Fr Wilfrid entered the monastery at Ampleforth in 1930 among a remarkable group of fellow novices and others above and below him. He was, together with some of these others, an example of the power and strength of God working in a person who might have simply sunk himself as a monk into the worldly pastimes that he also much enjoyed and indulged in. But in the event he became a holy man, a devoted monk, a person who touched the lives of those who got to know him.
Fr Wilfrid Mackenzie was born in Madras on 15 September 1911, baptised Ian. He remained in India until he was seven years old, and he retained a great interest in India and its affairs, reminiscing of the British Raj, not so much from his memory as from conversations with his mother and reading. In fact a favourite author of his was Rudyard Kipling, and he loved the Jungle Book, Kim, the Maltese Cat, and other tales from India. He used to marvel at the wonderful style of life that the British ascendancy led in India, and one felt he wished it might return! This early part of his life was very important in his whole formation.
His father was an engineer and, from all accounts, rather aloof. In fact Wilfrid used to admire his father and the old-fashioned ways of the early part of the 20th century. When he saw modern fashion in anything, clothes or music or styles of life he would remark: “What would my father or mother have thought of that?” The impression given of the Mackenzie household was that father was at his books in his study, not to be disturbed, and the two boys were brought up by their mother and by the various domestic servants they employed. In India this would have meant an ayah (nanny), a cook, a cleaner, a dhobi man (laundry man), woodcutter and so forth. It was not unusual for an ordinary British family to have a dozen or so servants.
His mother was the Catholic, and she became one through the good offices of a Jesuit in India who instructed her in the faith. Her faith was old fashioned and strong and no doubt because of her affection for the Jesuits, after prep school in Newcastle for a short time, he was sent to the Jesuit school of Mount St Mary’s near Sheffield. The family lived then in Newcastle and probably through the parish in Jesmond his mother met Mrs Rabnett, whose son was at school at Ampleforth and later entered the monastery as our famous Fr Cuthbert Rabnett. Mrs Rabnett had heard that young Ian was at the Mount, but she advised Mrs Mackenzie that the young boy would do much better if he went to Ampleforth. All his life Wilfrid was devoted to his mother in a particular way. She was a source of wisdom for him and a role model that he used to offer for other mothers. Probably she, too, accepted her lot as the companion of her hard-working and rather distant husband, immersed in his business affairs. One aphorism of hers that Wilfrid loved to quote was: “Pity the wife whose husband does not smoke!” Wilfrid never took to political correctness!
At Mount St Mary’s, Ian Mackenzie was very happy. Indeed one of his endearing characteristics was to make the best of the particular circumstances of the moment. He took a pet with him to Mount St Mary’s school, a duck! When asked how on earth was that possible, both the fact of it, and how he avoided being teased by the others, he used to shrug his shoulders and say, “I’m not sure”. Possibly his large size would put off other boys who might have taken him on in a fight. He liked the Jesuit teachers, but showing the independent spirit that was his all life long, he told his fellow classmates that when he was at Ampleforth he would come back to the Mount and beat them at rugby. That might well have happened in those days. He did not feel attracted to Jesuit ways such as the “examen” twice a day, or what he thought was their rather “inhuman” style. He thanked God that he had found the Benedictine way, which he felt was far the better, just as being English was far better than being of any other nationality. Later on in Preston he was intrigued and fascinated when invited to have lunch with the Jesuits at St Wilfrid’s. He always hoped to meet some of his former teachers of Mount St Mary’s.
He loved Ampleforth and it would be interesting to know more how his monastic vocation first came to bud in his heart and then led him to enter the noviciate. He was in the school from 1924 to 1930 and he could remember many of those in the “form” with him. He developed at Ampleforth his passion for sport and the countryside, especially rugby football and hunting. He was not academic but a loyal, conservative-minded, traditional young man with a strong streak of independent thinking. In fact the “prejudices” of his family in which the word “socialist” he used to tell us was never mentioned, were simply strengthened and reinforced in his education. He probably only listened really to those with whom he agreed. Certainly he was like that later on in life.
Wilfrid joined the noviciate in 1930, together with at least seven others. Among them were people very different from him, like Aelred Graham, Bruno Donovan, Alban Rimmer, Robert Coverdale, Aldhelm Finnear, and among those in the year subsequent were James Forbes, Mark Haidy and Jerome Lambert. Many of these were colourful characters that might have influenced a young and impressionable youth. Not Wilfrid! He remained steadily the person he was to become, devoted to God, devoted to an Ampleforth of a certain steady, unchanging and increasingly mythological existence, devoted to the people and the place where God put him. If possible that should be near the fells where he could enjoy the hunt or at least near a golf course. Essentially Wilfrid was uncomplicated and single-minded, and seemed a person who would find it more easy to stay on the God-given path that he knew than to swerve off it. One wonders if he influenced those contemporaries of his in monastic life, or did they simply see in him the good, devoted young man that many came to love and revere?
His monastic training was not eventful, except that he held Fr Placid Dolan as his great mentor and model. This great monk was both an innovative thinker and a deeply spiritual man and the wide sweep of Fr Placid’s interests was only equalled by the originality of his views. But what interested Fr Placid most of all were the things of the Spirit, and on his illness in 1941 he went to recuperate at Skins farm where Mr and Mrs Mackenzie then resided in Derbyshire. So Wilfrid had many occasions to know him and hear his mother speaking of him. Wilfrid did not have the same intellectual gifts as Fr Placid, but he followed his spirit, and became a man who certainly combined the gifts of nature and the gifts of grace, seeing them as they are, really different aspects of the single Glory of God in his creation. Later on in life, when Wilfrid would reflect on his brethren and their strange ways, to his way of thinking, he would remark, “That person never had the right guru to guide him”.
In Cardiff in 1943 there was no hunting but the Cardiff Arms Park was within the confines of the Parish. This was his first parochial experience apart from his wartime priestly work in Coxwold and around Ampleforth, a very different scene. In all the eight parishes in which he served, he entered the pastoral world enthusiastically. Parishioners love a priest who also enjoys hobbies and sport, so when he persuaded his parish priest to delay confessions until after the international matches were over, it would have been another effective pastoral tool for his work. He thoroughly enjoyed the Welsh rugby if his comments 50 years later are anything to go by.
In Workington he was known for his work among the young people, as well as outings with the Blencathra foxhounds. His pastoral zeal and the love of the people wherever he served evoked responses that lasted all his life. Wilfrid, when at Leyland, used to go back to Workington for holidays, and after 50 years he was still remembered and loved.
He was a parish priest from 1956 to 1979, first at Lostock Hall, near Preston and later at Easingwold near Ampleforth. He was known for his quiet, steady approach, conservative and fair. At Lostock Hall he left his mark in adding a tower and two bays to the church. In Easingwold he found the Yorkshire folk rather closed compared to those in the North-West of England that he was used to. He went to Fr Denis Marsall, a life-long friend and asked him what was the matter with the Yorkshire people. “Don’t you know?” replied Denis “that these Yorkshire folk are like that because they are still afraid that the Danes might invade them again”. Wilfrid was known for his Volkswagen Beetle car, his dog and his quiet, continuous work for the people. He had developed over the years a liking for golf, and played on his days off when not hunting.
After four years in St Joseph’s, Brindle, Wilfrid came to Leyland where he remained for 20 years, from 1983 to 2003. Back in the North-West, no longer a parish priest, he became an assiduous and kind visitor of the people. Wilfrid was always kind to his housekeepers, and really could not come to terms with the modern style of parishes without resident housekeepers. Mary Nightingale, who was with him in Easingwold, was devoted to him, and later at Brindle he used to take the housekeeper there, a certain Mary, shopping each Saturday to Blackburn. She was devoted to him because of his kindness and understanding. Later in Leyland he became the great friend of those ladies who worked in the house because of that courtesy and understanding. This continued for the last year and a half in the infirmary in Ampleforth, where the nurses loved him. He used to pretend (and perhaps it was not a pretence) that he did not quite know where he was in those last months of his life, but he remained perfectly content with his lot. He was very grateful for visits and for the good work done to him by the caring brethren as well as the professionals.
From 1979 he was able easily to be part of the fell hounds in the Lake District and he continued this interest until his last year in Leyland. He was well known to the huntsmen and the officials of the hunt, visiting them in their homes and even ministering to them pastorally. He used to make a habit to attend the Rydal Show each year, even when hunting was over for him, as he had reached his 90th year.
Wilfrid had many qualities as well as limitations. He was compassionate, a much loved confessor both for the brethren and for the people. We would receive ‘phone calls from parishioners asking if it was Wilfrid hearing confessions on a Saturday night. He was not an intellectual, but he was a wise thinker and an assiduous reader. He must have read David Knowles’ three volumes dealing with monastic life in medieval England four or five times. He also read novels and he loved poetry. He was a deep, if slow, thinker, a wise man with a capacity for shrewd judgements about others. He also used to love the Scriptures and he would take a Jerusalem Bible and sit in the House Chapel in Leyland for an hour or so on many an evening, later on falling asleep in there before retiring to bed.
He failed to come to terms with Vatican II. Like Fr Placid Dolan he was essentially an individualist. He never addressed himself to collective humanity. He had no concept of the purpose of Vatican II. In fact the only positive thought he had about Vatican II was that it had the good effect of putting an end to scrupulosity.
He had no understanding of “collegiality”, “collaborative ministry”, “the theology of communion” or the “spirituality of communion”. All of this opens up the Catholic church and enables dialogue both within the Catholic church itself, with other Christian churches and with those of other religions and people of good will of no religion. This was all a closed book to Wilfrid. He saw no point in ecumenism, although he was utterly courteous to the individual non-Catholic. He used to tell me that there was no point in listening to the laity, rather a parish priest should tell them what to do. Instinctively he was a “Little Englander” and he really did not understand why foreigners could not adapt to English ways. He failed to understand the Irish, and found some of his Irish brethren very difficult. In fact various priests and religious of different nationalities did come to stay in Leyland, and with some of them Wilfrid struck up a friendship. This was despite himself, and because of his exquisite courtesy. But it would also be fair to say that some companions he found impossible, and these might sometimes be his own brethren or the guests.
In all this we come back to Wilfrid the man, the priest and the monk. He did have limitations, and he could be frustrating for a person who was more in tune with the modern world and modern Church, or simply held different views. But once you got behind all that you discovered a person in whom love and suffering had formed him to become almost naturally self-disciplined to follow his clear path. He was utterly dedicated to the divine office, and did manage to join in when we began saying office in common in the parish. But he used to ask the question, “Why all this psalm saying?”, and some bits of the scriptures he found very difficult to understand and accept, like the Apocalypse. He would read it dutifully, but then tell you it was all nonsense. He had all the monastic instincts, with a feeling for obedience and community life, belonging to our Ampleforth conventus with its history and style of monasticism. He might not fully understand the modern ways of the monastery, but it was his home. He was utterly devoted to the mass, and at the end when he could not preside on his own he would concelebrate. This continued right up to the end of his life as he was taken down the cloister to conventual mass or to the Abbot’s chapel.
A striking and God-like quality was his utter detachment from things, and his ability to be content with his lot. When it became clear that he could no longer drive, there was no lamentation. He simply gave up his beloved last Volkswagen Beetle car and resorted to walking. When he could no longer visit the people he remained content in his room, reading, going for short strolls, and was not a burden on the others. He was a self-sufficient person, at peace with himself, and so able to be a guide and support for others.
In the end his failing memory and his physical weakness led him to return to the infirmary at the Abbey. There he was very well looked after, in a room with a marvellous view down the valley. Visitors came and he was content, as gradually be grew less able to read and to hold conversations. He died peacefully after a short illness, surrounded by the love of his brethren and the nurses in his ninety-third year.
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