MCNABB, VINCENT

Dominican theologian, spiritual writer, and preacher;b. Portaferry, County Down, Ireland, July 8, 1868; d. London, June 17, 1943. He was baptized Joseph, one of 11 children of Joseph McNabb, sea captain, and Ann Shields. After early education at St. Malachy's, Belfast, and St. Cuthbert's, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he entered the Dominican Order at Woodchester, Gloucestershire, and was given the name Vincent. He studied at Woodchester until his ordination in 1891 and then at Louvain (1891–94), where he took his lectorate in theology. After the completion of his studies he returned to England and taught in the Dominican studia at Woodchester and Hawkesyard until 1906. He was then assigned to parish work, first in London (1906–08) and then in Leicester (1908–14). This was followed by another period of teaching at Hawkesyard (1914–20), after which he returned to London, where he spent the remainder of his life occupied with preaching, lecturing, and writing.

Much of his writing and preaching was concerned with the social question, but he was also a popular retreat master and wrote a number of popular works on the spiritual life and some books on theological and scriptural subjects. In 1916 McNabb began a long association with Hilaire belloc, Eric gill, and Hilary Pepler—and later with g. k. chesterton—through which he came to see in distributism, the land and craft movements, the solution to many contemporary social problems. In his last years he became less utopian and accepted some elements of industrial society. He was relentless in self-discipline and in his practice of poverty, going everywhere on foot if that were possible, and wearing his homespun habit; his open-air preaching made him a well known figure in London. His character remains enigmatic: he was a holy man and an eccentric, a zealot and a romantic, humble and pugnacious, loving and intolerant, sincere and histrionic; but always a pastoral priest, a lover of the poor, a conscientious religious, and a man of prayer.

His principal published works include: Oxford Conferences on Prayer (London 1903; reedited as The Science of Prayer, Ditchling 1936) and Oxford Conferences on Faith (London 1905), both of which were republished in one book as Faith and Prayer (London 1953); From a Friar's Cell (Oxford 1923); The Church and the Land (London 1926); Thoughts Twice-Dyed (London 1930); The Craft of Prayer (London 1935); The Craft of Suffering (London 1936); and A Life of Jesus Christ our Lord (London 1938).

Bibliography: Blackfriars 24 (Aug. 1943) 284–318, memorial number. e. a. siderman, A Saint in Hyde Park (Westminster, Md. 1950). f. valentine, Father Vincent McNabb, O.P. (Westminster, Md. 1955).

[s. bullough]