A reflection on the Catholic Crusade -- sixty years on
By Alan Ecclestone
(Epilogue to Conrad Noel and the Catholic Crusade; a critical evaluation. Edited by Kenneth Leech. [London], The Jubilee Group. 1993
As one who has reason to be grateful to the Catholic Crusade at every important stage of my life, it is part of my debt of gratitude that I offer a brief reflection on it.
Its limitations are now evident enough. Imaginatively it was too closely attached to the Medieval Church, so that it did not face the changed conditions that Establishment of the Church of England industrialisation and urban growth, and the changed relationships arising from these and other great socio-economic factors.
It could not as a consequence show any deep understanding of the free churches or the changing status of women in society and the personal problems related to this, nor could it envisage clearly the nature of the mpdern state so heavily geared into a new monetarism and a new armaments industry.
H. G. Wells was a good deal more prophetic as regards these things than Christians.
On the other hand, the Crusade groups did identify the basic nature of the Church as expressible in the parish as a body of people being nurtured to grow up into the Body of Christ, being involved in all aspects of their human nature in the regeneration of the spiritual capacities and personhood of each and every member.
It was militantly critical of the falsely dualist conception of religion, of the false ethics, personal and social -- to which people were being enchained, the polluted atmosphere, the alienation of huamn beings from the natural world, from each other, from their own essential nature and from God.
It saw the need to teach people to challenge the false assumptions and deadly practices arising from them that assailed, corrupted and went far to destroy right relationships at every level of Being and Existence. It offered a conception of the Church which was both conscious of and conscientous about the God revealed alternative and it drew people into this.
That task is now, more than ever, the great issue that confronts the Church at this time. Therein lies the unfinished work to which the Catholic Crusade drew the hearts and minds of many men and women. We owe it to them to take up that work too.
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Alan Ecclestone was a member of the Catholic Crusade abd author of Yes to God, The Night Sky of the Lord and other books. He died in 1992 as the above booklet was going to press.
For more information, see the appreciation of Alan Ecclestone by Tim Gorringe on this site.
