The Catholic Church in England and Wales (In Modern Times)

The Catholic Church in Great Britain today is a resurrected church. After the tragic events of the reformation in which the political authorities of Britain found it opportune to separate the British people from the Roman See, the state proceeded to create a national church which adopted a generic Protestantism for its creed but preserved the outward episcopal structure of ecclesiastical government.

The Faith became the object of a virulent persecution which lasted almost three hundred years and produced not a small number of martyrs from every social class in the kingdom. Catholics nevertheless persevered, albeit in dramatically reduced numbers. By the middle of the XIX century the remnant of the ancient church, its numbers reinvigorated to a good degree by immigration from Ireland and France, as well as conversions from the general English population, resurrected all the structures of public worship. It is regrettable but understandable given the profound prejudice of the protestant establishment in Britain, and its necessity to cling on to any vestige of historical authenticity, and continuity with the medieval English church, that upon the re-erection of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, Parliament sought fit to forbid Catholics the use of the names and territorial dimension of the ancient dioceses of the realm.

Forced to re-draw the ecclesiastical map of the Catholic Church in Britain, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales now found themselves Shepards not of Canterbury, York or London, but rather of Westminster, Liverpool and East Anglia. A small price to pay in exchange for the opportunity of restoring Britain once again to the orbit of the barge of Peter.

Today the Church in England and Wales is divided into five provinces, one Apostolic Exarchate for the Ukrainians, the Military prelacy, and twenty-two dioceses.