Looking Forward to the Weekend

This year's Midwest Catholic Family Conference presents some great speakers: Scott Hahn, Steve Ray, Monica Miller, Rachel Balducci, Tim Staples (who comes every year), Reverend Dennis McManus, and Raymond Arroyo. Mr. Arroyo will make two presentations--one on Saturday about fiction as a means of evangelization and another on Sunday about Mother Mary Angelica, the foundress of EWTN and two religious orders.

Inspired by Raymond Arroyo's Facebook announcement of a good deal on the eBook, I purchased the final installment of his biography his former boss: Mother Angelica: Her Grand Silence: The Last Years and Living Legacy. (Available for a limited time only at the special price.)

As he notes, EWTN fades to the background as Mother Angelica resigns as CEO of her broadcast empire and then after she suffers a stroke that leaves her speechless. She also has to retire as the Abbess of her community after a trip to Japan during which she is severely injured and ends up bedridden. There is a struggle for leadership and control within her community, the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration, between two sisters. Eventually, both of them leave the community, other sisters left Hanceville, Alabama to found new houses of Poor Clares, the number of postulants decreases, and the community merges with another house of Poor Clares from Charlotte, North Carolina, whose Abbess becomes the leader of the combined house in Hanceville.

Some reviewers (as you may see on Amazon.com) don't like Arroyo airing this "dirty laundry". They think it reflects poorly on Mother Angelica. Canonized saints like St. Alphonsus Liquouri and St. Francis of Assisi have endured struggles in their community, maintaining their vision, and even their influence in the orders they've founded. When her cause for canonization opens in a few years, her faithfulness and suffering will be the foundation of the declaration that she is a Servant of God.

In the course of this book, Arroyo details Mother Angelica's physical sufferings and the dutiful care her sisters give her inside the cloistered convent. He also provides details of reports of spiritual manifestations, visions, and attacks of the devil. Arroyo includes excerpts from the many letters received attesting to her influence on the lives of viewers and listeners to EWTN, where her old series are still rerun. He dedicates a chapter to how he worked for Mother Angelica and how she influenced him. The last chapter describes her very last days of agony during the Holy Week of 2016. The book exhibits great transparency and honesty about her love of God, her faithfulness to His inspirations, and her personality.

I have to admit that her story and her written works have appealed to me much more than her broadcast appearances, her old shows that EWTN airs on television and radio. Arroyo explains her importance for Catholics in the United States and around the world faithfully and loyally.

Apologetics: Tradition at the Spiritual Life Center

At the Spiritual Life Center of the Diocese of Wichita on Tuesday, August 22 at 7:00 p.m.: 

Apologia: The Merit of Tradition
Defending the Faith in the 21st Century
Stephanie A. Mann

Apologizing isn’t saying “I’m Sorry.”

apologia or ἀπολογία (Greek): a speech in defense

An apology, in the classical sense, is a reasoned defense of the faith.

Join Dusty Gates, M.A., and guest presenters for these sessions of apologetic dialogue. Each session will address a different topic, pertinent to 21st century Catholics, which we have the need and obligation to be able to defend and explain: firstly for ourselves, secondly to our families and religious brethren, and thirdly to the greater public who may inquire of us; either as seekers of the faith, or as its attackers.

Protestants and Catholics alike often ask, "Where is that Catholic Church teaching in the Bible?" Thus, even Catholics are influenced by one of the basic tenets of the Protestant Reformation: sola scriptura, citing the Holy Bible as the only source of authority in Christianity. The Catholic Church has consistently taught that there are two sources of authority in the Church: the Tradition of the Church and the Holy Bible, formed and canonized by that Tradition. This month's Apologia at the Spiritual Life Center, presented by Stephanie A. Mann, will explore this teaching and look at how even Protestants have Tradition in their communities' authority for being a Christian.

$10 admission: online, by phone, or at the door. 7pm-8:30pm.

Each session features a one hour presentation on one topic, followed by 15-30 minutes for Q/A and discussion of this topic, and/or any topic pertaining to apologetics.

Seems natural that someone interested in Church History would be interested in Tradition! In preparation for this presentation next month, I've been reading Yves Congar's The Meaning of Tradition. Congar, a Dominican and periti at the Second Vatican Council, wrote two longer works on Tradition: La Tradition et les traditions: essai historique and La Tradition et les traditions: essai théologique, combined in the English translation as Tradition and Traditions: An historical and a theological essay. Ignatius Press provides an excerpt from The Meaning of Tradition, the introduction, here.

One of Henry VIII's "Loose-Ends": Blessed Margaret Pole

Last summer, I participated in a blog-tour for Susan Higginbotham's Margaret Pole: The Countess in the Tower. I finally received my hard-cover review copy this week!

Higginbotham's popular biography fortunately eschews some the pitfalls of imagining what Pole thought, how she felt, etc. The author tells the story briskly, explaining family relationships, changing fortunes of power and influence--the whole up and down on Fortune's Wheel that noble families experienced toward the end of the Wars of the Roses and the Tudor Dynasty. Margaret Pole, since she was a Plantagenet of the House of York, was in the midst of these changes from her childhood, not as an active participant, but at the beginning, almost as a pawn. Higginbotham notes that young Margaret and her brother had no powerful men to protect them or to support their legitimate claim to the throne, even during Richard III's reign. She survives her family's fall and even her brother's imprisonment in the Tower by Henry VII because of that vulnerability. Henry VII marries her off to a trusted courtier, Richard Pole, and she and he settle down to serve the king and have babies.

I wish the book would have included family trees for the major players. It is well illustrated.

When Henry VIII comes to the throne, he restores the widowed Margaret to her family holdings and gives her the title Countess of Salisbury. Higginbotham describes the households and the personnel of Margaret's estates. I wish she could have reconstructed what a day at one of Margaret's estates was like--what did she do everyday to manage her household, etc.

Her story is interwoven with Katherine of Aragon's and Mary Tudor's and thus with the whole King's Great Matter. Higginbotham's retelling of this sad story is aided by her restraint, but sometimes by necessity, Margaret Pole fades to the background. The family connections become the focus, as again, Margaret did not actively oppose Henry VIII's destruction of his marriage and family, his campaign of terror against any who did oppose him: the Carthusians, Thomas More, John Fisher, and a few other brave souls, or even his religious changes. Her sons participated in some of the trials. I do appreciate Higginbotham's comment that Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother, would have been shocked and dismayed to see John Fisher, the holy and scholarly Bishop of Rochester, so horribly treated and executed.

On her own estates, Margaret maintained the status quo of Catholic life, holding off any "Protestant" ideas in the person of an Evangelical cleric, but she did not participate in any resistance against Henry VIII's changes to religious practice.

Higginbotham believes that Pole's sons were involved in the Exeter Conspiracy and did make statements about the king soon dying of his leg wound or the need to have a new monarch. Reginald Pole did place his mother and family in an incredibly dangerous position with his attack on Henry's Supremacy, citing him as another Nero and warning him about suffering Richard III's fate. But Margaret, in all her statements, knowing Henry VIII's power to make and unmake, was clear that she would not participate in any rebellion against the monarch who had restored her lands and title. She would not be a traitor. Those who questioned her recognized that she was formidable in her own defense. Higginbotham includes the chilling detail that Henry VIII, wanting to leave London with his fifth queen, Catherine Howard, on a progress to the North needed to take care of any loose-ends, and thus Margaret was beheaded by an incompetent headsman, suffering great violence and pain. Well, when you know that Henry will find out more about his fifth wife soon after that progress, you know that more loose-ends will have to be dealt with.

One issue I have with the book: I think that Higginbotham should have recognized the importance of Hazel Pierce's scholarly biography, Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541: Loyalty, Lineage and Leadership. She cites Pierce often enough and should have explained what makes her book distinctive to that earlier work. When I first saw this book announced by Amberley, the subtitle indicated a correction to a recent historical novel by Philippa Gregory, The King's Curse, and the cover did not cut off the top of the figure representing Margaret. Perhaps when the book had that purpose its relevance and impact was greater. It is well-written and achieves the purpose of telling the story of Margaret Pole, offering another perspective on the multiple horrors of Henry VIII's reign, but it lacks a certain significance.

St. James Priory and the Dudley Family

In honor of the Feast of St. James the Greater, some words about the Cluniac Priory of St. James in the West Midlands founded by Gervase Paganell in honor of St. Thomas of Canterbury, according to Gervase's father's wishes. Paganell was the First Lord Dudley, but he rebelled against Henry II during the Great Revolt of Henry's sons in 1173-74 and never returned to his castle after Henry had it destroyed. This website for the Friends of Dudley Castle describes how the Cluniac monks took over the role of the feudal lord in the nearby community:

For 50 years the barons stayed away from Dudley and the Prior of St James took on the responsibility of running the town's civil and religious life. Gervase had just founded the Borough (town) and being new it was a little unsteady in its development. The Prior being a scholarly man helped it to get through these early problems. As every market town had at least one annual fair he got permission to hold one in Dudley on July 15th. This was St James Day, the Apostle that the Priory was dedicated to. Close to where the fountain stands today, stocks were built. These were a wooden contraption in which to lock up people who were not law-abiding. Just to remind the market people God was always watching them a stone cross stood next to the stocks.

Thanks to this help the town began to grow and prosper but it was in other ways that the Priory helped with the town's growth. Medieval society was not one in which much thought was given to protecting peoples welfare. The church began to take on this role. The monks built a hospital (on the west range of the cloister, next to the great west door). In those days hospitals were not only for the sick. One role it took was a place where travellers could have a bed for the night and a meal, (normally free of charge). Another was a place where old people could retire, (they would help pay for this by handing over their property to the monks). But of course there was a place for the sick and a monk (like Brother Cadmon in the fictional stories) was a herbalist who made medicines. Given the knowledge at the time many of these people were terminal cases and a small part of the building was reserved for the dying. It was a small, quiet room with paintings on the walls of the various saints who would protect the person on his/her entering the next world.

Please read the rest there. The ruins are of course picturesque, and this news story describes how an app can help visitors understand the background of Priory Park, in which they are situated. Yes, there's an app for that; more information about Priory Park here.

When the Priory was suppressed by Henry VIII, John Dudley, later the Duke of Northumberland received the buildings and land. When was executed in 1553, the Priory buildings fell into disrepair.

Image credit for Priory Ruins.

St. James the Greater, pray for us!

Tyndale, More, and Venomous Words

The Pathway, a publication of the Missouri Baptist Convention, is running a series of stories commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. In this post, the focus is on William Tyndale and Thomas More:

In 1529, the year before Tyndale printed the Pentateuch, Thomas More—an English lawyer who was on the king’s council and who would soon be named Lord Chancellor of England—wrote a lengthy dialogue attacking evangelical heretics like Luther and Tyndale. Soon Tyndale responded with a brief answer to More’s dialogue. And, again, More replied with a Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, a work that trudged along for half a million venomous words.

Ironically, Tyndale may have considered More, the famous author of The Utopia, a friend of reform little more than a decade earlier. Indeed, he seems betrayed by More’s attacks. But, although he was friendly with famous Christian humanists and was no particular lover of the pope, More always believed that the hierarchical Roman church was the only guarantor of truth and order in the world. If the church falls, the world will collapse into chaos. Thus, the church must be defended vehemently.

It is no wonder then that some—though not all—historians have argued that More himself employed Henry Phillips, who betrayed Tyndale to his death. In October 1536, after being imprisoned for more than a year, Tyndale—a martyr for Reformation truths—was strangled and then burned at the stake.

But by the time of Tyndale’s death, More had been dead for a year—a Catholic martyr beheaded by the authority of King Henry VIII.

I'm glad to see the author clear More of employing Henry Phillips. But he needed to make it clear: If Tyndale had been imprisoned for more than a year by October 1536, that means the betrayal took place in 1535: Thomas More had been in the Tower of London since April of 1534 and had been out of office since 1532.

The author also doesn't give the full context of the exchange of publications between More and Tyndale: although Ben Hawkins refers to More's "half a million venomous words" in his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, he does not describe the venom of Tyndale's response to the Dialogue—some of those 500,000 venomous words may indeed be Tyndale’s, because More took each argument in Tyndale’s 1531 An Answer to Thomas More’s Dialogue and answered it point by point.

In his Reformation Divided, Eamon Duffy looks at the Confutation and notes the effort and detail with which More labored on this work. As this reviewer sums up Duffy's effort to explain More's effort:

Duffy takes for his study perhaps the chief offender among More’s works, his voluminous Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer (1531), a work five times longer than the book it purported to confute. Critics, Duffy remarks, have found the Confutation a “shapeless, repetitious and boring work whose immense bulk and inflamed rhetoric reflects the collapse of More’s control over his material, and hence his failure as artist, persuader and polemicist.” Even C. S. Lewis deemed it “the longest, the harshest, and the dullest” of all More’s controversial writings.4 Duffy, however, successfully counters the perception that More’s religious polemics were failures even as literary works. More was adapting learned literary debate for a vernacular readership. Some of the vast bulk of his compositions results from his decision to quote his opponents at length so that it could be evident that he was not misrepresenting their arguments. More claimed, in fact, that Tyndale’s Answer could be reproduced in its entirety simply by leaving out More’s own responses in the Confutation. “One test of the value of any literary innovation,” Duffy points out, “is whether or not the form is adopted by other serious writers.” The form More introduced was indeed to have “a decisive influence” on the shape of religious controversies in the next generation of both Catholic and Protestant polemicists, as the works of William Rastell, Thomas Harding, and John Jewel attest.

I've submitted a review of Reformation Divided to another publication and will let you know when it's in print!

Newman's Omaha Connection

Father Juan Velez kindly sent me a review copy of his new book, Holiness in a Secular Age: The Witness of Cardinal Newman, published by Scepter. I'm about two-thirds through the book, which serves as an excellent introduction to Newman's life, projects, and works, exploring his educational projects especially--not the just The Idea of a University, but the practical experience Newman had teaching and administering education at Oxford, in Dublin, and at the Oratory School.

In the course of describing Blessed John Henry Newman's affinity for friendship, Father Velez mentions the first Bishop of Omaha, Nebraska, James O'Connor, whom he met at the Propaganda Fide in Rome while studying for the priesthood. I wondered why an American bishop would be studying in Rome, but then discovered with a little research that Bishop O'Connor was born in Ireland, came to the United States, studied at St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia, and then went to the Propaganda College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1848. Then he became the first bishop of the Diocese of Omaha:

Bishop James O’Connor was appointed to replace Bishop O’Gorman in 1876. In 1880, the Dakotas were separated and the Diocese of Sioux Falls was established. Montana was dropped three years later. In 1885, the Diocese of Omaha, consisting of Nebraska and Wyoming, was established.

During Bishop O’Connor’s administration, many of Omaha’s older parishes were founded and the Franciscan Fathers arrived in the area.

After the Creighton family gave Bishop O’Connor the college they had endowed, Creighton University was entrusted to the Society of Jesus in 1878.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, then Father O'Connor returned to the United States after ordination:

The following year he was appointed rector of St. Michael's Seminary, Pittsburgh, and in 1862 rector of St. Charles's Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania. In 1872 he was appointed pastor of St. Dominic's Church, Holmesburg, Pennsylvania. In 1876 he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Nebraska, and on 20 August of the same year he was consecrated titular Bishop of Dibona by Bishop Ryan of St. Louis. During his episcopate the vicariate developed with wonderful rapidity. The construction of the Union Pacific Railway in 1867, and more especially the extension of the Burlington Railway in the seventies and eighties, opened up Nebraska to colonists, and white settlers began to pour in from the Eastern states. It became the duty of the new vicar to provide for the growing needs of the faithful, and the yearly statistics of the vicariate show how successful were his labours. 

When he was consecrated " titular Bishop of Dibona", that was like a holding place designating a mission territory where no established diocese yet exists. It would be fascinating to read some of the letters between Newman and Bishop O'Connor! I don't have ready access to those letters, but I wonder if they corresponded about issues of university education, since Bishop O'Conner was involved in the establishment of Creighton University.

The Catholic Branch of the Ingalls Family

From ChurchPop:

Edith Florence Ingalls is mentioned only in passing by her nickname, Dolly, in The Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was only a baby in the chapter entitled “Christmas.” But that’s a thrill enough for this great-great-grandchild of hers! But what’s even more amazing is the story of how that branch of the Ingalls family converted to Catholicism, which gave me my Catholic faith.

Edith grew up to marry Heil Nelson Bingham and together they raised 6 children in Oakes, ND. Although not a Catholic family, they chose to send all their daughters to the Catholic school in town. Something must have struck Edith’s husband about the Catholic faith because eventually he converted to the Catholic Church, but Edith resisted. They were married for 38 years before he passed on.

Twenty years after his passing and as her time drew near, Heil appeared to her in a dream telling her, “Edith, you need to make up your mind.” The next morning she requested a priest. The family thought she must mean a minister, but Edith refused to see him and sent him away insisting that she wanted to see a Catholic priest. A priest was fetched and she received her sacraments, passing away the next day.

Edith was Laura Ingalls' cousin; her father was Peter Riley Ingalls, Charles Philip Ingalls's brother. This is a fascinating family account of conversion. Please read the rest there as the author describes how Heil and Edith's daughters became Catholic and married Irishmen, handing down the Catholic faith to future generations.

An Ordination in Dachau

During the English Recusant period the missionary priests had travelled to Rome, Reims, Douai, or Vallidolid for their seminary training and ordination. We know that some of the martyrs joined the Jesuit order or expressed the hopes of becoming Jesuits after they were arrested and imprisoned. Francis Phillips writes in The Catholic Herald about a secret ordination in Dachau, where 2,759 priests and seminarians were imprisoned (and 1,034 died) between 1938 and 1945. Karl Leisner had been sent there because he made a disparaging comment about Hitler:

On 14 December 1941, he was moved to Dachau and assigned to the priests’ block. Under the harsh conditions of the camp his TB worsened and his hopes of being ordained a priest seemed unachievable. Then, as Providence would have it, Bishop Gabriel Piguet of Clermont-Ferrand arrived in Dachau as a fellow-prisoner on 6 September 1944 – and only a bishop is authorised to confer the sacrament of ordination. This was duly requested for Leisner by a Belgian priest, Fr de Coninck.

Bishop Piguet agreed, on condition that the ordination was authorised by the bishop with whom Leisner was affiliated and also that of the Archbishop of Munich, as Dachau was in his diocese. These authorisations were obtained clandestinely through the good offices of a young woman, Josefa Imma Mack (she was later to become a nun). She used to visit the plant shop at the edge of the compound at Dachau, where flowers and food grown by the prisoners was sold to the public, and where she was able to communicate with priest-prisoners assigned to work there.

She smuggled in the necessary letters of approval, along with the holy oil, a stole and the ritual books. The ordination, on 17 December 1944, took place in the chapel in Block 26 in great secrecy. Zeller records that the ceremony “made a lasting impression on the priests who were present.” The Bishop’s violet cassock was made from fabric from stocks pillaged by the Germans; the mitre was made by Fr Albert Durand, the only British priest at Dachau. Several hundred clergymen supported the young deacon, who wore an alb over his striped prison clothes.

Please read the rest there. Phillips reviewed the book from which this story is taken here. The Priest Barracks: Dachau, 1938-1945 by Guillaume Zeller is published by Ignatius Press. Pope Saint John Paul II beatified Leisner on 23 June 1996.

Church and State in Colonial British America

The Eerdman's blog offers an excerpt from Mark A. Noll's book The Old Religion in a New World about the development of religious freedom in the colonies before the American Revolution:

Before the mid-eighteenth century, church and state were bound together more closely in New England (with the exception of Rhode Island) and the Chesapeake colonies of Virginia and Maryland (along with South Carolina) than they were in England at the same time. As part of the settlement of William and Mary as British monarchs in 1689, Parliament passed “An Act for exempting their Majesties Protestant subjects, dissenting from the Church of England, from the penalties of certain laws.” This Act guaranteed freedom of worship to Trinitarian Protestant Nonconformists, even as it reaffirmed existing laws prohibiting the dissenters’ entrance to the universities, membership in Parliament, or service as officers in the army and navy. (Roman Catholics and Unitarian Protestants continued to suffer harsher disabilities.) The New England and Chesapeake colonies acknowledged this Act of Toleration, but in practice they restrained New England’s non-Puritans and the Chesapeake’s non-Anglicans more closely than non-Anglicans were restrained in England.

If the history of New England and Chesapeake colonies explains much of the intermingling of church and state that remained in the American states of 1791, where, then, did advanced notions about the separation of church and state, as embodied in the First Amendment, come from? Part of the answer is contained in the history of these vigorous establishments themselves. Such lonely voices as Roger Williams’s and momentary outbursts of toleration like the Maryland Act of 1649 did point, however feebly at the time, to what would follow. More direct support for non-traditional relations between church and state appeared in the colonies founded after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.

Please read the rest there. If you are interested, the book from which this excerpt is taken is available for free digital download:

During July, Eerdmans is pleased to offer The Old Religion in a New World as Logos Bible Software’s Free Book of the Month. Grab your Logos digital copy before this special offer expires.

William Bonde, RIP

William Bonde, a Bridgettine monk of Syon Abbey died on July 18, 1530. English Catholics like Bonde and other Bridgettines (Richard Whitford and John Fewterer), and Thomas More were writing works in the vernacular to defend and explain Catholic Church teaching. Bonde wrote “The Pylgrimage of Perfection” in 1526 and “The Directory of Conscience” in 1527. He was buried in the chapel of Syon Abbey--which, according to this blog was about as wide as Salisbury Cathedral--but his resting place is unknown because Syon Abbey was suppressed in 1538 and its buildings destroyed.

This monograph from Oxford University Press describes the efforts of the Bridgettines to defend and reform the Catholic Church:

This book investigates how Syon Abbey responded to the religious turbulence of the 1520s and 1530s. It examines the eleven books three brothers - William Bonde, John Fewterer and Richard Whitford - had printed during this period and argues that the Bridgettines used vernacular printing to engage with religious and political developments that threatened their understanding of orthodox faith. Through these works - and their some twenty-six editions - the Abbey presented itself as part of the vanguard of the Church, fighting heterodoxy with a three-fold commitment to reformed spiritual leadership, vernacular theology and the spiritual education of the laity. It used its printed books to to augment inferior parochial instruction; bolster orthodox faith and contradict evangelical argument; resist Henry VIII's desire for ecclesiastical supremacy; and defend the monastic way of life.

The book has three principal aims. First, to continue the debate about the nature of late medieval Catholicism by directing attention to one community that publicly proclaimed a very specific Catholic identity. Second, to highlight the shifting nature of that identity, which developed continuously in response to evangelicalism. Third, to emphasise the importance and impact of conservative vernacular theology in this period.

Reforming Printing makes a strong contribution to our understanding of the Bridgettine community of Syon Abbey, and more generally the monastic and Catholic response to the developments that culminated in Henry VIII's break with Rome. It sheds new light upon the religious climate of the 1520s and 30s and will be of considerable interest to literary scholars and historians of the English Reformation, especially those working on early modern religious writing.

James Hope-Scott and Henry Manning

While I'm at the Spiritual Life Center today here in Wichita to present on "St. Thomas More: Conscience and Martyrdom" and "Blessed John Henry Newman: Conscience and Conversion", it's appropriate that I mention two contemporaries of Blessed John Henry Newman who were born on July 15.

Henry Manning was born on July 15 in 1808, James Hope (he added the -Scott later) in 1812.

Henry Cardinal Manning, the second Archbishop of Westminster, is one of the famous converts who became Catholic through the influence of Newman in the Oxford Movement. He and Newman had a rather contentious relationship during their Catholic years. The story of his conversion is told in David Newsome's The Parting of Friends: The Wilberforces and Henry Manning.

James Hope-Scott, on the other hand, was a most faithful friend and defender of Newman. He was a barrister and represented Newman during the Achilli trial. More on his life from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

third son of the Honourable Sir Alexander Hope, G.C.B., who was fourth son of John, second Earl of Hopetoun, a Scottish title dating from 1703. His mother was third and youngest daughter of George Brown of Ellerton, Roxburghshire. During early childhood his home was the Military College at Sandhurst, where his father was in command. Afterwards he went abroad with his parents, staying in succession at Dresden, Lausanne, and Florence, and thus gaining a mastery of the German, French, and Italian tongues. In 1825 he entered Eton, whence, in 1828, he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford. After a visit to Paris in 1829 he went into residence at Oxford the same year. The degree of B.A. he took in 1832, coming out in the fourth class in literis humanioribus. Next year he was elected a Fellow of Merton. In 1835 he gave up his intention of entering the ministry of the Established Church, and began to study law under conveyancers, his call to the bar at the Inner Temple taking place in 1838. Meanwhile, in the latter year he graduated B.C.L. at Oxford, proceeding D.C.L. in 1843. In 1838, after publishing anonymously in pamphlet form a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he saw through the press Gladstone's work entitled "The State considered in its Relations with the Church". Next year he and Roundell Palmer (the future Earl of Selborne) projected "The History of Colleges". In 1840, at Newman's request, Hope wrote in "The British Critic", a review, later published separately, of Ward's translation of "The Statutes of Magdalen College, Oxon." The same year, as junior counsel for the capitular bodies petitioning against the Ecclesiastical Duties and Revenues Bill, he delivered the remarkably able speech which moved Brougham to exclaim, "That young man's fortune is made." In 1840, moreover, he was appointed Chancellor of the Diocese of Salisbury, which post he held until 1845. About the same time he took part in the foundation of Glenalmond College, in Perthshire, for the education of the Scottish Episcopal youth. In 1840-41 he spent some eight months in Italy, Rome included, in company with his close friend Edward Louth Badeley. On his return he became, with Newman, one of the foremost promoters of the Tractarian movement at Oxford. His next publication was a pamphlet against the establishment of the Anglo-Prussian Protestant See of Jerusalem, of which a second edition appeared in 1842. In 1849 and 1850 there came the Gorham trial and judgment, and in the latter year the agitation against the so-called "Papal Aggression". These events finally determined him upon the course of joining the Catholic Church, into which, together with Archdeacon Manning, he was received in London in 1851 by the Jesuit Father Brownhill.

In 1852 he managed Newman's defence in the libel action brought against him by Achilli, and in 1855 he conducted the negotiations which ended in Newman's accepting the rectorship of the Catholic University of Ireland. As to Hope's professional work, within a few years of his call he devoted himself wholly to parliamentary practice, in which his success and emoluments became prodigious. This was the palmy period of railway construction, and eventually he became standing counsel to almost every railway in the realm. In 1849 he was appointed Q.C., with a patent of precedence.

How he came to change his name:

His first wife, whom he married in 1847, was Charlotte Harriet Jane Lockhart, only daughter of John Gibson Lockhart and granddaughter of Sir Walter Scott. She soon followed her husband into the Catholic Church. A year later he became tenant of Abbotsford to his brother-in-law, and on the latter's death, in 1853, its possessor in right of his wife, thereupon assuming the name of Hope-Scott. Not long afterwards he added a new wing to Sir Walter's mansion. In 1855 he bought the Highland estate of Dorlin, whereupon he built a new house, selling the whole to Lord Howard of Glosson in 1871. In 1858 he had to mourn the loss of his wife, who died in childbed, the newborn child dying shortly after, and Walter Michael, his infant son and heir, before the close of the year. His second wife, whom he wedded in 1861, was Lady Victoria Alexandrina Fitzalan- Howard, eldest daughter of the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk, of whose children Hope-Scott had been left guardian. In 1867 he had the honour of a visit from Queen Victoria at Abbotsford, and in the same year he bought a villa at Hyères, in Provence. Like her predecessor, his second wife died in childbed in 1870, after giving birth to James Fitzalan Hope, now (1909) M.P. Hope- Scott never overcame the grief and shock entailed by this last bereavement. He now withdrew from his profession, surviving his dead wife but little more than two years, and dying in 1873. His funeral sermon was preached by his old and intimate friend Cardinal Newman in the same Jesuit church of Farm Street in which, two and twenty years back, Hope-Scott had made his submission to the Catholic Church. His charities and benefactions were wellnigh boundless. It is reckoned that from 1860 onwards he spent £40,000 in hidden charity. Among his innumerable good works, he built at a cost of £10,000 the Catholic church at Galashiels, near Abbotsford, and he was the chief benefactor of St. Margaret's Convent, at Edinburgh, wherein he lies buried.

More about him at Abbotsford here.

At his funeral, Newman praised him for his "tender conscience", his generosity, his talents and gifts as a barrister and advocate, and then concluded:

O happy soul, who hast loved neither the world nor the things of the world apart from God! Happy soul, who, amid the world's toil, hast chosen the one thing needful, that better part which can never be taken away! Happy soul, who, being the counsellor and guide, the stay, the light and joy, the benefactor of so many, yet hast ever depended simply, as a little child, on the grace of thy God and the merits and strength of thy Redeemer! Happy soul, who hast so thrown thyself into the views and interests of other men, so prosecuted their ends, and associated thyself in their labours, as never to forget still that there is one Holy Catholic Roman Church, one Fold of Christ and Ark of salvation, and never to neglect her ordinances or to trifle with her word! Happy soul, who, as we believe, by thy continual almsdeeds, offerings, and bounties, hast blotted out such remains of daily recurring sin and infirmity as the sacraments have not reached! Happy soul, who, by thy assiduous preparation for death, and the long penance of sickness, weariness, and delay, has, as we trust, discharged the debt that lay against thee, and art already passing from penal purification to the light and liberty of heaven above!

And so farewell, but not farewell for ever, dear James Robert Hope Scott! He is gone from us, but only gone before us. It is for us to look forward, not backward. We shall meet him again, if we are worthy, in "Mount Sion, and the heavenly Jerusalem," in "the company of many thousands of angels, the Church of the first-born who are written in the heavens," with "God, the Judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the Mediator of the New Testament, and the blood which speaketh better things than that of Abel."

On the Son Rise Morning Show with Matt Swaim

Matt Swaim--back on the Son Rise Morning Show temporarily to help with hosting duties while Anna Mitchell is on maternity leave--and I will talk about Servant of God Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, aka Mother Mary Alphonsa. We'll talk about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central.

I wrote about Nathaniel Hawthorne's youngest child for the blog roll at the National Catholic Register. Part of her story how she and her husband became Catholics but then had to separate:

Rose Hawthorne’s conversion to Catholicism in 1891 shocked the family. Her father had died in 1864 and her mother moved the family to Dresden, Germany, where Rose met George Parsons Lathrop. Because of Franco-Prussian War, Sophia moved again, back to England. There she died in 1871; Rose and George were married later that year in an Anglican Church over the objections of her brother and sister; they thought it was too soon after their mother’s death and that Rose was too young and vulnerable to marry.

They had a troubled marriage; he abused alcohol and their only child Francis died of diphtheria in 1881. George edited The Atlantic Monthly and Rose wrote poetry. They lived in New London, Connecticut and took instruction from a Paulist, Father Alfred Young, and were received into the Church. Like many new converts, they were filled with zeal and worked for the Church together on several projects, including the Catholic Summer School Movement and a history of the Visitation Convent in Georgetown.

In 1895, Rose and George took the extraordinary step of asking the Catholic Church for a permanent separation—not an annulment of their marriage—because of George’s instability and alcoholism which endangered Rose. Neither would be free to marry until the other died so they demonstrated their belief in the indissolubility of marriage and in the Sacrament of Matrimony even as they separated. George died of cirrhosis of the liver three years later.

Years ago I read Sorrow Built a Bridge by Katherine Burton, herself a convert to Catholicism. As I recall, reading this biography was like reading a novel. It was an excellent portrayal.

To Vest or Not to Vest, That is the Anglican Question

Several British newspapers are noting that the General Synod of the Church of England has voted that their clergy do not need to wear liturgical vestments during church services, in view of how society has become more and more informal. This blog, by an Anglican living in Rome, reminds us that the Church of England has rejected vestments in the past, using the mitre worn by bishops as an example:

In the first place, I would like to begin with a little historical background, the mitre is of Roman and Pontifical origin, it derives from a non-liturgical papal tiara knowns as the camelaucum - it was worn as early as the eight century, as shown in the Liber Pontificalis, the biography of the Popes. Around the 10th century it started to be worn at important processions and services by Bishops and during the later Middle Ages its use became more or less defined as we know it today with the mitre being used for dramatic moments during the Mass, during the Te Deum or originally even at particular times during Advent and Lent, Good Friday or Candlemass liturgies, etc. The use of mitres was adopted quite soon in the English Church as well, by the 12th century it was widespread throughout the country, we do know of very fine examples of embroidered English mitres from the 12th to 16th centuries. By the time of the Reformation, especially under Edward VI mitres fell out of use and it was not until the 19th century, in the wake of the ritualist revival it was once again adopted, notably thanks to Bishop Edward King of Lincoln. Although the history of the Church in England goes back to Saint Augustine of Canterbury in the 6th century, its Reformation only goes back 500 years and the mitre was only unpopular for about 300 years and its use has again been part of the Anglican tradition for about 200 years.

Please read the rest there. This blog, from an Evangelical Anglican view point, reminds readers of the Vestments Controversy during Elizabeth I's reign:

With the ascension of the new queen, many Marian exiles hoped for further reform upon their return to England and for the final removal of vestments from mandatory church use. The new queen, however, sought unity with her first Parliament in 1559 and did not want to encourage nonconformity. Under her Act of Uniformity, backed by the Act of Supremacy, the 1552 Prayer Book was to be the model for ecclesiastical use but with an even more conservative stance on vestments that went back to the second year of Edward VI's reign. The alb, cope, and chasuble were all to be brought back into use, while the exiles had abandoned even the surplice. The queen assumed direct control over these rules and all ceremonies or rites. There was a great deal of diversity of opinion. Some agreed with the queen in practice but encouraged preaching against vestments. Others were in favor of vestments altogether. And even others, like Miles Coverdale, were anti-vestment altogether.

The debate continued among the more conformist clergy and the nonconformist clergy. In 1563 an appeal was made to ecclesiastical commissioners to exempt the petitioners from wearing vestments. It was approved by all the commissioners except for Archbishop Matthew Parker. Parker then went on, in 1566, to draw a line in the sand against the nonconformity. This brought about a general protest and established one of the thorns in the sides of the soon to be non-conformists and Puritans.

Please read the rest there.

I presume that Low Church and Broad Church congregations would welcome more casual dress by their clergy, but that the Higher the ritual in other congregations, the more formal the liturgical dress. Perhaps this Synodal decision will be another step for some High Church Anglicans in their journey to coming Home to Rome through the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham?

Happy Birthday, Sir Kenelm Digby!

Kenelm Digby, Catholic convert and son of one of the Gunpowder plotters, was born on July 11, 1603--almost three years before his father's execution. From Cambridge University:

A dark shadow lay over his family name when, aged 24, Sir Kenelm Digby raised a fleet to sail against the enemy French in the multicultural world of the Mediterranean. In his new book, Joe Moshenska (Faculty of English) looks at the intellectual, political and culinary life of a man driven by a thirst for knowledge. . . .

Sailing south in January 1628, Digby left behind a beloved wife and two sons, the youngest just a few weeks old. He was a man on the make. Despite being well-connected and highly educated, he had a black mark against his name. His father, Everard Digby, had been hung for treason against the crown. Revealed to be a co-conspirator in the Gunpowder Plot, Everard was subjected to the most grisly of executions. In front of approving crowds, his heart was ripped out and his genitals sliced off.

Everard Digby maintained his dignity right up to the moment he lost consciousness. He professed that he “deserved the vilest death” and made an impassioned plea that wife and sons not be punished for his crime. Everard’s fortitude became legendary but his family lived with a sense of disgrace. The blood stain in the title of Moshenska’s book is a reference to a wound cut deep into a man with an extraordinary thirst for knowledge and experiences.

Seventeenth century England was layered in complexity. Raised as a gentleman and a Roman Catholic in a country that had officially broken its ties with Rome, Kenelm Digby learned early on to tread a delicate line between faith, politics and expediency. As a practising Catholic student at Oxford, he was unable to “weare a gowne” (matriculate) and each November endured the bonfire celebrations that reminded him of his father’s death. But Digby had friends in high places and the means to travel.

Trips to Europe, the first when he was aged just 14, helped Digby to develop the worldly ease and diplomatic skills so vital to him later in life. In Italy, his nimble mind won admiration in philosophical debates. In France, his handsomeness gained the (embarrassing) attention from the older and powerful Queen Regent. Visiting Spain, he socialised with the future Charles I – and became dangerously entangled in negotiations for a royal marriage bringing two disparate nations together.

The single voyage that allowed Digby to establish himself as a loyal subject was almost derailed by those who sought to discredit him as papist. The 1620s saw England engaged in an expensive war with its Roman Catholic neighbours. When he finally got the commission he sought from the king, it gave him permission to sail wherever he chose and to take as prizes any ships belonging to enemies of England. He was empowered to undertake any action “tending to the service of the realm and the increase of his knowledge”.

More about the book here; looks fascinating!

The Oxford Experience

From the Imaginative Conservative, by Jason Baxter:

And as you walk through these streets and quietly pass into and then out of the shadows, you feel a smallness: these buildings have been here for centuries and have that noble antiquity of an earlier and prouder age that did not ask “how much” but “what should be done.” The buildings don’t look down on you, because they’re too lofty, too concerned with higher dreams. You feel small because you know that, to them, you are nothing. They have heard centuries of idle chatter and adolescent boasting; they have heard the first authentic thoughts of learned men; they have seen trees, older than the New World, grow up and die within their walls. These buildings feel as old as the seasons and the streams that flow constantly among them. Experiencing such august nobility in Oxford is to encounter a solemn, foreboding, and mysterious antiquity.

And it’s not only American tourists who get this strange, melancholic feeling about Oxford. Even those iconic titans, Lewis and Tolkien, whose personalities have blended into the stones of the city, felt it, too. Tolkien, in his wonderful Anglo-Saxon manner, called Oxford that “Many-mansion’d, tower covered” city “in its dreamy robe of grey/… aged in the lives of men,/ Proudly wrapt in mystic mem’ry overpassing human ken.” In Lewis’s short poem “Oxford,” he describes this city as a place of deep serenity, like the perpetual movements of the city’s somnolent rivers: “A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams…/ A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.” Similarly, Hopkins called Oxford, “Towery city and branches between towers; / Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarméd, lark charméd, rook-racked, river-rounded.” And if you go inside the Ashmolean Museum, you will see any number of romanticizing paintings of the city that give you an Oxford, bathed in soft light. What the Pre-Raphaelites did for knights and ladies, these painters did for Oxford: they give a painfully nostalgic view of the medieval city. To such astute observers, Oxford is that city that mingles antiquity, the natural, and a keen sense of nostalgia.

Read the rest there. I concur.

Pictures (c) Stephanie A. Mann, from my week at the Oxford Experience in 2010.

Pugin, and Newman, Hopkins, Chesterton, and Tolkien . . .

From the original edition's entry on the Yale University Press website:

The style of the medieval period, which flows through the bloodstream of western culture, was vigorously re-established in post-Enlightenment England. This one-volume history of the Medieval Revival is the first coherent account of it, especially those aspects that are expressed and reflected in literature. The book focuses on the period 1760 to 1971, with an Epilogue on the reverberations of medievalism in the present day.

The rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after its destruction by fire in 1834, re-established Gothic as the national style. But medieval imitation manifests itself wherever one cares to look: in literature, architecture, the applied arts, religion, politics, and even Hollywood. In this skilled dissection of the components of this pervasive cultural movement, Michael Alexander rejects the idea that medievalism was confined to the Victorian period, and overturns the suspicion that it is by its nature escapist.

The style of the medieval period, which flows through the bloodstream of western culture, was vigorously re-established in post-Enlightenment England. This one-volume history of the Medieval Revival is the first coherent account of it, especially those aspects that are expressed and reflected in literature. The book focuses on the period 1760 to 1971, with an Epilogue on the reverberations of medievalism in the present day. The rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after its destruction by fire in 1834, re-established Gothic as the national style. But medieval imitation manifests itself wherever one cares to look: in literature, architecture, the applied arts, religion, politics, and even Hollywood. In this skilled dissection of the components of this pervasive cultural movement, Michael Alexander rejects the idea that medievalism was confined to the Victorian period, and overturns the suspicion that it is by its nature escapist.

From the new paperback edition's entry on the Yale University Press website (I read it on my Kindle Fire):

Now reissued in an updated paperback edition, this groundbreaking account of the Medieval Revival movement examines the ways in which the style of the medieval period was re-established in post-Enlightenment England—from Walpole and Scott, Pugin, Ruskin, and Tennyson to Pound, Tolkien, and Rowling.

“Medievalism . . . takes a panoramic view of the ‘recovery’ of the Medieval in English literature, visual arts and culture. . . . Ambitious, sweeping, sometimes idiosyncratic, but always interesting.”—Rosemary Ashton, Times Literary Supplement

 “Deeply researched and stylishly written, Medievalism is an unalloyed delight that will instruct and amuse a wide readership.”—Edward Short, Books & Culture

The Table of Contents, with the last names and titles of works listed in each chapter, demonstrates the range of Alexander's survey:

Introduction

1. The Advent of the Goths: The Medieval in the 1760s 

2. Chivalry, Romances and Revival: Chaucer into Scott: The Lay of the Last Minstrel and Ivanhoe 

3. Dim Religious Lights: The Lay, Christabel and 'The Eve of St Agnes'
4. Residences for the Poor: The Pugin of Contrasts 

5. Back to the Future in the 1840s: Carlyle, Ruskin, Sybil, Newman 

6. 'The Death of Arthur was the Favourite Volume': Malory into Tennyson

7. History, the Revival, and the PRB: Westminster, Ivanhoe, visions and revisions

8. History and Legend: The subjects of poetry and painting

9. The Working Man and the Common Good: Madox Brown, Maurice, Morris, Hopkins

10. Among the Lilies and the Weeds: Hopkins, Whistler, Burne-Jones, Beardsley 

11. I Have Seen . . . A White Horse: Chesterton, Yeats, Ford, Pound 

12. Modernist Medievalism: Eliot, Pound, Jones 

13. Twentieth-century Christendom: Waugh, Auden, Inklings, Hill 

Epilogue: 'Riding through the glen' 

Bibliography 

Notes 

Index

Acceptance and interest in the Middle Ages--the period between the Fall of Rome and the Renaissance--meant an encounter with Catholicism in Protestant, anti-Catholic England. Michael Alexander acknowledges this fact throughout his study of "The Middle Ages in Modern England". Reformation and Enlightenment Scotland and England had regarded those centuries as the Dark Ages of Faith--the Catholic Faith--and had derided them for superstition and error. As Alexander notes, however, the English parliamentary system had developed in the Middle Ages, so they were wrong to jettison that period. When the Houses of Parliament in Westminster were rebuilt after a devastating fire, the English style of architecture was ordered, and that style was Gothic. The designer of new buildings was A.W. Pugin, but he did not receive the credit for his contribution because he was a convert to Catholicism.

Alexander goes back often to Sir Walter Scott's poetry and historical novels as great inspirations to the revival of interest in the Middle Ages. He notes that John Henry Newman commented on how Scott created interest in the Catholic Middle Ages, even though Scott was not that sympathetic to Catholicism. I think that Alexander misses out on Newman's research into the Middle Ages--because he rightly notes that Newman was most interested in the early centuries of the Church--and neglects his "Second Spring" sermon and his study of the history of the university, which certainly addresses Medieval issues. Alexander does not list Newman's The Rise and Progress of Universities in his bibliography, nor does he cite Newman's eloquent praises of Catholicism in England before Henry VIII and its horrific destruction in the "Second Spring":

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, that great creation of God's power, stood in this land in pride of place. It had the honours of near a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned on some twenty sees up and down the broad country; it was based in the will of a faithful people; it energized through ten thousand instruments of power and influence; and it was ennobled by a host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of glorified intercessors, who were the respective objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of Chichester. And then, too, its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its universities, its wide relations all over Europe, its high prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its dependencies, its popular honours,—where was there in the whole of Christendom a more glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with kings and nobles, with the people, found in every village and in every town,—it seemed destined to stand, so long as England stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers—you know it well. I need not go through it. The vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time, and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed,—its grace disowned,—its power despised,—its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown. It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away, and there was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace;—and such was about the state of things when we were born into this weary world.

Newman is not a medievalist, I concede, but there's more there than Alexander may be aware. I think Alexander misses out on exploring the Oxford Movement and High-Church Anglicanism after Newman's conversion even more. See this essay, for example. Alexander mentions how the High-Church Ritualists "sought true beauty in holiness," but does not describe how they combined great concern for beautiful churches and liturgies with care for the poor in other practical ways; the poor deserved beauty too: in art, architecture, and music in their churches and chapels.

I was also surprised that Alexander spent so little time on William Cobbett, whose extensive interest in the social history of the Middle Ages in England is prominently displayed in his History of the Protestant Reformation. Cobbett's defense of the monasteries in England before and during the English Reformation should be mentioned in those passages when Alexander discusses modern views of medieval monasticism. He mentions Lingard in passing too, but Father Lingard was no defender of the monasteries, especially just before their dissolution.

Alexander likes G.K. Chesterton and even comments that his students actually enjoyed reading The Ballad of the White Horse. He hints at the medievalism of some of Chesterton's followers like Christopher Hollis, Christopher Dawson, and others, but does not follow up on them, except for Eric Gill and David Jones. I'd like to read some of Hollis's works. I was surprised at his inclusion of Ezra Pound because I did not know that Pound was "an academic medievalist" with "two degrees specializing in early romance languages"!

Alexander expresses various concerns about how literature and history are taught, studied, written, and read. For all the advances in knowledge made in various academic fields since the eighteenth century, he recognizes that the Middle Ages have lost ground again. A unified, cohesive view of English history and literature is thwarted by specialization and uncertainty. No professional historian would present a Whig interpretation of history anymore, but without it, what creates the narrative? Belief in progress means the story goes somewhere. Modern secularists will not accept religion, that is Christianity, as the unifying vision of English history and literature, so we are left with a great and widening divide between academic study and popular history. Alexander notes that the BBC presents surveys of English history by Simon Schama, for example, and they are popular with audiences. He makes a derisive comment: "In popular legend, the only golden age which is reliable at the box office is the age of Elizabeth I, unspotted by the blood shed in enforcing religious uniformity and in colonising Ireland"; of course, the only martyrs in England were Protestant!

The author acknowledges that he could have explored other themes: the Jacobites, liturgical studies, cathedrals, public ceremonials like coronations and funerals, the Arts and Crafts movement, etc. Nevertheless, this is an entertaining and thought-provoking survey of Medievalism in England after the Reformation and the Enlightnment and through the 20th century. Excellent illustrations, too.

Known and Unknown Martyrs in 1539

Along Old Kent Road, there was a spot called St. Thomas's Waterings or St. Thomas-a-Watering, where pilgrims to Canterbury, including Chaucer's crossed a stream on their way. It was therefore a well-travelled spot and thus a good place for executions and the display of traitors' remains. As British History Online notes:

This spot was in the old Tudor days the place of execution for the northern parts of Surrey; and here the Vicar of Wandsworth, his chaplain, and two other persons of his household, were hung, drawn, and quartered in 1539 for denying the supremacy of Henry VIII. in matters of faith.

And in another place, BHO names the Vicar:

In our account of the Old Kent Road (fn. 4) we have mentioned the fate of Griffith Clerke, Vicar of Wandsworth, his chaplain, and two other persons. They were hanged and quartered at St. Thomas a Waterings on the 8th of July, 1539, for denying the royal supremacy.

The old Catholic Encyclopedia has these details about those martyred on July 8, 1539, highlighting the Venerable Waire, and:

English friar and martyr, hanged, drawn, and quartered at St. Thomas Waterings in Camberwell (a brook at the second milestone on the Old Kent Road), 8 July, 1539. All authorities agree that there were four martyrs at this time and place, and all agree that one of them was the Vicar of Wandsworth, Surrey. It is certain that the name of the last was John Griffith, generally known as Ven. John Griffith Clarke, and that he was chaplain to Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, who was executed, 9 December, 1538, or 9 January, 1538-39, and that he was also Rector of Dolton, Devon. Stow is the only person to mention "Friar Waire". Sander speaks of "a monk whose name was Mayer"; but he wrote in Latin and his work was printed abroad. It is clear that Waire was a friar, for both Wriothesley and Lord Lisle's servant, John Husee, speak of two friars as having suffered with Griffith. Of the two unnamed martyrs we know that one was a priest and Griffith's curate or chaplain at Wandsworth. The other was either a friar, as Wriothesley and Husee say, or one of Griffith's servants, as is asserted by Stow and Sander. It is possible that Friar Waire is to be identified with Thomas Wyre, one of the signatories to the surrender of the Franciscan friary of Dorchester, 30 September, 1538. However, it is uncertain to what order he belonged. If he was a Franciscan it is remarkable that his death is not recorded in the "Grey Friars' Chronicle", and that no mention is made of him in such English Franciscan martyrologists as Bouchier or Angelus a S. Francisco.

Venerable Waire and Venerable John Griffith Clarke are among those declared Venerable at the beginning of the Cause for the English Martyrs during the reign of Pope Gregory XIII. Just enough is known about them for them to be so honored, but:

though they all died heroically, their lives were so retired and obscure that there is generally but little known about them. It may, however, be remarked that, being educated in most cases in the same seminaries, engaged in the same work, and suffering under the same procedures and laws the details which we know about some of the more notable martyrs (of whom special biographies are given) are generally also true for the more obscure.

In the article about the English Reformation Martyrs for the Catholic Encyclopedia, author J.H. Pollen made these comments about the two known martyrs of July 8, 1539:

1539: Friar Waire, O.S.F., and John Griffith p. (generally known as Griffith Clarke), Vicar of Wandsworth, for supporting the papal legate, Cardinal Pole, drawn and quartered, (8 July) at St. Thomas Waterings.

In 1536, Reginald Pole, in exile, wrote "Pro ecclesiasticæ Unitatis defensione" (Defense of the Unity of the Church) to protest against Henry VIII's usurpation of the title of Supreme Head and Governor of the Church in England, making himself the Vicar of Christ. Soon after sending it to Henry, Pole was named a Cardinal by Pope Paul III and then Legate. He was involved in efforts to make the Pilgrimage of Grace more successful. His brothers and mother were arrested in connection with the Exeter Conspiracy; his brother Henry Pole, Baron Montagu was executed on January 9, 1539 and his mother remained under arrest until her beheading on May 28, 1541. If Venerables Waire and Griffith Clarke were accused of supporting Pole, the charges against them included not just denial of the Supremacy, but involvement in rebellion against the king. We don't know if they had been held in prison like the trio of Queen Katherine of Aragon's chaplains and counselors, Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell, refusing to accept Henry VIII's new title, or if they had, like the great abbots of the monasteries of Reading, Glastonbury, and Colchester, taken the oath and then regretted it, hoping for a return to the unity of the Church under the Vicar of Christ. Either way, they were brave men, even in obscurity. May the same be known of us someday, however dimly.

The Tenth Anniversary of "Summorum Pontificum"

Today is the tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI's Motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. It's wonderfully appropriate that I'll be able to celebrate this anniversary today by attending daily Mass in the Extraordinary Form of the Latin Rite at noon at my home parish, Blessed Sacrament, here in Wichita, Kansas. My husband and I attend EFLR Masses often when they are offered and have benefited spiritually from the reverence and the silence during the celebration of the Paschal Mystery. In many ways, that reverence and silence aids in our fuller participation in the Sacrifice of the Mass, and also in our celebration of the Mass in the Ordinary Form.

Robert Cardinal Sarah spoke about the implementation of Benedict's Motu proprio and the very real problems in Catholic worship that it addresses at a colloquium in Germany earlier this year:

Certainly, the Second Vatican Council wished to promote greater active participation by the people of God and to bring about progress day by day in the Christian life of the faithful (see Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 1). Certainly, some fine initiatives were taken along these lines. However we cannot close our eyes to the disaster, the devastation and the schism that the modern promoters of a living liturgy caused by remodeling the Church’s liturgy according to their ideas. They forgot that the liturgical act is not just a PRAYER, but also and above all a MYSTERY in which something is accomplished for us that we cannot fully understand but that we must accept and receive in faith, love, obedience and adoring silence. And this is the real meaning of active participation of the faithful. It is not about exclusively external activity, the distribution of roles or of functions in the liturgy, but rather about an intensely active receptivity: this reception is, in Christ and with Christ, the humble offering of oneself in silent prayer and a thoroughly contemplative attitude. The serious crisis of faith, not only at the level of the Christian faithful but also and especially among many priests and bishops, has made us incapable of understanding the Eucharistic liturgy as a sacrifice, as identical to the act performed once and for all by Jesus Christ, making present the Sacrifice of the Cross in a non-bloody manner, throughout the Church, through different ages, places, peoples and nations. There is often a sacrilegious tendency to reduce the Holy Mass to a simple convivial meal, the celebration of a profane feast, the community’s celebration of itself, or even worse, a terrible diversion from the anguish of a life that no longer has meaning or from the fear of meeting God face to face, because His glance unveils and obliges us to look truly and unflinchingly at the ugliness of our interior life. But the Holy Mass is not a diversion. It is the living sacrifice of Christ who died on the cross to free us from sin and death, for the purpose of revealing the love and the glory of God the Father. Many Catholics do not know that the final purpose of every liturgical celebration is the glory and adoration of God, the salvation and sanctification of human beings, since in the liturgy “God is perfectly glorified and men are sanctified” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 7). Most of the faithful—including priests and bishops—do not know this teaching of the Council. Just as they do not know that the true worshippers of God are not those who reform the liturgy according to their own ideas and creativity, to make it something pleasing to the world, but rather those who reform the world in depth with the Gospel so as to allow it access to a liturgy that is the reflection of the liturgy that is celebrated from all eternity in the heavenly Jerusalem. As Benedict XVI often emphasized, at the root of the liturgy is adoration, and therefore God. Hence it is necessary to recognize that the serious, profound crisis that has affected the liturgy and the Church itself since the Council is due to the fact that its CENTER is no longer God and the adoration of Him, but rather men and their alleged ability to “do” something to keep themselves busy during the Eucharistic celebrations.

Please read the rest there.

One thought I have when I attend the EFLR is that this is the ritual of the Mass for which William Byrd wrote his three Masses and his Gradualia; this is the Mass that St. Edmund Campion, St. John Southworth, St. Oliver Plunkett, Blessed John Cornelius, Blessed Thomas Maxfield and so many others learned to say in exile and brought back to England. This is the form of the Mass that English laymen and laywomen risked their lives to attend.

Thank you, Pope Benedict XVI! Thank you to all the priests in our diocese who have offered the EFLR to our Latin Mass Community in the Catholic Diocese of  Wichita, Kansas!!

Image Credit: from Wikipedia Commons, by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, available from http://fssp.org.

July 4 Martyrs: Priests and Laymen

Eight martyrs suffered on July 4: four each in 1594 and 1597. These executions are examples of a pattern that only existed during Elizabeth I's reign, when laymen were executed because of the assistance they offered to priests. (James I did not follow this policy of punishing the laity, even though the laws that made such assistance a felony were still "on the books".)

Blessed John Cornelius, SJ priest and martyr
Blessed Thomas Bosgrave, martyr
Blessed John Carey, martyr
Blessed Patrick Salmon, martyr 

John, Thomas, John and Patrick were executed together at Dorchester on July 4, 1594. All of them were from Ireland:

John Cornelius (1557-1594) pronounced Jesuit vows in prison days before he was hanged, drawn and quartered. He met Jesuits while he was studying theology in Rome in 1580 and had asked to enter the Society of Jesus, but was not able to leave the people he served to go to Flanders for the novitiate, which was the normal policy at the time. Before he was able to get to the novitiate, he was arrested in the Dorsetshire castle of the family who had sheltered him for years and sentenced to die for high treason- celebrating Mass and converting people back to Catholicism.

The son of Irish parents living in Cornwall, the priest's true name was John Conor O'Mahony, but used his middle name in a Latinized form. He was expelled from Exeter College, Oxford, for being Catholic and left for the Continent to study. After he was ordained a priest in Rome, he returned to England and made the home of Sir John Arundell his base of operations. He placed himself under the direction of Father Henry Garnet, the superior of the English mission, while he waited for permission to make his novitiate, but was captured before he received an answer. One of the family servants betrayed him to the authorities, and he was arrested April 14, 1594, while hiding in a priest-hole in the Arundell family castle in Dorset. Prison officials in London tortured him in a vain attempt to learn the identities of the families who had sheltered him or those who had attended the Catholic services. Aware that his death was near, he pronounced the vows of the Society before a Jesuit and two lay people as witnesses. 

Bosgrave, Carey and Salmon were pronounced guilty of the felony of aiding and abetting Father John. All that Bosgrave had done was lend Father Cornelius his hat after he'd been arrested! The sentence was the same for all: hanging, drawing, and quartering. 

After the court had published its judgment, it offered all four men a reprieve if they would give up their Catholic faith. All four refused. 

The execution took place at Dorchester two days later. The three laymen were hanged first. Each made a Catholic profession of faith before the trap was sprung. Carey kissed the noose and called it a “precious collar”. Father John then kissed the feet of his hanging companions.  He prayed St. Andrew's prayer, "O good Cross, made beautiful by the body of the Lord: long have I desired you, ardently have I loved you, unceasingly have I sought you out; and now you are ready for my eager soul. Receive me from among men and restore me to my Master, so that he, who, by means of you, in dying redeemed me, may receive me. Amen."

He was not allowed to make any formal statement; but he did manage to state that he had been lately admitted into the Jesuits, and would have been en route to the Jesuit novitiate in Flanders had he not been arrested. After praying for his executioners and for the welfare of the queen, John Cornelius also was executed. The body was taken down and quartered, his head was nailed to the gibbet, but soon removed. These martyrs are honored at the Catholic parish in Chideock.

Note that Sir John Arundell of Lanherne also suffered for his Catholicism:

In 1569 he refused to subscribe to the Act of Uniformity and in the following year he was obliged to enter a recognizance for his ‘good behaviour’, but it was not until 1577 that his Catholicism came to be looked upon as a source of danger to the realm. On 29 Nov. in that year Cuthbert Maine [St. Cuthbert Mayne], the seminary priest, was hanged at Launceston; in his speech from the scaffold he described Arundell as a ‘good and godly’ gentleman with the result that two weeks later Arundell, whose refusal to attend church had been noted, was placed under arrest. On his release he was required to live near London and took up residence in Clerkenwell. During his absence from Cornwall his house was searched and subsequently charges against him were laid before the Council in September 1579. In 1585 Arundell was lodged in the Tower, allegedly because of his association with his wife’s cousin, Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel. At the same time he was fined 1,000 marks in the Star Chamber for contempt of the proclamation regarding recusants. Released from the Tower in 1586, he went to live at Muswell Hill and remained there until the early months of 1590, when he was imprisoned at Ely. He was set free in the summer and settled in Isleworth, where he died on the following 17 Nov. His body was carried with great pomp to Cornwall and buried beside those of his ancestors at St. Columb Major, where a monument was later erected to his memory.

Blessed William Andleby, priest and martyr 
Blessed Henry Abbot, martyr
Blessed Thomas Warcop, martyr
Blessed Edward Fulthorp, martyr

Fr Andleby served in Yorkshire, and Henry, Thomas and Edward were three laymen who assisted and sheltered him; they were executed together at York on July 4 in 1597 under Elizabeth I. Blessed William Andleby was a convert--he had thought to argue Doctor William Allen out of his Catholic faith and instead found himself argued into it:

He was born at Etton in Yorkshire of a well-known gentle family. At twenty-five he went abroad to take part in the religious wars in the Spanish Netherlands, and called at Douai to interview Dr. Allen, whom he attempted to confute in argument. Next day he recognized that Allen was right, was converted, and eventually became a priest. Mention is found of his having served at Mr. Tyrwhitt's, in Lincolnshire, and also of his having succoured the Catholic prisoners in Hull blockhouse. "His zeal for souls was such as to spare no pains and to fear no dangers. For the first four years of his mission he travelled always on foot, meanly attired, and carrying with him usually in a bag his vestments and other things for saying Mass; for his labours lay chiefly among the poor, who were not shocked with such things. Afterwards, humbly yielding to the advice of his brethren, he used a horse and went somewhat better clad. Wonderful was the austerity of his life in frequent watchings, fastings, and continual prayer, his soul so absorbed in God that he often took no notice of those he met; by which means he was sometimes exposed to suspicions and dangers from the enemies of his faith, into whose hands he at last fell after twenty years' labour in the vineyard of the Lord." (Challoner). He was condemned for his priestly character, and suffered with three laymen, John Abbot, Thomas Warcop, and Edward Fulthrop--Abbot and Fulthrop were also converts to Catholicism from the Church of England.

All of these martyrs were beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI. Blessed martyrs of England, pray for us!