The
foundation of the English Province has several unusual aspects. There is first
of all the fact that the Founder of the SCJs contemplated an English foundation
already at the time of the persecution of religious in France at around the
turn of the century. Nothing came of this at the time. Secondly, when at last a
start was made, it was largely the work of one man: Father Matthew Kusters,
SCJ. It was his initiative that caused the move, and the isolation of the country
during the second World War saw to it that this septuagenarian had to provide
leadership and take full responsibility for the work right to the end of his
life.
Born
in Holland in 1886, professed at Sittard in 1895, he was ordained in Luxembourg
in 1898. He then became responsible for one major building project after
another, first at Bergen op Zoom, then at Louvain, Heer and Lanaken. From 1926
to 1934 he was in Rome as a member of the General Council, and it was in that
capacity that he asked the then Superior General, Father Philippe, to be
allowed to begin a foundation in England. He got leave to do so and came to
England in July 1934.
His first request
for permission to settle was addressed to the diocese of Southwark. He thought
that diocese was short of priests and offered to help,but was told the diocese
was well supplied with priests. He then wrote to Archbishop's House,
Westminster, and thinking that all reference to parish work was taboo, referred
exclusively to the Foreign Missions. However, he soon found out that the only
way of getting into the Archdiocese was the acceptance of parish work - which
he promptly did. So he was asked to take over part of the parish of Harpenden,
Hertfordshire, and after the Catholics in the village of Redbourn and the
surrounding district.
Father
General gave permission for this enterprise and Father Kusters began begging
for the necessary funds. He managed to buy a house in the village of Redbourn,
but the appointment of the Superior General as Bishop Coadjutor of Luxembourg
meant that Father Kusters was called to Rome to attend a General Chapter. When
the Chapter was over, he was given other official business to handle, so that
in the end it was not Father Kusters, but Father Lennartz who became the first
resident priest at Redbourn on March 14th, 1936. (Father Lennartz was a former
missionary of the German Province; he had been apostolic prefect in the
Cameroons before the first World War).
Father
Kusters crossed the North Sea in the following September, but soon became
restless in Redbourn. There was not enough work for two men in the small
parish. He moved out by the end of the year to begin a parish at
Wheathampstead, a nearby village, but his presence there was very temporary: in
August 1937 he acquired a large house at Ampthill, 20 miles from Redboum, where
he not only wanted to start another parish, but also a novitiate. After all,
his aim was to give the Society in England a firm foundation. But the General
Council turned down his request for a novitiate - the plan must have been
regarded premature - so Father Kusters now began to think of a Juniorate. In
January 1938 he started a parish at nearby Bletchley, but here too he stayed no
more than 9 months. When he heard that a convent was being abandoned in Earl Shilton,
Leicestershire, he took the opportunity to begin a small juniorate there
(January 1939). It is really quite incredible, the pace at which this old
priest moved: within three years he changed his residence five times!
Prospects
really were good. Soon boys started coming to the new juniorate and, shortly
before the War began, prospective novices went across to Brugelette, Belgium.
But the whole work was put in jeopardy when war broke out. First of all, it
meant that the flow of personnel and of funds stopped completely. To serve the
two small parishes we were looking after, and to staff the juniorate, there was
a grand total of four priests and three brothers! Secondly, there was now no
place where a prospective novice or scholastic could go. In 1940 three students
managed to come back to England from Belgium; of those that stayed behind, four
remained in Belgium throughout the war (they had Irish passports) and returned
as priests afterwards. But the three others had to be provided for!
But
Father Kusters was not a man to be put off easily. He asked and obtained
permission to begin a novitiate in Redbourn; not an easy thing to do, for all
communication with Rome was now a long and tedious process and had to be made
via the Red Cross in Switzerland. In due course, Redbourn also became a
Scholasticate of sorts. In addition to the small presbytery and little
prefabricated church, the students themselves erected two rather primitive
buildings to accommodate the growing community. Father Kusters acted not only
as Regional and local superior, but also as parish priest, novice master and
teacher of various scholastic subjects. As this was obviously an impossible
task for one old man, the Archbishop intervened and made him send his
theological students to the Diocesan Major Seminary at Ware. This happened in
September 1944. Already Father Kusters' health was deteriorating and the
disappointment caused by this move may well have precipitated things, for he
died on October 24th, 1944, 78 years old.
With
the death of Father Kusters the SCJs in England lost their leader,and it was of
the utmost importance that someone else would take over as soon as possible.
Fortunately the war was drawing to a close and the Superior General, Father
Govaart, managed to send someone from Rome at a very early date. Ordina-ry
travel was not yet possible in March 1945, but Father A.Puts came on a
diplomatic passport, as secretary of the nuncio to the Netherlands, Mgr Giobbe.
What he found was a slowly growing community, hampered mainly by the inevitable
restrictions of war: inadequately housed and badly staffed. With great energy
he set himself to provide the English foundation with everything that was
considered necessary to ensure its future: a scholasticate (Malpas, 1946), a
juniorate (Newport, 1949) and a novitiate (Barton under Needwood, 1954):
spacious buildings out in the country, away from the centres of population.
Staff came first from the Netherlands, but soon also from the local communities
themselves.
There
was also modest growth in apostolic work: parish work was undertaken in
Lincolnshire, a county where Catholics are few and parishes cover large areas:
Market Rasen, Corby Glen. Some priests were specially appointed to travel
throughout the diocese of Nottingham visiting families who lived too far away
from the nearest Catholic Church. And when a call came for missionaries to
South Sumatra and South Africa, a few priests set out for these countries.
Meanwhile
growth remained slow - much of the effort had to go into training future
members. The Province was established in 1947; it then counted 14 priests, 14
scholastics and 3 brothers, 31 in all. In 1960 this number had risen to 35
priests, 7 scholastics and 8 brothers, 50 all told. But even then only 16 priests
were engaged in strictly apostolic work (parishes, missions): the remainder
were concerned with formation work.
During
the last 10-15 years quite radical changes have taken place. Minor seminaries
were never as common in this country as they were on the Continent, and when
our juniorate at Newport was faced with the prospect of spending large sums of
money to bring it up to the standards required by the government, the rather
meagre results (vocation-wise) of the school led in the end to a decision to
close it down as a juniorate and to put it at the service of youth work in
Shrewsbury diocese. As such it is now a great success: the house is full all
the year round with groups, mainly from the top classes of secondary schools
(school leavers),and has as such a very good name.
This
was, however, not simply a matter of scrapping a vocation project; new projects
were set up to replace it. To begin with, the Society started a foundation in
Scotland, at Kilwinning in Ayrshire (1970) where boys from the district
interested in becoming SCJs live and study and go for their lessons to the
local Catholic Comprehensive School. The group has been kept small on purpose;
during the first few years there were only six boys in the house, and the number
will be kept down to a dozen at the most, so that a family atmosphere can be
maintained. So far the results have been very encouraging: of the original six,
two were professed in 1976, and two others are now making their novitiate.
Another
measure which was taken when the juniorate was closed down was more intensive
vocation work throughout the country. Three priests are at present engaged in
this: one in Scotland and Ireland, one in North-East England and one in the
rest of England. Wherever permission can be obtained, schools are visited and
likely candidates are also visited at home. Throughout the year contact is
maintained both through periodicals (one for younger, one for older boys)and
personal correspondence. Once a year groups of younger boys are invited to one
of our houses for a period of about 5 days, while the older boys are invited
for weekends about once a term.
As a
result there is a steady influx of candidates for the novitiate, though the
number is never large. In 1975 two were professed, in 1976 four. At present
there are three novices. Meanwhile the novitiate itself has changed a good
deal. It has moved away from its rural setting at Barton under Needwood and,
after some temporising, has now settled in the same community as the scholastics,
in city surroundings. Though much of the former novitiate set-up survives,
novices do no longer form a community of their own and regular use is now made
of the opportunity to engage in work outside the house.
Finally,
the scholasticate had to change course. The first move came in 1971 when,
because of a drop in the number of students, it was decided to start a joint
venture with the Redemptorists whose scholasticate was about 40 minutes away.
Our staff joined theirs, and so did our students. This worked well for two
years, but then the Redemptorists decided to take their students to a
university. With our own small number we did not want to be left high and dry,
and so opted to settle near the Major Seminary of the Liverpool Archdiocese at
Upholland. At the time (Summer 1973) this seemed the right thing to do, yet
within a year we had to move once more, for by then Upholland College was about
to merge with the other Major Seminary in the North of England, Ushaw College
near Durham. And so September 1974 saw us settling near Ushaw, in a house at
Gateshead which we took over from the Little Sisters of the Assumption. This
new arrangement has the advantage that Ushaw College is a recognised
constituent College of the University of Durham, which means that it can send
any students it thinks suitable to follow a course at this University and
obtain a degree there. The result is that a certain number of students are
regularly selected to follow a two-year Theology course at the University; this
possibility is now also open to our own students.
While
these changes took place in the formation programme, there was also a striking
change in our pastoral work. First of all,
our parish work remained no longer restricted to small, rural communities. New
parishes were begun in Manchester (1970), Northhampton (1972) and Irvine,
Scotland (1976), while an old city parish in Liverpool was also entrusted to us
(1974). - Secondly, youth work was taken in hand, beginning with a club in
Liverpool dock land, and now coming into its own with residential centres both
in Liverpool and in Newport. SCJs have been appointed Diocesan Youth Directors
in the dioceses of Liverpool and Shrewsbury. All this extension was due, not
only to a slow growth in numbers, but also to the change in the formation
programme which now requires less personnel. It even became possible to send
two priests and two brothers to Zaire to staff the. parish on the left bank at
Kisangani! - Finally, the Province launched into Retreat work with the opening
of the former scholasticate at Malpas as a Petreat and Conference Centre. Not
only does this assure the Province of a meeting place for its own functions,
but it also performs an important service to those who come there on Retreat,
while those who only come for conferences or courses are at least given an
opportunity to get a glimpse of what the Church is about.
One
would like to hazard a guess at what the future might bring. There is at
present no reason to expect any immediate startling changes, but that is no
guarantee that they will not happen. The experience of the last fifteen years
puts us on our guard against easy assumptions on this score.
One
issue that has come up regularly is the possibility of an Irish
foundation. The Province has quite a few Irish members, but no foundation on
the other side of the Irish Sea. Several attempts have been made in the past,
but so far without success. Yet surely there is no reason to give up hope in a
matter of such importance.
Further
ventures there and elsewhere depend, of course, on the staff which is
available. So far the Province has been a young one, but slowly the number of
older members is increasing - soon a new man ordained. will no longer be an
addition to our manpower, but a replacement. This underlines the need for
continued concentration on recruiting.
All
in all, the Province makes the impression of a lively, active unit. Because
numbers are small, one may meet sometimes more than half the membership at a
single meeting! Meetings of the Province are held regularly at Malpas: they may
take the form of Study Days, Renewal Courses, Retreats or simply celebrations.
All this augurs well for the future.
C. Sondermeijer scj.