The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1913-10-25
FATHER FABER
AN APPRECIATION OF THE GREAT
ENGLISH oRAToRIAN WHOSE
SEMI-CENTENNIAL HAS JUST
BEEN CELEBRATED.


Catholic England is now commem-
Grating the fiftieth anniversary of Fa-
Their 'Faber. In recent article Mr..
Wilfred Meynell, editor of the London
Tablet" wrote as follows about the
great oratorian:
There are two tributes-no, there
are three-to Father Faber, which
many of those who love him must
have pigeon-holed. Father Faber was
a great loss to the whole Church, but
he is still doing a great work by his
writings" That tribute from Plus TX
carries with it hint of a man I'M
timely dead. Great men, the greatest,
may have lived so long that their
passing cannot be considered a great
loss-they have said their say, they
have done their deeds, their night had
already come before they descended
to the tomb. Faber, dying at not
much more than half the age of some
of his contemporaries, might still, had
he lived, have lived to great purpose.
But of him it might truly be said that
into a short time he crowded the emo
ton, the industry, the love of a far
longer span of life. Hour for hour,
nobody perhaps did quite so much
certainly nobody did more. For his
was pre-eminently the gift of facility.
If Newman said that "he never knock
ed anything off," Faber might have
made very different boast, and with
no disparagement to the use of his
amazing powers. Had he begun to
erase, he would have left a blank
with him mending would have meant
an ending. That the resulting want
of form here, or failure of exact taste
there, has not lessened the right un-
derstanding of him, that the pinch of
salt with which we occasionally have
to take the obiter dicta of Father
Faber," as he once sweetly called him
self, is proved by the second testi-
mony which comes to mind for quota
ton. II know no man who has done
more to make the men of his day love
God and aspire to higher path of the
interior life" That is the testimony
of Cardinal Manning, who knew of
what he spoke. Praise from him may
rank to a Catholic Englishman as the
most precious that could come from
any of his fellows. Lastly, the very
informal tribute of Mother Margaret
Mary O'Halloran cries out to us with a
note of human sympathy, What a
man you are, what man you are!"
And it is as man no less than as
liam Faber in memory. He was so
great and so catholic a man that we
hardly class him by his county as we
do almost all others. There is some
thing almost incongruous in calling
this familiar of the Heavens a York
shireman. 1t was the Civilta Cat
tolica that once noted "the ease with
which he moves in the invisible world
of grace, as if it were the tangible
world of Nature" His Huguenot de-
scent, like that of Newman, and many
more of the Victorian converts, is
noteworthy enough; but we cease to
think of Faber as the habitant of a
parsonage son of an Anglican
minister and an Anglican minister
himself. He stands for something so
much less local. He stands for
largeness that has hardly any bounds.
The most spacious of oratories could
not contain him. Hundreds of thou
sands of copies of his works have
sold in French, German, Russian, Ital-
ian, Spanish and Flemish translations.
None but a doctor of the Church
could have written Them" cried an
Italian missioner, anticipating indeed.
What wisdom, what science, what
elevation of mindi" 1t is this eleva-
tion-of heart rather than of mind
this essential spirituality which has
raised the level of modern spiritual
literature in England and in all the
world Nor is that influence on the
wane Manning, with a caution so
little like Faber, but so characteristic
of himself, conditioned his praise
when he spoke of Faber as affecting
"the men of his day" The men of
the day-after have followed their
fathers to the feet of Faber; and,
gratuitous form of human error as
has been declared to be, we
are surely not too bold in picturing a
great future multitude of readers for
Faber's spiritual works His hymns,
whatever their defects, will be sung
and said as long as that form of liter
ature prevails, and we cannot inn
agine nursery of the future in which
they will not stir feelings as keen and
as aspiring as those with which they
were written The political outlook
of Faber, which was that of the Young
Party, has been justified by
all recent legislation. OF his poems.
apart from his hymns, it was interest
ing to note when, not long ago, Sir
GRANDEUR made an an
thology, that Faber has full pres
We do not cite his place
in the oxford Book of Victorian
Verse;" for the simple reason that the
inclusion of utterly worthless pieces
IN that collection robs of any signif-
canoe a position. however important,
IN its pages.
The f7ff3afh anniversary If Fahor's