Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 1 Campion News The Newsletter of Campion Hall, Oxford University Number 4, Trinity Term 2015 Mercy, Flexibility or Change? Newman Lecturer Offers Bishops’ Synod a Choice
“WOW!”, was the admiring open- ing comment of Lord (Chris) Pat- ten, the University’s Chancellor, as he began chairing the discus- sion following this year’s New- man lecture given on 6 March by Professor Lisa Sowle Cahill. In his exclamation the Chancellor was summing up the warm accla- mation accorded to Professor Ca- hill’s masterly presentation by a large appreciative audience. The annual Newman Lecture is sponsored and presented in turn by the three Catholic Halls of Ox- ford University, the Benedictine St Benet’s Hall, the Dominican Blackfriars and the Jesuit Campi- on Hall; and this year Campion presented the lecture and the fol- lowing reception in the splendidly Photo Jack Mahoney equipped Pichette Auditorum of Professor Lisa The Master The Chancellor neighbouring Pembroke College. Sowle Cahill Dr Hanvey SJ Lord Patten Professor Cahill, who is the J. Donald Monan Professor at the Jesuit Boston Col- Catholic theology of marriage and the family; sec- lege, Massachusetts, had chosen as the subject of ondly, the widely diverse patterns of practice affect- her lecture, Catholic Families: Theology, Practice, ing families throughout modern society, from which and Evangelisation, in the light of the Bishops’ the Catholic church is far from immune, ranging Synod on the Family to be concluded in Rome later from cohabitation before or in place of marriage, this year. The audience at the lecture included the and contraception, through divorce and remarriage, Chancellor and Lady Patten, the Heads, staff and to same-sex partnerships, IVF and surrogate chil- students of the three participating Halls, Archbishop dren; and thirdly, the increasingly urgent calls for Bernard Longley and Bishop William Kenney CP the Church in its evangelisation to deal with the of the local Birmingham Archdiocese, Archbishop painful theological and moral dilemmas facing Peter Smith of Southwark Archdiocese and Bishop many Catholics in their marriage, often centring on Declan Lang of Clifton Diocese, and other members the dispute which is now growing within the Church of the University and visitors. over their admission to receive Holy Communion Professor Cahill dealt in turn with the three top- while attending Mass. ics identified in her title as they affect Catholic fam- Surveying recent comments made by Pope Fran- ilies: first, the traditional, somewhat monolithic, cis, who summoned the Synod, on the role of
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The Newman Lecture, continued New Bursar Appointed mercy in the Church’s approach to this whole area of marital and family pastoral support, Professor Cahill explored the nuances of the Pope’s some- times apparently off-the-cuff remarks on the sub- ject, and concluded that there appear to be three possibilities which are, in principle, open to the Synod in its next session:
Applying the Church’s mediation of God’s mercy to couples who find themselves in in- soluble marital situations;
Flexibly applying the Church’s legislation by invoking epieicheia (pastoral equity), expand- ing the process of marriage annulment, and recognising the developing “law of graduali- e are happy to report the recent appoint- ty” in the observing of Church rulings, as dis- W ment of a new full-time Bursar to Campion tinct from instant compliance with them; and Hall. Mr Mark Shaddick, FCA, MA (Oxon) is an accountant and a graduate of Exeter College in Considering the development and modifying Modern History and Economics, who also studied of the Church’s teaching on marriage. Russian at Bristol University. He spent over twen- ty years with GKN plc, the British multinational In addition to the Chancellor’s appreciative reac- automotive and aero-space company, first as As- tion to Professor Cahill’s presentation, the many sistant Controller, then as Financial Controller and other tributes included a striking public request Company Secretary, and finally as Finance and IT from the Archbishop of Southwark for all the Bish- Director. ops of England and Wales to receive personal cop- Recently on sabbatical leave, he is also a local ies of the lecture, to help them prepare for the con- historian, and co-author of Yesterday’s Children, cluding session of the Synod on the Family. Appro- Bidford-on-Avon Remembered (2013), and We priately, Blessed John Henry Newman, in whose Will Remember Them (2014). He is married with honour this annual lecture was founded, wrote fa- two daughters, and is a long-suffering supporter of mously about the importance of the bishops consult- Bristol Rovers Football Club. ing the faithful in matters of doctrine. Here was surely an outstanding instance of this. Contents
1 The 2015 Newman Lecture Professor Cahill plans to incorporate her 2015 2 A New Bursar Appointed Newman lecture in a future book on the family. Her 3 Obituary: Father Ian Brayley SJ previous books include Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics (2013); Theological Ethics: Campion Congratulations Participation, Justice, and Change (2005); Bioeth- 4 Holy Week Retreat ics and the Common Good (2004); Family: A Chris- The Passion in Oxford Art tian Social Perspective (2000); Sex, Gender and 5 Up and Running — our new website Christian Ethics (1996); Love Your Enemies: Disci- The Georgetown Connection pleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory (1994); and 6 Treasures of Campion Hall, 4: Between the Sexes: Foundations for a Christian The Hopkins Archive Ethic of Sexuality (1985). 8 Visiting Scholars An audio-recording of Professor Cahill’s 2015 9 The new Robert Parsons Room Newman lecture is accessible at the Campion Hall 10 Past Masters: Richard F. Clarke website, which is to be found renewed at
Campion News Trinity 2015 Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 3 Obituary: Father Ian Brayley SJ
FATHER IAN BRAYLEY died in lent memory and a very sharp the Jesuit Medical Centre at Bos- mind (the daily Times crossword combe, Bournemouth, on 27th was solved in record time) he December, 2014. Born in Barnsta- could navigate the University ple in 1923, he trained originally system with great competence as a scientist (taking part in radar as Senior Tutor. research at Malvern during the His learning was equalled by war), and later became one of the exceptional kindness, usually best known members of Campion disguised under a cloak of hu- Hall, living here for a record forty mour. Devoted from his teenage years (1969-2009). years to the liturgy of the Mass After studying at the Biblical (he joined the Roman Catholic Institute in Rome, he began teach- Church at the age of 19) he ing at Heythrop College in Oxfordshire, and when made a point of celebrating his daily Mass with it transferred to London University he moved to great care in what became known as the Brayley the Hall, where in many ways Oxford fitted him Chapel. He can be compared to the wise scribe, like a glove: he was the quintessential Oxford don. drawing old and new from his storeroom (Mt 13 51 An outstanding tutor, he taught Scripture and He- -52), and distributing them with great generosity. brew to many students (many of them Anglican His many friends mourn a remarkable man to ordinands), being granted dining-rights at Exeter, whom the Hall is much indebted. R.I.P. which he much appreciated. Gifted with an excel- Joseph Munitiz SJ We offer Campion’s Congratulations
To Fr Gregory Morgan, of the To Dan Mai SJ, for his recent To Kazutomo Karasawa, Pro- success in fessor of his DPhil English phi- in Social lology at Philoso- Tokyo’s phy. His Komazawa thesis, University, which in- who has volved been on sab- Archdiocese of Sydney, on his over a year batical with confirmation for doctoral studies of ethno- us this past at Oxford. Before ordination graphic field work in rural China, year. He has just produced the Greg graduated in philosophy was on Sustaining Family Life in fruits of his research, an edition, and theology, and with a Licenti- Rural China: Reinterpreting Fil- with notes and a facing English ate in Christian Ethics. After pa- ial Piety in Migrant Chinese translation, of The Old English rochial and hospital ministries in Families. It demonstrates how Metrical Calendar (Meno- Australia, he completed a Cam- migration and modernization are logium), published by Boydell & bridge MPhil in Philosophy of reshaping familial roles, chang- Brewer. A late tenth-century Ol- Religion, and is now engaged in ing filial expectations and the de English poem, it sets out, in a Oxford working towards a doc- notion of care-taking. Dan plans methodical structure based on the toral project that evaluates the to undertake work in the Jesuit framework of the solar/natural dialogical and theo-cultural va- Refugee Service (JRS), which year, the locations of the major lidity of natural law in post- cares for displaced refugees in feasts widely observed in late troubled areas around the world. Anglo-Saxon England. modern jurisprudence.
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Campion News Trinity 2015 Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 5 Holy Week Retreat The Passion in Oxford Art PART OF the retreat described in the previous col- umn was devoted to the Stations of the Cross done in a new, but old, way. Making the Stations, pri- vately or in a congregation, is a highly popular Lenten devotion for Catholics, and every Catholic church is recognisable by the fourteen scenes mounted around its walls portraying stages, or sta- tions, of Christ’s Passion and Death, from his arrest in Gethsemane to his death on Calvary and his bur- ial. The Way of the Cross is intended to lead the worshipper meditatively through a local enactment of the centuries-old Jerusalem pilgrimage which Photo Cris Fajardo prayerfully traces the steps of the suffering Christ along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. Some modern EVERAL MEMBERS of Campion Hall took part sets of Stations of the Cross, as in the hillside Sta- S during last Holy Week as a team of spiritual tions at Lourdes, now include a final fifteenth sta- guides conducting a retreat for a group of gradu- tion, the Resurrection of Christ, thus fittingly com- ates and Jesuit alumni. Until recent years the tradi- pleting meditation on God’s plan of salvation. tional form of a Jesuit retreat was the so called This past Lent the group of University students “preached retreat”, when a single priest-director and staff on retreat were led by the Master to re- would give three or four lengthy conferences a day enact this traditional pilgrimage afresh in Oxford, on spiritual topics to an audience of retreatants, as they visited several art centres on foot to medi- often twenty to thirty or more, providing medita- tate prayerfully on famous paintings which depict tion material to help them engage in periods of stages of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. personal prayer. The more modern form of retreat, These centres included Campion Hall itself, Christ the “directed retreat”, has become more popular Church, Keble College, and the Ashmolean Muse- and is more individual-centred, with only a brief um. The last houses a Crucifixion, shown below, daily talk given to all, and with provision for each considered by some to be by Michelangelo, which retreatant every day to visit one of a team of spir- is on loan from the Hall. itual guides, in order to discuss their prayer life and retreat experience, which is thus tailored to their personal needs and taste. Retreats are periods of withdrawal from daily life for a time, long or short or even for a series of evenings, to engage in meditation, reflection, and personal prayer. Ignatian retreats, including di- rected ones, are generally conducted following the programme of the small book, The Spiritual Exer- cises, composed by the founder of the Jesuits, Ig- natius of Loyola, in the light of his own conversion experience. They focus attention on the life, pas- sion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and can vary in length, the full form lasting thirty days and being experienced twice in their training by individual Jesuits. Shorter forms, ranging from eight to five days, and even weekends, are also taken by individuals, and are often conducted by Jesuit directors, as well as by other men and wom- en religious and laypeople. The Jesuit Retreat Cen- tre at St Beuno’s in North Wales provides full de- tails on its retreats at
Campion News Trinity 2015 Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 6 Up and Running: the Georgetown Connection new Campion Web Site THE RADICALLY REVISED Campion Hall website became operative in early March and is already proving popular with searchers and surfers. Much more than a noticeboard, the new website aims to provide all interested parties and enquirers with a detailed and colourful account of Campion and its life as both a University Private Hall and a Jesuit religious community, along with its academic and other pursuits. The home page offers the viewer a wide-ranging series of links, both within the hall and connected to Oxford University and the Jesuit Order in Britain Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. and overseas. A central section provides a video- tour of the Hall’s distinguished architecture and HE LONG-STANDING connection between collection of art works, conducted by the Master; T Campion Hall, Oxford, and the Jesuit and there is also a series of interviews with mem- Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., is a bers of the Hall describing its various aspects and link valued by both institutions in the shape of two activities. In addition to information on recent and apartments in the Hall being available to forthcoming events, the web site also provides each Georgetown faculty members for sabbatical leave member of the Hall’s community with his own per- and research visits. Joining the Georgetown visi- sonal page, including details of his career, publica- tors currently at the Hall, Professor Oriana Skylar tions and other activities, with appropriate links. Mastro and her husband, Arzan (see Newsletter 3), Pictured below is the professional team who we were equally pleased last term to provide a have been constructing the new website, as they warm welcome to Professor Peter C. Pfeiffer. recently presented and demonstrated it to an appre- Peter is Professor of German, and an affiliated ciative group of Hall members, and explained how faculty member in the Program in Film and Media they could individually keep in regular touch with Studies, at Georgetown. He holds a PhD from the viewers. University of California at Irvine and has pub- lished extensively on 19th and 20th century German and Austrian literature and culture, including film. He was chairman of the German department for many years, and is spending part of his sabbatical semester at Campion Hall, completing some essays on economic themes in 19th century German litera- ture. His particular interests are representations of work in literary discourses, but the first essay he will finish is actually on money and circulation in the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. Peter also hopes to re- charge his batteries by reading and by trying to emulate Willkie Collins’ Readers of the Hall’s Newsletter and other inter- heroes who walk between ested parties will be pleased to learn that, in addi- far-flung places always tion to continuing to publish and distribute the hard arriving just in time for copy, the Hall now makes provision for an online something interesting to version of the Newsletter, whose current, past and occur. He is a passionate future issues, can be accessed and viewed at the gardener and enjoys Hall’s website,
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Treasures of Campion Hall, 5: The Hopkins Archive
THE RECENT PUBLICATION by Oxford University Press of the Campion Hall manuscript, “The Dublin Notebook”, as the seventh volume in The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Victorian Jesuit poet, is a topical illustra- tion of the rich contents of the Hopkins Archive which is held at Campion Hall. Born in Essex in 1844 and dying of typhoid at the age of 45 in Dublin, where he was Professor of Classics at Universi- ty College, Hopkins began an illustrious academic career by winning a classics scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he was greatly admired by its leg- endary Master, Benjamin Jowett. He graduated with a notable double First in Classics, notwithstanding being engaged in writing poetry as well as being received into the Catholic Church and advised about his future by John Henry Newman, the converted luminary of the Oxford Movement.
Hopkins the Jesuit Hopkins the poet Hopkins decided to become a Jesuit priest, and in a As a Jesuit, Hopkins was regularly engaged in moment of mistaken self-denial he conscientiously teaching, parochial ministry and preaching. He is destroyed his early poems, afraid now of demean- best known now for his markedly original poetic ing his religious experience by making poetic capi- idiom, which he intended especially to be heard tal out of it. All his life he kept a regular journal in rather than just read. It drew heavily on his darting which he described his experiences, particularly of imagination and his musical ear for the cadences the beauties of nature, but it was some years before and rhythm of the Welsh and Anglo-Saxon he resumed writing poetry when his Jesuit superior tongues, and it was expressed through restless im- at St Beuno’s College, North Wales, where he agery and rich alliteration in an impacted and spent formative Jesuit years, prompted him to com- densely allusive style. His numerous poems were memorate the recent drowning of five German made public after his death by his close friend and regular correspondent since Oxford days who be- came the highly influential Poet Laureate, Robert Bridges.
God’s Grandeur Along with his frequent phases of inspired exalta- tion at sensing God’s grandeur charging all that he was so aware of around him, Hopkins suffered reg- ularly during his life from bouts of poor physical health and low self-esteem; and these deteriorated further from periods of mental depression and reli- St Beuno’s North Wales gious desolation, as well as from academic over- Site of the Hopkins Museum work towards the end of his life. Yet, on his death bed in Dublin the Jesuit priest and poet expressed nuns in a tragic shipwreck off the Kent coast. The to his family and bystanders a sense of deep spir- result was his challenging elegy, “The Wreck of itual contentment: "I am so happy, I am so happy. I the Deutschland”. loved my life."
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The Hopkins Archive says he wrote while a Balliol undergraduate read- For the following account of the Hopkins Archives ing ‘Greats’ (classics), drafts of many of his ser- at Campion Hall we are indebted to Revd Michael mons, and a meandering ‘commentary’ of the Spir- F. Suarez, SJ, a Visiting Fellow of the Hall, Profes- itual Exercises. Here too are Fr Hopkins’s private sor and Director of the Rare Book School at the diaries and the infamous ‘Dublin Notebook’, which University of Virginia, co-General Editor of The records some of his darkest hours while teaching at Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, and University College, Dublin, and examining for the Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Royal University of Ireland. Online (OSEO). He is also co-editor of the schol- Now these and other manuscripts are finding their arly edition of Hopkins’ Dublin Notebook way into print in the eight-volume Collected Works (pictured on facing page), and the 2014–15 J. R. of Gerard Manley Hopkins, published by Oxford Lyell Reader in Bibliography at Oxford University. University Press (2006–17) under the general edi- Professor Suarez writes: torship of Professor Lesley Higgins, who organized and catalogued the Hopkins archive at the Hall in ampion Hall is privileged to hold the largest the 1980s, and Fr. Michael F. Suarez, S.J., a long- C repository of the papers of the Victorian Jesu- time member of the Campion Hall community. it poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Fittingly, the Hop- kins Archive, owned by the British Province of the Four volumes have been published thus far, the Society of Jesus, is in a centre of literary scholar- Higgins-Suarez Dublin Notebook being the most ship and close to the other major repository of recent (2014). Professor Higgins’s edition of the Hopkins writings, the Bodleian Library. For many Diaries is now in press and will appear in the com- decades, scholars have come from as far as Aus- ing months. tralia and Japan to examine these priceless manu- Campion Hall’s own Fr Joseph Munitiz, S.J. has of scripts, each one unique. late done yeoman’s service as Archivist, caring for Among these are Fr Hopkins’s surviving letters, a these and other valuable records held in trust for signed autograph copy of his Jesuit vows, the es- posterity by the Hall.
THE WINDHOVER To Christ our Lord I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king- dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing, As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
“The best thing I have written” No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear, Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.
CAMPION NEWS is produced termly in Campion Hall, Brewer St, Oxford, OX1 1QS, and is printed and distributed by the Holywell Press, Oxford. It is also available on line at
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RUFINO J. MEANA PEÓN S.J. is a Spanish Jesuit and Professor of Clinical Psychopathology at Comillas University, Madrid, as well as Senior Research Fellow at Campion Hall for Hilary and Trinity terms. After gaining Licentiates in Psychology, Philoso- phy and Moral Theology, he was awarded his PhD summa cum laude with a dissertation on ‘Subjective Experience of Meaning in Life’, followed, as a clinician, by specialist degrees in Gestalt Therapy, Psychoanalytic Psycho- therapy and Clinical Diagnosis. He is a Registered Clinical Psychologist ac- credited by the European Federation of Psychologists' Associations and a member of other professional associations, including the American Psycho- logical Association. For the past 20 years Rufino has had an active universi- ty teaching and research career as a psychotherapist, along with extensive experience caring for Catholic priests and religious, and training psychother- apists in formation. He has produced many scholarly studies and is currently researching ‘Operationalized Psychodynamic Diagnosis’ and ‘Psychological Anthropology: Human Strengths’ with two different teams of colleagues.
HANINA BEN-MEN- PAUL SHORE was AHEM studied law at Senior Visiting the Hebrew Univer- Research Associ- sity of Jerusalem, ate in the Univer- and was admitted to sity’s Faculty of the Bar in 1970. He History during received his Oxford Hilary Term. He D.Phil. in 1978, and is Adjunct Profes- has since taught in sor of Religious the Hebrew Univer- Studies at the Uni- sity's Faculty of versity of Regina, Law. In 1987/8 he Canada, where he was a visiting pro- has written on Jes- fessor at Stanford, uit history, educa- and in 1995 at Har- tion and spirituality. He has also published a study vard Law School, and he has recently completed a of the Vita Christi of Ludolph of Saxony, which term’s research at Campion Hall. Ignatius Loyola read while convalescing from the From 1995 to 2000 the Head of the Hebrew Uni- Battle of Pamplona. versity Faculty of Law's Institute for Research in Shore was examining some of the first efforts Jewish Law, he then in 2000 -2012, spent the by Jesuits to translate and understand the Qur’an, spring semester at Harvard Law School as Gruss and how these early efforts influenced representa- Visiting Professor of Talmudic Civil Law. tions of Muslims in Jesuit plastic art, books and His areas of expertise are talmudic law, the phi- drama. While at the Hall, Professor Shore lectured losophy of Jewish law, epistemic analysis of Jew- in the Faculty of Theology and Religion on ish law, legal controversy, the legal thought of "Theology, Nation Building, and Professional Maimonides, and jurisprudence. Identities: Another Look at Confessionalization in Among the books he has written or edited are Early Modern Europe"; and also, in the Faculty of the multi-volume anthology and commentary Con- History, on "Understanding and Misunderstanding troversy and Dialogue in the Halakhic Sources the Qur'an: Jesuit written and visual approaches to (Hebrew), the fourth volume of which is Contro- Islam in the 17th and early 18th centuries". versy and Dialogue in the Jewish Tradition: A Originally from Portland, Oregon, Shore lives in Reader; Judicial Deviation in Talmudic Law: Gov- southern Manitoba, where he has lectured on the erned by Men, Not by Rules; Authority, Process Jesuit-Huron encounter and taught First Nations and Method: Studies in Jewish Law. people of the Long Plain Reserve.
Campion News Trinity 2015 Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 10 The Robert Parsons Room Fellow-Oxonian and Fellow-Jesuit
NE OF THE MOST ELEGANT rooms in Campi- join the recently established Society of Jesus. O on Hall, with its French window opening on Totally committed to using Jesuits along with the English secular clergy for the reconversion of their native land, Parsons was the first Jesuit missionary to Reformation England, as superior of the three- man Jesuit team, including Campion, which was sent there by their sceptical Superior General. The latter’s misgivings were justified when Campion was apprehended and executed and the others fled back to the Continent. A wanted and watched man in exile, Parsons now concentrated on writing and publishing religious and spiritual pamphlets and books for the English Catholics at home and abroad, notably his enormously popular Christian Directory, which in its pirated Protestant edition is to the garden, its fireplace and chandelier, and its claimed to have influenced Shakespeare. He also silver-grey furniture and decor, has had various methodically planned the next and more successful names since it started life as a Georgian update to Jesuit mission to England, and contributed to the original sixteenth-century building, including founding several English seminaries in Spain and the Junior Common Room, the Middle Common Flanders, intending them to be ready for transplan- Room and the Seminar Room. Now it has been tation as universities in a reconverted England. He appropriately named the Robert Parsons Room, in was also widely suspected, and accused, with some memory of the Oxford man who was once Bursar warrant, of meddling in European politics and aim- and Dean at Balliol College, and subsequently a ing at the reconversion of England (and Scotland), Catholic and a Jesuit colleague and Superior of Ed- if necessary by the force of Spanish arms. mund Campion in Elizabethan England. Parsons’ final Parsons, also spelt Persons in his day, had a not years were very happy childhood and education in his native spent in Rome, Somerset, but his teacher recommended he be sent writing and ne- to Oxford at the age of eighteen in 1564. He ma- gotiating, and triculated at St Mary’s Hall and after graduating watching over with distinction he was appointed fellow and tutor the English Jes- at Balliol College, having reluctantly taken the oath uit mission and of supremacy in a ceremony presided over by the his Spanish proctor for the year, his acquaintance, Master Ed- seminaries. He mund Campion, fellow of St John’s College. The was also run- new Fellow of Balliol fell foul of a Puritanical ning the Eng- group in the University and after his appointment lish College in as bursar of Balliol he was accused of financial im- Rome, not with propriety in the accounts. Having also been shown -out that con- to be of illegitimate birth, which would call for his troversy, then expulsion, and being suspected of papistry, he and subsequent, chose to resign his fellowship and leave Oxford. that was never At least the last charge was true, for, on heading very far from off to study medicine in Italy, Persons became a him and his Catholic, and in Calais spent eight days on Ignatian religious plans Robert Persons SJ retreat under the direction of an English Jesuit, for most of his 1546-1610 which resulted in his deciding to go to Rome and life. Engraving by James Neeff, Antwerp
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Past Masters: Richard F. Clarke
N ORDER TO STAFF its numerous grammar Like other Ox- schools in Britain and in its mission territories ford converts, be- I in Southern Africa and British Guyana, the ginning with Cam- British Jesuit Province relied for many years on its pion himself, young members qualifying as teachers by graduat- Clarke decided on ing from London University, since entrance to Ox- becoming a Catho- ford was forbidden to Roman Catholics, first by lic to enter the Jes- the university until 1871, and then by the protec- uit Order, no tive English Catholic Bishops until 1895. The fol- doubt attracted by lowing year, determined that their colleges should its tough intellec- profit from Oxford graduates, especially in Clas- tual approach to sics, the Jesuits decided to open a Hall at Oxford, religious belief. where Jesuit scholastics could matriculate after During his Jesuit completing their philosophical studies. For this formation he was purpose they leased a small property in St Giles’, ordained to the Richard F Clarke near St John’s College and the Jesuit parish church Roman Catholic Master 1896 — 1900 of St Aloysius, and they chose to appoint as its priesthood and at the end he was appointed editor first master Father Richard Frederick Clarke SJ, of the respected British Jesuit monthly publication, MA (Oxon). In accordance with regulations, the The Month. This post held his attention for the new private hall of Oxford University was named next eleven years, alongside the many popular reli- after its Master as Clarke’s Hall. gious pamphlets which he produced for the Catho- lic Truth Society, in which he also took a lively Early life interest. More academically, he founded and edit- Clarke was born in Islington in 1839, was brought up in a strictly Evangelical family, and was edu- ed the Stonyhurst Philosophical Series, and con- tributed its volume on Logic. cated at Merchant Taylors’ School, where he crowned various school prizes by gaining a schol- The Hall’s first phase arship to Oxford at St John’s College. In the On vacating his editorial chair Clarke was appoint- course of taking his degree there he just missed a ed the first Head Master of the new Jesuit College First in Greats, perhaps through concentrating on in Wimbledon, and shortly afterwards was posted his rowing and gaining his blue in 1859, when Ox- to the staff of the Jesuit church in Oxford. This ford defeated Cambridge on the latter’s boat sink- period of residence was probably intended to qual- ing. (His inscribed oar is still on display in the ify him a year later, when the Catholic hierarchy lecture room in Campion Hall). approved of Catholics studying at Oxford, to re- Clarke was elected a Fellow of St John’s and turn to the university and be appointed Master and became a popular tutor. After taking his MA he religious Superior of the new Jesuit hall which was was ordained priest in the Church of England, and immediately set up. Having throughout his life a after one sermon his friends remarked that he was strong devotion to Blessed Edmund Campion, clearly on his way to Rome. So it proved, when he Clarke at first wanted to name the Hall after his was shortly afterwards received into the Catholic Oxford hero, Campion, but he was obliged to fol- Church with his two sisters in 1869 at the Jesuit low university procedure and name it after himself Farm Street Church, a popular venue at the time as its founding master. He proceeded to govern for instructing and receiving intellectuals. Had he amiably in this pioneering role, and with great suc- waited a year or so further, he might have retained cess. However, his exertions on behalf of his men his fellowship by taking advantage of the change and of spiritual clients and retreatants, as well as which permitted Catholics to enter the University of many of the local poor, exhausted him; and his and study and work there, but the St John’s author- death in 1900 at the age of 61, after only four ities disapproved of his conversion and he found years as founding Master of the Hall, came as a religious refuge at a more friendly Trinity College. grief, but no great surprise, to his many admirers.
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Growing apace shown by the photograph of them below in their Few at first, but increasing in numbers annually, winged Jesuit gowns during their fortnight spent at the Jesuit scholastics who attended Clarke’s Hall as the Jesuit holiday house at Barmouth, North Wales, undergraduates proved of impressive quality, no in 1899. Clarke as a biretta-ed and slightly pugna- doubt due in part to their having already taken a cious looking religious Superior occupies the cen- three-years course in philosophy. Regular reports tre of the front row, with two future masters stand- from the Hall in the Jesuit in-house publication, ing behind his right shoulder, Henry Keane (with Letters and Notices, record pleasing degree suc- folded arms) and Ernest Vignaux. cesses (two Firsts and a near First in the first three-man cohort) as well as significant and encouraging visits from the Vice-Chancellor of the University and heads of its various Colleg- es. The same regular account of Jesuit life in Oxford records in 1898 that, after being in ex- istence for six terms the number of Jesuit stu- dents in Clarke’s Hall rose from an original four to seven, and might be twelve in the fol- lowing year, with some studying Mathematics and most studying Classics. To house the in- crease in numbers a second small house was being leased a couple of doors away in St Giles, which would provide rooms for individuals, who would all come together to the main house for The Hall at the Barmouth Villa 1899 meals, worship and other community events. The The last word on the first Master of what was to account continues with a favourable description of become Campion Hall can be given to Clarke him- the location of Clarke’s Hall in Oxford: “our local self, observing on the virtues of college life in Ox- situation could not be bettered; we are within easy ford, which he had personally experienced, which reach of all of the colleges; and while having the he was now in process of sharing with his Jesuit benefit of the finest street of all in Oxford, we are charges, and from which in the years to come many at the same time sufficiently removed from the bus- British Jesuits were in their turn to benefit: tle and noise of the city.” “College life in Oxford is about as good a prepara- As well as a university institution, Clarke’s Hall tion for a man’s life in the world as can well be de- also constituted a religious community of Jesuits vised by human wisdom, and exercises a moral and who lived together, studied together and wor- mental discipline which is of the greatest value.” shipped together. They even holidayed together, as Amen to that. New Alumna Organist IT’S A REAL PLEASURE to have a former pupil from our Jesuit Stonyhurst College as the new organist at Campion Hall. Mary Ann Wootton LLCM is the first woman to be Senior Organ Scholar at St Peters College, Ox- ford. She has played the piano since she was four, and won several major awards for her performance. She has also played before the Queen and given performances abroad, including at the Moscow Conservatoire. Mary Ann became Junior Organ Scholar at Blackburn Cathedral, and played several times with the Northern Chamber Orchestra. She fulfilled a childhood ambition by playing the famous Wurlitzer organ in Black- pool Tower Ballroom for a BBC television children’s programme. In 2006 she was declared American Young Theatre Organist of the Year, and in 2009 she was named Student of the Year by the American Theatre Organ Society. Mary Ann en- joys tennis and badminton and is interested in antiques, especially as a collector of antiquarian books.
Campion News Trinity 2015 Campion News, Trinity Term 2015 page 13 Introducing The WAY IDDEN AWAY in two small rooms in Micklem lish-speaking H Hall, the oldest part of Campion Hall, are the world. For a offices of The WAY, the international review of short period there contemporary Christian spirituality published quar- was also a “Way terly by the British Jesuits. Working there are Eliz- community” with abeth Lock, the Assistant Editor, and Ruby Mur- -in the British phy, the office assistant. The current editor, Paul Province, bring- Nicholson SJ, was appointed in July 2008, operat- ing together ex- ing first from the Jesuit novitiate in Birmingham perts in this field. and now as Assistant to the Jesuit Provincial in Currently four London’s Mount Street. editions are pro- The WAY was founded in 1961, just before the duced annually, monumental changes brought about in the Catholic one of which, Church by the Second Vatican Council. From the replacing the Sup outset it has seen itself as a journal of Christian, -plements, is a and not specifically Jesuit or Ignatian, spirituality. special number As its web-site proclaims, “Through writing in- with a particular formed by critical and creative scholarship, it aims focus. In July 2103, as illustrated here, the topic to provide a forum in which thoughtful Christians, was African spirituality; while in 2014, to coincide from different walks of life and different traditions, with the 400th anniversary celebrations of Heythrop can reflect on God’s continuing action in human College now in London University, the special experience.” number considered how the subject of spirituality is taught. Postconciliar Ignatian developments On The WAY’s web-site a selection of previous However, in the mid-1970’s, there was a large- articles is freely available, along with full details of scale rediscovery of Ignatian spirituality, and the how to subscribe, and how subscribers can access journal both reflected and promoted that develop- the full 50-year archive. In addition, in recent years ment. James Walsh SJ (1920-1968), who founded it has begun to edit and publish its own books, spe- The WAY and edited it for its first 25 years, intro- cialising in Ignatian titles, and to offer a wider Ig- duced for some years a regular additional Supple- natian Book Service, which is accessible through ment which spread the theory and practice of spir- its web site
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Campion News Trinity 2015