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Friedrich Von Hügel's Spirituality of Empowerment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Ellen M. Leonard
Ellen M. Leonard*
Affiliation:
University of St. Michael's College, Toronto
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Abstract

As a Catholic lay person Friedrich von Hügel developed a spirituality which sought to integrate scholarship, including the critical study of religion, with a full religious life, one which holds the institutional, the intellectual, and the mystical elements in a creative tension. He did this during and after the period known as “Roman Catholic Modernism,” a difficult time in the history of the Roman Catholic Church as it responded to perceived threats with severe restrictions. This essay explores how von Hiigel's spirituality was one of empowerment by considering him as advocate and networker, writer, and spiritual director. He not only developed a lay approach to spirituality but a spirituality of scholarship which can still inspire contemporary Christians.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994 , pp. 270 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1994

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References

1 For recent studies of the Modernist crisis and its aftermath see Appleby, R. Scott, Church and Age Unite! The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992);Google Scholar and Schultenover, David, A View from Rome on the Eve of the Modernist Crisis (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

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18 “Official Authority and Living Religion,” Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion, Second Series (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1926), 3–23;Google Scholar hereafter EA 2. For details of how this essay evolved see Barmann, , Von Hügel, 158–60.Google Scholar

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27 Ibid.

28 ME 1, 30.

29 Ibid., xxi.

30 Ibid., xxxi.

31 Ibid., 248.

32 Ibid., 54.

33 For a contemporary analysis of how theology can be pursued as a scientific study see Murphy, Nancey C., Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).Google Scholar Murphy draws on Roman Catholic Modernism as an example of the effect on theology of scientific reasoning replacing medieval epistemology. See esp. 88-129.

34 Tyrrell to von Hügel, April 8, 1908, PP, BL, Add. MS 44931.

35 Von Hügel to Tyrrell, April 16, 1908, PP, BL, Add. MS 44931; published in SL, 148-51; quotation from 148.

36 ME 2, 380.

37 Ibid., 383.

38 Ibid., 385-86.

39 Ibid., 371.

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44 Ibid.

45 Ward, Maisie, The Wilfrid Wards and the Transition: The Nineteenth Century (London: Sheed & Ward, 1934), 300.Google Scholar Maisie Ward was Wilfrid's daughter.

46 March 20, 1916, SAUL, WWP MS vii; 143 (197).

47 June 11, 1912, SAUL, VHP, MS 30994; published by Whelan, Joseph P., “The Parent as Spiritual Director: A Newly Published Letter of Friedrich von Hügel,” The Month n.s. 2 (1970): 86.Google Scholar

48 Underhill repeatedly expressed her gratitude to von Hügel in her published works. See “Baron Von Hügel as a Spiritual Teacher,” Mixed Pasture: Twelve Essays and Addresses (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1933).Google Scholar

49 Material related to von Hügel's direction of Evelyn Underhill is in SAUL, VHP, MS 5552.

50 von Hügel, Friedrich, Letters from Baron Friedrich von Hügel to a Niece, ed., with an introduction by Greene, Gwendolen (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1928), 25;Google Scholar hereafter LTN.

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52 LTN, 3.

53 Von Hügel to Kemp Smith, December 31, 1921, The Letters of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and Professor Norman Kemp Smith, ed. Barmann, Lawrence F. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1981), 161–62;Google Scholar emphasis is von Hügel's.

54 See preface to EA 1, xiii, for von Hügel's underlying convictions regarding other religions and Christians not in communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

55 Von Hügel to Tyrrell, December 18, 1906, BL, PP. Add. MS 44929; published in SL, 136-37.

56 ME 1, xxv-xxvi.

57 Hügel, Von, “Father Tyrrell: Some Memories of the Last Twelve Years of His Life,” Hibbert Journal 8 (01 1910): 234.Google Scholar

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61 Ibid., 31.

62 Von Hügel to Hildegard (1899), quoted by de la Bedoyère, , The Life of Baron von Hügel, 117–18.Google Scholar

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64 Ibid., 267.

65 Von Hügel to Tyrrell, March 4, 1900; quoted in Petre, , Story of a Friendship, 123–28;Google Scholar quotation from 124.

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