"I am an Ultra-Catholic...."

"THE ULTRA CATHOLIC"

Father E. L. Mascall, sometime Professor of Historical Theology....

"I am an Ultra-Catholic-No ‘Anglo-,’ I beseech you,

You’ll find no trace of heresy in anything I teach you.

The clergyman across the road has whiskers and a bowler,

But I wear buckles on my shoes and sport a feriola.

My alb is edged with deepest lace, spread over rich black satin;

The Psalms of David I recite in heaven’s own native Latin,

And, though I don’t quite understand those awkward moods and tenses,

My ordo recitandi’s strict Westmonasteriensis.

I teach the children in my school the Penny Catechism,

Explaining how the C. of E.’s in heresy and schism.

The truths of Trent and Vatican I bate not one iota.

I have not met the Rural Dean. I do not pay my quota.

The Bishop’s put me under his ‘profoundest disapproval’

And, though he cannot bring about my actual removal,

He will not come and visit me or take my confirmations.

Colonial prelates I employ from far-off mission-stations.

The music we perform at Mass is Verdi and Scarlatti.

Assorted females form the choir; I wish they weren’t so catty.

Two flutes, a fiddle and a harp assist them in the gallery.

The organist left years ago, and so we save his salary.

We’ve started a ‘Sodality of John of San Fagondez,’

Consisting of the five young men who serve High Mass on Sundays;

And though they simply will not come to weekday Mass at seven,

They turn out looking wonderful on Sundays at eleven.

The Holy Father I extol in fervid perorations,

The Cardinals in Curia, the Sacred Congregations;

And, though I’ve not submitted yet, as all my friends expected,

I should have gone last Tuesday week, had not my wife objected!"

The delight of the Thursday Midday Mass at Holy Trinity is the spiritual refreshment quietly received in the service, and the good-humoured conversation over coffee afterwards. In the after-Mass conversation this Thursday Father Jamie and I found we had a common respect for Fr Eric Mascall (1905-1993), once a Professor of Theology, a writer of learned Thomist tomes, poet, failed teacher, prominent Anglo-Catholic, and professed brother of the Oratory of the Good Shepherd from 1938 until his death in 1993. My Training Incumbent was also a brother of the Oratory, and Fr Mascall was a fairly frequent visitor in Stamford Hill days.

Jamie has much time for Fr Mascall's learning, and I appreciated having him as tutor at Kings College (London) in the early Seventies. At Kings for ten years, he was Professor of Historical Theology, and while teaching there he lived in the Clergy House of St Mary's, Bourne Street, and served in the parish as an unofficial but distinguished curate.

He was a man who made theology accessible, and he had a contagious gift of humour, all the more so in the way he recounted stories and performed (his own) verse. "Pi in the High" takes an endearing look at contemporary Anglo-Catholicism, and in the Foreword to Pi in the High he wrote, “To take oneself too seriously is bad theology."

Eric Lionel Mascall, was born in London in 1905. He was educated at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, where he was introduced to Anglo-Catholicism. He went on to Pembroke College, Cambridge to read mathematics. In Cambridge he encountered the Oratory of the Good Shepherd. He left university with first-class honours in mathematics, and he went on to teach mathematics at a boys’ school for three years, but was very unhappy doing so because, as he put it later, “he ‘had no training in teaching, … I was no good at athletics and … I was a bad disciplinarian’.”

Out of what he perceived to be a failure on his part, he then explored a priestly vocation, and was trained at Ely Theological College for one year. Ordained in 1932, he held two short curacies before beginning his long and distinguished academic career in philosophical, systematic, and historical theology, with a reputation as an exponent of Thomism (Thomas Aquinas). He retired in 1972, but remained at Bourne Street.