The Henson Journals

[33]

Wednesday, July 7th, 1926.

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I finished reading a volume recommended to me both by Fawkes and Bishop Knox – Life and Letters of the Venerable Father Dominic (Barberi) C. P. Founder of the Passionists in Belgium and England, by Father Urban (Young) C. P. 1926. I was not greatly impressed by the book, which is written in the ecstatic stilted style of conventional Roman hagiography. Father Dominic, who "received" Newman in 1845, and died in 1849, is, I learned, on the way to be canonised. The impression which I always receive from Roman Catholick books is conveyed powerfully by this, viz. that the mentality and [ethos?] of Papistry are so remote from our own, that the most complete agreement on formal points of doctrine and practice would go but a little way towards effecting any real unity between the Roman and English Churches. The type of devotion is almost repulsive, and it is nourished by disciplines and devotions which are trivial, irrational, and even degrading. A language passes on the lips of these good people which is not only unintelligible but also repellent. Dominic himself subscribes his letters "Dominic of the Mother of God"; another Passionist father is "of the side of Jesus": & these bizarre descriptions are reverently repeated as if they carried some grave spiritual significance. The asceticism is arbitrary, fantastic, extreme; & it promotes virtues which are artificial and unattractive. I ask myself seriously, Do I really wish to substitute the conception of Christianity which underlies this ecclesiatical system for that which underlies the Anglican system, and I find myself quite unable to return an affirmative answer. Unity would be dearly purchased if it implied – and Anglo–Catholicism shows that it does imply – such a substitution of fundamental conception.

[34]

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What an unreal world was that in which all these busy zealots were living! They imagined themselves to be working miracles, reversing the courses of history, and converting nations, when in point of fact the great world was barely conscious of their existence, and continued its way unaffected by their busy activities. Even the Oxford Movement with its tragedy in Newman's secession was but a trivial episode in the march of events. It may have transformed the Church of England, i.e. the clergy and the clericalized section of it, but it has left the Nation of England untouched. To what ends the nation is marching we cannot know: it is God's secret: but that those ends are not perceptibly affected by the plottings of Roman ecclesiasticks, & the spiritual fortunes of a few score of Anglican converts is plain enough. The decisive ideas of the coming age are not those which reign in the seminaries and sacristies, and their ultimate triumph will certainly not serve the ambition of churches. It is undoubtedly true that all religious enthusiasts are liable to exaggerate their own importance, and to transfigure into agreeable forms all that they experience; and this dangerous tendency is greatly strengthened in the actual circumstances of the modern Church, which is so alien in feeling and objective from contemporary society that it hardly moves outside itself, & is thus in audience of its own voice!

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