Pretre rejeté

"I have always made a mess of things in my life. I had the intellectual capacity to make a brilliant agnostic, but converted to religion. I had studied to become an international banker, then used my inheritance to build schools and churches. Finally, while Secretary of the Conferences on Higher Studies, I was listed for episcopal election but criticised Teilhard de Chardin as heterodox. Here I am, a priest rejected, unusable even as a curate or convent chaplain, utterly good for nothing."

-- Father Houghton, Rejected Priest

Thus did Bryan Houghton -- convert, priest and author -- assess his life and times in his autobiography Pretre rejeté (Dominique Martin Marin, 1990). In a brief tribute to Fr. Bryan Houghton (Wikipedia, French) entitled "The Rejected Priest" (Una Voce), R. Michael McGrade reviews the story told by this singular priest:

A blend of his renowned wit and understated British humour, penetrating insights on the state of the Church and a quality of prose second-to-none, it was the last of three remarkable books written during his lengthy, self-imposed exile in southern France. The consummate English gentleman - refined, erudite and of independent means - Father Houghton 'emigrated' to the little city of Viviers in 1969 where he resided, in a fascinating apartment within a stone tower of an ancient "chateau", where he passed to eternal life on November 19th, 1992 in his eighty-second year.

What prompted Fr. Houghton to suddenly quit England after three decades of priestly service and spend the last twenty-some years of his life in a foreign land with neither responsibility nor employment? McGrade tells us:

Liturgical scandals were already commonplace in England prior to the conclusion of Vatican II, burgeoning immediately after the introduction of vernacular language into the Mass in 1963/64. Yet they had not fiddled with the Canon and Fr. Houghton still felt able to offer the Mass of 1964 with a "certain devotion", even as his peers were switching into experimental-mode around him. He wrote, however, to his Bishop, in shrewd anticipation of the liturgical anarchy to come, submitting his resignation "from the day on which they touch the Canon". The Bishop, of course, replied that "nobody is thinking of reforming the Canon" and assured him that the bishops were there precisely in order to prevent it from being touched. "Poor dear Bishop!" wrote Fr. Houghton, "he did not have the slightest idea about what was going to happen". Five years later this 'suspended' resignation was activated and, with the Bishop's approval, he resigned as parish priest of Bury St. Edmunds with effect from midnight 29 November 1969. The following day, the New Mass came into force-they had "touched" the Canon and restricted the Old Mass to retired or aged priests, sine populo (alone and in private).

As soon as he arrived in Viviers, Fr. Houghton contacted the Bishop who gave him permission to say the Old Mass daily, in "private," at the high-altar of the cathedral, barely 100 metres from his residence. Not long afterward, there gathered around him a small congregation of about one hundred faithful for whom he offered Mass each Sunday (with the bishop's permission) in a twelfth century chapel Notre Dame de la Rose. In a tribute to Fr. Houghton, after his death, one female member of this little 'parish' wrote that the faithful who united around him in Viviers:

... were a faithful people who all, in their intimate life, to varying degrees, had suffered the drama related in Bryan Houghton's most beautiful book (Judith's Marriage, Credo House, 1987 - out of print): to suddenly feel that the visible Church - of bureaus and bulletins, conferences and connivances - scorns and disowns so many humble efforts, and obscure sacrifices, so much courageous fidelity and self-denial, all that swept aside as old-fashioned, historically useless, politically non-existent, worthy of a good psychoanalysis... In these bitter times, in a canton of France, some wounded souls, some outraged fathers, some humiliated mothers will have kept the Faith: because a young Englishman, thirty-five years earlier had left his (Anglican) Tradition in order to embrace a higher tradition.

McGrade writes that Fr. Houghton accepted his estrangement and exile with equanimity: "This internal calm, manifested in a gentle reserve more English than the Tower of London, derived from his estimation that the major events of his life were imposed on him; that he had not had to choose but only to accept; and consequently, that the principal character of his existence was that ineffable mystery - the grace of God." His definition of himself: "good for nothing." Yet, as McGrade notes, he consented to be nothing; and therein lay his success.

Read the rest of the story, weep, be inspired, pray for the repose of Fr. Houghton's soul, and thank God for His servant Pope Benedict XVI who has restored freedom of worship to those whose consolation is found through the Mass of the ages.

[Hat tip to A.S. and R. Michael McGrade.]

Of related interest:

• Abbé Bryan Houghton, "Le choc du Concile" (The Shock of the Council)
  
  
• Abbé Bryan Houghton, "La souffrance des laïcs" (The Suffering of the Laity)