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‘The only True Friend’: Ritualist Concepts of Priestly Vocation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

W. N. Yates
W. N. Yates*
Affiliation:
Portsmouth
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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.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 15: Religious Motivation Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian , 1978 , pp. 407 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978

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References

1 Both quotations will be found in Walsh, W., Secret History of the Oxford Movement (London 1899) p 388.Google Scholar

2 See especially Clark, G. S. R.Kitson, Churchmen and the Condition of England (London 1973).Google Scholar

3 Knapp, J., The Church in the Circus (London 1858).Google Scholar

4 Yates, [W. N.], [‘Leeds and the Oxford Movement’], Thoresby Society Publications 55 (Lceds 1975) pp 18, 27.Google Scholar

5 [Royal Commission on] Ritual, First Report (London 1867) pp 63-70, 115-19.

6 St Silas, Hull, Parish Paper, July 1894.

7 Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline, Minutes of Evidence (London 1906) 3, p 99.Google Scholar

8 Lockhart, J.G., Cosmo Gordon Lang (London 1949) p 121.Google Scholar

9 Garbett, C.F., The Work of A Great Parish (London 1915) pp 59–60.Google Scholar

10 Huelin, G., ‘St. Margaret Patteiis: A City Parish in the Nineteenth Century’, Guildhall Miscellany 3 (London 1971) pp 277-86.Google Scholar

11 Yates pp 32-4.

12 Ritual, First Report pp 50-63.

13 [St Matthew], Southsea, [Parish Magazine], November 1906.

14 Huntington, G., Romish Aggression (Tenby 1893).Google Scholar

15 Cornford, [E. B.], [Parish Book] (Southsea 1908) p 235.Google Scholar

16 Southsea, February 1904.

17 Pollen, J. H., Narrative of Five Years at St. Saviour’s, Leeds (Oxford 1851) pp 83–4, 89-90Google Scholar. There was a major confessional scandal at St Saviour’s in 1850 which led to the resignation of the incumbent.

18 Yates pp 35-6, 57-8. Greenwell himself published a pamphlet entitled Priesthood, Confession and Absolution (Leeds C1874).

19 Dolling, R. R., Ten Yeats in A Portsmouth Slum (London 1896) p 142.Google Scholar

20 Cornford p 97.

21 Hull Daily Mail, 4 November 1897.