DELANY, SELDEN PEABODY

Author; b. Fond du Lac, Wis., June 24, 1874; d. Highland Mills, N.Y., July 5, 1935. He was the son of Edmund and Evelyn (Peabody) Delany. In 1896 he graduated from Harvard University, where he was converted from Presbyterianism to High Church Episcopalianism. Three years later, after study at Western Theological Seminary, Chicago, Ill., he was ordained to the Episcopal ministry. After serving as curate at Fond du Lac, Wis.; Boston, Mass.; and Menasha and Appleton, Wis., he became dean (1907–15) of the Episcopal cathedral in Milwaukee, Wis.; from 1915 to 1929 he was curate at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, New York City, where he edited the American Church Monthly; he was promoted to rector in 1930. He resigned his rectorship and received conditional baptism on June 24, 1930, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church, New York City. Following study at the Beda College in Rome (1930–34) he was ordained on March 17, 1934. On his return to New York, he became chaplain at Thevenet Hall, Highland Mills, N.Y., where he remained until his death.

Delany had long been a leader of the High Church movement in America, and some 200 Episcopalians, including a dozen members of the clergy, followed him into the Catholic Church. He described the process of his conversion in Why Rome? (1930), where he stated that the primacy of the papacy was the chief obstacle to his conversion. He revealed, too, that he had not previously read Apostolicae curae, Leo XIII's encyclical declaring Anglican orders null and void, having accepted as adequate the reply of the Anglican archbishops to the encyclical. Delany was also the author of Rome from Within (1935) and Married Saints (1935).

[f. d. cohalan]