Dom Bede Camm (1864-1942), Monastic Martyrologist

1993 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 371-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Aidan Bellenger

One of the soldiers asked him what religion he was of. He readily answered, ‘I am a Catholic’ ‘What!’ said the other, ‘a Roman Catholic?’ ‘How do you mean a Roman?’ said Father Bell, ‘I am an Englishman. There is but one Catholic Church, and of that I am a member.’These words of a Franciscan priest, Arthur Bell, executed at Tyburn in 1643, could have been taken as his own by Dom Bede Camm, the Benedictine martyrologist, who was one of the great propagandists of those English and Welsh Catholic martyrs who died in the period from the reign of Elizabeth to the Popish Plot. The lives of the martyrs were familiar to English Catholics through the writings of Richard Challoner (1691–1781), whose Memoirs of Missionary Priests had been available in various forms since its publication, as a kind of Catholic reply to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, in two volumes in 1741–2, but in the late nineteenth century, as the English Catholics, reinforced by many converts from the Church of England, grew more combative in controversy following the relative calm of the Georgian period, the martyrs came more to the forefront. The church authorities sought recognition of the English martyrs’ heroic virtue. In 1874 Cardinal Manning had put under way an ‘ordinary process’, a preliminary judicial inquiry, to collect evidence to elevate the ‘venerable’ martyrs to the status of ‘beati’. In 1895, and again in 1929, large batches of English martyrs were declared blessed. In 1935 Thomas More and John Fisher were canonized. It was not until 1970 that forty of the later martyrs, a representative group, were officially declared saints.

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 314-327
Author(s):  
Rowan Strong

In the 1840s the Church of England, through the agency of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), established an official chaplaincy to emigrants leaving from British ports. The chaplaincy lasted throughout the rest of the nineteenth century. It was revitalized in the 1880s under the direction of the SPCK in response to a surge in emigration from Britain to the colonies. This article examines the imperial attitudes of Anglicans involved in this chaplaincy network, focusing on those of the 1880s and 1890s, the period of high imperialism in Britain. It compares these late nineteenth-century outlooks with those of Anglicans in the emigrant chaplaincy of the 1840s, in order to discern changes and continuities in Anglican imperialism in nineteenth-century Britain. It finds that, in contrast to the imperialist attitudes prevalent in Britain during the late nineteenth century, Anglicans in this chaplaincy network focused more on the ecclesiastical and pastoral dimensions of their work. Indeed, pro-imperial attitudes, though present, were remarkably scarce. It was the Church much more than the empire which mattered to these Anglicans, notwithstanding their direct involvement with the British empire.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Elliott

At the Reformation, three possibilities faced English Catholics. They could continue to be Catholics and so suffer the penalties of the penal laws; they could conform to the Church of England; or they could adopt a middle course and become Church Papists. The Nevills of Nevill Holt, near Market Harborough in Leicestershire, went through all three phases. In the reign of Edward VI, Thomas Nevill I became a Protestant. His grandson, Thomas Nevill II, became a Church Papist under James I; and Thomas II’s son, Henry Nevill I, continued to be one at the time of the Civil War. But Henry l’s son William was definitely a Catholic and went into exile with King James II, while William’s son, Henry Nevill II, was an open Catholic under Charles II. Henry Nevill II’s descendants continued to be Catholics throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries until they left Nevill Holt in the late nineteenth century.


Author(s):  
Noel Malcolm

This essay presents a hitherto unknown work: the first autobiography ever written by an Albanian. It was composed in 1881–2 by a young man (born in 1861) called Lazër Tusha; he wrote it in Italian, and the manuscript has been preserved in an ecclesiastical archive in Italy. Tusha was the son of a prosperous tailor in the city of Shkodër, which was the administrative centre of the Catholic Church in Albania. He describes his childhood and early education, which gave him both a love of Italian culture and a strong desire to serve the Church; at his insistence, his father sent him to the Catholic seminary there, run by the Jesuits. He describes his disappointment on being obliged, after six years, to leave the seminary and resume lay life, and his failed attempts to become either a Jesuit or a Franciscan. Some aspects of these matters remain mysterious in his account. But much of this unfinished draft book is devoted to things other than purely personal narrative: Tusha writes in loving detail about customs, superstitions, clothes, the city of Shkodër, its market and the tailoring business. This is a very rich account of the life and world of an ordinary late-nineteenth-century Albanian—albeit an unusually thoughtful one, with some literary ambition.


1998 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-253
Author(s):  
George Marshall

Ever since the Reformation, and increasingly since the example set by Newman, the Church of England has had to contend with the lure of Rome; in every generation there have been clergymen who converted to the Roman Catholic Church, a group either statistically insignificant or a momentous sign of the future, depending on one’s viewpoint. From the nineteenth century Newman and Manning stand out. From the first two decades of the twentieth century among the figures best remembered are Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) and Ronald Arbuthnot Knox (1888–1957). They are remembered, not because they were more saintly or more scholarly than others, but because they were both writers and therefore are responsible for their own memorials. What is more, they both followed Newman in publishing an account of the circumstances of their conversion. This is a genre which continues to hold interest. The two works demonstrate, among other things, the continuing influence of Newman’s writings about the identity of the Church.


1999 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 408-418
Author(s):  
Frances Knight

In 1910, the Royal Commission on the Church of England and the Other Religious Bodies in Wales and Monmouth revealed that the Church of England was the largest religious body in Wales, and attracted over a quarter of all worshippers. This indicated a significant improvement in the Church’s fortunes in the previous half century, and a different picture from that which had emerged from the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, which had suggested that the established Church had the support of only twenty per cent of Welsh worshippers. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light upon the Church’s improving fortunes between 1851 and 1910 by exploring the liturgical patterns which were evolving in a particular Welsh county, Montgomeryshire, in the late nineteenth century. Montgomeryshire is part of the large rural heart of mid-Wales, bordered by Radnor to the south, Cardigan and Merioneth to the west, Denbigh to the north, and Shropshire to the east. The paper considers the annual, monthly, and weekly liturgical cycles which were developing in the county, and how the co-existence of the Welsh and English languages was expressed in different styles of church music and worship.


2007 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 419-427
Author(s):  
Stephen Sykes

Several years ago, I had a conversation with an American Roman Catholic Archbishop with a substantial theological background, in the course of which I asked him to be frank about his impression of the American Episcopal Church. His reply was memorable: They appear not to want to say no to anything.’ This encapsulates the inherent difficulty in the idea of ‘inclusiveness’, or in the much-claimed virtue of ‘comprehensiveness’ which Anglicans and Episcopalians are wont to make. Two problems immediately present themselves. The first is that, without difficulty one can suggest views or actions of which it would be impossible for a church to be inclusive, at least with any semblance of loyalty to the New Testament. Then, secondly, the inclusion of disputed actions, such as the ordination of gay persons, presents a different order of difficulty from inclusiveness in relation to disputed beliefs. Churches characteristically have rules about who may, or may not be ordained into a representative ministry. Ordinands are ‘tried and examined’. But tolerance of diversity of belief is one thing: tolerance of diversity of practice another, as the churches of the Anglican Communion discovered when they simultaneously ordained women to the priesthood, but extended tolerance to the beliefs of those who asserted that the priesthood was reserved to males. The illogicality of that position is exposed by the discovery that those being received into the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church were publicly required to state that they accepted the ministry of the Church of England – a higher requirement than was imposed on newly ordained Anglican clergy. On the other hand, it was argued at the time, and the argument has force, that an acknowledged state of incoherence was preferable to overt schism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
Andréia Márcia de Castro Galvão

As mudanças legislativas do final do século XIX alteraram o status quo da Igreja Católica, levando-a a desenvolver novas estratégias de ação a fim de defender seu espaço junto à comunidade. Devido a séculos de padroado, a religiosidade brasileira tornara-se uma mescla de práticas medievais e mágicas com características portuguesas, africanas e indígenas. O combate a essas práticas foi intensificado com a implementação do ultramontanismo, que buscava centralizar e verticalizar o poder clerical, diminuir o poder das irmandades leigas, sacralizar os locais de culto, dentre outras. Partindo dessas premissas, esse artigo analisa a vinda de religiosos católicos europeus para Goiás, nomeadamente da Congregação do Santíssimo Redentor – redentoristas –, como parte importante do projeto ultramontano. Esses religiosos reforçaram o clero (então diminuto), contribuíram na propagação da fé com missões, giros paroquiais e desobrigas, criaram um jornal religioso e ainda ajudaram no controle da principal festa religiosa do estado. The Congregation of the Holy Redeemer in Goiás (1894-1925) The legislative changes of the late nineteenth century has altered the status quo of the Catholic Church, leading it to develop new strategies of action in order to defend its space with the community. Due to centuries of patronage, Brazilian religiosity had become a mixture of medieval and magical practices with Portuguese, African and indigenous characteristics. The fight against these practices was intensified with the implementation of ultramontanism, which sought to centralize and verticalize clerical power, to reduce the power of lay brotherhoods, to sacralize places of worship, among others. Based on these premises, this article analyzes the coming of European Catholic religious to Goiás, namely the Congregation of the Holy Redeemer – Redemptorists – as an important part of the ultramontane project. These religious strengthened the clergy (then scanty), contributed to the spread of the faith with missions, parochial circuit and disengagement, created a religious newspaper and also helped control the main religious celebration of the state.


Author(s):  
Philip Jane

There has been little research into musical endeavour in small rural New Zealand townships during the late nineteenth century. This article explores the life of Joseph Higham, one of the first professional musicians to settle long term in Hawera. It surveys his wide-ranging musical activities in and around Hawera, including his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. The work, influence and outcomes of provincial musicians are compared to musicians working in the larger cities; while the reduced scale of amateur activities resulting from a smaller and more widespread population is notable, the general quality and professionalism of teaching is similar.


1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 524-540
Author(s):  
James P. Rodechko

During the late nineteenth century, Irish immigrants were not always sympathetic toward the Catholic Church. Observers indicated that large numbers of Irish-Americans were dissatisfied with Catholic attitudes toward American conditions and might consequently sever their ties with the church. At times, priests, members of the hierarchy, and the American Catholic press showed particular concern that Patrick Ford, the influential and controversial editor of the New York Irish World, encouraged immigrants to question their traditional place in the church. In the late 1870s, Ford's opinions of American socio-economic and political affairs directly challenged those of Catholic spokesmen.


1958 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 105-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. F. A. Best

The many non-theological controversies which ranged about the Church of England in the first three decades of the nineteenth century fell into two classes, the one inspired by the deficiencies in the church's physical equipment for performing its allotted functions as the state's religious establishment, the other by the superiorities and advantages enjoyed only by its members. The controversies in the latter class went the deeper. In discussing ‘church reform’, the fact of establishment could be taken for granted: but in discussing the legal disabilities and social inferiorities under which both Protestant and Roman Catholic nonconformists suffered, the establishment's superiorities had to be defended against liberals who maintained that an established church could do without them, and its very existence as an establishment had to be justified against the charges of those Protestant dissenters and secularists who maintained that established churches were iniquitous, oppressive, and absurd. The discussion thus ranged freely between the poles of political practice and political philosophy, and joined the immediate problems of the hour to the most serious philosophical and theological problems with which thoughtful statesmen could be concerned.


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