The Ministry of the Printed Word: Scholar-Priests of the Twentieth Century ed. by John Broadley and Peter Phillips (review)

This elegantly published and weighty (almost three pounds) book recounts the intellectual and spiritual contributions of eleven English scholar priests, one of whom became a bishop (Bernard Ward) and another a cardinal (Aidan Gasquet). Four were Jesuits (George Tyrrell, John Hungerford Pollen, Herbert Thurston, and Frederick Copleston); two were Benedictines (David Knowles and Christopher Butler, plus Gasquet). One was a parish priest (Adrian Fortescue), and two clerical scholars (Philip Hughes and Ronald Knox).

Each priest is given a separate and most readable chapter, with a general introduction by Broadley that is significantly entitled "The 'Eighth Sacrament' in the Life of a Priest." No Dominicans are mentioned, because Aidan Nicholas has recently published on the English Dominican scholars. The scholarly contributions of American, French, Australian, German, Dutch, or other clergy are not the focus of this book, though many of the priests mentioned did study in Rome, Louvain, Paris, Germany, or other places where there was a tradition of Catholic intelligence. The English Church in the Reformation survived because of Douai and other places of exile. In fact, both Stonyhurst and the Downside Abbey have connections to Belgium, something that comes up in several chapters.

The place of intelligence in the Church has suddenly become a lively issue under Pope Francis after the intense philosophical and theological reflections we became accustomed to under John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The tradition of the scholar-priest has often been at odds with the notion of a pastoral role among diocesan priests or an exclusively contemplative role among the religious orders.

The worthiness of a scholarly vocation was evident in the lives of all the men recorded in these pages. Their very existence was often the living refutation of the notion that Catholics were uneducated or uninformed about both temporal and ultimate things. Not every priest need be a scholar, of course, but every diocese and every religious order requires for its own good some men who are devoted to things intellectual. Revelation, after all, is also addressed to intelligence. Athens remains basic to the training of a priest.

In one sense, this book is dominated by historians. The English Catholic writers strove to identify and defend that earlier Catholic experience in Britain before the Reformation. This endeavor included writing the history of monasticism in the Middle Ages with a detailed exposition of what happened during the English Reformation, and with the later experience of the gradual restoration of freedom to Catholics in the nineteenth century. The abiding theme is that the essential continuity of Christianity is through the Catholic tradition, not through the Anglican establishment.

Many of these writers came into conflict with their bishops, their Orders, or even with the Holy See over issues of doctrine and religious discipline. It is not difficult to see the concern that bishops and superiors had in dealing with these unique intellectuals. This personal conflict is a recurring theme in many of these chapters. Each chapter gives background on the family and early education of the writer, how he found his vocation, his university training, his academic achievements, and his old age and death. There is a useful run-down of each man's papers and books. Usually we have an evaluation of the abiding interest in the man's works and critiques of them by other scholars.

This is a welcome book. Indirectly it is a warning about the danger of a mindless Church. I was particularly struck by this comment about Ronald Knox: "Knox paid his congregation the compliment of believing that they had minds, minds that could be challenged and enlightened" (p. 195). This book is a monument to the importance of Catholic intelligence, not merely among learned scholar-priests.