The Intellectual Crisis in English Catholicism

Liberal Catholics, Modernists, and the Vatican in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

William J. Schoenl

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351627689
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This volume, first published in 1982, examines the attempts of English liberal Catholics to reconcile their Church with secular culture and provides an account of the development of liberal Catholicism in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This work was written not only for specialists in religious history but for all readers who might be interested in this seminal period of Catholicism. It is a study in religious, intellectual, and cultural history.

NOTES

Notes to the Introduction

¹As used here, the term "science" includes any branch of study based on research and the inductive method. It should not be taken to mean the natural sciences only. While the latter is the more common meaning of "science" today, nineteenth-century writers were inclined to employ "science" in its broader sense when referring collectively to those disciplines which challenged religion. They applied the term to Biblical criticism and historical scholarship, as well as other contemporary disciplines.

²Attempts to reconcile Catholicism with contemporary culture occur repeatedly in the history of the Church. They may be concerned with questions of belief, political issues, social concerns, or other problems of life within the culture. They may remain within the bounds of orthodoxy or stray beyond. Thus, "liberal Catholicism," used to refer to such attempts, is a term with a very broad meaning. Objections can be raised against this use of the term. For one thing, "liberal Catholic" was often used by Church officials in the nineteenth century to signify a disloyal or unorthodox Catholic. For another, on a number of issues, some "liberals" agreed with "conservatives" against other "liberals"—and "conservatives" likewise divided at times. Nevertheless, in writing on the efforts to reconcile Catholicism with contemporary culture in the nineteenth century, the historian must use some term to refer to these attempts. "Liberal Catholicism" presents at least no more problems than alternative terms, such as "progressive Catholicism," or "aggiornamento," an anachronism when applied to the nineteenth century. Moreover, many of the protagonists in the nineteenth-century attempts at reconciliation referred to themselves as "liberal Catholics"—and their opponents often applied the same term to them. This is true both of leading figures in mid-century and, to a lesser degree because of the unfavorable connotations the term had taken on within the Church, of protagonists in similar efforts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As used in this study, the term implies no greater or lesser degree of orthodoxy between "liberals" and "conservatives." It must be recognized that they had much in common as Catholics; they shared basic religious beliefs and practices: most of them accepted the Church's dogmas and authority, worshipped at Mass, received the sacraments, etc. Their different perspectives on the relations of Catholicism with contemporary culture were secondary to their Catholicism itself.

³Josef L. Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England; The "Rambler" and Its Contributors¿ 1848-1864 (London, 1962), p. 221.

⁴The earlier ultramontanes had looked to the papacy to support the Church against the new secular state that had arisen out of the French Revolution. The neo-ultramontanes believed, in addition, that authority within the Roman Church should be fully centralized in the hands of the papacy.

⁵See Edmund Sheridan Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, 2nd ed. (London, 1896), Vol. II, Ch. vii, "The Temporal Power of the Pope."

⁶See Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England . . . 1848-1864, Ch. viii, "Catholic Politics and Catholic Intellect, 1860-1861," and Ch. ix, "Friends and Enemies, 1861."

⁷Ibid., pp. 131-32.

⁸Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, II, 322-23, quoting a letter by Manning to Talbot, February 25, 1866.

⁹J. G. Snead-Cox, The Life of Cardinal Vaughan (London, 1910), II, 297, quoting from a letter by Acton to The Times, November 24, 1874.

¹⁰See E. E. Y. Hales, Pió Nono (Garden City, N.Y., 1962), Ch. vii, Sec. 1, "The Syllabus of Errors (1864)."

¹¹Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England . . . 1848-1864, p. 22 9, quoting from a letter by Newman to Acton, March 18, 1864.

¹²His refusals may occasionally have resulted from an over-scrupulous conscience and a shy nature, but his intellectual honesty and discrimination seem to have been the more common reason.

¹³See A. 0. J. Cockshut, Anglican Attitudes (London, 1959), Ch. iv, "The Doctrinal Crisis."

¹⁴Henry E. Manning, "On the Subjects Proper to the Academia," Essays on Religion and Literature, ed. Manning, 1st ser. (London, 1865), pp. 43-44, 46; [Manning], "The Work and the Wants of the Catholic C...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• I. The Reappearance of English Liberal Catholicism
• II. English Liberal Catholics In 'The MID- and Late 1890'S
• III. The Joint Pastoral Censuring Liberal Catholicism
• IV. The Parting of the Ways
• V. The Condemnation of Modernism
• VI. The Aftermath
• Notes
• A Selected Bibliography
• Index