Good Grief?
Searching for Raymond: Anglicanism, Spiritualism, and Bereavement Between
the Two World Wars
by Rene Kollar
New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2000
(208 pages; $60.00, cloth)
reviewed by Richard J. Mammana, Jr.
The First World War, with its unprecedented losses, brought bereavement as never before to vast numbers of British families. Immediately after the 750,000 English wartime casualties came the further deaths of more than 150,000 Britons in an influenza epidemic. All this hit a church without explicit liturgical prayers for the dead very hard. Survivors wishing to have some sort of contact or assurance regarding their departed loved ones often turned to the welcoming arms of spiritualism. Through séances, channeling, automatic writing, and other means, many found more for their comfort than they saw in traditional Christian teaching about the afterlife. Rene Kollar (a Roman Catholic priest teaching at Saint Vincent Archabbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania) chronicles the official Anglican reaction to this tendency in Searching for Raymond. At eight decades’ remove from the events in question, one can’t but see a pastoral blunder of the most extraordinary proportions. From the outset, ecclesiastics formed committees to handle the issue. As usual, this was to the detriment of Christian souls.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
31.1—January/February 2018
The Wisdom of the Victorian Quest for Innocence by David Sandifer
22.3—April 2009
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by J. Daryl Charles
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
