The condition of the Roman
Catholic community in England was at that time a singular one. On
the one hand the old repressive laws of the seventeenth century
had been repealed by liberal legislation, and on the other a
large new body of distinguished converts had entered the Roman
Church as a result of the Oxford Movement. It was evident that
there was a 'boom' in English Catholicism, and, in 1850, Pius IX
recognised the fact by dividing up the whole of England into
dioceses, and placing Wiseman at the head of them as Archbishop
of Westminster. Wiseman's encyclical, dated 'from without the
Flaminian Gate', in which he announced the new departure, was
greeted in England by a storm of indignation, culminating in the
famous and furibund letter of Lord John Russell, then Prime
Minister, against the insolence of the 'Papal Aggression'. Though
the particular point against which the outcry was raised--the
English territorial titles of the new Roman bishops--was an
insignificant one, the instinct of Lord John and of the English
people was in reality sound enough. Wiseman's installation did
mean, in fact, a new move in the Papal game; it meant an advance,
if not an aggression-- a quickening in England of the long-
dormant energies of the Roman Church. That Church has never had
the reputation of being an institution to be trifled with; and,
in those days, the Pope was still ruling as a temporal Prince
over the fairest provinces of Italy.
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