From the Provincial Archives

Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate Province of Britain and Ireland From the Provincial Archives Fr. Laurence Fox OMI 2 [Explanatory Note] 1 This personal document tells how Fr. Lawrence Fox, previously a Quaker, entered the Catholic Church in 1843. It also more briefly relates his Oblate vocation. It tells of a period when religion was very high on the social agenda. Catholics in England had been ‘emancipated’ from the penal laws in 1829. The Anglican Tractarian movement was in full swing. A significant number of Anglicans, priests and laity, were becoming Catholics, including John Henry Newman in October 1845 who was to speak of a ‘second Spring’ of the Catholic Church in Britain and attract the interest of St. Eugene to establish there an Oblate mission. Lawrence begins and ends his story in the West of England – Devon and Cornwall, where the Quakers had then and still have a strong presence. But its main narrative takes us to the London of 2 Charles Dickens, with whom - Lawrence remarks - he was ‘on visiting terms’ . Lawrence’s memoir transports us to this world of high religious feelings and strong forms of piety: Quaker, Catholic and Protestant. We get an intimate view of Catholic lay people and clerics. There are vestiges of the role played by the Catholic laity in the penal days, especially the Catholic aristocracy. Lawrence does not show us the poor of London. Instead we see the emergence of a strong Catholic ‘middle class’, exemplified by the Fox’s and Cox’s and the famous Ward family. Catholic lay people have a lofty view of priests and priesthood and are demonstrative in their veneration of bishops. At the same time we are given a vivid account of the irrational fear in which priests were held by many non-Catholics. We learn something of the clerical life-style of the time. We also taste the anti-catholic prejudice that was still rife in London notwithstanding ‘Catholic Emancipation’. We have glimpses of the emigrés priests coming from France in the 1840’s as evidence of the lively topicality of religion there too. Above all, though, it is a personal story in which Lawrence acknowledges with gratitude that, under God and Mary, he owed the grace of his conversion into the Catholic Church entirely to the witness of a Catholic cousin and his wife and children. He does not present himself as one driven initially by some inner spiritual hunger. He comes from a happy home with settled beliefs. How explain his ready response to the new grace offered him in his contact with his cousin’s family? This is what he wants to explain. It was a warm and fervent household, - a busy doctor’s practice in Moorfields in central London, 3 close to St. Mary’s which was then the Catholic pro-cathedral in London . The Fox household attracted into its orbit a wide range of relations, friends and clergy, all of whom intrigued Lawrence, as readers will see. 1 The memoir is a handwritten text held in the General Archive of the Oblates in Rome. The text in the provincial archive is a typed copy of the original. We have inserted within square brackets in the body of the text references to the pages of the typed text: ‘page 2, 3’ etc. We have inserted sub- headings: ‘Quaker background’ etc, and some footnotes. MH, editor. 2 Perhaps contact came through Dickens’ purchase of a cottage for his parents in Alphington, Exeter, Devon in 1839, though his parents’ stay there was very brief. Dickens’ trip to North America took place 2 January to 29 June 1842, but otherwise he was resident in 1 Devonshire Terrace, in central London around the time of the events spoken of in our text. Dickens had no Catholic leanings. 3 Opened in 1820. 3 He says he is “thoroughly edified’ by that family. He speaks of his attraction to a picture of Our Lady of Dolours, a present to the doctor which is hanging in one of the rooms. He mentions with gratitude the family’s prayers for him, and being asked to wear the Miraculous Medal. He records the stresses he felt , and various encounters that roused him to react instantly in defence of Catholics when ignorant assaults were made on them and their creed. He describes how by reading Catholic literature for the first time he is gradually convinced that the Catholic Church is the true church of Christ, as argued by Wiseman. But he is not yet consciously looking for a new church. He is an admirer from a distance and wants to keep his distance from the Catholic Church. But crucially his father – after receiving information that his son was well on the way to becoming a Catholic - exerts pressure on him to sever his links with his cousins and their Church. This pressure dumbfounds Lawrence. He did not see himself as being on the road to the Catholic Church, yet his father was making this demand on him. He did not reply immediately to his father, and when his father wrote him a second and even stronger letter, it acts as a catalyst: he feels instantly that at all costs this severance from his Catholic cousin must not happen, it would be against his conscience, indeed, and he must become a Catholic. His decision brings him peace of mind, joy. And this despite the fact, as he makes clear, that he is still very much in the dark about Catholic doctrine. He had in fact quite easily come to accept the general Catholic ‘Rule of Faith’, after which the ‘details’ did not matter so much to him. (We must remember at the same time that he brought with him from his upbringing some knowledge of Scripture.) That, then is Lawrence’s explanation as to how he came to enter the Catholic Church. It was a real ‘metanoia’, a transformation. The Church he had learnt all his life to despise was now the centre of his life. The force and enduring quality of the transformation reveal the work of the Holy Spirit, which has opened his heart to the Gospel in a new way. There was more to his decision than an intellectual judgement about where lay the ‘One True Church’. Without his knowing it, - though others could see it - he had fallen in love with this Catholic Church and its Lord and his Mother. Surely we can say he saw this beauty in his cousin’s family life! The Holy Spirit had opened his heart to the Gospel of the ‘Family Fox’. And under his Father’s pressure he is compelled to decide for or against his love. That is why he must become a Catholic – and without delay! Under God and Mary, he owed the grace of his conversion into the Catholic Church entirely to the witness of a Catholic cousin and his wife and children. All this is food for thought, - about conversion and society and family: about religious differences in family, about tolerance and intolerance, but especially about the power of grace in family, of why a Catholic family can rightly be called a ‘little church’. Lawrence says that all conversions are different. His own shows us that conversion does not always come from ‘Angst’. It was a conversion worked by the attraction of spiritual beauty! After his conversion, and some years of practice as a doctor, Lawrence came into contact with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate who had lately opened their first mission in Penzance. He briefly records his priestly calling and entry into the Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Thus incidentally he gives us a glimpse of the beginnings of the Oblate mission and family in Britain. 4 Father Fox became an outstanding Oblate missionary priest. An outline of his life can be found in the 4 Oblate ‘Historical Dictionary’ . An account of how his role as chaplain of the South Dublin Union 5 came up for debate in the English Parliament has been written by Fr Paul Byrne omi . His experience 6 as manager of Ireland’s chief reformatory school for boys is reflected in the reports he wrote as manager for the British government of the day and printed by the school’s printer. His accompaniment of St Eugene on his visit to London, Liverpool, Leeds and Dublin in 1857 can be seen 7 in the Codices Historici of the Inchicore House of Retreat and Sicklinghall. 4 See Historical Dictionary of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Rome 2010, Vol. II, s.t.:Fox, Lawrence Prideaux. This is available on the Oblate website. 5 Fr Byrne’s article appeared in Across the Century, a collection celebrating the centenary of the Oblate mission in Inchicore and it also is available on-line. 6 St. Kevin’s, Glencree, 1867-1873. Some of his annual reports are held in the Provincial Archive in Dublin. These reports were made to the British Government at that time, and are no doubt somewhere to be found in their archives. It would be deeply appreciated if they could be located. 7 Cf. Hughes and Coughlan, (Eds.), “Oh! When will be return again?” in Vie Oblate Life, August 2000, pp. 281-291. 5 History of My Conversion By Father Lawrence Prideaux Fox omi (1820 – 1905) [introduction] I have been often asked to give a detailed account of the circumstances which led to my conversion from Protestantism to the Catholic Church. Various reasons prompted me to postpone what I foresaw I should some day or another if I lived long enough, have to accomplish, in obedience to the oft-repeated wishes of my friends.

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