123 results for Catholic for Religion

Bessie Rayner Parkes

She had become seriously interested in Secularism in 1857. Now, after attending the Congress for the Advancement of Social Science in Dublin in 1861, she became interested in the work of the Irish Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of Charity .
Speaight, Robert. The Life of Hilaire Belloc. Hollis and Carter.
4
Her conversion to Roman Catholicism was a profound change for her. Her friends Adelaide Procter and Irish feminist Sarah Atkinson were significant influences, and another was her admiration for the active well-ordered charity which she associated with the Catholic Church.
Rendall, Jane. “’A Moral Engine’? Feminism, Liberalism and the <span data-tei-ns-tag="tei_title" data-tei-title-lvl=‘j’>English Woman’s Journal</span&gt”;. Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, edited by Jane Rendall, Basil Blackwell, pp. 112-38.
129
Levine, Philippa. Feminist Lives in Victorian England: Private Roles and Public Commitment. Basil Blackwell.
36
She became increasingly devout later in her life.
Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists. New York University Press.
Crawford, Anne, editor. The Europa Biographical Dictionary of British Women. Europa Publications.

Alexander Pope

Since he was born and faithfully remained a Catholic , he was excluded from university, from government jobs, and latterly from residing in London or owning a horse worth more than a certain sum.

Sally Purcell

Although in her student days she practised witchy activities like casting spells, she was, says Marina Warner (the recipient of an unsuccessful spell to cure a painful unrequited love), a quietly practising Catholic most of her adult life.
Warner, Marina, and Sally Purcell. “Preface”. Collected Poems, edited by Peter Jay and Peter Jay, Anvil Press Poetry, pp. 15-18.
15,18

Kathleen Raine

KR was brought up in her father's Wesleyan Methodist faith, and also introduced to her maternal family's Presbyterianism by her Scottish relatives. She wrote of being drawn more strongly to the Greek myths in her father's library books than to Christianity in her childhood. During the 1940s, and in flight from her love-affair with Alastair MacDonald , she became a temporary convert to Roman Catholicism , although she finally left the Catholic Church. She was much influenced by Jung 's archetypal theories and by the eastern tradition of religious and philosophical thinking.
Raine, Kathleen. Autobiographies. Skoob Books.
69-71, 25-8, 77, 240, 245
Stanford, Donald E., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 20. Gale Research.
20: 293

Jean Rhys

JR was at one time attracted to Catholicism , mostly practised by the black people on the island. There was considerable prejudice against Catholicism, and many horror stories about the nuns
Rhys, Jean, and Diana Athill. Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. Deutsch.
77
circulated amongst the white people on Dominica, so JR was at first very upset by plans for her to attend the convent as a day pupil. However, she grew to love the Mother Superior and enjoyed her lessons. From May to December 1904, when her father took a leave and went with her mother to England, she became a boarder at the convent. She liked the fact that black and white people sat together at church instead of being segregated, as they were at the Anglican church. JR decided to become a Catholic nun, but not to inform her parents until she grew older. After her parents returned, she resumed attendance at the Anglican church with her family. Her interest in Catholicism waned. She tried to do good works as the Anglican minister urged, but concluded that this was a useless pursuit because the Devil was stronger than God. JR later ironically described her religious phase as happy: "I don't think I've ever been quite so happy since."
Rhys, Jean, and Diana Athill. Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. Deutsch.
81
Rhys, Jean, and Diana Athill. Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography. Deutsch.
22, 31, 77-82, 86, 88
Angier, Carole. Jean Rhys: Life and Work. Little, Brown.
20-1, 24-5

Elizabeth Shirley

Born into the English gentry, ES was until about the age of twenty brought up an earnest heretic:
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
that is to say, a member of the Church of England . Her eldest brother, for whom she kept house for some years, converted to Catholicism in connection with his first marriage. (His wife was later celebrated for her pious, early death.) He was married in 1587 and widowed in 1595. His second wife was a Catholic too, and he died in the bosom of the Church (though in 1618, four years before his death, he denied his religion in an attempt to avoid the civil penalties attached to it).
Shirley, Evelyn Philip. Stemmata Shirleiana. Nichols and Sons.
83-4, 86-7, 88
The story goes that Elizabeth resisted for six years any pressure that his faith may have represented, before herself converting to Roman Catholicism on the basis of her own reading. The final spur to her conversion was hearing an old beggar-woman relate a story about the Virgin intervening with a miracle to save a woman in childbirth.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
27

Edith Sitwell

ES was received into the Roman Catholic Church at Farm Street Church in Mayfair.
Glendinning, Victoria. Edith Sitwell. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
318

Jane Squire

An accusation was brought against JA of being a Popish recusant convict, that is of practising the outlawed Roman Catholic religion. The charge (which was dismissed) probably had something to do with her ongoing court case.

G. B. Stern

She spent her first Christmas as a Catholic with Sheila Kaye-Smith and her husband, T. Penrose Fry , and attended Midnight Mass in the church they had built in their fields, with German prisoners of war adding noticeably to the singing ability of the congregation. She more than once attended retreats at the Cenacle Convent in Hampstead, under the aegis of Ronald Knox .
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery.
92, 176

Elizabeth Strickland

Elizabeth, while remaining a practising Anglican , became remarkable for her capacity to think herself into the mindset of British Roman Catholics at a time when the generally dominant party in England saw them as the enemy. She also developed a lifelong though sceptical interest in spiritualism.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Agnes Strickland

Anna Swanwick

She remained a Unitarian all her life, but was open-minded enough to enjoy discussing Unitarianism on equal terms with Catholicism, Judaism, and other forms of religious worship
Bruce, Mary Louisa. Anna Swanwick, A Memoir and Recollections 1813-1899. T. F. Unwin.
155
with the eccentric Marquess of Bute (himself a Catholic convert from Anglicanism).
Bruce, Mary Louisa. Anna Swanwick, A Memoir and Recollections 1813-1899. T. F. Unwin.
155

Gertrude Thimelby

GT was a member of an English gentry family who became Roman Catholics during her childhood. Her minority religious allegiance shaped her life.

Winefrid Thimelby

She was a cradle Catholic born into an English gentry family which harboured priests, celebrated the mass in secret, and suffered persecution for their faith. A recent commentator, Dorothy L. Latz , regrets the way that modern criticism has tended to ignore the religious dimension in dealing with such women as WT . Latz reminds readers that Thimelby would not have thought in terms of a career, or self-assertion, but of contemplative [life], spirituality, and . . . love of God.
Latz, Dorothy L., editor. “Neglected Writings by Recusant Women”. Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th-17th Centuries, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg.
43n15

Elizabeth Thomas

She was a Cartesian in philosophy, and an Anglican in religion (though the influence of her Dissenting grandmother caused her an attack of doctrinal panic over predestination at the age of fifteen). She says she resolved, as befitted a disciple of Descartes , to take responsibility for her own religious faith, to be able to say why she was a protestant, not a Quaker or Roman Catholic.
Curll, Edmund et al. “The Life of Corinna. Written by Herself”. Pylades and Corinna, p. iv - lxxx.
xv, xvii

Flora Thompson

Although strongly influenced by her Methodist grandfather, FT grew up in the Anglican Church. She remained an Anglican even though she was attracted to the Catholic Church in later life.
Lindsay, Gillian. Flora Thompson: The Story of the Lark Rise Writer. Hale.
71, 133

Katharine Tynan

As a young girl, KT was a fervent Catholic who aspired to be a nun: the convent glimmered like a pale star before me.
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder.
46
Her eldest sister, whom she looked up to but who died when Katharine was still fairly young, had entered a convent.
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder.
42

Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady Tyrwhit

Born into the rising English gentry and into the then nationally practised Roman Catholic faith, she later made choice of the new or reformed religion of Protestantism . (As the Puritan John Field put it much later, God drew her out of the sincke and mier of Poperie.)
Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady Tyrwhit,. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Morning and Evening Prayers, edited by Susan M. Felch, Ashgate, pp. 1-51.
16
Her husband said that his wife, although not seyne in Devynnete (that is not a theologian), was halff a Scrypture Woman.
Elizabeth Oxenbridge, Lady Tyrwhit,. “Introduction”. Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Morning and Evening Prayers, edited by Susan M. Felch, Ashgate, pp. 1-51.
10
Protestantism had an obvious attraction for women who wanted to read and learn for themselves, and to assume responsibility for their relationship with God and their eventual salvation.

Evelyn Underhill

Around 1904 EU developed an interest in Roman Catholicism.
Greene, Dana. Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. Crossroad.
21
This interest, however, aroused in her an almost equal anxiety, on two grounds. For one thing, her spiritual development thus far had largely been self-directed, and she was loathe to sacrifice her intellectual liberty for the sake of becoming a Catholic.
Armstrong, Christopher J. R. Evelyn Underhill. Mowbrays.
57
Secondly, her fiancé, Hubert , was wary of her converting, chiefly on the grounds that Evelyn's confessor would virtually make a third in their marriage and constitute an alien power with certain rights of possession over her.
Armstrong, Christopher J. R. Evelyn Underhill. Mowbrays.
30
Nonetheless she decided, in April 1907, that she would convert, but postponed any action until after the wedding. She reversed her decision later that year when the papal decree Lamentabili and the encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis were issued. These texts condemned Modernist teaching, a growing trend in Catholicism that tried to reconcile modern scientific and historical knowledge with traditional doctrine. EU 's spiritual thought was largely influenced by Modernist teachings, and she could not commit herself to a Catholicism that excluded them. Nevertheless this year, 1907, was the time from which she dated her conversion to Christianity.
Greene, Dana. Evelyn Underhill: Artist of the Infinite Life. Crossroad.
21, 26, 28-9
Armstrong, Christopher J. R. Evelyn Underhill. Mowbrays.
58
“Underhill, Evelyn (1875-1941)”. AIM25: King’s College London College Archives.

Mary Ward

Born into the English gentry at a period of harsh persecution, she was a cradle Catholic (and a fervent one) whose ideas for new departures within the Church often led her into conflict with its hierarchy.

Mary Wesley

MW was influenced in her religious thinking by several writers, including Simone Weil and Graham Greene . The novelist Antonia White stood as godmother to them both, and they seem to have fallen in mostly with broad-minded priests who did not absolutely require that they should abandon their (in the eyes of the Church) non-marriage and live as brother and sister. At Thornworthy they helped the local community raise money (by a lottery, among other things) to build a small Catholic church instead of celebrating Mass in the village hall.
Wesley, Mary, and Kim Sayer. Part of the Scenery. Bantam.
127-8
Marnham, Patrick. Wild Mary: the Life of Mary Wesley. Chatto and Windus.
171-3

Antonia White

When Eirene, later Antonia, was seven years old, her father converted to Catholicism —a decision that had a profound effect on her. She too became a Catholic and remained a nominal one all her life, returning actively to the faith when she turned forty. Yet her religion exacerbated her feelings of shame and unworthiness.
Chitty, Susan. Now To My Mother. Weidenfeld and Nicholson.
5-6
Vaux, Anna. “Biscuits. Oh good!”. London Review of Books, pp. 32-4.
33

Jane Francesca, Lady Wilde

Though confirmed into the Church of Ireland (that is, in the Anglican faith) she sometimes thought (for partly political reasons) of converting to Roman Catholicism . She arranged a second, Catholic christening for her sons.
Ellmann, Richard. Oscar Wilde. Knopf.
6, 19

Harriette Wilson

HW was received into the Roman Catholic Church under the religious name of Mary Magdalen.
Wilson, Frances. The Courtesan’s Revenge. Faber.
294