Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/656

 WESTMINSTER

59t)

WESTMINSTER

or chanting of the Divine Office. In this they are assisted by a choir composed of choristers, and also of boys who are maintained and trained in the song- school attached to the cathedral. The cathedral has thus been able to fulfil, under the fostering care of Cardinal Bourne, what its founder regarded as its missionary object — that it should be not only a fitting centre and summit to the structure of the Cathohc Church in England, but that it should stand in the midst of the capital of the British Empire as a worthy presentation of the dignity and beauty of Cathohc worship in liturgy, music, and ceremonial. Its success and the multitudes which assemble within its walls have attested the public appreciation of the lofty ideal which entered into its erection, and have more tlian justified the wisdom of Cardinal Vaughan and his predecessors. The cardinal also organized the researches which led to the decision given at Rome in 1896 on the subject of Anglican Orders.

During his time the number of priests was increased by 90, and the number of churches by 14 in London and 20 in the Home Counties. Mgr. Michael Barry succeeded Mgr. Gilbert as vicar-general and provost of the chapter in 1S95. Bishop Robert Brindle, D.S.O., was auxiliary bishop from 1899 till his appoint- ment to the See of Nottingham in 1901. He was succeeded as provost by Bishop Patterson, who had been Wiseman's intimate friend.

To the college at Mill Hill, which he had founded as a young priest, and from which the Faith had since been spread to so many wild places of the earth, the cardinal would retire from time to time to pray for blessing on the work of his later years in the archdio- cese; and there he breathed his last on 19 June, 1903.

D. Leo XIII died a month after Cardinal Vaughan, and one of the first acts of Pius X was the translation of Bishop Bourne, then in his forty-third year, to the See of Westminster. The new metropohtan, a Lon- doner by birth, had been Bishop of Southwark since 1897, having been consecrated Bishop of Epiphania, as coadjutor with right of succession, in the previous year. He was early marked as a leader of men by the abihty and energy with which he conducted St. John's Seminary, Wonersh, from its very foundation, endowing it with his high ecclesiastical ideals, and placing it amongst the leading colleges of England with a distinctive spirit of its own. It is almost the only seminary in England which is strictly Tridentine, i. e. which educates the priests of the diocese from boyhood in a purely ecclesiast ical college in the diocese. His training had fitted him to take the lead in eccle- siastical education; for his student days were passed in the long-established Enghsh colleges at Ushaw and Old Hall, in the seminaries of St. Thomas in London and St-Sulpice in Paris, and, finally, in the theological side of Louvain University. His six years' govern- ment of the Diocese of Southwark is especially memo- rable for the development of rescue and social works and for the opening of a very large number of new missions. It was already manifest that he possessed the great administrative ability, power of organiza- tion, and apostolic zeal which he has since displayed in a larger sphere of activity as Archbishop of West- minster and head of the Church in England. He was created cardinal on 27 Nov., 1911, and received the same titular church, of St. Pudentiana, as Cardinal Wiseman.

The rule of the fourth archbishop has been noted for tlie gathering together and organization of forces. Westminster Cathedral, opcne<l in 1903 and conse- crated in 1910, bus l)ecome the focus of diocesan activities and the great centre of English Cathohcism. It witnessed tlie celebration of the (loldeii Jubilee of the Hierarchy in 1910; and secvnv-d the wonderful su(!ce.ss of the Eucharistic Congress of 1908, at which seven cardinals, seventeen arclibishops, and over seventy bishops assisted. The diocesan seminary has

beer restored to its ancient home at Ware, and housed in a commodious modern building. The annual general meetings of the Catholic Truth Society have developed into national congresses, in which aU the Catholic works of the country unite. The Catholic Women's League, foimded in 1907, has banded Catho- lic women together for the furtherance of religious and intellectual interests, and of social work. The altar- servers of the country have been united in the Arch- confraternity of St. Stephen, founded by Cardinal Bourne in 1905. The Catholic Federation has been established, with the object of enabling Catholics to take combined action in securing the due represen- tation of Cathohc interests in public bodies; and thus concrete form has been given to the principles laid down by the first archbishop. At length, also. Catholic prison chaplains have, through the influence of Cardinal Bourne, been placed on an equaUty with the Protestant.

Cardinal Bourne has spoken with the voice of a great churchman who commands attention, on subjects of the first importance, e. g. the crisis of the French Church (1906), the Congo question (1909), temporal power (1911), present social unrest (1912), and the language question in Canada (1910 and 1912). "His is the straight word — wise, concihatory, never shrink- ing from a full .statement, but only from an unfair one." Two events in particular have revealed him as a statesman capable of rising superior to any emergency. One was the tactful, but firm and decisive, handling of the Government's eleventh-hour prohibition of the Eucharistic Congress procession. The other was the conduct of the campaign against the Education Bill of 1906. The chmax of this campaign was reached in the monster demonstration at the Albert HaU, where the archbishop, supported by the Duke of Norfolk and Mr. John Redmond, rallied Catholics of everj' pohti- cal creed to the defence of the schools.

The publication of the ApostoUc Constitution "Si qua est" on 28 Oct., 1911, marks a new epoch in the history of the Church in England. Hitherto the whole of England and Wales had formed one ecclesi- astical province, composed of one metropolitan and fifteen suffragan sees. In 1911 three provinces were formed: Westminster in the east, Birmingham in the west, and Liverpool in the north. Westminster retains the Churches of Northampton, Nottingham, Portsmouth, and Southwark, as suffragan. "Slore- over, for the preservation of unity in government and poUcy, to the Archbishop of Westminster are granted certain new distinctions of pre-eminence. He will be permanent chairman at the meetings of the bishops of all England and Wales ... he will take rank above the other two archbishops, and will, through- out all England and Wales, enjoy the privilege of wearing the pallium, of occupying the throne, and of having the cross carried before him. Lastly, in all deahngs with the supreme civil authority, he will in his person represent the entire episcopate of England and Wales. " The progress that the Church has made in England since the establishment of the hierarchy may be realized from the fact, pointed out by Cardi- nal Bourne, that two of the new provinces "each possess more churches and larger bodies of clergy than were contained in the whole country in 1850; while the third and smallest province falls but very little .short of the .same degree of expansion". In the Dio- cese of Westminster alone the number of priests has been nuiltiplied by five, the number of churches by four, and the Catholic popuhition has been increased by one hundred and fifty thous.and, during the same period of sixty years.

Mgr. WiUiam A. Johnson, Bishop of .■\rindela, died in 1909. In the words of Cardinal Bourne, he had been "the main pivot in the government of the arch- diocese for forty-four years". Born in London in 1832, he became assistant secretary to Cardinal