On 29 September 1850 the Pope issued a formal declaration, commonly called a 'bull', restoring the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, creating Nicholas Wiseman Archbishop of Westminster (Wiseman was also made a cardinal the following day) and establishing twelve bishoprics. On 7 October Wiseman issued his first pastoral letter, 'from out of the Flaminian Gate', to the Catholic clergy of England, the triumphalist tone of which further inflamed Protestant antagonism to what became known as the 'Papal Aggression'. The result was a wave of anti-Catholic hysteria as 'the latent and historic prejudices of the English people rose to the surface' (Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part 1 [1966], p. 294). The Ritualist or Tractarian Movement in the Anglican Church, associated with Dr Pusey, was also fiercely assailed as having been a sort of fifth column within the Church of England consisting of clergymen who had, according to the Bishop of London, brought 'their flocks, step by step, to the very verge of the precipice' of Romanism.
Read more...
