Studies in the Catholic Social Movement
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About This Book [ what the critics are saying | table of contents | about the author(s) ]
Henry Somerville, prolific Catholic journalist during the middle of the 20th Century, produced this survey of the Catholic Social Movement in order to chronicle the then-ongoing response of Catholic moral philosophers and social and political activists to the social challenges posed both by the industrial revolution and the socialist/Marxist response that it provoked. This text, having been written in 1933 during the busy heyday of the Catholic Social Movement, provides a "primary-source" immediacy that cannot be achieved by historical retrospectives written years later. It offers an inspiring and eye-opening account of the long and busy tradition of Catholic social and political action in the face of growing hostility to natural, sane, traditional, and spiritual modes of living that were characteristic of the time before the industrial revolution caused the upheaval of American and European lifestyles.
What the Critics are Saying
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Table of Contents
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Introduction —Paul Misner, Ph.D. |
About the Author(s)
Henry Somerville
Born in Leeds, England, Somerville (1889-1953) was the son of working-class parents and had seven brothers and three sisters. He went to elementary schools in the Cathedral parish of Leeds and started work in a factory as soon as he was 13 years old. At 21 he got a job as sub-editor on a Catholic weekly newspaper and after a few months there got a scholarship at Ruskin College, Oxford, through the interest of the late Father Charles Plater, S. J. While still in the factory and before there was any national movement of the kind, Henry Somerville had started a social study club in Leeds and when the Catholic Social Guild was established the methods of this club became the model for clubs all over Britain. He was one of the earliest and most active workers for the Catholic Social Guild and had a good deal to do with establishing it in the industrial centres. At Oxford he obtained the Diploma in Economics and Political Science with Distinction.
After leaving Oxford he devoted himself to writing on social questions and to lecturing for the Catholic Social Guild for a time, and then joined the staff of the Manchester Guardian as sub-editor. In November 1915 he went to Toronto at the invitation of the late Archbishop Neil McNeil and spent nearly three years in the Archdiocese, engaged in the promotion of social work and social study among Catholics. In the fall of 1918 he gave a course in sociology at St. Francis Xavier’s College, Antigonish. He returned to England, at the beginning of 1919, and became Organizing Secretary of the Catholic Social Guild, a position which he held until the summer of 1922.
It was during this period that The Christian Democrat was started as the monthly organ of the Guild, the annual summer schools at Oxford were begun and weekend schools in other parts of England, and the Catholic Workers’ College was founded. Mr. Somerville then became London correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star in which capacity he visited many European countries, including Soviet Russia. In 1933 he returned to Toronto to assist in the editorship of The Catholic Register, now The Canadian Register.
His books include Civics: A Manual for Schools and Britain's Economic Illness. In addition he has written booklets and pamphlets and has contributed to almost all the leading Catholic reviews published in the English language. He was awarded the Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. In 1947 he was named a Knight Commander of St. Gregory of His Holiness Pope Pius XII. In 2001 The Catholic Register (partly adapted from C. J. Eustace, "Henry Somerville," in Matthew Hoehn,, O.S.B., trans., Catholic Authors [Newark: St. Mary's Abbey, 1948], pp. 698-9).
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Dr. Misner is Professor Emeritus of Theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is the author of Papacy and Development: Newman and the Primacy of the Pope, Social Catholicism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War, and numerous articles, reviews, and contributions to anthologies.
