Many individuals freely give their time and expertise to ensure the running of the Catholic Archives Society and to ensure that its aims and purposes are successfully fulfilled. Its primary aims are to promote the care of the archives of the Roman Catholic Church, so enabling them:
- To be used for the efficient administration of the diocese, parish, religious foundation or lay society they concern
- To be available for research and cultural uses
The Society is not funded by any outside agency and its officers are strictly honorary. Its income comes from subscriptions, profits from conference and training days and the sale of publications. The Society is not an archive repository and does not hold or collect archives.
Constitution
The constitution of the Catholic Archive Society was last amended at the 2021 AGM and can be found here
The Council
The Council members meet several times a year. The current Council is comprised of the following members:
President : Fr Geoffrey Scott
Abbot of Douai Abbey (1998 – 2022). Titular abbot of Lindisfarne and parish priest of Alcester (Warks). He serves as Benedictine librarian, archivist, and congregational annalist. He lectures in church history at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford and previously at St Mary’s College, Oscott, and St John’s Seminary, Wonersh. He is also a member of the Patrimony Committee of the English and Welsh Bishops’ Conference, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Historical Society.
Officers
Chair: Jonathan Bush
Vice Chair: Lawrence Gregory
Treasurer and Membership Secretary: Jon Purcell
Secretary: Claire Marsland
Journal Editor: Isabel Keating
Council members
Annaig Boyer
Jenny Smith
Fr Paul Harrison
Naomi Johnson
Peter Sims-Coomber (co-opted)
Daniel Flint (co-opted)
Our Patrons
Lay Patron: Dr Carmen Mangion.
Senior lecturer in the department of History, Classics and Archaeology at Birkbeck University. Co-founder in 2001 of the Historians of Women Religious in Britain and Ireland (H-WRBI), a network of approximately 300 international scholars connected via an electronic list and a website (http://www.history.ac.uk/history-women-religious/).
Religious Institute Patron: Sister Barbara Jeffery.
Former archivist for the Union of the Sisters of Mercy, Great Britain (1999 – 2009) and the Institute of Our Lady of Mercy (2011 – 2013). She held office as the Chair of the Catholic Archives Society, and in 2007 collaborated with Jack Scarisbrick from the Birmingham Diocesan Historical Commission, on The History of the Diocese of Birmingham (1850-2000).
Episcopal Patron: Bishop David Oakley.
Ordained in 1980, Rector of St Mary’s College, Oscott (2013 – 2020). In January 2020, he was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Northampton, and is a supporter of Catholic archives and history.
Historic Patrons:
Our Historic Patrons are St Bede, Hemming and Mariota Blackburn , For more information on these patrons and how we came to adopt them, please click here
The Society has no formal links either with the Bishops’ Conferences in the countries where its members live or with the archives profession. Contacts with the latter are maintained by CAS members who are professional archivists.
catholicarchivesociety.org 