The London Church Crawl…

When I was a child, I used to go walking with my father. He was a religious man and taught me a simple lesson…never pass a church. It is a habit, I still have. In Belfast, I won’t pass St Mary’s, St Peter’s, St Paul’s, and when I am in Newcastle, Newry, Coalisland, it does me no harm. And Dublin, Cork, Limerick.

The Catholic Church claims to be universal but actually there is a certain nuance. No more so than in England. The English Catholic Church does not like the Irish Catholic Church. It is mutual. Certainly more than sixty years ago, I was first told that I  should not trust an English Catholic.

But aren’t we on the same side? Not at all.

Laudabiliter…it is a Papal Bull. Or Papal Bullsxxt. It is a document which may or may not exist which makes Ireland subservient to England. The Pope who signed it was the only English Pope, Nicholas Brakespeare (aka Pope Adrian IV).

Not to be taken seriously. A bit like Pope Leo (an American Pope) handing Canada over to the United States.

It is a simple fact that the unpleasantness between England and Ireland pre-dates the Reformation. And after the Reformation, Mary Tudor, a Catholic was planting Kings County (sic) and Queens County (sic).

I was in London two weeks ago for a few days, Thursday to Sunday and got to visit a few churches. I had not been in London since 2015 so time to catch up.

I first went to London in May 1976, a training course for my civil service job. The first church I ever found was Corpus Christi in Maiden Lane, a small street between The Strand and Covent Garden. A small church, and based in Theatreland, there were plaques commemorating the Catholic Actors Guild…Frank Finlay, Eamonn Andrews, Patricia Hayes, Richard O’Callaghan, Danny La Rue and Joe Gladwin from Last of The Summer Wine).

About twenty years ago, I took my wife to Maiden Lane and the priest’s homily was about Great Women, naming Mother Theresa and…Margaret Thatcher. As he shook hands with people leaving the church, I tackled him about one of his examples “oh take a chill pill” he said. To me!!! The cheek of it. My wife recalls that she had to drag me off the poor priest saying “Leave it aht John, he ain’t worth it”.

This was probably at the height of my Victor Meldrew years.

So Thursday 5th June, I am back in Maiden Lane. It has changed. The whole “actors church” is not as prominent. Now it is the spiritual home of Catholic members of the London police. I wonder if there are no Catholic entertainers left in England….are Dáire O’Briain, Ed Byrne, Aisling Bea, Frankie Boyle, Roisin Conaty…I cant see them or Jimmy Carr on the notices board.

But we do need saints. And as Sister Michael (from Derry Girls) said we get a buzz off statues. That is the thing about Catholicism. We always get a new saint when we need one. St Gianna Molla is new to me. Italian. She gave her life rather than have an abortion. And Carlo Acutis (the 21st century Anglo-Italian) will be canonised later this year.

Whether it is Joan of Arc, Maximillian Kolbe or Oliver Plunkett, every saint is as as much about the time of the canonisation as the time the saint lived.

A walk from Maiden Lane to Warwick Street and I find this church closed.

Nearby in Golden Square is the old Portuguese embassy church and now headquarters to the most bizarre of Catholic institutions…the Sovereign Military Order of Malta which traces its origins back to the Hospitaler knights in the Crusades. To be fair, it does amazing work but is essentially aristocratic Catholics from “old” Europe. Until just a few years ago, The Knights and (now) Dames had to have noble birth and have military service.  Pope Francis put some manners on them. The current top man is a Canadian and a commoner.

Friday 6th June. Victoria Station. A short walk down Victoria Street to Westminster Cathedral. In the Piazza, there is a man lying on his back and does not look to be conscious. I hope someone else would approach him but it fell to me. I wonder if he is dead. We all think we will be a Good Samaritan but it is a relief when a young man and woman come over. There are some tablets beside the man.

About three other homeless people come over. The unconscious man is called Danny/Dan and they try to revive him. The young man is phoning for an ambulance.

The Cathedral is massive with a gift shop and a small cafe. One of the Cathedral guides tells me that he has just shown a group of school children around and he had to explain the meaning of the word “martyr”. The Catholic Church and especially the English franchise is big on martyrs.

On the left side of the Cathedral is a chapel dedicated to St George and English Saints and Martyrs. This includes the forty saints canonised in 1970, when England needed some saints. The chapels for Scotland and Ireland are on the right side of the church. The Irish chapel is thru the prism of England…names on marble walls dedicated to people who died serving in the Irish (sic) Guards, RAF, RN, etc.

The glass casket of St John Southworth is usually is usually in the English Chapel but is currently in state in the centre aisle. He was hanged drawn and quartered in 1654 and his body embalmed, stitched together again and buried in Douai France during the French Revolution. And returned to Westminster after the First World War.

The folk tale around him is that a sympathetic executioner allowed him to die from hanging before quartering. He was as these things go, popular with Londoners. There are other theories. The Spanish Ambassador bribed the executioner.

The strange thing about English saints is that they are posh and aristocratic, Priests hiding in secret rooms in stately homes. Irish saints much less posh. Living under hedges beside Mass rocks.Sixty odd years ago, Catholicism was all about martyrs.

“Faith of our fathers living still in spite of dungeon fire  and sword”….actually an English hymn. But dying and being butchered because of religion was unlikely to happen in the 1960s. We were wrong.

Of course Catholics were not the only people to die for faith in Tudor and Stuart England. Or indeed Europe.

Of course John Southwell, Edmund Campion, Margaret Clitherow and all the others were practising Catholicism. But were they also practising Treason? Clearly the Gunpowder Plotters were never canonised but I would guess many Catholics would see them as martyrs (religious and political).

In many ways 16th century is not a lot different from the 21st century. Sons of respected Catholics going off to France to become priests (Campion) or “terrorists” (Guy Fawkes). Sons of respected families in West Midlands going off to Pakistan to return to England.

Catholic Law. Sharia Law.

Still, there is a McDonalds outside the Cathedral. And Dan/Danny is leaning on a big rubbish bin. He is out of it.  In his own way, he too is a martyr.

Sunday 8th June. My last day in London and it is an early start.  “There is something about a Sunday that makes a body feel alone” (Kris Kristoffersen).

Tube from Pimlico to Piccadilly. Short walk thru Air Street and Glasshouse Street to Warwick Street and the Church of the Assumption and St Gregory…the “Jacobite Church”. This is the spiritual home of  those who believe the legitimate king of England, Scotland and Ireland is actually living in Bavaria and I once attended a service there once where the congregation were wearing white roses and…a lot of tweed. There is a monument to King Robert/Rupert who died in 1955.

The church was briefly the church for the Portuguese embassy but mostly the Bavarian embassy church right up to Edwardian times. It has also been the chaplaincy for Irish, Italian and Spanish hotel staff in the middle part of the 20th century. I bet the tweedy people loved that.

And in the early 21st century, it was the “church” for London’s LGBT Catholics. I do not know how the tweedy people felt about that but King Henry IX who succeeded Charles III was both a cardinal and homosexual. The current “gay church” is in Mayfair.

To be fair to the Bavarian “royal house”, they are harmless even decent people. They have no real desire to press their claim to take over the three kingdoms. Indeed they supported the Republic of Ireland in 1916. Another point in their favour is that they opposed the Nazis.

The current “king” is Francis (the Duke IN Bavaria (sic)  and the poor man just wants to be left alone and not get loyal greetings from his subjects.

I arrive just before 10.30am Mass is due to start. I sit at the back and the church is filling up. Some women are wearing white lace scarves (I think the word is “mantilla”) and the people are extremely well dressed. I am handed a very large Catholic hymnal by the meeter/greeter who eyes me suspiciously.

At exactly 10.30am there is a procession down the left aisle of the church. It is led by an adult altar server waving incense and four adult servers with candles. The priest vestments…(red for Pentecost) are very traditional and quite a lot of lace. Expensive. The priest wears a biretta (the four horned black hat)…not seen one in donkeys years. But if you watch Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald in “Going My Way”, you will know what I mean.

The thought occurs this might be a Latin service but I never get to find out. My mobile phone goes off and I rush out of the church.

Sunday morning walk thru Soho. It is different imid morning. No bright lights or fancy restaurants. People actually live in Soho. Cats prowl. I wonder what the heck was going on in Warwick Street. From the five minutes I saw, it was a different kind of “traditionalism”.

Soho is quiet. Chinatown is lively. And I reach Notre Dame church at Leicester Square as the congregation is gathering for 11am. The flags outside are of the French speaking nations. This is the home church of the French ex-pats in London and many gathered in the foyer are African or  tourists and happy to be treating it as a shared occasion. 

London is dotted with churches that serve Polish, Italian, Filipino congregations, Quax Road at Kilburn being one of the “Irish” churches. The notable thing is that in England, migrants fill the pews in churches but the church establishment will always be “English”.

I get to Westminster Cathedral just before noon. It is a solemn high Mass and although I like things casual, this is after all Pentecost Sunday. The worrying thing about Mass in Westminster is the bit where we offer each other a sign of peace and a Tory MP might bound towards me with outstretched hand. But it is post-COVID and we do not have to do that.

I take a short cut from the Cathedral to Victoria Station. A handful of homeless are still sleeping in doorways. One of them is Danny/Dan. Still suffering his personal martyrdom.

at Gatwick, I go online to find out what happened to Warwick Street. It is now a church with a special mission to promote Our Lady of Walsingham which the English Church predating the Reformation venerates. Being English, she outranks Fatima, Knock, Lourdes and the rest.

The priests are actually converts from the Church of England. And don’t  get me started on people who left the Anglican church because of the Vicar of Dibley.