23 Facts About Joseph McCabe

Joseph Martin McCabe was an English writer and speaker on freethought, after having been a Roman Catholic priest earlier in his life.

Joseph McCabe was "one of the great mouthpieces of freethought in England".

Joseph McCabe criticised Christianity from a rationalist perspective, but was involved in the South Place Ethical Society which grew out of dissenting Protestantism and was a precursor of modern secular humanism.

Joseph McCabe was born in Macclesfield in Cheshire to a family of Irish Catholic background, but his family moved to Manchester while he was still a child.

Joseph McCabe entered the Franciscan order at the age of 15, and spent a year of preliminary study at Gorton Monastery.

Joseph McCabe was recognised as an outstanding scholar of philosophy, and was sent for a year to study at the Catholic University of Louvain.

Joseph McCabe returned to London and resumed priestly and educational duties, until in October 1895 when he was put in charge of the newly founded Franciscan college in Buckingham,.

Joseph McCabe had gradually been losing his faith and eventually left that post and the priesthood in February 1896.

Joseph McCabe wrote a pamphlet on his experiences, From Rome to Rationalism, published in 1897, which he then expanded to book length as Twelve Years in a Monastery.

Joseph McCabe wrote prolifically on science, religion, politics, history and culture, writing nearly 250 books during his life.

Joseph McCabe was respected as a speaker, and gave several thousand lectures in his lifetime.

Joseph McCabe was an advocate of women's rights and worked with Mrs Pankhurst and Mrs Wolstenholme-Elmy on speeches favoring giving British women the right to vote.

Joseph McCabe was active in organizations, although his biographer notes that he had a difficult relationship with some of their leading figures, and consequently relations between Joseph McCabe and various groups could be strained.

Joseph McCabe was an Appointed Lecturer at the South Place Ethical Society, where he could still occasionally be heard after 1934.

In 1900 Joseph McCabe translated the book Riddle of the Universe by Ernst Haeckel.

Joseph McCabe was involved with the Rationalist Association and in 1925 they arranged for him to debate the early Canadian young earth creationist George McCready Price.

Joseph McCabe came to the conclusion that Jesus was an Essenian holy man who was turned into a God over the years by hearsay and oral tradition.

Joseph McCabe claimed that the 14th edition, which had been published in 1929, was devoid of the critical comment about the church that had been in the 11th edition.

Joseph McCabe similarly accused the Columbia Encyclopedia of bias towards the Catholic Church in 1951.

In 1920 Joseph McCabe publicly debated the Spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle on the claims of Spiritualism at Queen's Hall in London.

Joseph McCabe had exposed the tricks of fraud mediums and wrote that Spiritualism has no scientific basis.

Joseph McCabe's article Scientific Men and Spiritualism is a skeptical analysis of the subject and a look at how various scientists such as William Crookes and Cesare Lombroso had been duped into believing Spiritualism by mediumship tricks.

Joseph McCabe wrote the book Spiritualism: A Popular History from 1847.