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Joseph Berington—‘Prophet of Ecumenism’?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2024

J. Derek Holmes
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Extract

The Reverend Joseph Berington (1743-1827) has never had a particularly good press even from sympathetic Catholic historians. This is almost certainly due to the fact that he was a leading supporter of the cisalpine, if not gallican, Catholic Committee and was one of those Catholics who belived that an Oath of Supremacy, properly understood, was not incompatible with Catholic principles. As a result of his attitude and activities, he was at one stage censured by the bishops and deprived of his faculties. Berington himself felt that English Catholics had suspected him since he taught philosophy at Douay where he was regarded as being too modern and bold in his philosophical opinions, and that this explained the later questioning of his orthodoxy. Joseph Gillow simply claims that Berington’s ‘love of novelty and of the affected liberality of the day created great prejudice against his writings, which, however, was considerably removed before his death’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 22 , Issue 254 , May 1941 , pp. 227 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © 1941 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

page 227 note 1 Catholic Miscellany, Vol. IX (1828), pp. 371–2.Google Scholar

page 227 note 2 Ibid., pp. 225, 298.

page 228 note 1 J. T. Ellis, Catholics in Colonial America (Baltimore, 1965), pp. 416–18.

page 229 note 1 Reflections addressed to The Rev. John Hawkins (Birmingham, 1785), pp. vii, 19–20, 22, 25, 56, 71.

page 229 note 2 Ward, B., The Eve of Catholic Emancipation (London, 1911), Vol. II, pp. 270, 302–3.Google Scholar

page 230 note 1 See also, Catholic Miscellany, Vol. X (1828), pp. 85–7.Google Scholar

page 230 note 2 Berington to Chadwick, 29th July, 1786, Ushaw College President's Archives, C5. Quoted with the kind permission of the President.

page 231 note 1 Ward, B., The Dawn of the Catholic Revival in England (London, 1909), Vol. II, pp. 213–14.Google Scholar

page 231 note 2 Quoted by Eamon Duffy in his excellent and illuminating study, ‘Ecclesiastical Democracy Detected’, Recusant History, Vol, 10 (1970), p. 196.Google Scholar

page 231 note 3 Ward, , Dawn, II, p. 247.Google Scholar Geddes' biblical scholarship was bitterly satirized by his fellow Catholics:

When G … had ceased on his Bible to work,

Because it would suit neither chagel nor Kirk

Had fretted his Gizzard, because all the printers

Declar'd not a copy would sell in ten Winters:

One piour Catholic expressed the hope that ‘his translation will serve for nothing but to wrap up pepper and spices, or become offerings to Cloacina’. (Banister to Rutter, 7th June, 1790, Upholland College Archives.)

page 231 note 4 Recusant Hiitory, Vol. 10, p. 315.Google Scholar Italics mine.

page 232 note 1 Catholic Miscellany, Vol. IX, p. 371.Google Scholar

page 232 note 2 Duffy, Eamon, ‘Doctor Douglass and Mister Berington’, Downside Review, Vol. 88 (1970), p. 247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 233 note 1 Catholic Miscellany, Vol. IX, pp. 380–2.