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‘The only True Friend’: Ritualist Concepts of Priestly Vocation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
The title of this paper was inspired by a piece of ecclesiastical doggerel published in the Hensal-Cum-Heck Church Monthly for November 1895:
- They may call me a Papist, and laugh at my creed,
- ‘Tis the Faith that will save in the hour of need;
- Let them talk, let them laugh, but when death is at hand
- The priest is the only true friend in the land.
It is not the only ritualist concept of priestly vocation; in a somewhat earlier tract on confession priests are described as ‘the spiritual police of Almighty God; they must hunt out, track, pursue, and arraign sinners, as the police pursue and apprehend thieves and rascals’. Although both concepts are to be found elsewhere in ritualist literature, and both would have been accepted by many ritualist priests as not being mutually exclusive, it would seem that the concept of the priest as ‘friend’ was the dominant one.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978
References
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