Previous studies of the life and thought of Edmund Bishop (1846-1917), an English liturgiologist and convert to Catholicism, have underplayed the change in his attitude from positive to negative with respect to the institutional Catholic Church. This crucial shift in thinking occurred during 1899-1901, and is clearly reflected in his own writings. From then on, he differentiated between the institution that was the Catholic Church and Catholicism as a religion. Although he remained faithful to the latter, his diaries and letters preserve an intentional record of his severe criticism of the Catholic hierarchy. Bishop's views represent those of a layman and of an informed observer at a time when the Catholic Church was confronting the Modernist challenge.

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