Reform-minded English Jesuits cleaned house in 1954 and 1971 . . .

Fr. Humwicke tells about it.

A correspondent . . . asks for more information about my statement that the Jesuits burned the relics in the Reliquary Chapel in Oxford’s Catholic Parish Church, Alyoggers. Information is provided in an excellent, erudite, and readable little book called St Aloysius Parish Oxford The Third English Oratory A Brief History and Guide 1793-2000 New Edition by Fr Jerome Bertram, MA, FSA, of the Oratory.

I will lift some bits from Father’s narrative.

Caught up in the thing, these Jesuits went beyond the call of sacred duty:

“In 1954 the Jesuits decided to ‘modernise’ the church. Nearly all the statues and pictures disappeared, as did several memorial brasses to priests and parishioners, and the whole building was painted battleship grey, obliterating all the brilliant colouring of the internal decorations …

In the 1960s came the major changes in the Catholic Church following the second Vatican…