In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

A visitor found the photo above of Kinsman as a student at St Paul's School in Concord, NH. This is actually a key part of his background, as he makes clear in Salve Mater that the Kinsmans were a pominent Ohio family, There's a Kinsman Road and a Kinsman district in Cleveland. That Frederick would attend St Paul's School, one of the St Grottlesex group, and become an Episcopal bishop are indications of his and his family's high standing in society. Kinsman's literary product as a Catholic is complex, and with much of it available to me due to the generosity of a visitor, I'm finding it deserves detailed reading and reflection. Reveries of a Hermit is an example. About half of it is the closely reasoned apologetic I've discussed here, but there's a Part II which is about the same length but more difficult to parse. It sets out to be an essay on three saints connected with the ancient city of Ephesus, but in the middle, there's a chapter on Birc...

There's been a certain amount of background noise over recent generations, especially from commentators like Alan Dershowitz, that quotas persist in ivy League and similar elite schools, and although the schools insist that Jewish quotas are a thing of the past, quotas of all sorts have grown and become steadily more intricate. There may no longer be Jewish quotas per se, but admissions criteria that de-prioritize applicants from affluent suburbs have a similar effect, and these persist. The first impression I had, just days after arriving at Dartmouth, was that some of my clasmates were in effect flying coach, while others flew first class. This was at complete variance with the public narrative current at least in the 1950s and early 60s that the elite schools were highly selective based on grades, test scores, and extracurriculars, and those selected were the best and the brightest. This view was reflected in David Brooks's remarkably silly 2000 book, Bobos in Paradise, ...

The remarks I quoted from Frederick Kinsman yesterday on Anglo-Catholics, that among them "there was much exercise of private judgment, both in a chronic fastidiousnesss which spent its energy in pointing how everyone else was more or less wrong" go a long way for me in explaining what's happened in the North American ordinariate. A visitor comments, The “chronic fastidiousness” of which Kinsman speaks is a defining characteristic of the ordinariate. No doubt it is more difficult in the Catholic church to flout constituted authorities, at least where they have taken a position, but the mindset that “we have it right, and everyone else is wrong” is everywhere, and the “everyone” often means other ordinariate communities, not just benighted “Novus Ordo” parishes. After over four hundred comments on a video of the mass at St Timothy, Sykesville which revealed their use of women servers and guitar accompaniment, the administrator of the Anglican ordinariate ...

The section of Reveries of a Hermit most relevant to my purpose is the chapter on Anglicanism. He traces its origin to exclusively secular and political concerns: Change of religion in Englnd did not arise from a desire for revision such as Luther's, or for rediscovery such as Calvin's. It was the result of the policies of Tudor sovereigns. Four of these successively imposed on their subjects such religious establishment as seemed to them expedient. Henry VIII substituted Royal for Papal supremacy: Edward VI inaugurated changes aiming at English copying of Swiss models: Queen Mary, using Royal Supremacy to replace Papal, brought back Catholicism as far as she could: Queen Elizabeth adopted a series of compromises, intended to reduce to a minimum religious differences within her realm, and her policies have ever since largely prevailed in the English-speaknig world. (pp 122-123) I simply don't know what's taught now in Eng Lit, but up to the 1970s, this was regard...

I found Frederick Kinsman's Reveries of a Hermit enormously stimulating, and as I said the other day, its title is misleading. His main argument is that the varieties of Protestantism are all actually versions of agnosticism: The aim of these lectures is to compare and relate three points of view from which the Christian religion is regarded. The first looks on it as something based on unreliable legends, and therefore negligible, except as myth expressive of picturesque fantasies. The second professes to hold its essentials but is ever ready to relegate component parts into the category of non-essentials, is eclectic; and the successive stages of its history are chracterized by rejections rather than by retentions. The third regards it as the one great fact in human history, to be retained intact and given dominant place in human life. Common names for these points of view are, the Agnostic, the Protestant, and the Catholic. . . . One main purpose of the investigation ...

I've had to defer my next post on Frederick Kinsman at least until tomorrow, as I received a lot of material for a post on my old blog on developments at Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio . It seems to me that phenomena like the racket Fr Christopher Phillips was able to run for almost three decades at Our Lady of the Atonement, in which he indulged himself and selected underbosses at the expense of people who were allowed to fancy they were getting authentic Catholicism, is an extension of Kinsman's take on Anglicanism -- especially for high-church types, there has always been a key element of fantasy. I'll have more to say about this, but it's definitely a factor in the failure of Anglicanorum coetibus .

A visitor to my old blog brought a fascinating figure in Anglican and Catholic history to my attention, Frederick Kinsman, and he's very kindly sent me copies of Kinsman's books as he's located them. According to Wikipedia , Frederick Joseph Kinsman (September 27, 1868, Warren, Ohio - June 18, 1944, Lewiston, Maine) was an American Roman Catholic church historian who had formerly been a bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church. From 1908 to 1919 he was Episcopal Bishop of Delaware. However, On May 14, 1919, Kinsman announced his intention to resign as Episcopal Bishop of Delaware the following October. He subsequently became a Roman Catholic. He was appointed professor of modern church history at The Catholic University of America. The photo above is apparently his formal portrait as Episcopal Bishop of Delaware. I haven't been able to find any other photos of him, though they must certainly exist. If anyone can locate any others, I'd greatly appreciate l...