I’ve always been proud of my English heritage. So much so that when I began to consider converting to Catholicism, I felt uneasy. After all, English history this past half of a millennium has been littered with anti-Catholicism. To be Catholic, I felt, is to be very un-English. Moreover, many well-revered “heroes” of English history were quite anti-Catholic themselves. To name one example, “Good Queen Bess” might seem less good if, during her reign, you would have been executed for holding what was the common religious faith of the nation not more than a couple decades prior. What was once known as “Our Lady’s Dowry” became a place where Our Lady’s shrine at Walsingham was destroyed by orders of none other than the King himself, who was even granted the title “defender of the faith” by Pope Leo X in 1521. This was but one of many attacks on “Romish” practices in a once proudly Catholic nation.

The history of Catholicism in England is at once both incredible and filled with tragedy; and history, as we know, is written by the victors, so it cannot be surprising that the English history I was used to came with a Protestant bias. To rectify this, I recently read a book by Joseph Pearce entitled Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England. In this book, it felt like Pearce was wrestling with the same dilemma I had come across: it felt like the choice was either to be English, or to be Catholic, but not both.

Luckily for us both, this dilemma is a false one. Because this book not only describes the consequences of the English Reformation, but also dives into the Catholic roots of England as well as the English Catholic revival, one cannot describe it as being entirely cynical. What Pearce puts forward is itself a portrait of true English identity. As he says at the beginning of his work:

Seeing True England through the omnipresent perspective of the Triune splendour of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, we know that such an England can never die, not because it lingers like a fading coal in the memory of mortal men, but because it exists as a beautiful flower in the gardens of eternity. This is the England which is celebrated in these pages.

Joseph Pearce, Faith of Our Fathers (“Prologue”)

Pearce presents an England firmly rooted in the truth of the Catholic Faith. This England, he suggests, is realer than any other we may have encountered. He says, after all, that this England “whose history in time is but a mere prefiguring” is rather like the shadows in Plato’s cave. He says:

As they [the Saints] go “further up and further in” to the reality beyond the shadowlands of mortal time, they find themselves in England; not the England they had known but the real England. They “are now looking at the England within England, the real England…. And in that inner England, no good thing is destroyed.”

Joseph Pearce, Faith of Our Fathers (“Epilogue”)

Needless to say, Pearce has his own bias, which I share (viz. that we are both Catholics). However, taken as a work that presents the history of England from a Catholic point of view, I would say that I very much enjoyed it. There were times I thought that he might have glossed over the questionable actions of English Catholics, however this is understandable. After all, one could argue that the changes of the English Reformation precipitated a blowback. (For example, the dissolution of the monasteries, which was undoubtedly motivated by greed and hugely disrupted English social life.)

At any rate, what one has here is no doubt a different take on English history than you may have heard, but this is not a bad thing; and regardless, I don’t believe this is the book’s primary value anyhow. More importantly, what I see here is a man holding his country accountable to the Truth Himself. He rightly professes his patriotism and his faith without compromising the integrity of either. In my view, this was a very enjoyable read that has helped me on the road to doing the same; and I would highly recommend it.