Obituary - Fr Gregory Swann 1974

Born: 1 Oct 1887 – died: 31 Mar 1974
Clothed - 5 Oct 1911
Solemn Vows- 19 Dec 1915
Priest - 29 Apr 1919(**TEXT in AJ says 1920)

Born in Merton, Surrey in 1887, he moved early in life with his parents to East Anglia, where he attended Lowestoft College. In 1906 he went to St Edmund's Hall, Oxford to read chemistry and he also rowed in the college 'eight'. Years later he could be discovered in his room wearing his rowing cap - a sign of a drop in temperature or a rise in pressure. Still a non-Catholic, he was drawn to some form of religious life and a few months before going to Oxford, he spent a fortnight at Painsthorpe, one of the early stopping-places of the then Anglican community now at Prinknash. He found the life there physically severe but liturgically satisfactory, although he admitted he was only once present at Matins at 2 a.m. While at Oxford he basked in the diversity of 'High' Church practices but, in his last term he met the brethren at St Benet's Hall and was received into the Church. A few months later, September 1909, he visited Ampleforth but was advised to wait for a year before deciding to try his vocation there, so he went to Germany and taught English at Essen in the Rhineland. In October 1910 he returned to Ampleforth as a postulant, but admitted that the liturgical life then lived there was far from that ideal he had glimpsed at Painsthorpe. His monastic life followed the usual pattern of those days; novitiate at Belmont, where he found life more to his ideal. He returned to Ampleforth in June 1914 - a premature return to teach chemistry in place of the only master of that subject who had been taken ill. He was solemnly professed in December 1915 and ordained priest in April 1920(**TEXT in CV says 1919). Liturgical life at that time was by his standards - and perhaps by ours at the present time - at a low ebb. The writer of this remembers an occasion when the Abbot remarked, 'You must remember that you are in a monastery attached to a school' - a snort from Fr Gregory; 'the tail wagging the dog'. But in September 1920 Ampleforth re-opened its own novitiate and there was scope for improvement, spear-headed in great part by Fr Gregory. Until 1926 he was in charge of the church at Helmsley whither he went every Sunday, at first by bicycle, with a solid back tyre, and then on foot. In 1927 he began 31 years of pastoral work at St Anne's Liverpool, Lostock Hall and Cardiff, returning to Ampleforth in 1958.

Outwardly Fr Gregory will be remembered for his assiduous pursuit of the three 'L's - Latin, Liturgy and Laughter. Sometimes simultaneously.

Latin: if anything could be expressed in that language, he did it, even the most trivial things. Think of his tea caddy at Helmsley, thea nigra optima (had he got this from the monastery kitchen?) and the box of pins labelled acus aeci, or the notice on the charcoal box after a particularly pungent odour at solemn Vespers; keep covered propter felles visitantes. The use of the so-called 'classical' pronunciation of Latin in the Office was painful to him, but he could raise a smile at the thought of raucae factae sunt fauces meae.

The Liturgy: His ideal was summed up in the words of that Declaration (No 34) of the Rule and Constitutions: 'Cum primarium officium nostrum sit in terra praestare quod angeli in caelo....' and so he could not bear many of the curtailments of the solemn performance of the Mass or Office. He did his best and there are still extant in different places specimens of his work produced on a jelly pad - simplified chants which even the less gifted could use. The constitution of the Council on the Liturgy he considered a rather regrettable document - the use of the vernacular, the shortening of the Office and the lessening of the numinous in the Mass. But on the parishes he was free to follow his own wishes - he always said, sometimes sang, the Office with a certain solemnity in the privacy of his room. As he put it, he always kept the Canonical Hours.

Laughter: Like a small rumbling volcano, his laughter was never far below the surface; a word, a look or a gesture could make him laugh even when he was most depressed. (How strange in Holy Scripture laughter is never mentioned as a virtue.) But do not think he was only superficial or a crank. The high regard in which he is still held by many of the young people who came under his wing on the parishes give the lie to this as the following extract from a letter from New Zealand testifies:

I first had the good fortune to come under Fr Gregory's paternal wing as a young schoolboy of 12 in 1927. I loved him right away and over the many years since those far-off days Fr Gregory's profound influence has always been with me. I owe him such a lot, the love of Latin, architecture, history, geography but most especially the love of the Faith and the whole sacred liturgy. We corresponded regularly for over 36 years and many of his letters were little masterpieces. I shall miss them.

'There will be joy in heaven' and I hope that after the trials of this life no member of the angelic choir will dare put an ictus in the wrong place or any of the elders cast down his golden crown in an amateurish fashion - but Fr Gregory would probably laugh.

GREGORY SWANN

Details from the Abbey Necrology