The Henson Journals

[111]

11th Sunday after Trinity, August 26th , 1906, Ochtertyre, Crieff N.B.

[symbol]

We attended service at Monzievard Church – an unpretentious not to say hideous building. The minister, a comparatively young man, hailed from Ireland, and certified his origin both by his brogue, and by his exuberant rhetoric. He impressed me as sincere and religious, but (unless in time warned of his risk) destined to swell the great host of wind–bags.

At lunch there was present an agreeable R.C. priest, with whom, when the meal ended, I took a long walk almost up to the brink of Lake Turrett. We talked hard all the while, and I was agreeably astonished at the outspokenness of his comments on ecclesiastical affairs. He shewed me a letter recently received from Duchesne, in which the great R.C. savant declared his opinion that, if Pius X reigned another 10 years, he would wholly destroy religion in France, and that if he were granted 'the years of Peter', the very existence of Christianity would become doubtful!! This independent priest – Fawkes – told me that he was a personal friend of Loisy, who would probably be excommunicated at the end of the year. Father Tyrrell had been prohibited from saying Mass.

[112] [symbol]

He spoke with much discrimination of parties in the English Church, perceiving very justly that the High Church Anglicans, in spite of their parade of affection for Liberal Roman Catholics, are really less friendly to theological liberty than the Vatican itself, being frankly medieval. He told me that wilful murder and attending theatres by priests were the only 'reserved cases' in the confessionals of Scotland. The prohibition of clerical attendance at theatres had been enacted by the Synod of Westminster, and was rendered necessary by the low social type of the general body of priests, who could not be trusted to comport themselves decently in public! Maturin and Hugh Benson were carefully kept in the background by the ecclesiastical authorities, as being likely to claim a larger independence than is consistent with that purely instrumental rôle which the clergy are designed to fill in the Vaticanist scheme. "Converts" generally were greatly suspected by the Hierarchy. I did not care to inquire whether Father Fawkes were himself a 'convert', but he indicated that he had been at Oxford, and I suspect that he went there as an Anglican, and 'found salvation' in that ecclesiastical atmosphere.

---