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Juvenile Holiness: Catholic Revivalism among Children in Victorian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

John Sharp
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Extract

Studies of revivalism, from Calvin Colton's explanation of the ‘classic’ American experience to John Kent's recent unsympathetic work, have highlighted the use of children as instruments of adult conversion and have illustrated the way in which revivalism sought to influence the whole of domestic life by confirming the sect's alienation from wider society. Equally, children were evangelised in their own right, an important fact to remember in view of the large numbers who died before they reached late adolescence. Although it may strike us as precocious, Victorian children were considered the possessors of an instinctive religious sense, which revivalism sought to harness and develop. The notion of the ‘child-leader’, which was the mainstay of much religious literature throughout the nineteenth century and, propagated by the Sunday schools, was embedded in the growing revivalist ideology, grew out of an ambivalent attitude towards children. Against the older, theological assertion of the depravity of all human beings, there emerged in the late eighteenth century a ‘softer’, more sentimental attitude, which depicted children in particular as potential recipients and bearers of grace. The roots of this attitude lay as much in the theological tradition as in a reaction against it on the part of those who rejected any idea of the aboriginal sinfulness of children and stressed instead their essential innocence.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 220 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

* I should like to record the debt which I owe to the work of Dr S. W. Gilley, as will be obvious to anyone familiar with the field of nineteenth-century Catholic studies.

1 Colton, C., History and Character of American Revivals of Religion, London 1832Google Scholar; Kent, J., Holding the Fort, London 1978Google Scholar.

2 Revealed, for instance, in the hymns of Isaac Watts. See Lacqueur, T. W., Religion and Respectability: Sunday schools and working class culture, 1790–1850, New Haven 1976 1ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Coveney, Peter, Images of Childhood, Harmondsworth 1967Google Scholar.

4 Kent, op. cit., 25711.

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7 Redemptorist Fathers, Provincial Archives of the London Province (hereafter cited as ALP), St Mary's, Clapham, ‘Provincial Chronicles, 1843–53’, 320, 322.

8 Livius, T., Father Furniss and his Work for Children, London 1896 1–81Google Scholar.

9 Review article of the above, The Month, xciii (1899), 220Google Scholar. E. P. Hammond, the great Protestant children's missioner, did not begin his work in Britain until 1860. See Headley, P. C., The Reaper and the Harvest: scenes and incidents in connection with...E. Payson Hammond, M.A., London 1885Google Scholar.

10 His biographer told but part of the story when he wrote that it was only during the early part of Furniss's career that ‘opinions were divided as to the soundness of his methods of teaching. Some priests approved, others condemned his strange stories and singular methods of impressing the minds of children with the fear of God and a desire to love and serve Him.’ Livius implies that objections were silenced when ‘the true wisdom of his method was proved by its effects’. Livius, Furniss, 118, 121.

11 ALP, ‘Chronica Domestica, Clapham’, vol. ii, sub anno 1872.

12 Ibid., Bb7, Decree of the Rector Major, 27 July 1855. A further decree, Bbio, 9 December 1855, forbade the admission to first communion of children under the age of eleven, and never without the consent of the parish priest.

13 J. Furniss, The Sunday School, Dublin n.d., 6.

14 Bossy, J., The English Catholic Community, 1570–1850, London 1975Google Scholar, chap. 13.

15 Gilley, S. W., ‘The Roman Catholic mission to the Irish in London’, Recusant History, x (1969), 124ffGoogle Scholar. In London, for instance, 27,494 persons attended mass on the day of the census, 1851, whereas the Irish-born population of the region was 81,453, O’Connor, K., The Irish in Britain, London 1972 3Google Scholar. Cf. Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Classes in Victorian England, London 1963 1ffGoogle Scholar.

16 Britten, J., ‘The work of the laity’, Dublin Review, 3rd ser., xviii (1887), 151–67Google Scholar; C. G., ‘The leakage of the Catholic Church in England: its remedy’, The Month, lix (1887), 176–89Google Scholar; Tynan, J., ‘The conversion of England’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, 3rd ser., xii (1891), 642–53Google Scholar; J. Curry, ‘The leakage from the Catholic Church in Great Britain’, Ibid., 914–27. For the effect on children, see ‘The children of the Catholic poor’ and ‘How we lose our poor’, The Tablet, 1 March 1873 and 10 February 1883; Vaughan, H., The Loss of Our Children, London 1886Google Scholar; Britten, J., ‘The loss of our boys’, The Month, lix (1887), 457–68Google Scholar; Oates, A., ‘The lost, strayed and stolen of our Catholic poor children’, Dublin Review, 3rd ser., xvii (1887), 157–77Google Scholar.

17 Larkin, E., ‘The devotional revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875’, American Historical Review, lxxvii (1972), 625–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lees, L., Exiles of Erin: Irish migrants in Victorian London, Manchester 1979Google Scholar, chap. 7.

18 Typified by Manning's famous remark that he had worked for the Irish occupation of England, Purcell, E. S., Life of Cardinal Manning, 2nd edn, 2 vols, London 1896, ii. 677Google Scholar.

19 Lees, L., ‘Patterns of lower class life: Irish slum communities in nineteenth-century London’, in Thernstrom, S. and Sennett, R. (eds.), Nineteenth-Century Cities, New Haven 1969 3–86Google Scholar; Lobban, R., ‘The Irish community in Greenock in the nineteenth century’, Irish Geography, vi (1971), 270–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lowe, W. J., ‘The Lancashire Irish and the Catholic Church, 1846–71: the social dimension’, Irish Historical Studies, xx (1976), 129–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tuathaigh, M. A. G., ‘The Irish in nineteenth-century Britain: problems of integration’, Trans. Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., xxxi (1981), 149–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Lees, Exiles of Erin, esp. p. 164.

21 Beames, T., The Rookeries of London, 2nd edn, London 1852 1Google Scholar.

22 For the full implications of drink see Harrison, B., Drink and the Victorians, London 1971Google Scholar. The social conditions of the Irish are described in Jackson, J. A., The Irish in Britain, London 1963Google Scholar; O’Connor, The Irish in Britain; Lees, ‘Lower class life’; and Hickey, J., Urban Catholics, London 1967Google Scholar.

23 Furniss, The Sunday School, 3.

24 Gilley, S. W., ‘Heretic London, holy poverty and the Irish poor’, Downside Review, lxxxix (1971), 64–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Gilley, S. W., ‘Supernaturalised culture: Catholic attitudes and Latin lands, 1840–60’, Studies in Church History, xi (1975), 309–23, at 310 and 318CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 The Sunday School, 297.

27 Livius, Furniss, 52.

28 The Sunday School, 39, 282.

29 Livius, Furniss, 86, 153.

30 The Sunday School, 21.

31 A point emphasised by Faber, F. W., Devotion to the Pope, London 1860, 14–15Google Scholar, where children (together with the poor) are described as ‘another visible Self... second Selves (the making of which) was an emanation of the same wisdom and the same benignity, out of whose abysses came the overwhelming mystery of the Blessed Sacrament’.

32 Livius, Furniss, 70.

33 Ibid., 87.

34 The Sunday School was meant as a handbook for others engaged in similar work, in which Furniss outlined his philosophy of religious training and gave practical illustrations of his theory. He held that if presented in a way suitable to its capacity, the pious practices of religion would find a place in every child's heart (p. 28).

35 This claim is made by Livius and substantiated by witnesses whom he quotes.

36 Livius, Furniss, 59.

37 Redemptorist Fathers, Domestic Archives, Kinnoull, Perth (hereafter cited as ADK), F3, testimony of Fr Stevens.

38 Livius, Fumiss, 146.

39 J. Furniss, The Sight of Hell, Dublin n.d., 3.

40 Ibid., 6.

41 J. Furniss, The Great Evil, Dublin n.d., 7.

42 ‘The smell of that horrible body was most fearful. From this corruption of death, worms began to come out, and they crept into his mouth, and eyes, and ears, and nostrils... The unfortunate man himself howled with terror and pain; he bit his tongue, and dashed himself against the stones. At length he lost his senses, and fell down dead under the terrible load which he carried. Unhappy sinner! you go about, day by day, tied up with death.’ Ibid., 10.

43 Ibid., and J. Furniss, Stumbling Blocks, Dublin n.d., passim.

44 Stumbling Blocks, 31.

45 ‘Your mortal sin was the great heavy weight which weighed on the heart of Jesus and broke it, and made him die of sorrow.’ The Great Evil, 22.

46 J. Furniss, Almighty God, Dublin n.d., 24.

47 Ibid., 14.

48 Livius, Furniss, 36.

49 Ibid.

50 For example, ‘The factory system, as it enables the children to earn their own living and renders them independent of their parents, leads to a spirit of undutifulness and insubordination - and the corruption of those among whom the young have to work, renders them familiar with vice at an early age. ‘Redemptorist Fathers, Domestic Archives, Bishop Eton, Liverpool (hereafter cited as ADBE),’ Domestic and Mission Chronicles, Hanley Castle and Bishop Eton’ (hereafter CD/ALBE), vol. ii. sub anno 1857, 95.

51 ALP, ‘Buggenoms MS’, 54.

52 Stumbling Blocks, passim.

53 J. Furniss, The Book of Young Persons, Dublin n.d., 12.

54 ADBE, CD/ALBE, vol. i. sub anno 1853 (no page reference).

55 Ibid., vol. ii. 1857, 153.

56 Livius, Furniss, 171.

57 Five hundred at Burnley in July 1859, when there were 700 confirmations; at Stockport in September 1856 there were 2,700 confessions and nearly 1,000 confirmations; at St Patrick's Liverpool, in April 1862, so many children wished to attend that separate missions had to be given to the boys and girls. A total of 2,000 made their confession and 1,400 their communion. ADBE, CD/ALBE, ii. 64; iii. 59, 116, 123; iv. 16. Reports of Furniss's missions appeared in The Tablet for 6 September and 18 October 1856, 7 March 1857, 10 July 1858, 18 February, 3 December and 24 December 1859, 28 February 1860 and 2 November 1861.

58 ADBE, CD/ALBE, iii. 48.

59 A mission to children in the Brooms, Co. Durham, in 1873 recorded that the good spiritual state of the children was due to confraternities. ADK, ‘Relationes circa Apostolici Labores’ (hereafter cited as ALK), ii. 28.

60 One priest claimed a permanent sevenfold increase in mass attendance in some parishes following Furniss's missions; at Barton-on-Irwell, where Furniss gave two missions in 1857 and 1859, the parish priest considered them’ eminently successful, not only in their effect upon the children, but also upon the adult parishioners. Their influence was felt for five years afterwards; and, for the two years on each occasion following the mission, the attendance at church and the frequentation of the sacraments was such as was never known before or since.’ Livius, Furniss, 170, 120. Fr Duckett of Wolverhampton recorded a tenfold increase in mass attendance following the institution of a children's mass after one of Furniss's missions. ALP, ‘Catalogus Defunctorum, CSSR in Provincia Anglicae’, 74.

61 ADBE, CD/ALBE, iii. 300.

62 Ibid., i. sub anno 1854.

63 Thirty adults were converted at the mission in St Patrick's Liverpool mentioned above.

64 ADK, ALK, i. 7, 116; ii. 383.

65 Ibid., i. 21 records the example of the factory girl who rushed to the mission during her meal-break to be confirmed. On p. 40 there is a description of a children's mission at St John's Perth in 1869 at which the children went about the town singing the mission hymns and prayers in order to annoy the local Protestant majority!

66 ADBE, ‘Relationes circa Apostolici Labores, Bishop Eton’ (hereafter cited as ALBE), ii. 247. ADK, ALK, iii. 34 records that the people of St Michael's Elswick, diocese of Hexham, were well prepared in 1884 for their mission ‘especially by the previous week of the children's mission’.

67 ADK, ALK, i. 39; ii. 18; ADBE, ALBE, ii. 248; iii. 27.

68 See above, p. 222.

69 Saturday Review, 18 April 1857, 354. See Furniss, J., A defence of What every Christian must know and do’ in reply to the Saturday Review, Dublin 1857Google Scholar.

70 For instance, the Dominicans sold copies of What every Christian must know and do at a mission in Tralee in 1857. It called forth a spate of letters to the Kerry Evening Post, subsequently printed as ‘Old Betty's Book’ or ‘What every Christian must know and do’, being the Dominicans’ New Year Gift to the People of Tralee, Kerry 1857.

71 The Saturday Review called Furniss ‘a fanatical follower of that perilous guide, Liguori’. See also, A Protestant, Popery Made Plain, as shown in Furniss's Popish Directory, Inverness 1857, and Maxwell, G., St Alphonsus and the Redemptorists: their immoral and false teaching exposed by Quotations from their Writings, Dublin 1859Google Scholar.

72 For example, ‘It is not a sin to desire some temporal misfortune to another in order that it may make him cease to give scandal or be converted, or not persecute the good’ (p. 23n.).

73 Lecky, W. E. H., History of European Morals from Augustine to Charlemagne, 2 vols, London 1869, i. 237nCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Fitzgibbon, G., Roman Catholic Priests and National Schools, Dublin 1871Google Scholar; reply by T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R., ‘Infamous publications: who wrote them?’, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, N.S. viii (1872), 241–55, 289–306. See also Farrar, F. W., Eternal Hope, London 1878Google Scholar, liii. 57n. where Furniss's works are described as ‘unutterably revolting’, and Besant, A., On Eternal Torture, London 1874, 7–8Google Scholar, where Furniss is dismissed as ‘that half-human being, a priest’!

75 Thrane, J. R., ‘Joyce's Sermon on Hell’, Modern Philology, lviii (1960), 172–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 195. Cf. Rowell, G., Hell and the Victorians, Oxford 1974 1–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Cf. Faber, F. W., All for Jesus, London 1853 3Google Scholar, for a contemporary Catholic view. For Protestant teaching, some of Spurgeon's sermons or the children's literature of Mrs Sherwood would provide comparisons.

77 Scott, T., Hell, London 1875, 5Google Scholar. A year earlier, Furniss's works were printed in full in New York under the title, Tracts for Spiritual Reading. A French translation appeared under the title, Le Missionnaire des enfants, Tou rnai 1888.

78 Kent, Holding the Fort, 34.

79 Dublin Review, 3rd ser., v (1881), 138. Hell-fire preaching to children did, of course, continue, as readers of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man will be aware. The reaction of the schoolboys, other than Stephen, reveals a cynical and light-hearted approach (Penguin edn, 125), and confirms the general tenor of my conclusion.