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The Jesuit College, Manchester, 18751

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Oliver P. Rafferty S.J.
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Extract

In an Apostolic Constitution, dated 8 May 1881, Pope Leo XIII sought to regulate the relationship between diocesan bishops and religious orders. In the words of Herbert Vaughan the Papal pronouncement ‘sums up and ends a recent controversy on matters of discipline affecting the working of the Church in Great Britain’. Romanos Pontifices represented a personal triumph for Vaughan. He had assiduously campaigned at Rome to have the freedom of religious orders restricted, and their operations subject to the supervision of the local bishop. The Pope’s document directs that members of religious orders may not open a house in any diocese without the explicit permission of the bishop. Nor, in future, would it be possible for a religious congregation to convert existing institutions to other use without the consent of the episcopal authorities. The ruling of the document was an adjudication affecting all religious orders, and demanded complete obedience to all its details. The only religious order mentioned by name was the Society of Jesus. It, too, was to be subject to this ordinance in spite of its claims to be exempt from such interference in the running of its affairs.

Type
Other
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , October 1990 , pp. 291 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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Footnotes

1

A large number of documents concerning the Jesuit presence in Manchester are kept in ABPSI. These consist mostly of letters between the main protagonists. None of the material is catalogued. It is lodged at ABPSI RY/2/1 and RY/2/2. In addition there are several privately printed documents, two composed by the Salford Diocesan authorities and two by the Jesuits. These are as follows:

The Claim; The Bishop of Salford’s Reply: Uncanonical Reopening of the Jesuit College and Summary of the Whole Case, 1875; Facts and Documents relating to the College of the Society of Jesus in Manchester, 1875; The Case. An earlier draft of the latter document is entitled The English Jesuit College Manchester. All these documents may be found at APBSI RY/2/2.

References

Notes

2 The Tablet, Vol. 57, No. 2145, 21 May 1881, p. 801.

3 ‘Notwithstanding also the statutes and customs of all Orders, Congregations, Institutes and Societies whatsoever, including the Society of Jesus, and setting aside therefore their own privileges, induits and apostolic letters to the contrary of this constitution, even if these privileges have been several times renewed’. Cf. The Tablet, Vol. 57, p. 837. The whole Constitution is printed in both Latin and English in that issue of the paper.

4 Not the ‘early 1860’s’ as claimed in a recent article by John Marmion, ‘Catholic Manchester’, ‘Priests and People, August 1987, p. 195.

5 Subsequently Bishop Vaughan, Turner’s immediate successor, was to claim that the Jesuits had agreed to spend £5,000 on the school. The Jesuits denied that they had made such a commitment; cf. The Bishop of Salford’s Reply: Uncanonical Re-Opening of the Jesuit College and Summary of the whole Case, 1875, p. 6.

6 The Case, pp. 7 and 11.

7 The Case, p. 10.

8 Snead-Cox, vol. I, p. 273.

9 Letters written by Harper and Porter are preserved in ABPSI RY/2/2. These testimonials were written twelve years after the events to which they refer.

10 The Case, p. 26.

11 The Claim, p. 13.

12 The Claim, pp. 12 and 29.

13 This memo was drawn up by Bénoit at Vaughan’s request in October 1873, by which time the Jesuits had been back in Manchester for some six years.

14 The Case, p. 15.

15 This document, published anonymously, is the work of Fr. Peter Gallwey. There is a scarcely legible draft in Gallwey’s hand in ABPSI.

16 The Case, p. 18.

17 Facts and Documents relating to the College of the Society of Jesus in Manchester (London, 1875), p. 7.

18 The Bishop of Salford’s Reply (see footnote 5), p. 4.

19 Porter’s letter is reproduced in The Case, p. 26.

20 The Claim, p. 7.

21 Edwards, Francis, The Jesuits in England from 1580 to the Present Day (1985), p. 199 Google Scholar, wrongly describes Weld as Provincial at this time.

22 A note of the Jesuit Provincial consultation held at Oxford on 17 December 1874, states that one of the reasons for the opening of the school in the first place was that two scholastics ‘needed employment.’ One is tempted to speculate that the history of the Roman Catholic Church in England would have been different if the two young men in question could have been found gainful employment elsewhere. Gallwey’s ‘consultors’ were the Jesuit priests: J. Clare, J. Johnston, G. Porter and W. Waterworth. I would like to thank the Reverand Kevin Fox, S.J. for drawing my attention to the Consultation Minutes as a source of information for the events surrounding the Manchester school affair. The Consultation Minutes are kept in the Jesuit Provincial’s office in Farm Street, London, and are not normally considered to be part of the ordinary archival material. They are not as a rule available for inspection.

23 The Case, p. 77.

24 Ibidem.

25 The Claim, p. 30.

26 The Claim, pp. 15–16.

27 The Case, p. 109.

28 Snead-Cox, p. 277.

29 The Case, p. 30.

30 The Case, p. 135.

31 This was in fulfilment of the promise Beckx gave to Vaughan in his letter of 25 May. He states that he will ‘… write to the superiors of the Society in England that the school in Manchester may be closed at the end of the current month’; see The Case, p. 135. Beckx was being optimistic about the length of time needed to send a letter from Italy to England. He was, however, as good as his word and wrote to Gallwey from Rome on 27 May. The letter is kept in the ABPSI. My thanks are due to the archivist, the Reverand G. Holt, S.J., for help in tracing this and many other documents.

32 The Bishop of Salford’s Reply, (see footnote 5), p. 18.

33 See Whitehead, Maurice, ‘The English Jesuits and Episcopal Authority: the Liverpool Test Case, 1840–43’, Recusant History, October 1986, pp. 197–219 Google ScholarPubMed, for a detailed summary of the case.

34 Ward, Bernard, The Sequel to Catholic Emancipation (London, 1915), pp. 28 et seqGoogle Scholar.

35 The Case, p. 57. Gallwey suggests that Franchi was appalled at the idea that the Jesuits seemed reluctant to assist in middle class education; cf. The Case, p. 83.

36 The Claim, p. 16.

37 The Case, p. 34.

38 Ward, Wilfrid, The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (2 vols., London, 1899), vol. II, p. 116 Google Scholar. Ward (p. 115) makes the diplomatic observation that, ‘the rule of the various communities did not contemplate their members undertaking ordinary mission work among the poor.’

39 Norman, Edward, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984), p. 283 Google Scholar. Manning stated in an article in 1863 that, ‘an adequate system of Education for the poor and the middle classes,’ was an urgent priority for the English Catholic Church; cf. The Dublin Review 1863, pp. 139 et seq.; also McClelland, V. A., Cardinal Manning: His Public Life and Influence 1865–1892 (London, 1962), p. 51.Google Scholar

40 This is McClelland’s judgment; cf. op. cit., p. 53. Such a view is complicated by Manning’s own testimony. Toward’s the end of his life he records in a notebook: ‘I have had none of the traditional anti-Jesuit prejudices. Before I was in the Faith, my whole sympathy was with St. Ignatius and his sons’; cf. Edwards, op. cit., p. 302. What is certain is that he considered the loss of the English to Catholicism to be a direct result of the actions of the Jesuits from 1580–1773.

41 Manning saw the Jesuits as aristocratic, élitist, absolutist and arbitrary; cf. Gray, Robert, Cardinal Manning: A Biography, (1985), pp. 215ffGoogle Scholar. Gray is also of the opinion that Manning disliked the Jesuit influence with the educated laity, because this tended to work to the disadvantage of the secular clergy.

42 See Manning, H. E., The Work and Wants of the Catholic church in England, 1863 Google Scholar, in Miscellanies (3 vols., London, 1877–1888), vol. I, p. 68. See also Norman, op. cit., p. 254. Manning’s attitude contrasted sharply with that of Newman, in how each viewed the role of Oxford and Cambridge in English life and the function of university education for Catholics. Newman rejected what McClelland describes as the ‘new scientific liberalism’ symbolized, for example, by the University of London; see McClelland, op. cit., p. 111. Newman declined Manning’s invitation to be part of the Senate of the Catholic University College at Kensington, because of the proposed relationship, for degree purposes, with the University of London; cf. Newman’s letter to Manning, 24 November 1873, The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by C. S. Dessain and T. Gornall (1974), Vol. 26, p. 390.

43 Gray, op. cit., p. 253.

44 Purcell, E. S., Life of Cardinal Manning (2 vols., 1895), vol. II, p. 506.Google Scholar

45 Snead-Cox, vol. I, p. 243.

46 Leslie, Shane, Henry Edward Manning: His Life and Labours (1921), p. 302.Google Scholar

47 ‘Cardinal Manning and the Jesuits’, The Month, Vol. 137, 1921, p. 482.

48 Letters and Notices (the house journal of the English Province of the Society of Jesus), Vol. 29, 1907–1908, p. 50.

49 Memoris of Father P. Gallwey S.J., (1913), p. xi.

50 Pollen, op. cit., (see footnote 47), p. 482.

51 See, for example, Sydney F. Smith, S.J., ‘The Life of Cardinal Vaughan’, I, The Month, Vol. 116, 1910, p. 16.

52 Snead-Cox, vol. I, p. 304.

53 Snead-Cox, vol. II, p. 25.

54 The Case, p. 101.

55 The Claim, p. 4.

56 The Claim, pp. 13–14.

57 ABPSI. RY/2/1. It must also however be stated that Vaughan for his part seems to have held no lasting animosity towards the Society. As early as December 1875 he invited the Jesuits to open a middle school in Accrington. He further invited the Fathers at Stonyhurst to be part of his ‘Academia’ in Manchester; cf. Consultation Minutes, 30 December 1875 (see footnote 22).

58 The Manchester affair had all the ingredients which plagued the evolution of Catholic education from the early mid-century on. An added complication was the activity of the Jesuits with regard to the proposed Catholic University College in Kensington, which was struggling for life almost simultaneously with the efforts of the Society to bring to birth the Manchester school. The bishops were most anxious to ensure adequate educational provision at the secondary, but also at the tertiary level; (cf. their Joint Pastoral from the Fourth Provincial Synod of Westminster on the matter.) To this end, given what was regarded, by some, as the unsuitability of Oxford and Cambridge, it was decided to set up a University College. The Jesuits were invited to take part in this enterprise. By October 1873 Manning was able to report that the proposal for the College had widespread support. The justification for the project is too detailed to indicate here in any substantial way. Briefly however, whilst the affiliation of the more established Catholic schools such as Stonyhurst and Ushaw to the University of London in the years after 1838 provided a stimulus to greater educational attainment, a conviction remained that what was needed was a University College which was not simply an appendage to the secondary schools. In establishing the College at Kensington, Manning, Vaughan and others hoped that at last English Roman Catholics would have a college of higher learning with a university and Catholic ethos which would involve secular and regular clergy and laymen in its administration. Apart from the old aristocratic prejudices against institutions of higher learning other than Oxbridge, the beginnings of the College at Kensington were marred by a dispute between the Jesuits (and to a lesser extent the other religious orders) and the hierarchy, over the precise role they would have in the running of the new University College. Almost as of right, the Jesuits believed that they should have the Chair of Philosophy, and that of Theology, with the possibility of having professional staff in other faculties. Fr. Weld, (although in a minority on the question) was especially concerned that the Order should train some of its brightest members in the natural sciences, with a view to their teaching these disciplines. Whilst the bishops wanted the co-operation of the Jesuits for Kensington, they were equally sure that the College should not become a glorified Jesuit seminary. The Jesuits decided to have no part in the venture, hoping instead to have a University College of their own in or near London. The refusal of the Society to support the Catholic University College, was an action unlikely to prosper their educational ambitions in Salford. The whole story of this affair is told by McClelland, V. A. in English Roman Catholics and Higher Education 1830–1903 (1973)Google Scholar.

59 The Bulls concerned are Regimini militantis Ecclesiae, of 27 September 1540, which was subsequently confirmed by Pope Julius III in the Bull Exposcit Debitum, 21 July 1550. Pius VII restored the Jesuit order with the Bull Sollicitudo omnium Ecclesiarum of 7 August 1814.

60 This is contained in a summary of a letter found in Ireland in 1912, and printed in Letters and Notices, Vol. 32 1913–1914, p. 350. The letter is from Fr. General Beckx, to Fr. James Jones S.J., who succeeded Fr. Gallwey as Provincial in 1876. Unfortunately there is no copy of the original letter in ABPSI.