Gerard Noel
Catholic Herald editor who earned the respect of all sides in the post Second Vatican Council era
GERARD NOEL, who has died aged 89, was editor of the Catholic Herald and one of the few laymen who was listened to with equal respect by traditionalist and progressive Roman Catholics during a turbulent and troubled era for their church in the 1960s and 1970s.
As Catholicism attempted farreaching reforms in its teachings and structure in the wake of the landmark Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Noel was both commentator and counsellor in rapidly changing times, writing a string of books that gave the historical context to contemporary church disputes, and acting informally as a trusted advisor to cardinals, bishops and Vatican officials.
His stints at the helm of the Herald were from 1971 to 1976, when he was editor, and from 1982 to 1984, when was editor-in-chief, having stepped in to steady the ship after a short-lived editor had departed suddenly. These coincided with divisive and sometimes bitter battles within the Church over contraception, married priests and closer working ties with other faiths.
Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical, Humanae vitae, had dashed hopes raised by the Second Vatican Council of extending reform into the area of sexual ethics. It reaffirmed the traditional ban on “artificial” means of birth control, causing widespread disillusionment among many Catholics and a rejection by some of the Church’s teaching authority.
On such contentious matters, Noel steered a reasoned middle line, balancing his own instinctive support for modernisation with a historian’s realisation that the Catholic Church moves slowly and cautiously in such matters, and needed gentle coaxing rather than confrontation.
His efforts at conciliation were greatly helped by his abundant personal charm and keen sense of humour. A superb mimic – his Oxford contemporary Tony Benn being one of the finest – Gerry (as he was always known to his many friends) was a clubbable sort and was in demand on many committees. These ranged from long service as a vice-president of the Council of Christians and Jews and on the board of the pro-Zionist organisation, Britain and Israel, to an ad hoc appointment to the group of (male) Garrick members charged with refurbishing the ladies’ loos at the club (which admitted women only as guests).
The Honourable Gerard Eyre Wriothesley Noel was born on November 20 1926, the second son of the fourth Earl of Gainsborough. His father was an unusual figure in his day – an English aristocrat who was also a devout Catholic, and served as a Privy Chamberlain to two popes, Benedict XV and Pius XI. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Noel was sent to school at Georgetown in the United States, returning in 1943 to work as an interpreter and translator in the Psychological Warfare Bureau.
At the end of the conflict, he read Modern History at Exeter College, Oxford. He then tried out several careers before finally settling on journalism and publishing. He briefly tested his priestly vocation at the English College in Rome, and then was called to the Bar in 1952. He toyed with politics, standing unsuccessfully as a Liberal candidate for Argyllshire in 1959 general election, where he trailed in third behind the Tories.
By that time had joined the board of Herder, a leading Catholic imprint. It set him on a path. There was work with several of the Catholic newspapers – including a spell as literary editor of the Catholic Times. He was also a keen supporter of Prism, the short-lived inter-faith rival to the denominational titles that was set up in the late 1960s by his great friend, the Liberal peer and Anglican clergyman, Tim (Lord) Beaumont.
As editor of the Catholic Herald from 1971, Noel encouraged open and civilised debate in its pages between the different factions in the church.
The Herald had long been the most radical of the British Catholic newspapers, and was in the vanguard of the calls for reform, notably in its long campaign for the mass to be celebrated in English as well as Latin. With that achieved, as a result of the Second Vatican Council, Noel repositioned his paper much more as a builder of bridges, with the result that it lost some of its bite and its readership to its rival, The Tablet.
The paper’s finances were always fragile, but Noel played little part in the daily struggle to make ends meet, save to press his friends into service as columnists – including Lord Beaumont and the leading Tory politician and fellow Catholic, Norman St John Stevas. They did it for love not money – as essentially did Noel, who was comfortably off in his own right, with houses in London and the Cotswolds.
In 1982 Noel took over the paper’s weekly back-page “Charterhouse Chronicle” column (named after the street where the paper’s ramshackle offices were located) following the death of its original writer, the Observer foreign correspondent Patrick O’Donovan. It was to continue weekly under his byline for almost two decades. Noel’s large post-bag, full of invitations to conferences, talks and openings, showed what a popular figure he had become in the Catholic community.
Away from day-to-day journalism, throughout the 1960s he had rapidly produced a series of life-in-progress biographies of key figures of the time, including Senator Barry Goldwater and Harold Wilson (both 1964). His range as a writer was as impressive as his industry – from contemporary politics ( The New Britain, 1966), to history ( The Great Lock-Out of 1926 1976); from Church matters ( The Way to Unity after the Council, 1967) to royal
Princess Alice, Queen Victoria’s Forgotten Daughter (1974), and an acclaimed life, published in 1984, of Queen Ena of Spain. Many considered it his best book.
All of this was combined with editing the Herald, later serving as its editor-in-chief and encouraging and mentoring a succession of young Catholic journalists who included Richard Dowden, Frances Gumley, Jonathan Petre, Cristina Odone, Peter Stanford and Martin Newland. All went on to careers at the BBC or on national newspapers, with Newland editing The Daily Telegraph.
In later years, Noel kept up his output of books. In 1994 he substantially revised his earlier (1980) Anatomy of the Catholic Church, the original title being a nod to Anthony Sampson’s Anatomy of Britain. It was, he would say, his most significant contribution to promoting greater understanding of the history of Catholicism.
He followed it with a biography of his 19th-century ancestor and namesake, Sir Gerard Noel MP (2004), another in the same year of his great friend and contemporary, Miles, Duke of Norfolk, then a survey of Renaissance popes (2006), and in 2009 a well-received life of Pope Pius XII that staunchly defended the wartime pontiff dubbed “Hitler’s Pope” by another biographer.
Noel preferred to label Pius “the hound of heaven” and recalled in his introduction how, through the good offices of his father, he found himself granted a private audience with the pontiff in 1948 at his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo.
He turned the memory into a wellpolished anecdote. His penchant for recounting such personal stories – and for telling jokes – may have entertained, but it could also distract readers and listeners from Noel’s seriousness of purpose. He was at heart more scholar than hack, but he never quite produced a fitting book to showcase his many talents.
He married, in 1958, Adele Were, and they had two sons and one daughter, all of whom survive him.
Gerard Noel, born November 20 1926, died July 27 2016