Maurice Child was a prominent

Anglo-Catholic Anglo-Catholicism comprises beliefs and practices that emphasise the Catholicism, Catholic heritage (especially pre-English Reformation, Reformation roots) and identity of the Church of England and various churches within Anglicanism. Anglo-Ca ...

priest in the

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in the inter-war years. Child was born in 1884 and educated at

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo (South Somerset), River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish include ...

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, and Cuddesdon College. He was ordained by the Bishop of London in 1909. He served curacies at St Andrew's Haverstock Hill,

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; St. Michael, Plymouth; Holy Trinity, Sloane Street; and St. Mary, Pimlico. He was a librarian at Pusey House, Oxford and General Secretary of the English Church Union. He was appointed as Rector of St Dunstan, Cranford in 1935. At this time he was much involved with the Society of SS. Peter and Paul, a group within Anglo-Catholicism which promoted a Tridentine interpretation of the

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and whose motto was "Back to

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". He was the author of numerous tracts published by the society, often with illustrations by Martin Travers. Child was much travelled. In 1912 he took part in the Yale Expedition to Peru. Before the First World War he worked in

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, the South Sea Islands and Australasia. During the First World War he was with the British Expeditionary Force in France serving as a liaison officer. After the Armistice he was in the United States and in 1922 went to India and Burma. He also organized the first Anglican

pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a travel, journey to a holy place, which can lead to a personal transformation, after which the pilgrim returns to their daily life. A pilgrim (from the Latin ''peregrinus'') is a traveler (literally one who has come from afar) w ...

to the Holy Land in 1924. A well known socialite, he was nicknamed by clerical colleagues the "Playboy of the Western Church". He died in 1950 after falling down the stairs at a friend's dinner party.

References

* Michael Yelton, ''Outposts of the Faith'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Child, Maurice 1884 births 1950 deaths English Anglo-Catholics 20th-century English Anglican priests Place of birth missing Anglo-Catholic clergy Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society