Was Oscar Wilde a Catholic?

There was another person present at Wilde’s deathbed – his lifetime Catholic friend Robert Ross. Ross had kept his promise to Wilde and had brought a Catholic priest to his deathbed. Later Ross admitted feeling guilty because he had dissuaded Wilde from becoming a Catholic on many occasions. He revealed that he was afraid of the scandal that would ensue should Wilde become a Catholic and then revert back to his gay lifestyle.

However, Richard Ellman in his biography of Wilde [1] is less convinced than Dunne of the significance of Wilde’s conversion, referring to the application of sacred oils as a symbolic affirmation of Wilde’s religious tendencies – like "putting a green carnation in his buttonhole". 

Wilde’s attraction to the Catholic Church was a worry to his Protestant father. He threatened to disinherit him if he converted and hoped that by sending Wilde to Oxford — which at the time, did not admit Catholics to the university — his attraction to Catholicism would be squashed.

But it was not to be. Wilde’s room was full of photographs of Cardinal Manning and Pope Pius IX, and Thomas à Kempis' Imitation of Christ was his nightly reading.

It is impossible to know for sure whether Wilde did convert to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed. But there is little doubt that he seriously considered "going over" and converting to Catholicism on a number of occasions during his lifetime.

Wilde regularly visited Brompton Oratory, London's fashionable Catholic church, and was invited to be received into the Catholic faith. At the last moment he declined, sending instead a box of white lilies.

After his libel/sodomy trial and before leaving England, Wilde went again to the Brompton Oratory. However, his usual priest was away so Wilde failed once again to discuss conversion.

 During his trial Wilde told his lover, Alfred Lord Douglas, that as soon as the trial was over and he was released he would convert to Catholicism. Instead he was jailed.

But this humiliating experience didn't seem to quell Oscar's spiritual leanings.  In jail he read Dante, The Bible and the Life of St Francis.

After two years of hard labour, Wilde was released.  Shortly after, he wrote to a Jesuit retreat house requesting help of some sort. The letter has not survived. However, on receipt of a response Wilde broke down and cried in the presence of friends.

Whatever his request, it had been refused.

During his years of Parisian exile Wilde attended Mass and visited Rome. He claimed that on his first visit to Rome he had been given a ticket to see the Pope by a complete stranger, or as Oscar said,  'an angel', whilst taking tea in the Hotel de l'Europe.

He was blessed by Pope Leo XIII on numerous occasions, crediting the Holy Father with curing him of food poisoning.

 Whether Oscar Wilde converted on his deathbed may be an irrelevance.  This is because  Wilde’s mother, Jane, an atheist, a poet and radical believer in the cause of Irish nationalism, had apparently arranged his baptism at the age of four or five by Rev. L.C. Fox of Dublin.  This was  to spite Oscar's father.  So where are the records?  Ah, well, because it was done privately, it was never registered. Is this true?   We shall  probably never know.

What we can be sure about is that Oscar Wilde was obviously deeply attracted to the Catholic Church, loving the liturgy and the artistic aesthetics of Church life.

Whether he was a convert to Catholicism or not, Christian imagery is arguably evident in many of his works, particularly The Picture of Dorian Gray, and many of his beautiful short stories such as The Happy Prince and The Selfish Giant.

Sources:

• [1] Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellman (Hamish Hamilton, 1987)
• Catholic Education Resource Centre on line

Copyright: K Duffy