In memoriam A.H.M., part the third

Melancholicus has now finished reading Martyr of Ritualism, and is still infused with an after-glow of awe at the extraordinary life and labours of its protagonist.

If only a tenth part of our Roman clergy were as energetic, devoted and holy as Father Mackonochie, how different would the Church now be!

In any case, Melancholicus shall now surcease from comparing the Roman Catholic clergy unfavourably with Mackonochie, lest readers who disdain Anglo-Catholicism consider such talk impious and altogether without merit.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Melancholicus shall now conclude his reminiscences of Father A.H.M. with some photographs of the man and his companions so as to furnish his readers with some flavour of this martyr of ritualism even if they have not read his life.

Father Alexander Heriot Mackonochie at the height of his powers

Mackonochie as a young priest, probably in the St. George’s Mission days. (This profile looks to Melancholicus not unlike a certain Simon N. from Limerick—although perhaps mutual friends of ours would disagree)

Father Charles Fuge Lowder, founder of the Society of the Holy Cross (Societas Sanctae Crucis), to which Mackonochie belonged

Father Arthur Stanton as a young man. Stanton (with biretta!) was one of Mackonochie’s curates at St. Alban’s, ministering there for almost his whole priestly life. He died in 1913

The clergy of St. Alban’s, Holborn, in 1874, the same year in which parliament passed the notorious Public Worship Regulation Act—which, incidentally, is still on the statute books though honoured more in the breach than in the observance. Front row (from left): H. A. Walker, A.H.M., Arthur Stanton, H. E. Willington. Back row: H. G. Maxwell, E. F. Russell, G. R. Hogg. Note that nearly all the clergy are either wearing or holding birettas. Melancholicus can’t get over the birettas

Mackonochie’s cross marking the spot where he died in the Mamore Forest not far from Ballachulish, Scotland, on 15 December 1887

Footnote: astoundingly, Father Mackonochie is omitted from the liturgical calendar provided by Common Worship; despite the impact of his ministry on the Church of England and his legacy which survives to this day, he has no holy day of his own. Yet undeservers such as Martin Luther are commemorated—scroll down to October 31 (Luther is commemorated on Halloween—are we at liberty to take such tongue-in-cheek?)

A.H.M. reditus

Melancholicus is still racing through Martyr of Ritualism. He is right near the end of it now.

In his declining years, in the autumn of 1884, Father Mackonochie went so far ‘Romish’ as to preach, at the invitation of certain of his brother clergy, a retreat for priests.

The experience was not altogether a happy one for Mackonochie, for he was conscious of the failing of his intellect due to the fatigue of a life given to extraordinarily hard work among the urban poor, not to mention the seemingly endless prosecutions that placed so great a strain on the last twenty-five years of his life. His ability to preach and deliver conferences was not what it was, and as might be expected he was embarrassed by this deterioration, even if he took it in a spirit of Christian resignation. He was not an old man—he had not yet turned sixty—but he was worn out from his labours nonetheless, with the diminished vigour of a man at least twenty years older. His friend, bishop Chinnery-Haldane of Argyll and the Isles, recalled that there had been “a certain amount of hesitation and perhaps a little confusion at times, but what he said was always helpful and edifying”.

In any case, the retreat was judged a success by those who attended it, and would have been followed up with another that December had Mackonochie been both willing and able.

But reading this episode made Melancholicus realise what he probably needs most right now, namely a retreat.

It is a long time since he went on retreat. Retreats at the beginning of every semester were mandatory when Melancholicus was in seminary. These were week-long affairs, preached by a variety of persons, sometimes handled by more than one person simultaneously. Some of them were good, others mediocre. The last retreat he attended was in January 2005, at the commencement of his final semester in clericatu. But Melancholicus would now welcome the opportunity to go on retreat, with daily Mass (clean, please, or better still, Trad), silence, spiritual conferences (wholesome and solid, based on the writings of the saints, not on dubious fluff about “our brokenness” and “healing”), self-examination, and of course confession of sins.

Since leaving seminary in 2005, he has neglected the practice of going on retreat very properly. This is due in large part to the non-availability of opportunities in Ireland to go on an authentically Catholic retreat. Just take a look at the website for this sty of heretical nonsense and the reader will have some idea of the kind of drivel on offer. Expensive drivel, too. Look at the prices they charge for a weekend of the spiritual equivalent of tinted steam, and from which one would not likely come away a better person, with grace in one’s soul, and with resolutions to acquire some lacking virtue, or conquer some besetting vice. This place might possibly be the worst stronghold of self-centred, pseudo-Christian New-Agery in the country, but it is probably mimicked to a greater or lesser degree by other establishments and religious houses who offer to the public such retreats and days of recollection.

Some rare trad retreats have occasionally been preached in Ireland over the last few years; one must keep one’s ears close to the ground to get wind of such in the secretive world in which trads are by force of circumstance compelled to operate. Happily, there are rumours of such a retreat being planned for next spring in a Cistercian monastery by a certain industrious young man whom Melancholicus shall not embarrass by divulging his name; but it will be an excellent opportunity for spiritual spring cleaning, especially in view of the fact that Melancholicus shall be entering the married state a couple of months later.

Should any of Melancholicus’ Irish readers be interested in attending such, he shall post the details as soon as they become available.

In Memoriam A.H.M.

At present Melancholicus is reading a book.

This used to happen more regularly than it does at present owing to his unfortunate discovery last year of this wonderful piece of software—I say unfortunate because though an immensely enjoyable pastime, Rome: Total War has proved to be a tremendous thief of time and hence an occasion of sin.

But back to reading. The book in question is called Martyr of Ritualism, by Michael Reynolds, and was first published in 1965. It is a life of Father Alexander Heriot Mackonochie (1825-87), vicar of St. Alban’s, Holborn.

This book is absorbing reading. Melancholicus found it gathering dust in a little-visited corner of the university library, and when he went to borrow it he discovered with some satisfaction that he was the very first reader to do so. It has been in his possession for only two weeks, but he is already on the final chapter.

Martyr of Ritualism is in many ways a powerful and moving story. The ritualists, as they became known, were the immediate heirs of the Tractarian school of the Church of England in the middle years of the nineteenth century. If men like Keble, Pusey and Newman laid the foundations by setting forth the intellectual basis for the Catholicism of the English Church, it was left to those who followed after to implement the practical consequences of the Oxford Movement. The gradual Catholicising (some might—and did—say ‘Romanising’) of the English Church was a protracted and often painful affair; those whose pioneering labours in the liturgical and pastoral expression of rediscovered Catholic doctrines suffered much from the harrassment of protestant agitators such as the Church Association, as well as from unsympathetic bishops. Some prominent ritualists such as Mackonochie were prosecuted repeatedly for illegal liturgical acts and appurtenances, such as vestments, Confiteor and Last Gospel, ceremonial mixing of the chalice, wafers, the lavabo, hiding of the manual acts, the sign of the cross, the sanctus bell, incense, portable lights, lights upon the holy table, holy water, the blessing of palms, Tenebrae, the paschal candle, the stations of the cross, the observance of days not appointed to be observed by the Prayer Book, the eastward (ad orientem) position, the elevation of the host and chalice, and the recitation of the Canon of the Mass. Although Mackonochie was never actually imprisoned, other ritualists such as Arthur Tooth and Richard Enraght were sent to gaol for their liturgical defence of Catholic doctrine (at least as they understood it). They were also pilloried in the newspapers, often becoming the victims of caricatures and cartoons in such publications as Punch and Vanity Fair. But, in marked contrast to the lily-livered milquetoast prelates of the contemporary Roman and Anglican Churches, they held their ground, not allowing fear of persecution or media ridicule to budge them one inch from their principles. Mackonochie was prepared to suffer ceaseless litigation, suspension, deprivation and even imprisonment for those eucharistic ceremonies he recognised as integral to the liturgical expression of the Faith.

What a breathtaking contrast to the thoroughly secular, de-catholicised and effeminate clergy of our own day.

For all their portrayal in satirical cartoons as precious ‘lace and holy water priests’, the Anglo-Catholic ritualists of the 1860s and 1870s were tough guys. Heroes. They were men. Manly men. And they had a tremendous appetite for work and ministry in some of the poorest and most deprived slums in England.

What are we to think when so many of the ceremonial items, vestments, acts and gestures for which Father Mackonochie fought so hard and suffered so much, would just a hundred years later be jettisoned without so much as a backward glance by an entire generation of supposedly ‘Catholic’ priests and bishops drunk on the fanaticism of ‘aggiornamento’, and all that hated word connotes?

What would Father Mackonochie have had to say about the kind of Mass Melancholicus witnessed yesterday in the chapel of the university?

It is a scandal. Truly a scandal.