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Essays in English

by Ida Friederike Görres
The Church

"A Letter on the Church"

1946, translated/adapted in 1949: Dublin Review 223, no. 446 (Winter 1949): 71–89. 

Note: this translation omits some sections from the German edition; a new, complete translation of this letter along with Görres's response in 1947 is forthcoming.

Additional essays on the Church by Görres, such as "Demolition Troops in the Church" and "Trusting the Church" may be found in the book Bread Grows in Winter.

Liturgy, Priesthood

Does Modern Man Have a Capacity for Liturgy?

(1966, translated in 2022 by Jennifer Bryson)

Women in Holy Orders?  (1965, UK) /

"Women As Priests?" This Woman Says 'No.'" (1965, USA)

Laywoman's View of Priestly Celibacy (1966)

in Theology Digest 14, no. 1 (Spring 1966): 54–59.

This article  is a paraphrase of several passages from the book Is Celibacy Outdated? by Görres (1965).

Marriage and Family, Sex and the Sexes

“Satanic," “An atheistic doctrine of woman”: A Review of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1951)

Translated by Jan C. Bentz and Jennifer Sue Bryson. Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy. Volume 49, Issue 3, 2023.

Ida Görres on the History of the Family

Ida Görres, "History of the Family," trans. Barbara Waldstein-Wartenberg, in The Chesterton Review, Volume 35, Issue 1/2, Spring/Summer 2009, 277-279.

This is an excerpt from Broken Lights: Diaries and Letters; Görres develops the ideas in this passage in more depth in her 1971 book What Binds Marriage Forever (English translation forthcoming).  The full text of Broken Lights is available at Archive.org.

God and Faith

The Wild Orchid and Christendom in the Novels of Sigrid Undset

(1930, translated in 2022 by Jennifer Bryson)

St. Joan

This English translation of this essay essay was first published in Görres's book The Cloister and the World  (1935),  93–110. It was translated by Harriette Eleanor Kennedy. It was re-published as Ida Coudenhove. “St. Joan.” In Saints Are Not Sad: Forty Biographical Portraits. Edited by Frank Sheed. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1949, 257–269; republished in 2023 by Cluny Media.

Of the Homelessness of God

in Life of the Spirit 4, No. 42 (December 1949), 4:255-264. 

The Believer's Unbelief, adapted by A.Z. Serrand

A discussion of faith and Reinhold Schneider. This text consists of commentary by Fr. A.Z. Serrand as well as passages from an essay written by Görres; these passages are a translation into English from French of a text that was previously translated from German into French. A new translation of the entire essay from German to English is forthcoming.

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© 2021 by Jennifer Bryson

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