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Bishop Gosse of Liverpool (1865–1872) and the importance of being English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Peter Doyle
Peter Doyle*
Affiliation:
Bedford College of Higher Education
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Extract

The papal bull Universalis Ecclesiae of 1850 set up a hierarchy of bishops with ordinary power to replace the vicars apostolic who had ruled the catholic church in England since 1688. It stated explicitly that the new bishops were to have all the necessary powers to rule their dioceses in the same way as titular bishops elsewhere, and it spoke clearly about the resumption of the ‘common law of the church’ in England. Yet the commitment of the Roman authorities to a fully independent hierarchy was not wholehearted. The church in England was to remain under the aegis of the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda), whose normal brief was to look after missionary territories not stable enough to have properly constituted hierarchies. According to the bull, the English bishops were to send regular reports on the state of their dioceses to Rome, and were to be diligent in informing Propaganda ‘of everything which they shall think profitable for the spiritual good of their flocks’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 18: Religion and National Identity , 1982 , pp. 433 - 447
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1982

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References

1 Latin text in Decreta [Quatuor Conciliorum Provincialium Westmonasteriensium 1812-1873] (2 ed London nd) pp 75-83; English translation in [The English Catholics 1850-1950] ed Beck, [G. A.] (London 1950) pp 107-15Google Scholar.

2 Beck p 112.

3 Schiefen, [R.], [‘The Organisation and Administration of Roman Catholic Dioceses in England and Wales in the mid-nineteenth century’], PhD thesis (London 1970) pp 105-6Google Scholar; also his article, ‘“Anglo-Gallicanism” [in Nineteenth-Century England’], CHR (1977) pp 14-44.

4 On Talbot see Holmes, [J. D.], [More Roman than Rome] (London 1978) pp 73-4Google Scholar; Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, p 24; Cwiekowski, [F.J.], [The English Bishops and the First Vatican Council] (Louvain 1971) pp 39–41 Google Scholar.

5 Bishop Goss to the bishop of Shrewsbury, 14 January 1862, Lancashire] R[ecord] O[ffice], RCLv 5/4/246.

6 Aubert, [R.], [Le Pontificat de Pie IX (1846-1878)], FM 21 (Paris 1952) pp 281-94Google Scholar.

7 1862: the canonisation of the Japanese martyrs; 1867: the eighteenth centenary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul.

8 Aubert p 287.

9 Pii IX Pontifias Maximi Acta, 6 vols (Graz, Austria, 1971) 1, p 585; 2, p 527; 3, P 431-2.

10 Quoted in Butler, [C.], [The Life and Times of Bishop Ullathorne], 2 vols (London 1926), 1, p 237 Google Scholar.

11 Aubert p 281.

12 Butler, 1, p 228.

13 Archives of the English Benedictine Congregation, Ampleforth; Miscellaneous box, file ‘Letters to Brown, various’; Goss to Brown of Newport, 19 December 1870. Vaughan was editor of The Tablet, Veuillot of L’Univers.

14 Altholz, J. L., The Liberal Catholic Movement in England (London 1962)Google Scholar, gives the full story of The Rambler and its condemnation.

15 LRO, RCLv 5/4/355, 14 July 1862.

16 Milburn, [D.], [A History of Ushaw College] (Ushaw, Durham 1964)Google Scholar has the fullest account of the disputes over the colleges; see also Schiefen, caps 5-7.

17 Many thousands of pounds were involved; Milburn, p 246, and numerous letters in LRO, RCLv 5/3.

18 Archives of the diocese of Southwark, B.13, 1 June 1863.

19 For a similar judgement see Aubert p 281.

20 LRO, RCLv 5/5/147, Goss to canon Oakeley, 24 April 1867.

21 A[rchives of the] B[irmingham] O[ratory], Goss to Newman, 28 March 1870.

22 The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, ed Dessain, C. S., 21 vols (London 1961-77), 29, p 69 Google Scholar, Newman to canon Fisher, 9 March 1879.

23 Goss to Oakeley, n 20 above.

24 Butler, 2, cap 13, deals with the question in full.

25 ABO, Goss to Ullathorne, 10 September 1867.

26 McClelland, V. A., English Roman Catholics and Higher Education 1830-1903 (Oxford 1973) pp 212-13Google Scholar for Goss’s views.

27 Goss to Ullathorne, n 25 above.

28 Decreta, p 332.

29 A[rchives of the] A[rchbishop of] L[iverpool], Pastorals[of bishop Goss], 2nd Sunday of Advent 1867.

30 Cwiekowski pp 293, 322, 324.

31 ABO, 28 March 1870; printed, with some misprints and minor omissions, in Cwiekowski, pp 169-72.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 LRO, RCLv 5/4/340, 1 July 1862.

35 Archives of the Propagation of the Faith, Scritture riferite nei Congressi, Anglia, 16, 1861-3, n 580 Goss to Barnabo 4 June 1862; Barnabo’s reply of 24 July is in Lettere della SC Congregazione dall’ anno 1862.

36 AAL, Ad clerum letters of bishop Goss, 31 October 1870; The Tablet (London) 12 and 19 November 1870; ABO, Goss to Newman, 24 January 1871.

37 For the riot, see Burke, [T.], [Catholic History of Liverpool] (Liverpool 1910) pp 154-5Google Scholar; for Wiseman, ibid p 138 and LRO, RCLv 5/2/466 and 468, Goss to Errington and Briggs, 4 February 1859.

38 Goss told Newman what he had written, ABO, 24 January 1871.

39 See the discussion in Dupanloup, F., De La Souveraineté Temporelle Du Pape (Paris 1849) p 15 Google Scholar.

40 The sermon was published in The Preston Chronicle, 3 September 1864; a revised edition was published as a pamphlet, Sermon and Address on the laying of the Foundation Stone at Euxton; copy in Downside Abbey Library, pamphlet collection, A151 F, 12mo pamphlets number 34.

41 AAL, Pastorals 14 Febraruy 1871.

42 See n 40 above.

43 Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, p 43, n 117.

44 Cwiekowski p 44, n 1.

45 Butler, 1, pp 358-9.

46 AAL, Roman Documents, Address to the Holy Father 1860 (Liverpool 1860)Google Scholar.

47 AAL, Pasotrals 14 February 1871.

48 AAL, Ad clerum letters, 3 and 25 December 1859, and 13 March 1860.

49 LRO, RCLv 5/4/311, Goss to bishop Grant, 16 April 1862.

50 AAL, Pastorals 11 December 1867.

51 AAL, Roman Documents, Barnabo to Goss, 6 March and 18 June 1868.

52 Above n 47.

53 Holmes, p 116, summarises the thinking on this issue.

54 Goss to Newman, see n 31 above.

55 Nobody was clear what the papal primacy of jurisdiction meant in practice; see the excellent discussion in Sweeney, G., ‘The Primacy: the small print of Vatican I’, in Bishops and Writers, ed Hastings, A. (Wheathampstead 1977), pp 179–206 Google Scholar; the German bishops issued an important document on the topic in 1875 which was approved by the pope (and the English bishops), see Küng, H., The Council and Reunion, (London 1961) pp 283-95Google Scholar, and also 196-204, 234-6.

56 Above n 40.

57 AAL, Pastorals 5 Frebruary and 28 September 1866.

58 Denvir, J., The Life Story of an Old Rebel (Dublin 1910, reprinted 1972), p 156 Google Scholar. Denvir was a Fenian, editor of The Catholic Times, arms smuggler and secretary of the Home Rule Confederation of the 1870s.

59 Burke p 185-6.

60 AAL, Pastorals 5 February 1866; Sermon of 29 September 1867, reported in The Weekly Register (London) 5 October 1867, pp 212-3. On Fenianism in the area see Lowe, W. J., ‘Lancashire Fenianism 1864-71’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire (Liverpool) 126. (1977) pp 156-85Google Scholar.

61 LRO, RCLv 5/1/141, Goss to James Whitty, Esq, 19 March 1856; 5/3/64, Goss to Rev. Lans, 15 April 1859.

62 Sermon of 29 September 1867, see n 60 above.

63 The speech was reported with acclaim in The Porcupine, an independent Liverpool weekly, issue number 26, 30 March 1861.

64 Burke p 186.

65 Lowe, W. J., ‘The Irish in Lancashire 1846-1871, A Social History’, 2 vols, PhD thesis, Trinity College, Dublin 1974, pp 386 Google Scholar, 393, 467; and Gilley, S. W., ‘Evangelical and Roman Catholic Missions to the Irish in London 1830-1870’, PhD thesis, Cambridge 1971, pp 30-5Google Scholar for the relatively minor part played by anti-Irish sentiments in anti-catholicism.

66 Butler used ‘sober ultramontane’ of Ullathorne, 2 p 48, and ‘gallican’ of Goss, The Vatican Council, 2 vols (London 1930) 1 p 206. Talbot used ‘radical anti-Romanist’ and ‘anglo-gallican’ of the English bishops; Schiefen, ‘Anglo-Gallicanism’, p 36, 41.