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The most significant thing about Cardinal Heenan’s autobiography is its preface. He cannot write the whole truth, he tells us, because ministers of Christ must keep confidences without limit of time; and he has written his own life-story because that was less trouble than the granting of frequent interviews to a prospective biographer. In other words, he regards the history of a man’s life as total recall tempered with discretion. How well does this dubious conception serve him ?
Best, obviously enough, in narratives of a circumscribed and picturesquely memorable kind. Days in the infants’ class; a schoolboy’s escapade; anecdotes of life at Rome or in a parish; episodes in a journey to Russia. Some of the anecdotes are entertaining; of some (especially those of an edifying character), the best to be said is that c'est la guerre, mais ce n'est pas magnifique. However, it is good to have the criminally bad diet at Ushaw set down for posterity by a cardinal, while his account of The Day World War II Broke Out should find a place in any anthology of such narratives. The book proceeds in this style from schooldays to Rome and from Rome to ordination in 1930 and parish work. Before and during the war the author became involved, not only in local affairs, but in public speaking and writing. There follows the resurrection of the Catholic Missionary Society in 1947, retreat work for Clergy (of which the unfortunate The People's Priest was the precipitate) and the author’s appointment in 1951 to the See of Leeds. We are promised a second volume. What kind of man emerges from the first?
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- Copyright © 1972 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Not the Whole Truth, by Heenan, John C., Archbishop of Westminster. London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1971, 335Google Scholar pp. No price stated, but £2.75.
1 Note how, during his Irish journey and its moral uncertainties, the author put his finger at once on two evils: social injustice, and a rift between priests and people. In such appraisals of personal morality he speaks with a justified assurance; it is there that he feels most at home.
1 I wonder if the most disturbing factor in the whole controversy over Pius XII's reticence is always appreciated. It is not that he kept (or did not keep) silent; it is that, with the rarest of exceptions, nobody thought the issue worth raising until Hochhuth's play. The C.T.S. then published a pamphlet defending Pius; but only then, It took a long time to see that it was his business.
2 To move down to a very different moral level, the Irish priest Fahey was able to pubfish, with an Imprimatur, poisonously anti‐Semitic works, the second of which appeared when the death‐camps were known to be operating. Who condemned him?
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