The Church and the Land

Fr. McNabb, Irishman, Dominican theologian, preacher, Distributist, social critic, mystic, and man of action, was born in 1868 in Portaferry, County Down, Ireland, within a few miles of the rock that covers the bones of St. Patrick. On November 10, 1885, he joined the novitiate of the English Dominicans at Woodchester in Gloucestershire, England, and was ordained in 1891. After studies at the Louvain (where he obtained in 1894 the degree of lector in Sacred Theology), he was sent to England where he spent the remainder of his life. He received the Master of Sacred Theology degree in 1917, and for his work in the interests of Belgium during World War I, he was made a Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Beligum (1919). Along with various official provincial capacities, he served as a Professor of Philosophy at Hawkesyard Priory, Prior of Holy Cross (Leicester), Woodchester (Gloucestershire), Hawkesyard (Staffordshire), and St. Dominic's (London) Priories, and priory librarian. From 1929 to 1934 he lectured on the Summa of St. Thomas at the University of London Extension. As a theologian, Thomist, and social critic of 19th- and 20th-century England, he was perfectly suited to his role as de facto chaplain to the Distributist League and the Catholic land movement. Fr. McNabb is the author of numerous classics of spirituality and history; among his thirty books and numerous articles are Nazareth or Social Chaos, The Catholic Church and Philosophy, Church and Reunion: Some Thoughts on Christian Reunion, Craft of Prayer, Faith and Prayer, Francis Thompson & Other Essays (with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton), Geoffrey Chaucer: A Study in Genius & Ethics, God's Good Cheer, Mysticism of St. Thomas Aquinas, New Testament Witness to Our Blessed Lady, Science of Prayer, St. Elizabeth of Portugal, and others. The greatest of his contemporaries felt him much greater than themselves. He is, Chesterton wrote, one of the few great men I have met in my life. Belloc wrote of him that the greatness of his character, of his learning, his experience, and, above all, his judgment, was altogether separate from the world about him, but most remarkable was his holiness, of which he said, I have known, seen and felt [it] in person. To this Fr. Ronald Knox would add, upon his death, that Fr. Vincent gives you some idea of what a saint must be like. And the English Dominican journal Blackfriars simply offered on the same occasion that he was one who in modern times and in England most closely approached the life and ideal of the founder of the Order of Preachers.