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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 February 2015
When Britain declared war on Germany in August 1914 few could have foreseen that it would last four years or predicted the slaughter it would bring. The parishioners of the Catholic parish of St. Peter Seel St., in the docklands of south Liverpool, along with Catholics throughout the country, on the first Sunday of the war were exhorted to pray for peace. The assumption seemed to be that the war would be a short one. The lessons of Britain's last major conflict, the South African Wars at the turn of the nineteenth-century, seemed not to have impinged on popular imagination. it would, however, be only a relatively short space of time before the news of local young men ‘killed in action’ began to appear in the notice books of St. Peter's and other Catholic parishes, bringing a growing realisation that this war was ‘different’. Perhaps it would not end quickly and certainly as the horror of events in Belgium and France began to appear in the press, national, local and ‘confessional’, the conviction grew that indeed this was no ‘ordinary’ war. How did the leaders of the Catholic community respond? What guidance and comfort were offered to the community, which was largely working class, whose sons found themselves in the front line?
1 Contemporary usage favoured ‘England’ and ‘English’ rather than ‘Britain’ or ‘British’ although it was often stressed that it was the British Empire that was at war with the Central Powers.
2 Liverpool Record Office (LRO) 282 PET/3/15 Notice Book St. Peter's Seel St. 1912–1916, passim.
3 The Catholic Herald, which published regional editions, carried extensive accounts of events at the front.
4 Much of the pastoral guidance lay Catholics received came in the form of sermons and pastoral letters read from the pulpit. Extended versions of many of the pastoral letters appeared in the Catholic press. Sermons or extracts of sermons given by prominent Catholic preachers also appeared. Martin John Broadley, the biographer of Bishop Louis Charles Casartelli of Salford, argues that Casartelli was the only English bishop to speak about peace and the danger of war in the months leading to the outbreak of World War One. Broadley, M. J., Louis Charles Casartelli: A Bishop in Peace and War (Manchester, 2006) p. 132ff.Google Scholar See also Michael, Snape, ‘British Catholicism and the British Army in the First World War’, Recusant History, 26(2) October 2002, pp. 314–358.Google Scholar Snape's major focus is on Catholics and the British Army but he also touches on some of the issues raised in this article.
5 Casartelli's Lenten pastoral letter in 1914 before the war, Pax Christi, dealt with this issue. Broadley, Casartelli, pp. 132–133.
6 The Tablet, 15 August 1915.
7 The Times, 23 November 1914.
8 Reginald, J. Dingle, Cardinal Bourne at Westminster (London, 1934) p. 105.Google Scholar
9 Dingle, Cardinal Bourne, pp. 106–107.
10 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 28 November 1914.
11 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 15 August 1914 and 9 January 1915.
12 The Tablet, 27 February 1915.
13 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 30 January 1915.
14 The Tablet, 10 October 1914.
15 The Tablet, 17 October 1914.
16 The Tablet, 10 October 1914.
17 The Tablet, 11 December 1915.
18 The Tablet, 27 February 1915.
19 The Tablet, 6 March 1915.
20 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 18 December 1915.
21 The Tablet, 30 January 1915.
22 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 13 November 1915.
23 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 4 December 1915.
24 The Tablet, 11 December 1915.
25 The Tablet, 18 December 1915.
26 The Catholic Herald, 18 December 1915.
27 The Tablet, 8 May 1915.
28 The Times, 24 November 1914.
29 The Tablet, 24 July 1915.
30 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 28 November 1914.
31 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 11 December 1914.
32 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 9 January 1915. Broadley, however, points out that Casartelli never addressed assembled troops nor appeared at recruitment meetings as Bourne and Whiteside of Liverpool did. Broadley, Casartelli, p. 141.
33 The Tablet, 17 July 1915.
34 The Tablet, 13 November 1915.
35 Davies, J., ‘British Catholics and the South African War, 1889–1900’ in Hilton, J. A., Turning the Last Century: Essays on English Catholicism circa 1900 (Wigan, 2003) pp. 47–65.Google Scholar
36 Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 30 January 1915.
37 Martindale, C. C., Fr. Bernard Vaughan S.J. (London, 1923).Google Scholar Geoffrey Holt, ‘Bernard John Vaughan’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) vol. 56, pp. 159–160.
38 The Tablet, 12 September 1914.
39 The Tablet, 20 February 1915.
40 The Tablet, 2 September 1914.
41 The Tablet, 22 May 1915.
42 The Tablet, 30 October 1915. Letter from ‘English Convert’.
43 Casartelli, for example, found himself in some difficulty throughout the war attempting to explain and defend Benedict XV's position. Broadley, Casartelli, pp. 145–147.
44 The Tablet, 5 June 1915.
45 The Tablet, 16 January 1915.
46 The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 had been seen as perhaps the greatest outrage in the war to that date and had led to a storm of anti-German feeling in Britain, especially in the Lusitania's home port of Liverpool.
47 The Tablet, 11 December 1915.
48 Ernest, Oldmeadow, Francis Cardinal Bourne (London, 1940) vol. 2, p. 123.Google Scholar
49 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 3 July 1915.
50 The Tablet, 18 December 1915. Broadley, Casartelli, pp. 149–150.
51 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 4 December 1915.
52 The Tablet, 17 October 1914.
53 The Tablet, 9 October 1915.
54 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 17 April 1915.
55 The Tablet, 13 November 1915.
56 The Tablet, 16 October 1915.
57 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 11 December 1915.
58 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 27 November 1917.
59 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 9 January 1915.
60 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 10 July 1915.
61 Oldmeadow, Bourne, vol. 2, p. 124.
62 The Tablet, 10 October 1914.
63 The Tablet, 20 November 1915.
64 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 16 October 1915.
65 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 23 October 1915.
66 The Tablet, 27 February 1915.
67 The Tablet, 27 February 1915.
68 The Tablet, 13 March 1915.
69 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 2 October 1915.
70 The Tablet, 20 November 1915.
71 The Tablet, 7 August 1915.
72 The Tablet, 20 February 1915.
73 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 4 December 1915.
74 The Tablet, 13 March 1915.
75 The Tablet, 11 December 1915.
76 The Tablet, 1 May 1915.
77 The Catholic Herald (Liverpool), 20 February 1915, The Tablet, 6 March 1915.
78 The Tablet, 30 October 1915. Requiem for soldiers and sailors killed in action.
79 The Tablet, 16 January 1915.
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