Welsh Journals

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for the re-formation of the diocese of Menevia in 1895 and the appointment of Mostyn as its bishop was, after all, that 'the idea of a Welsh diocese, a Welsh bishop, and a bilingual clergy would not only make a special appeal to Welsh Catholics, but would break down prejudice and encourage a sympathy in the non-Catholic Welsh, and so open the way to conversions' .61 In 1904, Bishop Mostyn established St Mary's College at Holywell as a junior seminary to train future priests in the Welsh language and Welsh cultural matters. Ten years later, and with the encouragement of Leo XIII,62 he also welcomed two members of the Order of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate from Quimper, Brittany 'who, after having learned the Welsh language, would undertake in that idiom the evangelization of the Welsh people' .63 Fr G. M. Trebaol worked at Llanrwst in the Conwy valley, north Wales,64 while Fr Merour was based at Blaenau Ffestiniog, and then at Pwllheli.65 In 1936, Bishop McGrath re-opened St Mary's College in Aberystwyth after it had been closed two years earlier due to a lack of finance.66 Again the aim was to train future priests to speak Welsh. McGrath was also to welcome the Passionist Order's new Welsh study house at St Davids, Pembrokeshire,67 and a Redemptorists' foundation dedicated to evangelism in Welsh at Machynlleth.68 Roman Catholics, it was written at this time, 'were approaching the conversion of Wales through the Welsh language, as they recognised there was little hope of doing so except through the native tongue'.69 In 1948, at the beginning of his incumbency, even the English bishop John Petit insisted that if the conversion of Wales was ever to become a fact, the Welshman must be approached as a Welshman and 'not as some kind of hybrid Englishman, which he is not'.70 By 1960 all Church students in the Diocese of Menevia were expected to have some proficiency in the Welsh language.71 There were, however, some Catholics who maintained that the use of the Welsh language alone, whether in preaching, singing, or prayer, would not win the people of Wales over to the faith. It was just as imperative to be able to preach, sing, and pray in a Welsh manner. 'The whole religion of this country,' claimed Henry Bailey Hughes, the nineteenth-century Welsh-speaking priest, 'seems to consist in the tonic sol-fa; so I must even go with the tide and set them singing the Christian doctrine.and so fight Methodism with its own weapons. I believe we shall convert Wales better by singing than by preaching.'72 As bishop of Menevia, Mostyn reiterated the importance of congregational hymn-singing. 'We are living in a land which has been truly styled a "land of song" he wrote, 'and most of us have heard the magnificent