Herbert Vaughan renounced a considerable inheritance and a warm, loving household to pursue his vocation as a priest. From a wealthy, established Catholic family that survived penal times, he was the eldest of 13 siblings and his entire life was marked by unstable health due to a weak heart.
He was painfully shy and upset colleagues and contemporaries with his apparent brusqueness. But he was a genuinely pious and holy man, spending two hours a day in prayer, and was painfully aware of his many faults.
He learnt his faith from his mother and missionary life fascinated him from an early age. He was overcome with the impulse to bring the Good News of the Gospel to those who were yet to hear it.
Vaughan was schooled by the Jesuits and Benedictines, and enjoyed a long association with the Carmelites. He was a man of the Victorian age, with a broad international view developed by travel. It seems that he was never a parish priest or even a curate. After training for the priesthood in Rome he became vice-rector at the new seminary at Ware, Hertfordshire, where he was generally esteemed and spent time investigating priestly training.
He co-founded a missionary society of diocesan priests, the Oblates of St Charles, and a new missionary order, the Mill Hill Missionaries. He absorbed himself in his first love – evangelisation – and the order grew and prospered under his care. He thought he had found his great mission in life.
But fate determined otherwise. Aged only 40 he was made Bishop of Salford, where he remained for 20 years, founding the Children’s Rescue Society and promoting countless similar initiatives.
In 1868 he established the Catholic Truth Society, which became known as “the CTS” and continues to this day as an active publishing charity. It began as a small pamphleteering outfit, inspired by seeing the power of the Protestant printing press in America.
Vaughan went directly to his audience in the parish churches throughout the country and the “CTS boxtender” was born: a lay person with a small, portable wooden box opened up to display and sell halfpenny booklets to educate and support the faithful.
Vaughan’s CTS produced thousands of inexpensive, accessible and popular tracts. They were a source of knowledge, spiritual food, catechesis and novelty. Readership boomed between the 1920s and 1940s as two horrific wars took their ghastly toll on the human spirit and psyche.
CTS’s aim was to have the best authors writing on the things that mattered. Readers were encouraged to leave the publications on buses, park benches and train seats after reading them. The movement’s army then was, as it remains today, a combination of readers who could buy CTS booklets very cheaply and donors who gave generously to support the mission to evangelise. CTS still relies greatly on donors today.
There are now 7,000 booklets in the CTS archive. Those I have read all whisper the same powerful truth: that God loves each of us deeply and without reserve, no matter who we are or what we have done. Jesus demonstrates that all forms of death have been conquered by his Passion and Resurrection. There is nothing to fear in this life.
In 1868 Vaughan bought the Tablet for £900 and became its editor. Thanks to his good business sense, the publication’s weekly circulation grew quickly, distinguishing it from liberal competitors and keeping it close to Rome. He was thus at the heart of Catholic communications, writing and editing long into the night. His conviction was that the truth must be disseminated no matter how unpopular it might seem.
Then bad news came: a request from the pope to become archbishop of Westminster. Vaughan, then aged 60, begged to be excused. But when he could see there was no way out he threw himself into the role with all his energy, despite increasing illness.
Arriving in London in 1892, he announced plans to build Westminster Cathedral. He wanted to put Catholicism back on the map, and to inspire and encourage his flock after centuries of the Church being forced into the shadows. He surprised everyone by the sheer size of the project, but thanks to his great abilities as a fundraiser, he was able to achieve his vision and the Cathedral’s foundation stone was laid in June 1895.
It was built during the last eight years of Vaughan’s life, as a grand symbol of the rightful place Catholics took in late Victorian society. The first liturgy held there, in June 1903, was his own Requiem.
Vaughan died at Mill Hill aged 71 among his missionary order confrères. Just over a century after his death, in 2005, his remains were moved to Westminster Cathedral.
On CTS’s 150th birthday this year, we should give thanks to Vaughan for his impulse to evangelise, his commitment to the truth and his life of love and service.
Fergal Martin is the general secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. For more information about the 150th anniversary of the Catholic Truth Society, visit onefifties.org. To purchase the set of 25 limited edition onefifties titles (£30) drawn from the CTS archives, go to ctsbooks.org (code: CLS1). Or you can enter our competition to win a set. Send a postcard or email to us (address on page 27) marked “CTS”, telling us who Cardinal Vaughan founded the CTS with and naming two other organisations Vaughan founded. The competition closes on May 4
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