CONCERNING MY CONVERSION

New Zealand Tablet, 17 August 1911, Page 1591

CONCERNING MY CONVERSION

INTERESTING narrative by a SYDNEY \ ANGLICAN

(Concluded from last week.)

It was said to me, and by more than one Anglican clergyman with whom I took counsel, and who appeared not to approve of my putting into practice the ' expede Herculem ' principle, that I should not permit myself to be influenced by the facts to which I strove to direct their attention, but that I should look further afield; and these persons pointed more particularly to what was going on in England as likely to restore my confidence. It is true "that at the time the Anglican Bishop of Manchester had not (so to speak) put the three unchasubled centuries into the box, nor had the bewildering breadth of his brother of Hereford yet brought vexation to the soul of the expostulating Lord Halifax. Nevertheless," the facts of which I had spoken were to be found in England not less than in Australia, and it seemed to me that some of those who had

Peculiar Opportunities for Observing those Facts were not in agreement with my friends. The son of an, Archbishop of Canterbury, and perhaps I may add, the son of such an Archbishop of Canterbury as Edward White Benson, and a man who added to his large experience an observation of great keenness and much acquired knowledge; such an one, I was inclined to .believe, would know what he was talking about, and what he was writing about. And against the statements of my friends I set the utterances of Monsignor Benson, and in his conversion I found a sufficient reply to their (as I thought) rather infelicitous advice. -. In the above statement I have avoided detail. For to go into detail on such a matter would require circumstances which have not been mine. Moreover, argument, for such writing must of necessity be largely argumentative, in order to do good must be convincing, and as many writers far better equipped for such an enterprise than myself would seem, speaking generally, to have failed to convince, 1 am not unwilling for a little longer to try to hit upon some form of statement which might be more likely to make the successful appeal which converts desire. Should I, in the future, have time, and should the thing appear desirable, I should like well to make some humble contribution to what mav be called the literature of conversion.

Possibly it would not be amiss were I to attempt even here and now to further indicate something of that powerful stream of influence which brought about my leaving the Church of England, and my being received into the Catholic Church. I do so with the hope that even so slight an indication may be at least one of those ' aids to reflection ' which have in the past done so much to induce at least a consideration of the claims of the

One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

I received, not long ago, from a well known firm of silversmiths in England, a catalogue entitled ' Communion Plate,' which catalogue had for what may be termed its frontispiece a photograph, or the reproduction of ' a photograph, of the sanctuary of an Anglican Church. The description of this reproduced photograph will be best given by simply transcribing what I find printed beneath it and this I therefore transcribe with scrupulous exactitude: ' A very handsome gold Altar Service. In -beautifully-worked Fleur-de-lis pattern, consisting of a massive pair of 4ft 9in gospel lights and extinguisher, altar . cross, pair of candlesticks, two vases, two five-light candle, branches, alms dish, bookrrest, sanctuary lamp, complete with /ceiling plates and chains.' The expression, apparently in gold, of the above ' altar service,' must be, as its reproduced photograph is of itself enough to prove, very imposing. ' What more/ I can fancy some Anglo-Catholic saying, with such a sanctuary in his mind or before his eyes, ' what more can Catholicity desire?' Such a question is easily answered. The more that the Catholic desires is the little more (and how much it is) that makes for reality. He desires to be

a member of a Church which when presented (as here) with a representation (as in this case) of analtar'; does not at once fall to verbal fisticuffs as to whether the word altar is permissible or no, in which fray, it may be observed, one of the parties engaged—the party which would stoutly repudiate the word 'altar ' — would certainly "find in the Book of Common Prayer a most serviceable weapon.-. And again, the CatholiG finds a large stone suddenly flung into the quiet stream of his mind's calm flow by the words: ' Sanctuary lamp, complete with ceiling plates and chains.' Somehow, to him, ceiling plates and chains do not seem to justify the word 'complete.' He finds himself ' V

Looking for the Tabernacle.

Should he ask where it is, it is not improbable that the Anglo-Catholic (who would be forced to admit that amongst the dense detail of this photographed 'altar' no Tabernacle could be found) would reply that this sanctuary was not yet sufficiently advanced ' for this, that the Tabernacle was still to come. It is -very possible that he would add that the Tabernacle would 'come in time.' Meanwhile, there is the sanctuary lamp. But the Tabernacle, to some minds, should precede the sanctuary lamp. It is a case of cause and effect. To put the effect before the cause mars one's sense of the fitness of things—of the reality of things. There is an air about this photographed sanctuary lamp of both pretentiousness and pretence. Its vagueness and indefiniteness are very unsatisfactory—does not know where the Anglo-Catholics stand. Now one does know where the good old common sensible Protestant and Reformed ' Evangelicals' stand—they stand 'at the Northside of the Table.' Surely this frontispiece makes matter for reflection, one finds oneself reflecting (to speak plainly) upon fhams. And now let us turn from this counterfeit presentment to reality, to the simple reality of a story from the pages of Australian history, for the facts of which I am indebted to the ' History of the Catholic Church of Australasia' of His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop of Sydney. In the year 1817 a priest arrived in Sydney from Rome. He applied to Governor Macquarie for leave to exercise his sacred ministry, and a written report of his interview with the Governor is still existent. From it we know that, upon learning the errand of Father Flynn, the form of Lachlan Macquarie's countenance was changed, that he spoke, not without heat, of 'Popish missionaries,' that he expressed his wish and his intention to 'make all Protestants, and that apparently he ended by requesting Father Flynn, in the tones of one accustomed to command, at once to return to Rome. Somewhat disconcerted, as one may believe, by this Tudorian welcome, Father Flynn withdrew.

But the Catholic Church at the moment was not; represented in Australia only by Father Flynn. And it appears that amongst the some six thousand Catholics, a strange stir. had been created by the unwonted tidings that a priest was in their midst. With .-.«•-

That Inexhaustible Patience and Perseverance which were not the least of their heroic characteristics they determined yet once more to make use of the instrument of petition. Meanwhile, Father Flynn sought a hiding-place 'I will be obliged to conceal myself for some time,' is a sentence from one of his letters, and to the house that concealed him news of the petition was conveyed. He seems to have supposed that so touching an appeal could not fail.of its effect, and, sanguine of its success, he permitted himself to walk in the public street. The police at once took him into custody. He begged to be allowed to return to his lodging. But his request was refused, and he was without loss of time removed to a ship. He had left in the house on Church Hill the Pyx containing the Blessed Sacrament within a cedarn" chest. That house became the scene.of what for a great poet or painter would be a great subject.' Before this Tabernacle the lamp of the sanctuary was kept lighted for two years. And thither came during those years, to pray in silence and in sorrow, that strange people whom all possible combinations of penalty and insult did but

leave firmer in the Faith. There is about this story the evidence of a mysterious vitality, a vitality which obviously is not to be explained by postulating the patronage and protection of those high in place. I, who write this, have been greatly privileged to see an altar which preserves a part of the chest of cedar referred to in this so-affecting history, and I regarded the precious relic with very different feeling from those with which I regard such objects as the sanctuary lamp which is 'complete with ceiling plates and chains.' I have here made use of a passage from Catholic history and of the frontispiece of a catalogue to illustrate a contrast. I do not mean the contrast between Catholicism and Protestantism, for there is something real about Protestantism it does really protest. I mean the contrast between

Catholicism and Anglo-Catholicism.

And I think it worthy of notice and remark that upon the site where Father Flynn so long ago offered the Holy Sacrifice, and where the Catholics came to kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, the Holy Sacrifice is still offered, and people are still kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament. lam quite sure that in 1817 not one of the Protestant Churches in New South Wales had such a sanctuary as the one photographed for the before-mentioned catalogue, and I am not less sure that not one of the ministers therein officiating but would, at the sight of even its 'altar cross,' have held up hands of horror at so brazen-faced a traffic with the ' Scarlet Woman.' These ministers were members of the Church of England, and the Church of . England, as well as the Catholic Church, has its relics on Church Hill. For in St. Philip's Church they keep the Bible and prayer book which were used by the first chaplain. Should that gentle and pious person revisit the glimpses of the moon he would find that between him and such of his successors in the ministry of the Church of England as were Anglo-Catholics there was a great gulf fixed. Whereas Father Flynn, under like circumstances, would find that the Catholic' Church was still the Catholic Church. lam far from saying that Rev. Richard Johnson, 8.A., would not find that the Protestant and Reformed Church was not still the Protestant and Reformed Church. On the contrary, I think that he would. I think that the facts prove that he would. ' And I am certain that he would no more have dreamt of confusing the ' Ecclesia Anglicana of Magna Charta with the Church of the Acts of Supremacy than he would have dreamt of confusing the creed of his friend Mr. William Wilberforce with that of Cardinal Wolsey. And these thoughts lead one on to the consideration of what is meant by unity and disunion, and what by continuity and non-con-tinuousness.

The Evidence Which is to be Extracted

from facts does not seem to some by whom it is examined and cross examined, to prove at all conclusively that the Church of England will stand fast for ever. ' Jerusalem is built as a city: that is at unity in itself ; her surpliced choir-boys sing,' but the grave seniors of the congregation must often sigh, wishing that things were indeed so. A great master in literature spoke, a very long time ago now, of the ' city of confusion.' What words would he use to-day ? And because he has had such exceptional opportunities for observation, and because he'writes in a day of deepened and ever-deepen-ing omen, I will here introduce an extract from The Religion of the Plain Man, of Monsignor Benson, the preface of which book is dated 1906. It is in this way that the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury has to write: ' Simon is Peter, not because he is a stone by nature, or even by grace, but because in the inscrutable decrees of God he is chosen to be the foundation stone of ai£ institution which Christ names His Church. There is only one Church in Christendom which claims to be built upon that Apostle; and that the one whose centre is Rome, where Peter ruled, and where his body lies. As for the gates of hell, is there any other institution in Christendom which compares with this for immovability, authority, and impressiveness ? One was built upon the fire of Xuther, another upon the piety of Wesley, another upon the lusts of a king, and the inde-

pendent spirit of a nation. These have stood for varying periods, and not one of them for , more than four hundred years. And- the rain has descended, and the floods come, and the winds blown and beaten upon these houses; and the world that looks upon them already mocks at the cracking walls, the tottering pinnacles, the agitated faces of those who look out of the windows, the efforts of those who under-pin and mortar.

The House Divided Against Itself

shall not stand; how much less a house not only divided against itself, but, as well, founded originally upon the sands of men's passions and fancies, plastered with untempered mortar, fashioned on other lines than those of the heavenly Architect.' ' '•■.";

Yes : that is what it is. There is something wrong, or rather there is something fatal, about the fact that in one of the houses spoken qi in the above quotation from which Monsignor Benson made his escape men are not of one mind. The handwriting on the cracking walls ' runs plain : And Jesus knew their thoughts, and said unto them: Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And the writing - that 'is on other walls is plain also: 'Et ego dico tibi quia tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam, et portae inferi non prevalebunt adversus earn.' Whoever reads these two inscriptions can scarcely do so without reflecting that it is evidently foolish to forget the words of Christ, or to despise them, and not wise to misinterpret them, or to seek to explain them away. The disputes or feuds which disturb the peace of the Church of England are very often attributed to what is called her want of a visible head. But the Church of England is not really in want of a visible head.

The Difficulty Lies in the Fact

that so many of her members refuse to obey or even to acknowledge that head. To be sure the head is a crowned head, and some Anglicans object to such a supremacy. _ They call it Erastianism, and rather than incur the odious charge of Erastianism they make up rules out of their own heads as they go along. They seem to think that many heads are better than one. But if is to these many heads that may be traced those broils and brawls which have for so long been one of the stock jests of the satirist. It is no use talking in a superior manner about Erastianism, for the Erastianism of the Church of England is a fact, and every bit as plain a fact as that the Catholic Church is not Erastian. Just as it is also a fact that the ThirtyNine Articles are the protests of Protestants against the \ Church of Rome,' and not a hand-book intended to instruct those who have signed them how by stealth to restore those very ' corruptions ' against which those who drew them up so forcibly protested. To say that the Church of England has no visible, or even no supreme head, is untrue. Though it seems true that the voice which proceeds from it, whether directly or by delegation, will not likely be able to stay the storm to which we have seen Monsignor Benson making allusion, the storm of which the final result is wreckage. So to talk is to talk of the future. But it _is necessary to think of the future, and one brings to one's thoughts of the future the effect of one's study of the past. The wish to ' make all Protestants,' that, as I sit writing here in New South Wales, comes to me as a part of my study of the past. It is clear that the Governor, with whom history teaches us to connect those words, was equally desirous of unmaking all Catholics, and certainly if natural advantages, as they may be called, could have made and unmade, Macquarie had had his will. ' Where there was a will there was a way, and it may have looked a very good way, and one very likely to be effective. But in this case there was really no effective way save the way of God. Such ways as belonged to man belonged to the Government. A Protestant chaplain accompanied the first fleet; In the first 33 years of the history of New South-Wales, the Protestants built five churches and laid the foundation stories of two others, and these churches were served by the Church of England min.

istry. During these 33 years the Catholics were allowed no chaplain they were ordered to take their places on Sundays amongst the Protestants, and were punished for disobedience, and their children were taken from them and set to learn in schools where all were made Protestants. It may be that this part of the history of the Catholic Church in Australia may be said to be

A Part of the History of Ireland.

It has often seemed to me that what I am told is the characteristic of the climate of Ireland (for I have never had the good fortune to be in that country) is symbolical of the pages of her history, for those pages must surely be wet with the rain of many tears. It seems to me impossible that that history can be read in any other way. 1 cannot understand how its pages can be read except through sympathetic shower and mist, and when I say that the first 33 years of the history of New South Wales may be said to be a part of the history of Ireland I mean that the policy of •' making all Protestants' was continued in Australia, and continued in a form too closely resembling that in which it had once been sought to Protestantise Ireland. But it is not easy to 'make all Protestants of that nation. They were not only witnesses for the Faith before the Tudors began to commit Acts of Supremacy, but they have been witnesses ever since. Here are the people who, as it seems to me, can teach us what is meant by ' continuity.' It is in Ireland that one perceives ' continuity,' a continuity as self-evident as the joy caused by the perception. It is with the people of Ireland that the faith of those Celtic cenobites, whose caves and crosses have been for so many hundreds of years the scenes of pious pilgrimages, is still to be found, and amongst them exists so rooted a reverence for their heirlooms of holiness, and so clear and strong a spiritual insight into the truths bequeathed to them by their faithful dead, that it is impossible to doubt, were some evil.revival of the Penal Laws to turn once more the island into a torturechamber and a slaughter-house, that her true sons and daughters, no whit less Catholic than St. Patrick and St. Columba, would set, as of old, their faces steadfastly towards scourge and scaffold.

It Was in Vain

that during the early years of Australian history, in order to make all Protestants, the resources of Protestant civilisation were exhausted. It was useless to withhold from the Catholics the favor of Caesar. That favor was shown to those who hated them, and who had, in the natural order, dominion over them. It is rather a striking coincidence that in the year 1803, the year in which, for a few months, Father Dixon, one of the 'Convict Priests,' was allowed, under a sort of surly surveillance, to offer the Holy Sacrifice, that George 111. presented to the Protestants of Sydney silver Communion plate of a costliness worthy of a King's gift. It is rather striking coincidence that in this very same year, 1803, Father Dixon, as we know, celebrated with a chalice which a convict had fashioned out of tin, and was vested with a chasuble made from the curtains of the poor. This was some hundred and eight years ago. I will say no more of the difference between now and then than that its realisation makes instinctive the re-calling of two passages of Scripture. One is: And the gates of hell shall not. prevail against it'; and the other is: 'But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it. And. I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.'

Such is the Divine Promise,

such the divine prophecy ; the promise and prophecy of a throne of supernatural authority and appeal, of a Voice to be audible through the Ages, of a Voice which was to guide humanity from generation to generation, and to sJsj.ll whatever of storm the proud and foolish self-will of . man may raise. They speak these words uttered by the Son of God, of where on earth absolute truth should abide, and of whence on earth absolute truth should be revealed.

I remember, as a young man, the stir that was occasioned in England by the publication of John Inglesant. I read it with great interest and delight, and

played my little part in that conversational criticism winch ever buzzes about the book of the season. What did it mean Was Mr. Shorthouse a ' Roman Catholic 'I Did he wish his readers to think of him as of one well disposed towards the Roman Catholics? Was the charm of his literary style a ? subtle method of sowing that seed which could only, come to light in 'Roman' atmosphere and soil ? Such was the sort of questions that people, and people who set up to be intelligent, used to ask at the time. - And very foolish questions they were. For whatever Mr. Shorthouse was, he was certainly no ' Roman Catholic ' missioner. He was, indeed, very much more like a Protestant pamphleteer. His Jesuit was worthy of one of those studios where the lay-figure is so much more used than the living model/' and his Cardinal was not quite the sort of personage who, at the time of which 1 speak, was still living at Archbishop's House, Westminster. The impression which the author of John Inglesant left upon his readers, and the impression which doubtless he desired to leave upon his readers, was to be found at the close of his story. The words, as I well remember, had a great effect upon me, and in them-, perhaps, may be found the principle of. too many heretical years. I will quote the passage ' " The Church of England," I said. seeing that Mr. Inglesant paused, "is no doubt a coml promise, and is powerless to exert its discipline, as the events of the late troubles have shown. It speaks with bated assurance, while the Church of Rome never falters in its utterance, and I confess seems to me to have a logical position. If there be absolute truth revealed,

There Must Be an Inspired Exponent

of it, else from age to age it could not get itself revealed to mankind." This is the Papist argument," said Mr. Inglesant; "there, is only one answer, to it—Absolute truth is not revealed."' I have come to disbelieve that statement, and to believe its opposite. I have come to believe in the inspired exponent.' I believe that absolute truth has been revealed. Unless that is so, I do not see how Christ could have built ' a house of refuge for man,' of how the ever-encroaching, false counsel of the TimeSpirit is to be successfully combated. I believe that absolute truth is lodged in the Catholic Church, and I believe that it is to be found nowhere else. And so believing, I had to believe as well that it was my duty to leave that communion to which certainly absolute truth had not been revealed (as the author of John Inglesant, himself a conspicuously devoted member of the Church of England, was so ' extreme to mark'), and to come a suppliant to that long-desired home, to cross whose threshold is at last to learn where still.the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.

It is Sometimes Said of Converts,

though of course only by very shallow people, that they are the victims of a weak emotionalism. It were truer to say that they are the victors over a very strong emotionalism, the. emotionalism that would fain keep them where they are. To ' forget also thine own people and thy father's house,' to feel blowing upon one all the airs of association and of memory, to leave the familiar and the so long-beloved, to seem to flout all those deep hours in which one learnt to love or to loathe what was help or hindrance to the soul, to forego the easy welcome of friends whose well-known faces were to grow unfamiliar with a frown—here is matter for that emotionalism which doth so easily beset many, and which to struggle with and strangle is not done without heard cries for help. Well must many converts understand those touching words which Cardinal Manning wrote to his dear friend,' Dr. Pusey: 'Nay, I loved the parish church of my childhood, and the college chapel of my youth, and the little church under a green hill-side, where the morning and evening prayers, and the music of the English Bible, for seventeen years, became a part of my soul. Nothing is more beautiful in the natural order, and if there were no eternal world, I could have made it my home.'

I have had friends who have worn, and who still wear, the colors of all parties in the Church of England, and many of them, I am glad to say, are still my friends. I may well be glad to say so. For who knows better than I what is their : loyalty, their humility, their honesty, their unselfishness, their zeal, who knows as well as I what is their kindness A man may indeed be grateful for such friends, as he must also regret any s«ch that he may have ' lost awhile.' And if at times I find • memorable those melancholy verses of Matthew Arnold about ' parts of a single continent,' I often, too, have occasion to perceive the full significance of the title which Cardinal Newman gave to ' The Story of a Convert,' the story, I mean, which he called 'Loss and Gain.' That last word prompts me, before I make an end of this slight sketch of secondary cause, 'to make some allusion, however inadequate, to those of the Catholic Church who have been kind friends to me. I would, as I remember their not unremembered acts, that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me. But when the heart grows full, the voice grows faint. And I must content, or discontent, myself with the too-niggard remark that it is the remembrance of their much kindness, which has added force to the quotation which since last February has so frequently risen .in my heart, and gathered on my lips: ' Haec requies mea in saeculum saeculi: his habitabo quondam elegi earn.'

GORDON TIDY.