content regulars Vol 23 No 290 May 2020 13 GHOSTLy cOUNSEL ANDy HAWES 20 Views, reviews & previews on the importance of church 3 LEAD STORy Was it ever thus? ART : Owen Higgs on Titian 15 VIERGES NOIRES 12 Ian McCormack considers what we might learn from the past BOOKS: William Davage on Notre Dame EDITORIAL 16 Lois Day on e Mior BISHOPS Of THE SOcIETy 31 4 Time to sow in the North and e Light A report on Catholic growth in the John Twisleton on e Northern Province City is my Monastery 17 THE WAy WE LIVE NOW Trevor Jones on e Joy of cHRISTOPHER SmITH 5 Keeping up appearances God remembers Geoffrey Kirk SImON mORRIS Jessica Bayon and Maicie reads some episcopal Harrison review books 23 LOcKDOWN DIARy correspondence for Easter THURIfER is staying in 6 How the Ox’s bellow was 24 Gospel Writer heard around the world JOHN GAyfORD 26 LETTER TO THE EDITOR JAcK ALLEN St Mahew studies more than Aquinas 30 TOUcHING PLAcE 27 Tyberton S. Michael and All Angels, Kerry, 8 Her majesty The Queen’s SImON cOTTON Powys Easter message considers the eighteenth century 9 A Giant in the Land 31 Tariro UK STEPHEN PARKINSON Hope for Youth in Zimbabwe offers personal memories of Geoffrey Kirk 11 St Stephen’s Lewisham AILSA TEmPLE remembers Geoffrey Kirk as parish priest 12 ‘I confess that I have always been fascinated by the nature of story’ JONATHAN BAKER on the though and theology of Geoffrey Kirk 14 francis Wagstaffe remembered E R E The Easter Garden at All G V A Saints Notting Hill O M I C Articles are published in New Directions because they are thought likely to be of interest to Fr Sam McNally-Cross blesses his parish from the roof readers. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or those of Forward in Faith. of St Thomas, Kensal Rise. 2 ■ new directions ■ may 2020 Lead Was it ever thus? Story Ian McCormack onsiders what we might learn from the past n 27 th March 2020, the Archbishops of Canterbury catholic social teaching. St John Chrysostom preached, and York wrote to the clergy of the Church of Eng - ‘Would you do honour to Christ’s body? Neglect Him not O land. The letter included these words: ‘We are in a when naked; do not while here you honor Him with silken time of great fearfulness. The numbers of those becoming se - garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and naked - riously ill and dying is increasing. It therefore remains very ness.’ This teaching was echoed again and again in Pusey’s ser - important that our churches remain closed for public worship mons. For example, from a sermon of 1844, ‘There is no and private prayer.’ deeper source of blessing, nor more frequent means of en - This instruction seeks to prohibit the clergy from entering larged grace to the soul, than love for Christ’s sake, to His little their own churches for private prayer, at a time when the law ones and His poor.’ of the land specifically exempts ministers of religion travelling to their place of worship from the restrictions on free move - ment brought about to fight the Corona Virus. The instruc - In fact, all of the communities with tion is something for which the archbishops will have to which Pusey was directly involved answer on the day of judgement, and it would be imprudent understood themselves to be not to comment further here. But it was not ever thus in the Church of England. philanthropic organisations with a religious In Liddon’s Life of Pusey , the author quotes at length the ethos, but Religious communities whose Rector of Bethnal Green’s reminiscences of the cholera epi - incarnational theology manifested itself demic of 1866: ‘My curates were ill, unable to do any duty - I had been up for several nights running to two or three in the in social and nursing work among the morning, attending to the sick, and more especially to the poorest and neediest communities. timid and fearful, - who would not go to bed for fear of ‘the pestilence that walketh in darkness’ - Wearied and at my wits’ end as to how I could possibly help my Vestry through their A high view of their calling notwithstanding, the sister - arduous duty, I had come down to a late breakfast at nine hoods (and their advocates) were not above using their social o’clock, when my servant announced Dr Pusey ... he offered usefulness as public justification for their existence. In 1848, to act as my assistant Curate to visit the sick and dying ... and Pusey wrote to the chaplain of Eton College regarding the to minister to their spiritual wants.’ most deprived urban conurbations: ‘Either these poor people Pusey was joined in Bethnal Green by (among others) the and their children … are not to be helped at all, or they must Hon. Charles Wood (later Viscount Halifax) and the Sisters be helped in part by Christian females: and then the only ques - of the Most Holy Trinity (SMHT) from Devonport, Ply - tion remains, “Are these to work without the support of mu - mouth, and subsequently of Ascot Priory. Members of this tual sympathy and advice and the comfort of a common home Sisterhood – the lineal descendant of the very first in the and prayer together, crippled in their exertions for want of Church of England – had already served as nurses in their plan and mutual help and distribution of labour?”.’ Pusey val - home town of Plymouth during a cholera epidemic there, and ued the religious life for its own sake. But he was not above in Scutari alongside Florence Nightingale. They now arrived using utilitarian considerations to gain acceptance for this (to in the East End of London to work alongside Dr Pusey, who protestant Victorian sensibilities) shocking new way of life. had been influential in their foundation. The valuable work of Nor were the sisterhoods and their supporters slow to grasp Pusey and the sisters is recorded at length in Liddon’s biogra - the opportunities for advancing the catholic life which their phy. unique circumstances provided: daily celebration of the Eu - Recent historians have tended to overplay the extent to charist was introduced at the convent in Devonport in 1849 which early sisterhoods were founded specifically to meet so - to give spiritual sustenance to the sisters during their work cial needs. In this model they were primarily professional phi - among the cholera victims there. lanthropists; what one contemporary commentator called The philanthropic work of the sisterhoods won over to ‘lady guerillas of charity.’ In fact, all of the communities with their cause many people who would otherwise have been im - which Pusey was directly involved understood themselves to placably opposed to their existence. The same was true for be not philanthropic organisations with a religious ethos, but slum clergy, particularly the ritualists who were at the fore - Religious Communities whose incarnational theology mani - front of Anglo-Catholicism in the generation after Pusey. fested itself in social and nursing work among the poorest and Even the most ardent and organized protestant agitators neediest communities. In this, they mirrored the understand - found it difficult to whip up popular resentment against the ing of the Tractarians, who themselves stood in a long line of very man who was leading social work in a particular district. may 2020 ■ new directions ■ 3 The historian John Shelton Reed has argued persuasively that sense grew among friend and foe alike that by its response to it was precisely the manifest holiness and dedication of many poverty, squalor and disease, Anglo-Catholicism reached parts of the ritualists that won them the love and support of their of the country that were otherwise ‘largely untouched by the parishioners. Tolerance by others of their ritualism was a by- national Church, or indeed by religion in any form’ (Shelton product of this hard-earned respect, affection or even love. Reed). There can be little doubt that the heroic response of Pusey, the members of SMHT, and then subsequently the christ poses a question which all of us must younger generation of ritualists played a significant part in answer, and he is likewise the answer to all that change, bringing a new-found respectability to the Anglo- Catholic movement, and by extension new life and vigour to the questing and questioning of human the ministry of the Church in those places where Anglo- hearts. Catholicism took hold. The consequences of the Church of England’s somewhat None of this meant that the controversies over anglo- different response to the epidemic of 2020 remain to be seen. catholicism in general, and ritualism in particular, disap - ND peared. The prosecutions under the Public Worship Father Ian McCormack is the Vice Chairman Regulation Act were only a decade after Pusey’s work in Beth - of Forward in Faith. nal Green. But throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, bit by bit the prevailing wind shifted in favour of A version of this article also appears in Living Church magazine. Anglo-Catholic theology, ritual, and social practice, as the Time to Sow in the North A statement from the Northern Bishops of The Society of Saint Wilfrid and Saint Hilda s the three Society Bishops based in the Province of York, we welcome the Time to Sow in the North re - A port produced by St John’s College, Nottingham. As the Bishop of Burnley states in the report’s Foreword, “it is not hard to find Catholic parishes where Church life is vi - brant and alive, and the identification of common features as - sociated with such growth is important if parishes in this tradition are to grow in evangelistic confidence.” We look forward to discussing how the Church’s resources can be targeted at our most deprived communities, where many such Catholic parishes are to be found and where addi - tional resources will, among other factors, help to achieve a growth in Church life.