Bishop Challoner's Prayer-Book

Extract

Richard Challoner was a man of varied an great achievement, but two tilings stand out in their significant for all English-speaking Catholics. The first was his revision of the Rheims-Douay English version of the Bible. This revision almost amounted to a new translation; till recently it was the only Bible current among Catholics in Great Britain and Ireland, and was used almost as exclusively in the United States (cf. the preface to the Confraternity New Testament). The second was his compilation and writing of a prayer-book, The Garden of the Soul, which was first published in 1740. This book has since gone through countless editions, and is still the best-known Catholic prayer-book in the English language. So great has been its influence that, in the form in which it left the hands of the, author, it has given rise to the term ‘Garden-of-the-Soul Catholic‘ to designate one of solid unostentatious piety (combined perhaps with a certain lack of imagination). I do not know, but I suppose that its influence has been scarcely less in America, at any rate for a considerable time.