Faith in the Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism, 1945-82

ISBN-13: 9781784993658 / Angielski / Miękka / 2016 / 320 str.

Alana Harris

Opis

Reflecting contemporaneously on the monumental events taking place in Rome (and throughout the Catholic world) as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council, the publisher and polemicist Frank Sheed wrote a book in 1968 entitled Is it the Same Church? Nearly fifty years on, this historical study of the social, cultural and gendered identities of English Catholics addresses a similar question, and surveys changes and continuities in their devotional lives and spiritual commitments, across three generations. Drawing upon a multi-disciplinary methodology employing diverse written sources, material practices and life histories, this book seeks to assess the impact of these changes on the ordinary believer, alongside simultaneous shifts in British society relating to social mobility, the sixties, sexual morality and fears of secularisation. In doing so, it also examines specific transformations in the Roman Catholic liturgy, extra-liturgical practices like the rosary and benediction, devotion to Mary and the place of women within the family and church, as well as the relationship of English Catholics with their favourite saints. Appealing to students and scholars of modern British gender, cultural and religious history, as well as a general readership interested in the changes to the Catholic Church and religious life in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century, Faith in the family illustrates that despite unmistakable differences in their cultural accoutrements and interpretations of Catholicism, English Catholics continued to identify with and practise the 'Faith of Our Fathers' before and after Vatican II.