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ENGRAVED BY O. LACOUR, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY ELLIOTT AND FRY, 55, BAKER STREET, W.

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THE ARCHBISHOP OF WESTMINSTER.

BY WILFRID WARD.

N complying with the request of the editor of this magazine to write a brief outline of the career of the new Archbishop of Westminster, I shall best consult the ArchArch

bishop's own taste by speaking primarily of the work which he has had at heart for the Catholic Church in this land, and introducing personal details only so far as they serve to record his experiences, and account for and justify his views and

aims.

We have not far to seek for the leading idea which the Archbishop has sought to impress upon his contemporaries. He has recently published some essays in which "Devotion to the See of Peter," is spoken of as the primary need of our time and country. Rome, as representing the ideas of unity and authority, and as the original source of English Christianity has a claim on the affection of all Englishmen. But devotion to the See of Rome represents also with the Archbishop, the motive which is traceable in his own career from beginning to end-namely, devotion to the Apostolic ideal of which St. Peter is the representative. From the time when, at the age of seventeen, he gave up the commission in the army which was already secured for him, and proposed to himself the work of evangelising Wales, learning its language, and preaching to its people, the idea of Apostolic work, and the Apostolic spirit have been leading thoughts with him. A priest was an Apostle, and was to learn the spirit of the "Prince of the Apostles." To make the Catholic priesthood in zeal and self-renunciation truly Apostolic was Archbishop Vaughan's aim as vice-president of Cardinal Wiseman's 112. January, 1893.

ecclesiastical seminary of St. Edmund's in 1855, as an Oblate of St. Charles Borromeo in the succeeding years, as founder of the College near Hendon for Missions in Infidel Countries in 1863, as Bishop of Salford from 1872 onwards. Dogmatic theology, liturgical rites, philosophy, criticism, history, all have their place in Catholic education and in the ideal of the Catholic Church; and the Archbishop has recognised their importance

but it is primarily by the simpler ideal of the Apostolic spirit that he has sought both to guide his own labours and those of his priests, and to win the hearts of those to whom the Catholic Church was unknown. A life of selfdenial and absolute devotion is in his view a language which is intelligible to all. St. Peter is the embodiment of that life. The attainment of the spirit of Peter is one principal aim of devotion to the See of Peter.

The Archbishop of Westminster's early educational influences were predominantly, but not exclusively, Roman. Born in 1832, of an old Catholic family and heir to a considerable property, Herbert Vaughan, at the age of seventeen, abandoned the prospect of a worldly career. After two years of philosophical reading at Downside College near Bath, he passed to Rome for his theological course in 1851. Those were days of eminent Roman professors. Ballerini in moral theology, Schrader in Scriptural exegesis, Perrone in dogma, are all great names. And there was a greater still among the Professors of the Collegio Romano, the celebrated Jesuit father Passaglia. Passaglia was a man of brilliant gifts, great personal attractions, and striking presence,-"kind and magnificent," as the Archbishop has described him,-extremely tall, and with the keen

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ness and force which characterised him

fully expressed in his face. He was a genius with some of the impatience of control and wrong-headedness which often go with genius. His rupture with the Holy See, and his revolutionary views are well known. He died in communion with Rome, after a term of estrangement which caused his English pupil much pain. But in 1851 his orthodoxy was as unquestioned as his genius. If Perrone represented the completest and most rigidly scholastic form, Passaglia's method gave the future Archbishop some experience of a freer and less conventional treatment of theology.

The stream which followed Newman to the Catholic Church had not ceased in 1851, and as many as seventy-two Englishmen very many of them converts -were in Rome reading theology. Among them were Henry Edward Manning; Henry Coleridge, brother to the present Chief Justice; Gilbert Talbot, brother of the late Lady Lothian; J. L. Patterson, now Bishop of Emmaus, and the Jesuit fathers Eyre, Wynne, and Harper. Mr. Vaughan lived for a time in rooms which he shared with the wellknown Irish poet Mr. Aubrey de Vere, until he became a member of the Academia dei nobili ecclesiastici. It was during this sojourn in the Eternal City that he made acquaintance with Cardinal Manning, and laid the foundation of the friendship which afterwards existed between them. Father Whitty, Cardinal Wiseman's vicargeneral, also came to know Mr. Vaughan in Rome, and their intercourse resulted in his suggestion to Cardinal Wiseman that Mr. Vaughan should be appointed VicePresident of St. Edmund's College, Old Hall, the principal Catholic College for ecclesiastical education in the south of England. The appointment was made and accepted in spite of the extreme youth of the vice-president elect.

Before entering on his new office, Father Vaughan sought and found opportunities of enlarging his acquaintance with Catholic education, chiefly on the ecclesiastical side.

Six months at Munich as the guest of Döllinger was an experience worth having; and such men as Reisach, afterwards Cardinal and then Archbishop of Munich, and Windischmann, his vicargeneral, had much information to give concerning Catholic education in Germany, while their sympathies were far more congenial to the Roman student than those of the great historian. Windisch

mann was a man whose capacity

commanded the admiration even of those

who least agreed agreed with his views. Döllinger has described him as "an Ultramontane by nature, with a native capacity for organising and ruling," and as possessing likewise "the highest qualities of a critical scholar." It was by Windischmann's advice that Father Vaughan visited the seminary of Eichstadt in Bavaria; while a tour in France and Italy gave him an opportunity of learning something of seminary life in those countries. The priestly ideal as enforced, in accordance with the traditions of St. Charles Borromeo, in the seminaries of Novara and Milan, made a special impression on the English priest.

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Arrived at Old Hall in 1855, Father Vaughan endeavoured to impress this type on the future priests of the seminary, and to foster that spirit of devotion to Rome which the school represented typically by De Maistre's great work, Du Pape, had already introduced so extensively in France that Gallicanism was practically extinct. In conjunction with Manning, he formed the congregation of Oblates of St. Charles, which was joined by several of the college professors. cannot but recall the Archbishop's rencontre with my father (W. G. Ward) at this time, which he has described to me as the beginning of their intimate friendship. My father, who, since his condemnation by Oxford convocation and subsequent conversion had lived near St. Edmund's, held in 1855, the chair of dogmatic theology. A lay professorship of dogmatics was in marked opposition to the ideas of the new vice-president. At their first meeting Father Vaughan explained that one of his chief plans for the welfare of the college was to get rid of the lay professor. His candour delighted my father. In place of the remonstrances which the vice-president fully looked for, came the answer, "How interesting! Do explain your views on the subject." The end of the conference was that Father Vaughan attended some of the lectures, and was converted from an opponent to a hearty ally.

In 1860 the Oblates left St. Edmund's College and lived together in Bayswater, Manning acting as superior. Father Vaughan's desire to work as an Apostolic Missioner took practical shape once more in 1863 in the endeavour to found a foreign missionary college in England. With a

special blessing from Cardinal Wiseman and from Pius IX. he set sail for America to collect funds. "Don't go," Pius IX. said to him, "you will get nothing." A large sum was realised in the event, and Father Vaughan wrote to a friend of the Pope, "Tell his Holiness that his blessing was worth more than his prophecy."

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The college was built at Mill Hill near Hendon, and any one who will may witness the touching ceremony of the "kissing of the feet of the missioners whom year by year it sends out to infidel countries. Father Vaughan continued to be its rector until, in 1872, he was appointed Bishop of Salford.

The Bishop of Salford's energetic work in Manchester is still fresh in our memory, and it is the work which so many hope to see continued in London. The spirit of St. Peter applied to the needs of the nineteenth century was still the key-note, and he has sought to attain his aim both by the formation of an effective priesthood and by stimulating the laity to take their share in ecclesiastical interests. He has opposed the multiplication of small seminaries, and believes that larger institutions are a more effective instrument for turning out apostolic priests. He looked to the great college of Ushaw in the north, numbering when he was appointed bishop between 300 and 400 students, as the educational centre; while the personal relations between each priest and his bishop were to be cultivated in final year of pastoral theology spent in the immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral. The welcome he has accorded to the co-operation of laymen is instanced not only by the introduction of laymen into committees connected with diocesan matters, but by his inviting them to take their part in delivering lectures in the larger Ecclesiastical Colleges. Although a staunch supporter of Roman Scholasticism the Archbishop is equally emphatic on the value of the vernacular in speaking and writing, more especially under the conditions of modern society; and he is known to wish for a further development of priestly training in this direction. Of the efforts made at Ushaw to bring Catholic education in touch with the times in this and other ways he wrote as follows in a recently published letter to the vicepresident:"I heartily congratulate you on having introduced into your new course lectures upon subjects which are needed to bring more closely the youthful minds

in your charge into touch with the questions and problems of the times. I cannot but feel that this spirit of 'modernity' and directness of aim in the mental equipment of your students will bear abundant and salutary fruit in the influence which they themselves are destined to exercise later on the minds of others." In a similar spirit the Archbishop has set an example of the keenest interest in the modern problems connected with labour, the social question," the education of the poor; avoiding, indeed, the hasty adoption of untried theories, but concerning himself closely and practically with their solution on Catholic lines.

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Such appears to be the spirit in which the Archbishop has regarded his work for the Church in the past, and it may be traced in the remarkable address on the programme" of the Church in England, which he delivered on occasion of his enthronement at Westminster. It is a spirit not antiquarian or theoretical, but eminently modern and practical. He never forgets what his early training helped to impress on his imagination, that the Catholic Church, unlike the local or sectarian forms of creed by which it is surrounded, is a living power and energising system belonging to all nations; and that it is normally and in idea coextensive with the human race. The experience of many places and persons has taught him that one spirit can coexist with many forms of its expression; and while he is strongly opposed to the conception of a national church, which tends to foster narrowness, obstinate attachment to unpractical traditions, estrangement from Rome, he is a friend to wide liberty in matters of ritual or form. Hence his development of English psalmody in the public services in Manchester. Hence, his readiness to depart from the Roman custom of teaching in Latin. English by birth, Roman by education, he is equally emphatic in enforcing two lessons-that of realising our fellowship with the universal Church throughout the world, sharing her devotion and her doctrine, and that of expressing both doctrine and devotion in the manner which will best bring them. home to Englishmen. We take the word of Rome, but pronounce it in the English way. The model for an Italian speaker is said to be Lingua Toscana in bocca Romana, and so the Archbishop's model for an English Catholic's religious devotion would probably be Lingua Romana in bocca Inglese.

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