Unsung Heroes Take Center Stage

Regular readers of this illustrious journal might recall that I recently wrote a multipart series titled “Unsung Heroes of Christendom,” which focused on heroic figures from history who are not as well-known as they should be. This series came to mind as I received three newly published books from Mysterium Press, an intrepid new publisher in England. The three books in question are Charles II and James II, both by Hilaire Belloc, and The Glories of the Sacred Heart by Cardinal Manning. More on these specific books presently, but why the connection with the “Unsung Heroes of Christendom” series?

Quite simply, the two authors, Belloc and Manning, have spent far too long in the shadows of better-known contemporaries with whom they are inextricably associated.

Hilaire Belloc is usually seen in the light of his lifelong collaborative friendship with G.K. Chesterton, in whose shadow he has always walked. Their close association as defenders of the Faith was lampooned by George Bernard Shaw, who saw them satirically as a single entity which he dubbed the Chesterbelloc. If, however, they were seen to be together, it was usually in the sense that Chesterton walked in front with Belloc tagging along loyally behind. This is to do a grave injustice to their friendship and to their literary achievement.

Belloc was a significant influence on the young Chesterton, enabling Chesterton to see Catholic Europe and Catholic history in a new light and opening Chesterton’s eyes to the justice inherent in Catholic social teaching. As writers, Belloc was Chesterton’s equal as an essayist and prose stylist, and at the very least his equal as a poet; and as a historian, he was indubitably Chesterton’s mentor.

As for Cardinal Manning, he is usually seen in the light of his illustrious contemporary, St. John Henry Newman, in whose shadow he has not merely been destined to walk but by whom he has been doomed to be eclipsed. This is nothing less than another grave injustice.

Like Newman, Manning was a convert to the Faith. Newman was received into the Church in 1845 and Manning six years later, in 1851. Manning succeeded Cardinal Wiseman as Archbishop of Westminster in 1865 and was the head of the English hierarchy—and, therefore, the leader of England’s Catholics—during a period of great revival.

Between 1870 and 1890, the number of Catholic schools in England had increased from 350 to 946. Whereas there had been 83,000 students enrolled in Catholic schools in 1870, this had increased to 224,000 by 1890. In 1840, there had been 469 churches and chapels in England; 50 years later, this had increased to 1,335. Such success was a fitting testimony to the presence and leadership of Cardinal Manning.

It is in light of the relative neglect of Belloc and Manning that these new volumes of their works, published in the United Kingdom by Mysterium Press and distributed in the United States by Os Justi Press, should be seen.

Charles II and James II are the fifth and sixth, respectively, in a succession of new editions of Belloc’s historical works that Mysterium Press has brought back into print in splendid hardcover new editions with attractively designed dustcovers. They are not merely for lovers of history but for lovers of books!

Belloc’s historical scholarship, so evident in these and other works, was employed to counter what he called the “enormous mountain of ignorant wickedness” that constituted “tom-fool Protestant history.” Yet he doesn’t counter bias with bias but bias with balance. He simply restores to the historical narrative the Catholic voice and the Catholic perspective, as well as restoring to the narrative those parts of it that had been erased and edited out by the anti-papist Whig historians. It was not merely the distortions of “tom-fool Protestant history” that he sought to address but the “ignorant wickedness” of anti-Catholic historians who had brushed under the carpet the cruel execution and persecution of England’s Catholics by the ruthless and cynical enemies of the Church.

The Glories of the Sacred Heart, first published 150 years ago, in 1876, remains as fresh as it is refreshing because of the force and vigor, and the robustness, of Cardinal Manning’s uncompromising theological orthodoxy. Where today, for instance, except in the most theologically rooted of writers, would you find a chapter titled “Dogma: The Source of Devotion”? We might expect, except in the most wishy-washy and washed out of modernist writers, a chapter titled “Dogma: The Source of Truth,” but the good cardinal is saying that it is the source of devotion.

And he does so with good reason because all authentic Catholic devotion is rooted in the dogma of the Incarnation, the Real Presence of Christ, not merely as the providential guide through all salvation history but as the Real Presence in every tabernacle in every Catholic Church throughout the world. It is, therefore, an additional blessing that this new edition of this long out of print book also contains, as bonus material, Cardinal Manning’s sermon “The Blessed Sacrament: Centre of Immutable Truth.”

One small sample of the cardinal’s writing on the Incarnational Presence should suffice to convince us that his is a voice that needs to be heeded and restored to the great conversation:

If you would find the Fountain of the Water of Life and the glories of the Eternal Throne, on which the Lord of the Sacred Heart sits and reigns for ever, go into any sanctuary where the light burns silently before the tabernacle. Kneel there and cover your face. Jesus is there, and the Ever-blessed Trinity, and the Vision of Peace, and the heavenly court, and the Kingdom of His glory.

What is one to say about the ineffable beauty of these words of profound reflection? Do they not speak as powerfully and beautifully as the words of St. John Henry Newman, his great contemporary? Unlike Newman, Cardinal Manning is unlikely to be named a Doctor of the Church. No matter. He is a servant of the Sacred Heart and, like Hilaire Belloc, an indefatigable defender of the Faith.

Let’s end with Belloc’s judgment on the greatness of Manning:

It was my custom during my first days in London, as a very young man…to call upon the Cardinal as regularly as he would receive me; and during those brief interviews I heard from him many things which I have had later occasion to test by the experience of human life…and Manning did seem to me (and still seems to me) much the greatest Englishman of his time. He was certainly the greatest of all that band, small but intensely significant, who, in the Victorian period, so rose above their fellows, pre-eminent in will and in intellect, as not only to perceive, but even to accept the Faith.