Life of Father Ignatius of St. Paul, Passionist (The Hon. & Rev. George Spencer).

by Pius a Sp. Sancto

BOOK III
F. Ignatius, a Secular Priest.

BOOK III.
F. Ignatius, a Secular Priest.

CHAPTER I.
His First Days In The Church.

Conversions to Catholicism were not such every-day occurrences, some thirty years ago, as they are now. The disabilities under which Catholics laboured politically, before 1829, made them hide their heads, except when forced into public notice by efforts to break their shackles. The religion that civilized England, and consecrated every remarkable spot in it to the service of God, had become a thing of the past, and the relics of Catholic piety that studded the land were looked upon as the gravestones of its corse, or the trophies of vanquishing Protestantism. Not only was Catholicity supposed to be dead in England, but its memory was in execration; nurses frightened the children with phantoms of monks, and mountebank preachers took their inspiration from the prejudices they had imbibed in childhood. The agitation about the Veto, and the Debates on the Catholic question, which filled the public mind about the year 1830, and for some ten years before, showed that Catholicity had not died, but only slept. The Catholics emerged from their dens and caverns; they bought and sold, spoke and listened, like their neighbours; and the King was not afraid of a Catholic ball when he took his next airing in Hyde Park. The Catholic Church had been barely given leave to eke out its declining days, with something like the indulgence allowed a condemned criminal, when, to the astonishment of all, it sprung up with new vigour, and waxed and throve in numbers and in position. It was considered worth a hearing now, and faith came by hearing to many, who would have been horrified before at opening by chance such an antichristian thing as a Catholic book. A conversion, then, rather stunned than embittered the relatives of the convert. The full tide of Tractarianism had not yet set in, and the systematic pitchforks of private persecution and stately rebuke, that were afterwards invented to stop it, were not so much as thought of. The conversion of the Honourable George Spencer happened in those peculiar times. His family were partially prepared for it, for fluctuating between so many religious opinions as he had been for so long, and earnest, too, in pushing arguments to their furthest length, it was often half suspected that he would go to Popery at last. There he was now, a child of the Catholic Church, shrived and baptized according to her ritual. His die was cast. He was fixed for ever. His wandering was at an end. With the exception of his house-keeper, who laid her down to die for sheer affliction at the news, we are not aware that many others were much moved by what they considered his defection. Doubtless, his father and the immediate family circle felt it deeply; his Protestant vagaries had caused them sleepless nights and silent afternoons, and the Church of which he became a member was not likely to seem less absurd to them than it once seemed to himself. But then he was incorrigible; there was no use talking to him; he would have his own way, and there was what it led to.

Lord Spencer was always favourable to Catholics, but it was in the spirit of generosity to a fallen, or justice to an injured people. He never dreamt his own son would be one of the first to reap the benefit of the measures he advocated in Parliament. The letter he received from Leicester in January, 1830, must have been a shock indeed. Besides, a member of this aristocratic house descending to such a level must be considered a family disgrace—an event to be wept over as long as there was one to glory in the name of Spencer, or feel for its prestige. Taking all these things into account, and many other minor considerations, it would be no wonder if Mr. Spencer was treated with harshness, and banished Althorp for ever. Nothing of the kind. His father was very considerate; and liberal, too, in making a provision for his son's future maintenance. George himself was received on friendly terms by every branch of the family, and, so far from avoiding him or mortifying him, they seemed all to have respected his sincerity. He wrote to Dr. Walsh, the Vicar Apostolic of the central district, immediately after his reception into the Church, placing himself as a subject at his lordship's disposition. Mr. Spencer's idea was to be ordained as soon as possible, and come back to his own parish to preach, like St. Paul, against his former teaching. This intention was checked by the Bishop's writing word for him to put off his first Communion a little longer, and to come and meet his Lordship in Wolverhampton towards the middle of February. This letter he received in F. Caestryck's, in Leicester, three days after his reception. He thinks the arrangement excellent. He spent a fortnight in the priest's house at Leicester, and he used often to say that this good priest's way of settling difficulties, though it might look unsatisfactory, was the very best thing that ever occurred to him. He made Mr. Spencer fully aware of the great dogma of the Church's infallibility before he received him. F. Caestryck was one of those good emigre priests who were well up in the Church's positive and moral theology, but cared very little for polemics. Whenever Mr. Spencer asked him "Why was anything such a way in Catholic teaching?" the old man simply replied: "The Church says so." This was very wise at such a time; the period for reasoning and discussion was passed, and the neophyte had to be taught to exercise the faith he had adopted now. He learnt the lesson very well, and was saved from the danger of arguing himself out of the Church again, as some do who do not leave their private judgment outside the Church-door, at their conversion.

Scarcely anything is so remarkable as the readiness with which, on his reception, he laid down all notions of his being a minister of God. One short extract from a letter to his housekeeper, enclosing money from Leicester, to pay bills, will illustrate this: "If you have an opportunity, tell those who choose to attend, that I have acknowledged the authority of the Catholic Church, and therefore resigned my ministry for the present. If they care for my advice, tell them to send for Mr. Foley (the priest at Northampton), and hear him as the minister of God." This letter was written before he was a week a Catholic, and it promises well for his future that he does not arrogate to himself the office of teacher before he is commissioned, much less before he is sufficiently instructed. Many, in their first fervour, make false steps in the way he avoided which it is often difficult to retrace. The glow of happiness at finding one's self in the Church ought to be allowed to subside, and to allow the newborn judgment to be capable of discretion, before beginning to dabble in theology.