Sword of the Spirit was a forerunner of the Catholic Institute of International Relations, now Progressio, founded by Cardinal Hinsley

Arthur Hinsley

Arthur Hinsley was an English prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Westminster from 1935 until his death, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1937.-Biography:...

 in August 1940. It has been suggested that launching Sword of the Spirit was "Probably Hinsley’s most memorable act".

The broader purpose of the movement was to work to put Christian social teachings into effect as an alternative to totalitarianism and extremism

Extremism

Extremism is any ideology or political act far outside the perceived political center of a society; or otherwise claimed to violate common moral standards...

 of both the Right and the Left. Its more immediate aim was to promote awareness and acceptance of the five Peace Points proposed by Pius XII soon after his election in 1939: the defense of small nations, the right to life, disarmament, some new kind of League of Nations, and a plea for the moral principles of justice and love.

Although founded by the cardinal, the movement was intended as a lay organization. The first vice-president was Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Henry Dawson was a British independent scholar, who wrote many books on cultural history and Christendom. Christopher H. Dawson has been called "the greatest English-speaking Catholic historian of the twentieth century".-Life:...

, but practical organization was in the hands of Richard O'Sullivan K.C., Barbara Ward

Barbara Ward

Barbara Mary Ward , in later life Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, was a British economist and writer interested in the problems of developing countries. She urged Western governments to share their prosperity with the rest of the world and in the 1960s turned her attention to environmental...

, and Professor A. C. F. Beales of London University.

The aims behind the movement were set out in a letter to The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

(December 21, 1941) signed jointly by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York (Cosmo Gordon Lang and William Temple

William Temple (archbishop)

William Temple was a priest in the Church of England. He served as Bishop of Manchester , Archbishop of York , and Archbishop of Canterbury ....

), by Cardinal Hinsley, and by the Moderator of the Free Churches (W. H. Armstrong). Hinsley hoped to make the movement ecumenical, organizing two interdenominational mass meetings in London in May 1941, but in the course of 1941 the Vatican insisted that Catholic and Protestant social movements be segregated, and a parallel movement under the name Religion and Life was inaugurated for non-Catholics.

Sword of the Spirit was subsumed into the Catholic Institute for International Relations in 1965.

Further references

• Joan Keating, "Discrediting the 'Catholic State': British Catholics and the Fall of France", in Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789, edited by Frank Tallett and Nicholas Atkin. London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1996. ISBN 1852851007