For some time, I have thought that Henry Cardinal Manning should be canonized. He championed the papacy and the Church in difficult times, and almost single-handedly caused the Church to grow to great numbers through his teaching, personal pastoral care, and even fighting with the powers of evil in politics, as well as the Modernists in the Church.
He foresaw all the crumbling of British society we now see because of the watering down of religion in the school system. He prophesied what would happen to an increasingly secular society chasing after entertainment and status.
He rebuked the old guard Catholics who ignored the new Catholic teaching on social justice.
He saw that loyalty to Rome kept the Church united against the growing powers of nationalism.
He stood up for the working class, the poor, the sick.
Against the heresies of national churches separating themselves from Rome, he stood firm.
What has destroyed the status of the Church in both America and in Great Britain has been the heresies of Americanism and Anglicanism.
Without an independent, universal Catholic Church, bishops and priests fall into a parochialism which denies the authority of the pope, and, therefore, the authority of Christ Himself.
Manning saw this clearly.
To me, he is a great leader in the Church against Modernism.
I wish a real Catholic who understands the path of perfection, which Manning sought, would write a definitive biography.
Many one of the young trads would consider doing this.....