Cover Story: Queen Catherine of Aragon at Blackfriars

Two new books feature cover illustrations of Queen Catherine of Aragon before Henry VIII on June 21, 1529 at the ecclesiastical trial held at Blackfriars to determine the validity of their marriage: Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation by Henry Ansgar Kelly from CUA Press and Betrayed Without a Kiss: Defending Marriage after Years of Failed Leadership in the Church by James Clark from TAN Books.

It's a dramatic scene of course--one that Shakespeare could not resist--as the queen ignored the Papal Legate and Cardinal Wolsey and spoke directly to her husband. Her speech is equally compelling. Here's another image (since I'm not completely sure of the copyright status of the other two illustrations, I won't post them) by Henry Nelson O'Neil, which is in the Public Domain:

The blurb for the CUA Press book by Henry Ansgar Kelly mentions this crucial event in the lives of Henry and Catherine:

After inquisitorial procedure was introduced at the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome in 1215 (the same year as England’s first Magna Carta), virtually all court trials initiated by bishops and their subordinates were inquisitions. That meant that accusers were no longer needed. Rather, the judges themselves leveled charges against persons when they were publicly suspected of specific offenses—like fornication, or witchcraft, or simony. Secret crimes were off limits, including sins of thought (like holding a heretical belief). Defendants were allowed full defenses if they denied charges. These canonical rules were systematically violated by heresy inquisitors in France and elsewhere, especially by forcing self-incrimination. But in England, due process was generally honored and the rights of defendants preserved, though with notable exceptions.

In this book, Henry Ansgar Kelly, a noted forensic historian, describes the reception and application of inquisition in England from the thirteenth century onwards and analyzes all levels of trial proceedings, both minor and major, from accusations of sexual offenses and cheating on tithes to matters of religious dissent. He covers the trials of the Knights Templar early in the fourteenth century and the prosecutions of followers of John Wyclif at the end of the century. He details how the alleged crimes of "criminous clerics" were handled, and demonstrates that the judicial actions concerning Henry VIII’s marriages were inquisitions in which the king himself and his queens were defendants. Trials of Alice Kyteler, Margery Kempe, Eleanor Cobham, and Anne Askew are explained, as are the unjust trials condemning Bishop Reginald Pecock of error and heresy (1457-59) and Richard Hunne for defending English Bibles (1514). He deals with the trials of Lutheran dissidents at the time of Thomas More’s chancellorship, and trials of bishops under Edward VI and Queen Mary, including those against Stephen Gardiner and Thomas Cranmer. Under Queen Elizabeth, Kelly shows, there was a return to the letter of papal canon law (which was not true of the papal curia). In his conclusion he responds to the strictures of Sir John Baker against inquisitorial procedure, and argues that it compares favorably to the common-law trial by jury.

The preview from TAN for Clark's book demonstrates that he does address The King's Great Matter and Saint John Fisher's role in it: Chapter Three: "Searching for John Fisher: The Counter-Revolution to Protestantism from the Council of Trent to Humanae Vitae". [Get it: "Searching for Bobby Fischer"?]

It's still interesting that two publishers chose illustrations of this event on these books on rather different topics.

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Preview: Blessed John Slade and "The Voice of the People"

We'll return to our weekly discussion of an English martyr on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, October 30. I'll be on at my usual time, about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later here.

Monday's martyr from Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year was hanged, drawn, and quartered on October 30, 1583. Blessed John Slade, a layman, had been founded guilty of denying Queen Elizabeth's spiritual authority over the Church in England and thus had committed High Treason.

John Slade was born in Dorsetshire and left England after being expelled from New College in Oxford for his recusancy/Catholicism to study Civil and Canon Law at the English College at Douai. As Bishop Richard Challoner describes his return to England, where he worked as a schoolmaster, he was "so zealous in maintaining the old religion" that he was "apprehended on that account."

When he and John Bodey, another Canon and Civil lawyer trained at Douai, were tried for their zealous Catholicism, the main charge against them was that they would not recognize Queen Elizabeth as the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, with spiritual authority. Thus they were violating the Act of Supremacy of 1558. They were imprisoned together at Winchester, tried and convicted together, but were not executed together. Blessed John Bodey suffered the execution of a traitor on November 2, 1583. Both Slade and Bodey were beatified by Pope Pius XI on December 15, 1929, among a large group of priests and laity (136).

As John Hungerford Pollen, who gathered the information about the English martyrs beatified in 1929 by Pope Pius XI, recounts, when John Slade was drawn to the gallows in Winchester on October 30. 1583, he was questioned again about Papal Supremacy and why he denied the religious supremacy of Elizabeth I.

He replied "the Supremacy hath and doth belong to the Pope by right from Peter, and the Pope hath received it as by divine providence. Therefore, we must not give those things belonging to God to any other than him alone. And because I will not do otherwise, I may say with the three children in the fiery oven, and the first of the widow's seven sons in the Maccabees: "Paraii sumus mori magis quam pairias Dei leges pravaricari." [we are ready to die rather than to transgress the laws of God, received from our fathers." 2 Macc 7:2]

Asked about Pope Pius V's excommunication of Elizabeth I, Slade replied with similar boldness:

"Sir," answered Slade, " you are very busy in words: if the Pope hath done so, I think he hath done no more than he may, and than he ought to do. I will acknowledge no other head of the Church, but only the Pope: and her Majesty hath no authority in temporal causes likewise, but only what he shall think good to allow her." At these words the people cried, "Away with the traitor. Hang him. Hang him."

Father Bowden quotes these replies in his entry for Blessed John Slade, citing the verse from the Gospel according to St. Luke: "But they cried again, saying: Crucify him, crucify him." (23:21) as the "Voice of the People" who urged his bloody execution.

It's rather unusual for a layman to be convicted of High Treason for his religion, but after Pope Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth I and declared that Catholics were not bound to be loyal to her religious or temporal supremacy--and in the midst of the investigation of the Throckmorton Plot to rescue Mary, Queen of Scots and place her on the throne of England--this was an essential issue for Elizabethan authorities. 

We may also be astonished that Blessed John Slade invoked the pope granting permission to Elizabeth I to rule England as Queen in the temporal sense, but the combination of temporal and religious authority in the monarch created the tension of loyalties for her Catholic subjects. I wonder how many in the Church of England--until the Tractarian Movement of the 1830's in Oxford--ever thought that perhaps the Archbishop of Canterbury, the most senior Church of England cleric, should have the spiritual authority, and that the Church of England should not be an Erastian church with the monarch having such control over worship, doctrine, and other ecclesiastical matters. (Note that of Henry VIII's heirs, only Mary I did not claim that authority, leaving it to the Pope and his representative in England, the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole.) 

Not many, or at least not many would speak such thoughts out loud. T'would be Treason!

Blessed John Slade, pray for us!

Preview: The Canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales

We'll take another detour Monday morning, October 23, in our Son Rise Morning Show series on Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors For Every Day in the Year. This time, Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I will remember the canonization of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales by Pope St. Paul VI on October 25, 1970, 53 years ago.

So I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here and/or catch the podcast later here.

I did consult the index prepared by Sophia Institute Press for Father Bowden's book and discovered that he does not include six of the Forty Martyrs in his daily reflections: Saints Thomas Garnet, SJ; Richard Gwyn; John Jones, OSF; David Lewis, SJ; Nicholas Owen, SJ; Polydore Plasden. Why didn't Father Bowden include them? I don't know. We should remember that he was writing in the early Twentieth century to English Catholics, trying to inspire them spiritually and morally to be as true to their Faith in Christ and His Church as these English martyrs and confessors had been. He wasn't writing a comprehensive history/biography of the martyrs and confessors.

In 1910 when this book was published, 20 of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales had only been declared Venerable, and one of those canonized in 1970, John Lloyd, is only mentioned in the memento of Saint Philip Evans, SJ (then Venerable) on July 22, page 237. Please note that Evans and Lloyd were executed together on July 22, 1679 in Pwllhalog, near Cardiff in Wales at a site known as the "Death Junction", in the throes of the so-called "Popish Plot" and they are two of the six Martyrs of "and Wales" in the title.

We must remember that the Causes of the English and Welsh Catholic martyrs of the Reformation and Recusant eras did not start until after the Restoration of the Hierarchy in 1850. After that process Pope Leo XIII beatified 54 in 1886 and nine more in 1895. Pope Pius XI beatified 136 more in 1929 and canonized Fisher and More on May 19, 1935. Then, after World War II, the Cause began again and these 40 were canonized. Pope St. John Paul II beatified 85 more in 1987.

There are many, many resources on-line (not to mention my blog!) and in print describing the processes of beatification and canonization of the English and Welsh martyrs. Here's one about the Forty Martyrs focused on Lancashire. Here's another from the Archdiocese of Southwark.

But for Monday's discussion, I'd like to focus on Pope Paul VI's comments about the martyrs he declared saints on October 25, 1970. The Vatican website does not translate all of his homily into English, just the introductory and closing sections; a Jesuit website (ten of those canonized that day were Jesuits) provides another portion.

In the English sections of his homily, Pope Paul VI welcomed not only the English Catholic hierarchy in attendance at the Mass but the Anglican dignitaries present--assuring the latter that the canonization of these martyrs was not meant to be a point of division between the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion, which had just begun ecumenical talks:

We extend Our greeting first of all to Our venerable brother Cardinal John Carmel Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster, who is present here today. Together with him We greet Our brother bishops of England and Wales and of all the other countries, those who have come here for this great ceremony. . . . Thanks to them we are celebrating Christ’s glory made manifest in the holy Martyrs, whom We have just canonized, with such keen and brotherly feelings that We are able to experience in a very special spiritual way the mystery of the oneness and love of the Church. We offer you our greetings, brothers, sons and daughters; We thank you and We bless you.

While We are particularly pleased to note the presence of the official representative of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Reverend Doctor Harry Smythe, We also extend Our respectful and affectionate greeting to all the members of the Anglican Church who have likewise come to take part in this ceremony. We indeed feel very close to them. We would like them to read in Our heart the humility, the gratitude and the hope with which We welcome them.

And he closed his comments with words of hope about the day when "the unity of the faith and of Christian life is restored": "Perhaps We shall have to go on, waiting and watching in prayer, in order to deserve that blessed day. But already We are strengthened in this hope by the heavenly friendship of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales who are canonized today. Amen."

Obviously we are still waiting and watching for that day, for various reasons.

About the martyrs themselves, he offered this praise:

. . . it is perfectly clear that they are worthy to stand alongside the greatest martyrs of the past; and this is not merely because of their fearless faith and marvellous constancy, but by reason of their humility, simplicity and serenity, and above all the spiritual joy and that wonderously radiant love with which they accepted their condemnation and death. 

The high tragedy in the lives of these martyrs was that their honest and genuine loyalty came into conflict with their fidelity to God and the dictates of their conscience illumined by the Catholic faith. 

Faced with the choice of remaining steadfast in their faith and of dying for it, or of saving their lives by denying that faith, without a moment’s hesitation and with a truly supernatural strength they stood for God and joyfully confronted martyrdom. 

The 40 Martyrs of England and Wales canonized 53 years ago are: Alban Roe, Alexander Bryant, Ambrose Barlow, Anne Line, Augustine Webster, Cuthbert Mayne, David Lewis, Edmund Arrowsmith, Edmund Campion, Edmund Gennings, Henry Morse, Henry Walpole, John Almond, John Boste, John Houghton, John Jones, John Kemble, John Lloyd, John Payne, John Plessington, John Rigby, John Roberts, John Stone, John Southworth, John Wall, Luke Kirby, Margaret Clitherow, Margaret Ward, Nicholas Owen, Philip Evans, Philip Howard, Polydore Plasden, Ralph Sherwin, Richard Gwyn, Richard Reynolds, Robert Lawrence, Robert Southwell, Swithun Wells, and Thomas Garnet.

In England, their feast is celebrated on May 4, the date of the first martyrs at Tyburn. In Wales, their feast is celebrated on October 25, highlighting the Six Welsh Martyrs.

Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, pray for us!

Praising the Servant of God Pope Pius VII: Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis

While I was listening to the Son Rise Morning Show Monday morning before I was to go on the air, I heard Anna Mitchell and Matt Swaim mention a letter Pope Francis had written about Servant of God Pope Pius VII. It was issued on September 21 to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of Pope Pius's death on August 20, 1823 to Bishop Douglas Regattieri of Cesena-Sarsina (Barnaba Niccolò Maria Luigi Chiaramonti was born in Cesena on August 14, 1742):

The significant occasion of the bicentenary of the death of the Servant of God Pope Pius VII is for me a happy occasion to address a cordial greeting to you, dear Brother, and to the entire civil and ecclesial Community of Cesena and Sarsina, which remembers with gratitude an illustrious son, a courageous pastor, a caring defender of the Church. To all those who take part in the many initiatives of the "Chiaramontian year" I wish to convey my paternal closeness together with my good wishes.

In re-examining the life of this venerable Predecessor, a personality of profound faith, meekness, humanity and mercy, who distinguished himself for his competence and prudence in the face of those who impeded Libertas Ecclesiae, feelings of gratitude and admiration emerge for the spiritual legacy he left behind and the evangelical frankness with which he sustained difficult trials during the twenty-three years of his Pontificate. Despite the political and social turmoil that marked that century, he trustfully abandoned himself to God's will and accepted the humiliation of exile with exemplary docility, offering everything to the Lord for the good of the Church.

Pope Francis paid tribute to Pius VII's diplomatic efforts:

Certainly, if we consider the historic period in which Pope Pius VII lived, we cannot but note the great wisdom with which he was able to make himself an “ambassador of peace” to those who exercised temporal power. Confronted with a controversial political scenario and a specious action that threatened the salus animarum, with the calmness of one who always trusts in God’s provident intervention, he did everything in his power not to fail in his mission as “guardian and guide of the flock”, and despite the restrictions imposed on him, he continued fearlessly to proclaim the consoling force of Christ’s Gospel, in accordance with the spirit of the Beatitudes which call the children of God to be workers for peace (cf. Mt 5:9).

It's interesting to note that Pope Benedict XVI also praised Pope Pius VII during a visit to a Marian shrine in Savona, Italy in 2008:

It is a pilgrimage that is also a memory and a tribute to my Venerable Predecessor Pius VII, whose dramatic experience is indissolubly linked to this City and its Marian Shrine. Two centuries later, I come to renew the expression of gratitude of the Holy See and of the entire Church for the faith, love and courage with which your fellow citizens supported the Pope under house arrest in this City, imposed upon him by Napoleon Bonaparte. Many testimonies of the manifestations of solidarity for the Pontiff, sometimes even at personal risk, have been preserved. They are events that the people of Savona can well be proud to commemorate today. As your Bishop rightly observed, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that dark page of Europe's history has become rich in graces and teachings for our day too. It teaches us courage in facing the challenges of the world: materialism, relativism, secularism without ever yielding to compromises, ready to pay in person while remaining faithful to the Lord and his Church. The example of serene firmness set by Pope Pius VII invites us to keep our trust in God unaltered in trials, aware that although he permits the Church to experience difficult moments he never abandons us. The episode the Great Pontiff went through in your land invites us always to trust in the intercession and motherly assistance of Mary Most Holy.

In fact, it was Benedict XVI who proclaimed him a Servant of God (in 2007)!

Servant of God Pope Pius VII, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Sir Thomas Lawrence - Portrait of Pope Pius VII

Prayers for Prince Arthur: Queen Elizabeth of York, March 1502

Over at the Mutual Enrichment blog of Father John Hunwicke, he posted a list of churches/shrines and benefices that Queen Elizabeth of York requested and made for the recovery of her son Prince Arthur of Wales in March, 1502. Arthur and his wife Catherine of Aragon had set up their household at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches. They became ill of some unknown malady--perhaps the "sweating sickness" that Henry VIII would flee so often during his reign--and Arthur died on April 2, 1502,15-1/2 years old. Catherine of Aragon, the Princess of Wales, survived:

Here is an itinerary for a priest called Barton who was sent from the Court of Elizabeth of York in March 1502 to make offerings at shrines all over Middle England for the life of Prince Arthur her son, who, had he lived, would probably have been the first of a whole list of imperially-minded English Kings of that name. I give, in Old Money, the sums (some of them fractions of the Mark) he was to donate at each shrine (OL=Our Lady of):

OLWindsor, and S George at Windsor, and the Holy Cross there (2/6);
King Henry (2/6);
OLEton (1/8);
The Child of Grace at Reading (2/6);
OLCaversham (2/6);
OLCockthorpe (1/8);
Holy Blood of Hailes (1/8);
Prince Edward (5/-);
OLWorcester (5-);
Holy Rood at Northampton (5/-) and OLGrace there (2/6);
OLWalsingham (6/8);
OLSudbury (2/6);
OLWoolpit (1/8);
OLIpswich 3/4);

So Father Barton started in Windsor and ended in Ispwich, praying for Prince Arthur. Father Hunwicke notes two of the shrines Father Barton visited were (in bold italics above) for King Henry VI and his son Edward, Prince of Wales. So Father Hunwicke notes in another post:

On May 4, 1471, a battle decisive in English dynastic history: at Tewkesbury. It sticks in the memory because the conflict eventually burst into the Abbey Church, where the slaughter was only eventually ended when the Abbot took a Procession the the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar down to where the killing was happening.

Among those who died in those bloodied hours was the last heir of the the Lancastrian family, the seventeen year-old Prince Edward. He was buried, and still is, in that Abbey [now a Church of England place of prayer/worship]; the place of his burial is now marked by a Victorian brass tablet.

According to the Wikipedia article on Prince Edward, the plaque reads:

Hic jacet
Edwardus
princeps Wallie, crude
liter interfectus dum adhuc juvenis
anno dñi 1471 mense maie die quarto
eheu hominum furore Matris
tu sola lux es ⁊ gregis
ultima
spes

This can be translated into English as follows:[6]

"Here lies Edward, Prince of Wales, cruelly slain whilst but a youth. Anno Domini 1471, May fourth. Alas, the savagery of men. Thou art the sole light of thy Mother, and the last hope of thy race."

Of course, Prince Edward's mother was Queen Margaret of Anjou. Prince Edward is a character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part Three, the next history play we'll read aloud in our semi-quarterly Shakespeare reading group. The Folger Library describes him thus as depicted in the play:

Prince Edward, of the Lancastrian party, is the son of Henry VI and his Queen, Margaret. He is very much his mother’s son, haughty, stubborn, and quick to insult.

He pays little attention to his father, regarding him as a weakling, and rejecting his injunctions to restraint. Eager to fight for his rights, he is recklessly unwilling to bow to superior force, and even when captured by his enemies refuses to speak the slightest word that might imply a surrender, making his death at Yorkist hands even more certain than it ever was. He is slaughtered in front of his mother’s eyes. His ghost returns in Richard III.

James Northcote (1746-1831) painted the scene (Public Domain) from Shakespeare (Act Five, Scene 5) as Edward IV, George, the Duke of Clarence, and Richard, the Duke of Gloucester (the future Richard III), stab the young prince to death as his mother protests in horror. Other more contemporary sources indicate that Edward was slain in battle by Clarence. (Note that Northcote also depicted the murder of the Princes in the Tower from Richard III (Act Four, Scene 3.)

I know that Henry VII promoted the Cause of Henry VI, as noted here and here, but I did not know about any cult for Prince Edward of Wales. If you look at the comments for both of Father Hunwicke's posts, you'll notice some remarks by the Once I Was a Clever Boy blogger!

Of course, we know that Prince Arthur's death and Catherine of Aragon's subsequent marriage to his younger brother Henry, the future Henry VIII, are events tremendously important to the religious and dynastic history of England--to put it lightly!

 And, he posted another itinerary of prayers and alms for Prince Arthur!

I have read that Father Hunwicke is ill so please keep him in your prayers.

Image credit (Public Domain): Depicted person: Arthur Tudor (1486-1502), Prince of Wales was the first son of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. This portrait is regarded as the only surviving contemporary portrait of the sitter.

Preview: Another Confessor: William Cardinal Allen, RIP

After our detour to consider the feast of Saint John Henry Newman on Monday, October 9, we'll return to our exploration of Father Henry Sebastian Bowden's Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on Monday, October 16 on the Son Rise Morning Show.

Since it's the anniversary of his death in Rome on October 16, 1594 (429 years ago!), we'll focus on William Cardinal Allen, the great founder of the seminaries preparing the missionary priests to return to England. So I'll be on the air about 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, the last segment in the second national hour on EWTN Radio. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Father Bowden has a few entries for Cardinal Allen, who was not a martyr but prepared many priests for the missionary field who became martyrs, and the one I chose for today highlights Allen's regret that he had not been able to offer his own life for the Lord.

The Catholic Encyclopedia provides great evidence for William Cardinal Allen's significance for the recusant/penal/missionary era in England. Born in 1532, 

He was the third son of John Allen of Rossall, Lancashire, and at the age of fifteen went to Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. in 1550, and was elected Fellow of his College. In 1554 he proceeded M.A., and two years later was chosen Principal of St. Mary's Hall. For a short time he also held a canonry at York, for he had already determined to embrace the ecclesiastical state. On the accession of Elizabeth, and the re-establishment of Protestantism, Allen was one of those who remained most stanch on the Catholic side, and it is chiefly due to his labours that the Catholic religion was not entirely stamped out in England. Having resigned all his preferments, he left the country in 1561, and sought a refuge in the university town of Louvain. The following year, however, we find him back in England, devoting himself, though not yet in priest's orders, to evangelizing his native county. His success was such that it attracted notice and he had to flee for safety. For a while he made himself a missionary centre near Oxford, where he had many acquaintances, and later for a time he sought protection with the family of the Duke of Norfolk. In 1565 he was again forced to leave England, this time, as it turned out, for good. He was ordained priest at Mechlin shortly afterwards. The three years Allen spent as a missioner in England had a determining effect on his whole after life. For he found everywhere that the people were not Protestant by choice, but by force of circumstances; and the majority were only too ready, in response to his preaching and ministrations, to return to Catholicity. He was always convinced that the Protestant wave over the country, due to the action of Elizabeth, could only be temporary, and that the whole future depended on there being a supply of trained clergy and controversialists ready to come into the country whenever Catholicity should be restored.

And authors like Philip Hughes and Eamon Duffy praised the kind of formation Allen designed for the missionary priests--they weren't going to be in parishes and they were probably going to be alone most of the time--they needed to be trained for apologetics with knowledge of Church history including English Church history, the Bible, and Church doctrine. They needed to preach in English, obviously, and he also prepared them carefully for their spiritual life in the missionary field: fasting twice a week for the conversion of England, use of St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, frequent Confession as spiritual development, not merely juridical forgiveness of sins, and other spiritual devotions.

In his book Reformation Divided, which I reviewed several years ago for the St. Austin Review, Duffy concurs with the Catholic Encyclopedia's view: "because of Allen “English Catholicism was given an institutional lifeline to the larger world of Christendom . . . because of him, it survived.” (p. 163)"

With the title "Father of Many Sons" on page 328 and the Scripture verse from 1 Corinthians 4:15: "For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you", Father Bowden highlights Cardinal Allen's last months and deathbed:

"Douay," he wrote, a few months before his death, "is as dear to me as my own life, and which hath next to God been the beginning and ground of all the good and salvation which is wrought in England." Created cardinal by Sixtus V, he became the natural protector of the afflicted English Catholics, and, by his writings and influence, powerfully aided their cause. Dying, he said that the greatest pain he suffered was to see that after by God's help he had induced so many to endure imprisonment, persecution, and martyrdom in England, he had deserved by his sins to end his life on that bed--Rome, October 16.

May he rest in the peace of Christ.

Pole and His Books at Lambeth

The Reformation Cardinal exhibition at Lambeth Palace Library opened last week. It's an exhibition featuring some of his books (appropriately enough for a Library):

Pole’s was a life steeped in books. He was a scholar and a collector of one of the period’s most intriguing libraries, and it was in books that he fought his battles and made his strongest statements for reform. This exhibition gathers books from Oxford, London, and Rome to tell his story. The Pole who emerges is a complex and agonized individual, someone of sincerity and of evident charm, a connoisseur, a man of strong faith, a European statesman—and a battler for moderation within the limits of the possible.

There's an excellent digital exhibition for those of us who can't get to London before December 15, divided into "eras" of his life as a student, controversialist against Henry VIII, Cardinal scholar in Rome, Viterbo, and Trent, and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reign of Mary I. Each section highlights books, letters, and other documents: the books he studied, the books he wrote, books he inspired to renew the life of the Catholic Church in England, and books evaluating his role in the English Reformation and that renewal. 

The summing up:

Since [his death], he has been at the heart of two contrasting legends of English history. In one he is seen as the cruel agent of ‘Bloody Mary’ and an instigator of the burning alive of approximately three hundred English and Welsh men and women for their non-Catholic religious beliefs. The other legend of Pole as a saint and almost a martyr for the Catholic faith began to form immediately after his death. Biographies of the late cardinal were written and edited by men who had known him, notably Ludovico Beccadelli, and by supporters, not least at New College in Oxford, where a third of the fellows refused to accept Elizabeth’s religious settlement of 1559, resigned their fellowships, and moved abroad.

The role that Pole had played, his legacy for English Catholics in particular and for the European Counter-Reformation more broadly, would remain as meaningful as it was complex.

You have click on each image in the sections, scroll down a narrative panel or click on arrows to follow the explanation about the context and the provenance of each book or document, and then close the tab to return to the exhibition page and open another image. 

Two of the most interesting in the section on Henry VIII and Pole's "disagreements" are a Psalter with St. Thomas a Becket's name all blotted out and Pole's copy of the Bishop of Exeter John de Grandisson's Life of Becket, one of only six copies of the work to survive Henry VIII's attacks on the martyred saint.

Image Credit (Public Domain:) El cardenal Reginald Pole, por Sebastiano del Piombo

Preview: Why St. John Henry Newman Should be on the USA's Liturgical Calendar

We're going to interrupt our series on the Mementoes of the English Martyrs and Confessors on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, October 9 to discuss the feast of Saint John Henry Newman. I'll be on the show at my usual time, around 6:50 a.m. Central/7:50 a.m. Eastern, to talk with Anna Mitchell or Matt Swaim.

Please listen live here or listen to the podcast at your convenience here.

Saint John Henry Newman died on August 11, 1890 and usually his feast would be celebrated on the date of his death, but it was already the feast of Saint Clare of Assisi. So the anniversary of his joining the Catholic Church on October 9 in 1845 was chosen instead when his beatification was announced.

In England and Wales October 9 is celebrated as a Feast now (with the Gloria recited or sung at Mass). There were already three optional memorials on October 9 (St. Denis and Companions, St. John Leonardi, and St. Paulinus of York, an English saint) before his canonization in 2019, meaning that either the Weekday or Ordinary Time, or the memorial of one of those three saints, could be celebrated. The English Bishops moved those three optional memorials to October 10 to make room for Newman's Feast on October 9. (The Anglican Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in the United States also celebrates this Feast day.)

I propose that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops do something similar to make room for Newman on our Liturgical Calendar and offer three reasons, in ascending order of importance. 

At this time, his feast is not on the Liturgical Calendar at all, not even as an optional memorial.

I'm not going to be greedy enough to propose his feast as a Feast in the USA, but as the Memorial, thus the only feast to be celebrated on October 9--and that St. Denis and St. John Leonardi be moved as optional memorials on October 10.

My three reasons: First:

Newman and the New Evangelization: After teaching a graduate class on Newman and the New Evangelization for our local Newman University the past two summers, I'm convinced that he is an excellent patron saint for this project, which includes the Eucharistic Revival, to renew the faith of Catholics, particularly the laity. 

Newman offers many insights into how to revive and re-enforce Catholics' belief in what they believe and what the Church teaches, and to integrate it more firmly in their lives. He encouraged both growth of knowledge of the truths of the Catholic Faith and the actions that demonstrated that knowledge and belief. As he told the Little Brothers of the Oratory in Birmingham:

I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity. I wish you to enlarge your knowledge, to cultivate your reason, to get an insight into the relation of truth to truth, to learn to view things as they are, to understand how faith and reason stand to each other, what are the bases and principles of Catholicism and where lies the main inconsistencies and absurdities of the Protestant theory. I have no apprehension you will be the worse Catholics for familiarity with these subjects, provided you cherish a vivid sense of God above and keep in mind that you have souls to be judged and saved. In all times the laity have been the measure of the Catholic spirit; they saved the Irish Church three centuries ago and they betrayed the Church in England. You ought to be able to bring out what you feel and what you mean, as well as to feel and mean it; to expose to the comprehension of others the fictions and fallacies of your opponents; to explain the charges brought against the Church, to the satisfaction, not, indeed, of bigots, but of men of sense, of whatever cast of opinion.

By preparing those Little Brothers of the Oratory with vibrant knowledge and conviction of the Faith, Newman wanted them to use their personal influence to help others gain that assurance. Quoting an earlier work from his Anglican days (The Tamworth Reading Room letters of 1841) in the Grammar of Assent (1870), he proposed:

The heart is commonly reached, not through the reason, but through the imagination, by means of direct impressions, by the testimony of facts and events, by history, by description. Persons influence us, voices melt us, looks subdue us, deeds inflame us. Many a man will live and die upon a dogma: no man will be a martyr for a conclusion.

He dedicated an entire sermon to this theme, "Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth" as an Anglican, so it was a constant in his life that he wanted to prepare Christians to share their Faith effectively through formal education, sermons, literature, friendships, and arguments and apologetics--in that order. Thus they would be able to move others to embrace the Truth.

I'm not alone in this belief about Newman and the New Evangelization: Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop James Conley, the late Father Ian Ker, and many others have observed this.

My Second Reason: 

The Newman Centers at secular universities in the USA: Since the first Newman Club was founded at the University of Pennsylvania in 1893--just three years after his death!--Newman Centers at secular universities have provided students with Holy Mass and the other Sacraments, continuing religious education, social activities, a place a study, etc. The National Catholic Register just published an article about them last month.

As the Newman Ministry website notes:

Over 80% of students stop practicing the faith in college—that’s most of the campus! The problem is, many students struggle to find great friends that share their faith.

It can be overwhelming to walk onto a new campus with no friends. There’s so many opportunities and decisions to make. Faith usually isn’t at the top of the list.

That’s where we come in. Newman Ministry connects students with a Catholic community on campus, so their faith thrives in college and beyond.

So Saint John Henry Newman has had an influence in the USA since the late 19th century through these campus centers for Catholics, even though not all of them still use his name. I attended the Newman Center at Wichita State University and learned about Saint John Henry Newman there (it now does not use his name, but that's still the way I think of it!).

My Third Reason: 

Newman's Miracles

Both the miracle accepted for his Beatification in 2010, and the miracle accepted for his Canonization in 2019 occurred in the United States of America, and both of them through the influence of EWTN!

Deacon Jack Sullivan had watched a program on then-Venerable John Henry Newman on EWTN and decided to ask Newman's intercession for his back problems:

“They were discussing not only Newman’s teachings, but the process of beatification,” Sullivan explained to EWTN. “At the end of the program, they had on screen an address of the Oratory in Birmingham [England] and they said, ‘if you receive any Divine favors, please contact that Oratory.’

“I happened to have a piece of paper and a pen on the table in front of me and I wrote it down. Then, I thought, ‘If I wrote it down, I might as well pray to Newman.”

“I prayed, ‘Please Cardinal Newman, help me with God so that I might walk and go back to classes and be ordained.’”

After a later surgery that found greater damage to his spine than thought:

On August 15, 2001, four days after his surgery, Sullivan again prayed to Cardinal Newman.

“I felt tremendous heat and a tingling feeling all over that lasted for five or 10 minutes,” Sullivan said. “After I experienced this, I immediately stood up straight. I was able to walk, not with a walker or cane, but on my own, without any difficulty or pain. I walked all over the hospital, just joyful. I never needed any pain medication after that.”

Melissa Villalobos was inspired by the same program to ask Newman's intercession in the second miracle:

Melissa Villalobos lives near Chicago. As a college student at Washington University in St Louis she met her husband-to-be David Villalobos, and it was there that she also first came across the Newman Center, which she had assumed was named after a rich benefactor.

Soon after graduating in 2000, she watched a TV show on EWTN called ‘Newman At 2000’. In 2010 she watched the Beatification of Cardinal Newman on EWTN, and remembers being very moved. She was given a prayer card with the face of Newman, and she began to read his works on the Internet and her devotion to him grew, so that she would turn in prayer often to ask him for favours and inspiration. . . 

When she was pregnant with her fifth child, Gemma, Villalobos began to experience bleeding from uterus. During a particularly dangerous hemorrhage, she prayed:

"Please Cardinal Newman make the bleeding stop!” As soon as she had finished her sentence the bleeding stopped. She immediately thanked Cardinal Newman, convinced that she had been healed by his intercession. She was then able to hurry downstairs and check on her children with no further bleeding.

On a visit to the doctor later that very same day, 15 May, he confirmed with an ultrasound that Melissa had been cured of her condition, and her placenta was no longer torn. The bleeding never returned. . . .

These two miracles are further evidence of devotion to Newman in the United States.

There's at least one more reason I've thought of: the many American converts, especially from the Episcopalian church, who have been influenced by Saint John Henry Newman. Like the late Thomas Howard, Holly Ordway, Father Dwight Longenecker, Deacon Scott Carson, Monsignor Jeffrey Stinson, etc., etc., many have attested to Newman's influence on them. Just peruse the stories collected on the Coming Home Network website and you'll see what he has meant to converts in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States.

Finally, I do have a very personal reason for this proposal: after studying the works of Saint John Henry Newman since I first learned about him as a college sophomore, writing about him, teaching about him, and praying for his intercession, I'd like to attend a daily Mass on his feast day on October 9 in the next year or so.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!