Protestant Errors and Roman Catholic Truths (Part I of II)
Back to the wonderful world of nineteenth-century controversial fiction. The time is 1829, shortly after the passage of the Catholic Relief Act--also known as Catholic Emancipation; the subject is the right relationship between the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. Our novelist (er, "novelist") is a High Churchman, the Rev. Noel Thomas Ellison, and his semi-epistolary novel--the only one he ever foisted upon the world, it would appear--is Protestant Errors and Roman Catholic Truths: A Tale (1829). Despite the title, this is not an argument in favor of converting to Roman Catholicism. Instead, it is a defense of the Anglican via media--the "middle course" (170) between the extremes of full-blown Protestantism, like Presbyterianism, and full-blown Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, the novel insists that the Church of England has far more in common with Roman Catholicism than it does with Protestantism, and does so thanks to a handy allegory in romance form.
Plot-wise, Protestant Errors... is a bit of a train wreck. (Or, as W. E. Gladstone dryly noted of the author, "a delicate subject, to the execution of wh he seems unequal.") It follows the unfortunate adventures of the Cambray children, whose best religious interests--and, therefore, best marital interests--are balked by the interference of the resolutely anti-Catholic Mr. Cambray. Orlando, one of the sons, is indeed inammorato. Although he is a CofE clergyman, he is passionately in love with Agatha Radcliffe, a devout Roman Catholic. His sister Clara, meanwhile, falls for Donald Douglas, a man of dubious religious views (among other things, he "systematically declined ever receiving the sacrament" [20] while at college) who is, nevertheless, an avowed Protestant. (Despite being named "Clara," she evinces an unfortunate lack of clarity when it comes to her choice of spouse.) Thanks to "education" (71), Mr. Cambray's anti-Catholic prejudices run riot, and, while he remains a member in good standing of the CofE, he feels rather attracted to Presbyterianism (71-72). Angry at his son's unwillingness to reconsider his engagement, Mr. Cambray resorts to the usual tactic of wealthy parents: he writes Orlando out of the will, to no avail. Alas, Mr. Cambray promptly suffers the novel's Abrupt Death Number One, leaving the figuratively poor Orlando literally poor as well. Despite Mr. Cambray's death, and despite the fact that Orlando has already suffered the loss of inheritance because of his steadfastness, Agatha now refuses to marry him: even dead, she tells him, "your father forbids us" (81). This is Major Scruple Number One (to accompany Abrupt Deaths).
Needless to say, things are not going well on Clara's front. For their honeymoon, Donald Douglas takes her and her ailing brother, Willoughby, on the usual grand tour of the Continent. Too late, Orlando and company discover that there was a problem with Mr. Cambray's new will, and Douglas now has "sovereign mastery over the property" (129). Given Douglas' penchant for gambling, this is a Bad Thing; in fact, he is currently draining the property's entire worth (130). If Orlando would just do a little legal tap-dancing, the will could be tossed out! Enter Major Scruple Number Two: Orlando refuses to intervene, even though, by doing so, he could support his remaining siblings. (Like Major Scruple Number One, Orlando's moral decision is not only self-defeating, but also negatively affects several other people. This novel holds some sort of record for self-inflicted suffering.) Overseas, meanwhile, Willoughby and Douglas fall in with some nefariously nebulous "Christians" at Geneva, which leads Willoughby to collapse under "the deathly influence of dissipated habits" (134). Here's Abrupt Death Number Two. Orlando and Beatrice trek overseas to see their sister, who doesn't seem to understand why her husband wants them to live under the name "Stanholt" (did I mention that "Clara" was something of a misnomer?). Just in time, Douglas gets himself killed, for Abrupt Death Number Three. (For such a short novel, the hit count seems rather high.) To make up for Abrupt Death Number Three, Clara produces a child, and they all return to the desperately over-mortgaged estate. Alas, some weeks later, Agatha dies from her inability to marry Orlando, for the novel's climactic Not-Entirely-Abrupt Death Number Four. Touchingly, she requests burial in "your own Church-yard" (156), complete with Anglican burial service; apparently, her Catholic relatives prove entirely cheerful about this proceeding (the service, I mean, not the death) [1]. After quoting (unsourced) John Keble's "Burial of the Dead" from The Christian Year, the novel ends with Orlando going about his business.
At first glance, the allegory seems obvious enough. The Church of England (the Cambrays) can either ally itself to the Roman Catholic Church (Agatha Radcliffe), or to that very loosely-defined conglomeration of churches defined as "Protestant" (Donald Douglas). Ingrained prejudices lead many Churchmen to prefer Protestantism, even though, in many respects, the "tie of Christian unity" (168) is far tighter between the CofE and Roman Catholicism than it is between the CofE and, say, Presbyterianism (one of the novel's two big bugbears, along with Unitarianism). Even though Agatha and Orlando are willing to unite, without relinquishing their essential beliefs, popular opinion keeps them asunder--to the detriment of both parties. "Marriage" to Protestantism, however, leads to moral and spiritual bankruptcy, thanks to the loosey-goosey nature of "Protestantism." (When you unite yourself with Protestantism, goodness knows what will show up in the bedroom, so to speak.) The bonds of true love link Anglicans and Catholics, but Anglicans and Protestants prove ill-assorted; in fact, the Protestants appear to be rather vampiric. Anti-Catholicism thus drives Anglicans away from their rightful Catholic "marriage" with the Roman Catholic Church, and into the dangerously welcoming arms of their false Protestant brethren. (Whereupon, it seems, everybody dies.) Nevertheless, Agatha's willingness to be buried in a CofE graveyard, complete with CofE burial service, suggests that in the end, the differences between the two churches can be buried (literally).
Even if you didn't know that this novel was written by an Anglican High Churchman, however, you could figure it out from his representation of Roman Catholicism. Orlando explains to his sister that
...the Church of Rome must modify and alter many of her doctrinal tenets, if not in essence, at least she must shape them afresh, and put them, I do not say on a more scriptural basis, but draw them up and state them in a more scriptural catholic manner [...] She must expunge some points from her vocabulary of essentials, and reserve them for her vocabulary of things optional. She must (I do not wish her to disclaim them— no good man would put his interdict on them as ungodly things), transfer some articles from the page of faith to the page of feeling; and without authoritatively calling on her members to present such and such offerings of piety to Jehovah in His temples of public worship, leave them according to their own consciences to present them to heaven when in their own closets—when communing with their God in secret—when all but piety, the indwelling Angel of the Christian, is still. (67-68)
The Catholic convert and novelist E. C. Agnew parodies exactly this type of argument in Geraldine (1837-39): reunion between the CofE and the RCC depends, in effect, on the RCC relinquishing everything that distinguishes it from the CofE, and not vice-versa. It can maintain its differences, to be sure, but only by turning them into either things indifferent or entirely private, domestic acts of worship. Orlando's imperative "must"s put the burden of conformity on the Roman Catholic side. While the CofE must cease its obeisances to the more hardline Protestants in its midst, and perhaps revisit its inheritance from the Caroline church of Archbishop Laud (57), it doesn't need to undertake any major revisions to the Prayer Book, the Thirty-Nine Articles, or anything else of import. In other words, because the CofE already contains within itself everything worthwhile from the RCC, it doesn't need to budge; the RCC, however, needs to undertake a massive self-study if it wants to retain its accreditation. One suspects a Roman Catholic reader would not be sympathetic to this call for reunion.
Of course, Protestant readers weren't especially sympathetic to this novel's call for reunion, either. In Part II, we'll take on the response to this novel: Plumpton Wilson's unoriginally-titled Protestant Truths and Roman Catholic Errors: A Tale (1830).
[1] There is nothing especially odd about this, as this site explains, but Agatha is explicitly opting for a CofE burial when a RCC church and graveyard are available.