and prestigious position.

⁴⁰ In 2016 CORI and the Irish Missionary Union merged to form the Association of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (AMRI). ⁴¹ Irish Times, 19 April 2010. ⁴² Irish Times, 10 August 2017. ⁴³ Census of Ireland 2016: Profile 8 Religion: Religious Change, https://www.cso.ie/en/ releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp8iter/p8iter/p8rrc/ (accessed 11 December 2020). ⁴⁴ Census of Ireland 2016: Profile 8 Religion: No Religion, Atheism, Agnosticism https://www.cso.ie/ en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp8iter/p8iter/p8rnraa/ (accessed 11 December 2020).

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Church and State The post-conciliar landscape in Ireland already surveyed indicates that the influence of the Irish hierarchy in the public square was in decline long before the abuse scandals hollowed out its authority.⁴⁵ Between the papal visits a preponderance of episcopal statements in the domain of Church and State concerned sexual morality, as Geiringer and Kelly’s Chapter 5 in this volume demonstrates. This had, in Dermot Lane’s words, a ‘negative impact on the image of the Church, putting it into a defensive mode and losing credibility in the public domain’.⁴⁶ Moreover, such interventions rarely proved decisive in influencing the outcome. For instance, Garret FitzGerald recalled that concerns about property rights rather than pressure from the pulpit led 63 per cent to reject divorce in 1986.⁴⁷ The next most frequent type of episcopal intervention concerned education and merits a brief comment. The Irish bishops faced nothing like the turbulent situation that prevailed in England and Wales during the 1980s with the imposition of a market-driven ideological approach and a movement against State funding of denominational schools. However, the 1990s and 2000s witnessed a flurry of education legislation by an increasingly interventionist and secular Irish State. For example, under the new primary school curriculum, introduced in 1999, there was a greater separation of secular and religious instruction than ever before. Under the 1998 Education Act, for the first time, the State recognized a variety of non-denominational schools such as Gaeilscoileanna (Irish-language schools) and multi-denominational schools (which from 1984 came under the umbrella of Educate Together). In the present century there has been a growing State interest in providing a plurality of school types to serve the needs of a more culturally, ethnically, and religiously diverse population.

From the Northern Ireland Troubles to the St Andrews Agreement The most significant moment of the 1979 papal visit, and one that attracted international media attention, was Pope John Paul II’s speech at Drogheda. This addressed building peace in Northern Ireland, reconciliation based on justice, and an unequivocal renunciation of violence. It was largely drafted by Cahal Daly. He and Cardinal Conway were the towering figures in the Church’s response to the first decade of the Troubles along with Bishop Edward Daly of Derry and to a

⁴⁵ See Tom Inglis, Moral Monopoly: The Rise and Fall of the Catholic Church in Modern Ireland, 2nd edn (Dublin, 1998). ⁴⁶ Dermot Lane, ‘Vatican II: The Irish Experience’, The Furrow, 55:2 (2004), p. 72. ⁴⁷ Garret FitzGerald, All in a Life: An Autobiography (Dublin, 1991), p. 631.

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lesser extent William Philbin of Down and Connor.⁴⁸ Numerous individual priests and religious also ceaselessly condemned violence and warned that its consequences were the opposite of what was intended. A native of Belfast and anguished over the violence, which he vigorously condemned, Conway penned most of the joint episcopal statements during the opening years of the Troubles. These emphasized that the conflict was not a religious war, that the Catholic community had legitimate grievances, that the IRA campaign had no legitimacy and disassociated the vast majority of the nationalist community from it, that all violence (paramilitary or State-sanctioned) should be excoriated, and that efforts to seek reconciliation should be lasting.⁴⁹ As discussed in Power’s Chapter 11 in this volume, the Troubles had a galvanizing effect on Christian Church leaders and Conway was to the fore in organizing the first official interchurch meeting at Ballymascanlon in September 1973. The period also witnessed joint intercessions for peace and reconciliation by the Catholic churches in Ireland and Britain, often on St Patrick’s Day such as in 1988 and 1989. From the early 1970s, World Peace Day on 1 January became an occasion for Irish bishops to appeal for peace in Northern Ireland as ever more people were killed and maimed. Daly, who became bishop of Down and Connor in 1982 and archbishop of Armagh in 1990, frequently preached on the need to foster crosscommunity dialogue by transcending denominational divisions and political divergences.⁵⁰ Frequently criticized by republicans, he ‘was often contrasted with the more ebullient and outspoken Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich, perceived as having more republican sympathies’.⁵¹ Daly’s views formed the basis of the Church’s oral submission in February 1984 to the New Ireland Forum, established by the Irish government as a means of finding a democratic solution to the Northern impasse. He made clear that the hierarchy ardently sought peace and justice, that it rejected the concept of the confessional State, that it was ‘acutely conscious of the fears of the Northern Protestant community’ and ‘would raise our voices to resist any constitutional proposals which might infringe or endanger the civil and religious rights and liberties cherished by Northern Ireland Protestants’. He also emphasized that the bishops in no way sought to have their Church’s moral teaching enshrined in civil law but wished to fulfil their pastoral duty.⁵²

⁴⁸ Margaret Scull, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998 (Oxford, 2019); Marianne Elliott, The Catholics of Ulster: A History (London, 2000), pp. 416–28; Gerald McElroy, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Crisis, 1968–86 (Dublin, 1991). ⁴⁹ See Daithí Ó Corráin, Rendering to God and Caesar: The Irish Churches and the Two States in Ireland, 1949–73 (Manchester, 2006), pp. 145–69. ⁵⁰ Maria Power, Catholic Social Teaching and Theologies of Peace in Northern Ireland: Cardinal Cahal Daly and the Pursuit of the Peaceable Kingdom (London, 2021). ⁵¹ Patrick Maume, ‘Daly, Cahal Brendan’ in McGuire and Quinn (eds), Dictionary of Irish Biography, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.009877.v1. ⁵² Irish Times, 10 February 1984.

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Unsurprisingly, the Catholic bishops and other Church leaders supported the peace process during the 1990s. Catholic and Protestant clergy played an important role in appealing to politicians in both parts of Ireland and in Britain, and paramilitaries to help end the violence. The decade witnessed a number of powerful interchurch moments. In February 1993 the leaders of the four main Christian churches spent a week in the United States to explain the nature of the conflict and promote economic investment by American companies.⁵³ Two years later, Cahal Daly joined Robin Eames (Church of Ireland archbishop of Armagh) in a historic ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral.⁵⁴ In September 1997 the first official meeting between an Ulster Unionist delegation and representatives of the Catholic Church took place in Armagh on political developments in Northern Ireland.⁵⁵ The hierarchy welcomed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 as balanced and providing for a constructive and peaceful resolution of the conflict. Seán Brady, who succeeded Daly in 1996, was deeply committed to the implementation of the agreement which faced a succession of difficulties from policing to decommissioning which were renegotiated through the St Andrews Agreement in 2006. A statement by the hierarchy in June 2003 captured its position on the need for ‘a shared future for the people of Northern Ireland based on the principles of equality, shared responsibility and devolved government established by the Good Friday Agreement. This shared future must be agreed in dialogue, founded on respect for diversity and held together by trust’.⁵⁶ An unassuming and warm man, Brady worked tirelessly until his retirement in 2014 to deepen such trust between the churches.

Conscience of Society The Church’s conservatism on moral issues has tended to obscure its social justice agenda or, as Liam Ryan put it, its role as the ‘conscience of society’.⁵⁷ From the 1970s, the Church developed a more critical view of the State’s social policy shortcomings, particularly in relation to inequality and poverty.⁵⁸ This reflected the influence of John XXIII’s Mater et Magistra (1961), which overturned Church suspicion of State involvement in social provision, and the continuing reception of the Second Vatican Council’s Gaudium et Spes (1965). Three other factors were significant. The emphasis on charity of earlier decades gave way to an ethos of participation and empowerment. Second, Irish membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) became a locus of economic and social policy

⁵³ ICD 1994, p. 9. ⁵⁴ ICD 1996, p. 9. ⁵⁵ ICD 1998, p. 11. ⁵⁶ ICD 2004, p. 10. ⁵⁷ Liam Ryan, ‘Church and Politics: The Last Twenty-five Years’, The Furrow, 30:1 (1979), pp. 3–18. ⁵⁸ On this, see Carole Holohan, ‘The Second Vatican Council, Poverty and Irish Mentalities’, History of European Ideas, 46:7 (2020), pp. 1009–26.

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change in the shape of the European Social Action Programme.⁵⁹ Third, the contraction of religious in increasingly State-run social services facilitated a stronger critique of those services. The example of activist priests in raising awareness of social justice issues in the 1960s was continued between the papal visits. Many priests and religious became household names for their work in championing those on the margins. Brother Kevin Crowley founded the Capuchin Day Centre in 1969 to provide food, clothing, and care facilities for those in need. The centre was visited by Pope Francis in 2018. Donal O’Mahony, another Capuchin, founded Threshold in 1978 to address housing inequality, deprivation, and insufficient legislative protection for tenants. It assisted almost 3,000 people in its first two years and celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2018.⁶⁰ During the 1979 papal visit, a planned stop in the socially deprived Seán McDermott Street was cancelled as the pontiff was behind schedule. This slight had a profound impact on Peter McVerry, a Jesuit priest.⁶¹ In 1983 he founded the Arrupe Society, later re-named the Peter McVerry Trust to tackle homelessness, drugs, and social disadvantage. He is arguably the best known and most outspoken advocate of greater equality and social inclusion. In 1985 Sister Stanislaus Kennedy (‘Sister Stan’), a member of the Sisters of Charity, was a co-founder of Focus Ireland, a housing charity. She later established the Immigrant Council of Ireland and in 2014 was voted Ireland’s greatest woman.⁶² The 1980s was a particularly grim decade. The national debt was 129 per cent of gross national product in 1986, inflation was rampant, unemployment never fell below 15 per cent, social services were reduced, social welfare payments were inadequate, and 206,000 more people left Ireland than arrived with a peak of 44,000 departures in 1989. A survey of poverty in Ireland in 1981, One Million Poor, by Sister Stan suggested that 30 per cent of the population lived below the breadline. She drew attention to the absence of reliable data on poverty and income distribution. This led in 1986 to the establishment of the Combat Poverty Agency as an independent body. Voluntary organizations led by or under religious patronage such as the Society of St Vincent de Paul were in the vanguard of public commentary on socio-economic issues. Poverty may have been ‘rediscovered’ by sociologists in the 1960s, but in an Irish context the St Vincent de Paul sodality had been working quietly to ameliorate the consequences of poverty since the 1840s. The best-known Irish Catholic lay organization of social concern and action, in 2014 it had 10,500 members and 1,500 auxiliary members in 1,235

⁵⁹ Mairéad Considine and Fiona Dukelow, Irish Social Policy: A Critical Introduction (Dublin, 2009), p. 56. ⁶⁰ Turlough O’Riordan, ‘O’Mahony, Donal’, McGuire & Quinn (eds.), Dictionary of Irish Biography, DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.009868.v1. ⁶¹ ‘The Sunday Interview: Peter McVerry’, Sunday Business Post, 25 May 2014. ⁶² Irish Independent, 20 September 2014.

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conferences active in every county in Ireland.⁶³ It should also be stated that Trócaire, the bishops’ overseas development agency established in 1973, paralleled these efforts through aid to the developing world. In 1984, despite the economic crisis, Church collections for Trócaire, with its distinctive Lenten collection boxes, raised £5.7 million for famine relief in Africa. Irish Catholics have continued to support its efforts and in 2017 Trócaire raised €29.1 million, one of the highest figures in its history.⁶⁴ Clergy, religious, individual bishops, and the Episcopal Conference helped raise public awareness about the interlinked problems of poverty, long-term unemployment, and emigration, as well as the inadequacy of Ireland’s social infrastructure. Although there was no money to address this, the 1980s did witness a raft of reports around the needs of older people, the disabled, the Travelling community, and the implications of large-scale emigration.⁶⁵ Between 1983 and 1986, a Commission on Social Welfare, which included Sister Stan and Bob Cashman, a former Society of St Vincent de Paul president, carried out the first review of the social welfare system.⁶⁶ Due to the prevailing economic situation, most of its recommendations were postponed until the 1990s. While often associated with the 1950s, episcopal concern for the welfare (material and spiritual) of Irish emigrants, especially in Britain and the United States, was a perennial issue. The Episcopal Conference played a significant role in a variety of campaigns in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries to regularize the status of the undocumented in the United States, to have the Irish government fund emigrant services, and to support the Irish abroad, particularly the elderly and those without family.⁶⁷ The Episcopal Conference regarded unemployment as the greatest social evil confronting Irish society in the 1980s and early 1990s. In December 1992 it published a considered a hundred-page pastoral, Work is the Key: Towards an Economy that Needs Everyone, which placed the responsibility for creating Irish jobs on Irish shoulders, welcomed ‘those analyses which have refused to sanction a fatalistic outlook or to lay the blame for our high unemployment and emigration at the door of Brussels or the world economy’, and called for a clear long-term programme for job creation.⁶⁸ The bishops consistently offered a positive assessment of Irish involvement in the European Community because of its emphasis on peace and stability, fundamental rights, and greater economic development and prosperity. In Dublin, Archbishop Connell frequently addressed unemployment; tackling its attendant ills lay behind the relaunch of the Catholic Social

⁶³ Bill Lawlor and Joe Dalton (eds.), The Society of St Vincent de Paul in Ireland: 170 Years of Fighting Poverty (Dublin, 2014), p. xx. ⁶⁴ ICD 1985, p. 355; Irish Times, 11 August 2018. ⁶⁵ Considine and Dukelow, Irish Social Policy, pp. 61–2. ⁶⁶ Irish Times, 15 September 1983. ⁶⁷ Breda Gray, ‘The Politics of Migration, Church, and State: A Case Study of the Catholic Church in Ireland’, International Migration Review, 50:2 (2016), pp. 315–51. ⁶⁸ Irish Times, 9 December 1992.

     

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Service Conference as Crosscare in 1993. The bishops of the west of Ireland were proactive in commissioning a major jobs and regional development study to stem unemployment and emigration; this was published in 1994 as Crusade for Survival.⁶⁹ It led to a public campaign and the establishment three years later of the Western Development Commission as a government agency. Aside from economic issues, members of the hierarchy addressed a broad range of social problems, including, among others, drug abuse and alcoholism, the commercialization of Sunday, responsible advertising, suicide, and discrimination against the Travelling community. Between 1994 and 2007 Ireland experienced an unprecedented economic transformation: annual gross domestic product grew by an average of 9.4 per cent between 1994 and 2000, and 5.4 per cent between 2001 and 2006; the number at work grew from 1.23 to 2.05 million; unemployment fell to 4.5 per cent by 2006; the Celtic Tiger was lauded around the globe. The community and voluntary sector played an important role in lobbying for greater resources to address social exclusion. From 1997 organizations representing that sector, including CORI and the St Vincent de Paul, participated in the national social partnership talks which served as a national framework for industrial relations and wage bargaining until 2009.⁷⁰ To the frustration of the community and voluntary pillar, economic rather than social progress was prioritized.⁷¹ Some successes were recorded. For instance, in 2002, the government benchmarked the lowest social welfare rates at 30 per cent of gross industrial earnings. During the Celtic Tiger era, many Church figures, such as Fr Seán Healy and Sr Brigid Reynolds of the justice office of CORI,⁷² criticized the neo-liberal approach to economic growth and the dominance of the market and the individual over society. In Prosperity with a Purpose: Christian Faith and Values at a Time of Rapid Economic Growth, a wide-ranging pastoral in November 1999, the bishops stressed that economics should serve society and the common good.⁷³ The document received little media attention because the Church struggled to communicate its message in the secular realm. Two principal reasons for this can be advanced. The first was growing mistrust due to the mishandling of clerical child abuse. Second, between the papal visits the media became the chief supplier of alternative value systems and intensely critiqued religious institutions that had once been above public scrutiny.⁷⁴ During the post-2008 recession, the bishops addressed the financial turmoil and ⁶⁹ ICD 1995, pp. 8–9. ⁷⁰ Both organizations were parties to the negotiations that led to Partnership 2000 (1997–2000), Programme for Prosperity and Fairness (2000–3), and Sustaining Progress (2003–5). ⁷¹ Paul Teague and Jimmy Donaghey, ‘The Life and Death of Irish Social Partnership: Lessons for Social Pacts’, Business History, 57:3 (2015), pp. 418–37. ⁷² In 2009 CORI Justice became a secular body called Social Justice Ireland. ⁷³ Irish Times, 4 November 1999. ⁷⁴ Susie Donnelly and Tom Inglis, ‘The Media and the Catholic Church in Ireland: Reporting Clerical Child Sex Abuse’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 25:1 (2010), pp. 1–19.

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associated societal disaffection, while also highlighting the appeals of Catholic social justice groups for an end to the austerity policies that characterized Irish budgets in the early 2010s. A shortage of labour during the Celtic Tiger was remedied by immigration and a rapid transformation to a multi-ethnic country. The proportion of non-Irish nationals increased from just under 6 per cent in the 2002 census to 12 per cent in 2016, or 535,000 persons from 200 different countries. Polish nationals were the largest group with 122,515 arrivals and Polish was the second most spoken language in the country. Only a minority of Poles left during the post-2008 economic crisis.⁷⁵ The percentage of Catholics born outside Ireland grew from 7.2 per cent in 2002 to 12 per cent in 2016.⁷⁶ For the Irish Church, this meant a rapid reorientation from being a sending Church since the nineteenth century to becoming a receiving Church. This reversal was captured in the diocese of Kildare in 2005 when the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of Christ, missionary order was invited to develop a ministry to the large migrant population.⁷⁷ The order was first established in Nigeria in 1937 by Charles Heerey, the Irish-born and educated first archbishop of Onitsha. A study of migrant chaplains in the 2000s revealed an uneven level of inclusiveness, initial fears of segregation instead of integration, and a gradual readjustment of the Irish Catholic Church.⁷⁸ In 2018 there was an African, Brazilian, Filipino, French, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, and Romanian chaplaincy; the Brazilian and Filipino were the most extensive in terms of multiple centres outside Dublin. In recognition of the level of change, the Bishops’ Conference restructured its commission on emigration in 2008 to comprise a council for emigrants and a council for immigrants. The latter has produced several resources to assist parishes such as a guide to develop a ministry of welcome, and prayers and blessings in different languages. Moreover, the hierarchy has regularly organized conferences to raise awareness of racism, the plight of asylum seekers, those in direct provision, and human trafficking. At a civil society level, numerous well-regarded pro-migrant organizations such as the Immigrant Council of Ireland and the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland owed their foundation to Catholic clergy or religious, primarily returned missionaries and diaspora chaplains.⁷⁹

⁷⁵ ‘Census of Population 2016—Profile 8 Irish Travellers, Ethnicity and Religion’, https://www.cso. ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-cp8iter/p8iter/p8rroc/ (accessed 13 December 2020); Bryan Fanning, Migration and the Making of Ireland (Dublin, 2018), pp. 222, 230. ⁷⁶ ‘Census of Population 2016—Profile 8 Irish Travellers, Ethnicity and Religion’. ⁷⁷ ICD 2006, p. 9. ⁷⁸ Breda Gray and Rita O’Sullivan Lago, ‘Migrant Chaplains: Mediators of Catholic Church Transnationalism or Guests in Nationally Shaped Religious Fields?’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 19:2 (2011), pp. 94–110. ⁷⁹ Gray, ‘Politics of Migration, Church, and State’, p. 335.

     

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Institutional Dénouement The Irish Church experienced a historic nadir in 2009 with the publication of the devastating reports of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse (Ryan Report) in May and the Commission of Investigation into the Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (Murphy Report) in November. Diarmuid Martin, permanent observer of the Holy See at the United Nations, succeeded Desmond Connell as archbishop of Dublin in 2004. He set a strong example by cooperating fully with the Murphy Commission. By the time of his retirement in December 2020, Martin’s courageous leadership in the areas of child safeguarding and confronting the past altered the culture of the Church at home and served as a template for dioceses across the world. He was succeeded in February 2021 by Archbishop Dermot Farrell. The depth of anger at the revelations of the Murphy Report was unprecedented: at the Vatican for instructing bishops to treat the matter as an offence (or delict) under canon law instead of a criminal offence; at the police for appearing to collaborate in suppressing investigations; at the hierarchy for trying to cover up such crimes in the 1990s and for failing to meet their responsibilities. The focus of public attention subsequently switched to the Vatican. In midFebruary 2010 the Irish bishops were summoned to discuss the crisis with the Pope and members of the curia. The bishops offered their own observations and suggestions, spoke frankly of the depth of anger, betrayal, and shame expressed to them, and outlined the significant measures taken to ensure the safety of children and young people.⁸⁰ The following month, Pope Benedict issued a pastoral letter to the Catholics of Ireland in which he shared ‘in the dismay and the sense of betrayal that so many of you have experienced on learning of these sinful and criminal acts and the way Church authorities in Ireland dealt with them’.⁸¹ For many, however, the letter did not go far enough because it was silent on the culpability of the Vatican. The letter announced an apostolic visitation to Ireland ‘to assist the local Church on her path of renewal’. It took place in the early months of 2011 with particular emphasis on child safeguarding standards, seminary training, and doctrinal discipline. In February 2011 the Irish bishops launched the Towards Healing Counselling and Support Service, with a commitment of €10 million over five years, to meet the support needs of survivors of abuse and their families.⁸² It replaced Faoiseamh which had operated between 1996 and 2011. By the end of the 2010s, both counselling services had supported ⁸⁰ ‘Press Release on the Meeting of the Holy Father with Senior Irish Bishops and Members of the Roman Curia’, 16 February 2010, https://www.catholicbishops.ie/2010/02/16/press-release-on-themeeting-of-the-holy-father-with-senior-irish-bishops-and-high-ranking-members-of-the-roman-curia/ (accessed 11 December 2020). ⁸¹ ‘Pastoral Letter of Pope Benedict XVI to the Catholics of Ireland’, 19 March 2010, http://www. vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2010/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20100319_church-ireland. html (accessed 11 December 2020). ⁸² ICD 2012, p. 9.

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5,470 people.⁸³ In April 2011 Limerick became the second diocese after Dublin to appoint a director of safeguarding to oversee all aspects of child protection in Church-related activities.⁸⁴ The practice also developed in the 2010s of the publication of annual reviews of safeguarding practice in individual dioceses. These positive developments were overshadowed by the publication in July 2011 of the Cloyne Report into the handling of allegations against nineteen clerics. Damningly, the diocese of Cloyne was found to have ignored the Church’s own guidelines on child protection. The fallout sparked a sensational attack in the Dáil. Speaking as a practising Catholic, Taoiseach Enda Kenny alleged the report exposed ‘an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago. In doing so the report excavates the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day’.⁸⁵ He demanded a considered response. It was later revealed that during a private meeting with Irish president, Mary McAleese, in 2003, when inquiries in Ferns and Dublin were ongoing, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state, had floated a concordat with Ireland to protect Vatican and diocesan archives. McAleese described it as one of the ‘most devastating moments’ of her presidency.⁸⁶ Within a month of Kenny’s condemnation, the Holy See recalled its nuncio and in September issued a twenty-five-page response.⁸⁷ In November 2011 the Irish government decided to close its Vatican embassy on economic grounds; it was subsequently reopened in 2014 and relations improved. The imposition of the new missal in 2012 without consultation, and the disciplining of some Irish priests and theologians by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for their views on women’s ordination and LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, plus) increased disillusionment with the papacy of Benedict XVI.

Twilight or Adaptation? Side by side with appeals for forgiveness, episcopal statements since 2000 frequently referenced the need for renewal. In December 2005 a new commission for pastoral renewal and adult faith development was created. It was an overdue acknowledgement of the changed environment in which the Church’s primary task took place. In June 2012 Dublin hosted the Fiftieth International Eucharistic Congress, eighty years after it held the Thirty-First Congress in 1932. It was regarded by Church leaders as a means of encouraging renewal. A significant but largely neglected move in this direction occurred a year earlier with the launch ⁸³ https://towardshealing.ie/history/ (accessed 11 December 2020). ⁸⁴ ICD 2012, p. 9. ⁸⁵ Dáil Debates, 739:3 (20 July 2011), https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2011-07-20/ 19/#spk_559 (accessed 11 December 2020). ⁸⁶ Irish Times, 7 August 2018. ⁸⁷ Irish Times, 5 September 2018.

     

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in January 2011 of Share the Good News, the first Irish national directory for catechesis. National catechetical directories had been issued in France, Belgium, and other countries even before the end of the Second Vatican Council, but in Ireland catechesis remained narrowly school-oriented for decades. Share the Good News set out a ten-year plan for evangelization, for catechesis, and for religious education, particularly of adults.⁸⁸ Diarmuid Martin described it as a recognition of the changed religious culture of Ireland in which ‘we can no longer assume faith on the part of young people who have attended Catholic schools nor indeed young people who come from Catholic families’.⁸⁹ Since the turn of the present century there have been numerous listening exercises by individual bishops, consultative assemblies of religious and laity, diocesan assemblies, and in Limerick in 2016 the first diocesan synod in over half a century. Much has been written on a desire for change in the domains of Church teaching, leadership, participatory structures, gender, and ministry, among others. As Eugene Duffy argues, the missing vital element has been agreed instruments of accountability for the implementation of renewal for all concerned, but in particular the local bishop.⁹⁰ The example of the Limerick synod, which was shaped by an eighteen-month listening process involving 5,000 people across the diocese may provide a template for other dioceses. The narrative of decline and this chapter’s focus on the institutional Church should not obscure the fact that a critical mass of believers remains, that religion retains a public salience, and that developments at a local grassroots level and youth movements such as Youth 2000 (which began in Ireland in 1993) have prioritized greater lay involvement and a more evangelical Church. An analysis of the European Values Surveys of twentytwo countries in 2014 and 2016 found that 36 per cent of Irish adults attended a religious service at least once a week, whereas the average was 12.8 per cent. Even those aged between 16 and 29—Ireland’s least religious cohort—were more likely to pray than other Europeans: 54 per cent identified as Catholic, 24 per cent attended Church, and 43 per cent prayed on a weekly basis; only Portugal and Poland recorded higher Mass attendance.⁹¹

Conclusion Pope Francis visited Ireland on 25 and 26 August 2018 as part of the ninth international World Meeting of Families. In May 2018 two-thirds of Irish voters ⁸⁸ ICD 2012, p. 8. ⁸⁹ ‘Press Release on Launch of Share the Good News’, 5 January 2011. ⁹⁰ Eugene Duffy, ‘Assembly or Synod?—Some Theological Considerations’, The Furrow, 63:6 (2012), pp. 299–300. ⁹¹ Stephen Bullivant, Europe’s Young Adults and Religion (London, 2018), https://www.stmarys.ac. uk/research/centres/benedict-xvi/docs/2018-mar-europe-young-people-report-eng.pdf (accessed 11 December 2020).

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favoured the repeal of the eighth amendment, prompting some commentators to pronounce the end of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Yet, the following month half a million tickets were booked for the closing papal Mass on 26 August. In the event, the number who braved the inclement weather was much lower than predicted. The most significant episode of the papal visit was a ninety-minute meeting between Francis and eight survivors of clerical abuse.⁹² Although hastily arranged, after strong entreaties from the archbishop of Dublin, the meeting shaped the penitential rite for the papal Mass when a repentant pope sought forgiveness. Strikingly, the pontiff was reminded throughout his visit of the need, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar put it, ‘to ensure that from words flow actions’. Two months after the 2018 papal visit, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin celebrated the final Mass in the Church of the Annunciation in Finglas. Opened in 1967, it was one of the largest churches in Ireland with a capacity for almost 3,500. In the intervening decades, its massive concrete and steel structure had deteriorated, and its congregation waned to a fraction of what it had once been. The building was demolished in 2021. In its place a new church one-tenth of the size and a parish centre will be built, while the remaining land is earmarked for housing of the elderly. This closing vignette encapsulates the extent and texture of the decline experienced by the institutional Church between the papal visits (Figure 16.1). It

Figure 16.1 Waving crowd as Pope John Paul II flies over Phoenix Park, Dublin, 1979. Image with permission of Tony Murray. ⁹² Irish Times, 1 September 2018.

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might also serve as a fitting metaphor for the Church and the ongoing challenge of adaptation it faces if it is to speak convincingly to the needs of contemporary Catholic Ireland.

Select Bibliography Ganiel, Gladys, Transforming Post-Catholic Ireland: Religious Practice in Late Modernity (Oxford, 2016). Maher, Eamon and O’Brien, Eugene (eds.), Tracing the Cultural Legacy of Irish Catholicism: From Galway to Cloyne and Beyond (Manchester, 2017). Ó Corráin, Daithí, ‘Catholicism in Ireland, 1880–2016: Rise, Ascendancy and Retreat’, in Bartlett, Thomas (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland vol. 4 (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 726–64. Ó Corráin, Daithí, ‘Why did Pope John Paul II Visit Ireland? The 1979 Papal Visit in Context’, British Catholic History, 35 (2021), pp. 462–85. Scally, Derek, The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship (Dublin, 2021). Scull, Margaret, The Catholic Church and the Northern Ireland Troubles, 1968–1998 (Oxford, 2019). Twomey, D. Vincent, The End of Irish Catholicism? (Dublin, 2003). Weafer, John A., Thirty-Three Good Men: Celibacy, Obedience and Identity (Dublin, 2014).

Statistical Appendices Timothy Kinnear

These appendices provide numerical data regarding the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. Many of the tables and graphs use Catholic Directory as a source. They are typically assembled from diocesan figures, with any missing figures imputed from proximate years where feasible. Not all categories are recorded for all nations or all decades. Consideration was taken regarding the figures to use where anomalies were identified. Consequently, some data used differ slightly from those recorded in Catholic Directory. Affirming the reliability of any one data point and making comparisons over time is challenging due to varying rigour in providing or estimating figures at the source, possible omissions, and modifications in categories recorded. Nonetheless, the data indicate broad contours of change over time. Figures presented here for the nations of England, Wales, the Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland that use Catholic Directory or other diocesan-level sources are estimated by apportioning data, as some dioceses cross the boundaries of those nations. To derive the estimates for Ireland, diocesan figures are apportioned to Northern Ireland as follows: Archdiocese of Armagh 75 per cent, Derry 95 per cent, Clogher 60 per cent, Kilmore 5 per cent. Figures for Wales include 89 per cent of the archdiocese of Cardiff, as the archdiocese includes Herefordshire. England estimates include His Majesty’s Forces and immigrant communities where stated in the source. Figures are rounded where percentages are used. See www.crs.org.uk/catholicism-in-numbers for a full discussion of sources, bibliography, additional notes, diocesan-level figures, and updates. Mass Attendance Estimates A1.1

England

Wales

A1.2

Scotland

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005 2008 2019

1,236,120 1,337,150 1,392,750 1,495,390 1,869,665 1,863,263 1,587,524 1,332,826 973,000 907,427 854,877 679,914

47,490 51,375 53,510 57,460 71,835 71,590 56,700 54,609 40,500 35,146 30,292 21,988

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005 2010 2018

407,090 386,320 369,360 420,250 382,110 311,000 296,030 283,546 222,327 192,235 170,894 130,128

Sources: Religious Trends no. 2 (England and Wales 1920–90), UK Church Statistics no. 4 (England and Wales 2000–5 and Scotland 1920–2005), Catholic Directory (2008–18), Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales (CBCEW; 2019).

The author would like to acknowledge the scholarship that underpins his quantitative survey, especially that of Peter Brierley, Clive Field, and Anthony Spencer.

358

  England 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Wales

80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000

0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Scotland 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000 100,000 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Frequency of Attendance (percentage of Catholics) Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

A1.3

Every week

Monthly

Every week

Monthly

1973–4 1981 1990 1999–2000 2008

91% 85.2% 84.8% 65.2% 45.1%

5.5% 6.8% 11.2% 16.3%

93.4% 84.9% 73.5% 61.1%

1.1% 3.5% 13.2% 8.6%

Sources: 1973–4 records attendance at Mass, cited in Inglis, ‘Catholic Identity in Contemporary Ireland: Belief and Belonging to Tradition’, Journey of Contemporary Religion 22:2 (2007); 1981–2008 record frequency of attendance at religious services, tabulated from European Values Study Trend File 1981–2017 (GESIS Data Archive, Cologne. ZA7503 Data file Version 2.0.0, DOI 10.4232/1.13736). ‘Every week’ figures for 1981–2008 include those attending once a week or more. The graphs record the percentage of Catholics who stated they attend monthly or more frequently.

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

100%

100%

80%

80%

60%

60%

40%

40%

20%

20%

0% 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

0% 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010

Catholic Population Estimates Republic of Ireland A2.1

National population

Catholic population

1926 1936 1946 1961 1971 1981 1991 2002 2011

2,971,992 2,968,420 2,955,107 2,818,341 2,978,248 3,443,405 3,525,719 3,917,203 4,588,252

2,751,269 2,773,920 2,786,033 2,673,473 2,795,666 3,204,476 3,228,327 3,462,606 3,861,335

No religion

% Catholic

1,107 7,616 39,572 66,270 138,264 269,811

92.6 93.4 94.3 94.9 93.9 93.1 91.6 88.4 84.2

Source: Census 2011 Profile 7, Statistical Tables, table 1, Central Statistics Office.

Northern Ireland A2.2

National population

Catholic population

1926 1937 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011

1,256,561 1,279,745 1,370,921 1,425,042 1,536,065 1,507,065 1,577,836 1,685,267 1,810,863

420,428 428,290 471,460 497,547 477,919 414,532 605,639 678,462 738,033

No religion

% Catholic

59,234 166,442 183,078

33.5 33.5 34.4 34.9 31.1 27.5 38.4 40.3 40.8

Source: Northern Ireland Census reports. The ‘No religion’ figure for 2001 is estimated, as those responses were combined with respondents who did not state a religion.

Republic of Ireland 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 0 1920

1940

National population

1960

1980

2000

Catholic population

2020 No religion

Northern Ireland 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 0 1920

1940

National population

1960

1980

2000

Catholic population

2020 No religion

360

  England and Wales

A2.3 1959 1963 1971 1980 1991 2001 2005

National population

Catholic population

Non-Catholic population

% Catholic

49,152,000 49,603,000 50,748,000 52,360,000 53,575,300

5,058,500 5,200,200 4,557,800 4,257,400 4,312,200 4,172,700 3,904,500

44,594,200 45,345,600 46,435,800 48,187,300 49,670,800

9.3 8.6 8.5 8.0 7.3

Sources: Office for National Statistics mid-year population estimates; Spencer, ‘Four-Wheeler’ Catholic population estimates, Digest of Statistics of the Catholic Community of England & Wales, 1958–2005, vol. I: Population and Vital Statistics, Pastoral Services, Evangelisation and Education (Taunton, 2007).

Catholic Directory Estimates of Catholic Population

A2.4

England and Wales 1921 1931 1939 1951 1961 1970 1981 1991 2001 2011

1,931,991 2,206,244 2,375,196 2,808,596 3,545,500 4,010,208 4,257,789 4,248,346 4,136,284 4,034,069

Scotland 1921 1931 1940 1951 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001 2011 2018

601,304 607,000 614,469 748,463 799,180 822,800 828,100 774,550 688,337 632,374 689,300

Note: Spencer’s ‘Four-Wheeler’ and Sacramental Index figures seek to capture Catholics who attend church for at least baptism, marriage, and funeral (p. 14). Catholic Directory population figures are compiled from priests’ estimates. The Directory methodology does not accurately capture the number of baptized Catholics nationally and often underestimates, so other sources should be considered such as those presented here.

Scotland A2.5

National population

Catholic population

Non-Catholic population

% Catholic

1967 2001 2011

5,198,300 5,062,011 5,295,403

888,000 803,732 841,053

4,310,300 4,258,279 4,454,350

17.1 15.9 15.9

Sources: For 1967, National Records of Scotland mid-year population estimates; Spencer, Sacramental Index, cited in Field, Secularization in the Long 1960s Numerating Religion in Britain (Oxford, 2017), p. 63. For 2001 and 2011, Scotland’s Census reports.

 

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Numbers of Priests England A3.1

Secular

Regular

Total

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1972 1980 1990 2000 2010

2,416 2,672 3,597 4,094 4,453 4,751 4,520 4,041 3,801 3,480

1,372 1,454 1,898 2,186 2,509 2,433 2,178 1,929 1,513 957

3,788 4,126 5,495 6,280 6,962 7,184 6,698 5,970 5,314 4,437

Wales Retired

Secular

Regular

Total

Retired

617 772

74 113 186 183 214 204 192 179 149 136

107 136 112 180 190 147 126 112 99 72

181 249 298 363 404 351 318 291 248 208

15 36

Scotland A3.2

Secular

Regular

Total

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2001 2010 2019

505 577 685 801 970 1,003 922 840 697 574 477

97 98 147 223 260 261 252 217 148 141 129

602 675 832 1,024 1,230 1,264 1,174 1,057 845 715 606

Source: Catholic Directory. The Directory recorded retired priests for England and Wales separately from 1994.

Wales, total

England, total 8,000

500

6,000

400 300

4,000

200

2,000

100

0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Scotland, total 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

A3.3

Parish/ diocesan

Curates and others

Regular/clerical members of religious orders

Total

Parish/ diocesan

Curates and others

Regular/clerical members of religious orders

Total

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018

869 873 879 890 910 3,373 3,204 3,363 2,968 2,424 2,008

1,712 1,712 1,914 2,086 2,230

695 677 934 1,359 1,689 1,836 2,027

3,276 3,262 3,727 4,335 4,829 5,209 5,231

326 326 385 409 474

1,832 1,524 1,120

4,800 3,948 3,128

175 176 176 178 184 684 612 663 624 493 422

59 59 90 122 191 189 181 176 147 117 113

560 561 651 709 849 873 793 839 771 610 535

Source: Catholic Directory, annual recapitulations of statistics. The Republic of Ireland total for 1990 is omitted due to an apparent anomaly regarding Dublin. Curates, administrators and others are no longer recorded separately by 1970. Regular clergy are recorded for 1920–70, religious missionary clergy for 1980 and 1990, and clerical members of religious orders or congregations thereafter.

Republic of Ireland, total

Northern Ireland, total

6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

 

363

Places of Worship Churches and chapels

Scotland

A4.1

England

Wales

A4.2

Churches, chapels, stations

Missions

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1972 1980 1990 2000 2010

1,808 2,061 2,376 2,646 2,988 3,416 3,530 3,800 3,346 2,616

124 145 182 222 216 252 245 216 188 168

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2001 2010 2019

431 448 481 506

252 267 180

Parishes

402 448 475 464 476 449 309

Source: Catholic Directory. Public churches and chapels in England and Wales. Regarding Scotland, churches were no longer recorded in Directory statistical summaries by 1960. Recording later resumed. Statistics for 2019 record 481 churches plus twenty Mass centres. Missions were no longer recorded separately by 1950, though parish figures for 1960‒1990 include missions with resident priests.

4,000

England

3,000 2,000 1,000 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1920

Wales

1940

1960

Scotland

600 400 200 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

Churches, chapels, stations

2000

2020 Parishes

1980

2000

2020

364

  Churches

A4.3

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018

2,065 2,065 2,097 2,043 2,073 2,097 2,182 2,159 2,180 2,192 2,191

408 408 412 425 441 438 468 469 465 465 460

Source: Catholic Directory. 1920–70 figures are parochial and district churches, 1980 and 1990 are parochial and other churches, and more recent figures refer simply to churches. Ireland figures for 1980 and 1990 include estimates for the Diocese of Limerick as these are not stated in the source.

Republic of Ireland 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

500 400 300 200 100 0 2020 1920

Northern Ireland

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

Religious Communities of Women Convents

Scotland

Scotland

A5.1

England

Wales

A5.2

Convents/ communities

A5.3

Sisters in religious orders

1930 1940 1950 1960 1972 1980 1990 2000 2010

859 985 1,029 1,100 1,192 1,224 1,190 1,187 992

37 45 51 63 74 72 73 73 61

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2001 2010 2019

65 71 78 95 106 112 147 170 151 131 92

1980 1990 2001 2010 2019

1,237 984 623 463 333

Source: Catholic Directory. Regarding Scotland, figures for 1920–40 are for convents and 1950–2019 for religious houses/communities of women. The figure for 1990 includes one house for both men and women.

  Convents

Scotland, convents / communities

1,500

200

1,000

150

500

100

0 1930

1950

1970

365

1990

England

Wales

2010

50 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Scotland, sisters in religious orders 1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

Convents/communities

Sisters in religious orders

A5.4

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

A5.5

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

387 391 458 524 576 628 739 856

43 44 69 75 76 77 86 106

1991 2000 2010 2018

10,181 8,183 6,867 5,013

1,247 1,008 782 579

Source: Catholic Directory. Figures for 1920–70 are for houses of religious orders/communities of nuns and for 1980–90 figures are for convents.

Republic of Ireland, sisters in religious orders Northern Ireland, sisters in religious orders 1,400 12,000 1,200 10,000 1,000 8,000 800 6,000 600 4,000 400 2,000 200 0 0 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020

366

 

Religious Communities of Men Scotland A6.1

Religious houses/ communities

Brothers in religious orders

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2001 2010 2019

16 15 22 46 54 57 54 56 45 43 39

127 95 77 46 36

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

A6.2

Houses/ communities of brothers

Houses/ communities of priests

Houses/ communities of brothers

Houses/ communities of priests

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990

117 116 121 160 174 188 187 188

89 90 101 120 133 149 189 225

14 12 11 17 20 20 21 16

9 9 10 10 16 17 18 19

Brothers in religious orders A6.3

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

1991 2000 2010 2018

1,067 1,056 620 520

111 95 54 35

Source: Catholic Directory. The Scotland figure for 1990 includes one house for both men and women.

  Scotland, brothers in religious orders 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020

367

Republic of Ireland, brothers in religious orders 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1990 2000 2010 2020

Northern Ireland, brothers in religious orders 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 1990

2000

2010

2020

Ordinations England and Wales A7.1

Secular

Regular

Total

Secular ordinations to Wales

A7.2

To dioceses in Scotland

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

57 102 119 87 139 90 54 85 24 19 32

59 64 93 57 81 52 41 0 4 3

116 166 212 144 220 142 95 85 28 22

1 9 3 7 4 8 6 6 1 0 1

1920 1930 1939 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2001 2010 2018

11 31 28 27 39 20 13 13 6 4 6

Sources: England and Wales figures for 2019 are ordinations to the diocesan or ordinariate priesthood, published by the Department for Catholic Education and Formation. All other figures are tabulated from ordinations recorded in Catholic Directory. Scotland figures are ordinations to (arch)dioceses.

England and Wales 250 200 150 100 50 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

Scotland, to dioceses

2000

50 40 30 20 10 0 2020 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

Destinations of ordinations recorded in Irish Catholic Directory A7.3

Canada

Dioceses in England

Dioceses in Northern Ireland

Dioceses in the Republic of Ireland

Dioceses in Wales

Oceania

Religious, apostolic and missionary

Scotland

South Africa

Trinidad and Tobago

United States

Total

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1979 1990 2000 2010 2017

0 3 1 0 3 5 3 0 0 0 0

8 16 18 13 42 27 10 0 0 0 0

16 11 11 15 17 10 10 13 3 0 3

67 94 88 73 78 55 53 55 21 5 7

0 1 1 1 2 3 2 0 0 0 0

21 19 24 23 15 2 0 0 0 0 0

4 0 24 75 212 110 45 6 11 5 7

4 4 17 18 7 1 0 0 0 0 0

0 2 2 2 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

22 31 16 36 69 46 3 0 0 0 0

143 181 202 256 446 260 126 74 36 10 17

Source: Tabulated from individual records in Catholic Directory. Inferences were made in the few instances where destinations were unclear. One destination for a priest in 2000 was not identified.

To dioceses in Ireland (RoI and NI) excluding religious and missionary

Total recorded 500 400 300 200 100 0 1920

150 100 50 1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

 

369

Conversions England

Wales

Scotland

A8.1

Conversions/ receptions

Conversions/ receptions

A8.2

Adult receptions

1920 1930 c.1941 1950 1960 c.1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

12,340 11,478 9,209 10,543 13,914 5,449 5,440 4,805 4,206 4,443 2,563

281 502 302 467 569 298 343 270 196 172 111

2000 2010 2018

378 379 341

Sources: Catholic Directory; CBCEW (England and Wales figures for 2010 and 2019). England and Wales figures for 1920–70 record conversions; 1980–2019 are receptions. Scotland figures are recorded as adult receptions, with or without baptism.

England 16,000 14,000 12,000 10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

Wales

2000

600 500 400 300 200 100 0 2020 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

370

 

Marriages A9.1

England

Wales

A9.2

Scotland

1920 1930 c.1941 1950 1960 1971 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

23,102 22,629 31,805 32,767 45,304 43,526 30,243 23,583 12,561 9,862 7,982

838 1,002 1,480 1,390 1,556 1,591 1,281 1,035 478 439 202

1920 1930 1939 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018

5,894 4,552 5,984 6,143 6,498 7,484 6,307 4,632 2,510 1,770 1,144

Sources: Catholic Directory; CBCEW (England and Wales figures for 2019). England and Wales figures for 2019 include 2,960 marriages prepared by parishes in England and Wales but which were conducted overseas.

England

Wales

50,000

2,000

40,000

1,500

30,000

1,000

20,000

500

10,000

0 1920

0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

1940

1960

Scotland 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

1980

2000

2020

  A9.3

Republic of Ireland

A9.4

Northern Ireland

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2002 2010 2019

12,670 14,252 15,049 14,866 19,989 20,974 16,626 15,908 13,781 8,863

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

2,635 2,095 2,554 2,638 3,312 4,678 3,994 3,759 2,885 2,896 2,216

371

Sources: Annual Report of the Registrar General for Ireland, Report on Vital Statistics, Marriages 2010 and Marriages 2019 reports, Central Statistics Office; Marriages by Method of Celebration 1887–2019, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

5,000 4,500 4,000 3,500 3,000 2,500 2,000 1,500 1,000 500 0 2020 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

372

 

Baptisms A10.1

England

Wales

A10.2

Scotland

1920 1930 c.1941 1950 1960 1971 1980 1990 2000 2010 2019

75,425 62,962 63,941 83,751 118,696 101,638 73,582 66,700 62,323 62,049 42,501

2,296 3,166 3,178 3,399 3,866 3,711 2,770 2,664 1,772 1,913 1,049

1920 1930 1939 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018

23,093 17,366 17,053 19,948 25,148 20,633 14,334 12,632 8,717 7,905 5,996

Sources: Catholic Directory; CBCEW (England and Wales figures for 2019). England and Wales figures for 1920–50 are children’s or infants’ baptisms, 1960–2019 are for children up to 7 years. Scotland figures for 1920–90 are recorded as baptisms, 2000–18 are for infant baptisms, excluding receptions (which may include baptism).

England 140,000 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Wales 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 1920

1940

1960

Scotland 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 1920

1940

1960

1980

2000

2020

1980

2000

2020

Catholic Schools and Their Pupils England A11.1

c.1920 1930 1940 1949 1960 1971 1980 1990 2000

Elementary/primary

Total schools

Schools

Pupils

Schools

1,152 1,278 1,392 1,326 1,632 1,917 2,034 1,853 1,755

348,962 354,401 368,051 347,153 386,949 480,536 401,892 393,857 423,570

1,572 1,756 1,914 1,875 2,636 2,928 2,869 2,484 2,302

Wales Elementary/primary

Total schools

Pupils

Schools

Pupils

Schools

Pupils

391,052 406,707 426,580 438,666 660,418 858,158 838,689 732,137 792,943

52 53 57 56 72 76 83 78 75

14,781 19,768 15,216 16,058 14,850 15,823 15,101 15,500 15,098

66 76 77 84 111 116 115 105 95

16,182 21,359 17,302 18,854 23,110 29,886 31,141 28,284 27,923

Sources: estimated from Catholic Directory; Catholic Education: A Handbook, 1960/1 (Directory figures for 1960 may understate totals). Pupil figures for 2000 are understated as Directory notes that 200 schools’ pupils are not recorded.

England, total schools Wales, total schools 140 3,500 120 3,000 100 2,500 80 2,000 60 1,500 40 1,000 20 500 0 0 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

A11.2 England 2019 Schools Primary schools Secondary schools Sixth form colleges All through

Wales 2019

Pupils 1,714 340 14 49

Schools

State funded primary & nursery State funded secondary State funded sixth form colleges Independent

Pupils

439,530

Primary

71

Maintained primary

14,726

320,416 26,833

Secondary Sixth form colleges

15 1

Maintained secondary Maintained sixth form colleges Independent

12,270 1,322

38,253

Independent (all through)

1

173

Sources: Catholic Education Service Digest of 2019 Census Data for Schools and Colleges in England; Catholic Education Service Digest of 2019 Census Data for Schools and Colleges in Wales.

Scotland A11.3

1921 1931 1971 1977

Secondary schools

84 72

Scotland schools, including independent schools Pupils

A11.4

Primary

Secondary

Primary and secondary combined

Special schools

Total schools

3,380 10,300 62,534 81,725

2005 2010 2015 2018

336 313 308 304

58 52 52 52

3 4 4 4

12 9 6 6

409 378 370 366

Source: Darragh, ‘The Catholic Population of Scotland, 1878–1977’, The Innes Review 29(2) (1978).

Source: derived from School Contact Details, Scottish Government.

Scotland, local authority (LA) schools and pupils A11.5

Primary schools

Pupils

Secondary schools

Pupils

Combined primary & secondary

Pupils

Special schools

Pupils

Total LA schools

Pupils

2005 2010 2015 2018

336 313 308 304

68,790 65,221 70,398 71,566

58 52 52 52

53,719 51,163 49,216 50,625

0 1 1 1

0 819 996 1,033

6 6 3 3

364 335 231 178

400 372 364 360

122,873 117,538 120,841 123,402

Source: derived from School Contact Details, Scottish Government.

Republic of Ireland

Northern Ireland

A11.6

Primary schools

Post-primary schools

Primary schools

Post-primary schools

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2018

4,480 4,462 4,193 3,288 3,175 3,017 2,901 2,781

544 642 811 780 779 717 651 600

775 797 889 587 545 542 519 495

55 95 131 119 121 120 111 99

Source: estimated from Catholic Directory.

Republic of Ireland 2020 A11.7 Mainstream primary Second-level

Schools

Pupils

2,760 344

503,215 187,734

Northern Ireland 2019 A11.8 Maintained primary Maintained secondary (non-grammar) Voluntary grammar

Schools

Pupils

360 57 29

79,082 38,325 28,755

Sources: Central Statistics Office, tables ED126 and ED128, Department of Education and Skills; Department of Education, Northern Ireland. Note: figures compiled/derived from Directory are not commensurate with the above.

Republic of Ireland 5,000 4,000 3,000 2,000 1,000 0 1950

1960

1970

1980

Primary schools

1990

2000

2010

2020

Post-primary schools

Northern Ireland 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1950

1960 1970 1980 Primary schools

1990 2000 2010 2020 Post-primary schools

Index Note: Figures are indicated by an italic “f ”, following the page number. For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Abbeys, Monasteries and Priories (see also education) Monasteries and monasticism 15, 23–4, 62–3, 170, 172–3, 183–4, 203–5, 315–16 Ampleforth Abbey (and school) 94–6, 126n.7, 153, 172–3, 205 Aylesford Priory 156–7 Blackrock Monastery 341 Buckfast Abbey 170, 183–5 Douai Abbey 99 Downside Abbey 78, 126n.7, 172–3 Glenstal Abbey 32, 177, 183–4, 194–5, 198–9, 231–2, 238–9, 247–8 Hawkesyard Priory 183–4 Mount Melleray Abbey 162n.65, 172–3 Muckross Abbey 15 Quarr Abbey 172–3 Stanbrook Abbey 183–4, 190–1 Worth Abbey 170 Aberdeen Cathedral 181–2 Abortion 30–1, 105–7, 119–21, 155, 163, 283, 297, 339–40 Irish referendum 121, 163 Legalization in Britain 119 Legalization in Northern Ireland 121 Abstinence 24–6, 118–19, 149–51 Action of Churches Together, Scotland 231, 244–7 Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre (OSB), ‘Tyburn Nuns’ 97–8 Affluence 6–7, 58, 70–1, 74–5 Africa 12, 24–6, 46–7, 170 British colonies in 10–11, 44–5, 239–40, 249–50, 258–9, 292 Irish missionary activity in 249–68, 251f ‘Agatha Christi Indult’ (see also Latin Mass) 201–2 Aggiornamento (see also Second Vatican Council) 196–7, 270–1 Agriculture and rural life 16, 19, 27, 215–17, 265 Alfonso, King XIII of Spain 84 Alibrandi, Gaetano, Papal nuncio 339–40

Altar, orientation (see also liturgy, reforms to) 43–4, 50, 171–2, 177–82, 188–9, 206 Altar servers 63, 148–9, 320 America (see United States of America) Anglicanism (see also conversion and ecumenism) xv, 40, 46–7, 50, 53–5, 80–1, 84, 88–90, 96–100, 106, 116, 127, 130–5, 146–7, 156–7, 172, 174–5, 177, 180–1, 196–9, 203–4, 212, 214–15, 229–31, 239–41, 243–6, 288, 300, 310–11 Anglo-Catholicism xvi, 7, 88–9, 219n.30 Apostolicae Cure, 1896 229–31 Established Church xvii, 16–17, 78, 81, 89–90, 127, 129–31, 146–7, 240–1 Male and Female Religious 214–15, 288 Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham 55, 246 Sexual Abuse and 308n.2, 310–11 Women’s ordination 53–5, 246 Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) (see also ecumenism) 53–5, 243–4, 246 Anglo-Irish Conflicts 1919–21 Anglo-Irish and Irish Civil War 9–10, 12–15, 78–80, 160, 229–31, 249–50 Easter Rising 1916 61, 83–4, 86–7, 93–4, 249–50 Northern Irish violence (1968–), see Troubles, Northern Ireland Reconciliation xv, 241–2, 298–9, 346 Annulment 110–11 Anscombe, Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret 38–9 Anti-Catholicism xv, xxi, 17–18, 32, 36, 40–2, 45, 59–61, 63, 72–3, 86–8, 92–3, 99–100, 132, 143–4, 146–7, 261–2, 308–9 Anti-Protestantism 261–2 Anti-Semitism (see also Judaism) 237–8 Antony of Padua, St 149–52, 302 Archbishop of Canterbury 32, 98–9, 102–3, 243–4, 295–6 Architecture, Catholic xxii, 2–3, 50, 158–9, 165–87

378



Architecture, Catholic (cont.) Church design xxii, 10–11, 41–4 Gothic Style xxii–xxiii, 156–7, 172–3, 175–6, 181–2 Modernism 10–11, 156–7, 167, 170–2, 174–9 Romanesque 173–5 Aristocracy 36, 38–9, 93–4, 148–9, 215–17, 219, 254, 277–8, 280–1 Recusancy xviii, xxii, 147–9, 152 Armed forces and Catholicism (see World War One and World War Two) 77–103 Army and Navy Chaplains 23–4, 78–80, 79f, 82–4, 87–9, 91–2, 95–6, 101–3, 136, 193–4 Conscription 81–2, 85–7, 91, 98–9 Operational Banner, 1969–2007 101–2 Art 10–11, 58–9, 59f, 89, 94–5, 96f, 135, 137–8, 151, 158, 161, 177–8, 183–5 Catholic Arts and Crafts Movement 172, 183–4 Guild of Catholic Arts 17, 147–8, 183–4 Art Deco 173, 177–8 Asia xxii, 10, 253, 265–6, 292, 325–6, 341–2 Association of Catholic Priests 343 Association of Missionaries and Religious of Ireland (see also CORI) 343n.40 Australia xviii, xxii, 12, 86–8, 198–9, 308, 313, 324 Ballymascanlon Inter-Church Meeting 1973 32–3, 234, 238, 241–2, 344–5 Baptism 40, 42–3, 49, 49f, 149, 151, 201, 256–7, 304–5, 372 Beales, A.C.F. 3, 130–3, 235–6 Beatification 40–1, 53–5, 147 Beauduin OSB, Lambert 193–4 Beck, George, Bishop of Brentwood and Liverpool 3, 45, 125–6 Belfast 22–4, 77–8, 94–5, 96f, 101–2, 148, 319–20, 344–5 Belgium (see also Malines Conversations) 15, 20n.31, 22, 28–9, 38–9, 77–8, 85–7, 89, 97–8, 137, 154–5, 193–4, 225, 352–3 Belloc, Joseph Hilaire Pierre René 19–20, 38–9, 208–9 Benedict XV, Pope, Giacomo Paolo Giovanni Battista della Chiesa 2–3, 85–7, 250n.4 Benedict XVI, Pope, Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger 53–5, 75, 156–7, 201–2, 205, 246, 329, 352 State visit to Britain 53–5, 75 Benedictines (OSB), Order of Saint Benedict 44–5, 97–8, 178–80, 191n.27, 192–5, 244–5, 296–7, 315–16

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament 146–51, 155–6 Bernadette Soubirous, St (see also Lourdes) 155, 184–5 Beveridge KCB, Baron William Henry 18, 272–4 Biafra War (see also Nigeria) 264–6 Birch, Peter, Bishop of Ossory 28–9 Birmingham 4n.15, 77–8, 87–8, 137, 190–1, 197–8, 239–40, 249, 287, 293–7, 300–1 Birmingham Six (see Troubles, Northern Ireland) St Chad’s Cathedral 90–1 Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales 4–5, 203, 303, 326 Bishops’ Conference of Scotland 205 Blessed Virgin Mary xxi, 25, 42, 146, 149–51, 153–6, 159–62, 220 Boer War (see South African War) Borromeo, Charles 177–8 Bourne, Francis Alphonsus Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 4n.14, 81–2, 87–8, 229–31 Bradford 94–5, 169–70, 177–8 Brady KGCHS, Seán Baptist Cardinal, Archbishop of Armagh 320, 346 Brexit 11, 306 Bristol 181f Clifton Cathedral 168–9, 180 British Council of Churches (see also Ecumenism) 231–2, 239–40, 244–5 Brittain, Vera Mary 81 Brown, George Mackay 73–5 Browne, Dr Michael, Bishop of Galway 18, 29–30, 118–19 Butler OSB, Christopher, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster 192–3 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) 100 Canada 77–8, 92–3, 308–9, 313, 368 Canavan, Denis 62–3 Canonization 11, 25–6, 85, 90–1, 97–8, 147, 156, 221–2 of Thomas More and Bishop John Fisher, 1935 41–2 of the Forty Martyrs, 1970 40–1, 50, 147 of Cardinal John Henry Newman, 2019 53–5 Canon law 171, 178–9, 254–5, 270–1, 308–9, 323–7, 329, 351 Canterbury 190–1 (see also Archbishop of Canterbury) Cathedral (Anglican) 53–5, 346 Capuchin (OFM), Order of Friars Minor 252n.13, 254n.32, 256n.41, 347 Cardiff 45–6, 149–51, 150f Carey, George Leonard, Baron Carey of Clifton, Archbishop of Canterbury 243

 Caribbean 265–6, 281, 292 Caritas 271–4, 282, 284, 288–9 Carmelite (OCarm) Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (OCD) 315–16 Carmelite Sisters 61, 183–4, 341 Casey, Eamonn, Bishop of Kerry and Galway 30–1, 295–6 Catechism 81, 111–12, 129–30, 135–8, 154 Catholic Action 1–2, 16, 168, 235–6 Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) 9–10, 266n.103 Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ) 303 Catholic Evidence Guild 217–18 Catholic Federation 1–2, 89 Catholic Herald newspaper 90–1, 100, 216–17 Catholic Housing Aid Society (CHAS) 295–6 Catholic Institute for International Relations (CIIR) (see also Sword of the Spirit) 235 Catholic Marriage Advisory Council (CMAC) 108–10, 119–20 Catholic Renewal Movement (see also charismatic Christianity) 67–8 Catholic Social Guild 139n.97 Catholic Social Teaching (CST) 16–20, 67–8, 81–2, 231–2, 235–6, 273–4, 305 Catholic Truth Society 16, 109, 149–52, 154, 216–17 Catholic Women’s League (CWL) 1–2, 110–11, 147–8 Censorship (see also Film) 16, 30–1, 109, 208 Chaplaincy 291–306 Army and Navy 23–4, 78–80, 79f, 82–4, 87–9, 91–2, 95–6, 101–3, 136, 193–4 University 37, 138–9, 170–1 Charism 280–1 Charismatic Christianity 34–5, 156–7, 201 Charity (CCVI), Religious Sisters of 341–2, 347 Charity and philanthropy 1–2, 29–30, 266n.103, 271–2, 285–9, 346–7 and homelessness 25–6, 231, 285–7, 296, 347 Charity of St Vincent de Paul (DC), Daughters of 274n.20, 280, 282–3, 287 Charles, Prince of Wales 176 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith KC*SG 12–13, 38–9, 41–2, 147–8, 216 Child Guidance Clinics 20–1 Children and adolescents (see also education) xx, xxii, 10–13, 20–6, 28–9, 32–3, 42, 47–8, 70, 107–8, 125–31, 133–41, 143–4, 147–9, 151–5, 158, 161–2, 186–7, 190–1, 201, 214–15, 232–4, 252–4, 259–61, 263, 275, 281

379

Sexual abuse of 5–6, 8–10, 51–2, 127, 136, 144–5, 152, 159, 225, 276–7, 297–8, 308–33 Children of Mary 147–8, 153–4 China 24, 253–7, 261, 263–4 Christopher, St 50, 149–51 Churches and Cathedrals (see also individual cathedrals) Choirs in 87, 177–8, 190, 195–6, 202–3, 206 Construction and design of 10–11, 24, 43–4, 59–60, 67, 95–6, 134, 167, 169–70, 172, 175–6, 181–2 Numbers of 363 Parish structure 19–20, 40, 43–7, 69–70, 139, 141, 155–6, 159–60, 166–9, 236–8, 339–40 Sexual abuse in 316–19 Church Music Association, Irish and English 203–4 Church of England (see Anglicanism) Church of Scotland 72–3, 243 Anti-Catholicism 61 Church-State relations 1, 5–6, 16–17, 34–5, 107–8, 110–11, 121, 126–7, 143–4, 167, 311, 334–5, 344 Cinema (see also Film) 16 Civil rights 22–3, 67 Claretian Order (CMF), Congregation of Missionaries Sons of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary 10 Class, Catholicism and 1, 36, 61, 63–5, 67–8, 106, 125, 165–6, 236, 277–8, 316 Ethnicity 47, 296 Middle-class 40–2, 112, 117, 119–20, 151, 167–8, 279–81 Respectability 61, 63–4, 83–4, 171, 277–8 Social mobility 2–3, 37, 47, 62–4, 67, 141, 143–4 Working-class 1–2, 10, 36–7, 39, 70–1, 88–9, 93–4, 125–6, 138–9, 223, 273–4 Clergy Celibacy 122–3, 265, 270–1, 310–11, 329–30, 342 Clericalism 328 Ordination of 40, 43, 49, 49f, 53–5, 201–2, 243–4, 252–3, 340–1, 367 Women’s ordination 246–8, 352 Collins, John 100 Collins, Marie 325–8 Collins, Richard, Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle 85–6 Communion of Saints (see also individual saints) 10, 50, 89–90, 135, 146–52, 161 Communism 19, 60, 100, 155, 270–1 Conference of Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) 229–31, 235

380

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Conference of Religious of Ireland (CORI) 343, 349–50 Confession, Sacrament of (see also Reconciliation) 46–7, 138, 139f, 146, 151, 153, 156–7, 162–3, 300–1, 308–9, 316–17, 320, 323, 327, 335–6 Confirmation, Sacrament of 20, 151, 201, 276, 316–17 Confraternities 1–2, 24–5, 34–5, 146–9, 156, 158–9 Archconfraternity of the Holy Family 24–5, 158–9 Catenian Association 40–1 Children of Mary 147–8, 153–4 Legion of Mary 1–2, 21, 25–6, 34–5 Knights of St Columba/Columbanus 60, 110–11 St Vincent de Paul 21, 147–8, 283, 348–50 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith 112, 325–6, 352 Congregation of Jesus (CJ), Sisters of the 288 Connell KGCHS, Desmond, Archbishop of Dublin 319–20, 324, 339–40, 348–9, 351 Connolly, James 61 Conservative and Unionist Party 119, 273–4 Contraception and sexual intercourse (see also fertility and demography, sexuality, Humanae Vitae) 16, 33, 34–5, 51, 105–6, 108–9, 117–22, 146, 283, 339–40 Contraceptive Pill 33, 51, 117–21 Intra-uterine device (IUD) 120–1 In vitro fertilization (IVF) 121–2 Natural Family Planning (NFP) 116–17, 120–3 Rhythm method 116–17 Sex outside marriage 34–5, 107–8 Convents and Houses 23–5, 30–1, 125, 142, 153–4, 156–7, 168, 171, 214–15, 221–2, 255–6, 277–80, 364–6 Conversion 36, 38–9, 49, 55, 61, 65, 73–5, 87, 89, 96–8, 113–15, 154, 184, 208, 211–12, 214–17, 220–2, 226–7, 229, 231–2, 279, 369 from Anglicanism 141–2, 172, 212 to Christianity (see also heathen, pagan) 239–40, 249–50, 252–3, 255, 261 Conway, Dr William John Cardinal, Auxiliary Bishop of Armagh 26, 29–30, 335, 338, 344–5 Cork 20, 24, 28–9, 33, 162, 177–8, 178f, 232–4, 252–3 Cornwell, John 135 Corpus Christi 149–51, 150f, 159f Coventry Cathedral (Anglican) 77–8, 99, 175, 184

Craig, Sir James, 1st Viscount Craigavon 94–5 Crichton, Monsignor James D. 179–80, 193–4 Croke Park 26 Crosscare, formerly Catholic Social Service Conference 21, 348–9 Curran, Fr Charles E. 30–1 D’Alton, John Francis Cardinal, Archbishop of Armagh 22 Daly KGCHS, Cahal Brendan Cardinal, Archbishop of Armagh 128–9, 234, 241, 243, 338–9, 344–6 Daly, Edward Kevin, Bishop of Derry 337n.14, 344–5 Daly, Margaret 205 Davidson, Anne 74–5 Davis, Fr Charles Alfred 177 Dawson, Christopher Henry 2–3, 38–9, 235–6 Deacons 341–2 Women 246 Democracy 2–3, 14–15, 30–1, 92–3, 98–9, 206, 306, 345, 352 Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) 113–14 Demography (see Fertility) Derry Girls (television show) 161–2 Devolution 7–8, 13–14, 20–1, 346 Devotional culture (see also individual saints, pilgrimage and procession) xxii, 8–9, 24–5, 60, 125, 134, 146–64, 168, 183–4, 195, 213, 218–19, 259, 302, 329 Cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary xxi, 25, 42, 146, 149–51, 153–6, 159–62, 220 Sacred Heart of Jesus 146, 149‒52, 156‒9 Dignan, John, Bishop of Clonfert 18 Disability 20–1 Cerebral Palsy 28–9 Down’s syndrome 28–9 Disease (see also medicine) Leprosy 256–7, 260 Malaria 257 Polio 28–9 Tuberculosis 256–7 Divine Mercy of Jesus (see also Faustina, St) 155–6, 163–4, 185–6 Divorce (see also annulment) 16, 34–5, 105–6, 109–11, 119–20, 339–40, 344 Referendum (1986) 105–6, 110–11 Dominican Order (OP), Order of Preachers 23, 29–31, 112–13, 139–40, 183–4, 194–5, 267 Dominican Sisters 30–1, 255–6 Douai Abbey 94–5, 99 Downside Abbey 126n.7, 170, 172–3 Downton Abbey (television show) 36

 Doyle SJ MC, Willie Joseph Gabriel 87–8, 90–1, 96–7, 103 Drinkwater, Fr Francis Harold 127, 136–8, 141, 143–4 Drogheda 344–5 Drug and alcohol addiction 256–7, 286–7, 320, 327–8, 348–9 Dublin 1–2, 12–13, 13f, 17, 20–1, 24–5, 30–5, 78–80, 109, 117–18, 121–2, 152, 158–9, 159f, 167, 174f, 174–5, 190–1, 216–17, 234, 240–1, 243, 255–6, 258, 265–6, 268, 294, 314–17, 320, 322–4, 327–8, 335–6, 339–40, 352–3, 354f Dublin Institute of Catholic Sociology 17 Dublin Review 216–17 Duff, Frank 2n.5, 25–6 Dwyer, George Patrick, Archbishop of Birmingham 199–200 Eagleton, Terence Francis 48n.57 Eames OM, Robert Henry Alexander, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh 346 Economics, Catholic interpretations of 12, 17–18, 37, 267, 273, 299–301, 335–6, 347–50 Ecumenism (see also ARCIC, Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences, Swanwick declaration) 2, 7, 9–11, 32, 55n.76, 100, 102–3, 229–48, 266–7, 285n.84 Anti-ecumenism 32 Charities 287 Ecumenical churches 173–4, 180–1 Inter-faith relations (see also National Council of Christians and Jews) 229, 237–41 Pacifism 100 Universities 142 Edinburgh 60–1, 64–5, 70, 73–5, 90–1, 142, 147, 176, 200–3 Education xxi, 9–10, 125–45, 169–71, 344 Primary and secondary 43–4, 57–8, 128–31, 141, 168, 276–7 Boarding 156–7, 276–8, 280–1, 315–16, 341 Butler Act (1944) 22–3, 129n.26, 130–1, 143–4 Corporal punishment 312–14 Grammar schools 47–8, 128–9, 138–9, 275–6, 280 Independent/private schools 170, 280–1, 312 Irish 28, 128, 140–1, 170 Missionary 252, 262–3, 341–2 Montessori schools 137–8 Numbers of 373–6 Religious education in 136, 140–1, 344 Sexual abuse in 127, 312–16, 318–19, 325–6 Scottish 57–8, 63, 131–2

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State aid 128–9, 144–5 Teachers 21, 28, 70, 125, 128–32, 141–3, 279–80 Welsh 280 Women religious 129–30, 252, 275–82 Adult and Further Education (see also Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults) 57–8, 71, 138–40, 143, 198–9, 200n.98, 336n.9, 352–3 Bearsden 171 Catholic Workers’ College (College of Industrial Relations), Dublin 17 Corpus Christi College 200 Middleton Catholic College 171 Plater College, Oxford 17, 138–9 St Patrick’s College, Drumcondra 171 Education in Universities 68, 170–1, 215–16, 265, 277–8 Student Christian Movement (SCM) 32 University Act 1908 32 University chaplaincies 55–6, 138–9, 170–1, 176 Universities and Colleges (see also entry on seminaries) Cambridge 170–1, 215–16, 277–8 Campion Hall, Oxford 170 Edinburgh 64–5, 73–4, 176 Keele 170–1 Lancaster 170–1 Leeds Trinity 142 Liverpool Hope 142 Maynooth (seminary and university) 23, 29–31, 33, 170, 194, 199, 249–50, 253, 267, 335, 338–41 Newman University 142 Oxford 17, 138–9, 152, 170–1, 215–16, 277–8 St Mary’s University, Twickenham 142, 284 Trinity College Dublin 32 University College Dublin (UCD) 17–18, 30–2, 339–40 Edward VII, King 84 Elgar, Sir Edward William 38–9 Eliot OM, Thomas Stearns 211–12 Ellis, Alice Thomas 208–9, 213–15, 219, 225–6 Emancipation, Catholic xv, xvii, xx–xxi, 7, 14, 59–60, 82–3, 148–9 Centenary celebrations 15, 41–2, 258 Scottish Emancipation Act 1778 59–60 Empire, British xviii–xix, 9–10, 13–14, 44–7, 81–2, 98–9, 252, 260, 313 and Decolonisation 2–3, 231–2, 239–40, 292, 305–6 and Missionary work 13–14, 27, 250–1

382

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England, Catholicism in (see also Anglicanism) 6, 8–9, 16, 31, 91, 112, 151, 189, 225–6 Changing social attitudes 112, 121–2 Church attendance 49, 49f, 55–6, 106–7, 171, 186–7 Growth in interwar period 37–42 Health and social care 282–5 Irish migrants 166–7, 291, 297 Liturgical change 190, 201–2 Papal visit 1982 53–5, 57, 69–70, 243, 245 Post–1945 expansion 38–48 Restoration of the Hierarchy 1829 xv, xvii, xx–xxi, 3, 14, 59–60, 82–3, 148–9 Sexual abuse in 308, 311, 327, 331 Epstein, Sir Jacob 184 Eritrea 300, 304–5 Eucharistic Congress, Dublin, 1932 12–14, 13f, 158–9, 190–1, 258 Eucharistic Congress, Dublin, 2012 352–3 Eucharistic Congress, Edinburgh, 1935 61 Eucharistic Congress, London, 1908 147–8 Eucharistic devotion (see Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament) Eucharistic ministers 206 Eugenics 115–16, 121–2 European Court of Human Rights 113–14, 312 European Economic Community (EEC) and European Union (EU) (see also Brexit) 11n.52, 346–7 Faber CO, Fr Frederick William 192 Fairfield CBE, Dr Josephine Letitia Denny 116, 235–6 Falkland War, Catholic criticism of 99 Family, Catholic teaching and 1–2, 15–16, 20, 89–90, 106–11, 117, 120–3, 141, 152, 232–4, 254–5, 266n.103, 273–4, 276, 309, 318, 327, 337 Holy Family 151–2, 158–9 Family prayer 25, 34–5, 149–51, 157–8, 337 Farrell, Bernadette 205 Farrell, Dermot Pius, Archbishop of Dublin 351 Fasting 146, 149–51, 155–6, 266n.103 Fatima, Our Lady of 151, 154–5, 161–2 Faustina, St (see also Divine Mercy of Jesus) 163–4 Feminism (see also Women’s Liberation Movement) 2–3, 109–10, 218, 246, 297–8 Fergus, Dr James, Bishop of Achonry 27 Fertility and demography (see also contraception, sexuality) 4–5, 13–14, 57, 98–9, 107, 109, 143–4, 264, 359–60

Migration and population growth 44–5, 45n.42, 186–7, 239–40, 265n.98, 292–3, 305 Generational shifts 98–9, 107, 121–3, 147–8 Population decline 23, 57–8, 107 Population growth 27, 45, 49, 69–70, 98–9, 103, 166–7, 275 Fianna Fáil 12–13, 18–19 Film 16, 30–1, 41–2, 252, 255–6, 279n.51 Censorship 16, 30–1 Child pornography 322–3 Sex education Song of Bernadette (1943) 155 The Two Popes (2019) 156–7 Finances 11, 21, 24, 43–4, 47–8, 62–3, 128–32, 143, 165, 168–9, 171–2, 186–7, 275–6, 280–5, 289, 301 Finucane, Brendan ‘Paddy’ 93–4 Fisher GCVO, Geoffrey, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury 98–9, 243 Fisher, St John 40–1 FitzGerald, Garret Desmond 110–11, 344 Fitzsimmons, John 64–8 Flannery OP, Austin 29–31, 194 Foreign missions (see missionary work) Fort Augustus, Benedictine Abbey 62–3, 315–16 Forty Martyrs of England and Wales (see canonization, martyrdom, recusancy) France xv, 38–9, 77–8, 85, 89, 92–5, 184–5, 225, 352–3 Francis of Assisi, St 149–52 Francis, Pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio 2–3, 53–5, 122–3, 294, 334, 341–2, 347, 353–4 Fratelli Tutti 156–7 Sexual abuse 325–7 Synodal way 11, 53, 326–7 Traditionis Custodes 201–2 Visit to Ireland, 2018 334, 341–2, 347, 353–4 Franciscan Order (OFM), Order of Friars Minor xxi, 15, 17, 23, 315–16, 341 Third Order 15, 24–5, 147–8 Fraser, Antonia 279 Free Churches 85, 236, 245 Furnishings, liturgical 50, 165–6, 168–9, 172–4, 180–2 Furrow, The 29, 194, 238–9, 263–4 Gaelic, language and culture 15, 26, 60 Gaeilscoileanna (Irish-language schools) 344 Use in liturgy and church music 198–9, 203–4 Galvin SSC, Edward J., Bishop of Hanyang 249–50, 253–4, 264 Galway Cathedral 24, 173–4 John Paul II’s 1969 address 336

 Gambling 16 Bingo 43–4, 47, 168–9 Fundraising for church building 168–9 Gaudium et Spes 1965 1, 50–1, 167, 346–7 Gavan Duffy, Fr Thomas 252, 258 Gay Liberation Movement (see also homosexuality, sexuality) 111–12 Geach, Peter 38–9 Geldof KBE, Robert Frederick Zenon ‘Bob’ 268 Gender Theory (see sexuality) Glasgow 1, 4–5, 20–1, 60, 64, 67–70, 74–5, 77–8, 125, 142, 148, 154, 169–70, 174–5, 193–4, 203, 205, 239–40 Gleeson, Fr Francis 78–80, 87–8 Glenstal and Greenhills Conferences 32–3, 177, 183–4, 194–5, 198–9, 231–2, 238–41, 247–8 George VI, King 92–3 Gibberd, Frederick 171, 178–9, 184–5 Gill, Arthur Eric Rowton 177–8, 183–4 Godden OBE, Margaret Rumer 214–15 Godfrey, William Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 196–7 Good, Fr James 33, 118–19 Good Friday Agreement (see also Troubles, Northern Ireland) xv, 298–9, 346 Gordon, Major-General Charles George 84 Graham Jr, William Franklin ‘Billy’ 25 Gray, Gordon Joseph Cardinal, Archbishop of Edinburgh and St Andrews 64–5, 66n.45, 68n.55, 69–70, 197–8, 200 Greene, Graham 38–9, 208–9, 210n.9, 211, 211n.16 Gregg, John Allen Fitzgerald, Archbishop of Armagh 232–4 Gregorian Chant 156–7, 177–8, 190–1, 202–3, 205–6 Griffin, Bernard William Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 45–6, 108–9, 112n.43, 130–1, 237–8 Grille 32 Guildford Four (see Troubles, Northern Ireland) Guthrie, Field Marshal Charles Ronald Llewelyn, Baron of Craigiebank 102–3 Haig, Field Marshal Douglas 86–7 Hall, Marguerite Antonia Radcliffe 114–15 Häring CSsR, Fr Bernhard 30–1, 68 Hart, William Andrew, Bishop of Dunkeld 65 Hayes, Fr John Martin (see also Muintir na Tíre) 16 Healy, Fr Seán 349–50 Heard, William Theodore Cardinal, Bishop of Feradi Maius 65

383

Hearne CSSp, Fr Brian 258–9, 266–8 Heathen (see also conversion, pagan) 249–50 Heenan, John Carmel Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 40, 118–19, 201–2, 235, 237–8, 244–5, 276–7, 284 Heerey CSSp, Charles, Archbishop of Onitsha (Nigeria) 350 Henson, Herbert Hensley, Bishop of Durham 100 Hill, Fr Michael 321 Hinsley, Arthur Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 92–3, 235–8, 273–5 Holy Communion 38–9, 135, 146, 151, 153–4, 163, 177–8, 181–2, 193, 276, 335–6 Fasting 155–6 First Communion 151, 153–4, 163, 276 Under both kinds 50 Holy Ghost Fathers (see Spiritans) Holy Rosary (MSHR), Missionary Sisters of the 24, 256–7 Holy Spirit 156–7 Holy Spirit (DHS), Daughters of, White Sisters 280 Holyrood, Scottish Parliament 58–9, 105–6 Holywell, Wales 154–7 Holy wells 159, 161 Homelessness (see also Catholic Housing Aid Society) 25–6, 231, 285–7, 296, 347 Cathy Come Home (film) 285–6 Providence Row 286–7 Shelter 285–6, 295–6, 296n.39 Threshold 347 Homosexuality and LGBTQI 105–15, 119, 121–2, 155–6, 306, 310–11, 329–30, 340, 352 AIDS pandemic 112, 285n.84 Homophobia 113, 123n.110 Priesthood 329–30, 352 Scotland 112–13 Wolfenden Commission and Decriminalisation in England 1968 112 Hopkins SJ, Fr Gerard Manley 82–3, 208–9 Hornsby-Smith, Professor Michael P. 3, 6, 115, 119, 125–6, 146, 201 Hospitals 20–2, 28–9, 46–7, 62, 117–18, 121–2, 270–1, 274, 282–5, 341–2 Abuse in 320, 322–3, 327–8 Missionary 255–6, 261–2 Houselander, Caryll 208–9, 218–21, 224–6 Housing 30–2, 167–9, 246–7, 285–7, 295–7, 299–301, 347, 354–5 Howell SJ, Fr Clifford 193–4, 203–4

384

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Humanae Vitae 1968 33, 51, 67–8, 117–19, 331 Pontifical Commission on Birth Control, 1966 117–18 Humanitarianism (see International development) Hume OSB OM, George Basil Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 112, 238–9, 243–6, 285–6, 296–7 Hume KCSG, John 128–9 Humphreys SJ, Fr Alexander J. 20 Hurley SJ, Fr Michael 232, 238–9 Hymnals, popularity of 192, 203–5 Immigration (see Migration) Incest 312 India 47, 55–6, 82–3, 152, 214–15, 252, 254–6, 292, 295–6 Individualism 70–1, 158–9 Industrial schools (see also Residential institutions) 17, 275–6, 312–15, 320–1, 328, 330–1, 334–5 Innes Review 16, 73–4 Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), Loreto Sisters 279 Intellectuals, writers and artists 42–3, 49, 201–2, 208–12, 215–17 Interfaith dialogue 7–8, 32, 92–3, 102–3, 229, 231–2, 237–41, 247–8, 306 International development, charity, and humanitarianism (see also CAFOD, Trócaire, SCIAF) 19, 249, 265–6, 268, 270–1, 273–4, 347–8 Internationalism 9–10, 137–9, 168–9, 178–9, 193–4, 197–9 In vitro fertilization (IVF) 121–2 Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Catholic attitude towards 99, 102–3 Ireland, Church of 32–3, 142, 232–4, 241n.72, 343, 346 Ireland (Southern) or Éire 12–35, 265–6, 313–14, 334–55 Changing social attitudes 34–5, 105–6, 110–11, 113–14, 121, 336, 339–40 Child abuse in 308–33, 351–2 Church attendance 34–5, 106–7, 206, 331, 335–7, 358 Civil War 1922 12–15, 78–80, 160, 249–50 Constitution 1937 16–17, 34–5, 107–8, 110–11, 121, 167 Economic change 347–50 Education in 128–9, 138, 140–2, 140n.101, 376 General election 1932 12–13 Health and social care in 20–2, 28–9, 117–18, 320, 337–8

Secularization 122–3, 158–9, 162–3, 268, 336 Ireland, Northern (see also Northern Ireland; Troubles, Northern Ireland) Irish Bishops’ Conference 198–9, 234n.32, 334, 337–41, 348–9 Irish College Rome 341 Irish Council of Churches (see also ecumenism, Troubles, Northern Ireland) 32–3, 231, 241–2 Irish Family League 120–1 Irish Hospitals Sweepstake 20–2, 28–9 Irish language (see also Gaelic) 128, 198–9, 218, 258–9, 344 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 14–15, 95n.46, 101–2, 344–5 Irish Theological Association and the Irish Biblical Association 238–9 Islam 7–8, 45n.43, 102–3, 130–1, 239–42, 261–2, 343 Islamic schools 2, 130–1 Jesuits (SJ), Order of the Society of Jesus 15–17, 19–20, 23, 30–2, 83–9, 121–2, 138–9, 147, 170, 193–4, 204, 216–17, 229–32, 234, 238–9, 347 Jocist movement (see also Young Christian Workers) 135 John XXIII, Pope, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (see also Second Vatican Council) 14, 27, 32, 64–5, 156 Mater et Magistra 1961 346–7 Pacem in Terris 1963 100 John Paul II, Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyła 99, 121–2, 155–6, 293–4, 340–1 Theology of the Body 122–3 Visit to Ireland 1979 14, 243, 334, 336–8, 344–5, 354f Visit to the UK 1982 53–5, 57, 69–70, 243, 337–8 Jones, David 38–9, 96–7, 103 Joseph, St 142, 151–2 Guild of St Joseph 184 Judaism (see also anti-Semitism, interfaith dialogue, National Council of Christians and Jews) 94–5, 184–5, 237–8, 240–1 Nostra Aetate 1965 229n.3, 237–41 Kaye-Smith, Sheila 208–9, 214, 219 Keegan, Patrick (see also Young Christian Workers) 2 Kelly, Denis, Bishop of Ross 17 Kelly KC*HS, Patrick, Archbishop of Liverpool 201 Kennedy SC, Sister Stanislaus ‘Sister Stan’ 347–8

 Kenny, Sir Anthony John Patrick 169n.17 Kenny, Edna 352 Kent, Monsignor Bruce 100 Kenya 46–7, 265–7 Kerry 28, 30–1, 162, 341–2 Kilkenny 28–9, 312, 341 Killarney 15, 336–7 Cathedral 181–2 Kipling, Joseph Rudyard 82–3 Knights of St Columba/Columbanus 60, 110–11 Knock (Co. Mayo) (see also shrines and memorials) xxi, 25, 34–5, 162, 176, 267 Knox, Monsignor Ronald Arbuthnott 7, 38–9, 100, 154, 193, 208–9 Kossowski, Adam 183–4 Küng, Fr Hans 67–8 Labour Party 60, 62–3, 71–2, 293 Lacy, Richard, Bishop of Middlesbrough 85–6 Laicization 143–4, 294, 298–9, 324 Lancaster 170–1, 184–5, 191 Lapsed Catholics 55, 58, 70–1, 75, 96–7, 125–6, 135, 335 Latin Mass Society (see also Agatha Christi Indult, liturgy, Tridentine Mass) 201–2 Laverty, Maura 213n.19, 214, 225 Lay Apostolic Congresses (see also internationalism) 137–9 Le Corbusier, Charles-Édouard 175–6, 184 Leeds 142, 171, 195, 300–1, 322–3 Lemass, Seán Francis 26–7 Leo XIII, Pope, Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci 19–20 Apostolicae Curae 1896 229–31 Rerum Novarum 1891 16–17 LGBTQI (see Sexuality) Liberation theology 265–7, 285, 289 Limerick 24–5, 163–4, 175, 190–1, 190n.14, 335n.6, 351–3 Literature, Catholic 208–27 Catholic Literary Revival 208–10, 214, 216–19, 227 Homosexuality 114–15, 210–12 Memoirs 5–6, 36, 65, 91–2, 120n.91, 125, 135, 260, 264, 277–9, 308, 313–14, 319, 321n.60, 337n.14 Little Flower (see Thérèse of Lisieux, St) Liturgy 188–206 Agatha Christi Indult 201–2 Folk and Pop masses 205–6 Glenstal Liturgical Congresses 32, 194–5 Holy Week rite 195–6 Latin Mass Society 201–2

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Music and 50, 189–92, 194–6, 202–6, 303 Reforms to 166, 177–82, 192–4, 199–202 Role of scripture in 199 Tridentine Mass xvii, 201–2, 226 Vernacular 34–5, 50–1, 65, 146–7, 192–3, 196–200, 202–5 Gaelic mass and hymns 198–9, 203–4 Westminster Pastoral Liturgy Centre 200 Liturgy (ICEL), International Commission on English in the 197–200, 199n.90, 205–6 Liturgy, Irish Institute for Pastoral 199 Liverpool 4n.15, 20–1, 39, 41–2, 53–5, 77–8, 82–4, 101–2, 138–9, 147–8, 168–9, 172, 174–5, 180, 190–1, 201 Metropolitan Catholic Cathedral 41n.21, 43–4, 173–4, 178–9, 184–5 National Pastoral Congress 1980 53, 54f Lodge, David John 51, 117, 136, 188–9, 215–16 London 1–2, 10, 30–1, 39, 44–6, 55–6, 77–8, 82–3, 91–2, 108–9, 113, 147–9, 155, 167–8, 175, 200, 205, 213, 215–18, 229–31, 239–40, 276, 278–9, 281–6, 291–3, 295–7, 302–3, 305–6 Irish in 84–6, 278, 291, 294, 297–8 London County Council 116 London Irish Centre 294n.24, 297 Lough Derg (Co. Donegal) 160–1, 173–4 Lourdes 25, 55–6, 146, 149–51, 154–7, 160–1, 339 Louvain 15, 137 Lucey, Cornelius, Bishop of Cork 20, 234 Lutyens, Sir Edward Landseer 41–4, 170, 173–4 Luxembourg, John, Grand Duke of 93–4 Lynch OCarm, Fr, Malachy, Prior of Aylesford 183–4 MacColla, Fionn 74–5 MacDiarmid, Hugh 74–5 Macdonogh, George 86–7 Mackenzie OBE, Sir Edward Montague, Compton 73–4 Maclean, Calum 74–5 MacMillan, Sir James 74–5, 205 Magennis, James 94–6, 96f Maguire, John, Archbishop of Glasgow 85 Mahoney SJ, Fr John 121–2 Máille, Pádraig Ó 264 Malawi 264 Malines Conversations (see also ecumenism) 229–31 Mallon, Seamus 22–3 Manchester 1–2, 39, 41–2, 77–8, 170–1, 173, 190–1, 277–8, 300–1

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Mantel, Hilary 278n.40 Marian (see Blessed Virgin Mary, pilgrimages and processions, shrines) Marian Year 1954 17, 25, 162 Maritain, Jacques 183 Marriage (see also contraception and sexual intercourse) 3, 73–4, 84, 105–23, 216–17, 299–301 ‘Mixed marriages’ 32–3, 50, 96–9, 229, 232–5, 238, 261–2, 276 Numbers of 42–3, 49f, 57n.3, 336, 370 Sacramental 33, 49, 328–9, 335, 337 Same-sex 105–6, 113–14, 163 Marshall, Professor John (see also Catholic Marriage Advisory Council) 118–19 Martin, Diarmuid, Archbishop of Dublin 351–5 Martin MMM, Sr Marie 254–6 Martindale SJ, Fr Cyril 193 Martyrdom xxii, 40–1, 50, 74–5, 83–4, 93–5, 147–8, 152, 257, 264 Mass attendance 49, 49f, 55, 106–7, 336–7, 340, 353, 357–8 Sunday obligation 125–6, 146, 206, 221–2, 336 Mass-Observation 92–3, 273n.12 Matania, Fortunino 78–80, 79f, 89 Mathew, David, Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster 235–6 Mathew KBE MC, Sir Theobald 113 May, Theresa 293, 311 Mayer-Marton, George 184–5 Maynooth College (see education) Maynooth Missionaries to China (SSC), Columban missionaries 24, 250n.5, 253, 253n.21, 264n.92 McAleese, Mary 352 McCabe OP, Fr Patrick 316–17, 322–3 McDonald OSB, Archbishop Andrew Thomas, St Andrews and St Edinburgh 60, 74–5 McElligott OSB, Fr Bernard (see also Society of St Gregory) 192 McGarry, Fr Gerard J. 194 McGee, Joseph Michael, Bishop of Galloway 65–6 McGennis, Fr Paul 322–3, 327–9 McMahon, Thomas, Bishop of Brentwood 176 McNamara, Kevin, Archbishop of Dublin 110–11, 319–20, 339–40 McNeely, William, Bishop of Raphoe 17–18 McQuaid CSSp, John Charles, Archbishop of Dublin 16–17, 20–1, 24, 29–35, 118–20, 167, 174, 196–9, 265–6, 294, 314, 322–3, 339–40

McVerry SJ, Fr Peter 347 Media and broadcasting 7–9, 25, 33, 51, 53–5, 72–3, 92–3, 122–3, 156–7, 198–9, 232, 265–6, 294, 344–5, 349–50 British Broadcasting Company (BCC) 9n.45, 161–2, 285–6, 311, 320–1 Coverage of sexual abuse 52, 308–9, 315–16, 319–23 ITV 118–19 RTÉ 232n.23, 265–6, 320–1 Welsh Home Service 198–9 Medical Missionaries of Mary (MMM), Congregation of 24, 254–6 Medicine, Catholic provision of 18–22, 28–9, 46–7, 62, 98–9, 108–9, 111–13, 117–18, 121–2, 270–1, 274, 282–6, 341–2 Missionary work 24, 254–6, 261–2 National Health Service (NHS) 22, 272–3, 282–3 Psychiatry and sexual abuse 18–19, 318, 320, 322–3, 327–8 Women religious 20–1, 113, 121–2, 254–5, 274 Medievalism 172–4, 183, 211 Medjugorje 156, 160–1 Mercy (RSM), Sisters of 22, 282–7, 283n.72, 320–1, 330–1 Merry del Val OL, Rafael Cardinal xxii, 44–5 Meynell, Alice 208–9, 216 Migration xx, 1, 30–1, 37, 44–5, 48, 59–60, 77–8, 106–7, 155–6, 163–4, 166–7, 185–6, 239–40, 249, 291–306, 308, 313, 348–50 Mill Hill (MHM), St Joseph’s Missionary Society of 254–6 Milligan KBE, Terence Allen ‘Spike’ 91–2 Miracles, Popular Belief in (see also shrines and memorials, devotional culture) 91–2, 154–5, 161–2, 221 Miraculous Medal 89, 91–2 Missiology 249, 265, 267 Missionary Sisters of the Holy Rosary (MSHR) 252–3, 255–6 Missionary Society of St Columban (SSCME, formerly Maynooth Mission to China) 24, 250n.5, 253, 264n.92 Missionary work (see also international development) 249–68 ‘Black Babies’ 259–60, 268 Education 262–3 Irish Missionary Union 267, 343n.40 Laity 264 Rivalry with Protestants 261–2, 266–7 Women 254–7 Modernism 167, 175–8

 Monarchy xv, 82–4 Monasticism (see also orders and congregations) 62–3, 65–7, 94–5, 170, 172–3, 183–4, 189, 203–5, 315–16 Montessori, Maria 137–8 Month, The 15, 86–7, 216–17 More, St Thomas 20, 41n.22, 53–5 Mosaic 173, 184–5 Mostyn, Francis, Archbishop of Menevia 133–4 Motherhood 10–11, 21, 25–6, 32–3, 38–9, 87, 91–2, 107–10, 118–19, 158, 220, 250, 254–5, 259, 263, 274, 278, 312–13, 316–18, 330–1 Mother and Baby Homes 107–8, 260–1 Mother and Child Scheme 18–19 Muggeridge, Thomas Malcolm 113 Muintir na Tíre 1–2, 19–20, 27 Muir CBE, Edwin 74–5 Murphy-O’Connor, Cormac Cardinal, Archbishop of Westminster 102–3, 321 Murray OSB, Fr Gregory 195–6 Murray OSB, Fr Placid (see also Glenstal and Greenhills conferences) 194–5 Music 50, 189–92, 194–6, 202–6, 303 Muslim community (see Islam) National Conference of Priests of Ireland 343 Nationalism (Scottish and Welsh) and Home Rule (see also republicanism) xxiii, xvi, 4–6, 32, 58–60, 72–5, 156–7, 173–4 National Pastoral Congress (NCP) 1980 (see also Liverpool) 53, 54f Natural Family Planning (NFP) (see contraception) Neo-Catechumenate 156 Neste, Francis van 168–9 Ne Temere 1907 232–4 New Churches Research Group 177 Newman CO, St John Henry 3, 11, 38–9, 53–5, 192, 205, 215–17 Newman Group 31 New Zealand 324 Nigeria 77–8, 252–7, 259, 263–5, 304, 350 Nonconformists 180–1 Norris OSB, Fr Charles 183–5 Norris, David 113–14 Northern Ireland (see also Troubles, Northern Ireland) xv–xvi, 7–8, 13–14, 14–15, 21–3, 26, 32, 34–5, 72, 91, 94–5, 98–9, 147, 161–2, 296–7, 304, 313, 337–8, 338–9, 359 Abortion 119, 121 Abuse in 314–15, 320 Attendance in 106–7, 358

387

‘Bloody Sunday’ 101–2 Catholic church in 22, 157, 359, 364 Civil rights protests 1968 22–3 Contraception 117 Devotional culture in 25–6, 157 Ecumenism 32–3, 231–2, 240–2 Education in 28, 63–4, 126–9, 142, 376 Homosexuality in 113–14 Mixed marriages 229, 232–4 Parishes 362, 364 Peace Process 94–5, 128–9, 241, 346 Good Friday Agreement 1998 xv, 298–9, 347 St Andrews Agreement 2006 346 Religious houses 23–4, 365–6 Second World War, ‘The Emergency’ 78–80 Ulster Defence Regiment, Catholics in 101–2 Notre Dame de Namur (SNDdeN), Sisters of 171, 277–8 Noyes, Alfred 38–9 Nuclear age 78, 81–2, 98–103 Nuns (see Women Religious) Nuttgens, Joseph Edward 183 Obscenity 16, 30–1, 109, 114–15, 116n.68, 208 London Committee against Obscenity 113 Ogilvie SJ, St John 74–5, 147 Opus Dei 110–11, 156 Oratorians (CO), Congregation of the Oratory 101–2, 192, 297–8 Orwell, George (Eric Arthur Blair) 93–4 Ould OSB, Fr Gregory 190–1 O’Brien, Edna 30–1, 109 O’Brien, Kate 208–9, 213–15, 225 O’Brien, Keith Cardinal, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh 71, 329 O’Callaghan, Monsignor Denis 33, 309–10 O’Carroll, Fintan 203n.116, 205 O’Connor OP, Fr Fergal 30–1 O’Connor OSU, Sr Marianne 343 O’Flaherty CBE, Monsignor Hugh 94–5 O’Gorman, Colm 318 O’Mahoney, Richard, viii, 24 O’Mahony OFM, Fr Dónal 347 O’Rahilly SJ, Fr Alfred 87–8 O’Riordan CSsR, Fr Sean 29 Ó Fiaich KGCHS, Cardinal Tomás, Bishop of Armagh 268, 338–9, 345 Pacificism 81, 85, 90–3, 100 Paedophilia 7–8, 310–11, 323–4, 329 Pagan (see also conversion, heathen) 36, 85, 211, 236, 249–50, 252–6, 259–64, 267

388

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Paisley, Reverend Ian Richard Kyle (see also Democratic Unionist Party) 32, 113–14 Pakenham, Frank, Lord Longford 109–10 Papacy (see also individual Popes) xv–xvi, 77–8, 190, 243–4, 270–1, 311–12, 326, 351 Attitudes towards institution in Britain 143–4, 229–31 Neutrality in World Wars 85, 92–5, 99, 103 Papal nuncio 99, 339 Parish, Parochial system (see churches and cathedrals) Passionists (CP), Congregation of the Passion of Jesus Christ 23–4, 271 Patrick, St 12, 15, 26, 91, 152, 173–4, 250–1, 253–4, 297n.45, 344–5 Paul VI, Pope, Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini 61, 100, 156, 201–2, 234, 243–4, 267 Ecclesiam Suam 1964 72 Humanae Vitae 1968 33, 51, 67–8, 117–19, 331 Pax Christi 86–7, 92–3, 98–100 Peace (see also Troubles, Northern Ireland) 2–3, 78, 86–7, 90–100, 236, 239, 246–7, 344–6 Pepler OP, Fr Conrad 183–4 Penal laws (see also recusancy) xvii, xxii, 12, 15, 82–3, 214–16, 261–2 Penny Catechism (see also Catechism) 81, 135 Peritus 192–3 Permissiveness 6–7, 105–6, 111–12, 119, 310–11 Persecution, historical of Catholics (see also recusancy, Reformation) xv, 12 Peyton CSC, Fr Patrick 25, 157–8 Philbin, Dr William, Bishop of Clonfert, Down and Connor 19, 29–30, 238–9, 344–5 Photography 259, 313–14, 322–3 Pilgrimages and processions (see also shrines) 11–13, 15, 25, 41–2, 55–6, 147–51, 150f, 154–61, 159f, 168–9, 193, 276, 339 Pillarization 22, 62, 349–50 Piper, John 184–5 Pius X, Pope, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto 229–31 Tra le Sollecitudini 1903 188–92, 202–3 Ne Temere 1907 232–4 Pius XI, Pope, Ambrogio Damiano Achille Rati 12, 133–4, 156 Casti Connubi 1930 116 Catholic Action 1–2, 16, 168, 235–6 Mortalium Animos 1928 229–31 Pius XII, Pope, Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli 98–100, 116–17, 154–5 Plater SJ, Fr Charles 88–9

Plater College 17, 201 Plunkett, Joseph Mary 83–4 Plymouth Cathedral 172 Poland 77–8, 93–4, 154–6, 353 Politics 1–3, 13–15, 21, 34–5, 37, 58–61, 73, 93–4, 113, 156, 216–17, 272, 297, 305, 320 Conservativism 273–4 Labour 60, 62–3, 71–2, 293 Scottish National Party 74–5, 99, 112–13 Social Democratic and Labour Party 22–3 Poor Laws 17, 285–6 Poor Servants of the Mother of God (PSMG) 284–5 Poverty 29–30, 70–1, 75, 96–7, 218, 223, 231, 239, 266, 272–3, 285, 287–8, 346–8 Pre-conciliar and post-conciliar (see Second Vatican Council) Presbyterianism (see Church of Scotland) Presbytery 137, 167–8 Priesthood (see also vocations) 23, 29–30, 53–5, 69, 97–8, 146, 265, 342–3, 367–8 Declining numbers 139–40, 340–1, 343 Influx of foreign priests in Ireland xiv, 8 ‘Men in Black Campaign’ 1997 341–2 Social work 68 Suicide 343 Women’s ordination 100, 246 Progressio (see Catholic Institute for International Relations) Pro-life movement 34–5, 110–11, 119, 121 Propaganda 16, 87, 261–2, 267–8 Providence 210–11, 223–4, 284–5 Pruden, Dunstan 183 Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore xxii, 77–8, 172, 181–2 Purves OBE, Elizabeth Mary 135 Quakers 85–7 Queer (see also sexuality) 105–6, 111–12, 115, 306, 310–11, 352 Radharc (see also television) 30–1, 265–6 Rahner SJ, Fr Karl 67–8 Ramsey, Arthur Michael, Archbishop of Canterbury 32, 239–40, 243–4 Read, Piers Paul 214 Reconciliation, Sacrament of (see also Confession) 136n.76, 156–7, 176, 201 Recusancy xviii–xix, xxii, 74–5, 94–5, 147–8, 152 Forty Martyrs of England and Wales 40–1, 50, 147 Redemptorists (CSsR), Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer 23–5, 29, 159–60, 192

 Referendum 34–5, 105–6, 110–11, 113–14, 121, 339–40 Reformation xv, xviii, xxii–xxiii, 23–4, 39–40, 57, 62–3, 82–3, 308–9 Refugees (see also migration) 77–8, 184–5, 288, 293, 300–1, 303, 340 Relics 87–8, 156–7 Religious Education 9–10, 62–3, 127–9, 131–6, 138–41, 143, 281, 336–7, 352–3 Religious Instruction 125, 129–33, 136–9, 263, 335, 344 Religious Women and Men – Communities, Orders and Societies (see also education, individual entries, and missionary work) xix–xx, xxii, 17, 20–1, 23–4, 26, 28–31, 34–5, 40, 126–8, 132, 147–8, 159–60, 165–6, 170, 186–7, 215, 225, 238–9, 249, 277n.37, 323, 326–7, 341–2, 362, 364–6 Perfectae Caritatis 1965 274–5, 289 Republicanism 12–15, 78–80, 83–4, 86–8, 101–3, 212, 345 Residential institutions (see also education, mother and baby homes) 28–9, 171, 311, 313–16 Revivals, religious xx, 4–5, 190–1, 258 Reynolds SM, Sr Brigid 349–50 Reynolds, Fr Kevin 343 Reyntiens OBE, Nicholas Patrick 183–5 Rhythm method (see also contraception) 116–17 Richards CBE, Ceri Giraldus 184–5 Rinvolucri, Giuseppe 174–5 Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) 201 Robb CJ, Sr Pat 288 Robinson, Mary Therese Winifred 119–20 Romanesque 173–5 Rope OCarm, Sr Margaret Agnes 183–4 Rope, Margaret Edith Aldrich 183–4 Rosary 17, 25, 40, 146, 149–54, 156–8 Family Rosary Crusade 25 Public Rosary Movement 34–5, 146–7 Russell, Fr Clement Lloyd 172 Rwanda genocide 288 Ryan OP, Fr Columba 112–13 Ryan, Dermot Joseph, Archbishop of Dublin 167, 316–17, 338–40 Ryan, John 54f Sacred Heart of Jesus 146, 149–52, 156–9 Sacrosanctum Concilium 1963 178–9, 188–9, 192–9, 201–2

389

Safeguarding (see also sexual abuse) 51–2, 308–9, 321, 325–6, 328, 331–2, 351–2 Saints, devotional cults of (see also Communion of Saints) 50, 146–52, 161 Salmond, Alexander Elliot Anderson 62–3, 75 Sassoon CBE MC, Siegfried Loraine 97–8 Scanlon, James Donald, Archbishop of Glasgow 67–8 Schools (see education) Scotland 57–75 Anti-Catholicism 59–61, 63, 72–3 Catholic support for Independence 72–3, 112–13 Changing social attitudes in 69–71, 73, 105–6, 112–13 Church attendance 57–8, 71, 195, 357 Education in 62–3, 131–2, 138, 169–70, 314–16 Football 64, 168–9 Growth of institutions in 25–6, 60–1 Impact of the Second Vatican Council 64–9 Liturgical change 189–91, 193, 200, 203 National identity xxiii, 58–9, 73–5 Sectarianism 61, 63, 101–2 Sexual abuse in 71, 314–16, 329, 333 Scott, Adrian Gilbert 167, 173 Scott, Sir Giles Gilbert 172 Scott-Moncrieff, George Irving 73–4 Scottish Catholic Historical Association 4–5, 5n.21, 73 Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund (SCIAF) 9–10 Scottish Episcopal Conference 64–5, 198–200 Scottish Lay Action Movement (SLAM) later Renewal Movement 67–8 Sculpture 58–9, 59f, 177–8, 182–5 Second Vatican Council, 1962–5 xvi, xxi, 1–3, 6–7, 29–35, 48–51, 64–9, 90–1, 95–6, 103, 111–12, 125–6, 139–41, 146, 155–7, 159, 161, 165–8, 171–2, 176, 178–80, 186–9, 192–3, 197, 199, 201–5, 209–10, 213, 215, 216n.25, 225–7, 229–32, 235–8, 241–3, 266–7, 270–1, 274–5, 280–1, 289, 329, 339, 346–7, 352–3 Secrecy xxii, 65–6, 107–8, 117–18, 308, 312–13, 320–1, 323–4, 328–30, 332 Sectarianism (see also anti-Catholicism) xvi, 4–5, 7–8, 61, 87–8, 94–5, 101–2, 146, 239, 242, 246 Secularization 6–7, 37, 72, 122–3, 158–9, 162–3, 211–12, 223, 239–40, 268, 271, 306 Seminaries (see also priesthood) xvii, 23, 62, 66–8, 142, 156–7 Bearsden 69

390

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Seminaries (cont.) Closure 69, 156–7, 341 Drygrane 65–6 Irish College Rome 341 St Edmund’s College, Ware 81–2 St John’s College, Wonersh 97 St Patrick’s College, Maynooth 341 St Peter’s College, Cardross 66, 69, 170 Training in seminaries 68, 328–9 Sexual abuse 308–33 Forms 309–12 Impact 327–31, 334, 351–2 and gender of abused 309 and media 7–8, 310–11, 319–23 and safeguarding measures 51–2, 308–9, 321, 325–6, 328, 331–2, 351–2 in Britain 52, 127, 321–2, 325 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse 2015 311, 327 Nolan Inquiry 2001 52, 321, 325–6 in Ireland 351–2 Commission of Investigation into Catholic Archdiocese of Dublin (Murphy Report) 316–17, 320–3, 351 Commission of Investigation into the Irish Diocese of Cloyne 2011 309–10, 324–5, 352 Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse 2009 (Ryan Report) 314–15, 329, 351 Hart Inquiry 314–15, 317 Sexuality (see also contraception, homosexuality) 111–15 Abstinence 118–19 AIDS 112, 277n.34 Celibacy 122–3, 265, 270–1, 310–11, 329–30, 342 Gender theory 122–3, 310–11 Sex education 108–9, 112–13 Shanahan, CCSp, Fr Joseph 252–6, 259, 262 Sheffield 180, 282–3 Sheppard, David Stuart, Anglican Bishop of Liverpool 243 Sheppard, Rev Hugh Richard Lawrie ‘Dick’, Dean of Canterbury 100 Shrines and memorials (see also pilgrimages) 17, 59f, 74–5, 90–1, 94–7, 96f, 151, 154–5, 173–4, 302 Carfin (Scotland) 155, 157 Holywell (Wales) 155, 157 Holy wells 159, 161 Knock (Ireland) xxi, 25, 34–5, 162, 176, 267 Lourdes (France) 25, 55–6, 146, 149–51, 154–7, 160–1, 339

Medjugorje (former Yugoslavia) 156, 160 Walsingham (England) 11, 53‒6, 154‒7 War Memorials 89–91, 95–6 Sierra Leone 265 Simms, Dr George, Archbishop of Church of Ireland 32–3 Sinclair PCC, Venerable Margaret 61, 147 Singledom 92–3, 107–8, 286, 295–6, 296n.39, 336 Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) 350 Sixties, the 27, 48–51, 278, 287, 329 Skinnider, Margaret Frances 61 Slattery SMA, Fr Maurice 252–3 Slough 180–1, 295–6 Smith KC*HS, Michael, Bishop of Meath 29–30 Smyth, Fr Brendan 317, 319–21, 329 Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) 22–3 Socialism 1–2, 19–20, 22, 36, 58–61, 86–7, 93–4, 154 Social justice xvii, xxii, 138–9, 246–9, 271, 274–5, 285, 289, 334–5, 346–7, 349–50 Social mobility (see class) Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings 95–6 Society of African Missions (SMA) 19, 170 Society of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJ) 277–8 Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (RSCJ) 277–8 Society of St Gregory (SSG) 190–5, 203 Sociology, Catholic interpretations of 6–7, 17, 31–2, 68, 332 Sodalities, see Confraternities Sodano, Cardinal Angelo 352 South African Wars (Boer War) 82–3 South America 10–11, 265–6, 301–2 Southwark Cathedral and Diocese 77–8, 84, 172, 190–1 Spain 46–7, 77–8, 84, 156 Spanish Civil War 1936–1939 16–17, 92–3 Spark, Muriel 73–4, 208–9, 213–17, 219, 225–6 Spencer, A.E.C.W. Tony 31–2, 275n.25, 360 Spiritans (CSSp), Congregation of the Holy Spirit 315–16 St John of God (OH), Brother Hospitallers of 20–1 St John-Stevas, Norman Antony 112n.43, 119 St Patrick’s Society for the Foreign Missions (SPS) 253, 258, 264 St Vincent de Paul 21, 147–8, 283, 348–50 Stained glass 10–11, 183–5 Stations of the Cross 149–52, 183–4 Statistics 162–3, 340–1, 357–76

 Statues 42, 50, 158, 161–2, 181–3 Stigmatic 10–11, 147 Padre Pio 156 Stirling, David 94–5 Stopes, Dr Marie 115–16 Subsidiarity 18–19, 107–8 Suburbs 9–10, 24, 47, 91–2, 166–9, 186–7, 276 Sudan 84 Superstition 38–9, 96–7, 146, 161–2, 255, 261–2 Sutherland OM, Graham Vivian 184–5 Sutherland, Dr Halliday Gibson 115–16 Swanwick Declaration 1987 245–6 Swayne, Fr Seán 199 Sword of the Spirit 78, 92–3, 231–2, 235–6 Synodality 11, 53, 206, 326–7 Tabernacle 50, 178–9, 179f Tablet, The, 87, 93–4, 100, 118–19, 190–3, 216–17 Taylor SMG, Sr Frances Margaret 216–17 Taylor, Maurice, Bishop of Galloway 67, 92–3 Teilhard de Chardin SJ, Fr Pierre 32 Television (see Media) Temple, William, Archbishop of Canterbury 235–6 Terry, Sir Richard Runciman 189–90 Thatcher OM, Baroness Margaret Hilda 71–2, 272–3 Theology xvii, 6, 29–33, 67–8, 70–1, 81–4, 88–9, 92–3, 112, 122–3, 144–5, 167, 177, 192–4, 196, 199, 202–3, 210, 216–17, 223–4, 229–31, 246, 265–7, 285, 328–30 Feminist 218, 298 Liberation 265–7, 285, 289 Teresa of Calcutta, St 341 Thérèse of Lisieux, St 96–7, 153–4 Thils, Gustave 223 Tolkein, John Ronald Reuel 38–9, 96–7, 103 Town planning 47, 165–7 Trade unionism 17, 61, 288 Tridentine Mass xvii, xxii, 201–2, 225–6 Trócaire 9–10, 266, 347–8 Troubles, Northern Ireland 7–8, 94–5, 101–2, 113–14, 161–2, 220, 225, 229, 231–2, 238, 296–7, 304, 334–5 Ecumenism 241–2 Peace process 344–6 Uganda 267 Ultramontane xvi, xviii, xxi, 44n.40, 62, 190, 222–3 Unemployment 154–5, 273–4, 287, 340, 347–50 Unionism 22n.46, 60n.12 United Nations 78–80, 99–100, 311–12, 351

391

United States of America xviii, 12, 20, 23–4, 29, 32, 46–7, 59–60, 87, 172–3, 178–80, 198–9, 205–6, 213–15, 259, 309–10, 318–20, 346 Universities (see education) Unmarried mothers 25–6, 30–3, 107–8, 119 Urbanization (see also agriculture and rural life, suburbs) 9–10, 16, 20, 24, 27, 47, 77–8, 91, 119–20, 165–8, 173, 237–40, 276, 285–6, 294–6, 335–6 New towns in Britain 47, 167, 180–1 Ursula (OSU), Order of St 286, 343 Valera, Éamon de 16–17, 19–20, 26, 32–3, 93–4 Varadkar, Leo 353–4 Vatican I/First Vatican Council 1868–70 11 Vatican II (see Second Vatican Council) Velarde, Francis Xavier 169–70, 174–5 Vernacular 192–4, 196–200, 202–6, 217–18 Vertue, John, Bishop of Portsmouth 84 Vietnam 77–8, 81, 304 War 1955–75, 30–2 Vincentian (CM), Congregation of the Mission 229–31, 315–16 Vocations 27, 43, 64, 96–8, 170, 253, 257–8, 260–1, 265, 268, 298–9, 308, 334, 337–8, 340–3 Voluntary aided and voluntary controlled schools (see education, state aid) Von Hügel, Baron Fredrich 216 Vonier OSB, Fr Anscar 192–3 Wales, Catholicism in (see also Cardiff ) xvi, xviii, xxiii, 3–5, 4n.17, 8n.41, 21–2, 40–1, 45–6, 48–50, 65, 89–90, 107, 122, 128–9, 132–4, 142, 148, 152, 154–6, 168–9, 174–5, 192–3, 197–203, 209–10, 244–5, 271n.5, 275–6, 293, 308, 311, 320–1, 324–6, 331, 341–2, 344, 357 Baptism 372 Catholic schools 280, 373 Convents 364 Conversions 369 Mass attendance 45n.45, 357 Novelists and poets 81–2, 209–10, 213 Vocations 361 Welsh language 198–9 Walker, Christopher 204–5 Walsh, Francis Raymond, Bishop of Aberdeen 181–2 Walsingham, shrine 11, 53–6, 154–7 Walsh, Joseph, Archbishop of Tuam 197–8 Ward DBE, Baroness Barbara 9–10, 235–6 Ward, Josephine 209–12, 215–18

392

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Ward, Mary Josephine ‘Maisie’ 208–9, 217–18, 295–6 Waterford 162, 172–3, 341 Waugh, Arthur Evelyn St John 38–41, 87–8, 96–7, 103, 210–12, 216–17 Welfare state (see also subsidiarity) 43–4, 62, 125–6, 130–1, 175–6, 235, 270–89, 292, 296, 299 Welsh OSB, Sr Werburg 183–4 Westminster Cathedral 93–4, 148–9, 173, 183, 190–1, 197–8, 287 Westminster Catholic Federation 89 Westminster Hymnal (1912) 192, 203–4 Wheeler, William Gordon, Bishop of Leeds 197–8 White, Antonia 208–9, 210n.10, 214, 221–5, 279 Whiteside, Thomas, Archbishop of Liverpool 190 Whitney S.P.S, Fr Patrick 253–4, 263n.85 Whitsun 42–4 Wilde, Oscar 211–12 Williams, Baroness Shirley Vivian Teresa 81 Windham, Joan 151–2 Winning, Thomas Joseph, Archbishop of Glasgow 4n.14, 67–8, 243 Wolfenden Commission (see homosexuality) Women Ministry 10–11, 165–6, 246–7, 254–7, 271–2, 274, 352 Organizations 1–2, 109–10, 147–8, 246, 297 Religious Communities 270–89, 364–5 War experience 97–8, 254 Writers 208–27 Women’s Liberation Movement (see also feminism) 119–20

Woodruff, John Douglas 192–3 Working class (see class) World War I 40–1, 78–80, 84–91, 235 Army chaplains 78, 136 Conscientious objectors 81–2, 85–7 Conversion 38–9, 96–7 Effect on morality 114–16 Military service 80–1, 95–6 Papal neutrality in 85, 92–3 War memorials 89–90 World War II 91–8 Army chaplains 193–4 Conscientious objectors 81, 90–3, 98–9 Conversion 96–7 Ecumenism 235 Effect on morality 42–3, 91–2, 97–8, 108–9, 113 Ireland 78–80 Migration 77–8, 293 Papal neutrality in 91–5 War memorials 90–1, 95–6, 96f Women’s contribution 97–8, 184 World Youth Day 50 Worlock CH, Derek John Harford, Archbishop of Liverpool 54f, 243 Wright, Lance 177, 181n.47 York 36, 300–1 Young Christian Workers 2, 17, 138–9, 193 Youth 21, 55–6, 69–70, 119, 125–6, 135, 138–9, 156–9, 260, 270–1, 318, 336, 353 Zambia 267 Zouaves 82