Faith of our fathers! living still

Faith of our fathers! living still. Frederick William Faber* (1814-1863). Published in Jesus and Mary: or, Catholic Hymns for Singing and Reading (1849), and later reissued in Faber’s Oratory Hymns (1854). It was conceived as part of a project to provide Roman Catholics with accessible vernacular hymns, at a time when selections from Bishop Richard Challoner’s Garden of the Soul (1740) were still the staple of non-liturgical musical expression. In its original form, it spoke to Catholics of their history, and conflicts (‘living still/In spite of dungeon, fire and sword’; ‘Our Fathers, chained in prisons dark,/ Were still in heart and conscience free’), as well as their aspirations (‘Mary’s...