By Lorcan Keller
In October 1584, almost 1,000 years after St Augustine had founded the See of Canterbury (597), the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales came to an end with the death of Thomas Watson, former Bishop of Lincoln. Governance of the clandestine Church became a real issue, particularly after Pope Pius V’s excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I in 1570. In 1597, a succession of archpriests, George Blackwell, George Birkhead, and William Harrison, were quietly appointed. These men acted as first among the secular ‘seminary’ clergy, but wielded no episcopal authority, nor did they have any control over the (often rogue) Jesuit Mission.
Fearing rumours of foreign Catholic interference, King James I agreed to look the other way, allowing for a bishop entirely intent on spiritual matters. As such, Dr William Bishop was consecrated as Bishop of Chalcedon and Vicar Apostolic of England and Wales in June 1623. In 1688, the country was then divided into four apostolic vicariates, the London, Midland, Northern and Western districts. It is interesting to note that the saintly Richard Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, now buried here in Westminster Cathedral, was also responsible for the 13 American Colonies.
Under the Vicars Apostolic, there was nothing but the 1753 Apostolic Constitution, Apostolicum ministerium, by means of canonical authority and, as the Church in England rapidly changed through mass immigration and urbanisation, the constitution proved inadequate. Local rules and adaptions did not have any canonical force and carried the same weight as synodal authority. As such, clergy were given their consultative voice, but ‘both the authority and the machinery of a synod were wanting.’ Clergy were also inclined to appeal to Rome against the acts of their Vicars Apostolic. In July 1847, Bishop Nicholas Wiseman and Bishop James Sharples arrived in Rome on behalf of the Vicars Apostolic, to discuss a new constitution with Mgr Palma of the Propaganda Fide. However, according to Bishop Ullathorne, Wiseman reflected their feeling that:
‘Another Constitution for England would either perpetuate for many years to come the state of vicariate government, or would have to be only for a limited period, while the study and trouble for it would be as great as for one granting and at once erecting the Hierarchy.’
Their desire for a proper hierarchy was agreed, and a special congregation of cardinals were asked to meet and discuss the options for the English and Welsh Church. The congregation were certain that there would be a London-based metropolitan, with the elderly Bishop Thomas Walsh as Archbishop and Wiseman as his Coadjutor. In the meantime, Walsh was translated to the London District. The congregation negotiated for ten weeks, looking into ancient diocesan boundary lines. Additionally, they had asked Bishop William Bernard Ullathorne OSB to draw up a proposal, dividing the eight vicariates into 12 new dioceses. In a meeting with Ullathorne, shortly before he left Rome, Pope Pius IX expressed his hope that the bull declaring the Restoration of the Hierarchy would be published before he left for England. Pius was determined to avoid all conflict with the laws of the United Kingdom, but was aware that many English Catholics were keen that their ancient titles should not be ignored. At this stage, under the Emancipation Act of 1829, it was not illegal to use the unoccupied titles of the Church of England, hence the title Westminster, which had briefly been a diocese from 1540 to 1550.
The same night that Ullathorne left Rome, following the negotiations, a revolution broke out in the city, breaking into churches and ringing bells, falsely proclaiming an Italian victory over the Austrians. The Pope’s Minister, Count Pellegrino Rossi was assassinated and the Pope fled to Gaeta, delaying the restoration by another two years. However, the plans were firmly in place and the assumption in England was that the hierarchy had been restored. Bishop Walsh had died in February 1849, making Wiseman the Vicar Apostolic for London. When Wiseman was later called to Rome to receive the red hat, he lamented that it would likely mean a role in the Holy See, as he was considered too young for Westminster.
The Papal Bull Universalis Ecclesiæ was finally promulgated on Michaelmas, 29 September 1850. In his pastoral letter, ‘Given out of the Flaminian Gate of Rome’, on 7 October 1850, Wiseman did not hold back his joy, causing many to accuse the Church of papal aggression:
‘The great work, then, is complete; what you have long desired and prayed for is granted. Your beloved country has received a place among the fair Churches which, normally constituted, form the splendid aggregate of Catholic Communion: Catholic England has been restored to its orbit in the ecclesiastical firmament, from which its light had long vanished. […] Then truly is this day to us a day of joy and exaltation of spirit, the crowning day of long hopes, and the opening day of bright prospects.’
As the newly appointed Archbishop of Westminster and Apostolic Administrator of Southwark, Wiseman ordered Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and a Te Deum in every church across the two dioceses. However, before he could land in the country, there was outcry, sparking anti-Catholic sentiment.
Many bishops of the Church of England remarked on the ‘aggression’ of the Pope establishing a Catholic hierarchy in England, with the Archbishop of York calling it an ‘unparalleled aggression’. It should be noted, however, that hierarchies had been established in various British Colonies without any such backlash. Indeed, the Irish hierarchy continued throughout the Reformation and Penal Laws, albeit in clandestine and impoverished circumstances. All bar two of the Anglican bishops addressed Queen Victoria to make known their protest in what they described as an ‘unwarrantable insult’. Victoria was furious at the restoration, having remarked ‘Am I the Queen of England or am I not?’ She responded to the bishops’ address as follows:
‘I heartily concur with you […] in your attachment to the Protestant faith and to the great principles of civil and religious liberty. […] You may be assured of my earnest desire and firm determination under God’s blessing to maintain unimpaired the [principles of] religious liberty […] and to uphold, as its surest safeguard, the pure and Scriptural worship of the Protestant faith. […] You may rely on my determination to uphold alike the rights of my crown and the independence of my people against all aggressions and encroachments of any foreign power.’
Bishop Ullathorne tried to reign in some of the hysteria by arguing that, ‘As the only Catholic bishop now in England who has been immediately engaged in negotiating the re-establishment of our episcopal hierarchy’, a restored hierarchy was a much more English-friendly option. In his letter to The Times, dated 22 October 1850, Ullathorne argued that the restoration is ‘an act solely between the Pope and his own spiritual subjects, who are recognised as such by the Emancipation Act.’ He argued that, in temporal matters, Catholics in England are subject to the laws of the land, just as the Episcopalians in Scotland and the ‘Wesleyans’ in England, each of which divide the country into spiritual territories. By restoring the hierarchy, the Pope has removed himself as immediate bishop of the country and given that role to Englishmen, who are no longer the Pope’s vicars, but English bishops. The fallout from the Restoration of the Hierarchy led to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act being passed through Parliament in 1851. It was instantly a dead letter, and was abrogated in 1871 by a similarly named statute, although the use of such titles remained unauthorised.
Despite boasting a newly established hierarchy, England and Wales, along with Ireland, Scotland (hierarchy restored in 1878), and a number of other countries with non-Catholic governments, would remain as mission territories under the Propaganda Fide until Pope Pius X’s reforms in his 1908 constitution, Sapienti consilio.