Edward Ingram Watkin (27 September 1888 - 1981) [1] was an English Catholic philosopher, pacifist and writer.
He studied at St Paul's School, London and New College, Oxford. [2] In 1908, Watkin became a convert to Catholicism. [2] He publicly opposed conscription in 1916, [3] a position he upheld in his 1939 pamphlet The Crime of Conscription.
In 1927, Watkin befriended the exiled Italian priest Don Luigi Sturzo, whose work Watkin would later publish in the Dublin Review . [4]
Watkin's best known works were Philosophy of Mysticism (1920) and A Philosophy of Form (1938). He has been described as "one of the few non-Thomist Catholic philosophers of the early twentieth century." [5]
In 1930, Watkin translated Jacques Maritain’s French edition of “An Introduction to Philosophy” into English.
Watkin was a pacifist and joined the pacifist organization The Guild of Pope's Peace in 1916 which promoted peaceful solutions to World War I. [5] He founded in 1936 with Eric Gill and Donald Attwater the inter-war Catholic pacifist movement Pax. [6] This movement was prominently supported by Dorothy Day. [7]
Watkin was opposed to fascism, and his book The Catholic Centre includes a critique of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany as being part of "a social revolt against reason". [8]
His maternal grandfather was Herbert Ingram; Edward Watkin was a great-uncle on his father's side. [9]
His daughter was Magdalen Goffin.
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism or violence. The word pacifism was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ahimsa, which is a core philosophy in Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. While modern connotations are recent, having been explicated since the 19th century, ancient references abound.
Sir Edward William Watkin, 1st Baronet was a British Member of Parliament and railway entrepreneur. He was an ambitious visionary, and presided over large-scale railway engineering projects to fulfil his business aspirations, eventually rising to become chairman of nine different British railway companies.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the state have been constantly evolving with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history, the Church has had to deal with various concepts and systems of governance, from the Roman Empire to the medieval divine right of kings, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of democracy and pluralism to the appearance of left-wing and right-wing dictatorial regimes. The Second Vatican Council's decree Dignitatis humanae stated that religious freedom is a civil right that should be recognized in constitutional law.
Christian democracy is an ideology inspired by Christian social teaching to respond to the challenges of contemporary society and politics.
Clerical fascism is an ideology that combines the political and economic doctrines of fascism with clericalism. The term has been used to describe organizations and movements that combine religious elements with fascism, receive support from religious organizations which espouse sympathy for fascism, or fascist regimes in which clergy play a leading role.
Giovanni Gentile was an Italian philosopher, fascist politician, and pedagogue.
Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad was an English philosopher, author, teacher and broadcasting personality. He appeared on The Brains Trust, a BBC Radio wartime discussion programme. He popularised philosophy and became a celebrity, before his downfall in a scandal over an unpaid train fare in 1948.
The Catholic Worker Movement is a collection of autonomous communities founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the United States in 1933. Its aim is to "live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ". One of its guiding principles is hospitality towards those on the margin of society, based on the principles of communitarianism and personalism. To this end, the movement claims over 240 local Catholic Worker communities providing social services. Each house has a different mission, going about the work of social justice in its own way, suited to its local region.
Luigi Sturzo was an Italian Catholic priest and prominent politician. He was known in his lifetime as a Christian socialist and is considered one of the fathers of the Christian democratic platform. He was also the founder of the Luigi Sturzo Institute in 1951. Sturzo was one of the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI) in 1919 but was forced into exile in 1924 with the rise of Italian fascism, and later in 1943 Christian Democracy, although he was never a party member. In exile in London and later New York City, he published over 400 articles critical of fascism. Sturzo's cause for canonization opened on 23 March 2002 and he is titled as a Servant of God.
Peter Maurin was a French Catholic social activist, theologian, and De La Salle Brother who founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933 with Dorothy Day.
The Myth of the Twentieth Century is an influential, pseudo-scientific, pseudo-historical book by Alfred Rosenberg, a Nazi theorist who was one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi Party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. Rosenberg was later convicted for crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials and executed in 1946.
Titus Brandsma was a Dutch Carmelite priest and a professor of philosophy. Brandsma was vehemently opposed to Nazi ideology and spoke out against it many times before World War II. He was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp, where he was murdered in 1942.
The Dublin Review was a Catholic periodical founded in 1836 by Michael Joseph Quin, Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman and Daniel O'Connell. The fame of the "Edinburgh Review" suggested a territorial title, and Dublin was chosen as a great Catholic centre, though from the first it was edited and published in London.
Mario Sturzo was an Italian Roman Catholic bishop.
The Sandro Italico Mussolini School of Fascist Mysticism was established in Milan, Italy in 1930 by Niccolò Giani. Its primary goal was to train the future leaders of Italy's National Fascist Party. The school curriculum promoted Fascist mysticism based on the philosophy of Fideism, the belief that faith and reason were incompatible; Fascist mythology was to be accepted as a "metareality". In 1932, Mussolini described Fascism as "a religious concept of life", saying that Fascists formed a "spiritual community".
Fascist mysticism was a current of political and religious thought in Fascist Italy, based on Fideism, a belief that faith existed without reason, and that Fascism should be based on a mythology and spiritual mysticism. A School of Fascist Mysticism was founded in Milan on April 10, 1930. Active until 1943, its main objective was the training of future Fascist leaders who were indoctrinated in the study of various Fascist intellectuals who tried to abandon the purely political to create a spiritual understanding of Fascism. Fascist mysticism in Italy developed through the work of Niccolò Giani with the decisive support of Arnaldo Mussolini.
The No-Conscription Fellowship was a British pacifist organisation which was founded in London by Fenner Brockway and Clifford Allen on 27 November 1914, following a suggestion by Lilla Brockway, after the First World War had failed to reach an early conclusion. Other prominent supporters included John Clifford, Bruce Glasier, Hope Squire, Bertrand Russell, Robert Smillie and Philip Snowden.
Damaso Pio De Bono was the eighth bishop of Caltagirone in Italy.
Giovanni Battista Pinardi was an Italian Roman Catholic prelate who served as a bishop in Turin serving under three archbishops for the archdiocese. Pinardi studied for the priesthood in Chiari before his ordination in 1903 and served as a pastor until his episcopal appointment in 1916. He collaborated with Catholic Action and served as the vicar-general for the archdiocese from 1924 until Cardinal Maurilio Fossati removed him from the position in 1931 upon the advice of Pope Pius XI. His demotion enabled him to dedicate more time to his pastoral duties in the San Secondo parish church where he served from 1912 until his death. Pinardi tended to the displaced during World War II after a series of bombings in his region and was known for his anti-fascist views which contributed to his demotion from the vicar-general position.