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Cardinal Herbert Vaughan: Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop of Salford, Founder of the Mill Hill Missionaries by Robert O'Neil, M.H.M. (review) - The Catholic Historical Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 84, Number 3, July 1998
- pp. 564-565
- 10.1353/cat.1998.0020
- Review
- Additional Information
564BOOK REVIEWS yoking of nation to Church was acutely uncomfortable. Canon Sheehan feared that materialism would overwhelm the Ireland he envisioned, and it has, though more slowly than he anticipated. Traditional Catholic Ireland lingered into the 1960's, when economic advances and the Church's own embrace of change effected its rapid demise. Ruth Fleischmann is not sympathetic to Canon Sheehan's ethos, nor admiring , in the main, of his literary qualities. His novels have the faults common to popular fiction: sentimentality, didacticism, and too great a reliance upon coincidence and melodrama, but his sacerdotal characters are often compelling. Fleischmann most creditably examines their complexities and the conflict, to which Sheehan was personally sensitive, between the intellectual tendencies or ambitions of many priests, and the dullness to ideas of most of those to whom they ministered, a disparity so often issuing in clerical autocracy. As Fleischmann indicates, Sheehan's social attitudes were comparable with those of numerous contemporary leaders; indeed, his novels are indispensable to any reconstruction ofthe sense of Ireland that prevailed early in this century among so many of its people. His writings bespoke an age in which the Revival itself arose, a context, now largely hidden, against which Ireland's betterremembered writers defined themselves. Ignorance of that very Catholic Ireland serves even its opponents poorly, and Fleischmann's revisiting one of its major proponents merits genuine praise. Robert Mahony The Catholic University ofAmerica Cardinal Herbert Vaughan: Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop of Salford, Founder of the Mill Hill Missionaries. By Robert O'Neil, ?.?.?. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. 1997. Pp. viii, 520. $49.50.) Throughout 1995, English Roman Catholics celebrated the centenary of Westminster Cathedral. Cardinal Herbert Vaughan (1832-1903) played a significant role in the planning and realization of this London cathedral. On June 29, 1895,Vaughan laid the foundation stone for the new cathedral, and his Requiem Mass inJune, 1903, was the first major liturgical function in Westminster Cathedral . This impressive church stands as a memorial to Vaughan's vision for English Catholics, but it represents only an aspect of his devotion to Roman Catholicism. Robert O'Neil's well researched biography of Cardinal Vaughan tells the story of the third Archbishop ofWestminster, Bishop of Salford, and the founder of the Mill Hill Missionaries in an objective and entertaining manner. Vaughan's Roman Catholic family background influenced his decision to choose the priesthood. After an education at Stonyhurst, Brugelette in Belgium, and Downside, Vaughan went to Rome to prepare for the priesthood. O'Neil's BOOK REVIEWS565 description of these formative years, especially the influence of his mother, Louisa Elizabeth, and Vaughan's poor health, is good. After ordination in 1854, he returned to England and was appointed vice-president at St. Edmund's College , Ware. The author then discusses the significant events in this cleric's life: his association with the Oblates of St. Charles, his early missionary dreams, travels to the Americas, the establishment of St. Joseph's College, his purchase of The Tablet, views on Vatican Council I and infallibility, and missionary activities in America. In 1872, Herbert Vaughan was consecrated as Bishop of Salford. Again, O'Neil does an excellent job in describing Vaughan's activities in this northern diocese such as temperance, education, rescue work among children, his feud with the Jesuits, and issues relating to Ireland. In 1892,Vaughan succeeded Henry Edward Manning as the third Archbishop ofWestminster. Beginning with the problems surrounding the construction and staffing ofWestminster Cathedral, the author gives an excellent account of the archbishop's role in the controversy over the validity ofAnglican Orders, Modernism , and Roman Catholic attendance at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge . The missions and rescue work also formed an important part of Vaughan's program atWestminster. The cardinal's health began to deteriorate in 1897, and the last chapter gives an intimate glimpse into the struggles Vaughan experienced during the final years of his life. The book's epilogue addresses some criticisms of the cardinal and re-emphasizes the vision he had for the Catholic Church in England. O'Neil's biography of Cardinal Vaughan is a readable and entertaining book which gives the reader an insight into the motives...