Fr Raphael Williams, who died at Ampleforth on 5th June, was born at Caerleon on 17th July 1891. He was a member of a large family: three of the boys became monks at Ampleforth and a sister became a nun. One brother was killed in the first World War. At Ampleforth, where he went to school (1902-9), he was a contemporary of Jack (Fr Bernard) McElligott and of Reggie (Fr Stephen) Marwood. In scholastic attainment he was outstripped by them both, but like McElligott he was a member of the 1st XI and he played Ophelia to Marwood's Hamlet. In 1909 he received the Benedictine habit at Belmont (at that time the common novitiate for the English Benedictine Congregation) and no doubt it was there and later at St Anselmo's in Rome that he undermined his health as a result of the spartan regime at both places in those days. Yet this did not prevent him reaching the age of eighty one.
Instead of proceeding to the Ampleforth house of studies at Oxford (St Benet's Hall), he was sent by Abbot Oswald Smith to Rome to study philosophy under the redoubtable Fr Gredt, whose two thick volume text book must have been daunting in the extreme, made up as it was of an endless series of interlocking syllogisms. This overdose of the logical approach may have been the main reason for Fr Raphael's disinterestedness in logic and appeal to 'Vision'. The war cut short his studies, and he returned to Ampleforth in the summer of 1914, having had his fill of the scholastic method but never enough of the Master himself, St Thomas. He then took up his theological training under Fr Wilfrid Willson as well as his teaching in the school. One must suppose that in many areas he was an autodidact, with all the freedom and originality such a training creates, but also some lacunae.
In July 1917 he was ordained priest; in November 1920 he was appointed professor of philosophy to the young monks, for a period of three months. This work in fact continued for thirty years. No one who experienced his classes will forget them. He had little use for text books. One's copy was marked down the margin mostly 'wrong' or 'omit'. Each day was a journey into the unknown. His theories were at times brilliant and illuminating, at others outrageous and unintelligible, and not infrequently inaudible. But they were all his own and never dull. Even the most bovine among us were stirred to exclaim or protest in the name of logic or of fact. He did what a good philosophy teacher should do: provoke one to think.
In 1933 he became the first House Master of St Edward's House, where he remained for twenty years; and he is said to have remarked after his first decade, 'I used to think that I had to look after the boys, now I know that they have to look after me'. In fact he took a keen interest in each boy; and while often enough they were somewhat mystified by his comments - or could not hear them - something about him brushed off onto them, and the vast majority, after leaving school, looked back to him with affection, indeed even with veneration. He was concerned about the natural virtues, not least veracity and recognition of one's own limitations. He hammered away at intellectual humility and integrity. Those were the days when the boys came from 'protected' Catholic homes. At school they certainly lived a quasi monastic life, with daily Mass and communal daily prayers; High Mass, Vespers and Benediction on Sundays. Everyone expected it, few positively resisted, most accepted unquestionably. But how were these same boys to face a crisis of faith when they left school? Fr Raphael was fascinating to sixth form boys when he expounded such questions as the relationship between faith and reason in his Religion classes. It is said that one year he launched out as usual, in the first term, on all the objections to the faith. When he resumed after Christmas, to provide the answers, he found that the class had been entirely made up of Christmas-leavers and they had gone. Monsignor Knox used to say of those days that the Ampleforth boy who came up to Oxford did not know the answers to the knotty problems of the faith, but he knew that Fr Raphael did.
Fr Raphael was by nature an artist as well as having an acute analytical mind; though he used to remark that 'when the word synthesis crops up in the conversation it is time to go to bed.' His artistry took the form of water colour painting, which he practised all his life. He had been taught in the school of W. J. Body (a York artist of note), but the major influence on his work was undoubtedly William Birbeck, a distinguished artist, from whom he learned the technique of putting in the shadows (always purple) first. But his paintings were better far than his theories, from the stook-in-the-field period, the Norfolk broads phase, the Workington slum group, the Mells and Oxford series, to the still-life paintings; all of them executed with broad simplicity and sureness of colour and structure. He had the joy - and so did his friends - of seeing his work on show in the York Art Gallery.
On ceasing to be House Master in 1953, he became chaplain to Benedictine nuns of Colwich in the Midlands. There he shared his flat, so he maintained humorously, with an exclaustrated ghost, as the enclosure wall had been shifted to enlarge his quarters. He would give the Community conferences. The Abbot President had to reassure them that they were not going deaf; the transmission was faulty. In 1963, after ten years, he had a spell of four as chaplain to the Benedictine nuns at Teignmouth, where he was also very happy. But then his health began to fail, and therefore he returned to the Abbey.
These last six years he remained the centre of a devoted group of younger monks. His theories were in no way less provocative or profound than they had ever been, from the ignorance of doctors to the danger of red hair, from thinking in the imagination to not playing cricket with a straight bat. He had always been suspicious of intellectuals and esthetes; while 'mud-philosophers' - whoever they were - received undiluted reprobation. With it all there was an underlying playfulness so that one never was quite certain how serious any pronouncement was. Indeed his delight in simple things, flowers and post-cards from friends, visits from old boys or others, a kind of childlikeness endeared him to many. Indeed it was through this power of friendship that he practised best his priestly mission. Many were those who came to him for comfort or reassurance. It was partly that engaging honesty, that brushing aside of irrelevancies, of what he called 'humbug', that genuine concern for the truth, as well as a zest for life and for joy and fun in simple things that brought so many to his room, whether in St Edward's or in the monastery.
Meawhile, one might say, during all that time and across all those changes, lay upon his table the heavy ancient tome, taken out from the monastery library probably in the 1920s, the De Anima of Aristotle. This was the slow smouldering fire of his interest. We must not forget that for years he had belonged to the Catholic Conference for Higher Studies and had spoken at it. Indeed he had been a founder member. This interest in the work of Aristotle was serious. He had hoped to complete a great commentary upon it. Somewhere among his effects must be the precious manuscript. Not much of Fr Raphael's thought has survived in print: an article entitled 'God distinct from the Universe' in one of the series produced by the before mentioned Higher Studies Conference entitled God; another article in The Ampleforth Journal, 'Imagination and the Philosopher' (Summer Number 1931).
All this faded into the background when cancer became apparent in his face. All the fundamental simplicity of his character came to the surface, without loss of that infectious sense of fun and his disconcerting outspokenness. But now the mind was turned to a prolonged examination of conscience. He bore no grudge against God; he displayed no self pity, nor did he crumble under the fear of a final judgment. He became serene, strengthened by his unshakable belief in the mercy of God. Gradually every vestige of self was torn away. With humble acceptance he died, tears welling up in his eyes. The painting was finished, the shadows, the colours, the whole shape. God rest his soul.
He wrote just before the end: The Mercy of God is worth more than a thousand lives relived.
HUGH RAPHAEL WILLIAMS 5 June 1973
1891 17 Jul Born Caerleon
1902-09 Educ Ampleforth
1909 5 Oct Clothed at Belmont
1910 6 Oct Simple Vows
1912 27 May Minor Orders Bishop Hedley
1914 4 Oct Solemn Vows
1915 30 May Subdiaconate
1916 16 Jan Diaconate
1917 15 Jul Priesthood
1912-14 Study of Philosophy in Rome
1920 Nov Taught Philosophy
1921 Officially Professor
1933-53 Housemaster at St Edward's
Served Stearsby & Hovingham
1953 Chaplain at Colwich
1962 Chaplain at Teignmouth
1966 Returned to Ampleforth after falling
1973 5 Jun Died of a cancer in the nose