Catholics for a Changing Church

John Challenor [1923-2014]

When I first met Father John Challenor in 1966, he was just 43 years old.  He had by then been ordained twenty-one years and was a member of the Birmingham Oratory, the community founded by John Henry Cardinal Newman, and was employed by them in the next door St Philip’s Grammar School for Catholic boys.  I was a student for the priesthood (until the events of 1968 opened my eyes) and Eamon Duffy was just one of John’s appreciative pupils at that time (see Duffy’s Faith of our Fathers, Continuum 2004, p4 – the other 'exceptionally gifted man' was Hamish Swanston, later professor of theology at the University of Kent who died last year).  We were friends and collaborators in ministry through CRM/CCC from then until his death during the Easter Octave this year, some forty eight years.

In a review of Dawkins’ The God Delusion (RENEW 145, March 2008, p14) John said that after reading that book, ‘I am left as religious, as atheistic, as agnostic, as pantheistic as before.’  He had already explained in an autobiographical article (RENEW 134, June 2005, p2) how he answered the question ‘Am I a Catholic now?’ by saying ‘I am perhaps a former Catholic and a lapsed Anglican.  I would describe myself as a Jesus Seminar/Sea of Faith type of Christian, concerned to stand in the prophetic and wisdom traditions.’  And so he did.  Given his dislike of labels, it is hard to describe him. 

John Challenor was my mentor – and I acknowledged this in CCC’s collection of liturgies Take, Bless, Break, Share which I edited and which Canterbury Press published in 1998.  He guided my reading for those two years that I was an Oratorian philosophy student; he had worked for the difficult London BD as an external student, his first degree from Oxford being in History, and was extremely well-read in scripture studies and modern theology.  It was he who inspired me to become the sort of person I am (except for my failings of course!) and whose humble but uncompromising witness to the Gospels has kept me on the rails through thick and thin ever since.

He was a priest, although he ceased to exercise a sacramental ministry soon after he left the Oratory in 1972; he was a founder member of the Catholic Renewal Movement later CCC; he was a teacher and later a faithful husband to Sara Clethero, the opera singer and teacher as well as father to a daughter Zoë (born 1976) as talented a singer as her mother.   A portrait of Zoë, now a mother herself, can be seen behind John in the photograph.   John and Sara honoured me by asking me to be ‘best man’ at their own wedding. Although sometimes exhibiting a gruff exterior, he was a gentle, compassionate and humble man. But he could be impatient with fools and with the incompetent and would express his anger forcefully when driven to it.  Sara faithfully cared for him at home as he became more and more frail.

Above all he was a man of uncompromising principle, of commitment to the Gospel.  This is the reason he left the Birmingham Oratorians and the ranks of the clergy in the aftermath of Humanae Vitae, which he did not hesitate to witness publicly against.  It was the reason he abandoned the Church of England, which had been his spiritual home for thirty years since then, when in June 2003 it made the homosexual Dr Jeffrey John forgo the bishopric of Reading for the deanery of St Albans.  He did not leave the Church – the Church left him, and for shameful reasons too, many would agree.

John was 17 when the Second World War broke out and 22 when it ended. His experiences as a soldier, about which I never heard him speak, led to his becoming a Catholic and ultimately being ordained after studies at Saint Sulpice.  He had been an extra-mural lecturer for Michael Goulder at Birmingham University (1967-74) and was a much appreciated and respected teacher at St Philip’s Grammar School in Birmingham (Head of RE 1955-67).  After two years lecturing at the City of Birmingham College of Education (1972-74), he became Head of RE in a large inner city comprehensive school also in Birmingham (1974-82).  He was active in CCC on the executive for fifteen years and served as Chair for a time, as well as editor of RENEW.  In recent years was unable to travel to London for executive meetings.

Some Catholics – perhaps most of his former Oratorian brethren, all now dead – would consider him a sceptic and an apostate. But those of us who knew him saw only the reflection of Jesus.  Like Pete Lumsden, whom he knew, (see RENEW 143, September 2007, p9) he was uncompromising in his commitment to the Gospel, tolerant of error and alienated by bigotry. As he claimed, he stood in the tradition of the prophets and wisdom writers and was prepared to pay the price. He challenged and continues to challenge us. May he rest in peace and may we be faithful to the principles which inspired him and to which he remained uncompromisingly committed throughout his ninety-one years.                                                  

                                                                                                           Simon Bryden-Brook

Renew 168 (December 2013) is now available to be read by all.

Renew 169 (March 2014) is available to members who have logged in.

Giles Hibbert [1923-2013]

Giles Hibbert died a member of the Order of Preachers, whose motto is 'Veritas' or 'Truth' and lived a live devoted to witnessing to the truth and setting it uncompromisingly before others.   This commitment to truth meant both some initial alienation from his Protestant family (his father, Major General Hugh Hibbert DSO, was the local squire and read the lesson at Matins in the local parish church) as well as some trials for his brethren in the order over the years.  He came from a family of admirals and generals and was brought up in a country house in Wiltshire surrounded by servants.  His grandfather on his mother's side was a grandson of the third Marquess of Bath, a fact he would be mortified to have brought to public attention, as for many years he was an active Marxist, like the notorious 'red' Dean of Canterbury, and frequently travelled to Eastern Europe under the Communists.   

He was one of the fifty-five priests who wrote to the The Times in August 1968 to show their disapproval of Pope Paul VI's unilateral declaration, in the face of the opposition of the papal commission, of Humanae Vitae.  A battle with the Inquisition  resulted in an editorial about him in The Guardian of which he was ever afterwards immensely proud.   Similarly he was uncompromising about his homosexuality, playing a major public role in the founding of what was then the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, one of the few clergymen to do so and certainly the only RC one.

He had always supported CCC from its foundation in 1969 as the Catholic Renewal Movement and perhaps his most useful contribution to it was his taking over CCC's  publications in 1998.  By 2010, he had produced over fifty different booklets by writers as diverse as James Alison, Paul Collins, Eamon Duffy, Rafael Esteban, Sean Fagan, Paul Hypher, Nicholas Lash, Pat Pinsent, Elizabeth Price, Frank Regan, Cathy Scott, Joseph Seferta, Clare Short, Adrian Smith, Jack Spong, John Wijngaards and Rowan Williams.   Six of his own titles featured in CCC's list and his support was greatly appreciated by the movement.

Born in 1923, Robert Hibbert was educated at Uppingham and was an officer during the war.  Originally trained at Cambridge as a civil engineer, he entered the Dominicans after becoming a Catholic and abandoning his advanced engineering studies.  He was sent to study at Louvain and moved on to Oxford where he completed a doctorate.  By his own account (RENEW 120) he had a number of run-ins with ecclesiastical authority, all of which he survived.    This was in no small part due to the support which his order gave him but also to the fact that Giles had a brilliant mind and was nobody's fool.

After some time teaching at Blackfriars Oxford and in the university, where he taught Plato and Aristotle as well as Hebrew and Biblical Studies, he was appointed chaplain to the Catholics at Sheffield university where he spent eight fulfilling and rewarding years.  After two years as chaplain at York University, he ended up living alone in a small house in the Peak district which the order bought for him.  He became very active as chaplain to the local Newman circle.  From there he ran Blackfriars Publications, set up in 1993 under the patronage of Timothy Radcliffe, until his health forced him to return to live in community.   In 2009 he moved to the Dominican House on Haverstock Hill in London and in December 2012 to Cambridge where he had a happy final year of life.  

As he readily admitted, he was not a community man.   Indeed, on his return to community life in London another member of the community stopped him in the corridor and said “I don't like you Giles.  You have always been a bully,” to which Giles truthfully responded, “Yes, you are right.  I am sorry!”   He had mellowed from being a highly combative and even serious troublemaker, who deeply hurt and offended many people, to becoming more capable of demonstrating the deep humility he had, which only an attack on the truth as he saw it could allow his blazing guns to conceal.   He had a wide group of friends and will be sorely missed.                                                                                                                                           

Simon Bryden-Brook

Vatican City, 10 April 2013 (VIS) – The Holy Father dedicated his catechesis of this Wednesday's general audience to the salvific importance of Jesus' resurrection. After traversing St. Peter's Square in the open-top car, greeting the thousands of persons applauding his appearance, the Pope explained that the Christian faith “is based upon Christ's death and resurrection just like a house is built on its foundations. If those give way, the whole house topples. On the cross, Jesus offers himself, taking our sins upon himself and descending into the abyss of death, defeating it by his resurrection, eliminating it and opening the way to be reborn to new life.”

Read his words