Preface and Acknowledgements

Summary

A growing trend in recent English Catholic scholarship has been its diminution into a compartmentalised form of history that concentrates upon particular aspects of its history within short time-frames. To the non-specialist, the dates often appear to be quite arbitrary as they relate only to English Catholicism and bear no relation to the wider historical picture. While it is a useful way of managing sources, it does not allow the proper consideration of factors external to English Catholicism. This has the result of leading to a historical bias that is somewhat inward looking and fails to place English Catholicism in its proper context.

With its timespan of two hundred years, this study on Catholic faith and practice in England from 1779 to 1992, a period that is remarkably underrepresented in the historiographical canon, moves away from a bite-sized historical method towards one that is more inclusive. It is an account of a rapidly expanding religious community that moved from a position of limited visibility at the close of the eighteenth century to one of being a major denominational force in the religious landscape of the country by the end of the twentieth century. This change was not achieved in isolation. The transformation was accompanied by the simultaneous shift in England from a largely rural economy to an urban-based technological economy and a growth in secularisation following the eighteenth-century Enlightenment movement. There were, in addition, the changing priorities of the Catholic Church at large that cumulated in the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath. All had an impact upon Catholic faith and practice that required a response, from both the individual and the institutional church, that had at its heart the evangelical process of conversion and the leading of a better life resulting ultimately in the joy of salvation. It is in its placing of Roman Catholicism within the Evangelical spectrum of religious experience that this study of Catholic faith and practice provides radical new insights into the story of Catholicism in England, seeking, as it does, to reclaim the concepts of Revivalism and Renewal from being regarded as purely Protestant phenomena to being recognised as intrinsic elements of Catholic faith and practice.

Bringing this study to fruition has been eased by the help and support of many people.