Catholic Progressives in England after Vatican II

Chapter 3: English Catholics and the Establishment

T H R E E English Catholics and the Establishment THE OLD GUARD In contrast to the anti-establishment temperament of radical Distributism , Catholic sentiment after World War II was markedly more supportive of the prevailing cultural and political structures of the English social order. Bishop David Mathew in the third edition of his authoritative study of Catholicism in England (1955) recognized a palpably conservative , Tory inclination among the more prosperous Catholic social strata. This was symbolized, in his view, by the considerable influence of Douglas Woodruff, the rightist owner-editor of the highly respected lay Catholic journal The Tablet. Attached to this broadly conservative frame of mind were what Mathew called those Catholics in the managerial class “who had separated themselves from the Irish nationalismin -England which had so often been their father’s creed.”1 There was a distinct solidarity of opinion or“corporate quality”to their outlook, said Mathew, that was forged by General Francisco Franco’s struggle against the Communists in Spain’s civil war. The consensus among English 42 upper- and middle-class Catholics, the great majority of clergy, and virtually all members of the hierarchy (with the exception of the bishop of Pella) was that Franco was holding back atheistic Marxism in defense of European Christianity. In short, Mathew concluded that the English Catholic community had been moved to political consensus by accepting the notion that the Spanish imbroglio was a religious war. This was an assertion propounded by the influential Catholic journalist Douglas Jerrold,Woodruff’s paper, and the writings of other right-wing Distributist epigoni of Hilaire Belloc.2 Those Catholics who had a more nuanced view of the Spanish affair and were critical of Franco’s pro-Fascist policies and unsavory allies (the Dominicans in Blackfriars, Eric Gill, and the left-wing Distributists) were minority voices and had little impact on what Mathew saw as a highly positive solidarity of thought on the political right.What English Catholics learned through the putative“sagacious”editorial guidance of Woodru ff and Jerrold was to hold firm against Russian imperialism in foreign affairs and to stand guard against any manifestations of Marxism on the domestic scene.3 What Mathew identified as a consensus in Catholic thinking given focus by the Spanish Civil War downplays the other, darker side of that political coin, namely, the blindness to the evils of fascism and sympathy toward authoritarianism among English Catholics throughout the 1930s. Those whom Mathew honored were at least partly responsible for this.In 1937,for example,Frank Sheed published a book by J.K.Heydon , Fascism and Providence, that spoke of common ground between the Catholic Evidence Guild and what was considered Catholic-inspired fascist movements throughout Europe: both were parallel forces for righteousness in working for the creation of the corporate state.4 Catholics throughout the 1930s had the reputation of being philo-fascist. Indeed, in Leeds, Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), was known as “the Pope” due to the large number of Catholics who supported his movement. The BUF noted in its journal that fascists and Catholics had much in common since both were opposed to democracy.5 Although the English Catholic hierarchy was highly critical of the Nazis after the outbreak of war, it continued to resist condemnation of English Catholics and the Establishment 43 44 THE ENGLISH CULTURAL SETTING authoritarian regimes in Spain and Portugal, and it seldom said anything negative about various other movements on the political right.There was a certain irony to this position. For example, throughout World War II, Cardinal Arthur Hinsley of Westminster kept a signed photograph of General Franco on his desk. In a personal note thanking Franco, moreover , Hinsley hailed the dictator as the“great defender of the true Spain” and valued his “likeness as a treasure.”6 All the while, Franco’s benefactor , Adolf Hitler, had placed Cardinal Hinsley on the Nazi death list. Hinsley’s double standard could be explained by Cardinal John Heenan, who, after visiting Barcelona for the 1952 Eucharistic Conference,, asserted that“Franco’s Spain is a dictatorship with a difference.”7 This kind of thinking, claimed J.M. Cameron, had essentially crippled the political vision of his fellow Catholics. English Catholics, claimed Cameron in a 1960 discussion of religion and politics, continued to be imprisoned by a number of myths, forms of false consciousness that kept them at...