Challoner: the life of a death-defying prophet

A MAN born nearly 300 years ago, after England had been torn apart by a Protestant revolution, and who died after a mob overran London burning down Catholic churches has been invoked by the bishops as a patron of a major part of their Congress document, To Live Christ's Lily.
This is what they say: "Just two hundred years ago Bishop Richard Challoner, the muchloved Vicar Apostolic of the London District, whose learning and holiness had earned him the title of "Venerable" even in his life-time, assumed the mantle of a prophet. It was near the end of his long life and in one sense the fortunes of the Church in our land were at their lowest ebb. Fines and Penal Laws were succeeding where persecution and martyrdom had failed. The number of Catholics in England and Wales had fallen to about 70,000 and there were signs that sonic of the Catholic families. who had been the rock to which the local faithful clung, were in danger of coming to terms with the Establishment in order to achieve an casement of the Penal Laws. The heroic stand of nearly three centuries was in danger of disintegration.
It was at that stage. shortly
before the Gordon Riots of 1780. that Richard Challoner foretold the coining of "The New People".
"By 1850 the number of Catholics in England and Wales had risen to one million and the ancient Hierarchy was restored.
"We are the heirs of those days, the 'New People foretold by the 'Venerable' Dr Challoner: a people to whom even since increase has been given.
Bishop Challoner's career was astonishing. At the age of 88 he found himself running through the night to escape a mob after his life. For more than 40 years he had been in effective control of a third of the Catholics in England. in conditions which never let him live in his own house.
Being a Catholic in England then was rather like being a Christian in Russia today. If you kept quiet, you could just manage it, with luck. 1 o he charged with 'libel against the Reformation' could mean life imprisonment. It is not surprising that Challoner was, as Cardinal Hunie said recently. "a low key figure, who yet had enormous historical sig,pificance."
He was horn in a twilight world
of secret Catholics gathered round great recusant households. He was three years younger than Alexander Pope. and became a Catholic at 13 with his mother. At that time the law said a Catholic might not own a good horSe. a sword, or live within ten miles of London. A Protestant might buy his property and no legal process secure the price for it. There was the .death penalty for being a priest and, under a new law, £100 for the informer who secured his arrest.
Catholics looked to the aristocracy for protection. Lord Montague employed I50 Catholic retainers at his Castle at Cowdray, which had Holbein frescoes in the chapel. But there were still the informers. and the nobility sometimes apostasised. as Challoner found in his youth.
He got a good education at Douay, over the sea, then in its last phase as a garden for martyrs. he returned in 1730 as a priest. supplied with an assumed name. He wrote back as R. Willard, and his letters culled Rome, Milton and the Pope, Mr Abraham.
Within a lea years he was assistant to the ineffectual Bishop Petri:. running the whole London district from Hampshire to
Hertfordshire almost alone from 1738. When he confirmed, it might he at the Ship Inn. Lincoln's Inn Fields. Each Catholic would sit during the service with a pot of beer before him, lest intruders should break in.
There was always hope for the future. The Duke of Norfolk gave a lot of money and was on good terms with the Prince of Wales. George Ill was born in his house. Challoner was a loyal subject and deplored the 1745 rising. There was, in fact, no added penal legislation after its defeat.
During the periods of danger, Challoner worked alone on hooks. He wrote a vastly popular hook of devotion The Garden of the Soul. He turned the Dousty catechism into the basis of today's red CTS catechism. He even revised the whole of the Bible, which remained static until Ronald' Knox's effort. Nor was he afraid of incorporating phrases from the protestant King James version when it made the meaning clear.
But the period saw a real decline. There were only 120 priests in his district, There were no public chapels. The priests were appointed as chaplains by the landowners or foreign embassies in London. The bishops had no control over them or the religious missionaries. There was a law passed making the Anglican marriage service compulsory; and most Catholics had to at least seem to be consenting to communicatio in sacris with Protestants.
Priests were being hunted out and Mass houses closed by a crazed informer called William Payne. Challoner • himself was prosecuted and even after the sympathetic Lord Mansfield placed the burden of proof on the accusers of a priest, Bishop Talbot, brother of the Earl of Shrewsbury was arrested.
In 1778 a Catholic relief bill was prepared. But its Catholic supporters had no truck with bishops. Their chief, the young magnificently rich Lord Petre even became Master of the Masons in defiance of the Pope. Challoner's fellow bishops saw the whole Church in England in danger of being snuffed out. The nobles, including the new Duke of Norfolk, were apostasising.
It was then that Challoner spoke his prophecy of a New People. His words were marked.
In the wake of the Relief Act, the Protestant Association
headed by the unbalanced Lord George Gordon whipped up riots in London. Parliament was surrounded by an army of the mob. cheered on by Gordon from a window. They burnt out every Catholic chapel including the embassies', destroyed MPs' houses, including Lord' Mansfield's, attacked the Archbishop of York. sacked Newgate freeing 1,000 prisoners and set lire to l.angdale's brewery after drinking all they could.
Challoner was lucky to escape alive. Ile died six months later and was buried at the peaceful recusant centre of Milton Manor, Berkshire. His prophecy was far from fulfilment.
Cardinal Hume hopes for a Challoner festival on this his bicentenary. He encouraged all the tired hacks at the press conference for the bishops' document to pray at his tomb.
We are the New People. Challoner was called a saint in his life, Vatican 11. in Lumen Gentium, tells the New People: "All the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity. By this holiness a more human way of life is'promoted, even in this earthly society."