Homily of Canon
Nicholas France, Dean of Jersey
“It
is wonderful for us to be here”. These words were
spoken by St Peter, when Jesus was transfigured on
the mountain giving his Apostles a glimpse of His
glory. We could have echoed those words this
evening, as we entered this splendid Cathedral,
marvelling at its length and height, age and beauty,
sensing a glimpse of the glory of God.
The
grandeur of this building gives us a sense of that
God of power and might, whom we praise in the
Sanctus of the Mass. We can echo St Paul ’s words
to us “for this reason I fall upon my knees”
(Ephesians 3:14). Without this sense of God’s
transcendence, without an experience of wonder and
awe, we can fail to appreciate the amazing truth
about the God of Jesus Christ, who dwells not just
in majesty in the heavens, but who wants to dwell in
our hearts through faith.
The
wonder of the incarnation is that Christ wants to
make his home, not only in historic buildings such
as this, or in our parish churches, but in hearts
and homes and communities in the Diocese of
Portsmouth. Yes, our Diocese is one manifestation of
the presence of the Risen Christ on earth today.
Perhaps this is better understood if we see
ourselves not as the Portsmouth Diocese, but as the
Church of Portsmouth , like the Church of Ephesus or
Corinth , to whom Paul addressed his letters.
With
the gracious hospitality of our Anglican friends,
the Catholic Church of Portsmouth is gathered
together around its Bishop, Priests and Deacons in
thanksgiving for 125 years since its foundation. We
are the living stones that make up this church.
In
the perspective of eternity, and the transcendence
of God, for whom a day is like a thousand years and
a thousand years is like a day, our short existence
may seem brief indeed, though it extends back long
before our times.
We
were born from our mother, the Diocese of Southwark.
The new see was based in Portsmouth rather than the
more obvious central town of Southampton . This was
determined by the potential of St John’s in
Portsmouth as a suitable Cathedral, rather than St
Joseph’s, in Bugle Street, Southampton. We started
off with 55 chapels and 49 priests, to serve a
scattered Catholic population. In those years
parishes were called missions and were served by
missionary rectors. The first priority of priests
and people was not the building of churches but of
schools, to foster the Catholic faith of children.
From the pennies of the poor began our great
diocesan school tradition. Most Catholics in those
days lived in towns, though there were a few country
missions where Catholic families had kept alive the
old religion during penal times, in places like East
Hendred and Tichborne. In Winchester itself there
has always been a Catholic congregation, proud of
its Elizabethan martyrs. In the new diocese most
were local folk, with immigrant or convert
additions. These growing congregations were the new
people as prophesied by Bishop Richard Challoner,
who made a visitation of Catholic Communities in
Hampshire in the middle of the eighteen century,
when English Catholicism was at its lowest ebb.
In
1882, we received an Army Chaplain, one of the first
Catholic priests accredited to the British Army, as
our first Bishop. Vertue by name, he was virtuous
and assiduous in establishing the new diocese on the
Tridentine model, creating all the necessary
elements that make up a Bishop’s See with the
newly built Cathedral, his palatial Bishop’s
House, with its silver plate and ornaments, which
earned him the sobriquet, John the Magnificent. He
did much to establish our diocese, though he was
frustrated in his plans to build a diocesan seminary
next to the Aula or Great Hall at the side of
Bishop’s House. He had neither the men nor the
money to imitate one of the greatest Bishops of
Winchester, William of Wykeham, whose beautiful tomb
lies over there, who founded not only Winchester
College, as a junior seminary, but also New College,
Oxford as a training ground for men seeking priestly
ordination. John Vertue was a fine prelate who gave
our diocese a fine start.
The
history of our nation is usually divided into the
reigns of its monarchs. So the history of our
diocese is the story of our Bishops, and of how
their charisms and personality fused with the
traditions they inherited in the community of
priests and laity they shepherded.
Our
second Bishop, briefly John Vertue’s auxiliary,
was John Baptist Cahill. A Londoner by origin, he
was a man of intense energy and vision, achieving
much in strengthening the foundations of the
diocese, though believing he came too late because
of ill health and failing strength. He lived only
ten years to enjoy his prelacy. His portrait in
Bishop’s House indicates that he certainly
appreciated the grandeur of his office
There
are two achievements of Bishop Cahill, from which we
still benefit. Firstly, he welcomed many religious
communities expelled from France in the early 1900s
due to the anti-clerical laws enacted there. Some
were English exiles like the monks of Douai , who
did Cahill a service in taking over his failing
diocesan school at Woolhampton, making it their new
monastic home. In Jersey , four Carmelite convents,
hundreds of Jesuits, and other religious found a
welcome sanctuary. And the Isle of Wight was
enriched by the community of monks from Solesmes at
Quarr Abbey, not forgetting the exiled Benedictine
nuns at St Cecilia’s Abbey in Ryde.
The
monks of Quarr, expert in Gregorian chant,
influenced Bishop Cahill in his love of liturgy and
led him to carry out with such liturgical and
correct detail the completion of St John’s
Cathedral. One last memory of Bishop Cahill.
Although heavy handed in dealing with his priests,
he was quite astute in dealing with Rome ,
especially when Pope Pius X led a reaction to
modernist theology, which appeared to undermine both
the doctrinal and scriptural basis of Catholic
faith. There was a search made, an enquiry of all
Catholic Bishops to discern whether modernism
existed in their dioceses. The clever reply of
Bishop Cahill was that there was little danger of
modernism being contagious in the Diocese of
Portsmouth, as most clergy lived far apart and
rarely met each other and, in any case, it was well
known that his clergy never read books of theology.
One
of the blessings of Catholicism is our embrace of
people of different languages and cultures. This is
evident today, with the infusion of new blood thanks
to the faith of Polish and other newcomers.
In times past, the Church of Portsmouth was
blessed and enriched by Irish immigrants who came
and made their home among us. With this wave of
Irish people were many priests, especially from the
Diocese of Cloyne, to whom we owe a huge debt of
gratitude.
Among
the Irish who contributed to our diocese we must
name our third bishop, William Timothy Cotter,
himself a native of Cloyne. Whether due to English
prejudice or some other reason, he was not the
popular choice, at least for the canons of the
Cathedral Chapter, to succeed Bishop Cahill. However
Cotter was appointed Bishop choosing as his motto
“Non Recuso Laborem”, loosely translated by his
critics as “never turn down a good job”. An
Irish nationalist, he also looked to Ireland for his
supply of clergy, turning away vocations from within
his own diocese. He has been much criticised for
this though he must have had his reasons, not least
financial, as legend has it that all our diocesan
finances were lost in the nationalisation of the
Argentinian railways, in which they had been
invested.
Cotter’s
thirty years’ episcopate began before the First
World War and ended when he died in Bishop’s House
in the autumn in 1940, but a few months before that
residence was totally destroyed by enemy bombing.
The years of Cotter’s leadership were a time of
consolidation, especially in the field of education,
and the Bishop took great pride in the development
of La Sainte Union Teachers Training College in
Southampton , which in its time supplied countless
teachers for Catholic schools in our diocese and
beyond.
Although,
in the first half of the twentieth century, many
parishes still relied on rich benefactors when they
sought to build a permanent church, we should not
overlook the personal sacrifices of many
parishioners, in the days when even here in
Winchester, there were only a handful of
professional or middle class Catholics. Despite the
large benefactions that enabled the building of St
Peter’s in this city, I remember older
parishioners telling me how as children their
mothers gave them margarine instead of butter to
save pennies for the church debt. In the years after
the war Catholics worked hard to raise money to
build new schools, sometimes scandalising their
non-Catholic brethren by their dedication to bingo
and football pools. Yet, without a curate spending
his Saturdays running the football pools, rather
than preparing his Sunday sermon, great schools like
All Hallows in Aldershot would never have been
built.
Not
only was the Cathedral damaged and Bishop’s House
destroyed, but other churches in our diocese
suffered a similar fate. My greatest sympathy would
have been for the people of St Patrick’s,
Woolston, Southampton, who saved for many years to
build their church, which was opened in 1939, only
to be destroyed the year after during the Blitz on
that city.
The
destruction of his official residence gave Bishop
Cotter’s successor, John Henry King, the excuse to
stay in his beloved Winchester , where he had been
Catholic parish priest since 1923. With the
Cathedral of Portsmouth also damaged, St Peter’s
in Winchester became for many years the acting
Cathedral of our diocese, a source of pride to all
his successors in that church. With the home of the
Army at Aldershot and the Royal Navy at Portsmouth ,
the diocese experienced very considerably the
turbulence of war, not least the loss of contact
with the Channel Islands , which fell under German
occupation. Many priests served as military
Chaplains, one of whom, Father Henry Donnelly, still
alive at 96, after 71 years of faithful ministry,
happily recalls his memory of the war years.
With
John Henry King, we come into the living memory of
some of us. The post-war period was a time of new
immigration, Irish, Italian, Polish, Hungarian; they
came at different times enriching our parish
congregations. New churches, new schools; those were
the days of a strong independent clergy and an
easy-going, elderly Bishop allowing initiatives. For
example, the Clergy in the Cathedral were in the
forefront of liturgical innovation, even before the
Second Vatican Council. Alone of all the English
Bishops, John Henry received permission to absent
himself, due to age, from attending the Second
Vatican Council. However, in 1964, he was the first
Bishop to take part in the new Rite of
Concelebration at the Blessing of Aelred Sillem as
Abbot of Quarr, remarking afterwards that he and his
three fellow concelebrants should form a group like
the Beatles.
With
John Henry we experience the first stirrings of
ecumenism. Though steeped in the story of our
Catholic martyrs and recusant families, he had a
great love of Winchester Cathedral and maintained a
courteous relationship with its clergy. I remember
him telling me when, as a student, I visited him a
year before his death, that the dean had invited him
to preach in this cathedral but he had declined as
he feared his own clergy wouldn’t let him do this.
In
1965 following the death of John Henry, and at the
end of the Second Vatican Council, Derek Worlock
came from Westminster to be our Bishop. He had links
with the diocese; when a boy he lived just around
the corner from this Cathedral in Kingsgate Street .
Half the age of his predecessor, he
inevitably heralded a wind of change, promising
immediately to implement all the programme of
renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council. He
was true to his word and consistent in promoting the
new liturgy and lay participation in the life of the
church, especially through establishing diocesan,
deanery and parish pastoral councils. Through Derek
Worlock’s initiative the first pastoral centre was
opened in the South of England at Park Place , the
bonds of friendship and support were developed with
the diocese of Bamenda, in Cameroon , and the
permanent diaconate was introduced with the
ordination of Pat Taylor. Bishop Worlock was
actively involved in promoting ecumenical relations
with other denominations. His social conscience
challenged the powers that be in the city of
Portsmouth and he developed new social welfare
structures for our diocese, although these were
later not sustained.
During these years parishes first became
involved in the Pro-Life movement, and in CAFOD
projects. To many Bishop Worlock seemed outwardly
cold in personality, but others knew him to be
inwardly a warm and emotional man, who loved his
priests and scarcely lost one of them during those
turbulent years. He took to heart the words of
Ezekiel "I shall look for the lost ones, bring
back the stray, bandage the wounded and make the
weak strong".
After
Derek Worlock left for Liverpool, we were given
Bishop Anthony Emery, Auxiliary Bishop in Birmingham
. Older than his predecessor, without having the
experience of attending the Council it was hard for
him at 58 to leave his beloved Midlands for the deep
South, though he came to love our diocese and made a
home, and a burial place among us.
Anthony
Emery promoted Catholic education both nationally
and in the diocese and reorganised our catechetical
formation. He supported the introduction of parish
based sacramental programmes, the RCIA and adult
Catholic education. He was less sure about other
areas of lay involvement and some consultative
bodies fell into abeyance. However, his support for
his priests was without question and is something we
remember with gratitude and affection. He was proud
to celebrate the centenary of our diocese. At his
death Bishop Emery was greatly mourned.
In
our own times we have a better sense of what it is
to be the Church, so the era of Bishop Crispian,
nearly twenty years among us, is our story too. Our
Bishop indicated to us, soon after his arrival, that
he preferred to lead by encouragement and support
from behind, rather than from in front. It took us
time to understand, and gradually appreciate, how
this would lead us to maturity and to the greater
collaboration of Bishop, clergy and laity in the
mission and the ministry of the church. This we
experienced in the Diocesan Pastoral Assembly and
its fruitful application in our new Pastoral Areas.
As
our chief shepherd, Bishop Crispian has led us to
shepherd one another, to minister to one another, as
well as to exercise our baptismal vocation in
sharing faith and in worshipping together as a
priestly people. He has enabled this by employing
people and resources to help us achieve this
objective.
There
is one particular area in which Bishop Crispian has
given us a clear lead by his example. That is
ecumenism, as we experience with our Vespers
tonight, in the presence of Bishop Michael of
Winchester , who is not only a friend and confidant
of Bishop Crispian, but also a valued supporter of
our diocese. Together they have worked closely with
other religious leaders, who are also with us
tonight; these relationships have developed further
since the establishment of Churches Together in
1990. Across our diocese there are many examples of
close cooperation and Christian witness, as clergy
and people work with their brothers and sisters in
Christ, particularly in social action, which is
usually ecumenism at its best and most realistic.
And
what of the future, if there is a future? I find the
most chilling words in the Gospel are “When the
Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on
earth?” Yet Christ has promised to be with us
until the end of time, so hope should not desert us.
One
of the first principles of ecumenism I was taught,
is that we should be open to learn from other
Churches. This has been my experience working in
Churches Together in both Southampton and Jersey .
So, in the Catholic Church, we still have much to
learn from the Churches of the Reformation. We
waited four hundred years, not to lose face, before
adopting a vernacular liturgy, allowing the chalice
to the laity, and promoting reading of the
scriptures, all valid demands of the Reformers.
Perhaps we need to go further and remove compulsory
priestly celibacy, less valued today even by our own
people, who blame this for some of our recent
self-inflicted wounds. Such a reform might allow our
clergy to adopt a healthier lifestyle and ensure our
people an easier access to the Eucharist and better
pastoral care. Is that our future?
Is
that the way forward? Or, learning from history,
that great teacher of life, as John XXIII called it,
we might remember that after every crisis in culture
and society, whether at the end of the Roman Empire
or the passing of the Dark Ages, or following the
tumult of the Reformation or the French Revolution,
Catholicism revived, and enjoyed a renaissance in
confidence, sanctity and missionary zeal. This was
exemplified in a resurgent Papacy and in the
development of new
movements and religious orders. Might not
this be our future after this crisis of faith and
culture through which we have been living? Might not
our Church, renewed in its pastoral structures, and
recommitted to the Gospel value of celibacy, and
more open to new lay movements and new forms of
consecrated life, discern this to be the way
forward, in keeping with our Catholic history?
Perhaps
it may be otherwise, neither a new reformation nor
counter reformation. As Christians Together,
Catholics, Anglicans and Protestants, at least in
Europe , we may have to grow smaller and weaker as
cultural Christianity gives way to faith
Christianity. In this we would identify with our
crucified master, who redeemed the world not through
his strength but through his weakness. In the Sacred
Heart of Jesus, that encounter of human love with
divine love, we can hear again these words “learn
of me for I am gentle and humble of heart”. And if
such a humbling of our Church is seen as a gloomy
future, we might pray with Newman “Lead, kindly
light amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on, I
do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough
for me”.
However,
let us not lose heart. And may this Cathedral Church
, which has known the ebb and flow of the tide of
history, be for us a parable in stone, to encourage
us to stand firm in faith, come what may.
Whatever
the future, it is in God’s hands, so on this happy
anniversary we place our trust not in ourselves, but
in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and, for all that has
been, and for all those who have gone before us, in
these past one hundred and twenty-five years, let us
give thanks to God tonight.
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125
years of the