Ungumming the ‘papist’ label

This book is so important and good it deserves a more crowd-pulling title. Besides, is ‘Revival’ the right word? True, after a silence of 300 years some authors began to write from the Catholic point of view, but this has gathered no popular momentum. Also the word ‘Catholic’ in a title is likely to put people off. Speaking as a Catholic myself (an interest to be declared at once), I know well the kinds of expression a reluctant confession of my allegiance provokes: incredulity, or suspicion or, worse, a sort of loopy awe, as though a Catholic must be privy to other crackpot mysteries, such as the magical properties of crystals (or crystal balls).

The purpose of this book is to unpick the work of post-Reformation spin- doctors and to try and explain the way Catholics actually think. Here are careful and intelligent analyses of six very different writers — John Henry Newman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hilaire Belloc, G.