Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community, 1910-1950

James Lothian

Description

In The Making and Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community, 1910–1950, James R. Lothian examines the engagement of interwar Catholic writers and artists both with modernity in general and with the political and economic upheavals of the times in England and continental Europe. The book describes a close-knit community of Catholic intellectuals that coalesced in the aftermath of the Great War and was inspired by Hilaire Belloc's ideology. Among the more than two dozen figures considered in this volume are G. K. Chesterton, novelist Evelyn Waugh, poet and painter David Jones, sculptor Eric Gill, historian Christopher Dawson, and publishers Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward. For Catholic intellectuals who embraced Bellocianism, the response to contemporary politics was a potent combination of hostility toward parliamentary democracy, capitalism, and so-called "Protestant" Whig history. Belloc and his friends asserted a set of political, economic, and historiographical alternatives—favoring monarchy and Distributism, a social and economic system modeled on what Belloc took to be the ideals of medieval feudalism.

Lothian explores the community's development in the 1920s and 1930s, and its dissolution in the 1940s, in the aftermath of World War II. Frank Sheed and Maisie Ward, joined by Tom Burns and Christopher Dawson, promoted an aesthetic and philosophical vision very much at odds with Belloc's political one. Weakened by internal disagreement, the community became fragmented and finally dissolved.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Protestant
• Philosophie et théologie
• Inglaterra
• Protestantism
• Frank Sheed
• Tom Burns
• World War I
• Intellectual
• Writer
• Distributism
• Catholic
• Christianity
• Eric Gill
• David Jones
• Christopher Dawson
• History
• England
• Evelyn Waugh
• G. K. Chesterton
• Protestantisme

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 mai 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268085650
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

9 780268 033828

9 0 0 0 0

T H E M A K I N G A N D U N M A K I N G  O F T H E Eng l is h Cat h o l ic I ntellectual Community , 1910 –1950

 J A M E S L R . O T H I A N

The Making and Unmaking of the

English Catholic Intellectual Community,

1910–1950

T H E M A K I N G

A N D U N M A K I N G

O F T H E

English Catholic Intellectual Community,

1 9 1 0 – 1 9 5 0

J A M E S R . L O T H I A N

u n i v e r s i t y o f n o t r e d a m e p r e s s

n o t r e d a m e , i n d i a n a

Copyright © 2009 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Lothian, James R., 1969– The making and unmaking of the English Catholic intellectual community, 1910 –1950 / James R. Lothian. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN13: 9780268033828 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN10: 026803382X (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Catholic Church — England — History — 20th century. 2. Catholics — England — Intellectual life — 20th century. 3. England — Intellectual life — 20th century. I. Title. BX1493.L68 2009 305.6'824209041 — dc22 2009005438

This book is printed on recycled paper.

For Sheila

C O N T E N T S

Acknowledgments

Prologue

C H A P T E R 1 From Political Radicalism to Political Catholicism: Hilaire Belloc and the Roots of the English Catholic Intellectual Community

C H A P T E R 2 The Greater Servants: McNabb, Gill, Chesterton, and the Establishment of the Bellocian Orthodoxy

C H A P T E R 3 The Lesser Servants: The Next Generation and the Maturation of the Bellocian Orthodoxy

C H A P T E R 4 The Dawsonite Challenge

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Contents

C H A P T E R 5 The Unmaking of the English Catholic Intellectual Community

Epilogue

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

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385

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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

A number of people have made this book possible. At the Univer sity of Chicago my dissertation supervisor, Emmet Larkin, not only guided the project through its many stages but also provided a peer less example of professionalism. He is a model as to how to conduct oneself as a scholar and a teacher. Two other members of my disser tation committee, David Tracy and Andrew Greeley, supported the project at its inception and provided constructive criticism. But for the early encouragement of Stewart Weaver and John Guy at the University of Rochester I would never have enrolled in a Ph.D. program in history. They introduced me to British history and gave me the confidence to make a career of it. Two members of the Fordham University philosophy department, John Conley, S.J., and Joseph Koterski, S.J., introduced me to Catholic intellectual his tory. I first encountered Jacques Maritain’sArt and Scholasticismin ProfessorConley’scourseonaesthetics,littleknowingthatIwould discuss it in my Ph.D. dissertation and book; and Joe Koterski has continued to encourage my work. I must also thank the anonymous readers for the University of Notre Dame Press, both of whom provided helpful criticism of my manuscript and also saved me from several embarrassing errors. Any remaining errors are mine. Thanks are also due to the staff at the University of Notre Dame Press, especially Barbara Hanrahan, director; Rebecca DeBoer, man aging editor; Margaret Gloster, design manager; and Sheila Berg, copy editor. The staffs of a number of libraries and archives provided vital assistance to this project, including those of the Interlibrary Loan Department at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, the

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