Catholic Evidence Guild
Organization
The Catholic Evidence Guild is a loose international association of Roman Catholic lay volunteers which researches and presents explanations of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. Their objective is to address incorrect impressions about the Church and its teachings. Individual groups are subject to the respective diocesan bishop.
History
The organisation was founded in the Diocese of Westminster, England towards the end of 1918. By 1925 there were 20 to 30 branches throughout England. That year Maisie Ward published a practical training outline.
The Westminster branch has spoken regularly at Speakers' Corner since its inception. Prospective speakers were put through a strict training system by the Guild, with the goal of enabling "the ordinary Catholic to explain the truths of his religion in such a way as to reach the understanding of the crowd."
A branch was formed in New York City by students of Fordham University, which in 1931 undertook radio broadcasts published pamphlets, and wrote magazine articles. Their first outdoor meeting was held in 1936 at Columbus Circle. Guild member Paul Dearing, who worked for the National Catholic Welfare Council War Relief was one of fourteen people killed July 28, 1945 when a B-25 crashed into the Council's offices in the Empire State Building.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Catholic Evidence Guild” as organization. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as organization. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5053157. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1918, 1925, 1931 and 1936.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Catholic Evidence Guild”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Catholic Evidence Guild primary sources, Catholic Evidence Guild archive and Catholic research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Catholic Evidence Guild” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.