FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. – Oratorian theologian, b. Calverley (Yorkshire) 28 June 1814, d. London 26 Sept. 1863.
He spent his childhood in Westminster. From Harrow School he passed in 1832 to Balliol College, Oxford. In 1835 he won a fellowship, and in 1837 a prize fellowship at University College, Oxford. In 1836 he won the Newdigate prize with his poem The Knight of St. John. Other volumes of verse (1840-43) won him a reputation as a Wordsworthian. A zealous disciple of Newman, he was ordained in the Anglican Church in 1839. In 1841 he made a long tour of Europe with a pupil, described in Sights and Thoughts in Foreign Churches and among Foreign Peoples (1842), dedicated to Wordsworth whom he greatly admired. On his return he became Anglican rector of Elton (Huntingdonshire).
In 1842 he visited Rome, where Cardinal Acton obtained him a private audience with Gregory XVI, who, with fatherly candour, urged him not to wait for others but to consider his own salvation. His Catholic leanings were evident, and his Life of St. Wilfrid alarmed Protestants. Newman’s conversion (9 Oct. 1843) decided him, and on 17 Nov. 1843 he was received into the Church by Bishop Wareing at Northampton. A small community of converts, soon known as the “Wilfridians,” was formed at Birmingham, which moved to Cotton Hall, Cheadle (Staffordshire), in 1846; F. was elected superior. In 1847 he was ordained priest. In 1849 the Wilfridians became Oratorians at Maryvale and settled in Birmingham. Newman sent part of the enlarged community to London, where he founded an Oratory in King William Street, moving to Brompton in 1854. F. remained superior until his death. He returned to Rome in 1846 and 1852.
F. exercised wide influence at home and abroad as a writer, preacher, theologian, and spiritual director. His books were translated into many languages. Besides various translations, including a notable one of St. Louis Grignion de Montfort’s masterpiece (1863), he wrote 49 lives of saints for the Oratorian hagiographical collection (1847-56). His eight principal works of spiritual theology are still widely read: All for Jesus (1853), Growth in Holiness (1854), The Blessed Sacrament (1855), The Foot of the Cross and The Creator and the Creature (1858), Spiritual Conferences (1859), The Precious Blood (1860). The excellent Italian translation by Canon L. Mussa (8 vols., Turin 1860-81) has been frequently reprinted (Tutto per Gesù, I progressi dell’anima, Il SS. Sacramento, Il piede della Croce, etc.).
Among English Oratorians F. ranks next to Newman, with whom, despite some differences of outlook, his relations were always affectionate. F. was an ultramontanist like Manning and Veuillot, unlike Newman; he had little sympathy for “cisalpine” and “liberal” Catholics such as Lord Acton. His devotion to Pius IX was exemplary. His defect was a certain narrowness of judgment, which led him to impose Italian devotional forms that needlessly provoked English resentment, and a certain tendency to rigorism (e.g., in Growth in Holiness). On the whole, F. was certainly a great servant of God.