CANTERBURY, England — Despite reports of possible early signs of a Catholic revival in England, the majority of the country’s population continues to beat a path towards a post-Christian future.  

Perhaps no clearer is this seen than in the month of June. Scarcely any Englishmen know it is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, but they will know that the month has been given over to the demon of sexual perversity that endangers the salvation of souls, although few of course realize this is what it entails — or if they do, they are not allowed to publicly acknowledge it.  

But if there’s one helpful aspect to Pride Month, it’s that it sheds light on how far the nation has severed herself from her Christian roots.  

The festive processions celebrating sinfulness instead of the sacraments are now ubiquitous, as are signs and symbols supporting the LGBT agenda. From major supermarket chains and the headquarters of Britain’s intelligence services to the British Museum and even an unappetizing crumble dessert in the House of Lords, the colors of the “Pride” rainbow flag are brazenly on show.   

This past weekend, to coincide with a Pride Parade in the city center, The King’s School in Canterbury, regarded as one of the oldest schools in the world, founded in 597 by St. Augustine of Canterbury on his mission to evangelize the English, proudly hoisted the “Pride” flag above its ancient buildings in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral.  

This is the second year running that the school, whose alumni include World War Two Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and the writer Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor, has trumpeted Pride Month. Last year, the prestigious Anglican establishment that was renamed King’s in 1541 after King Henry VIII and his dissolution of the monasteries, was more enthusiastic: Staff invited pupils to take part in a “pride-themed cupcake decoration,” a “pride party cookout,” and attend a biopic of Freddie Mercury, a homosexual pop icon of the last century who died of AIDS.  

The impetus for such out and proud involvement is largely due to the school recently appointing an openly lesbian headmistress whose “wife” also teaches at the school. The school governors justified their appointments by citing the UK’s Equality Act, legislation brought in by the previous Labour government in 2010 which is often used to impose pro-LGBT policies. The Act, the school governors say, “enshrines protected characteristics and a commitment to fundamental British values.”  

King’s is not alone: Eton College, arguably England’s most prestigious private school, has embraced Pride Month and other fads, also under the label of “equality and inclusion,” and its headmaster has described himself as unashamedly “woke.”  

But promoting such debauchery and licentiousness in the country’s once respected schools would have been unthinkable just a couple of decades ago. Catholic theologian and commentator Gavin Ashenden, who attended the King’s School in the 1970s (as did I in the 1980s), sees the developments there and elsewhere as symptomatic of a surrender to a “new totalitarian political movement dedicated to the eradication of Christianity.” 

“I have no doubt that the people who decided to fly [the 'Pride' flag] think they are adopting a moral position,” he told the Register. “But their morality is one that surrenders not only the democratic integrity of a culture that generations died to protect and preserve, but explicitly sets out to replace the Christianity that has been celebrated in this place for one over one and a half thousand years, since 597, with a new paganism that celebrates hedonism and collective identitarian politics.” 

He added: “It is hard to explain the rationale for this surrender beyond a form of group psychosis and feebleness of thought and fragility of integrity.”  

Ashenden, who co-founded the popular Catholic podcast channel Catholic Unscripted, believes the King’s School, which is “steeped in the depths of Christian tradition” has now surrendered to “neo pagan collectivism” which is a “tragedy of the greatest proportions.”  

Its promotion of Pride Month follows a series of controversial “raves in the nave” in Canterbury Cathedral last year. Despite an outcry following the first such “silent disco” in February 2024, a second was held on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption. The discos were permitted by the Anglican dean of the Cathedral who is also openly homosexual, cohabiting with a male partner. 

Canterbury Cathedral and the city itself, the seat of Catholic England until the Reformation, has, much like the country as a whole, been experiencing a visible decline — a deterioration linked to the country’s rejection of its Christian roots that Pope St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI had tirelessly and prophetically warned about.  

“Even in his lifetime, St. Augustine of Canterbury considered abandoning the incorrigible pagans of England to their fate,” recalled professor Alan Fimister, an English Catholic theologian and historian.  

Recalling the words of 2 Peter 3:7 — that when Jesus comes again, He will judge the world not through a flood but with fire — Fimister observed that as an apostle to a seafaring nation “with a plentiful supply of rain,” St. Augustine will have had “plenty of opportunity to reflect on the message of the rainbow: that the next time God punishes the human race for their depravities, He will be using fire.”   

Diminishing Rainbow Flags 

But there are some signs of hope.  

Although still prevalent, the rainbow flags are fewer this year, and as recently reported in the Register and elsewhere, signs of a quiet Catholic revival in the country are emerging. 

This week, the English Dominicans said they are experiencing a significant increase in the number of novices, so many that they are appealing for donations to pay for their formation.  

“It will be our largest group of novices for a long time — certainly more than 30 years,” said English Dominican Father Thomas Crean. Noting that it is in the nature of the Church to grow and that it is “when it shrinks that we should look for reasons,” he added:

“Perhaps in the context of contemporary British society we can say that such an increase in religious vocations is an illustration of St. Paul's principle that ‘where sin abounded, grace did more abound’.” 

Writing this week in The Catholic Herald, Ashenden proposed “devotion to the Sacred Heart” as the “antidote to the campaign to reconstruct our society without God,” adding that “true love confronts disorder; forgiveness challenges rage; created purpose stands against collective coercion; and the call to Heaven rebukes the engineered violence of enforced compliance.”  

“Paganism fell once before at the feet of the Sacred Heart, rescuing our ancestors from its unforgiving grasp,” wrote Ashenden. “If Catholics return to this most sacred of devotions, it will fall again.”