Description Analysis of two recently discovered diaries affords a new way of looking at Catholic chaplain's roles, responsibilities, fears, and dilemmas.
Accompanying the fighting soldiers in Picardy, Flanders, and Artois, these diarist-chaplains daily recorded their first-hand experiences; telling us much about life at the Front, the nature of war, the Catholic Church in action, the post-Armistice civil state of affairs.
Daily accounts are punctuated by the deaths of colleagues, often a short distance away, and in this manner creating surreal situations in the same time frame and location by simple comparison.
A range of emotions and incidents expose the absurdity, yet profundity, of war from the unlikely source of clergymen: from being arrested as a spy, to attending a soldier to be shot at dawn, from being allegedly drunk on duty, to a cover up of an officer's suicide.
Chaplains as men are assessed from those who left primary and authenticated evidence, thereby minimalising the dangers of post-war sentimentalism or triumphalism, thus avoiding those studies which concentrate on the famous and ignore 'ordinary' chaplains who had become anonymous.
Drawing from Catholic chaplaincy evidence at large, historical and geographical contexts are accompanied by real day-to-day experiences.
Paintings by a Catholic chaplain at the front add to the milieu.
The diarist's encounters provide much of the data as they served on the Somme in 1916, then Ypres and Arras in 1917.
These tests of physical and mental endurance were nothing to compare with 1918, and particularly the German Spring Offensive.
Each day of the assault will show the fear, desperation and panic of not only the military, but also the civilian population.
The Catholic Church at war was uniquely universal; this meant that soldiers from all countries including Germany were catered for, as were French and Belgian civilians, and anybody who sought Catholic services.
A universal Church requires a broad social compositio.
| Clergymen | From being arrested as a spy to attending a soldier to be shot at dawn from being allegedly drunk on duty to a cover up of an officers suicide |
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Helion & Company Faith of our fathers: catholic chaplains with the british army on the western front 1916-1919/stephen bellis
