Great joy for the community at Downside followed by great sadness. The community has announced that it will be searching for a new home. The Abbey, one of only three minor basilicas in England, was described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as the most splendid demonstration of the https://twitter.com/downsideabbey/status/1298621686363947008

renaissance of Roman Catholicism in England. So the community will evolve as it should - but England is losing one of its most important Catholic presences.

Even though many of us who went there since the ‘70s suffered some form of abuse, this is also the saddest possible headline. It’s a travesty that such a great part of the English Catholic story has been reduced to this (accurate) headline. https://twitter.com/tammymcallister/status/1299405193071779843

So what’s the English Catholic story/identity. It starts to become a subculture, an identity as opposed to a faith, when Henry decided to go his own way. It became a subversive identity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_of_Supremacy#

And because it was subversive it also became dangerous to be Catholic. It was treasonous. It prevented you from exercising many rights, left you unable to serve your country in any meaningful way. It was punishable by death. Such laws remained UNTIL 1829. https://www.britannica.com/event/Penal-Laws

Also with the laws came the ridicule & ostracization. Everyone knows the 5th of Nov. in the UK is Guy Fawkes day. For centuries used to whip up anti-Catholic sentiment. Effigies of the Pope are still burned in some towns on that day every year. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Catholicism_in_the_United_Kingdom

Catholics built schools abroad (notably in France) because they couldn’t educate their children at home. The Jesuits at St Omer, Liege, & Bruges. The benedictines at Dieuloard & Douai.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_of_St_Omer,_Bruges_and_Liège

The English Benedictines are esp important to English Catholic culture because they have been around for 800 years. Unlike the Jesuits who also ran a mission to Catholics in England- they had been there for 300 before exile.

https://www.benedictines.org.uk/traditions#history

So exile only lasted a couple of hundred years because... the French Revolution. Suddenly it became less dangerous to be Catholic in England than France. Everyone got on boats back over the channel. By now the senior (oldest) house of several Benedictine monasteries is the

community of St Gregory the Great. They moved from Douai (1606-1794), to Acton Burnell (1795-1814), to Downside (1814-2020). From Douai to the trip to Downside they were essentially in hiding. All the English Benedictines found their way home in a similar way. They had also

during the preceding years changed what it meant to BE Benedictine monks. They had to remain in their monasteries, and work and pray. This made them one of the Church’s most powerful orders. They owned LAND. They had never before been allowed to be missionaries, English ones

were allowed an exception. This is why they had somewhere to run during the French Revolution. So now they’re back in England. Each house takes a different way. Ampleforth, for example, goes far north, builds a Romanesque chapel. The Downside community decides to make

an effort to put Catholics back a the center of English society. This results in the late 19th and 20th centuries in former pupils holding positions of National importance and service - that would have been illegal a century before. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Old_Gregorians

The possibility of a state visit in 2010 was only because of the conscious effort by Catholics to be seen as English, not a other, led by Downside’s example. The most obvious symbol? The resolutely English abbey they built (see @cusackandrew’s lovely pics). It’s bigger than my

current local cathedral. It’s one of three minor basilicas in England. So when the monks of Downside announce that they’re leaving their monastery. It’s BIG news for ALL English Catholics. When Evelyn Waugh, chronicler of C20th English Catholicism wanted to paint

the Crouchback family in his Sword it Honour trilogy as “establishment” English Catholics he notes that one of them “went straight from Downside into the Irish Guards”. And for now the school will continue. But without those monks doing what monks have done for 800 years, in

England, and 1500 worldwide at that place, it will cease to be a beacon of the return of Catholicism to England resurgent. In fact it will look like a sad retreat. Luckily a contract with Virgin Records leaves us with a memory

of what English Monasticism’s return once sounded like every single day of the week if you happened to walk in during a prayer time. A medieval sound, in a building that suited it: https://open.spotify.com/album/1qLyIz1wEBX6RgGX6VGVCF?nd=1&nd=1