The Congregation of Christian Brothers in Scotland, 1951-1983

Abstract

Books which claim to give an account of either the Irish or the Catholic Church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hardly give mention of the Christian Brothers and their missions. J. A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London 1938), is recognised as an investigative study of a long neglected file of scholarly accomplishment, but the Christian Brothers are not even mentioned. David Mathew, Catholicism in England, 1535-1935 (London 1936), likewise gives no reference to the Brothers. Thomas Burke in his Catholic History of Liverpool gives transient references to the Christian Brothers,1 but peruse the pages of The English Catholics, 1850-1950, a series of academic papers edited by Bishop Beck, and you will discover only four passing references.2 I would argue, however, that the missions of the Christian Brothers in Britain have been an important influence in the life of the Church and education. In the early part of the nineteenth century three men made a substantial impact on the Irish scene: Daniel O'Connell, political agitator; Father Theobald Mathew, founder of the Temperance Movement; and Edmund Rice, founder of the Congregation of Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ireland, and founder of the Order of Presentation Brothers, who has been described by his biographer as 'an outstanding influence of the period, and most important'.3 Rice was born in 1762 at Westcourt, Co. Kilkenny. After giving up a successful business, in 1802 he entered into religious life by founding and opening a school for the poor and underprivileged Catholic boys in Waterford. By 1820 the order was established on sanction by a papal brief, and by 1826 several communities and schools were established in the towns and cities of Ireland. In 1825 and 1826 Rice sent communites to Preston and London respectively, and this was the foundation of the first Christian Brothers' mission to England. The Brothers withdrew in 1880 due to a variety of events and circumstances which slowly chipped away, eroding the expansion of the Institute's work in England in the