Part of our Anglican patrimony is simply being English. That sounds chauvinistic to our American and Australian brethren, not forgetting the South Africans and people living in every other corner of the erstwhile Empire. Anglicans are also to be found in Wales, Scotland and the two Irelands. I write from the point of view of being myself an Englishman. I was born into a family carrying one of the most widespread surnames of Lancashire and Yorkshire, one hundred years after my great grandfather who, among his other achievements, navigated the Cape Horn under sail.
There are probably as many ways of being English as English people living in England, and many English people are not Anglicans, but are Roman Catholics or Christians of various non-conformist denominations. Perhaps one of our greatest characteristic (and weaknesses) is our reticence to affirm “absolute truth” or any other absolute principle, and to tolerate other people in our sense of fair play and our desire for social harmony and peace.
How is it possible to generalise, as England is extremely diverse in ethnical terms? We are a mixture of Angles, Saxons, Romans, Normans and every other race who came to that country by way or conquest or more peacefully. We are highly conscious of our regions, whether we are Geordies, Yorkshiremen, Lancastrians, Cockneys born within the sound of Bow Bells or from seafaring Cornwall or the Fens. From that point of view, I see little difference between ourselves and the French, whose country is far more geographically and culturally diverse. I suppose I “feel” closest to the Norman ethnical category than anything else, and lo and behold, I now live in a village between Rouen and Le Havre!
I listened this morning to a lecture given by someone by the name of Roger_Scruton. He has his own website. With his fairly neutral accent of an educated man, he sounds like a conservative, politically, as he voices his Euro-scepticism and pro-Americanism. I detect nothing extreme about his discourse, and found the ideas interesting. We are above all a place, not a religion or an ideology, or a nation, but a place and a home. That is probably what most interested me as I heard this lecture, not being an expert in law or constitutional matters.
We seem to struggle in looking for that Holy Grail of our identity, which is a perfectly legitimate human instinct. It is within ourselves, that love of home and hearth, of peace and stability. It is not peculiarly English, as I find northern French and German people also loving their homes and control over their own intimate lives. The word home is most characteristic in English. It doesn’t exist in French. When we saying we are going home, they say “On rentre à la maison” – We are going back into the house. For us English, house and home are two different things. Home is the sacrosanct character of a person’s intimacy, away from control of any higher agency than himself – insofar as he is abiding by the law and respecting the same homeliness of other people.
Englishness is not the simple fact of having been born in England, being of a particular race or even adhering to a particular religion. We do tend to eschew ‘religious truth’. It is certainly most manifested by our home instinct and obsession for property. We English love DIY and putting the stamp of our own personality in a house we buy. It is our territorial instinct like the dog cocking his leg against every lamp post in sight! I read somewhere that – A house that has not been tinkered with barely qualifies as a home.
That certainly corresponds with our instincts in the religious community. We always have to leave our mark on everything. How many Anglican liturgical books are defaced with words scribbled out and pieces of paper with typed texts stuck in? Seen this way, we do seem to be a nation of selfish slobs, more concerned for our own comfort than anyone else’s well being!
Englishness is fast disappearing, and the home instinct is merely being replaced by crass materialism and an increasing lust for possessions and wealth. It was only to be expected. We have to search deeper than our choice of settee and curtains for the lounge. The notion of home is not the house in which we live, but ourselves.
Now, where does this become relevant in our reflections on Anglican patrimony? I hit on it some days ago when writing on Newman in the light of his Oratory Papers. Newman managed to find his niche in the Catholic Church that he could call home, in a type of religious life for priests invented by a sixteenth century Florentine who lived most of his life in Rome. One would not expect an Italian to have such “English” ideas, but Saint Philip Neri was no typical Italian!
We English are not sectarians or separatists, and have a profound sense of the common good, but we need our home in the Catholic Church. Perhaps some Englishmen are called to be Franciscans or Jesuits – Foxes have holes, birds have nests, but the Son of Man… Is it selfish or un-Christian to want a home, rather than be a perpetual pilgrim in Evangelical poverty?
As I wrote the other day, this notion of roots and home struck me particularly when I found the objection of a modern French diocesan bishop to a priest staying in his parish for as long as his faithful want him and he wants. Now the polemics surrounding Bishop Nourrichard of Evreux have abated, I see the problem very clearly, which is not primarily a question of conservative Catholicism or liturgy. It is the conception of the parish priest and his ministry to families and individual persons living in a fixed place. Bishop Nourrichard is not alone in a new conception of the missionary priest who has no right to a home or roots. The priest must relinquish family, stability, a sense of belonging, his very humanity. It is the ultimate asceticism, not exacted even of monks who live in stability and security, even though they do not own private property. The modern parish priest is despised of all, known to no one, a distant administrator of anything between 20 to 40 parishes. Only a hero would ever be called to such a vocation, and be ready to be driven to a mental breakdown. It is ironic that the pre-conciliar Church was never so extreme in its ascetic requirements, and took human emotional needs into account.
Our Anglican patrimony is essentially stabilitas loci, perhaps a remainder from the monastic influence. Some of us like to travel when we are young, but we quickly become jaded by being in places where we do not belong. My wife and I went to Venice for our honeymoon. It is a beautiful place, but it is not ours. I left Venice with a sigh of relief, with the idea of returning to Normandy and home. Our life is home, our duties and the things we do each day. Sometimes, our souls long to explore, reach out to infinity and buck against the bridle, but we chase illusions. I am brought to think of that wonderful poem by Ralph Whitman, which figures in Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony:
O vast Rondure, swimming in space,
Covered all over with visible power and beauty,
Alternate light and day and the teemimg spiritual darkness,
Unspeakable high processions of sun and moon and countless stars above,
Below, the manifold grass and waters,
With inscrutable purpose, some hidden prophetic intention,
Now first it seems my thought begins to span thee.Down from the gardens of Asia descending,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, with restless explorations,
questionings, baffled, formless, feverish, with never-happy hearts
that sad incessant refrain, – Wherefore unsatisfied soul?
Whither O mocking life??
Ah who shall soothe these feverish children?
Who justify these restless explorations?
Who speak the secret of impassive earth?Yet soul be sure the first intent remains, and shall be carried out,
Perhaps even now the time has arrived.
After the seas are all crossed,
After the great captains and engineers have accomplished their work,
After the noble inventors,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.O we can wait no longer,
We too take ship O Soul,
Joyous we too launch out on trackless seas,
Fearless for unknown shores on waves of ecstasy to sail,
Amid the wafting winds (thou pressing me to thee, I thee to me, O Soul).
Caroling free, singing our song of God,
Chanting our chant of pleasant exploration.O Soul thou pleasest me, I thee,
Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the night,
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and Death, like waters flowing,
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite,
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me all over,
Bathe me, O God, in thee, mounting to thee,
I and my soul to range in range of thee.O thou transcendent,
Nameless, the fibre and the breath,
Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou centre of them.
Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God,
At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and Death,
But that I, turning, call to thee O Soul, thou actual me,
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs,
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death,
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space.Greater than stars or suns,
Bounding O Soul thou journeyest forth;Away O Soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
Cut the hawsers – haul out – shake out every sail!
Sail forth – steer for the deep waters only.
Reckless O Soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.
O my brave Soul!
O farther, farther sail!
O daring joy, but safe! are they not all the seas of God?
O farther, farther, farther sail!
Man is domesticated, and it is no accident that Saint Benedict insisted upon stability.
The life of the mendicant friar or missionary is a legitimate vocation in the Church. It is a direct imitation of what we know about Christ and the wandering community of the Apostles. Jesus is clear when he called people from a life of security to take up their crosses, depending solely upon blind faith in the Master.
However, stability is also legitimate and profoundly human, and not restricted to monks. Most ordinary English people will live for thirty, forty, fifty or sixty years in one place. Often, the family home is passed onto the children. Stability ensures continuity, a sense of tradition and a solid basis of human life. Whether a priest is a monk, lives in a fixed community of celibate clerics, or lives with his wife and family, this is where stability will be found.
The notion of home and stabilitas loci is not peculiarly English, but Roman and Greek. The Romans attached great importance to pro aris et focis – for our homes and hearths. Yet, many aspects of Englishness are not Roman. Our tradition of common law is not Roman. But, we have inherited the strong notion of home and family. This is being lost, and human beings suffer for it. Even in the Church, a young man is deprived of his roots – and is then called unstable!
It is not for the first time in history that this terra firma is being lost. Saint Benedict fought to revive and foster it in his monasteries. This stability in English society and monastic communities is an unwritten contract to ensure a sense of industry, duty, altruism and fairness. It doesn’t matter whether our fellow human beings are friends or members of the immediate family. Our duty is to respect them and treat them as we would like to be treated.
If there is one aspect our English way can contribute to the Catholic Church, it is a revival of this notion of stability in our families and parishes, an attachment to the places where we live and the will to evangelise that place. We should not be expected to uproot and relinquish in an optic of a particular type of asceticism, as has often been expected of Anglican converts in the past, but respected as belonging to our places, our homes and families.
Dear Father Chadwick;
You said that in France, we do not have such an equivalent of the English word "home", and that we say "maison" for both "home" and "house". I know that you are a very distingushed translator, but in facts we do have such a word. It is a "2 words-word: "chez-moi", or "chez-nous". The gramatical mistake "mon chez-moi" or "notre chez-nous" (pronounced "nott'chez-nous") is even widespread in France. When an Eglishman says "England is our home", a Frenchman will say "La France, c'est chez-nous" and it will have the same sense.
Best regards
Yes, I think you're right. I use this expression just about every day, and find it is a fairly good approximation to our concept. I find people in Normandy as attached to home as most of us English – but it's quite different in Marseilles. Life revolves more around pétanque and Pastis. Different areas are different.The English notion is very particular. You need to "feel" and "experience" rather than think about it.
Désolé.
A beautiful essay, Father. Chestertonian it is, and that's high praise from me. I'm reminded of the little plaque in the back garden of my friend Carlo's home:
"Parva sed apta mihi,
sed nulli obnoxia,
sed non sordida,
parta meo sed tamen aere domus."
It's from a renaissance poet but I've forgotten who.
Cheers,
-John-
I believe that the poet was Ludovico Ariosto; these lines were inscribed on the entrance to the house he built himself.
Dear Fr. Chadwick,
To some extent I think you are making the case in favor of "people's priests" vs. "full priests" as Cardinal Ratzinger outlines it, speaking of the Orthodox, in "Salt of the Earth", pp. 198-9.
In addition, you are speaking, I think, to the need of diocesan priests to have more outlets of friendship and "fellowship" amongst themselves, one of the apostolates to which the priests of Opus Dei dedicate themselves.
I don't regard any of the above viewpoints as "illegitimate", especially in our modern era.
I'm not really sure I get your meaning, but the idea I wanted to convey is that a celibate parish priest may be the father of the "family" of his parish. That quality of the priestly vocation is lost through not (here in France) letting a priest stay in a parish for more than 7-8 years. It takes at least 5-6 years for a priest to be accepted by the parishioners, and another 2-3 years for the bonding process to take place. After that, a real in-depth ministry becomes possible. In the present pastoral methods of most bishops, for reason of the crisis of vocations and the idea of being fair to all (all parishes must be desertified instead of most of them), bonding between a priest and his flock are impossible.
Not only has a celibate priest to renounce wife and family, but also any real ministry that necessitates bonding. It is a kind of "double-whammy celibacy", as I could call it, and unliveable. A priest in that situation cracks sooner or later – he either leaves and gets married, or does something dumb and evil like touching children! The priest is henceforth nothing more than a visiting "sacrament machine".
Parochial Catholicism is just about finished in much of Europe, and with it the memory of Christianity. Some of the better bishops are putting their parishes into the hands of religious communities and societies of priests – that gives much more stability and bonding between the people and the community. I have no personal experience of Opus Dei, but perhaps a more monastic note might go down better with ordinary people. I certainly would if I were a layman and had to think about which church I want to go to.
For the Church to relinquish the parish system would be suicide. Parish ministry is meeting people where they live and not create a "commuter church" in cities. The Church should not not imitate globalism! Otherwise, they might as well sell the Vatican and buy the Forbidden City in Beijing- and minister to the little children labouring in the sweat shops! We could have little Red Books instead of the Catechism!
I live in a village of some 600 inhabitants. More and more houses are being built here, so that refutes the idea of "desertification". People want to live in the country,and they sell their apartments to buy or build a house in the countryside. Our village has a Mairie (municipal authority) and a primary school. There is a village hall for occasional functions like flower shows or an amateur jazz concert. There is one Mass a month celebrated by a very old retired priest, and it is attended by about 10-12 people. It is possible to "commute" to a Mass (Novus Ordo of course) celebrated at Yvetot, which is about 15 minutes by car. There are no shops, bar, café or restaurant. I bought the former bakery, which was the last trader in the village, and the bakery has already been closed for some years. The nearest post offices are 15 minutes by car (Yvetot) or 10 minutes (Doudeville). The upshot of all this is a reversal of the trends of the 1970's. People are sick and tired of city-living, with crime and people being ever more aggressive and rude, and are returning to the country.
It all depends on the CAR!
In some villages, people are beginning to latch onto a new business concept – proximity and quality. People will be prepared to pay more for quality and proximity, rather than let the hypermarkets like Wal Mart rape and plunder the world and drive every single small trader out of business. It will all take time, but the movement is progressing slowly. It hasn't reached us yet, because anyone thinking of setting up a business here is taking a very big risk faced with the competition of the supermarkets and their easy parking and lower prices.
The Church is usually about 40 years behind any other trend, and the "trendy" bishops are the least aware of trends, and are dinosaurs. It is time to revive rural ministry, in small parishes, with a ministry of proximity and quality.
The vocations crisis can be reversed in a heartbeat. Bring back the sense of the sacred and let a priest do his job without the weight of bureaucracy and secularism. Then establish model parishes and good seminaries.
I only have the French translation of Salt of the Earth, and have not been able to find the reference – perhaps you could quote the paragraphs concerned.
Father,
My meaning was more limited than apparently I've expressed it.
FYI, the section from "Salt of the Earth" I had in mind can only be identified from my copy in the following way:
Part 2/Problems of the Catholic Church
—The Canon of Criticism
——Celibacy
It is not a discussion of the sociology of the problem (although I think that is what Peter Seewald was pressing for), but a characterization and contrast of the role of celibacy, as viewed from non-Catholic, protestant traditions, and from the Catholic and Orthodox standpoints. I felt that your argument fitted within the latter point of view, as representative of the reasoning behind what was translated into English by "people's priests".
I'm not advocating anything about any of the above.
Reply to #6
I have now read the passage to which you refer. This notion of the priesthood as in Eastern Orthodoxy was not in my idea, but rather the notion that you can't expect a man to be celibate and then proceed to destroy the purpose of his vocation – the pastoral ministry. What I say here might seem to be nonsense. Why would a Bishop seek to destroy a priest's vocation? This does happen with very 'progressive' European bishops, inspired as they frequently are by the ideology of cultural Marxism, 'deconstructionism' and a congregationalist ecclesiology.
The Anglican situation as accepted by the Holy Father is special – that there can be married priests (dispensed from celibacy) doing essentially the same "complete" ministry as celibate priests, naturally in situations where the conditions of the ministry are not designed to be destructive of the traditional conception of the Catholic priesthood.
The Orthodox 'dualism' between the married 'sacrament machine' and the ascetic monk is too radical. The Anglo-Catholic notion of the priesthood (married or celibate) is less 'dualistic', unless of course the priest in question is a monk and therefore vowed to celibacy and chastity.
The Holy Father's reflections are profound and inspiring. We are indeed honoured to have such a Teacher as our Pope (even though our canonical union remains to be brought about).
I remember a Polish Jewish (though probably atheist) new Canadian telling me years ago that the best culture for a sane management of affairs—I can't remember his exact words—was the British.
As a Slavic American Canadian I identify much more with the Magna Carta than I do with Ivan the Terrible or Catherine the Great.
It is also true that if you look around at the countries that were colonized by the British, they are generally doing a lot better than their counterparts colonized by the French, the Belgians or the Spanish.
Part of what I hope the Ordinariates do is provide a kind of Benedictine preservation not only of Anglican liturgy, hynms and so on, but the Common Law tradition, the respect for freedom and liberty and so on that has left such a grand inheritance in the countries where it flourished, but is now being eclipsed by multiculturalism and other relativistic and basically nihilistic worldviews.
I hope that we follow the Atonement model and establish schools where the intellectual heritage can also be preserved.
Deborah