NEW LLANTHONY ABBEY Father Ignatius's Monastery at Capel-Y-Ffin

in an enjoyable, instructive, detailed, and compelling study. I hesitate to call it de - books finitive because new and unexpected treasures can emerge from unlikely NEW LLANTHONY ABBEY places – but it will take some dramatic Father Ignatius’s Monastery at revelation to supersede this account. Capel-y-ffin This is a substantial and significant Hugh Aen book, well-researched, rooted in thor - Peterscourt Press 509pp £18.50 ough archival sources and attractively, if ISBN 978 1911175230 weightily, presented and written by Hugh Allen, comprehensive in its scope, In the gallery of Anglo-Catholic saints measured and considered in its judge - ments. and sinners Joseph Leycester Lyne (Fa - William Davage ther Ignatius) occupies an ambivalent position. He was a devout young man, habit; and those similarly in the world early drawn by a romantic medievalism observing rules of regular communion, VATICAN II to the re-establishment of the Religious confession, prayer, alms-giving and obe - A Pastoral Council Life in the Church of England, sup - dience to abbatial discipline. His behav - Serafino M. Lanzea ported by Dr Pusey and Priscilla Lydia iour could be decidedly prelatical: he Gracewing 552pp £25 Sellon. He was made a deacon; but did “introduced a most slavish kind of hom - ISBN 978 0852448885 not proceed to the priesthood – at least age enjoining his associates of the Order not within the Church of England. He never to speak to him unless they went In the past decade or two a huge contro - served under the great Fr Prynne with down on their knees, and never to pass versy has raged within the Roman whom he had difficulties, as he did later him without making a prostration”. It is Catholic Church on the interpretation with Fr Lowder. He had great energy not surprising that there is some evi - of Vatican II. Was it a continuation of and attracted supporters and adherents. dence of nervous collapse, a “psychoso - past teaching, or a rupture? How do you Many of these, however, were flotsam matic element in [his] breakdown”. interpret the Council Decrees? Has the and jetsam: criminals; a confidence The quieter life of the Abbey, al - Church really changed, or has it avoided trickster; eccentric misfits; one with a though not without its own familial dis - the change the Council Fathers wanted? “devious disposition and unpleasant quiet during the occupancy of Eric Gill The questions are endless. Clearly Vati - temper”; and another who was described and his family, after Fr Ignatius’s death can II is not an event which ended in as a “most holy man” but who struck Fr and the exodus of the community, and 1965, but one which continues 50 years Ignatius’s mother as “an unmitigated the present work of the pilgrimage trust, later as people try to unpack its signifi - scamp”. Although he had the vision to is not neglected in what inevitably seems cance. Naturally, private agendas influ - launch the project, despite his limita - like an extended postscript. ence this process and it is not helped by tions, he lacked insight into human na - One of the several merits of this the ambiguity of several of the Council ture. His energy tipped over into book is the fascinating detail that it pro - documents. The ambiguity was, of impatience; and his manifesto caused vides for those who came and went – the course, often intended, in order to keep controversy. He was self-professed, self- subsidiary cast, a motley crew, however on board the majority of the voting bish - appointed, eager but ignorant, and inex - we regard them – and not least the ap - ops. It did, and in most votes the majori - perienced. He was regularly and pearance of Joseph René Vilatte, one of ties were overwhelmingly large. In this comprehensively inhibited from preach - the episcopi vagantes that almost invari - study of the Council, and particularly its ing in dioceses, and turned to touring ably turn up in a certain strain of Anglo- hermeneutic, Lanzetta attempts to map hired halls to spread his vision. There is Catholicism. They emerge from Fr out some of the key debates and help us the whiff of an ecclesiastical huckster Ignatius’s shadow and allow a more com - to understand something of what was about him. prehensive understanding of the enter - going on. After various false starts and pere - prise and its ultimate failure. It is a heady There is much that is helpful in this grinations he settled his community, in mixture of scandal, devotion and deca - book: it reminds us that Vatican II was which life was often divisive, unhappy, dence, personal tensions and friendships, quite different from all other Councils and fractious, at New Llanthony Abbey vision and trumpery. The mouvementé in that it did not seek to define any doc - – a set of “slightly sinister-looking Victo - life is seen in the context of the buildings trine. It firmly resisted the pressure from rian Gothic buildings beside the ruins of and the constant demands of finance. the Holy Office to anathematise modern a church”. His community at Capel-y-ffin The careful and judicious sifting of evi - heresies. Under the direction of Pope was based on a Benedictine template dence from personal reminiscences, con - John XXIII it breathed a new spirit of and principles with Three Orders: those temporary press reports, previous openness and love to the world. It was cloistered; those living in the world in publications (it is not the first study and not, as the Holy Office would have liked, their own homes but following a quasi- that by Arthur Calder-Marshall, The an inward looking Council, tidying up monastic life of canonical hours and Enthusiast , still repays attention), results the Church and protecting Catholics December 2016 - January 2017 ■ new directions ■ 29.

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