ABSTRACT
The twentieth century opened with a face-to-face confrontation between one of the liberal Catholics and the English ecclesiastical authorities. In January 1900, St. George Mivart published two articles challenging a number of Catholic doctrines. 1 In addition to the recent events involving Rome, personal factors occasioned his outburst. In 1899 the Index had been reissued with his earlier articles on hell remaining under censure. Moreover, he was suffering from diabetes. In the face of death, Mivart, having written works of Catholic apologetics before, felt obliged to make his latest convictions known to his readers. He thought science would bring about radical alterations in Christian belief in the future, and hoped to prepare the way for these changes. He wished to encourage broad open-mindedness and scrupulous honesty and candor in the Church, which he recognized as still possessing enormous power and influence as a moral agent. 2 Most significantly, his two articles were an attempt to discover whether he and other persons arriving at the same conclusions regarding Catholic belief could remain within the Roman Communion.
