On temporal misfortunes – Richard A. Kaye in TLS :

‘Many people are familiar with Oscar Wilde’s last words, spoken as he lay dying in a Paris hotel in 1900, and first reported by his friend, the Anglo-French writer Claire de Pratz: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go”. But it is also possible that Wilde uttered something more along the lines of “Confiteor unum baptisma in remissionem peccatorum. Et unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam” (“I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And one holy, catholic and apostolic Church”).
This second claim may be traced back to Father Cuthbert Dunne, the priest who attended Wilde on his deathbed, and the writer’s admirers have often expressed unease about it. How could this Protestant-born Irish sexual rebel have embraced the Catholic Church, with its strictures and condemnation of same-sex relations? Gary Schmidgall, in his biography The Stranger Wilde (1994), writes of the “black humour” of Wilde’s “last-minute entry into the Roman Catholic Church”; a more recent biographer, Matthew Sturgis, in 2018, portrays the conversion as a “performance”. The Church itself, meanwhile, has come to embrace Wilde as a Catholic devout.’

(…)

‘According to his Oxford friend W. W. Ward, Wilde had inclined to Catholicism at university, making his “final decision to find refuge in the Roman Church … not the sudden clutch of the drowning man at the plank in the shipwreck, but a return to a first love”. In April 1878, Wilde became “grievously ill”, according to his friend Lionel Johnson, and sought out the Revd Sebastian Bowden, a priest well known for his connections in British high society. After their meeting, Bowden wrote to Wilde in order to alleviate what he called the “aimlessness and misery of your temporal misfortunes”: Let me then repeat to you as solemnly as I can say what I said yesterday; you have, like everyone else, an evil nature and this in your case has become more corrupt by bad influences mental and moral, and by positive sin, hence you speak as a dreamer and sceptic with no faith in anything and no purpose in life. On the other hand God in His mercy has not let you remain contented in this state. He has proved to you the hollowness of this world in the unexpected loss of your fortune and has removed thereby a great obstacle to your conversion. He allows you to feel the sting of conscience and the yearnings for a holy, pure and earnest life.’

(…)

‘Wilde met two popes during his lifetime: Pius IX in 1877; then, in the years of disgrace, Leo XIII (on several occasions). Those later meetings are especially extraordinary given Wilde’s notoriety, and would seem to confirm the particular nature of his attraction to Catholicism. “I hope that you may take a journey in life in order to arrive at the city of God”, Leo advised Wilde. “I do nothing but see the Pope: I have already been blessed several times”, the writer reported to Ross, “once in the private chapel of the Vatican.” Characteristically, Wilde was stirred by the sartorial splendours of the papal office. “Today is wet and stormy”, he reported, “but I have been with the holy father. Each time he dresses differently; it is most delightful. Today over his white and purple a velvet cap edged with ermine, and a huge scarlet and gold stole. I was deeply moved as usual.” The Dunne archive also offers a striking addition to this image of the sensualist worshipper, in the form of a letter from Wilde’s fourteen-year-old son Vivian (later Vyvyan), another convert, written after Wilde’s death. On December 14, 1900, he speculated on what prompted his father’s conversion: I think the chief reason he was not converted before was that his parents were strongly against it. But now, as they are both dead he had less to keep him from it … I am overjoyed at the news of a Rosary being found among his belongings.’ (…)

‘“The Catholic Church is for saints and sinners”, Wilde once remarked. “For respectable people, the Anglican Church will do.”’

Read the article here.

I would also forgo a church for respectable people. Who wants to be respectable?

The holy father and misery and decay make us all sensitive to a church and a seductive god. What are bodily pleasures on your last day?