No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
A pre-modern interpretation of the modern: the English Catholic church and the ‘social question’ in the early twentieth century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Towards the close of the first decade of the twentieth century there emerged an organized movement within the English Catholic Church which can be distinguished as Social Catholicism. The Catholic Social Guild (CSG), which was founded at the Catholic Truth Society Conference in September 1909, largely represented Social Catholicism in England and, as such, constitutes the focal point of this paper. This small body comprised laypeople, secular priests, and members of religious orders. Of the lay component a significant number of middle-class converts to Catholicism were prominent; whilst at parish level working men and women were recruited largely through schemes of social study. Social Catholicism represented a novel phenomenon not only because of its essential focus upon addressing some of the more intractable social problems of the day but also because it embodied an inherently different social rationale from that of more mainstream Catholic endeavour in this field. Looking back to the Church of medieval times, Social Catholicism perceived an ideal Church which, through its social precepts and actions, had exerted an exemplary socio-economic influence. Moreover such an historical precedent might embody the answer to the ‘social question’ – a multiform modern problematic – provided the Catholic Church could transform its past experience of a pre-modern social engagement into initiatives of theoretical and practical relevance to the modern situation.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1997
References
1 Oxford, Plater College archive, L. Toke, ‘The Catholic Social Guild’ (undated). [This archive is uncatalogued, and the material is therefore cited by author, title, and where possible date. Some of the material attributable to Toke appears under the nom de plume, F. Goldwell.]
2 Manning, H. E., The Catholic Church and Modem Society (London, 1880), p. 18.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 10.
4 Toke, L., The Rationalist Propaganda (London, 1909), p. 9.Google Scholar
5 Bagshawe, E. G., Pastoral on The Papal Encyclical (Nottingham, 1891), p. 4 Google Scholar; ‘The social doctrine of Bishop Bagshawe’, Christian Democrat, 15, no. 11 (Nov. 1935), pp. 163–5. [The monthly magazine, Christian Democrat, was the principal organ of the CSG from 1921 onwards, and much of its commentary appeared anonymously, but represented editorial initiative and viewpoint.]
6 Nottingham, Nottingham Diocesan archive, Sweeney, G. D., ‘A history of the diocese of Nottingham in the episcopate of Bishop Bagshawe’ (1961), p. 42.Google Scholar
7 Bagshawe, E. G., Mercy and Justice to the Poor the True Political Economy (London, 1885), p. 15.Google Scholar
8 Richter, M., The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and his Age (London, 1964), p. 377 n. 4.Google Scholar
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., p. 30.
11 Devas, C. S., Political Economy (London, 1911), p. 122.Google Scholar
12 Ibid., p. 657.
13 Goldwell, F., Guild Socialism (Oxford, 1918), p. 6.Google Scholar
14 Knowles, D., The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 296–7.Google Scholar
15 Foreville, R. and Keir, G., The Book of St Gilbert (Oxford, 1987), p. ex.Google Scholar
16 Ibid., p. 57.
17 Parkinson, H., A Primer of Social Science (London, 1913), p. 227.Google Scholar
18 Idem, The Problem of Poor Law Reform (London, 1911), p. 3.
19 Oxford, Plater College archive, Drinkwater, ‘On Mgr. Henry Parkinson’ (c. 1959), Canon Drinkwater was a pupil of Parkinson’s and became a writer on spiritual and social issues.
20 Parkinson, H., ‘A brief record of social conditions in England’, in MrsGibbs, P., ed., First Notions on Social Service (London, 1913), p. 24.Google Scholar
21 London, British Library of Political and Economic Science, Webb Local Gvmt Collection, vol. 286c, B. Webb, ‘Some historical considerations bearing on poor law reconstruction’, Oct. 1907.
22 London, British Library of Political and Economic Science, Passfield Papers, Section IV Item 4/2, S. Webb, ‘Unemployment and sickness insurance’, 27 Feb. 1911; ‘The financial waste of the present poor law’, 13 March 1911.
23 Belloc, H., The Servile State (London, 1912), p. 49.Google Scholar
24 Oxford, Plater College archive, Letter from H. Belloc to L. Toke, 19 Nov. 1917.
25 Oxford, Plater College archive, L. Toke, ‘In tempore opportuno’ (c. 1908/9).
26 Goldwell, Guild Socialism, p. 3.
27 Blackburn, S., ‘Ideology and social policy: the origins of the Trade Boards Act’, Hist 34 (1991), p. 45.Google Scholar
28 Gilchrist, J., The Church and Economic Activity in the Middle Ages (London, 1969), p. 59.Google Scholar
29 Hyndman, H. M., The Historical Basis of Socialism in England (London, 1883), p. 1.Google Scholar
30 Leo, Pope XIII, Rerum novarum [trans. The Condition of the Working Classes (London, 1913)], p. 40 Google Scholar.
31 Blackburn, S., ‘Sweated labour and the minimum wage’ (University of London Ph.D. thesis, 1983), p. 94.Google Scholar
32 Wright, T., ed., Sweated Labour and the Trade Boards Act, 2nd edn (London, 1913), p. 61.Google Scholar
33 Blackburn, ‘Sweated labour and minimum wage’, p. 119.
34 National Anti-Sweating League, ‘Report of conference on the minimum wage – 1906’, cited in Wright, Sweated Labour, p. 44.
35 Wright, Sweated Labour, p. 44.
36 Ibid., p. 54.
37 Condition of the Working Classes, p. 17.
38 In 1907 the Convocation of Canterbury adopted the doctrine of the living wage: see Oliver, J., The Church and the Social Order (London, 1968), p. 7.Google Scholar
39 Toke, L., ‘The living wage’, in Wright, Sweated Labour, pp. 34–7.Google Scholar
40 Ryan, J. A., The Living Wage (London, 1914), p. 16 n. 1Google Scholar.
41 Foote, G., The Labour Party’s Political Thought (London, 1985), p. 105.Google Scholar
42 Oxford, Plater College archive, Letter from H. Parkinson to V. M. Crawford, 11 Oct. 1914. Crawford was Hon. Secretary of the CSG.
43 Hobsbawm, E. J., ‘The Fabians reconsidered’, in Labouring Men (London, 1979), pp. 250–71.Google Scholar
44 Plater, C., ‘A great social experiment’, The Hibbert Journal, 1 (Oct. 1908), pp. 49–62 Google Scholar; idem, ‘Retreats and reconstruction’, The Hibbert Journal, 18 (July 1920), pp. 787–97.
45 Oxford, Plater College archive, confidential letter from F. Goldwell to C. Plater, ‘The social unrest’, 27 Oct. 1917, p. 2.