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At first the Scots College, which opened in 1602 with eleven students on its roll, was principally an educational establishment where the sons of noblemen were taught good morals, piety, sound doctrine and Christian values without having to make any promise to join the priesthood. Yet when control came into the hands of the Jesuits a decade later, it took little over a year to convert the college into a seminary. The catalyst was the first anniversary in 1615 of the execution of John Ogilvie, a Jesuit hanged at Glasgowâs Tollcross for refusing to swear allegiance to the Crown.
At the time, the students were asked to sign an oath promising to receive holy orders and return to Scotland as missionaries. The popular story is that the anniversary was enough to galvanize all fifteen students to sign up, but in truth only five oaths were ever discovered. Over the past three centuries, many students have taken advantage of the collegeâs excellent education, but failed to emerge with a clerical collar.
By the eighteenth century, the college became a hotbed of Jacobitism as hopes of a restoration of a Catholic monarchy ignited. They rested on Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie, who was born and educated in Rome. A legitimate heir to the throne, he was prevented from ever succeeding by the Act of Settlement, put in place in 1701 to ensure the Protestant Hanoverian succession passed over the Stuarts, though his ill-fated campaign in 1745 carried the hopes of the college students. When he returned to the city in 1766, following the death of his father, Prince Charles, he received a welcome befitting a monarch from the college rector, later summarily dismissed by the Pope, who, on grounds of Realpolitik, refused to recognize the Young Pretender.
From almost its earliest days, the Scots College has enjoyed a desirable address, sitting close to the Quattro Fontane, the road of the Four Fountains, high on the Quirinal, one of the seven hills that make up the Eternal City. The original property was knocked down and in 1869 a new college was built a few hundred yards away on a street with the gradient of a toboggan run. As the Quattro Fontane was the principal route to the papal palace, for over three centuries Scots students would watch as kings, queens and the royalty of Europe arrived to pay their respects.
In the early twentieth century, the palace was home to Italyâs King and, just before the Second World War, students watched as Hitler and Goebbels drove towards a meeting with Mussolini. One contemporary diarist at the college commented how easily he could have lobbed a bomb. It was a thought shared by the Italian partisans, who, in March 1944, planted a bomb in a bin at the collegeâs back door on the Via Rasella. The device detonated and killed thirty-two passing members of the Waffen SS. Upon hearing the news, Hitler demanded that the entire quarter be razed, but Field Marshal Kesselring, the countryâs commander-in-chief, insisted on a more emotive act of retribution. He had 320 men rounded up from the surrounding streets, marched to the Ardeatine caves outside the city, and shot â ten men for every dead German. At the time, the collegeâs caretaker, Lorenzo Martinelli, narrowly escaped with his life after hiding among the Italian orphans, now based within the college.
The lynching of Mussolini, Germanyâs defeat and the triumph of the Allies in 1945 left the collegeâs rector, Mgr William Clapperton, anxious to return to Rome from his exile in Scotland. Appointed in 1922, Clapperton was almost sixty and could be cantankerous and brisk with underlings but he was proud of his achievements at the college. The son of a Justice of the Peace from a Catholic enclave in Banffshire, he earned a First in Classics at Durham University before studying in Rome, a city he would never truly leave. At the Scots College, he bounded up the career ladder from head boy to vice-rector, then rector at the age of thirty-six.
The death of Archbishop Mackintosh of Glasgow in 1943 had robbed him of his great supporter and left the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh, James McDonald, the senior cleric in the country. A man with little respect for the college, McDonald preferred instead to send promising students to Cambridge. His intention was to maintain the college as a distant outpost populated by a few egg-headed postgraduates, but Clappertonâs resistance and a strongly worded letter from Cardinal Pizzardo at the Vaticanâs Congregaton of Seminaries produced the desired effect. In May 1946, it was finally agreed to reopen the college and in July, Clapperton was flown by the British Governmentâs Transport Command to Rome to make the necessary arrangements.
The essence of the Scots College is contained in the lyrics of the college song, written in 1900 as part of the institutionâs tercentenary celebrations. The author was John Gray, a published poet, novelist and Englishman. Gray had been a former lover of Oscar Wilde, who named his most celebrated character, Dorian Gray, after him in order to capture his affections. Accepted by the college as a mature student, Gray put away what he viewed as the errors of his youth and rose to be a canon and secretary of the Scots College society. The song runs:
From the land of purple heather, from the dear and distant north,
Scotland casts our lot together, Bonnie Scotland sends us forth, To the city by the Tiber, to the height of St Peterâs Dome, To bear the bright tradition back of everlasting Rome.
Hereâs a hand and faith behind it, hereâs my love till death shall part;
Give yours and I will bind it, with the dearest of my heart.
So land and kin forsaking, for Scotlandâs faith grown cold
For her valiant spirit aching, with the wound they wrought of old: In faith and heart united all in happy exile one, That Scotlandâs wrong be righted, so that Scotlandâs work be done.
We foot the fervent traces of those that went before,
Adorned with gifts and graces from our Alma Mater store: So sing the Careful Mother for a tribute to her worth, For to find so good another we might journey all the earth.
For aye the gaps supplying she draughts her study bands,
To keep her colours flying in the best of bonnie lands: The men she taught to cherish all she knows or ever knew; The hope that cannot perish Romans all and Scotsmen true.
To the accompaniment of these words, Winning and thirty other students arrived, under the supervision of Fr Philip Flanagan, at Romeâs Stazione Termini on the afternoon of 18 October 1946. The collegeâs vice-rector had taught them the words as an antidote to the tedium of their three-day journey â by rail from Glasgow to London, by boat from Dover to Calais, and by train once again via Paris to Rome. The devastation of central Europe, following six years of war, was visible from the carriage windows and the volume of ruined bridges and rail lines buckled by bombs reduced their progress to a crawl. Winning was to spend the first leg of the journey attempting to cheer up a fellow student, who would become one of his dearest friends. Charles âDonnyâ Renfrew had been raised by two aunts, following the death of his mother, and the day before departure one of them had been killed by a passing tram. With the date of departure fixed and the journey viewed as impossible for a solitary seventeen-year-old, Renfrew was prohibited from attending the funeral. When not attempting to raise Renfrewâs spirits, Winning was at work on his own. A painful stomachache, written off as a bad case of nerves by his parents, developed during the course of the journey into a series of stabbing pains that left him pale and withdrawn. The trainâs arrival in northern Italy was accompanied by a splitting headache, one that powdered Asket mixed with Vichy water was unable to tame. The party then stopped in the city of Turin to visit the tomb of St John Bosco, founder of the pious Society of St Francis de Sales (the Salesians). John Bosco was the patron saint of youths and author of many of the pamphlets Winning had previously sold door to door. It was while in Turin that Winning first encountered Italian food. What was in fact to develop into a lifelong love affair did not begin well: he was unable to twirl the spaghetti, the veal Milanese was mistaken for fish in breadcrumbs, and the spicy tomato sauce exacerbated his tender stomach.
The partyâs final approach to Rome was heralded by one studentâs cry that he had spotted the Colosseum, which later turned out to be a gasometer.
On the platform to greet them stood Mgr Clapperton and Fr Gerry Rogers, a tall, handsome priest from Glasgow who had arrived in Rome for further study in the field of canon law at the Roman Rota. Together as a happy band they made the short trip to the college by bus, along the Via Volturno, where British troops in khaki uniforms and bolt-action rifles patrolled the streets. At the Scots College, Lorenzo Martinelli had dusted down the cassocks he had hidden for the duration of the war. Winning was now to experience his own taste of Italian style, a uniform that consisted of a purple soutane, red sash, and black university-style gown called a soprana, an ensemble that was then topped by a black broad-brimmed hat, nicknamed the soup bowl.
Once dressed, the boys were given a tour of their new home. The kitchen and refectory were on the ground floor, the first floor housed both the library and the offices of the rector, while the second floor contained red damask-covered chairs and the valuable paintings of the drawing room. The student rooms were tucked away on the third floor. Winningâs room was small, basic and tiled in black and white. Its only accoutrements were a bed, a wardrobe, desk and chair, and an enamel basin, jug and pail. There was a solitary light in the ceiling and a cube of sunlight would sneak in through the window high in the wall. A shower room sat at the end of the hall, where each day he would collect water to wash.
Over the next few days, Winning began to familiarize himself with his new surroundings. A trip was organized by Fr Rogers to the catacombs of San Callisto and Winning, along with a few other students, wandered through the ancient passageways where the first Christians and early popes were buried. As impressive as the frescos and stucco work of San Callisto were the contents of the bakersâ windows to students starved of cakes and éclairs and subsisting on meagre food with little charm. Rationing was in force and the rector was struggling to secure adequate provisions; a situation that led to the Vatican sending over supplies of bread and pasta. Yet still the students would retire to bed hungry.
The cold was another persistent problem. The students arrived in the middle of October, when the days should have remained sunny and warm, but the worst winter that century had arrived for a long stay. The long cassocks worn by the students were valuable insulation against the cold, as were the silk stockings into which their trousers were tucked (as the college rules insisted). Until his death, Winning still possessed the silk stockings bought at great expense by his mother. He said: âIt was so cold that first year and the building was so old that the cold seeped into your bones. I remember wrapping anything I could find round my legs to keep me warm.â
In 1946, Pope Pius XII, christened Eugenio Pacelli, had resided on the throne of St Peter for seven years, since the very eve of war. A skilled diplomat, he had previously worked as papal secretary of state and negotiated concordats with both Austria and National Socialist Germany, agreements which lent Hitler international prestige at a crucial time, but which the dictator would later break. Throughout the war, Pius XII had repeatedly argued for peace, but refused to condemn the specific genocide of the Jews, preferring to protect the Vatican from possible destruction by the use of the broadest of strokes. Yet for all the condemnation that would accrue after his death, Pope Pius XII attracted universal devotion during his long life. He would become Winningâs favourite pope, a relationship triggered by the studentâs first glimpse of the ethereal pontiff, who more than any previous incumbent offered a glimpse of the divine.
The first time Winning saw Pius XII was on the Sunday after his arrival in October 1946. The students had been informed that a beatification ceremony was to take place that evening at St Peterâs, and those who chose to could attend. Winning made his way to St Peterâs Square accompanied by three other students, where they were recognized as Scots through the purple of their tunics by an elderly priest. âWonderful! You are back in Rome,â he commented, before introducing himself as a retired bishop of Malta and insisting they all accompany him as his âsecretariesâ to the front of St Peterâs Basilica. As they walked along the vast, marble-encrusted interior, crammed with chapels, altars and precious works of art, Winning was visibly taken aback, an emotion that would only deepen with the appearance of the Pope.
They waited almost an hour in the pews, where the bishop interspersed his prayers with a brief history of the building. Both students and host fell silent when hundreds of crystal chandeliers throughout the church unexpectedly sparked into life, to be followed a few seconds later by sonorous peals from silver trumpets. The Popeâs arrival was further heralded by the choir singing âTu es Petrusâ (You are Peter), while musicians played the pontifical march written by Vittorino Hallmayr, an Austrian regimental band director. The crowds then cheered. The first thing Winning saw was the plumed steel helmets of the Swiss Guard, advancing with raised halberds, the striking combination of spear and axe, and a chamberlain in traditional ruff. Then, high above their heads, seated on the Sedia Gestatoria, the great portable chair carried on the shoulders of robed men, was Pius XII. He had a rake-like appearance and the ghostly pallor of one who eats frugally. His fixed stare, shuttered behind round wire-rimmed glasses, was that of a man who could see past his audience, beyond this world and into the next. For the duration of his carriage, he was fanned by ostrich feathers and he in turn continually blessed those present by making a rigid sign of the cross. âHe had an almost mystical image. I felt overawed by the experience,â said Winning. He remembered the evening and the many future audiences he would attend, when he wrote in 1964:
Perhaps the most intimate quality of Roman formation is the personal love and loyalty it nurtures for the Vicar of Christ and the Holy See. In Rome the student lives under the shadow of Peter, close to Christâs visible head. Every student has his favourite Pope; it is usually the one he first saw and knew on coming to Rome. Instead of being simply a man or a catechism answer, the Holy Father is a living person.
Two years later, in 1948, Winning and a group of Scots students attended a private audience with Pius XII. They were not permitted to speak but instead they each knelt before him and kissed his ring as a sign of loyalty and devotion; in return, they received an individual blessing and a group photograph. Fifty-one years later, Winning fulfilled his vow when John Cornwell, the Cambridge scholar and author, published Hitlerâs Pope, a critical biography of Pius XII that viewed him as an anti-Semite who did little to protect the Jews. In a robust defence in the opinion pages of the Daily Telegraph, Winning argued that Pius XII had been fearful of further antagonizing the Nazis who would then turn the screws tighter on the Jews. âWould history have judged Pius differently if he had hurled anathemas at Hitlerâs regime, and wallowed martyr-like in the blood of his own people and the Jewish people?â
(#litres_trial_promo) He went even further and contacted the priest in charge of furthering Pius XIIâs beatification and offered every assistance in the defence of his heroâs crumbling reputation. This was to become a typical response from Winning who would mentally edit evidence, dismissing or reducing Pius XIIâs obvious anti-semitism and embracing the line that best supported the Church: a position that painted him as an ultra-loyalist, prepared to swallow the party line and regurgitate it when so called upon.
Winning and his colleagues departed the ceremony at around five oâclock and spotted seminarians in the scarlet cassock of the German College. Winning took the lead in approaching them in a gesture of peace, but his noble effort was unnecessary; each student was from Hungary, though based at the German-Hungarian college. As Latin was the only common tongue they began to quiz each other as they walked home. Josef Bistyo, one of the Hungarian students, explained how he had deserted from the army and walked for weeks until he reached Rome. Unable to speak the language he would rub his stomach when hungry. Winning and Bistyo became friends and for the duration of their university years they spent each morning break talking in Latin, so that they would become fluent in the language of the classroom and their textbooks.
If Winningâs devotion to the papacy was fuelled by his first sight of Pius XII, his template for the priesthood was formed by the lecturers at the Gregorian University, the West Point of the Catholic Church. If Oxford University in England had a propensity to produce prime ministers, the Pontificia Universita Gregoriana produced popes; ten during the previous four hundred years, including Pius XII. Originally founded as the Collegio Romano by Ignatius of Loyola, it was upgraded to a university by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and became an incubator for the Churchâs elite. The original building, constructed from a handsome honeyed stone, and situated in the old town, was confiscated during the Reunification of Italy in the 1880s. Mussolini granted permission for a new building to be built in 1929, a feat completed with Fascist punctuality in 1931. So it was to the Piazza della Pilota, a ten-minute walk from the Scots College along the Via Rasella, that Winning arrived in November 1946. The Scots College was comparable to a contemporary hall of residence, with Winningâs actual education taking place at the university under the tutelage of the Jesuits.
The first day brought a problem. After examining the Scots studentsâ previous course of study, the authorities decided that it was necessary for Winning to repeat a year of theology. It was a decision which meant the misery of Mill Hill was compounded by being regarded by Rome as a waste of time. He was initially disappointed, but grew to be grateful for the extra time, relishing the dynamism within the university. Each day, 2,500 students drawn from over 200 colleges and religious orders or communities gathered at the âGregâ to learn from 110 professors. The lecture theatres had raised banks of seats, each with a hinged desktop, and on the ground floor stood the professors who led them through dogmatic theology, fundamental theology and moral theology. A German student who sat in front of Winning in a number of classes was so enamoured with particular lecturers that he would sneak a camera from his leather satchel and take their picture. Winning said: âHe never bothered with the boring ones. Rome and the Greg were so full of great people he did not need to.â
Their teachers were contemporary stars such as Heinrich Lennerts, a German who taught dogmatic theology and explained to Winning the nature of the Trinity, the power of grace and the workings of the Holy Spirit, while also writing speeches for Pius XII. Maurizio Flick was an Italian Jesuit who taught moral theology and focused on the theology of the cross, a subject on which he would later write a celebrated book. Winningâs personal favourite was Sebastian Tromp, a Dutch Jesuit who was the principal author of Pius XIIâs encyclical, âMystici Corporisâ, issued in June 1943. During classes Tromp would joke, âAs we said in our encyclical ⦠excuse me, as the Holy Father said in his encyclical.â Winning was inspired by their quiet and usually humble nature, unexpected from men of such intelligence and achievement. On one occasion, he bumped into Charles Voyers, the French Jesuit who was an acclaimed humanist and pioneer of the ecumenical movement. Winning was able to give him a spare ticket for a papal event. âHe thanked me profusely and I would think these are the kinds of guys I want to be. He was a world-famous theologian, but very humble.â
Winningâs attempts to become such a âguyâ were aided by his tremendous stamina for work, combined with a comprehensive style of study. He would never use three textbooks, where a fourth might offer a more illuminating passage. At the college he would consistently study past midnight, despite the threat of a five oâclock rise. Eugene Matthews, a postgraduate student of canon law, said: âI thought he was very unwise and pushed himself much too hard.â Since Rome was regularly bedevilled by power-cuts, this meant most of Winningâs studies were conducted by candlelight. Commenting on his study methods, Charles Renfrew said: âHe read a lot in bed at night. The rest of us would have one or two books ⦠Tom would have fourteen books and theyâd all have markers sticking in them. I used to say: âCan I take away thirteen of those and let you finish one?ââ
(#litres_trial_promo)
For all the breadth of his study and the depth of influence brought to bear by the current pope and the teachings at the university, Winning was still able to carry his own personal experiences into the classroom. One unmarked exam paper was to have a growing consequence for his concept of social justice, which became more radical as he aged. During Winningâs second term, a lecturer asked the question, was it right to steal if you were starving? Winning drew on the poverty of his childhood and viewed the answer as simple: clearly it was better to save your life than die in obedience to the law. Outside of the class, he discussed his answer with other students and discovered that he was the only one to answer yes. Yet as the papers were never corrected his position was never challenged. âI asked the older fellows and they would shake their heads; but I felt they damn well needed to experience it.â
The experience of a Roman education was one of the gifts for which Winning would most often thank God. After the demoralizing drudgery of his British education, his experience in the Italian capital was one of levity and an unexpected liberalism. True, there were strict rules regarding many of the quintessential Italian experiences: the smoky bars of Trastevere, the chic restaurants of the Borgo Pio, the Opera House and theatre were all proscribed under threat of expulsion. But the museums, the churches, the Colosseum and the millennia of culture remained on permanent display and through the mandatory daily walk, designed to ensure the body remained as fit as the mind, Winning witnessed them all.
The Scots College, under the firm reign of Mgr William Clapperton, was reasonably contented. The rector preferred one rule for all, rather than having exceptions, and Winning found the college the most relaxed of all the establishments he had been in. âIf you were caught smoking in Bearsden, you would be fired. But if you were caught smoking in Rome, the rector would just say: âDonât put the cigarettes down the washbasin sink.ââ
Clapperton could be boorish at times with his own staff, but he was remembered fondly by students for the balance he brought to their education. For instance, students were encouraged to drink wine with their meals; a pleasure denied to Winning who was now nursing the beginnings of a stomach ulcer that would trouble him for the next twenty years. Should a student become âpuggledâ through drink, it would pass once without comment but a lesson was considered learned. However, as the wine was consistently watered down, such an occasion occurred only rarely.
Winning was called before Clapperton a number of times and reprimanded for his untidy dress and tardy arrival at morning prayer, but he held him in some affection. The rector was at his most unpopular during the monthly film nights, organized by Eugene Matthews with the assistance of Warner Brothers and MGM, who had offices in Rome. As a result of Clappertonâs poor hearing, he would ask for a running commentary. Rome was the type of city that attracted Hollywood stars and on one occasion, shortly after watching a Tyrone Power picture, Winning spotted the actor with Linda Christian, a leading actress of the day, posing for pictures by the Trevi fountain.
Clapperton reserved his most spectacular outbursts for the college football team. Before the war the Scots never lost their annual match against the English college; after the war they never won. Winning was an ineffectual player and rarely strayed on to the pitch; instead he preferred to remain on the sidelines and revelled in the Celtic match reports sent from home. He once took the opportunity to canonize Celticâs entire first team. Each day at 12.45 p.m., the students filed into the college chapel to perform the Litany of Saints, a prayer in which they petitioned the help of the Churchâs saints and martyrs. As Winning was leading the chant, and in the absence of either rector or vice-rector, he substituted the names of the saints for players such as George Hazlett, Konrad Kapler and William Gallacher.
Winning was frequently late. His tardiness provoked the ire of Clapperton, and caused his fellow students to moan with frustration. The amateur dramatics common at Blairs had been revived in Rome. Rehearsals were scheduled between eight oâclock and nine-thirty each evening, and Winning was perpetually late, reluctant to don a frock once again.
During his three years in Rome he would go on to perform as Calpurnia and Lady Macbeth, but he was allowed to retain his own sex in the operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. âWe all assembled at the right time, but he was always late. He would get impatient and heâd say, âWhy the hell do we have to say this?ââ said Charles Renfrew. Roddy Macdonald, another contemporary, said, âHe wasnât Laurence Olivier, but he worked hard, he made an effort.â The productions were performed each Christmas when, for a few nights, the English-speaking colleges in Rome became a cabaret circuit with the students performing one evening, spectating the next. The life of a âpoor playerâ had its downside, when on more than one occasion Winning had to visit a chemist, dressed in his soutane, to request nail-polish remover.
In July 1947, in a tradition dating back over three hundred years, the college closed down and everyone, staff, students and servants, travelled the twelve miles from the baking heat of the city centre to the relative cool and shade of the mountains. A stone house had been purchased in 1654 in an idyllic spot outside the hill town of Marino, which offered wonderful views out across the Sabine Hills on one side, and the blue of the Mediterranean on the other. The original Villa Scozzese had long since crumbled and had been replaced in 1925 with a modern two-storey structure, complete with an elegant courtyard and a bell tower which commanded views across the parched plains to Rome and up to the summit of Monte Cavo. The leisure facilities were those of an upmarket country hotel and included a swimming pool, tennis court and acres of vineyards, where, as Winning remembered, âyou could pick bunches of grapes as big as a bucketâ.
Upon arrival, the studentsâ and staffâs first priority was to inspect for any war damage, as the villa had been rented by the Italian Air Force before being converted into a German command post for the local area. It was in this capacity that Field Marshal Kesselring, commander-in-chief of Italy, had visited. Monsignor Clapperton discovered that what the Germans had lent with their right hand, they had stolen back with their left: new pumps had been fitted to ensure a steady water supply, the roads had been kept in good repair, and a mechanical wine press had been installed in the cantina. Upon their retreat, however, they had taken all the beds and mattresses, and ripped out the stoves they had fitted, leaving, as Clapperton recalled, âonly the holes in the walls to greet usâ.
(#litres_trial_promo) The compensation the college eventually received failed to cover the cost but, as Clapperton felt, âIt was summer, we were back at the villa, and it felt good to be alive.â
In previous centuries, summer visits to the Villa Scozzese had been restricted to just six weeks, but now with exams over, the university closed until October, and visits to Scotland restricted to just one every three years, the house was to be home for almost three months. The students settled into a long summer of hiking, swimming, tennis and only the lightest of studies. The rector ran a morning class, studying Danteâs Inferno in the original Italian and there was the rosary and Benediction each evening. Yet Winning was to tolerate his visits to the villa as opposed to truly enjoy them. A lifetimeâs fear of indolence was born during the two summers he spent at Marino. On future holidays for the rest of his life, he would plan and pack each day with excursions or visits, unable to simply slouch. âI felt it made you soft,â said Winning, of his drowsy Italian summers. He was also stricken with pangs of homesickness and would climb the bell tower to watch the planes he imagined were bound for Scotland. To keep himself busy, Winning began teaching a daily German class for any students who could muster the enthusiasm to attend.
Some days, however, were easier to endure than others. The rector enjoyed the sea and regular trips were organized to Netuno on the coastline. A lorry was hired and the students would climb into the back for the short trip. The villaâs servants would also travel down to prepare a large lunch at a beachside restaurant that they would take over for the day.
One incident Winning remembered with bemusement was the arrest of Constantino, the villaâs chef. He had already embarrassed himself by making a drunken speech in honour of dead Fascists. This took place when the students had attempted to pray before a memorial to the Gordon Highlanders who fell at the Anzio beachhead. A few days later, a second incident occurred on the occasion of Marinoâs annual festival, when the townsfolk travelled the neighbouring vineyards collecting grapes so that the townâs fountain would spout wine. After the ceremony, Constantino returned to the villa to prepare supper, but instead of simply serving the meat dishes and departing, he insisted on blowing a kazoo repeatedly in the rectorâs face. He was arrested the next day with two stories circulating (both of which may or may not be true), one that he had killed a man while serving Mussolini during the war, another involving the theft of a cow.
In the summer of 1947, the students were joined for a few weeks by the Scots bishops, who had arrived in Rome for the Ad Limina, the report they deliver every five years to the Pope and the various Vatican departments. Their arrival had an effect on Winningâs future as he learned that the archdiocese of Glasgow would be split to create two smaller dioceses, centred around the towns of Paisley in the west and Motherwell in the east. Although Winning remained a student for the diocese of Glasgow, he now knew he would not serve there as a priest, as his address lay within the new diocese of Motherwell. The students returned to the college in October, narrowly missing the collapse of the top-floor ceilings.
In the autumn of 1947 and spring of 1948, Winning was an interested spectator in an unprecedented campaign by the Catholic Church in the national politics of Italy. The cause was in opposition to the growing strength of the Communist Party under the remarkable leadership of Palmiro Togliatti, a native Italian who had spent the war years sheltering in Moscow. Togliatti was a natural politician, aware that Italians had no desire to swap Mussolini for Stalin, and so he developed a distinctly Italian form of Communism, one capable of drawing ten thousand spectators to hear him speak. He had already been expelled from the coalition government during the spring, at the behest of Washington, and now with a general election planned for May 1948, he stood as a potential Prime Minister.
While the American government publicly threatened to withdraw the benefits of the Marshall Plan from Italy, in the event of a Communist victory, privately they pumped in $5 million through the fledgling Central Intelligence Agency to the Christian Democrats and anti-Communist trade unions to prevent any such victory occurring. Hundreds of thousands of posters began appearing for the Christian Democrats, showing a skeleton in a Soviet uniform with the shoutline: âVote â or heâll be your boss.â A pastiche of such posters appeared on walls of the Scots College, during the election of the new debating chairman. Yet it was the power of the Pope which arguably swung the election. On 8 February 1948, Pius XII met with Professor Luigi Gedda, leader of Catholic Action, a Vatican-backed lay movement, which operated in a number of European countries to educate men (and a few women) about Catholic social teaching with the idea that they would influence society for the better, and charged him with the task of preventing a Communist takeover.
Pius XII denounced the Communists whom he detested for their atheism, and threatened any Catholic who sided with the party with excommunication, and Gedda set up a Civic Committee in 1,800 parishes across the country. These distributed propaganda posters and screened films depicting the Communists as godless and evil. From the balcony of his papal apartment, Pope Pius asked the gathered crowds, which included Winning, âDo you want to live under the atheism of Russia? Do you want to be disciples of Christ?â A week prior to the election, while Winning was on a short break in Siena with Charles Renfrew and Eugene Matthews, Italian seminarians across the country removed their cassocks, dressed as laity, and actively campaigned for the Christian Democrats. On 18 April 1948, the Churchâs pressure bore fruit: the Christian Democrats proved victorious. The Churchâs achievement would resonate with Winning, who would never forget the potential for influence which existed within the Catholic Church, though at the time he questioned the effects on democracy. His conclusion, however, was that a Communist victory would have had even greater, more serious consequences.
The date of Winningâs ordination as a priest was set for 18 December 1948. As he was still only twenty-three years old, one year below the permitted age, a special dispensation was sought and granted. Prior to the ceremony, he embarked, as was customary, on a one-week retreat to reflect on the honour and burden about to be bestowed on him. Winning and Hugh McEwan, a fellow Scot whose ordination was set for the same date, spent their retreat at the Jesuit headquarters a few hundred yards from St Peterâs Square. There they met their former scripture professor, Fr Josef Mochsi, a Hungarian Jesuit, who was composing a report for the Vatican on Communist Hungary. The priest wished them both well, but asked that they pray for him as he would be returning to Budapest shortly and arrest was inevitable. Winning promised to offer his first Mass for the priest, who one month later was imprisoned by the Communist authorities.
Maurice Taylor had reconvened his priestly training in Rome on the completion of his military service, and it was he who visited the Jesuitsâ headquarters and told Winning the location of the ordination. Unfortunately, the Church of the Twelve Apostles was an ordinary, unflattering site â entirely undesirable in the opinion of Winning â for hosting such a service. He insisted Taylor change the mind of the bureaucrat at the Vatican office who had made the decision. Winning wanted the ceremony to take place at the Basilica of St John Lateran, the grandest church in Rome after St Peterâs, and the site where he had previously received his minor orders. The self-regard of such a statement is one that verges almost on arrogance and illustrates that behind Winningâs doubts and occasional crises in confidence, there actually lay a strong bedrock of self-confidence. It is hard to imagine any Scots seminarian before or since who would deem a particular venue as unsuitable for his own ordination. Incredibly, Taylor was successful and Winningâs presumptuous wish was granted. On the appointed day, he arrived before dawn for a ceremony that began at half past six and would last over six hours.
Among the packed congregation was an extended delegation from Winningâs family. Thomas Winning senior had decided to sell his sweet-making machines in order to raise the necessary funds for himself, his wife and daughter to attend. Eight other relatives, including aunts, uncles and cousins, decided to make what was in 1948 a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not only to witness Winningâs ordination, but also to see the sights of Rome. The church, with its stunning marble statues and fourteenth-century frescos, did not disappoint. In total, thirty-nine priests and a whole host of minor orders were ordained that morning by Archbishop Luigi Traglia.
Winning attempted to focus all his attention on what was to come. God, working through the Holy Spirit, was only moments from descending upon him. At the altar, the elderly archbishop laid both his hands on his head and began to utter the prayers of ordination which stretch back two thousands years to Christianityâs earliest days. After praying that the Holy Spirit would touch Winning with his gifts, Traglia anointed his hands with the oil of Christ, the sacred oil of olives once used in the coronation of kings and a symbol of the Holy Spirit. It was these hands which would now be able to administer the sacraments of the Church, turn wine into blood, and unleavened bread into the body of Christ.
In the most dramatic part of the ceremony, Winning lay flat on the floor of the sanctuary, his face pressed into the marble and his arms folded under his head â a form of surrender to God and a symbol of his rebirth. âHe is waiting there like a dead thing, for the Holy Spirit to come and quicken him into a new form of life,â
(#litres_trial_promo) wrote Ronald Knox of the ordination ceremony. After a moment of silent contemplation, Winning rose as a priest and accepted the chalice and paten, the cup and plate used during the Mass for the bread and wine.
Outside after the service he embraced his mother and sister and shook hands with his father. It was the first time they had seen each other in over two years and the delight was evident. Although students were prohibited from missing classes to witness their friendsâ ordination, Charles Renfrew had attended and gave his warm congratulations. Again, according to tradition, the rector was absent and so Winning returned to the college to give Clapperton his first blessing as a new priest. After this he retired to a local restaurant for a family lunch, which he followed with a visit to Vatican Radio in order to broadcast his blessings and good wishes to Scotland.
A highlight, not only of his ordination but also of his life, followed two days later when he and his family enjoyed a brief audience with Pope Pius XII. In contrast to Winningâs previous encounters with the Pope, this time he was able to speak with him, even though very briefly. He exchanged a pledge of loyalty for the Popeâs blessing and promise of his thoughts and prayers. It signified the closure of a remarkable two years. Though his final exams at the Gregorian would not take place until June and his fine grades, a cum laude, were not yet known, that meeting on 20 December 1948 contained the essential ingredients of his future life and career: a fierce loyalty to the Pope, a deep love of the family, and an unflinching devotion to his duty as a priest.
FOUR (#ulink_8bfc3361-3394-5397-b3d8-ebb3c4089314)
A Curateâs Tale (#ulink_8bfc3361-3394-5397-b3d8-ebb3c4089314)
âGerry Rogers was a father figure to me.â
THOMAS WINNING
Ecclesiastical politics and their secular cousin are very similar. In both, any change in leadership frequently corresponds to a change in personnel. In 1947, Fr Gerry Rogers, once the indispensable troubleshooter of the previous Archbishop of Glasgow, Donald Mackintosh, discovered that his successor, Donald Campbell, was a far brisker, ruder character. Where Rogers had once sat at Mackintoshâs right hand, advising on a range of issues from Church law to liturgical matters and changes of personnel, he now found himself distanced from and no longer welcome within the confines of the inner circle.
Donald Campbell did not care much for Gerry Rogers. He disliked his popularity among his fellow priests and was jealous of his easy manner and his reputation as a âmanâs manâ, as comfortable on the eighteenth hole as he was uttering Latin prayers or cradling a child beside a baptismal font. As president of the Glasgow Archdioceseâs Marriage Tribunal, Rogers spent office hours sifting through the detritus of buckled marriages and would never have become Thomas Winningâs close friend and valued mentor were it not for Campbellâs irrational desire to rid his archdiocese of a brilliant mind whose face he felt no longer fitted. Campbellâs solution was cunning; in 1947, Rogers was appointed chaplain to a congregation of nuns in the town of Bothwell. In 1948, the archdiocese of Glasgow was broken up to create two new dioceses, and as Bothwell fell within the boundary of the new Motherwell Diocese, Rogers was excluded from the diocese of his birth.
The reason for the formation of the new dioceses was not simply to facilitate Rogersâ departure. It was the culmination of five centuries of antagonism and jealousy between the countryâs rival cities â Glasgow on the west coast and Edinburgh on the east â over where the Churchâs power lay and who best had the ear of Rome. Glasgow had enjoyed an early lead in the Dark Ages when in 1175 the diocese was granted the title specialis filia Romanae ecclesiae, Special Daughter of the Roman Church, by Pope Alexander III; this was a cloak of protection which defended the diocese from the long crook of the Archbishops of York and Canterbury who wished to see it pulled within their empire.
Seventeen years later, the title was stretched to cover the whole of Scotland, and Glasgow lost her exclusive status. Her fortunes tumbled further when, in 1472, the Vatican chose to elevate St Andrews to a metropolitan archbishopric, an arrangement which placed every other diocese, including Glasgow, in a subordinate role to the east of Scotland and incensed both bishops and King alike. James III initially refused to allow the new Archbishop Patrick Graham access to the town of St Andrews. So deep was his fit of pique at not having been consulted over the appointment that it took Grahamâs promise of extra taxation for the Crown before the King agreed to lift his blockade. In Glasgow, Bishop Robert Blacader sank into a petulant sulk over his inferior position and refused to recognize the eastâs new status; he went on to petition the Scots parliament who, in 1489, passed a law stating that: âthe honour and welfare of the realm demanded the erection of Glasgow into an archdioceseâ. Two years later, the bishop travelled to Rome and successfully pleaded his position before Pope Innocent VIII. Glasgowâs honour was restored on 9 January 1492 when a papal bull announced the areaâs elevation to an archdiocese with its own suffragen sees of Dunkeld, Dunblane, Galloway and Argyll. Yet hostilities continued between Blacader, now Archbishop, and William Scheves, the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. Scheves was attempting to seek redress at the Apostolic Signatura, the Churchâs highest court, for what he considered Blacaderâs repeated violations of his metropolitan authority. After a further year and a half, King James IV had cause to bang their mitres together in an attempt to seek a solution to a problem that was draining the country of money as rents and dues were now being sent to Rome to fund the lawsuit. The squabble was never resolved and decades later the Archbishop of Glasgow and the Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh were still fighting over supremacy. On one occasion during the 1540s, the cross bearers of Cardinal David Beaton of St Andrews and Edinburgh and James Dunbar, the Archbishop of Glasgow, were reduced to fighting each other outside Glasgow Cathedral to ensure their respective Archbishop entered the cathedral first.
The situation in reality was comparable with tussling over a deck chair on the Titanic. The Catholic Church was viewed as corrupt and heretical by the new reformers led by John Knox. The religious houses were perceived to be swollen with the contents of the peopleâs purses, parish priests were often absent, having abandoned the work to low-paid, poorly trained and ill-educated curates, and, as a result, parishes fell into neglect. A distinct lack of discipline rippled across the Church, leading to accusations of sexual immorality. While the Church leaders were rarely as promiscuous as presented in the accounts of Protestant historians, any sexual relations at all were hypocritical among men sworn to celibacy. In their defence, they believed the Church was on the cusp of recognizing a married clergy, and characters such as Cardinal Beaton, who had eight children by the same woman, Marian Ogilvie, with whom he lived for twenty years, considered themselves to be pre-empting progress. Progress, however, lay in the hands of Protestantism. The reforming theologies of Martin Luther and John Calvin, with their emphasis on scripture and condemnation of the way in which the Catholic Church conducted itself, had arrived in Scotland in the 1520s and begun to exert their influence. The burning of reformers such as George Wishart in 1545 and Walter Myln on 28 April 1558 did nothing to cauterize calls for change; instead, the first death led directly to the revenge slaying of Cardinal Beaton in his own room at St Andrews in 1546, while the execution of Myln triggered rioting in Edinburgh.
In reaction to increasing hostilities, the Church held a number of provincial councils between 1547 and 1559 to introduce reforms but, by the close of the final council, Catholicism was already doomed. A coalition of Lords and Lairds, hostile to Scotlandâs French Queen, Mary of Guise, now christened themselves the Lords of the Congregation and vowed to rid the country of both Queen and Catholicism. In 1557, a bond was issued vowing to ârenounce the congregation of Satanâ and to âestablish the most blessed work of God and his congregationâ. John Knox was invited back from Geneva and within two years the group had raised an army, with the patronage of Elizabeth I, the new Queen of Protestant England, and defeated the forces of Mary of Guise.
At the Reformation Parliament which took place in Edinburgh in 1560, the Confession of Faith, a document written by John Knox, was produced to state Scotlandâs new intent: the country was to be Protestant, and Catholicism was now illegal. The Mass was forbidden, priests were arrested and locked in the stocks, children born following a Catholic marriage ceremony were classified as illegitimate and the Church sank underground. Tufts of Catholicism remained in the north of the country and in the more remote islands where the Reformation failed to penetrate but the organized Church as it was known withered and died. Priests were pensioned off and married, parishioners converted, and attendance at the Kirk was mandatory.
Glasgow lost out once again in 1878 when the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was finally restored to Scotland. For 275 years the country had been without dioceses or bishops; instead, it was branded as a mission country and carved into three districts, northern, eastern and western, which were overseen by vicars apostolic. An argument was made that Glasgow, then the second city of the empire, the chief centre of commerce, manufacture and industry and crucially home to three times as many Catholics, priests and churches as Edinburgh, should be made the new metropolitan archdiocese.
Unfortunately, sense gave way to sentimentality. John Strain, the Vicar Apostolic of the eastern Crichton-Stuart district, supported by powerful lay patrons including John Patrick, the third Marquess of Bute, then one of the richest men in the world, argued that the Church should favour continuity and over time reanimate the dead dioceses. St Andrews may once have been the ecclesiastical centre of medieval Scotland, but in 1878, the town housed only two Catholic families and had no Catholic place of worship. Despite the drawbacks, John Strain won his way and was crowned Metropolitan Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh with a bejewelled mitre purchased by the Marquess of Bute, a generous gesture he extended to each new bishop.
The restoration of the hierarchy had triggered violent religious tensions in England when it took place in 1850, but Scotland was for once more fortunate. The Glasgow Herald was surprisingly supportive and argued that it would give the Pope pleasure and do Scotland no harm. The Free Church of Scotland was more aggressive, but overemphasized the strength of Scots law when one member sent a telegram to the Vatican threatening legal action in the Court of Session should the Pope have the temerity to persist, while the Episcopal Church, recognizing a credible threat to the size of its congregations, many of whom would subsequently drift to the Catholic Church, described it as âa violation of the law of unity and a rendering of the Body of Christâ. Neither opinion, however, led to bloodshed on the streets.
In recognition of Glasgowâs size and history, the city and the surrounding towns and countryside were made an archdiocese, responsible directly to Rome and operating without ties to Edinburgh, but also without the prestige of any suffragan sees. The Vatican had always planned to rectify this, but delay was followed by delay and once the archdiocese of Glasgow had embarked on a huge building programme it was thought imprudent to launch any new diocese until the books were balanced. This was achieved by the work of Archbishop Mackintosh, working closely with William Daley and Gerry Rogers.
During the course of his career as Archbishop and Cardinal, Winning would swivel both the mediaâs spotlight and the balance of power away from the metropolitan archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh to a permanent anchor within the confines of the archdiocese of Glasgow. In the space of one lifetime he would succeed where a dozen bishops and archbishops spread across eight hundred years had failed, by making Glasgow the undisputed capital of Catholic Scotland. Yet such achievements lay in a distant future; Winning, twenty-three years old, newly ordained and back living at home with his parents, said Mass daily at St Patrickâs where he had previously served as an altar boy, and waited for an appointment to a parish.
A new diocese requires a new bishop and in late December 1948, one was appointed. He was a poor choice. In later years, parishioners would joke that the Holy Spirit was on holiday when Fr Edward Douglas was appointed as their spiritual shepherd, others that the appointment was less the result of a rigorous search of the viable candidates than the activities of a blindfolded altar boy, armed with a list of names and a hat pin. The responsibility lay with Archbishop William Godfrey, the papal delegate to Britain, who developed a reputation for his controversial appointments. The new Bishop of Motherwell was certainly that. Edward Douglas was a small man, with a long crooked nose and a stoop, and if some heads are made for the mitre, others are crushed by the weight, and during the next six years, he was slowly flattened. For the past eighteen years, Douglas, who was forty-six, had been a diligent teacher at Blairs, where he was better equipped to deal with books, lessons and students than he was to deal with the administration, priests and stress that now lay ahead. In spite of his own deep reservations, he accepted that Rome â or at least the London branch office â had spoken, and on 21 April 1948, Douglas was ordained a bishop at Our Lady of Good Aid in Motherwell, a large Gothic church which would now serve as the dioceseâs new cathedral.
What Douglas lacked in qualities of leadership was compensated for by his eye for talent developed during twenty years in the classroom. Among his first decisions was the appointment of Gerry Rogers as his Vicar General, a choice that irritated Archbishop Campbell who had no wish to see the adversary he had thought he had rid himself of return. In a traditional diocese the âVGâ, as he is commonly known, acts as the Bishopâs deputy or chief of staff, assisting with appointments, liaising with priests and attending functions in his absence, but in the case of Motherwell, an infant diocese with a nervous, inexperienced leader, Rogersâ influence and power were magnified. It was a testament to his character that he never exploited his position, and instead did his best to support his wilting boss.
The new dioceseâs office was a detached bungalow in Bothwell from where Rogers began to organize staff. His position meant he was unable to oversee the marriage tribunal which each diocese required, so a new recruit was needed to be trained in canon law. As Rogers was a graduate of the Gregorian University and believed this was where the brightest students would reside, he contacted the rector of the Scots College asking him to recommend a suitable candidate. Clapperton suggested Winning, who had recently graduated with high honours, as someone possessing the necessary intelligence to complete the postgraduate course in canon law. A few weeks after returning from Rome, Winning was called into Rogersâ office and informed that he would be heading back the following year. The news was initially unwelcome. Rogers explained that knowledge of canon law was an invaluable aid in climbing the Churchâs career ladder, that it would open up new opportunities, but Winning could only see a return to the familiar pattern of study, one he was glad to have left behind. Before recommencing his studies, he needed to complete a year as a curate. This was to be his first opportunity to practise as a priest and he was sent to the tiny village of Chapelhall in Lanarkshire.
In August 1949, Fr Thomas Winning stood in his vestments at the altar of St Aloysius, smiling as Fr Peter Murie, the parish priest, introduced him as the churchâs new curate. âHeâll only be here a year,â explained Murie from the pulpit, âso donât you be muttering that I canât keep a curate.â Duly warned about his short shelf life, the parishioners still embraced the new priest as one of their own. As his first parish, St Aloysius was an exhilarating introduction to Winningâs chosen career. First, there was the church itself which enjoyed an enviable position on top of a hill, overlooking the rows of tenements that housed the villageâs two thousand residents, and backed on to a blanket of green fields. On a Sunday, Winning would stand outside the church door, ring a hand bell and watch as children aged from four to fourteen ran from their houses and up the hill for a weekly bible lesson. Father Murie was an erudite man and talented pianist who, although he suffered persistent ill health, remained a fine conversationalist and was only too happy to entertain his young charge with show-tunes after supper. Finally there was the work, which Winning found as rewarding as it was at first frightening. One week after his arrival, Murie took three weeks holiday leaving Winning in charge.
For almost a year, Winning revelled in his new role. He worked hard to set up a variety of groups such as the Union of Catholic Mothers and a Catholic Young Menâs Society. The childrenâs Sunday school was a source of great humour; he dubbed one boy the âheathenâ as his enthusiasm for putting up his hand was never matched with the correct answer. He organized a football team for the older boys of the parish, who proved as poor in the penalty area as their younger siblings were at Sunday school. Winning remembered the team in an interview for the book Faith, Hope and Chastity, a compilation of interviews with priests around Britain. âWe were beaten 10â1 the first time we played. During the game one of the team got a bad gash in his knee â one minute I was studying it and cleaning it up, the next minute I was having a cup of tea in somebodyâs house. I was twenty-four, and Iâd fainted at the sight of his blood.â A remarkable aversion for a man with the ability to transform red wine into the blood of Christ.
In the evenings, he conducted home visits and discovered that the dozen demanded by Fr John Conroy at Mill Hill was both impractical and ineffective. Instead, Winning settled on three or four visits per night and applied the tips suggested in the works of Fr Ronald Knox: speak with the father about work, the mother about her children, and always listen more than you talk. Although the area was poor, a visit from a priest remained an occasion for the best china and the provision of the comfiest seat. The only disappointment came within the confessional box. After seven years in the study of philosophy and theology, Winning was eager to flex his new knowledge, to wrestle with great moral issues, counsel the confused and guide those in doubt. Instead, his long hours behind the metal gauze and thick velvet curtain which separated the priest from the penitent were a tedious litany of adults continuing to confess the âsinsâ of a child. When one old man confessed that he had been âdisobedientâ to his sister, Winning asked him if he was not âa wee bit old for thatâ. The man, taken aback by what he perceived as the priestâs impudence, replied by asking Winning if he was not âa wee bit too young for thisâ, then walked out, and from then on went to Fr Murie for confession. Winning felt it was crucial to dissuade parishioners from repeating in rote form what they had said, once a month, for decades. Confession, he insisted, was about liberation from sin â not simply turgid repetition. This was to be the only blip in an enjoyable year that drew to a close too soon.
Winning returned once again to Rome in the autumn of 1950, exchanging his previous freedom for the rigid discipline of a student, for although ordained with experience in a parish he was still expected to follow the same strict timetable as the youngest student. The rector found it easiest to apply a universal set of rules and so Winning slipped back into a routine of a five-thirty rise, followed by prayers, Mass, breakfast and university. It was as if Scotland and St Aloysius were now little more than a blurred, half-remembered dream. âIn the library, I saw the same bookcase with the same panel of broken glass, and it felt like I had never been away,â he explained.
As soon as Winning arrived, he was given over to doubts which tore away at his confidence and ability. It was hardly surprising, for the task that lay before him was daunting. To achieve a doctorate in canon law was considered a stiff challenge to those familiar with the subject. John McQuade, an Irish priest who accompanied Winning and was also destined for Motherwell diocese, had studied the subject for three years, while another student on the same course had taught it for twelve years at an Irish seminary. In comparison, Winningâs experience to date with canon law was restricted to a couple of lectures at the Gregorian University three years previously. Winning likened the situation to being sent to complete a PhD in chemistry at Cambridge University when âyou hadnât made it past cleaning out the test tubes at schoolâ. Privately, he was terrified of failing, and in order to avoid such humiliation, examined his strengths and plotted what he recognized was the only route to success: a working routine of Stakhanovite proportions. His fluency in Latin was a tremendous aid, one which allowed him to understand the lectures with a precision which other students lacked, but closing the huge gulf required a daily programme of study which continued until one oâclock in the morning and permitted little more than four hours sleep each night, having serious consequences for his health.
In November 1950, a new Catholic dogma on the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary was announced.
A joke is perhaps the simplest way to illustrate the depth of devotion many Catholics have towards the mother of Jesus Christ: while Michelangelo was painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he looked down to see a peasant woman, kneeling in silent prayer. Bored with his work, he decided to brighten his morning by playing a trick at the old womanâs expense, and so as she bent her head in prayer, unaware of the artistâs presence, Michelangelo began to speak in a deep, resonant voice: âI am Jesus Christ, speak and your prayers will be answered.â Slowly the womanâs head tilted up towards the heavens and she began to answer. âHush! Canât you see Iâm talking to your mother?â
The Blessed Virgin Mary or Mary, the Mother of God, has for almost fifteen hundred years inhabited a deep place in the hearts of Catholics across the world. The reason for her popularity and the piety directed towards her is that she was entirely human, but one who, through her acceptance of Godâs will and the virgin birth of her son, became blessed with the divine. For centuries, Mary has been viewed as an intermediary, a postmistress who ensures the petitions and prayers of the faithful reach the correct destination, namely God.
The concept of Mary as a mediator between God and his sinners on earth developed in Western medieval piety around the eighth century, with the translation of the legend of Theophilus. The story is a predecessor of that of Dr Faustus and tells of a man who exchanged his soul for well-paid employment; when he was near to death, he begged Mary to save him from eternal damnation, which she achieved after pleading with the Devil. As the story spread out across Europe, so developed the idea of Marian devotion and the theological concept that Godâs grace could flow through Mary to earth. The belief was comforting to those who felt unworthy to pray directly to Jesus, the son of God, for they believed Maryâs maternal nature would intercede with her son on their behalf. By the eleventh century, pilgrimages had sprung up in her name, her image appeared on icons, and miracles were attributed to her hand, while the prayer the Hail Mary and the prayer cycle known as the rosary were becoming increasingly common. So powerful was the concept of Mary to become that in 1854, the Church proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, the assertion that she had been born without original sin. Less than a century later, in 1950, just two months after Winningâs return to Rome, a second dogma was to be defined. Pope Pius XII announced the doctrine of the Assumption, in which it was stated that at the end of Maryâs natural life she was raised body and soul into heaven.
In truth, Winning had never had much time for Mary. He said the rosary, appreciated that May was a month devoted to her memory, but that was as far as it went. In Winningâs mind, Mary was not a principal player and so was relegated to the role of extra. In the autumn of 1950, the theologians at the Gregorian University were deep in debate on the merits of Maryâs new status. A series of Saturday morning debates had been organized to articulate the arguments for and against the Popeâs plans. The ecumenists were concerned that it would further distance the Catholic Church from the Protestants for whom Mary was no more than a vehicle for Christâs birth. Since the Reformation they had been critical of any devotion to Mary on the grounds that it demonstrated a lack of trust that salvation would come through Christ alone. The Eastern Orthodox Church was in disagreement of the doctrine, for they felt the move distanced Mary from the human race, while the Mariologists were convinced of the hope such a dogma would provide to the world, namely that one day all the faithful would be similarly raised up.
Winning had attended the talks, but remained indifferent; it was his passion for Pius XII and his desire never to miss a public appearance that brought him to St Peterâs Square on 1 November 1950 where the Pope was preparing to address a crowd of almost one million people. The square was packed so tightly that Winning could scarcely move his arms, and had to strain his neck up in an attempt to peer over the shoulders of his fellow pilgrims. The setting was most uncomfortable for what Winning marked as a profound spiritual experience: looking across the sky above Rome, he noticed that although it was now early morning, the moon was still visible and was carved in a deep crescent â the same shape common to many illustrations of Mary as Queen of Heaven in which she stood perched on a crescent moon, smiling down on her charges below. The image startled Winning, and the crowds appeared to melt away. It was as if he had found a point where the membrane that separates the world from God was particularly thin and he was able to push through. In his heart he now knew Mary was real. âPrevious to that moment, she had been a statue or a figure or a face flat on a wall. I donât know what it was, but it came to me that she was real. It has remained in my memory as a very powerful image.â
Pius XII had his own reasons for announcing the doctrine of the Assumption. While Winning had been moved by the moon, the Pope had been struck by the sun, for while walking in the Vatican gardens, he had witnessed the phenomenon of the spinning sun, a sight associated with the visions of Our Lady of Fatima in 1917. He also wished to make a statement about the preciousness of life. In his text Munificentissimus Deus (God the Most Generous), he reaffirmed the importance of the body as a sacred vehicle of God, following a decade in which over fifty million lives had been lost during the Second World War. When the Pope finally appeared on the balcony and began to speak, Winning borrowed pen and paper from a neighbour and began to transcribe his comments, so anxious was he to capture the moment. Over the next few weeks, he was to re-examine the text and arguments concerning the Churchâs new teaching, and it was to strengthen his understanding of eschatology â the theology of death and mankindâs final destiny. Later, Winning was to develop a dreadful fear of death, one he felt was unbecoming for so senior a religious figure, and this moment was one he would frequently return to for solace during private moments of prayer.
In the Catholic Church, it is said that the politicians study canon law, while the spiritual are drawn to study the liturgy. As lawyers proliferate in the secular world of politics, so are they found in the upper reaches of the Catholic Church. Though Winning had no choice in the matter, there is little doubt that his intellect and aggressive personality were better suited to grappling with the practical application of rules and regulations than the esoteric flights of fancy required for pioneering work in theology. He was interested in the law, and if the field had been easily accessible to him in Scotland (it was for the most part a Protestant clique) he might have considered it as a career. In later life, he talked about alternatives to the priesthood he might have pursued as being those of âa doctor or lawyer, something with a bit of biteâ.
The law of the Catholic Church â or canon law, drawn from the Greek word for âruleâ â had been passed on through the centuries from AD 95, when the first âChurch ordersâ were written down in order to clarify the organization of the early Church and the manner in which the sacraments were to be celebrated. The writings of Church Fathers such as St Augustine and St Ireneus had produced further ideas that required legislation, while the growth of the Church led to a proliferation of rules governing everything from doctrinal issues and public worship to the disciplinary proceedings for priests and religious. Canon law became divided into universal laws, applying to Catholics throughout the world, and particular laws which held force within a given territory such as a diocese. Winning was to learn that the laws themselves were derived from three areas: Church law, which covered such matters as disciplinary measures or the length of the fast prior to communion; natural law, which concerned itself with issues such as the insistence of monogamy and correct heterosexual behaviour, as they were discovered in the natural order and were considered irreversible; and a third area, known as divine positive law, found in the revelation or the self-disclosure of God, and which included the indissolubility of marriage and the sacrament of confession. In 1140, Gratian, a noted canonist, produced a common text of the Churchâs rules and regulations, a collection of five volumes which was swollen over the centuries with new additions, but not until 1917 were all the volumes comprehensively codified. The man largely responsible for codification in 1917 was Fr Pietro Gasparri, but among his closest assistants was Padre Cappello, a diminutive Jesuit whose lectures Winning grew to love. In many ways, Cappello was a character the young priest could have found disagreeable; he had almost no sense of humour and refused to engage the class outside of the parameters of the discussion. Gifted with a prodigious memory, Cappello used neither textbook nor notes while speaking and could quote entire pages of canon law with ease. Laws and rules, he was keen to impress on his students, were for the safety and benefit of mankind, they were the boundaries on a straight road to heaven. Outside of the university, Cappello had a reputation as a wise and considerate confessor, a latter-day Solomon who sat for hours each day hearing confessions at the Church of St Ignatius. âWhen he died, his body lay in the chapel of the Greg and thousands came to see him, later they introduced his cause for canonization. He couldnât help but be a living role model of who you were trying to be,â said Winning.
Although Winning had just three lectures daily, each lasting fifty minutes, the period between the autumn of 1950 and the summer of 1951 was the hardest period of his academic life. John McQuade offered assistance where possible, but had his own concerns as he struggled to develop a working knowledge of Latin. Month after month, Winning worked seven days a week, from dawn until after midnight; his only breaks were morning and evening prayers and the daily queue to say Mass in one of the collegeâs small oratories. By the time of his summer exam, the punishing regime had shattered his health; so exhausted was he by his labours that he had to take a taxi to the university as he was unable to walk. After focusing for the length of the oral exam he took a taxi back to the college and spent the next ten days in bed. When a doctor was called he was diagnosed as suffering from rheumatism and although he had planned a trip to Lourdes, en route home for the summer, he was forbidden to take a dip in the waters in case it exacerbated his condition. After treatment at a Glasgow clinic for nodules in his joints, Winning returned to Rome in September 1951 for an academic year that was only slightly easier.
Among the friends Winning made that year was Paul Marcinkus, a huge American who had the build of the football player he once had been. Marcinkus was a postgraduate student at the US college who drove a Cadillac and spoke, as Winning observed, âfrom the side of his mouth, like a gangsterâ. Winningâs friend would rise to become the most senior American in the Vatican and the centre of one of the Churchâs biggest contemporary scandals. In 1982, âthe chinkâ as Marcinkus was dubbed by Winning, was head of the Institute for the Works of Religious (IoR), otherwise known as the Vatican Bank, when it became tangled in the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano, a large Italian bank. Marcinkus was friendly with Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, and in order to assist him as he attempted to sort out the bankâs finances he provided Calvi with letters of patronage which stated that the IoR backed his activities. However, in order to protect the Vatican, Marcinkus insisted Calvi provide him with a letter indemnifying the IoR from any financial responsibility, a fact hidden from Calviâs creditors, who would later consider this to be fraud. When the bank collapsed owing $1.2 billion, Calvi apparently hanged himself from Blackfriars Bridge in London, a scene that inspired Francis Ford Coppola who a decade later incorporated the death into The Godfather Part III. Many still believe he was murdered. The Italian authorities later convicted thirty-three people over the bankâs collapse, while Marcinkus spent two years trapped within the Vatican City after the police threatened him with arrest in spite of his diplomatic immunity. The matter was finally resolved in 1984 when the Vaticanâs secretary of state, Cardinal Agostino Casaroli and the Pope agreed to pay $244 million compensation to Banco Ambrosianoâs creditors against Marcinkusâs opposition. At the time, Winning stood by his old college friend and believed Marcinkusâs defence that he himself had been misled and was innocent of any wrongdoing. This position was, frankly, ridiculous, extending as it did a greater degree of leeway and understanding to Marcinkus than either the Pope or Cardinal Casaroli could muster, but it still fitted Winningâs pattern of deliberately choosing to believe the best about Church personnel, in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary.
In order to graduate, Winning was required to complete a body of original research that would further the study of canon law and so in the summer of 1952, he began to search for a suitable subject for his thesis. There were two reasons why he settled upon âTithes in Pre-Reformation Scotlandâ as the completed manuscript was titled; the first was proximity â he was to spend the summer at home and it made sense to focus on an aspect of Scottish Church history when libraries and research facilities were so easily to hand; the second reason was more basic and primal â a desire for revenge. In the past so much research had been carried out by Protestant historians who Winning believed had twisted and distorted the facts in order to better justify the Reformation. This would be his opportunity to redress the balance, and so he set to work with the words of the college song whispering in his ear: âthat Scotlandâs wrong be righted, so that Scotlandâs work be doneâ.
He was aided in his research by the discovery just four years before of a manuscript copy of lectures delivered in the sixteenth century by William Hay, the Scottish theologian and canonist at Kingâs College in Aberdeen. Although it had not yet been edited, Winning found inside its worn and faded pages a wealth of original information which he fashioned into crucial ammunition in his battle against what he perceived as the errant forces of Protestantism. Over the summer, he buried himself in the libraries of Scotland, working through a variety of sources including diocesan registers, the chartularies of monastic houses, and as many ecclesiastical documents as had survived the destruction of reformers. Where previous historians had found a corrupt system of arbitrary taxation of the poor by the Catholic Church, Winning uncovered a carefully regulated and organized system that funded hospitals and poor houses. In the preface to his work, he set forth his agenda to treat the subject from a Catholic point of view for the first time and to correct erroneous perceptions made by Protestant historians who, he wrote, âmanifest an appalling lack of understanding of the canon law which regulated the payment of tithes to the clergyâ.
(#litres_trial_promo) Winning wrote with a clear, simple style topped with the occasional literary flourish and over the course of 236 pages, he traced the origin, development and decline of the tithe system, crossing swords whereever possible in defence of the faith and within only a few pages skewering opposing views: âScotland has never recovered from the calamity of the Reformation and over three hundred years were to pass before she could boast once more of a properly constituted hierarchy. The great hatred of the priesthood engendered by Knox and his unruly mobs has been kept alive by generations of bigoted historians who have slandered the pre-Reformation Church without respite and continue to do so today.â
