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The expression cradle Catholic designates one who is born into the Roman Catholic Church—i.e., a Catholic ‘from the cradle’.
—Cf. also the expression cradle Anglican.
The expression cradle Catholic occurs, for example, in the following from Cradle Catholics and native-born Americans, by John Huer, published in the Greenfield Recorder (Greenfield, Massachusetts, USA) of Saturday 8th April 2023 [page A6, column 1]:
Cradle Catholics appear to care more about what the Pope says than what Jesus said, and more about the rules of the church catechism rather than the commandments of Christian morality; they seem to lack the fresh energy, curiosity and desire for deeper religious experiences, more commonly displayed in the newcomers, and are content with established routines and archaic ritualism.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression cradle Catholic that I have found:
1-: From an account of a meeting of the Converts’ Aid Society held in the Picton Hall, Liverpool, about “the sacrifices incurred by Anglican clergymen when they joined the Catholic Church”—published in the Nottingham & Midland Catholic News (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England) of Saturday 8th March 1930 [page 1, column 4]:
—Note: Founded in 1896, the Converts’ Aid Society (now St Barnabas Society) gives pastoral and financial help to non-Catholic clergy and religious who have converted to Catholicism:
Fr. Joseph Howard, of Liverpool, said he would like to pay his tribute to the valour and heroism of those men who had joined the Church at such material cost. […]
Cradle Catholics ought out of gratitude for that privilege, to do what they could to help these converts.
2-: From a letter by a person who had converted to Roman Catholicism, published in the Freeman’s Journal: Australia’s Catholic Newspaper (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 30th April 1931 [page 15, column 3]:
Only the incurably religious can find their way out of Protestantism into the Catholic Church. Only the irresistible driving power of interest—which must be the prompting of Divine grace—can enable an honest seeker to enter upon an inquiry large enough to show him what the Church is and what she is not. And when his eyes are opened, only restless, yearning desire, the sweet tyranny of the Good One, will force him inch by inch over the threshold. And the process is a cruel one, as painful for the soul as the process of resuscitation is for the half-frozen body.
This is a matter that cradle Catholics are profoundly ignorant of, and by many of them the convert is despised and tolerated. A good old Catholic once said to me in a whisper, “Don’t tell anyone you’re a convert—keep that to yourself.”
3-: From What Is A Catholic To Do? An Open Arena For The Brave, by Peter Belloc, published in the Nottingham & Midland Catholic News (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England) of Saturday 17th February 1934 [page 4, column 5]:
CRADLE CATHOLICS AND CONVERTS.
So in approaching the question it will be obvious that one has first to obtain some knowledge of one’s own Faith as seen by those who do not share it. To the “born” Catholic, until he becomes familiar with men and the world, it is almost impossible to conjure upon the retina of the mind’s-eye what human existence could be like without the Catholic Church—how, even, it could be endured as it is! The converts, men or women, who have existed without the Faith, and who have found and loved it, have behind them a wilderness upon which to look back. Clearly, these two must approach the same problem from completely different view-points.
4-: From Those “Panting Hart” Prayer Books. A Plea for Something More Worthy of the Faith, by Douglas Newton, published in the Nottingham & Midland Catholic News (Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England) of Saturday 3rd March 1934 [page 4, column 2]:
—Note: The British mountaineer Arnold Lunn (1888-1974) related his conversion to Catholicism in Now I See (London: Sheed & Ward, 1933):
Reading such books one recalls the little groan Mr Arnold Lunn utters in his brilliant and inspiring “Now I See.”
“The first Catholic prayer book I opened gave me rather a shock. I contrasted it regretfully with the Anglican prayer book, in which beautiful prayers are rendered in noble English prose.”
A great many “cradle” Catholics as well as converts like Mr Lunn, suffer in the same way.
5-: From A Catholic Plea For Reunion. An Olive Branch With Prickles, by Rev. Thomas Gilby, published in The Leicester Catholic News (Leicester, Leicestershire, England) of Saturday 5th May 1934 [page 13, column 1]:
The modern complications of devotion are adopted by many Anglicans in that very group which is the nearest to reunion, and many of them do this, not only in supposed imitation of Rome, but because they find such devotions effective. Who introduced us to so many modern devotions, cradle Catholics or the converts from Anglicanism? What more sober and solid and simple than the old North-Country English Catholic?
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