change, plus c’est la même chose – in this case problems about authority in the


English church. Fr Benson’s novel about the courageous continuity of Christian faith in the first Elizabethan era paints a heartening picture for those of us struggling for continuity in the second Elizabethan era. Great Keynes is a lightly disguised


Horsted Keynes. Te story, penned by nineteenth-century Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson’s convert son, is of the Roman Catholic conversion and martyrdom of a Tudor Archbishop’s


chaplain with


roots in mythical Great Keynes. Te author’s preface is signed ‘Tremans, Horsted Keynes, October 27, 1904’. His mother, Edward Benson’s widow, is commemorated in the porch of my own church of St Giles, Horsted Keynes. With the Church of England in


turmoil over legislation for women bishops and the ripple effect of international fall-out over homosexual unions, what beter escape for vacation


The Federation of Catholic Priests


Priests’ Pilgrimage to Walsingham Monday 11 October to


Thursday 14 October 2010 Theme:


Reclaiming Holiness:


Keble, Pusey and Newman Speakers include:


Bishop Lindsay Urwin OGS Fr Jonathan Baker Fr Owen Higgs


Fr William Davage


Chaplain to the Pilgrimage: Br Paschal SSF


Enquiries:


Fr Brian Tubbs The Vicarage Palace Place


Paignton TQ3 3AQ Tel: 01803 559059


This Pilgrimage/Conference should be eligible for CME funding


Ø The Daily Office and Mass


Ø Pilgrimage from the Slipper Chapel to the Shrine Church


Ø Renewal of Baptismal and Priestly Vows


Ø Pilgrimage devotions Ø All FCP members and friends welcome Ø Wives and non-members welcome


30 ■ newdirections ■ July 2010


reading than a novel that turns the clock back to a similar turmoil over authority over 400 years ago, esecially when the book is based in one’s own Sussex village? Hugh Benson wrote at the apex of


the Oxford Movement that atempted recovery of the catholic heritage of the Church of England. Like John Henry Newman Fr Benson became a celebrity convert from Anglicanism, one whose investigation of Anglican credentials led him to what he saw to be a sounder authority. Fr Benson was feted in England and America and that fame lies behind this American reprint of his novel. Te hero, Anthony Norris, and his


sister Isabel make separate pilgrimages from Puritan to Papal allegiance over the course of the story. Te decisive rejection of the Pope as head of the English Church is followed by the stripping of churches and a pyre of vestments and statues in Great Keynes. Te plight of faithful Christians is one of divided loyalty between age-old tested devotion and innovation alleged to be in the name of the Gosel. By What Authority? portrays people


of integrity across the divide, the best of whom wrestle to balance the claims of love and truth. Te worst exploit the divide with a cynical eye to worldly profit. Fr Benson provides an inspirational portrait of Edmund Campion, the scholar Jesuit known to Queen Elizabeth who is racked at Tyburn. Puritan sympathizer Archbishop Grindal is one of a few Protestants who


shine out in the


book. Anthony Norris moves from the Archbishop of Canterbury’s court to courting recusants such as Campion and engaging with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola which turn him Christward and Romeward. Te tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth’s atempted


via media and the Spanish Armada are covered, woven into the faith journeys of the principal characers. Is it the case though, as the editor’s preface claims, that


‘Benson depicts the rise and


entrenchment of the nation state and the replacement of a supernatural Lord and Savior (sic) with an earthly Virgin Queen’? No punches pulled in such a


sentiment but it is not a fair summary of the book itself, which is more nuanced


FOLLOWING STEP by step where the


kindly light led, Newman was taken eventually to where he had always longed to be. From an evangelical Anglicanism under an early tutor (whom he always remembered with affection and gratitude); through an unsecific reluctance to say anything intemperate against the Roman Church; by an argumentative temperament and a breadth and penetration of intellect, from one wing of the Church of England to its opposite extreme within the same church; and finally to an inability to deny that the Roman Catholic Church was the one true church, with an apostolicity that the Church of England – for all its piety, beauty and virtue – lacked. From that point there was no alternative to conversion.


in its criticism of the English Church’s pilgrimage through reformation. Te most haunting asect of the book for the troubled Anglo-Catholic is its title, By What Authority? Tis is the question heavily pursuing the Church of England’s children today as they face the ‘reimaging’ of their church for the modern era. Tat reimaging seems to be facilitated by the loss of sacred authority consequent upon the Reformation, as Hugh Benson would no doubt concur. Te implementing of women’s


ordination and same-sex union blessing seems as worldly a reimaging of the church as the clearing out of vestments and statues in the past. Fr Benson lived to see the faith of the church through the ages honoured once again in the Church of England but not sufficiently to retain his own allegiance. A century on from his day ‘the ancient church of this land catholic and reformed’ is experiencing extraordinary changes of questionable authority. Like the hero of Benson’s novel we have to move through these keeping integrity and sacrificing ourselves as best we can before sacrificing Christian principle.


Te Revd Dr John Twisleton is Rector of Horsted Keynes,


West Sussex in Chichester Diocese


JOHN HENRY NEWMAN A Very English Saint


Peter M. Chisnall Gracewing, 312 pp, pbk 978 0 85244 683 6, £14.99


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