I dreamed of a boy who was born in the land of Puritania and his name was John. – The Pilgrim's Regress [1]
The
opening sentence of The Pilgrim's Regress, C. S. Lewis's first attempt
at autobiography, serves as an appropriate place at which to commence our
quest to understand Lewis's complicated and often problematic relationship
with the Catholic Church. The boy of whom Lewis was dreaming was in fact
himself. In the preface to the third edition of The Pilgrim's Regress,
Lewis described John's 'Regress' as 'my journey', [2] indicating unequivocally
that he was the Pilgrim at the centre of the autobiographical allegory.
It is also significant that Lewis chose the medium of allegory as the means
by which to write his autobiography, since the juxtaposition of allegory
and autobiography signifies that there is an underlying meaning
to life. Our goal, therefore, will be to follow Lewis in the manner by which he meant to lead us. We shall endeavour to understand the meaning of his life by trying to understand his life as a pilgrimage in search of the meaning of life itself This was his intention in writing The Pilgrim's Regress and also his intention in writing his other autobiographical works, Surprised by Joy and A Grief Observed. We shall take him as he meant to be taken and shall follow in his footsteps, and mind-steps, as he traveled in search of the Truth.
Lewis's journey begins in Puritania, a place that has two levels of meaning. On the allegorical or metaphysical level–the level of Truth–it represents Puritanism; on the physical level–or the level of Fact–it represents Lewis's childhood in the Puritanical atmosphere of Protestant Belfast.
It would be a grave mistake to ignore the importance of Lewis's place of birth on the subsequent shaping of his mind, heart and life. It would also be a mistake to ignore the extent to which the poisonous twins of pride and prejudice exert a vice-like grip on those brought up in the sectarian shadow of Ulster in general, and Belfast in particular. For those who have never been to Belfast, and who have never savoured the bitterness that descends like an omnipresent fog over its warweary and war-worried inhabitants, no words will convey the power that all-pervasive prejudice wields on both sides of the religious divide. [3]
Yet, having commenced with an insistence that it would be a serious error to ignore the importance of Lewis's Ulster Protestant roots, it is necessary to insist, with equal vehemence, that it is possible to err in the direction of overemphasizing its importance. There is a real danger of stressing the power of Puritania to such an extent that it becomes a substitute for any serious consideration of Lewis's religious position. There is a danger of believing that Puritania predestined Lewis to become the sort of Christian that his admirers and detractors have come to love or loathe. Lewis, whose works are awash with the importance and the potency of free will, would have been horrified at such a deterministic interpretation of his life and beliefs. As such, we will be doing him a grave injustice should we fall into the trap of translating Puritania's importance into a presumed omnipotence. It is important but it is not that important.
In essence, although Puritania remained a powerful presence in Lewis's life, it was by no means an all-powerful presence. It would be truer to say that Puritania cast a shadow across the length of his life. Sometimes it was a shadow from which he sought to escape in order to discover the brightness beyond its domain; at other times it was a welcome shade, or shield, in which, and behind which, he hid from the heat of controversial debate.
There is, however, little doubt that the first twenty years of C. S. Lewis's life were dominated by the influence of Puritania and by his desire to escape from it. His grandfather, the Reverend Thomas Hamilton, was a clergyman of the Church of Ireland whose view of the Catholic minority in Belfast was coloured by the theology of bigotry. Catholics were, in his estimation, the devil's own children,[4] and he I never tired of deprecating the Catholic Church from his pulpit'. [5] Lewis insisted, however, that his father, as distinct from his maternal grandfather, was 'far from being specially Puritanical' but, on the contrary, I was, by nineteenth-century and Church of Ireland standards, rather "high".' [6]
For those unversed in the ecclesial position of the Church of Ireland, Lewis's words will be misleading. Although the Church of Ireland is part of the Anglican church it is far 'lower', that is, far more Protestant, than the Church of England. The key to understanding Lewis's words is found in the sub-clause, 'by nineteenth-century and Church of Ireland standards'. The truth is that what might be considered 'rather "high"' by the standards of the Church of Ireland in the nineteenth-century would be considered very 'low' by the standards of the Church of England at the time. Certainly there was no question of Lewis's father adopting the 'high church' position of the Oxford movement and its followers. On the contrary, he would have disapproved strongly of the 'popery' of Pusey and Keble and would have been outraged by the 'poping' of Newman.
Lewis's words must, therefore, be taken in context. His 'rather "high"' father was, in fact, rather 'low' in the wider spectrum of Anglican churchmanship. He was also, apparently, rather tepid in the practice of his faith and failed to convey any degree of faith or fervour to his son. 'I was taught the usual things and made to say my prayers and in due time taken to church', Lewis wrote. 'I naturally accepted what I was told but I cannot remember feeling much interest in it." Recalling his childhood, Lewis remarked that 'aesthetic experiences were rare' and that 'religious experiences did not occur at all.' [8] Such was the apparent indifference of his parents with regard to his religious instruction that Lewis recalled that he received his first inkling of spiritual truth from his Presbyterian governess, Annie Harper, who, during 'a longish lecture', conveyed 'the first thing I can remember that brought the other world to my mind with any sense of reality'. [9] In summary, Lewis's religious upbringing seems to have been characterized by an inherited anti-Catholicism, whether implicit or explicit, combined with a tepid low-church Anglicanism spiced with Presbyterianism.
Consciously or subconsciously, Lewis reacted against the more Puritanical strictures of Ulster Protestantism, particularly in the way in which it manifested itself in the family life of his friend Arthur Greeves. The Greeves family had been Quakers for several generations but when Arthur was about twelve years old his father, Joseph, became a member of the Plymouth Brethren, perhaps the most puri-tyrannical of the Puritan sects. Insisting that his wife and children follow his lead, he had the entire family baptized in the bathtub.
Lewis remembered that Joseph Greeves 'was timid, prim, sour, at once oppressed and oppressive. He was a harsh husband and a despotic father.... My own father described his funeral as "the most cheerful funeral he ever attended".' [10] Years later, Lewis reiterated in a letter to Arthur Greeves his hostile reaction to Puritanism:
Such was the sectarian apartheid, de facto, if not necessarily de jure, that existed in Ireland during the first years of the twentieth century that it is likely that Lewis had scarcely even met a Catholic prior to his arrival in England. This being so, it might be helpful to compare his cultural and psychological roots with those of another Protestant Irishman, George Bernard Shaw.
'All the influences surrounding Bernard Shaw in boyhood were not only Puritan', wrote G. K. Chesterton, 'but such that no non-Puritan force could possibly pierce or counter-act. He belonged to that Irish group which, according to Catholicism, has hardened its heart, which, according to Protestantism, has hardened its head, but which, as I fancy, has chiefly hardened its hide, lost its sensibility to the contact of the things around it. In reading about his youth, one forgets that it was passed in the island which is still one flame before the altar of St. Peter and St. Patrick.' [12] Chesterton's assessment serves as a timely reminder that pride and prejudice are always obstacles to sense and sensibility: 'It could never cross the mind of a man of the Garrison that before becoming an atheist he might stroll into one of the churches of his own country, and learn something of the philosophy that had satisfied Dante and Bossuet, Pascal and Descartes.' [13]
Elsewhere in his study of Shaw, Chesterton discussed the fortress mentality of Protestant Unionists:
There is, of course, a danger in taking the parallels between Shaw and Lewis too far. Shaw was born and raised in Dublin, an overwhelmingly Catholic city in which Protestants were the privileged minority; Lewis was born and raised in Belfast, a predominantly Protestant city in which the Catholics were a much-maligned–and, in consequence, an increasingly malignant–minority. Nonetheless, Protestant Unionists in both cities shared the same supercilious sense of superiority with respect to their Catholic neighbours.
The deeply-ingrained and all-pervasive prejudice of Lewis's childhood was recalled, with whimsical humour, by his brother, Warnie. 'We went to church regularly in our youth, but even then one sensed the fact that church going was not so much a religious as a political right, the weekly assertion of the fact that you were not a Roman Catholic Nationalist. Our butcher and our grocer attended one suspected primarily to draw customers' attention to the fact that at their shops could be bought decent Protestant food untainted by the damnable heresies of Rome.' [16] Warnie also recalled how he and his brother would play a game called 'Catholics versus Protestants', much as children in England might play 'Cowboys versus Indians' or 'British versus Germans'. In these sectarian games Lewis would always insist on taking the Protestant side.[17]
Further evidence of the anti-Catholicism that Lewis inherited as a child is provided in a letter he wrote to his father at the beginning of October 1908. Written shortly after his arrival at Wynyard School in Watford, the nine-year-old Lewis informed his father that he was shocked by the 'highness' of the ritual in the local Anglican church. 'I do not like church here at all because it is so frightfully high church that it might as well be Roman Catholic.' [18] These sentiments, obviously expressed with the implicit assumption that his father would approve of his plaintive contempt for the 'frightfully high' services, must throw into question Lewis's claim, many years later, that his father was 'rather "high"' in his churchmanship.
In November 1909, more than a year after his initial complaint to his father, he recorded the following anti-papist appraisal in his diary: 'We were obliged to go to St John's, a church which wanted to be Roman Catholic, but was afraid to say so. A kind of church abhorred by respectful Irish Protestants.... In this abominable place of
Romish hypocrites and English liars, the people cross themselves, bow to the Lord's Table (which they have the vanity to call an altar), and pray to the Virgin.' [19]
Now, however, comes the first hint of the conundrum of apparent contradictions that appear to have accompanied Lewis, throughout his life, in his love-loathe relationship with Catholicism. Compare the virulence of the words written in his diary with Lewis's recollection of the effect that he later claimed that the Anglo-Catholicism at St John's had on his youthful development.
Ultimately, perhaps, the appeal of Anglo-Catholicism might have resided in nothing more, or less, than a deepseated desire to escape from Puritania, once and for all. This was achieved, apparently at least, some time between 1911 and 1913, not by the embrace of Anglo-Catholicism but by the rejection of all forms of Christianity. 'And so, little by little, with fluctuations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief."' He had escaped from the clutches of Puritania–or at least he fooled himself with the illusion that he had done so. Little did he realize that Puritania could not be shaken off so easily. It, or at least its shadow, would continue to haunt Lewis, like a ghost of his past, on every step of his quest for the truth.
There
are many Protestants and Catholics who have been deeply affected and spirituality
changed by the writings of C.S. Lewis, including many converts to Catholicism
who credit C.S. Lewis for playing a significant role in their conversion.
But the ironic and perplexing fact is that Lewis himself, while “Catholic”
in may aspects of his faith and devotion, never became a Roman Catholic.
Many have wondered why.