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The Education and Training of Roman Catholic Priests in Nineteenth-Century England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Peter Doyle
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Extract

Faced with the problem of ministering to the pastoral needs of a rapidly expanding Catholic population, the restored English hierarchy naturally turned its attention to the training of candidates for the priesthood. The immediate problem after 1850 was to devise a constitution for the three existing colleges or seminaries, and it is to this issue that historians have given most attention. Of greater importance, however, were the ideals and standards which the bishops laid down to guide those who were running the colleges, for here they were setting a pattern of training which determined what was to happen for almost a century. In general terms, they advocated a training which isolated the seminarians from contemporary developments in secular education and which was marked by a deep suspicion of the world; it reflected a very narrow view of theology, and was partly responsible for the failure to develop a commitment to continuing study after ordination in many of the clergy. The present article investigates some of these issues by examining the decrees of the provincial synods of Westminster and the situation in the new diocese of Liverpool under its energetic second bishop, Alexander Goss.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 208 - 219
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

1 D. Milburn, A History of Ushaw College, Durham 1974; R. J. Schiefen, ‘The organization and administration of Roman Catholic dioceses in England and Wales in the mid-nineteenth century’, unpublished. Ph.D. thesis, London 1970, chapter 5; McClelland, V. A., English Roman Catholics and Higher Education, Oxford 1973Google Scholar. The three colleges were St Cuthbert's, Ushaw, Durham; St Mary's, Oscott, Birmingham; St Edmund's, Ware, Herts. There were also a number of English colleges abroad, for example in Rome, Lisbon and Valladolid.

2 Four provincial councils or synods were held, in 1852, 1855, 1859 and 1873. Schiefen, op. cit., analyses the first three. For the decrees and related documents, see Decreta Qualuor Conciliorum Provincialium Westmonasteriensium, 1852–1873, London n.d. (hereafter cited as Decreta).

3 Goss was bishop 1856–72; he had been coadjutor to George Brown from 1853. See Brady, W. M., The Episcopal Succession in England, Scotland and Ireland, 3 vols, Rome 1876Google Scholar, repr. London 1971, iii. 418–22; Gillow, J., Bibliographical Dictionary of English Catholics, 5 vols, London 1885, ii. 535–40Google Scholar; Hughes, P., ‘The bishops of the century’, in Beck, G. A. (ed.), The English Catholics 1850–1950, London 1950 1–222Google Scholar, at pp. 196–7.

4 Decreta, 161.

5 Ibid., 34.

6 Ibid., 28–31.

7 Ibid., 34.

8 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed. C. S. Dessain, 31 vols, London 1961–77, xi. 195; the letter was written in 1846.

9 Decreta, 164

10 Ibid., 223.

11 Ibid., 168,220.

12 Ibid., 154–72.

13 Ibid., 157–8.

14 Ibid., 163. Milburn, Ushaw, gives details of such expansion, chap. 5.

15 Decreta, 164.

16 Ibid.

17 Archives of the Archbishop of Westminster (hereafter cited as AAW), 116/3.

18 Decreta, 164–5.

19 Ibid., 167.

20 Ibid., 168. The recommendations were repeated at the fourth council in 1873 (Ibid., 220); Milburn, Ushaw, 305–6, mentions deficiencies as late as the 1890s.

21 Decreta, 168

22 AAW, 116/3, Report on St Edmund's Ware, 1859 (hereafter cited as Report).

23 Milburn, Ushaw, 142.

24 Ibid., 305–6.

25 AAW, 116/3, Report: Appendix, 19.

26 Milburn, Ushaw, 141–2.

27 AAW, 116/3, Report: Appendix, 19.

28 Decreta, 169.

29 Ward, W., W. G. Ward and the Catholic Revival, London 1893Google Scholar, repr. 1969, 122. W. G. ‘Ideal’ Ward taught philosophy and theology at St Edmund's. For an excellent analysis of the attitudes discussed here see Hegy, P., L’Autorité dans le Catholicisme contemporain, du Syllabus & á Vatican II, Paris 1975Google Scholar.

30 Ward, op.cit., 383.

31 Manning's letter of June 1859 is quoted in Butler, C., The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne, 2 vols, London 1926, i. 225–7Google Scholar.

32 Ward, W. G. Ward, 202.

33 Brady, Episcopal Succession, iii. 442. His collection of transcribed manuscript sources for the projected history is in the library of Upholland College, Lancashire.

34 Goss's letterbooks are in the Lancashire Record Office, Preston, catalogued LRO, RCLv 5/1–5. The reference is to a letter of 27 December 1858, LRO, RCLv 5/2, p. 411. For his attempts to get others to write, see Ibid., 5/1, pp. 98, 108, 123, 152, and 5/2, p. 116.

35 LRO, RCLv 5/1, p. 440.

36 Ibid., p. 446.

37 Ibid.

38 Archives of the Archbishop of Liverpool, Bishop Goss's Pastoral Letters, MS pastoral of June 1856.

39 LRO, RCLv5/i, p. 441.

40 For the long, acrimonious quarrels on these issues see Milburn, Ushaw, chap. 6, and Schiefen, ‘Organisation’, chap. 7.

41 Milburn, Ushaw, 167–9, 276–82.

42 Ibid., 281 n. 41.

43 Ibid., 277, 281.

44 Ibid., 277. The bishop was Casartelli of Salford (1903–25), a noted orientalist, professor at Louvain and lecturer at the University of Manchester, 1903–20; see Who Was Who 1916–28, 4th edn, London 1967, 180Google Scholar.

45 The visitation enquiries, returns and diaries are in LRO, RCLv Visitation Returns 1855 and 1865; the papers are boxed alphabetically by parishes.

46 Questions Addressed to the Clergy of the Diocese of Liverpool at the Visitation of 1855, Liverpool 1855, sect. II, no. 10. The same questions were used in 1865.

47 Ibid., sect. XIII, n. 15.

48 AAW, 116/3, Report.

49 There are two relevant library lists in the Archives of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, Farm Street, London, from the Jesuit missions at Ulverston and Wigan; drawn up in 1844 and 1834 respectively, they were used without alteration in 1865. They are to be found in ‘College of St Aloysius, Rixton to Wigan’ volume, fos. 134–5, 310–29.

50 These were not, of course, characteristics merely of English Catholicism; see Hegy L’Autorité, 14–15, 34–7, and Halkin, L. E., ‘La Formation du clergé Catholique après le Concile de Trent’, Bibliolhèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 50: Miscellanea Historiae Ecclesiasticae III, Louvain 1970 1Google Scholar: ‘les cas de conscience y tenaient plus de place que l’exégèse’.

51 See, for example, Crowther, M. A., Church Embattled: religious controversy in mid-Victorian England, Newton Abbot 1970 2–40Google Scholar; Bullock, F. W. B., A History of Training for the Ministry, St Leonards-on-Sea 1955Google Scholar.

52 Crowther, op.cit., 239–40; the date was 1869.

53 Decreta, 218–19, 221. For contemporary attitudes in France, see Hilaire, Y.-M., La Vie religieuse des populations du diocèse d'Arras, 1840–1914, 3 vols, Lille 1976, ii. 588Google Scholar: ‘l’idéal de ségrégation de plus en plus répandu dans les milieux cléricaux’; also, Halkin, Clergé Catholique, 115.

54 H. O. Evennett, ‘Catholics and the universities 1850–1950’, in G. Beck, English Catholics, 293–302; Milburn, Ushaw, 277–81; McClelland, English Roman Catholics.

55 Decreta, 220 (1873).

56 Ward, W. G. Ward, 75.