As an example of Catholicism at work in a grittily multicultural area, take the Jesuit church in Stamford Hill in north London, where Hasidic Jews have been joined by Hispanic and Slavic newcomers. Gimcrack shops offer cash-remittance services to distant lands. And on Sundays, mass is said first in English, then in Spanish, then in Polish. If migrants are not satisfied by that, they have choices: what meets their eye as they leave mass is a smart new Pentecostal church, with worship in Portuguese as well as English. For anyone who thinks churches need competition to stay on their toes, this is a healthy sight.
Nor are hard-pressed migrants the only element in Catholic London’s rich diversity. Another contingent is formed by young, successful men and women whose style and theology are conservative: believers in “salvation by tweed alone”, as one clerical wag dubs them. Some have emerged from monastic private schools; others are one or two generations away from roots in Ireland or eastern Europe. Their views are often well to the right of an older group of churchgoers, who sign up readily to green and third-world causes.
Nor should their influence be underestimated.
A thoughtful and generous article. One small error – there were bishops between the Reformation and 1850, but they were called Vicars Apostolic.
The question the article does not address is why the Catholic Church in Britain attracts such hostility. There are ethnic slurs about the German Pope, for example, by secularisers on the left, that would normally never be tolerated. Another indicator: I get the impression that among some young adult circles it is trendy to be against the Catholic Church, and they have formed groups to protest the papal visit.
I was once at a conference where a scholar mused aloud why there had been relatively little antisemitism in Britain. She said it was because Catholics had historically been the Other. We might say that current hostility is partly history (eg the Armada, Protestants burnt at the stake) but so many people today know hardly any history. To me the parallel with antisemitism is thought-provoking. When commentators start raving about ‘the Catholic Church’ it often sounds to me like it has become a bogeyman, a fantasy, in their minds, that it has morphed into something huge and powerful out of all proportion to the reality. Certainly there seems to be resentment that the Church will not ‘change with the times’ and join the liberal, secular consensus. Certainly, also, the Church has had its failings: authoritarianism, plus of course the horrors of child abuse. But even taking these into account, I still find myself taken aback sometimes by the virulence of the anti-Catholic hostility, and wonder what is going on.