a Crusade of Prayer, for the recovery of England to (Roman) Catholicism.
Mr. Purcell says: "The zeal manifested by the Catholics of France in the Crusade of Universal Prayer for the unity of Christendom bore a startling witness to the quickening power of the revival of religion. Throughout the entire country, in parish churches as well as in religious communities, public prayers, week after week, were offered up for the conversion of England. In Holland the Crusade of Prayer rapidly spread in all the seminaries and convents, and masses and communions and prayers were on Thursdays specially offered up for England. The Catholics of Germany, especially of the Rhineland and of Munich, took part in the Crusade. Before a year was passed all Catholic Europe was enrolled in the Crusade of Prayer."
Great numbers of English clergy and laity united in the Crusade, with the desire that it might bring about the unity of Christendom.
Prayer is answered, but not always in the way in which petitioners have expected and desired. It soon became obvious that the Crusade was succeeding in the Church of England, which was shaking off her drowsiness, and recovering her Catholic heritage.
In furtherance of the same end the "Society for the Promotion of the Unity of Christendom" was founded in 1857 for members of the Roman, Greek and Anglican Churches. The sole obligation was to pray daily for the unity of Christendom.
It became, however, so plain to the Ultramontanes that the prayers of the faithful were not being answered in the way that they wanted, but, on the contrary, resulted in the revival of the Anglican Church, rendering her an impediment to papal advance, and in the cessation of the leakage into the Roman Communion, that they became alarmed, and by a Papal Rescript, dated September 16,1864, the society was condemned, and Roman Catholics were forbidden to be members of it. They might, of course, pray for the union of Christendom and the conversion of England, but it must be according to the way of Pius IX, not in that of Jesus Christ.
