Converts: From Oscar Wilde to Muriel Spark, why so many became Catholic in the 20th Century,
by Melanie McDonagh
(Yale University Press, £25.00 / €28.99)
Melanie McDonagh is an Arklow woman, educated at Cambridge after school in Ireland, who has had a stellar career in London journalism. Among other accomplishments as a columnist, she has carved out for herself a niche as a defender of traditional Catholicism.
In this, a fascinating debut book, she examines the phenomenon of conversions to Catholicism in 20th century Britain, focusing on major figures who made this spiritual journey.
Some are well-known names, such as writers Robert Hugh Benson, G. K. Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Siegfried Sassoon; others treated, such as the eccentric philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe, may be less known but provide good copy.
The author sets herself the task of finding out why they decided “to submit to Rome.” This is no easy task; people are not always frank about their motivation and may not even be certain themselves what moved them in an area of life where emotion jostles with reason.
Convert
Makers
There is also a chapter headed “Convert Makers” on priests such as Dominican Vincent McNabb, Jesuit Martin D’Arcy and the scholarly chaplain Ronald Knox, all of whom instructed prospective converts who came to them.
The flow of converts dates back beyond the 20th century covered in this book to the middle of the 19th century, when the Oxford Movement sought to revive in the established Anglican Church the beliefs and practices of the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, while continuing to reject the authority of the pope.
Oxford don John Henry Newman, who was a leader of these “High Anglicans”, converted to Rome in 1845. His example and arguments set out in his book Apologia Pro Vita Sua were responsible for a flow of conversions, a good number of them among the upper class of Victorian Britain; these included some from the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, such as the Earls of Granard and Dunraven and the Whig parliamentarian William Monsell, who became Lord Emly.
The first convert highlighted in this book, Oscar Wilde, was a child of the Ascendancy resident in England from student days at Oxford”
Those converting risked a hostile reaction, whether motivated by a more militant Protestantism or a British nationalism that viewed Catholicism, with its allegiance to a foreign pontiff, as disloyal. That feeling died away as the twentieth century ground on.
The first convert highlighted in this book, Oscar Wilde, was a child of the Ascendancy resident in England from student days at Oxford. He had long flirted with Rome before being received into the Church on his deathbed in Paris in 1900 by Dubliner Fr Cuthbert Dunne.
Less well-known is that Wilde was followed many years later by his former lover and nemesis Lord Alfred Douglas, and by John Gray, the original of his character Dorian Gray. John Gray ended his days as a parish priest in Glasgow.
Redemption
The author notes in her introduction that Catholicism is a religion that appeals to homosexuals, citing the idea of transgression and redemption, of grace and atonement, as well as the confession of sin, as reasons for this.
Conversions more than doubled during the First World War. Chaplains such as Fr Willie Doyle and Fr Frank Browne (famously described by Field Marshal Earl Alexander as the bravest man he had ever met) were admired for the risks they ran to minister on the battlefield to dying soldiers. This won converts.
However, the author adds that “the notion that Catholic chaplains were braver individually than their counterparts in other denominations does not stand up to statistical scrutiny”. The casualties among Anglican chaplains were of the same proportions despite their being prohibited from going forward of Brigade headquarters.
The author traces from church records the growth of conversions from some 3000 per year in 1910 to over 15,000 in 1960 on the eve of the Second Vatican Council”
There is little in this book about Irish converts. One mentioned, albeit only in connection with the influence of Robert Hugh Benson, is Monaghan man Sir Shane Leslie. Leslie also deserted the Unionist cause long championed by his family and stood for the constituency of Londonderry as a nationalist in the General Election of 1910. He could be numbered among those who converted primarily to identify themselves with the Catholic majority and be counted more Irish for doing so. This was a motivation for conversion that had no counterpart in England.
The author traces from church records the growth of conversions from some 3000 per year in 1910 to over 15,000 in 1960 on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. One would need more examination of individual cases to determine how far this growth was based on unaided individual conviction, or the result of “mixed marriages” against the background of a growing Catholic population in Britain, enhanced by immigrants.
Conversions have fallen dramatically in the years since the Second Vatican Council ended. Is it, I wonder, that a church less wedded to its past rituals that now no longer proclaims boldly that there is no salvation outside its gates, is less attractive to outsiders searching for a certain guide what to believe and how to live their lives?
