Christian Patience

William Bernard Ullathorne was a Benedictine monk and Roman Catholic priest who ministered in Australia from 1833 until 1840 and then returned to his native England, where he was ordained a bishop in 1847 and served as Bishop of Birmingham from 1850 until 1888. He is best known for his catechetical trilogy: The Endowments of Man, The Groundwork of the Christian Virtues, and Christian Patience, published in the 1880s. Christian Patience is presented in twelve lectures. Bishop Ullathorne teaches that Christian patience is both a special virtue and a universal virtue. As a special virtue, it is opposed to two opposite vices: a vice of excess, and a vice of defect. Patience is the virtuous mean between the excess vice of obstinacy and the defect vice of impatience. As a universal virtue, patience in found in all the Christian virtues, as it strengthens and perfects them.