Our Marian winter deepens, and for this devotional freeze-out I have proof. Last year I underwent four Marian pilgrimages (to Illinois, India, Quebec City, and London). I then called on global Christendom to surpass me this year by embarking on fresh Marian pilgrimages of their own, “pilgrimages so meaningful that, when I hear of them, I will look on [my 2023 Advent] series with embarrassment and happily concede total defeat.” Lest my call be misunderstood, I reasserted it:

To my knowledge, not one person answered this lone Anglican’s call. The most immediate reason for this silence, that not as many people read my writing as I might hope, will simply not be entertained. (Vanity is remarkable armour.) Another explanation for this silence, that Marian pilgrimages represent quiet transactions of the soul that are not easily communicated and are possibly cheapened by writing, will also be politely ignored. And so, lest the grip of this Marian ice age deepen, I am left with only one recourse: to top myself.

It might seem late in the year to pull off such a stunt of peregrination, but I anticipated this outcome and so planned accordingly. If my previous pilgrimages entailed visiting the “poor man’s Walsingham”—that is, the Marian sanctum of Willesden—it fell on me this year to visit the actual Walsingham in Norfolk, that greatest of English Marian shrines. What is more, if my earlier journeys identified what I called a “Northern Guadalupe,” it was time to finally visit the original in Mexico City. I accomplished both, in accord with the stated rules of my challenge, within the calendar year.

The punctilious reader will here dispute that two pilgrimages in the year of our Lord 2024 cannot equal, let alone surpass, the four I accomplished in 2023, even if I chose major shrines. But the punctilious reader would be mistaken. For one does not simply walk into the great shrines of Walsingham and Guadalupe. One must prepare, and in so preparing for each of my pilgrimages this year, I managed no less than three preparatory trips to sister shrines of both Walsingham and Guadalupe. This indeed doubles the tally of the previous year, bringing my Marian pilgrimage total this year to eight. And so here, in honour of Mary, the Mother of God, the symbol par excellence of the church, and in the spirit of Advent—a season at once celebratory and solemn—is the first part of my report.

The Walsingham Way

Among the felicitous facts about the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, I have a favourite, which I hope will promptly become yours as well. Because the shrine is located northward for most residents of England, the Milky Way itself (back before light pollution when it was more clearly visible) became known as the Walsingham Way. For there in the fens of eastern England, a wealthy noblewoman named Richeldis of Favraches was visited by the Virgin Mary, who asked Richeldis to build her a house. Presumably this happened in 1061, a fact that is premised on a popular poem printed in 1496, which recent investigations suggest might actually be reliable.

But even those who favour a date of the early twelfth century still insist “there is no reason to doubt that [Richeldis] did indeed build a chapel to the supposed measurements of the Holy House of Nazareth.” By the early fifteenth century, the pilgrimage to Walsingham was so popular that the shrine was second only to that of Thomas Becket in Canterbury. Erasmus himself proclaimed in 1511, “You would say it was the abode of saints, so dazzling it is with jewels, gold and silver.”

Such wealth betrays what we all know comes next. Henry VIII destroyed the shrine, liquidating its considerable assets for himself. The dissolution of the monasteries and pilgrimage sites began tamely enough, as so many radical social programs do. Just as many modern Americans sympathize with cries to dispossess those “fat cats in Washington,” so did some sixteenth-century Englanders resonate with cries to bring wealthy monasteries and imperious abbots to account. But in time, initial promises of measured reform gave way to full-scale evisceration of the most sacred of places. The genuinely holy monasteries, not just the corrupt ones, were wiped out. So it was that the coastal marshlands that gave rise to “England’s Nazareth” swallowed her up again. As the poet Sally Thomas puts it in her gorgeous suite of poems about Walsingham, “They are broken. Mother, Child, gone.” As I already reported, the image of Walsingham, most assume, was taken to Chelsea and burned. Though some claim that the original image somehow survived and is hiding in plain sight at London’s V&A!

Whatever happened to the original statue, such contemptible proceedings—Roman Catholic friends tell me—are reason to not be an Anglican, and who can blame them? Still, even if we concede the (debatable) assumption that Anglicanism “began” with Henry VIII, this would be all the more reason to stay in it. For if Anglicanism inflicted the wound, what better tradition to impart the healing balm? “If I have defrauded anyone of anything,” Zacchaeus once said, “I will repay it fourfold” (Luke 19:8).

My first preparatory pilgrimage to Walsingham was a return visit to the replica shrine in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, still carefully tended by Grace Episcopal Church. If the original Walsingham kept devotional fires burning on the coast of the North Sea, how appropriate that the coast of that inland sea, Lake Michigan, now does so as well. My wife and I surreptitiously slipped in for prayer on a weekday afternoon, and the shrine was admirably well kept. What a joy to report that Wisconsin’s great Anglo-Catholic past, hosting ecumenical experiments like the Fond du Lac circus, yet endures.

With this I was prepared to make my way back to the land of Logres, specifically to York Cathedral, to see for myself the window that I referenced last year. Henry VIII rearranged one of the key Marian windows on the cathedral’s eastern wall, covering Mary’s head with his royal coat of arms. But those who travel to York to witness this, thereby amassing evidence for Anglicanism’s idolatrous failures, will be disappointed. For, as I learned from my colleague Tim Larsen, dean of the cathedral Eric Milner-White and the artisans under his charge worked tirelessly to restore the window to its original condition. I finally beheld with my own eyes the stained-glass dethronement of Henry VIII by Mary and her divine son.

I enjoyed a similar experience on a subsequent visit to Ely Cathedral. There in the great Lady Chapel—the largest in England—exquisite Marian statues were decapitated by Oliver Cromwell’s goons. Mary has been restored to a place of prominence here as well, thanks to a provocative sculpture by David Wynne, unveiled in the year 2000. Mary’s arms are raised in triumph, matching the celebratory tone of her Magnificat. To avoid confusion, the inscription below gives the clear reason for her rejoicing: not a vacuous “You go, girl,” but “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

An Anglo-Papist Restoration

I was at last ready for Walsingham. For if these acts of Marian recompense are worthy of note, they are trifles compared to the accomplishments of the greatest Marian hero to emerge from within Anglicanism itself, Father Alfred Hope Patten (1885–1958). If York restored a key window and Ely its Lady Chapel, Patten restored an entire church and pilgrimage site, the most important Marian site in his nation’s history. He did it, moreover, in the face of steady opposition from his Anglican bishop and from Roman Catholics, most of whom—in Patten’s lifetime at least—wished to have the remains of Walsingham all to themselves.

In Walsingham today, the Roman Catholic expression of Marian devotion at the Slipper Chapel (all that was left after Henry VIII’s destruction), and the Eastern Orthodox love for the Virgin displayed at St. Seraphim’s Chapel in the same town, enjoy welcome and honoured places. But like it or not, renewal of devotion at these Marian shrines came after Patten’s almost single-handed, and wildly successful, efforts at resurrection. This makes Walsingham one of the few (only?) places where all three great traditions run the race of Marian devotion, with Anglicanism earning a baffling first place.

Admittedly, Alfred Hope Patten was odd. The word “Anglo-Catholic” would not be adequate to describe him. The High Church lever would need to be cranked up a few notches, for Patten was an Anglican Papalist. This party believes that the genuine continuation of Catholicism in England is not Roman but English. These Anglicans claim the name “Catholic,” dubbing what we understand to be Catholics to be intrusive “Romans.” Moreover, they believe in papal primacy and look forward to the day when genuine unity will at last be restored under the see of Peter.

Peculiar as such positions may be, one could argue—and indeed some have—the absurd divisions of Christendom are more peculiar still. Even the critics of this party today concede that Anglican Papalists were ecumenically ahead of their time. They originated the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, produced masterpieces like Gregory Dix’s The Shape of the Liturgy, and paved the way for serious cross-confessional discussions. The influence of such faithful Anglicans may be what caused the Roman Catholic ecumenist and priest Abbé Paul Couturier to argue, “We must not delude ourselves into supposing that the vast problem of Christian Unity can be solved by a series of individual conversions.”

Still, my introduction to the Anglican Papalist preserve of Walsingham was not in theory but on foot. Owing to the manner of my arrival in the small town, I first visited the Slipper Chapel, the focal point of Roman Catholic devotion. There I met a “Roman” priest (as Father Patten would have dubbed him), who walked me back to the main town. As we travelled, he—not surprisingly—tried to convince me to convert. On the way we passed the Orthodox chapel of St. Seraphim, whose priest, I expect, would expect me to convert as well, though to Orthodoxy. All this was a fine illustration of Ron Rittgers’s assertion that competing Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ecclesiologies constitute an “impossible choice between two mothers, both of whom have important, compelling, and yet contradictory claims of being the church.”

At the Shrine

All this was before I had made my way to the main Anglican shrine. Wandering this quaintest of English hamlets to find it, I was spared the need to ask for directions. Glad to have dodged a passing summer shower, I reached the small town’s main, though nearly trafficless, intersection and attempted to orient myself. Before I could find any signs indicating the direction of the shrine, a celestial sign—the sign of the covenant (Genesis 9:12)—appeared just over the restored Holy House of Walsingham, showing me the way.

I entered the shrine gates and walked into the church that Father Patten built. There I saw a layman and a nun praying the rosary. Naturally, I took them both to be Roman Catholic. When I betrayed this assumption, they promptly corrected me, explaining they were Anglican—the nun being stationed at the Society of Saint Margaret right next to the shrine. Even though I had studied the Oxford Movement, nothing in church history class quite prepared me for such conversations.

I perused the precincts, admiring the tastefully vibrant frescoes of Enid Chadwick. To my surprise, I learned there was even an Orthodox shrine within the Anglican church itself, a happy concession to the Anglican insistence that their communion does not constitute the entirety of the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” A notice in the main courtyard, “Please Keep Silence in this Forecourt at All Times,” was a welcome contrast to the chatty, touristic atmosphere that spoils so many of the church’s holy places. I kept expecting to get kicked out as I lingered into the night, but pilgrims here can stay as late as they wish to pray.

Then there is the Holy House itself within the main church, the greatest single response I know of to the ravages of Henry VIII. Dozens of mauled monasteries and shattered shrines are here atoned for with actual fragments of that which was suppressed. Within this Holy House—itself a replica of Richeldis’s replica of Mary’s original home in Nazareth—is the image of Our Lady of Walsingham, commissioned by Father Patten to be carved in the likeness of the original. The statue is lovingly dressed in seasonal clothing and is surrounded by candles representing countless concerns regularly uplifted in prayer. “You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid,” wrote T.S. Eliot, and—Anglo-Catholic that he was—he might have had not just Little Gidding in mind but Walsingham as well.

As Father Patten slowly convinced the town’s small population to support him, and as construction began—amid much skepticism about the site he had chosen—a holy well was rediscovered, just as one was rediscovered at the original Willesden site in London. From this well, healing waters can be freely taken today. As to the efficacy of such waters, Michael Rear tells a story of an encounter in the town of Walsingham itself:

The Anglican revival of Marian piety at Walsingham poses to Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians a difficult question: What is better, to be a prodigal son returning, or to be an elder brother who is upset that the wayward sibling has at last come around? Disdain or envy for Alfred Hope Patten’s Anglican Marian piety would betray a very dim love of Mary indeed.

Of course Anglicans have no room to boast, owing to their laughable concessions to the decaying culture around them, concessions that—some would suggest—render Patten’s efforts null and void. While in England, for example, I saw a copy of The Church Times whose headline was “Not Popular? Try Pop Music in Your Services.” The thought of desperate parsons attempting to squeeze a cover of “Shake It Off” into a prayer of confession was less than salutary.

Fortunately, I had a chance to direct these very questions to the master of the Guardians of the Shrine, Father Graeme Rowlands. I was thrilled to have gained the appointment. This priest’s celebration of Mass was the opposite of a performance, the reverse of personal aggrandizement; his ego did not expand but diminished before the presence of Christ. When, during our meeting, I complained that the culture of Canterbury frequently resembles a multinational corporation trying to keep everyone happy more than it does a church, he was unfazed. “Oh, we pay no attention to that,” he told me with a gracious smile that was anything but naive.

The same gumption that fuelled Father Patten, it turns out, emboldens those who steward the shrine today. The structure of the Guardians of the Shrine is such that—unless another Henry VIII were to come along—they are preserved from outside interference for some time to come, rendering them effectively immune to doctrinal erosion in the wider Church of England, let alone her spasmodic appeals for relevance.

Mary Is Not an Extra

In 1945 Patten insisted, “It is because Mary is so patently left out of the scheme of English religious teaching that thousands, nay millions, of our countrymen have no grasp of the first principles of Christianity.” Nearly eighty years later, Walsingham shows remarkable continuity with this message. Father Rowlands put it this way in a recent sermon: “Devotion to Our Lady . . . is not an optional extra for those who like that sort of thing but an essential part of the practice of our faith.” Indeed, I would go so far as to say that my visit to Walsingham in 2024 corresponded exactly to comments made about the pilgrimage by Father Archdale King almost a century ago: “To my mind, nothing could restore Faith to the waverer and the doubter more than a pilgrimage to Walsingham, where controversy, discussion, and argument are non-existent, and where the Seven Fruits of the Holy Spirit take their place.”

Following my visit, I became a member of the Society of Our Lady of Walsingham, founded by Patten. Perhaps to celebrate the society’s one hundredth birthday next year, you might consider doing the same.

The secret of Walsingham is an open one: it is the open secret of Marian piety itself. Such piety was the common inheritance of ancient Christians, an inheritance that so many of us modern Christians have neglected. “May it be granted to us to adore with deep humility the indivisible Trinity,” pronounced Cyril of Alexandria, adding, “And then let us praise with songs of joy Mary ever virgin, who herself is clearly the holy Church, together with her Son and most chaste spouse. To God be praise forever.” The early church thought in symbols, and if we are to think with them, we must do the same. Mary, I never tire of reporting, is therefore more than just Mary. She is also a portrait of the collective body of Christians, a portrait of our individual journeys of faith, and a portrait of the depths of prayer. “It is Mary who will teach us how to be silent,” said John Paul II on his 1982 visit to Walsingham, “how to listen to the voice of God in the midst of the busy and noisy world.”

If Mary remains a portrait of the church and individual Christians, then the cross-confessional reality of Walsingham is not just a historical peculiarity owing to one outlandish rector, but a necessity. The presence of Anglican, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians, not to mention Methodists, at this great Marian shrine is not an inconsistency born of confusion. Their collective presence makes Walsingham an accurate symbol of the wider church.

I had long heard of such ecumenical miracles, the result not of doctrinal compromise but of theologically principled appeals to the wider body of Christ. I had visited one in Sweden and heard of others such as the Monastero di Bose and Taizé. And here was another. Indeed, Michael Rear, a Roman Catholic priest himself, concludes his great study of Walsingham by comparing it to the community of Taizé. “No one even thinks of asking ‘is Taizé Catholic?’ or ‘is it Anglican?’ or ‘is it a Protestant community?’ It is just—Taizé.” Precisely because of its principled defiance of the Church of England’s accommodationist conceits, Walsingham continues to be a place where, in Rear’s words, “no theological argument or disagreement spoils its peace.”

Those of us who, like Taizé’s Brother Roger, revere the larger fragments of Christ’s broken body—the Catholic and Orthodox churches—without breaking fellowship with the parts of Christ’s body that reared us, find in Walsingham a great and unexpected comfort. Mary’s body, the church where Christ gestates, finds here a realistic portrait of her actual circumference. Has the shrine had influence? The conclusion of Michael Yelton’s astute biography of Patten is difficult to dispute:

Even so, can Walsingham be surpassed? If we look not northward but southward, perhaps it can. For there we find not merely a wayward nation kept within the folds of Mary’s garment, but—because Our Lady of Guadalupe is the patroness of the Americas—two entire continents. And so, as the celebration of Christ’s nativity approaches, a report of my trip to Mexico City comes next.