John Armitage Sees England's Third Spring of Faith

Msgr John Armitage believes England may be living through a "third spring" of conversion to the Catholic faith. In a new interview with the National Catholic Register, published on 2 November, the East London parish priest said 22 people have just joined the RCIA in his parish, and only two of them are baptised.

"I don't think there's any doubting that," he said, when asked whether a reconversion of England could be underway. "If you'd said to me three years ago that what we are experiencing now would happen, I wouldn't have believed you."

Twenty-two people walking into a parish to ask about the faith is not a statistic. It is twenty-two seperate stories, twenty-two restless hearts. Armitage, a former rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and now master of the Guild of Our Lady of Ransom, has spent a lifetime watching England drift from the faith. Now he says something is stirring.

The interview marks the publication of a new booklet from the Catholic Truth Society, The Conversion of England by the Power of Prayer. Armitage wrote its foreword, and the little book is his rallying cry: England will come back to the faith on its knees, through prayer, as it did before.

A Booklet Built on Two Cardinals

The booklet brings together two texts from the 19th century. The first is a set of prayers for England's conversion by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman, the first archbishop of Westminster, written in the 1850s and said daily by seminarians at the Venerable English College in Rome until 1965. The second is a landmark lecture on the subject by Cardinal Herbert Vaughan, archbishop of Westminster from 1892 to 1903.

"It's not up-to-date stuff, but it's the ever-ancient, ever-new," Armitage said, borrowing from St Augustine of Hippo: the ancient and the new together give Catholicism its life.

What Our Lady's Dowry Means

England was rededicated as Our Lady's Dowry in March 2020, just before the COVID crisis took hold, in an act led from Walsingham, where Armitage had served as rector.

But what does "Dowry" actually mean? Armitage explained that in England a dowry was money or land set aside for a woman if her husband died, a custom reaching back to the Crusades, when men left and never came home.

"So in England, Our Lady's Dowry means that the country is set aside for Mary," he said. It is a claim that England belongs to her, and that she has not given up on it.

The First Spring and the Second

To understand the "third spring", Armitage reaches back nearly 1,700 years. The first public sign of Christianity in England, he said, was the martyrdom of St Alban, a Roman soldier, around the year 304. By the Council of Arles in 314, three British bishops were already present: Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adolphus of Colchester.

Then came St Augustine of Canterbury, sent by Pope St Gregory the Great in 597 to convert the south, where people still worshipped gods like Woden. Monasteries spread the faith, and the first spring grew into an England that was, in Armitage's words, always Catholic.

The second spring came after the Reformation, at the First Provincial Synod of Westminster in 1852, when St John Henry Newman preached his famous "second spring" sermon at Oscott. "The one thing alone I know, that according to our need, so will be our strength," Newman said.

Why Young People Are Coming In

So what is different now? Armitage is honest that his case rests on what he can see, not only on numbers. "That's not based just on the statistics, it's based on what we can see and anecdotal evidence," he said.

A new British survey found no sign of a national revival, as reported in No Revival in Britain as Church Attendance Stays Low. In his parish, though, 22 people have just joined the RCIA, the process for adults entering the Church, and only two of them are baptised. Two weeks before the interview, he joined the Adoremus Eucharistic procession through part of London, and as the crowd queued outside Westminster Cathedral, he saw seminarians everywhere. The rector of Allen Hall, the London seminary, told him it is "absolutely packed."

He reaches for Augustine to explain why young people are coming. "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." There is a restlessness, he said, because nothing else works.

Quoting the hymn Abide With Me, he said young people live in a world where everything changes, then find something that has not changed for thousands of years. "There may be something here," they say.

Pessimistic, Yet Full of Hope

Asked how confident he is that the faith will prevail in England, Armitage gave an answer that holds two things at once.

"I am very pessimistic, but I'm full of hope. I'm a Christian, so I'm full of hope. Hope takes us beyond the pessimism of events."

Revival is not only an English affair. The Revival Centre in Papua New Guinea marked 40 years with 374 baptisms, as covered in Revival Centre PNG Marks 40 Years With 374 Baptisms, and Franni Cash found Jesus' grace after leaving a cult, as reported in Franni Cash Finds Jesus' Grace After Leaving Cult. LO Worship released a new album about drought ending, as covered in LO Worship Releases The Drought Is Over Album Today, a theme Armitage would recognise.

The next spring, if it comes, will not be announced in a headline. It will be counted one RCIA class at a time.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.