May the Fourth Be With You!

I ordered a few booklets from the Catholic Truth Society in late March and they arrived in early April. One of them is just perfect for today, since this is, in England, the Feast of ALL the Martyrs of England and Wales (in Wales, the Feast is on October 25). The only disappointment for me is that the protomartyrs of the English Reformation era are not highlighted in these devotions. Father John S. Hogan wrote this booklet of prayers to highlight individual saints and the whole cohort of the martyrs of England, Wales, and Scotland. He provides brief biographies, prayers, novenas, litanies for martyrs before AND after the English Reformation. Thus the booklet includes St. Alban, St. Winifred, and St. Thomas a Becket. Among the English, Welsh, and Scottish martyrs are Blessed Margaret Pole, St. Edmund Arrowsmith, St, Margaret Ward, Blessed John Roche, St. John Ogilvie, Blessed Humphrey Pritchard, and Blessed Richard Flower.

Please check out my latest blog post at the National Catholic Register today. BTW: Anna Mitchell is repeating our interview from yesterday on the Son Rise Morning Show during the national EWTN broadcast hour and we focused on one of those protomartyrs, St. John Houghton. The others who were hanged, drawn, and quartered on May 4 in 1535 were the Carthusians Augustine Webster and Robert Lawrence, the Briggitine chaplain Richard Reynolds, and the parish priest, John Haile. The first four were canonized in 1970; John Haile was beatified, along with his companions, in a large group of martyrs (54) by Pope Leo XIII on December 29, 1886.