In 1673 James, Duke of York, was forced to resign as Lord High Admiral. Since James was in line to the throne, and would indeed become King James II, this was a fairly dramatic move. But James was a Catholic, and to hold any civil or military office he would have to take the newly introduced oath: “I, N, do declare that I do believe that there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or in the elements of the bread and wine, at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever.”
In 1678, the Test Act was extended to the House of Lords, to get rid of five Catholic peers; and for the next 150 years, no Catholic could sit in Parliament. The end of this prohibition in 1829 is often seen as an example of history’s progress towards toleration. But that history may now be going into reverse.
That seems, at least, to be the implication of Tim Farron’s resignation as Liberal Democrat leader. It was “impossible”, said Farron, for him to hold to the Bible and to lead a political party, at any rate a progressive political party. “A better, wiser person than me may have been able to deal with this more successfully,” Farron said – but he did not suggest how.
The historian John Charmley, a professor at St Mary’s University, Twickenham, argued even before Farron’s resignation that the media’s treatment of the Lib Dem leader amounted to a new Test Act.
There are many historical changes that lie between Catholics having to forswear transubstantiation, and traditional Christians of all denominations having to accede to sexual progressivism. But in both cases something is demanded of the believer, a question which cannot be escaped. Farron was asked about gay sex so often in the run-up to the election that it came to define the Lib Dems’ campaign.
Charmley says the example of the Test Acts is discouraging, in that they “actually worked as far as Catholics were concerned” – that is, they managed to bar Catholics from public life and marginalise the community. “What I would say is that we can learn that accepting our fate isn’t a good idea as we’ll never get back,” Charmley adds.
The writer Shaun Blanchard, who is researching a PhD on 18th-century English Catholics, also believes we can learn from our forefathers in the faith. By the 18th and early 19th centuries, Catholics could afford to be less concerned with mere survival, and more with establishing their political rights and their place in the culture. Institutions like the Catholic Committee and the Cisalpine Club helped to accelerate the dismantling of penal laws against Catholics, and eventually led to Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
Blanchard also singles out the efforts of historians like John Lingard, “whose groundbreaking historical writing challenged English Protestants to re-examine and complicate their tidily anti-Catholic narratives about their own history”, and of course Newman, whose Apologia demolished some anti-Catholic myths.
“Newman found this process deeply painful (he wept, apparently, at his desk), but it really made a difference in the public eye,” says Blanchard. “We should never shy away from dialogue – provided real dialogue is actually occurring.”
The Farron test, he suggests, brings to mind elements of the public view of Catholics two centuries ago: namely, the assumption that Catholics cannot be good citizens. And this can sometimes be overcome. There is a temptation, says Blanchard, to give way to “suspicions and polemics”, but history suggests these will hurt the Catholic community. “The positive takeaway is that the painstaking and sometimes uncomfortable process of dialogue and debate can yield real results.”
It will be a long process, though. As Charmley says, the new Test Act rests on wider cultural assumptions about Christianity. “A combination of toxic stuff in the Church abut sex scandals and the liberalisation of social mores about sex has produced the perfect storm, in which the Church’s right to talk about such things has, for most folk, been undermined. We have not properly catechised a generation or two, and many young people know next to nothing about Christianity except the scandals.”
It now seems unimaginable that a peer could be excluded from the House of Lords for believing in transubstantiation. Perhaps it will take less than 150 years for Tim Farron’s fate to seem similarly odd.
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