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Charles Plater S.J. and the Origins of the Catholic Social Guild

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Peter Doyle
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Extract

In an article published in The Month in 1908 Charles Plater claimed that there were three pressing needs which had to be met if English Catholic social action were to develop fruitfully. He admitted that there was no shortage of charitable institutions, and a long English Catholic tradition of charitable work, but claimed that in the main Catholics were apathetic when it came to social work. The three needs were, firstly, a need for experts, both clerical and lay, who could produce a sound social literature. These experts would form a Catholic equivalent of the British Institute of Social Service, to command the best advice and to foster local initiatives; with its help, Catholics could join in such bodies as anti-sweating leagues, housing schemes, temperance campaigns, and so on, and be sure of their ground. Secondly, there was a need for organised social study in all Catholic educational establishments, and for more or less informal study circles, so that interested and informed laypeople would be produced. Thirdly, there was a need to organise working-men’s study clubs to enable working-class Catholics to hold their own against socialist colleagues and so to form labour leaders. As Plater was to stress time and time again, working-men could only be reached by working-men. They would, he claimed, welcome the sense of power gained by this training and the self-improvement effected by it.

Type
Articles
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , May 1993 , pp. 401 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 Plater, C. ‘A Plea for Catholic Social Action’, The Month, 111 (1908), pp. 113–4 Google Scholar. On attitudes of working-men, see also PSA, p. 234.

2 CCM for biographical details. Plater’s Diaries are in the Archives of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, Farm St., London.

3 Diaries, July and August, 1904.

4 Ibidem, 23 September, 1907.

5 CCM, p. 102; Diaries, Aug–Sept, 1909.

6 RP, Preface by Casartelli. See also Doyle, P., ‘The Catholic Federation 1906–1929’, Studies in Church History, 23 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 461–76 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lane, P., The Catenian Association 1908–1983 (London, 1982)Google Scholar.

7 McEntee, pp. 164,ff.

8 CCM, p. 82.

9 Crawford, V., Ideals of Charity, (London, 1908)Google Scholar.

10 Ibidem, p. 10.

11 McEntee, p. 197.

12 For various accounts of the meeting, see CCM; McEntee; YB, and Cleary, V., Catholic Social Action in Britain 1909–1959: A History of the Catholic Social Guild, (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar.

13 CCM, pp. 114; by December the name had been changed to The Catholic Social Guild.

14 Plater, C., ‘A Catholic Society for Social Study’, The Month, (1909)Google Scholar.

15 YB 1910.

16 YB 1911 and 1912; see also YB 1920, p. 18. There seem to have been two study groups for working-men prior to the setting-up of the Guild, in Liverpool and Leeds.

17 YB 1911, pp. 28–33 (reprinted from The Catholic Times).

18 Ibidem, pp. 31, 33.

19 PSA.

20 See ‘L’Organisation Des Catholiques Anglais’, Bulletin Religieux du Diocese de Beauvais, (Beauvais, 1910) pp. 408–12.

21 PSA, p. 208.

22 PSA, p. 35.

23 PSA, p. 36.

24 PSA, p. 180.

25 PSA, p. 11.

26 PSA, pp. 228–9.

27 PSA, p. 190.

28 PSA, pp. 193–5.

29 PSA, pp. 18–9.

30 RP, p. 7.

31 RP, p. 13.

32 RP, p. 15.

33 Diaries, 2 Oct 1907.

34 Plater, C., ‘A Great Social Experiment’, The Hibbert Journal, October 1908, p. 61.Google Scholar

35 RP, p. viii.

36 RP, pp. 48–59.

37 RP, p. 120.

38 RP, p. 121.

39 RP, pp. 225–33.

40 RP, pp. 257–8.

41 Plater, , ‘A Great Social Experiment’, p. 50 Google Scholar; and see chapter 1 of RP for his views on contemporary society.

42 RP, p. 248.

43 RP, pp. 13–4; p. 255.

44 Plater, C., ‘Retreats and Reconstruction’, The Hibbert Journal, July 1920, pp. 788–97 Google Scholar; references at p. 793, p. 794.

45 Ibidem, p. 795.

46 RP, p. 248.

47 See details in YB.

48 CCM, p. 323; pp. 332–3. A paper in the Plater archive at Farm St. gives his notes for the lecture in Malta.

49 CCM, chapter 15.

50 CCM, pp. 305–6.