Frederick Oakeley

Frederick Oakeley (5 September 1802 – 30 January 1880) was an English Roman Catholic convert, priest, and author. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1828 and in 1845 converted to the Church of Rome, becoming Canon of the Westminster Diocese in 1852. He is best known for his translation of the Christmas carol Adeste Fideles ("O Come, All Ye Faithful") from Latin into English.

Early life The youngest child of Sir Charles Oakeley, 1st Baronet,

The year 1845 was a turning-point in Oakeley's life. As a fellow of Balliol he had joined in the election to a fellowship there of his lifelong friend and former pupil Archibald Campbell Tait, the future primate; but Tait had signed, with three others, the first protest against Tract XC. The furore over this last Tract led Oakeley, like Ward, to despair of his church and university; and in two pamphlets, published separately at the time both in London and Oxford, he asserted that he held, "as distinct from teaching, all Roman doctrine". For this avowal he was cited before the court of arches by the Bishop of London. His license was withdrawn, and he was suspended from all clerical duty in the province of Canterbury until he had "retracted his errors" (July 1845).

Catholic In September 1845 Oakeley joined John Henry Newman's community at Littlemore in Oxford, and on 29 October was received into the Roman communion in the little chapel in St Clement's, Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge. On 31 October he was confirmed at Birmingham by Nicholas Wiseman. From January 1846 to August 1848 he was a theological student in the seminary of the London district, St Edmund's College, Ware. In the summer of 1848 he joined the staff of the newly-built St George's Cathedral, Southwark; on 22 January 1850 he took charge of St John's, Islington; in 1852, on the establishment of the new hierarchy under Wiseman as cardinal-archbishop, he was created a canon of the Westminster diocese, and held this office for nearly thirty years, till his death at the end of January 1880, aged 77.

Works Oakeley published 42 works. Before his conversion were: Whitehall Chapel Sermons (1837) Devotions Commemorative of the Most Adorable Passion of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (1842) Laudes Diurnæ; the Psalter and Canticles in the Morning and Evening Services, set and pointed to the Gregorian Tones by Richard Redhead, with a preface by Oakeley on antiphonal chanting (1843)

Also a number of articles contributed to the British Critic.

After his conversion he brought out many books in support of Catholicism, including: The Ceremonies of the Mass (1855) a standard work at Rome, where it was translated into Italian by Lorenzo Santarelli, and published by authority; The Church of the Bible (1857) The Order and Ceremonial of the Most Holy and Adorable Sacrifice of the Mass: Explained in a Dialogue Between a Priest and a Catechumen (1859) Lyra Liturgica (1865) Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement (1865) The Priest to the Mission (1871) Catholic Worship: A Manual of Popular Instruction on the Ceremonies and Devotions of the Church (1872) The Voice of Creation (1876)

He was a constant contributor to the Dublin Review and The Month. To Cardinal Manning's Essays on Religious Subjects (1865) he contributed The Position of a Catholic Minority in a non-Catholic Country. The last article he wrote was one in Time (March 1880), on Personal Recollections of Oxford from 1820 to 1845 (reprinted in Lilian M. Quiller-Couch's Reminiscences of Oxford, 1892, Oxf. Hist. Soc.) His Youthful Martyrs of Rome, a verse drama in five acts (1856), was adapted from Cardinal Wiseman's Fabiola.