"The truth alone is worthy of our entire devotion." This is the premise of We Believe, Monsignor Gilbey's celebrated book explaining the fundamental teachings of the Catholic Church. In an age which bends truth to serve its immediate purpose his voice gives clear expression to the age-old meaning of faith and the means of acquiring it.
We Believe is an unusually confident, lucid and elegant read, a tribute to something rare in any age, a long lifetime without doubt or negativity. It is based on the traditional course of instruction given by Monsignor Gilbey to the many converts whom he received into the Church during his thirty-three years as Chaplain to Cambridge University. His special gift for illustrating subtle points with clear examples from his own reading and experience makes the book perennially accessible to Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
First published in a pocket edition by grateful subscribers, the book was later republished in hardback, fulfilling the long-held wish of many that it be introduced to a wider public. For Monsignor Gilbey it summed up his life's work. As he wrote in his ninety-third year, "Anyone who wants to know what I think seriously about almost every subject has only to turn to We Believe, by a Priest."
Born in 1901 of an English father and a Spanish mother, Alfred Newman Gilbey was educated at Beaumont, Trinity College, Cambridge and the Beda College in Rome. He was ordained priest in 1929. He was chaplain to the Catholic undergraduates in the University of Cambridge from 1932 to 1965 and was created a Domestic Prelate in 1950 and a Protonotary Apostolic in 1965. In 1981 he was made an honorary canon of Brentwood Cathedral. He lived in the Travellers' Club for over twenty-five years. In 1994 his Commonplace Book was published: it contains pieces by many authors which were a source of inspiration to him throughout his long and happy life. Shortly before his death in Passiontide 1998 he moved into the care of the sisters of Nazareth House.
His funeral was celebrated in the traditional Roman Rite in the church of the London Oratory, where he had celebrated his daily Mass in the same rite for many years. The Mass was celebrated by one of his spiritual sons, Fr Ronald Creighton-Jobe, and the absolutions were performed by Basil Cardinal Hume. This ceremony, one of the most extraordinary seen in the English Church for thirty years, was attended by many hundreds of people. He is buried in the courtyard of Fisher House, Cambridge, where he was Chaplain for a hundred terms.
We Believe, by Monsignor A.N. Gilbey.
256 pages, paperback. ISBN 1 901157 29 6.
£7.95 ; $13.95 in the U.S.A.
Published by The Saint Austin Press.
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