No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Rise of the Lay Catholic Evangelist in England and America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Extract
In December 1916 David Goldstein, Catholic convert and former Jewish socialist cigarmaker, approached Boston's Cardinal William Henry O'Connell with a novel plan. Goldstein wanted to deliver lectures on Catholicism from a custom-built Model-T Ford on Boston Common. A little over a year later, across the Atlantic, Vernon Redwood, a transplanted tenor from New Zealand, asked Francis Cardinal Bourne of Westminster for permission to speak on behalf of the church in Hyde Park. Both Goldstein and Redwood received episcopal approval and Boston's Catholic Truth Guild and London's Catholic Evidence Guild were born. The emergence of these two movements marked a new epoch in the history of the Roman Catholic laity in the English-speaking world. The fact that the lay evangelist appeared on the scene during the First World War and in the aftermath of the Vatican condemnations of Americanism (1899) and Modernism (1907), actions generally assumed to have dampened the spirit of individual initiative in the church, renders them all the more illuminating to scholars of modern Catholicism. Goldstein and Redwood both exemplified and encouraged the new assertiveness which began to characterize a growing number of the American and English laity by the First World War. They call our attention to a significant shift in the self-identity of the lay population which came to fruition during the period between the World Wars, a shift which prompted even tenors and cigarmakers to mount the public pulpit.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1986
References
1 There are virtually no recent secondary accounts of the history of these two movements. Aside from numerous contemporary articles in Catholic newspapers, magazines, and journals, the most important sources are: Goldstein, David, Autobiography of a Campaigner for Christ (Boston: Catholic Campaigners for Christ, 1936)Google Scholar; Browne, Henry, S.J., The Catholic Evidence Movement (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne, 1921)Google Scholar; Ward, Maisie and Sheed, F. J., Catholic Evidence Training Outlines (4th revised ed.; New York: Sheed & Ward, 1939).Google Scholar Further information on the Catholic Evidence Movement appears in Sheed, Frank J., The Church and I (New York: Doubleday, 1974)Google Scholar and Ward, Maisie, Unfinished Business (London: Sheed & Ward, 1964).Google Scholar On the Catholic Truth Guild see Campbell, Debra, “A Catholic Salvation Army: David Goldstein, Pioneer Lay Evangelist,” CH 52 (1983) 322–32Google Scholar; Idem, “David Goldstein and the Lay Catholic Street Apostolate, 1917–41” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1982).Google Scholar
2 See, e.g., McAvoy, Thomas J., “The Catholic Minority after the Americanist Controversy,” 1899–1917,” Review of Politics 21 (1959) 53–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Callahan, Daniel, The Mind of the Catholic Layman (New York: Scribners, 1963) x.Google Scholar
4 McDonnell, K. G. T., “Roman Catholicism in London 1850–68,” in Hollaender, A. E. J. and Kellaway, William, eds., Studies in London History (London: Hodder, 1969) 430Google Scholar; Gilley, Sheridan, “Papists, Protestants and the Irish in London 1835–70,” in Cuming, G. J. and Baker, D., eds., Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) 265–67.Google Scholar
5 Ellis, John Tracy, “Foreword,” to Halsey, William M., The Survival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of Disillusionment 1920–1940 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) xi.Google Scholar
6 Dolan, Jay P., Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Gilley, Sheridan, “Catholic Faith in the Irish Slums,” in Dyos, H. J. and Wolff, Michael, eds., The Victorian City: Images and Realities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973) 2. 837–54Google Scholar; Sharp, John, “Juvenile Holiness: Catholic Revivalism among Children in Victorian Britain,” JEH 35 (1984) 220–38.Google Scholar
7 Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church (2d ed.; London: Adam and Charles Black, 1972) 2. 283.Google Scholar
8 On the earlier period see Delumeau, Jean, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire (trans. Moiser, Jeremy; London: Burns & Oates, 1977) 189–94.Google Scholar
9 Brownson, Orestes, “Protestant Revivals and Catholic Retreats,” Brownson's Quarterly Review 5th series (1858) 289–322.Google Scholar
10 Dolan, Jay P., The Immigrant Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) 149–50.Google Scholar
11 On Irish devotional life see Larkin, Emmet, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland,” AHR 77 (1967) 625–52.Google Scholar
12 Dolan, Catholic Revivalism, 22–23, 42–43.
13 See Gilley, Sheridan, “Protestant London, No-Popery and the Irish Poor (1860–60)” Part II, Recusant History 11 (1971) 21–46.Google Scholar
14 Inglis, K. S., Churches and the Working Class in Victorian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963) 122–29.Google Scholar
15 Sharp, “Juvenile Holiness,” 221, 223.
16 The logistics are explained in detail in Elliott, Walter, Non-Catholic Missions (New York: Catholic Book Exchange, 1895).Google Scholar For more information on Vaughan and his society, see Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 11–16.
17 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 15–16, 200.
18 Gilley, Sheridan, “The Roman Catholic Mission to the Irish in London, 1840–1860,” Recusant History 10 (1969) 134–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Elliott, Non-Catholic Missions, 27–28. The difference between the “leaked” Catholic immigrants and the unchurched masses in Victorian Britain is underscored in Inglis, Churches and the Working Class, 139–40.
20 Pope, Hugh, O.P., “The Modern Apostolate,” AER 61 (1919) 125–36.Google Scholar
21 May, Henry, The End of American Innocence (New York: Knopf, 1959) 121–216.Google Scholar
22 See, e.g., Hughes, Philip, “The Coming Century,” in Beck, George Andrew, ed., The English Catholics 1850–1950 (London: Burns & Oates, 1950) 32–35.Google Scholar On similar developments in the United States see Schlesinger, Arthur M., Sr., “A Critical Period in American Religion 1875–1900,” Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings 64 (1930–32) 523–46.Google Scholar
23 Holmes, J. Derek, More Roman than Rome: English Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century (London: Burns & Oates, 1978) 250.Google Scholar
24 Solomon, Barbara, Ancestors and Immigrants: A Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956) chap. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
25 Dolan, Catholic Revivalism, 164.
26 McLeod, Hugh, Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (London: Croom Helm, 1974) 34–35.Google Scholar
27 Johnson, Dale A., “Popular Apologetics in Late Victorian England: The Work of the Christian Evidence Society,” JRH 11 (1981) 564.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
28 James M. Cleary, “The Public-Hall Apostolate,” cited in Elliott, Non-Catholic Missions, 48. This article appeared in Catholic World in 1895.
29 de Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America (ed. Mayer, J. P.; trans. George Lawrence; Garden City: Doubleday/Anchor, 1969) 2. 449; 1. 289.Google Scholar
30 Newman, John Henry, “A Second Spring,” in A Newman Treasury (London: Longmans Green, 1943) 214–16.Google Scholar
31 See, e.g., Bossy, John, The English Catholic Community 1570–1850 (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1975Google Scholar; reprinted 1979) chap. 14; Carey, Patrick, “The Laity's Understanding of the Trustee System 1785–1855,” CHR 64 (1978) 357–76Google Scholar; Dolan, Jay P., The American Catholic Experience (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985) chap. 6Google Scholar; Williams, J. Anthony, “Change or Decay: The Provincial Laity 1691–1781,” in Duffy, Eaman, ed., Challoner and His Church (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1981) 27–54.Google Scholar
32 Callahan, Mind of the Catholic Layman, chap. 3
33 Shea, John Gilmary, “Catholic Congresses,” in Official Report of the Catholic Congress Held at Baltimore, Maryland, November 11th and 12th 1889 (Detroit: William H. Hughes, 1889) 18–25Google Scholar; hereafter cited as Official Report.
34 Abell, Aaron I., ed., American Catholic Thought on Social Questions (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) 182–83.Google Scholar
35 “Father Nugent's Report,” in Official Report, 13.
36 Gwynn, Denis, A Hundred Years of Catholic Emancipation (London: Longmans Green, 1929) 169, 227.Google Scholar
37 Newman, John Henry, The Present Position of Catholics in England (London: Longmans Green, 1903) 390.Google Scholar
38 Souvenir Volume: Three Great Events in the History of the Catholic Church in the U.S. (Detroit: William H. Hughes, 1890Google Scholar; reprinted New York: Arno, 1978) 18.
39 Henry F. Brownson, “Lay Action in the Church,” in Official Report, 29.
40 Elliott, Non-Catholic Missions, 150–51.
41 The World's Columbian Catholic Congress (3 vols. in 1; Chicago: J. S. Hyland, 1893) 125, 58.Google Scholar
42 Davis, Cyprian, O.S.B., “Black Catholics in Nineteenth Century America,” U.S. Catholic Historians (1986) 13–16.Google Scholar
43 Callahan, Mind of the Catholic Layman, 72–74; cf. McAvoy, Thomas T., C.S.C., The Americanist Heresy in Roman Catholicism 1895–1900 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963).Google Scholar
44 Leo XIII, Testem Benevolentiae (“True and False Americanism in Religion”) in The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1903) 451.Google Scholar
45 McAvoy, Americanist Heresy, 321.
46 Gwynn, Hundred Years, 228.
47 Snead-Cox, J. G., The Life of Cardinal Vaughan (London: Herbert and Daniel, 1910) 2. 319–20.Google Scholar
48 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 2–9.
49 ibid., 6.
50 ibid., 7.
51 ibid., 10–11.
52 McAvoy, “Catholic Minority,” 81.
53 Norman, Edward, Roman Catholicism in England from the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985) 125–26.Google Scholar
54 Wangler, Thomas E., “Catholic Religious Life in Boston in the Era of Cardinal O'Connell,” in Robert E. Sullivan and James M. O'Toole, eds., Catholic Boston: Studies in Religion and Community, 1870–1970 (Boston: Archdiocese of Boston, 1985) 225.Google Scholar
55 Halsey, Survival of American Innocence, 49.
56 Ward, Unfinished Business, 80.
57 Pope, “Modern Apostolate,” 126.
58 ibid., 136.
59 Goldstein, David, “A Layman's Apostolate,” America 20 (1919) 335–37.Google Scholar
60 Goldstein explains why he prefers the term in his Autobiography, 349–54; cf. Ellis, William T., Billy Sunday: The Man and His Message (Philadelphia: Universal Book and Bible House, 1914) chap. 7 (entitled “Campaigning for Christ”).Google Scholar
61 For a description of the automobile, see Goldstein, Autobiography, 266.
62 ibid.
63 Quoted in ibid., 294.
64 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 9.
65 ibid., 49–50.
66 The article, entitled “Is Park Preaching Practical?”, is cited in Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 48.
67 This system is spelled out in considerable detail in a series of editions of Catholic Evidence Training Outlines, by Sheed and Ward; see also Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, chap. 5.
68 See Siderman, E. A., A Saint in Hyde Park (Westminster, MD: Newman, 1950).Google Scholar Siderman was a regular heckler at McNabb's outdoor sermons.
69 Goldstein, Autobiography, 273.
70 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 63, 68.
71 Ward, Unfinished Business, 81–82.
72 ibid., 189–94.
73 ibid., 99; Campbell, Debra, “‘I Can't Imagine Our Lady on an Outdoor Platform’: Women in the Catholic Street Propaganda Movement,” U.S. Catholic Historian, 3 (1983) 103–14.Google Scholar
74 Russell, W. H., “The Catholic Evidence Guild in the United States,” Lumen Vitae 3 (1948) 301–2.Google Scholar
75 Ward, Unfinished Business, 91.
76 David Goldstein to Martha Moore Avery, 21 April 1917 (David Goldstein Papers, Boston College Special Collections, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts); hereafter cited as GP.
77 (Carbon) Goldstein to the Rev. John C. Reidinger, 23 March 1936 (GP); Goldstein, Autobiography, 277; for similar claims by English street evangelists, clerical and lay, see Pope, “Modern Apostolate,” 128; Ward, Unfinished Business, 91.
78 Edward Heffron to David Goldstein, 17 January 1935 (GP).
79 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 87.
80 For an important exception see Goldstein, David, “Lay Street Preaching,” in O'Brien, John A., ed., The White Harvest (New York: Longmans Green, 1927) 207–38.Google Scholar
81 Browne, Catholic Evidence Movement, 45.
82 Goldstein, Autobiography, 346–47.
83 A comparison of the figures in the handbooks produced for the annual Inter-Guild Conferences of the English C.E.G. indicates that the year 1932 represents the apex of the English Guild's membership. Although statistics are not available for the American C.E.G., W. G. Russell, a former street preacher, asserts (“Catholic Evidence Guild,” 305) that the peak years for lay involvement in the American Guild were 1931–35.
84 Frank Sheed to the author, 2 June 1981.