correspondence

13

During my internship for NINS, I took great pleasure in reading the letters of Richard Simpson, a former Anglican priest numbered among the prominent Catholic converts of the time. He was most known for his involvement in the Liberal Catholic movement through the Rambler, a periodical which served to allow the prominent lay converts of the time to express their views to the masses. We currently have a total of 64 letters penned by Richard Simpson in the Digital Collections, of which most were directed to St. John Henry Newman. Despite their often-mundane nature (as is often the case with historical letters), they provide a window into the man Richard Simpson, as well as into the unfolding of the Rambler situation in 1859 as it suffered attacks by the English Bishops.

The NINS Digital Collections contain twenty-nine letters from Sir James Marshall. Marshall grew up in Edinburgh, the son of the Rev. James Marshall, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. He received his degree at Exeter College, Oxford and was ordained in Anglican Orders in 1852. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1857, but due to the fact he had lost an arm in a childhood accident, was barred from being ordained a Catholic Priest.

The NINS Digital Collections contains one letter from Father Basil Maturin to Bishop Amigo discussing his attendance at Father Tyrrell’s funeral. Father Maturin was born February 15, 1847 at All Saints Vicarage, Grangegorman, Co. Dublin, the third of ten children of the Rev. William Maturin. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and originally took Anglican Orders in 1870.

The intersection of Catholicism and education raised important, yet controversial, questions and prompted many discussions in the nineteenth century. Increased freedoms for Catholics in England opened many educational, financial, and societal opportunities. They could attend prestigious universities and finish degrees without professing Protestant oaths or having religious examinations.

Cardinal Herbert Vaughan––most known for his tenure as Archbishop of Westminster, England, and for founding Saint Joseph’s Missionary Society of Mill Hill––journeyed to and across the Southern United States in 1872. He aimed to document the hindrances that could and did threaten the introduction and widespread dissemination of Catholicism in African American communities throughout the once-Confederate territories. 

Before becoming Catholic in 1845, Newman had ascribed to the Evangelical party and then later the High Church party of Anglicanism. It was through certain friendships penetrating his heart so deeply that he became attracted to the truths of the Catholic faith. When Pope Leo XIII made Newman a cardinal in 1879, Newman chose cor ad cor loquitur (Heart speaks unto heart) as his motto. His friends surely spoke to his heart, and his heart spoke to theirs.