Luca Fumagalli

The 1920s and 1930s were a difficult period for Britain, both economically and socially: the country had not yet recovered from the First World War and unemployment was very high. To make things worse, the main political parties seemed unable to offer any solution to the problems of a large mass of poverty-stricken workers.

The Catholic Church, then led by Cardinal Bourne, was experiencing a second cultural spring: in addition to G. K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and other first-rate apologists, there were Msgr. Ronald Knox, the most brilliant theologian alive, and Father Bede Jarrett, the main figure behind the Dominican revival. Furthermore, the publishing house Sheed and Ward had been founded and Bernard Wall had launched the periodical “Colosseum.”

Amid all this, there was also room for distributism, not strictly a Catholic movement, but one in which Catholics were the overwhelming majority. Chesterton and Belloc were its main proponents; the two championed an economic theory that aimed to create a just, free, and happy society through an equitable distribution of the means of production.

Immediately after the “Chesterbelloc,” the most well-known exponents of distributism were the artist Eric Gill and the Irish Dominican Vincent McNabb (1868-1943).

The latter’s public career began in 1908 when, while prior of Leicester, he attracted attention for his brilliant skills as a confessor, preacher, and lecturer, demonstrating a profound knowledge not only of philosophy and theology but also of literature.

In 1898, before his appointment to Leicester, Father McNabb was at Hawkesyard Priory, a student house in the Staffordshire countryside. This led to his being responsible for managing a farm. At the time, he wasn’t .particularly drawn to it, but upon his return to the Priory in 1914, as a reaction to the brutalization of modern man, enslaved by machines, he devoted himself wholeheartedly to it, spending two to four hours a day in the fields.

Indeed, as early as 1911, the Dominican had become involved with the Distributist movement, writing various articles for Belloc’s “The Eye-Witness,” a weekly later replaced by Cecil Chesterton’s “The New Witness” and finally by “G.K.’s Weekly.” Distributists, despite their shared distaste for the factory system and mass production, harboured varying degrees of hostility toward modern machinery: while Chesterton and Belloc didn’t devote much attention to the topic, Gill and McNabb, on the contrary, considered it a matter of fundamental importance. However, for Father McNabb it was the land, for which he developed a true mysticism, that was the basis of any economic and social discourse (he also dedicated a couple of the most successful volumes of his extensive bibliography to the subject, The Church and the Land and Nazareth or Social Chaos).

In the creation of the “Guild of SS. Joseph and Dominic” by Eric Gill and Hilary Pepler, McNabb saw the fulfilment of his distributist ideal. His leadership was decisive in the first months of the new community’s existence, based in Ditchling, East Sussex, but over time, as relations between the founders soured, the Dominican lost interest in the project.

Relations with Pepler remained good, while with Gill there were other occasions of tension; nevertheless, Gill continued to revere Father Vincent as the holiest man of his time until the end of his life (an opinion shared by many, including Chesterton, Belloc, and Msgr. Ronald Knox, who in 1950 called for a process for McNabb’s beatification).

The Dominican’s outrage at the difficult conditions to which the urban population was condemned –particularly in the British capital, which he ironically dubbed “Babylondon,” a portmanteau of Babylon and London – did not alter his decidedly negative opinion of birth control. What he was seeking was not an easy solution to the problem of widespread poverty, but a serious and concrete intervention to improve the conditions of the many people oppressed by rampant industrialization.

Beginning in 1920, Father McNabb made a habit of going every Sunday afternoon to Hyde Park, in the heart of London, where, near the famous Marble Arch, there is an area called “Speaker’s Corner,” the traditional site of public speeches and debates, especially at weekends. Everyone was talking about the Dominican, dressed in the black and white habit of his order, who would cover the three kilometres from the convent of St. Dominic to his makeshift platform on foot in his boots, bringing with him a backpack containing the only two books he always carried: the Bible and the Summa by St. Thomas Aquinas.

Among the most assiduous spectators of McNabb’s “street catechesis” was a Jew, Edward Siderman, who dedicated a volume to the Dominican in 1950. The title, A Saint in Hyde Park, shows the almost unanimous affection that surrounded him. Moreover, every time he concluded his speeches, fearing he had offended someone with the passion of his words, Father McNabb invariably apologized: “God bless you all, and I beg your pardon.” Overall, his life was thus spent defending Christian truth from the attacks of an increasingly secularized world.

Walking with Father Vincent (Gracewing, 2023) sheds new light on the brilliant Dominican. Written by Andrew McNabb, Father McNabb’s great-grandnephew, an American Lay Dominican and writer, who infuses his own experiences, the book details a remarkable life, while presenting remedies for some contemporary problems. Through the vehicle of Father McNabb’s legendary walking, the author invites the reader to accompany them both, as he highlights the timeless truth and prophetic insight his uncle preached about, wrote about, and lived so dramatically.

This is a story needed now more than ever, a story of great personal holiness and devotion, a life of love fostered in a deeply Catholic home, a life lived with joy and vigour, bravely, and unflinchingly, for the purpose of saving souls, and in defence of eternal Christian Truth.

Andrew McNabb, Walking with Father Vincent, with a foreword by Dale Ahlquist, Gracewing 2023, 196 pages, £12.99.

Buy the book: https://www.gracewing.co.uk/page408.html

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