Eating dust and ashes

I have a certain admiration for the vigorous anti-Catholic one-liners of Edward Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury (1883-1896). Here is another one.

In 1887, Leo XIII celebrated the Golden Jubilee of his ordination to the priesthood.  Archbishop Benson's friend, Canon Mason, suggested he might send the Pope a gift "in the hope that an act of personal kindness might smooth the way towards the healing of the schism ". Benson replied*:

It is the Pope's business to eat dust and ashes, not mine to decorate him. Therefore, my dear Mephibosheth†, hold thy peace.

*A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, 2 volumes, (London: Macmilan, 1899), vol. 2, ch.11, p.586, letter of 27th November 1887.

† Mephibosheth was the son of David's friend Jonathan who appears in 2 Samuel 4, 9, 16, 19 & 21 (those are all chapter numbers) - Benson quotes 2 Sam 14:19 at the beginning of his letter to Mason. As a grandson of Saul Mephibosheth might be thought to have been a threat to David's rule. In 2 Sam 16 his servant Ziba tells David that Mephibosheth remains in Jerusalem expecting to be given the throne of his grandfather. It turns out in chapter 19 that this was a lie. Benson gives that name to Mason to say "I know you are loyal but you appear to be disloyal".

The architecture of Keble

When I was at Oxford I encountered two ideas which startled me (alright, I am sure I encountered more than two, I was never that jaded). The first was High Anglicanism; here were these Protestants, begorrah, and adherents of the 39 Articles:

Article 19: …  As the Church of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch, have erred; so also the Church of Rome hath erred, not only in their living and manner of Ceremonies, but also in matters of Faith. … Article 22:  THE Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory, Pardons, Worshipping, and Adoration, as well of Images as of Reliques, and also invocation of Saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God. … Article 28:  … Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions.

And yet they artlessly claimed "but we are Catholic". At school I had had a through history of the Reformation (and yes we had read the 39 Articles)  but, as I complained later to my headmaster, "you did nothing to prepare us for High Anglicans!" "Harry," he replied, "nothing would prepare you for High Anglicans." (This post is not going finally to explain the Church of England, I am sure that would overflow allotted bandwidth, but you can try Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction by Mark Chapman, if you are interested).

The second idea, possessed by almost everyone, was this visceral and unreasoning loathing of brick, specifically the college built of brick, Keble. This loathing extended even to one friend, who should have been proud of her membership of such an institution, but was embarrassed by the brick of the Great Gate (1530) of Trinity College, Cambridge.

These ideas combine in this video from Oxford Today about the architecture of Keble College. Keble, you see, was made of brick and for reasons I never understood, it was a standing joke. There is a story that a French visitor remarked "C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la gare,"* thinking perhaps of St Pancras Railway Station.

It was John Keble who, on 14th July 1833, had preached the sermon which, so far as Newman was concerned, kicked off the Oxford Movement (last paragraph). And it was thanks to the Oxford Movement that all these Anglicans were saying (39 Articles notwithstanding) "but we are Catholic."

(Look, I know what the Anglican claims are. The current project means I have to make myself intimately acquainted with them. But you have to understand it from the point of view of a young man fresh out of Shack. The idea was not so much blasphemous as hilarious. It was as though the graduate student, Fritz Helmutkohlenberger, had announced at breakfast "but we are Englisch, ja!")

Note the quotation from the College's architect William Butterfield at 1:20, and the presenter's gloss on it. "Not the Roman Catholic Church, but a Catholic Church that they believed the Church of England to have been part of – to still be part of – but the Catholic Church which had lost something at the Reformation." Hmmm, yes.

Keble was also the location of a famous graffito "Hands off Vietnam" still clearly visible, more than twenty years after the Fall of Saigon, when I was up. It seems to have faded almost to invisibility since then.

*h/t Ceridwen.

The trinkets of Rome

At some point in the early 1890s the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson*, carried out the third visitation of his diocese.  His addresses to the clergy on that occasion were collected in a book Fishers of Men  (London: Macmillan, 1893), which is available at the Internet Archive.  I could not find it directly through Google Books and I was only getting the top half of each page when I tried to use the online reader (which is useful for linking you directly to a given page). YMMV.

I have not read this book, I was only flicking through it to see the context for a quotation. In Chapter 5, Archbishop Benson discusses "Spiritual Power".

The Power we speak of is of course power in relation to human life. Power to mould and to invigorate the life of man.  So the person or the institution in which spiritual power is, has gained and keeps the Divine view of life, and deals with life in the Divine method.  It is from Jesus Christ alone that the Divine view and the Divine method can be learnt (p.111).

He contrasts this with a purely mechanical method of power. From this Archbishop Benson gradually unfolds an elegant expression of the standard Protestant "corruption theory" of the medieval Church.

You may trace the rise of the mechanical system of compulsory confession in and about Orleans in the ninth century, part of the tremendous effort to raise the barbarian lords and subjects; the gradual formalising, the destruction of spontaneity, the tariff of penances, the numerous repetition of devotional formulas, the gradual assumption of more and more authority in the form of absolution, the growth of a new sacrament, the fabulous basis and mockery of Indulgence. (pp.115-116).

He even quotes St Teresa of Avila against the Church, who "again and again speaks of her directors as lowering and impairing her spiritual strength."  The doctrine of the Real Presence is seen as a way to ease the difficulty of ascending in heart and mind to God by translating God "at any moment" "into the material world" and localising Him here. "The curious application of a transient figment of philosophy [i.e. transubstantiation CCC 1374-1376] to the mystery of Communion rationalised this and pronounced it done. The very earthly flesh of Christ was brought back to be worshipped." (pp.116-117). The same materialism leads "Rome" to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and devotion to the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts. (He calls it the worship of "two Sacred Hearts", but that is just an oversight.) This devotion, he claims is the restoration of the Manichaean heresy (p.117).

The reason Archbishop Benson brings all this up is he detects some of it in the Church of England, particularly in ritualism ("solicitude for deayed usages"). In his view the end of Catholic devotions is devotionalism: "the Kingdom will be a mustard-tree no more; it will be a petty herb of mint or anise: no more nested in by all the Birds of heaven—great, swift strong winged minds, as well as the shy and tender." (p.121). He digresses briefly on the power of Anglican laymen (what Newman called the State's pattern man, in a passage denounced by Kingsley) to remedy devotional "weakness" in the Anglican clergy, and then returns to his theme. 

What a moment is this to be fingering the trinkets of Rome! The very moment when it is denying not the "power" (that would be hopeless) but the "authority" of  the church of this country with an audacity never used before. The "power" shines in dark places, and strikes to the edge of the world. So it is the "authority" which must be disparaged now. [Earlier he had distinguished between power and authority, both of which the Church possessed; the latter without the former belonging to the Prophets, the former without the latter belonging to the Pharisees]. Large-minded men may be amused, but surely not without indignation, at being assured that 1200 Roman Catholic Bishops have refused to admit the validity of English orders; as if that contained some argument—as if we did not not know what the position of thesegood men is; at being assured that a pallium  not being received here from Romeis a proof that the continuity of the British and English Church is broken; at being assuredthat England has been just dedicated as "Mary's Dowry" and placed "to-day" under the Patronage of St. Peter. Is it a time to be introducing among our simple ones the devotional life of that body? (pp.122-123).

[Reference to a power which "shines in dark places, and strikes to the edge of the world" probably means the British Empire. Of course a baby born in the course of this visitation would have been old enough to be ordained into the Church of England in 1914 just as the British Empire entered the first of two wars which would destroy it and lead to Britain's utter humiliation. Even though they won.]

So why mention this? Well the Daily Telegraph in London just published an interview with +Justin, the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury.

“I am a spiritual magpie,” he says. As well as speaking in tongues (a Protestant practice), he adores the sacrament of the eucharist (a Catholic one).

And again: 

For his own spiritual discipline, Justin Welby uses Catholic models – the contemplation and stability of Benedictines, and the rigorous self-examination of St Ignatius. And, in a choice that could not possibly have been made since the 16th century – until now – the Archbishop’s spiritual director is Fr Nicolas Buttet, a Roman Catholic priest.

A Catholic Priest as the spiritual director of an Anglican! And not answering questions so as to clear the way for a conversion, mind. Newman would do his nut.  To be fair, Justin Cantuar:'s evocation of Catholic models could be justified in Benson's terms, for the latter seems to have some sympathy with the spirituality of St Teresa of Avila.(Although Benson could simply have been quoting a Catholic to twit the Catholics, just like I, erm, am doing here, quoting one AofC against another).

Fingering the trinkets of Rome indeed.

* (Archbishop Benson's youngest son, Robert Hugh Benson, became a Catholic in 1903 and subsequently a priest. He was the author of Lord of the World and The Friendship of Christ.)