Preview: Another Confessor, George Gilbert and "The Catholic Association"

Just a reminder, when Father Henry Sebastian Bowden included Confessors in the title of his Mementoes, men and women who suffered for their loyalty to the Catholic Faith during the long English Reformation but did not suffer martyrdom, he is not indicating that these Confessors are Beatified or Canonized Saints. (Blesseds and Saints are either martyrs or confessors), so there could be some confusion.

On Monday, October 2, we'll discuss another Confessor, George Gilbert, SJ, in our continuing series on the Son Rise Morning Show. So I'll be on at my usual time, around 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, to talk with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim about George Gilbert, SJ, and The Catholic Association he formed with the approval of Pope Gregory XIII (at left). Please listen live here or find the podcast later here.

The Catholic Association was a group of brave, young Catholic men of land and fortune who dedicated themselves to raising funds to support the missionary priests, to help those missionary priests with the contacts they needed to, as safely as possible, celebrate the Sacraments with the recusant, underground Catholic community.  As the Catholic Encyclopedia explains in the entry for another member of the Association, Stephen Brinkley, 

The members undertook to content themselves with the bare necessaries of their state of life, to spend the remainder of their goods in the cause of the Church, and to devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and the conversion of heretics.

They did so at a particularly dangerous time for Catholics in England as the great Jesuit missionary martyrs St. Edmund Campion, St. Robert Southwell, and other Jesuit missionaries Father Robert Parsons, Henry Garnet, and John Gerard, were coming to England. Stephen Brinkley helped Father Edmund Campion print and distribute his Decem Rationes (Ten Reasons), producing them at a hidden press in the Stonor House so they were placed on benches of St. Mary's the Virgin in Oxford in 1581, the year of Campion's imprisonment, torture, disputations on the Decem Rationes, trial, and execution. Brinkley was also arrested and tortured that year.

As Father Bowden describes George Gilbert, he was:

OF an old Suffolk family, possessed of a large fortune, a Puritan by profession, he followed in his youth the life of a gay cavalier. Going abroad, however, his eyes were opened to the faith, and he was reconciled by Father Parsons at Rome. Returning to England, he devoted himself to the services of the missionary priests, and formed for this purpose, with Lord Henry Howard, Lord Oxford, Mr. Southwell, Lord Paget, and other young men, a " Catholic Association," which was solemnly blessed by Pope Gregory XIII, on April 14, 1580. The members promised to imitate the lives of the Apostles, and to devote themselves wholly to the salvation of souls and the conversion of heretics. They were to be content with the necessaries of their state, and to bestow all the rest for the good of the Catholic cause. They supplied the priests with altar requisites, with horses, and various changes of apparel, and disguised themselves as grooms or servants and escorted the priests through the country from house to house. To Gilbert is due the first idea of the frescoes of the English martyrs in the English College, Rome. He was admitted to the Society of Jesus on his death-bed.

The Catholic Association found danger very quickly, as the arrests of 1581 led Parsons, Brinkley, and Gilbert to leave England. The Dictionary of National Biography provides these details, showing that Gilbert continued to work for Catholics in England in exile:

Proceeding afterwards to Rome, he entered the English College as a pensioner, and devoted himself to promoting the catholic (sic) cause in England. Gregory XIII frequently consulted him on a matter of high importance that necessitated his going to France. Gilbert was so eager about his preparations for departure that he was seized with a fever, which terminated fatally on 6 Oct. 1583. While on his deathbed he was admitted into the Society of Jesus. The pope declared that his death would be a serious blow to Catholicism in England. 

Gilbert incurred great expense by covering the walls of the English College at Rome with frescoes of the English martyrs.. . .

In a way, Gilbert's greatest service to the Jesuit and other priests may have been those frescoes of the English martyrs in the Venerabile in Rome (the Venerable English College). They were important to the Cause of the Martyrs of England and Wales, as evidence of a cult of devotion and veneration. Engravings of the frescoes were collected after Gilbert's death on October 6, 1583, by a Marian era priest, Father William Good, SJ in a volume titled Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (The trophies of the English Church). Among the martyrdoms pictured: Saints Edmund Campion SJ, Alexander Briant SJ, and Ralph Sherwin, on December 1, 1581.

Father Bowden chose a verse from the Acts of the Apostles to accompany this confessor's memento (4:32):

And the multitude of believers had but one heart and one soul: neither did any one say that aught of the things which he possessed, was his own; but all things were common unto them.

May George Gilbert and other members of the Catholic Association rest in the peace of Christ.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Pope Gregory XIII attributed to Bartolomeo Passarotti

Image Credit (Public Domain): Execution of Edmund Campion, Alexander Briant and Ralph Sherwin: engraving by Giovanni Battista Cavalieri (after Niccolò Circignani's frescoes in the chapel of the Venerable English College in Rome), and published in Ecclesiae Anglicanae Trophaea (Rome 1584). Stonyhurst Collections

Reginald Cardinal Pole Exhibition at Lambeth Palace

The Archbishop of Canterbury's London headquarters, Lambeth Palace, is presenting an exhibition in its Library on the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Cardinal Pole, beginning on October 5. The title of the exhibition is "Reformation Cardinal: Reginald Pole in Sixteenth-Century Italy and England":

Born in 1500 into the highest circles of the English aristocracy, becoming both cardinal and England’s last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole steered a perilous course through the storm of the European Reformation. A brilliant scholarly career in Italy took him to Rome, from where he launched an audacious campaign against Henry VIII’s regime and its anti-papal policies. His intellectual leadership of the Church mirrored his position in a circle of close spiritual friends, which included the artist Michelangelo. Returning to England after the accession of the Catholic Queen Mary, Pole reconciled the English Church to Rome and did much to re-establish Catholicism before his premature death at Lambeth in 1558. This exhibition brings together books from Oxford, London, and Rome to tell the story of this complex, charismatic individual.

I'll be on the lookout for more information about the exhibition next week.

Consulting the British History Online entry for Lambeth Palace, I found some information about the Cardinal Archbishop's time there:

To Cardinal Pole, who succeeded to the archbishopric, is attributed the foundation of the long gallery in Lambeth Palace. He was appointed to the deanery of Exeter by Henry VIII.; but was abroad when the king abolished the Papal authority in England, and, not attending when summoned to return, was proclaimed a traitor and divested of his deanery. In 1536 he was made cardinal; and when Mary ascended the throne he returned to England as legate from Pope Julius III., and had his attainder reversed by special Act of Parliament. "Few churchmen have borne so unblemished a reputation as this eminent prelate, and few have carried themselves with such moderation and meekness. He died November 17, 1558, being the very day on which Queen Mary herself died."

and

Several circumstances respecting Cardinal Pole are noticed as having happened here by Strype, Burnet, and other authors. Queen Mary is said to have completely furnished Lambeth Palace for his reception at her own cost, and to have frequently honoured him with her company. "In 1554, on his arrival from the Continent, having presented himself at court, he went from thence in his barge to his palace at Lambeth; and here he soon afterwards summoned the bishops and inferior clergy, then assembled in convocation, to come to him to be absolved from all their prejudices, schisms, and heresies. The following month all the bishops went to Lambeth to receive the cardinal's blessing and directions."

"On the 21st of July, 1556," says Strype, "the queen removed from St. James's in the Fields into Eltham, passing through the park to Whitehall, and took her barge, crossing over to Lambeth unto my lord cardinal's palace; and there she took her chariot, and so rid through St. George's Fields to Newington, and so over the fields to Eltham, at five o'clock in the afternoon. She was attended on horseback by the cardinal, &c., and by a conflux of people to see her grace, above ten thousand." In the winter of the same year the queen removed from St. James's through the park, and took her barge to Lambeth, where she visited Cardinal Pole. After dinner she resumed her journey to Greenwich, where she kept her Christmas.

In 1558 Cardinal Pole died at Lambeth Palace. His body lay in state forty days, when it was removed to Canterbury Cathedral for interment.

The website for Lambeth Palace includes a picture of the "descendant" of one of the fig trees Cardinal Pole had planted on the grounds:

Fronting the Great Hall on the west side of the courtyard is a magnificent White Marseille fig tree, which came to Lambeth Palace with the last Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Reginald Pole, in 1556. He served Mary I (Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon) until they both died on the 17th November 1558. The tree was relocated to this position in 1828 when Edward Blore built the residential block, and it bears abundant fruit every autumn.

So the Archbishop of Canterbury can have his figgy pudding every Christmas!?!

It will be interesting to see how the curators use the books from Oxford, London, and Rome "to tell the story of this complex, charismatic individual."

Preview: Two Confessors (Watson and Bonner) at St. Paul's Cross

Father Henry Sebastian Bowden included Confessors in the title of his Mementoes, men and women who suffered for their loyalty to the Catholic Faith during the long English Reformation but did not suffer martyrdom. On Monday, September 25, we'll discuss two of these Confessors--both repentant Confessors indeed--in our continuing series on the Son Rise Morning Show.

So I'll be on at my usual time, around 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, to talk with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim about Bishops Thomas Watson (of Lincoln) and Edmund Bonner (of London). Please listen live here or find the podcast later here.

Father Bowden describes Bishop Thomas Watson as "A Peacemaker" on p. 307, but before his final acts of repentance during the reign of Elizabeth I, he contributed greatly to the divisions in the Church. He was a colleague of Bishop Saint John Fisher at Cambridge University, serving as Master of St. John's College, founded by Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VIII's grandmother. Unlike his superior, however, he took the Oath of Supremacy, but Bowden notes that he "maintained in all other points the Catholic Faith." Without unity with the universal Catholic Church and the Vicar of Christ, that would be difficult to do, I think. He upheld certain Catholic teachings, but not all.

During the reign of Edward VI he was imprisoned for "preaching in its defense" but was freed from prison during the reign of Mary I and asked by the Queen to preach at St. Paul's Cross outside St. Paul's Cathedral in London and promoted to Dean of Durham and then Bishop of Lincoln. Under Elizabeth I, he was imprisoned for "contempt and contumacy" because this time, he refused the Oath of Supremacy. Bowden provides the detail that he wrote to Lord Cecil on October 6, 1578 that he was both blind and lame. He was confined in Wisbech Castle during the time of the "Wisbech Stirs", when about 32 or 33 Catholic priests, Jesuit and secular, were detained there and argued about keeping Fast Days and other spiritual/penitential matters. Bowden describes him as trying to keep the peace. 

He died on September 27, 1584, "having proved by twenty years of bonds his repentance for his early fall." The Bible verse is 1 Corinthians 1:10: "Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no schisms among you; but that you be perfect in the same mind, and in the same judgment."

Bishop Bonner of London is a more controversial figure, one of John Foxe's great villains for his questioning of suspected heretics during the reign of Mary I, but he's also controversial--and perhaps even more remarkable--for his stalwart support of Henry VIII's "Great Matter". Bowden titles his memento "Faithful in the End" (p. 285)

Bonner was a chaplain to Henry VIII and a member of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey's staff, and was zealous in promoting the king's Great Matter of the the divorce (annulment) and remarriage. Bowden includes the detail that Bonner "behaved, as he tells us himself, insolently to the pope." Rewarded for his service to the king, he was consecrated the Bishop of London in 1540 but of course was never confirmed by Papal Decree.

The Catholic Encyclopedia provides some additional details about his efforts in that diocese:

Almost his first duty was to try heretics under Henry's Act of the Six Articles, and though his action seems to have been only official, accusations of excessive cruelty and bias against the accused were spread broadcast by his enemies, and from the first he seems to have been unpopular in London. During the years 1542-43 he was again abroad in Spain and Germany as ambassador to the emperor, at the end of which time he returned to London. The death of the king on 28th January 1547, proved the turning point in his career Hitherto he had shown himself entirely subservient to the sovereign, supporting him in the matter of the divorce, approving of the suppression of the religious houses, taking the oath of Supremacy which Fisher and More refused at the cost of life itself, and accepting schismatical consecration and institution. But while acting in this way, he had always resisted the innovations of the Reformers, and held to the doctrines of the old religion. Therefore from the first he put himself in opposition to the religious changes introduced by Protector Somerset and Archbishop Cranmer.

He opposed the "Visitors" appointed by the Council, and was committed to prison for so doing Though not long a prisoner, after two years of unsatisfactory struggle he came again into conflict with the Protector owing to his omission to enforce the use of the new Prayer Book. When ordered to preach at St. Paul's Cross he did so, but with such significant omissions in the matter which had been prescribed touching the king's authority, that he was finally deprived of his see and sent as a prisoner to the Marshalsea. . . .

for the first time! and finally freed upon the accession of Mary I, whereupon Bonner was canonically reinstated as Bishop of London.

He assisted Reginald Cardinal Pole with the program of re-establishing the infrastructure and teachings of the Catholic Church in England, writing sermons to be read throughout his diocese and a catechism. Regarding his efforts to investigate heretics, Bowden notes that Bonner always wanted to "reconcile them to the Church before handing them over to the civil authorities." 

When Mary died and Elizabeth came to the throne, Bonner again proved himself loyal to the Church, refusing to stop the celebration of Mass and the praying of the Divine Office at St. Paul's. Bowden quotes him as responding to those demands, "I possess three things--soul, body, and property. Of the two last you can dispose at your pleasure." He was imprisoned in the Marshalsea and died there on September 5, 1538. Bowden cites Psalm 50:14: "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and strengthen me with a perfect spirit." He includes another memory of Bishop Bonner on page 319 with title "Poverty Preferred" and the verse from James 2:5.

By including these two fallen and repentant Confessors in his Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors, Father Bowden is clearly offering examples of how we, like them, can repent of our sins, be reconciled to God and the Church, and begin again through God's Grace and Mercy.

May they rest in peace.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Open air preaching at St. Paul's Cross.

William Byrd's Three Masses on the BBC's "Listening Service"

We are celebrating the 400th anniversary of William Byrd's death on July 4, 1623 throughout this year. Of course, it's being celebrated mostly in England!

The BBC has published a Composer of the Month article on his life and times in their classical music magazine, Tom Service has commented particularly on his Three Masses on his BBC program, Stile Antico has released a new CD, his works were performed at the Proms in Londonderry, and the Latin Mass Society in England is sponsoring a Byrd Festival with his Masses and works from the Gradualia including in the celebration of Mass at Corpus Christi Maiden Lane and other churches, etc., etc.

What's so good about the Latin Mass Society's effort is described in their program for the Festival:

This year, 2023, witnesses the four hundredth anniversary of the death of William Byrd, one of England’s greatest Renaissance composers. The Latin Mass Society is marking the occasion with a Byrd 400 Festival ofsacred music. From September 2023 the Southwell Consort, under the direction of Dominic Bevan, will perform music from Byrd’s Masses, Cantiones Sacrae, and sacred motets, as well as his organ music. 

Byrd’s sacred music was composed for the Roman Catholic Mass during a time when English Catholics faced religious persecution. Despite the clandestine climate in which it was composed, much of Byrd’s polyphony is sumptuous. It represents the last artistic flowering of an English liturgical tradition almost stamped out at the Reformation. 

The words, chant and ritual actions of the traditional Latin Mass were ancient in Byrd’s own day, and they have remained essentially unchanged ever since. It is within this context that this festival of sacred music will take place, presenting Byrd’s work in the original liturgical context for which it was composed.

In his "Listening Service" program, Tom Service makes a suggestion about these three Masses--meaning the ordinary text of the Mass, the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus, and Angus Dei--were integrated into the celebration of the secret Masses for which the works were intended. He notes the presence of the "custos" mark at the end of each part, suggesting that it means that the Mass parts were sung as the Mass was being "spoken". Service suggests that the Masses lasted as long as the Byrd Mass settings, around 20 minutes.

But I wonder about that, because not all Masses include all the parts of the ordinary, depending on the feast or feria being celebrated. In the Traditional Latin Mass, a Missa Cantata is sung/chanted by the priest, not spoken, and not all parts of the Mass, like the Roman Canon, are audible to the congregation even at a Missa Cantata; a Low Mass is a mostly silent Mass and usually these parts of the Mass are not sung. (That's assuming that the Mass revisions that Pope Pius V approved in 1570 for the Roman Missal, the Masses Catholic missionary priests were offering in England at the time Byrd was a Catholic and wrote these three Masses, are comparable to the Missa Cantatas and Low Masses I attend today.)

The Masses Byrd attended in Stondon Massey in Essex were celebrated under duress because it was illegal to say or attend Mass and everyone there, especially the priest, was in great danger, and so Service thinks these 20 minute Masses would have been practical, safe, and even politic, under the circumstances--to sum it up, serviceable.

As John Milsom wrote in the cover notes to the 2013/2014 CD of Byrd's Three Masses and the Ave Verum Corpus depicted above:

. . . In the 1590s, when his Masses were composed, there were no Catholic church choirs in England, and he never imagined them being sung proudly and publicly in cathedrals for all to hear. Few hard facts survive about the kinds of performances Byrd’s Catholic works received in his lifetime, but we can speculate with a fair degree of confidence. In the age of the Spanish Armada and the Gunpowder Plot, England’s Roman Catholic community celebrated Mass covertly behind closed doors, taking pains not to be found out and punished or fined. Their secret services took place in rooms hastily converted into chapels, led by priests who led surreptitious lives. If music was used, then it was sung and played by whoever came safely to hand: family members, invited guests and trusted servants. By definition, then, Byrd’s Masses are really chamber music, not choral repertory, and it was never Byrd’s intention that they should be sung in the resonant ambience of a great church by a choir such as that of Westminster Cathedral. . . .

Milsom comments on Byrd's Court career and the Anglican service music he wrote there and then states:

In private, he moved in the network of England’s Catholic community, whose religious beliefs he shared, and for whom he also wrote music—initially motets, but latterly also works for liturgical use, such as the three Masses and, later, the impressive cycle called Gradualia. As Byrd grew older his allegiances shifted, and he spent less time in London and more time with the Catholics in rural Essex, where he set up home. But his retreat never became a rift. Up to his death Byrd remained loyal to his queen [and king: James I from 1603 to 1623!] and his country, and he was tolerated at court even by those who knew of his double life.

He continues the discussion by contrasting the differences between the way Byrd sets words to music in the Anglican and Catholic works, noting that Catholic works "savour their words more meditatively, and speak with a more personal voice." (Please read the rest there.)

When Charles Cole reviewed the CD from the Westminster Cathedral Choir for the New Liturgical Movement website, he noted that Martin Baker had departed from the usual method of recording the choir:

It was perhaps partly in deference to these original performances in Tudor times that Martin Baker, the Master of Music, decided to make quite a radical change to the way the choir was recorded. Most of the Cathedral Choir’s recordings are made in the Apse, the usual liturgical singing position of the choir, however for this recording, the choir stood on the Sanctuary in a large square facing inwards towards Martin Baker, who stood at the centre. The effect is very different, both intimate and powerful, with a noticeable change in the acoustics. There is a heightened sense of dynamic range, with diminuendi of extraordinary control which taper into nothingness. And although this music will be very familiar to anyone in regular proximity to a traditional Catholic choir, there is a real sense of a new experience when listening to this recording.

I guess the only way we could come closer to hearing this music as Byrd and the congregation heard it would be to record an amateur choir in a small space!

Finally, I do have to make one comment about the "Composer of the Month" article from the June issue of BBC Music Magazine: Andrew Stewart writes that "Byrd risked punishment to compose sublime settings of outlawed Latin texts, especially during the 1580s when Jesuit missionaries from the continent were being burned at the stake . . ." (p. 60) 

No, they were being hanged, drawn, and quartered!

Preview: Blesseds Duckett and Corby in "Holy Rivalry" and with "The Kiss of Peace"

On Monday, September 18, we'll continue our series on the Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors by Father Henry Sebastian Bowden on the Son Rise Morning Show. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here.

As of today, the book is still on sale for $10.00! You cannot say I haven't told often enough!

Father Bowden offers four mementoes of Blessed John Duckett and three of Blessed Ralph Corby, SJ during the month of September. The two martyrs share three mementoes, because although they came to England as missionary priests by separate paths, served in the missionary field in vastly different durations (Duckett for about a year; Corby for 14 years), and were arrested separately, they shared imprisonment in London and went to Tyburn together for execution on September 7, 1644--during the English Civil War. They were both arrested and executed under Parliamentary authority.

For Blessed (then Venerable) John Duckett, on page 300 (September 20) in the book, Father Bowden offers an example of a Catholic priest as an Alter Christus (Another Christ), echoing the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus says "If therefore ye seek Me, let these go their way." (John 13:8) in a memory explaining how Father Duckett admitted he was a Catholic priest "To Save Others":

He was taken, in company with two Catholic laymen, as he was going to baptize two children on the Feast of the Visitation, July 2. His captors, the Parliament soldiers, carried him before a committee of the Sequestrators at Sunderland. He declined to answer as to his priesthood and demanded proof, but was committed to prison by reason of the Holy oils and books found on him. Again examined, and again refusing to inculpate himself, he was threatened with lighted matches placed between his fingers to make him confess what he was. This availing nothing he was sent back to prison. After an hour he was again called, and found his two companions on the point of being shipped and sent away, merely because he would not confess who he was. "Seeing this," he says, "and also fearing that the Catholics of the neighbourhood who knew me might suffer, and especially those with whom I lived, I confessed myself to free them and the country." His self-sacrifice was successful, and seemed an inspiration from Heaven. No more inquiry was made after his friends, but Father Duckett was sent up to London in company with Father Corby, a Jesuit, who was taken in these parts as he was going up to the altar to say Mass.

So Father Duckett did not admit immediately to his priesthood, even enduring some torture, but when the two laymen were threatened and he also became concerned for others in the Durham area where he was captured--especially the family or families of the children who were to be baptized--he confessed to save their lives.

The Catholic Encyclopedia offers some details about his life before his arrest, imprisonment, and execution: He was probably a grandson of Venerable [Blessed] James Duckett [a layman executed on April 19, 1601, also at Tyburn], born at Underwinder, in the parish of Sedbergh, Yorkshire, in 1603; died 7 September, 1644. He was ordained priest in 1639 and afterwards went to Paris where he studied three years in the College of Arras. He had an extraordinary gift of prayer, and while yet a student would spend whole nights in contemplation. On his way to the English mission, he spent two months in spiritual exercises, under the direction of his uncle, the Carthusian prior at Nieuport.

Then, when Fathers Duckett and Corby are in prison and are offered an opportunity for one of them to escape, Father Bowden offers the story of their "Holy Rivalry":

RALPH CORBY, alias Darlington, was born near Dublin of English parents, natives of Durham, who had gone over to Ireland for the free exercise of their religion. The piety of the family is sufficiently attested by the fact that both parents and children entered into religion: the father and his three sons into the Society of Jesus, the mother and her daughters into the Order of St. Benedict. After twelve years' hard work, notwithstanding continuous ill-health, among the poorer Catholics in Durham, he was arrested and sent up to London with Father Duckett. They were escorted from Westminster to Newgate by a company of Parliament soldiers, with a captain at their head, beating drums and firing off their muskets through the crowded streets, as if they had been the enemy's generals taken in war as in the old Roman battles. In prison the life of one of them could have been saved by an exchange made for a prisoner in the hand of the Emperor of Germany. The offer was first made to Father Corby, who declined it on the ground that Father Duckett, being younger, could do more work than himself; but he in his turn refused it with thanks, as Father Corby's life, on account of his experience, was of greater value.

He cites a verse from the First Letter of John for this scene: "Behold what manner of charity the Father hath bestowed upon us." (3:1) I wonder what the Puritan authorities thought of them, both rejectiing a chance to be freed, in exile of course (but probably to return).

In describing their executions at Tyburn Tree, Father Bowden offers these details ("The Kiss of Peace"):

They went out to suffer with their tonsures shaved, the one in his Jesuit's habit, the other in his priest's cassock. At the gallows Father Duckett made no speech, but told an heretical minister that he had not come hither to be taught his religion, but to die for it. After a short discourse from Father Corby, the two confessors turned to each other. Together they had been arrested, supported each other by their mutual courage and self-sacrifice, and with a last most loving embrace they together received their eternal crown. ("Salute one another in a holy kiss; all the saints salute you." 2 Cor. 13:12)

With these three mementoes, Father Bowden offers poignant examples of these martyrs' camaraderie in the midst of danger and suffering as they prepared for their executions. They were both beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI.

Blessed John Duckett, pray for us!

Blessed Ralph Corby, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman's Political Thought

Earlier this summer I taught a Graduate level course on "Saint John Henry Newman and the New Evangelization" at Newman University. It's not a class on Newman's life and works exclusively, but a class applying some of Newman's ideas for reviving the Church of England when he was an Anglican minister at the University of Oxford, and his efforts to teach and defend the teachings of the Catholic Church as an Oratorian after his conversion in 1845.

We read many of Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons, The Dream of Gerontius, excerpts from other works, like the Grammar of Assent, his Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, etc., and various articles and chapters analyzing his life and works.

Several times the students asked me about some aspect of Newman's life and works that didn't immediately touch on the topic of the New Evangelization, focused on the revival of Catholic life and practice among Catholics or those falling or fallen away from the Church in previously Christian or Catholic cultures. I had to tell them that Newman did not write a comprehensive fundamental theological work on Catholic doctrine, moral, sacramental, or spiritual, etc. 

Although we rightly often speak of Newman as a theologian, he was not a systematic theologian--he was consistent, but not systematic. He addressed certain themes and topics when he thought they need defending, on certain occasions, like Gladstone's contention that Catholics couldn't follow their (English) consciences after the doctrine of Papal Infallibility was proclaimed, or Pusey's not-so-peaceful discussion of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or the position of the Catholic laity in the Church, particularly regarding practical matters but also regarding the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful), etc.

And, as this article by Austin Walker shows, Newman was not a systematic writer about political philosophy, either: 

Newman was an occasional and unsystematic writer who never authored a formal treatise on political philosophy. Nor did he often weigh in on the political issues of the day—in fact, the only time he addressed a contemporary issue was when he wrote a series of pseudonymous letters on the Crimean War to chastise an intemperate British public for expecting too much from political life. [Sic: one might argue that Newman's Tamworth Reading Room letters should be included, as they chastised Sir Robert Peel for dictating a “fundamental rule, that no works of controversial divinity shall enter into the library” Peel was establishing for those who could not benefit from a university education at Oxford with the goal of improving their intellects and morals.]  However, one can find the key to Newman’s political insights in his treatment of the political status of the church.

Newman’s real political concern was the independence and vitality of the church, as viewed through the eyes of the Alexandrian Fathers. As an Anglican, Newman saw the independence of the church most immediately in its relation to the English state. As a Catholic, the same fundamental concerns remained, but they were inflected in a new valence. If Anglican Newman worried about the oppression of the church by the state, Catholic Newman was concerned about the oppression of the church by the predominating philosophy of the day. Liberalism promised an illusory liberty by positing a new mode of human organization, anthropology, and history. Newman’s political project, as both an Anglican and a Catholic, was to reassert a biblical and ecclesial reality that the age was forgetting how to see: the church itself as “an object of veneration and loyalty.”

Walker then unpacks Newman's concerns for the Church of England during his Anglican years, especially as a leader of the Tractarian Movement, and as a Catholic after 1845. 

With all the links to the various works throughout the article, it demonstrates one of the great advantages we do have in this technological age: the reader can both appreciate Professor Walker's analysis and read the entire work he cites without reaching for a book on the shelf, thanks to the newmanreader.org website!

Image: bust of Saint John Henry Newman in the garden of the College in Littlemore (c) Stephanie A. Mann (2023)

Preview: Blessed Adrian Fortescue and His Maxims

Blessed Adrian Fortescue, another one of Henry VIII's best friends (like St. Thomas More), was executed sometime in early July, 1539 (either July 8 or 9 or 10). He was a Knight of the Realm, a Knight of Malta, and a Dominican Tertiary. On Monday, September 11, we'll continue our series of Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors gathered by Father Henry Sebastian Bowden. Please note that the book is still available--as of today--for only $10.00 from the publisher!

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at my usual time: about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern: please listen live here and/or listen to the podcast later here.

The website of the Dominican Friars of England, Ireland, and Scotland provides this background of his life and times:

Like his forebears, Adrian served King Henry VIII in his ambitious military campaigns. He helped to rout the French the Battle of Spurs in 1513, and fought again in 1523. King Henry rewarded his support and in 1520 invited him to the splendorous Field of the Cloth of Gold where Henry famously wrestled with the King of France. Closer to home, Sir Adrian was made a Justice of the Peace of the county of Oxfordshire. In this period of history, royal favour could also take more peculiar forms. Sir Adrian had the dubious honour of being made a Gentleman of the King’s Privy Chamber, forerunner to the august body now known as the Privy Council.

In addition to being an assiduous servant of the Crown, Sir Adrian was evidently also a man of strong religious conviction and charity. His accounts reveal a number of benefactions to clergy and religious foundations. In 1532, he became a Knight of Devotion in the Order of Malta. The following year in July of 1533, he was admitted as a Dominican Tertiary at Blackfriars, Oxford, which he would visit from Stonor. But he also had a strong association with the Dominican Priory in London. His lodgings in the capital were in the precincts of the Blackfriars, close to the present eponymous tube station.

Sir Adrian was married twice and had children, so like St. Thomas More, he lived an active life as a Catholic layman, as a family man, with great devotion to his faith.

In the Catholic Encyclopedia, J.H. Pollen demonstrates the injustice of his martyrdom, as he was arrested, imprisoned, and included in a Bill of Attainder, without trial or evidence:

All of a sudden this quiet, worthy gentleman was overwhelmed by some unexplained whim of the Tudor tyrant. On 29 August, 1534, he was put under arrest, no one knows why, but released after some months. On 3 February, 1539, he was arrested a second time and sent to the Tower. In April he was condemned untried by an act of attainder; in July he was beheaded. No specific act of treason was alleged against him, but only in general "sedition and refusing allegiance". The attainder, however, went on to decree death against Cardinal Pole and several others because they "adhered themselves to the Bishop of Rome". Catholic tradition was always held that Sir Adrian died for the same cause, and modern Protestant critics have come to the same conclusion. His cultus has always flourished among the Knights of St. John, and he was beatified by Leo XIII in 1895.

Father Bowden does not highlight Blessed Adrian Fortescue's martyrdom, but instead provides a series of maxims he collected. (Pollen describes them thus: "He collected and signed several lists of proverbs and wise saws, which, though not very brilliant, are never offensive or coarse, always sane, and sometimes rise to a high moral or religious level.") Bowden uses the titles "A Martyr's Maxims (1) and (2)" with the verses, "She conducted the just, when he fled from his brother's wrath, through the right ways" (Wisdom 10:10) and "But the wisdom, that is from above, first indeed is chaste." (James 3:17).

Among the maxims:

Above all things love God with all thy heart.

Desire His honour more than the health of thine own soul.

Take heed with all diligence to purge and cleanse thy mind with oft Confession, and raise thy desire or lust from earthly things.

Be you houseled (that is receive Holy Communion) with entire devotion.

Pray often.

Also enforce thee to set thy house at quietness.

Resort to God every hour.

Advance not thy words or deeds by any pride.

Be pitiful to poor folk and help them to thy power, for then thou shalt greatly please God.

Give fair language to all persons, and especially to the poor and needy.

Also be diligent in giving of alms.

In prosperity be meek of heart, and in adversity patient.

And pray continually to God that you may do what is His pleasure.

Neither Father Bowden nor J.H. Pollen indicate where Blessed Adrian Fortescue wrote down these maxims, but this website indicates it was in his Book of Hours; further it notes that the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford has another book of Fortescue's containing proverbs which also includes a book written by his great-uncle John Fortescue, On Absolute and Limited Monarchy (dangerous reading while King Henry VIII was on the throne!), and passages from Langland's Piers Plowman!

The collection and use of these proverbs served as good preparation for the trials and martyrdom Blessed Adrian Fortescue would endure, imprisoned, found guilty without trial, and beheaded. Henry VIII also suppressed the Knights of St. John and seized their properties in England.

Blessed Adrian Fortescue, pray for us!