Preview: Newman on St. Joseph and Sympathy

Since we'll celebrate the feast of Saint Joseph on March 19, it seems appropriate to focus on Saint John Henry Newman's commentary on the Holy Family and the death of Saint Joseph in another meditation in the next installment of our Son Rise Morning Show Lenten Series. So Anna Mitchell (her turn, I think) or Matt Swaim and I will discuss part of Newman's meditation on how "Our Lord Refuses Sympathy" as He enters His passion. 

On Monday, March 17 (Saint Patrick's Day!), I'll be on at my usual time, at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Newman focuses on how Our Incarnate Lord had been born and raised in a loving human family and yet how, in His Passion, He eschewed the support and sympathy that humanity could provide:

1. SYMPATHY may be called an eternal law, for it is signified or rather transcendentally and archetypically fulfilled in the ineffable mutual love of the Divine Trinity. God, though infinitely One, has ever been Three. He ever has rejoiced in His Son and His Spirit, and they in Him—and thus through all eternity He has existed, not solitary, though alone, having in this incomprehensible multiplication of Himself and reiteration of His Person, such infinitely perfect bliss, that nothing He has created can add aught to it. The devil only is barren and lonely, shut up in himself—and his servants also.

Thus, He lived on earth for most of His life in a human image of that relationship among Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

2. When, for our sakes, the Son came on earth and took our flesh, yet He would not live without the sympathy of others. For thirty years He lived with Mary and Joseph and thus formed a shadow of the Heavenly Trinity on earth. O the perfection of {310} that sympathy which existed between the three! Not a look of one, but the other two understood, as expressed, better than if expressed in a thousand words—nay more than understood, accepted, echoed, corroborated. It was like three instruments absolutely in tune which all vibrate when one vibrates, and vibrate either one and the same note, or in perfect harmony.

One reason Jesus Incarnate lived in such a Holy Family and received their sympathy and support is, as Saint Thomas Aquinas writes in the Summa Theologicae, the sympathy of friends (and family I presume he would allow), helps us bear sorrows:

When one is in pain, it is natural that the sympathy of a friend should afford consolation: whereof the Philosopher indicates a twofold reason (Ethic. ix, 11). The first is because, since sorrow has a depressing effect, it is like a weight whereof we strive to unburden ourselves: so that when a man sees others saddened by his own sorrow, it seems as though others were bearing the burden with him, striving, as it were, to lessen its weight; wherefore the load of sorrow becomes lighter for him: something like what occurs in the carrying of bodily burdens. The second and better reason is because when a man's friends condole with him, he sees that he is loved by them, and this affords him pleasure, as stated above (Q [32], A [5]). Consequently, since every pleasure assuages sorrow, as stated above [1331] (A [1]), it follows that sorrow is mitigated by a sympathizing friend.

I think this feeling of sympathy also resonated with Newman, for he loved his friends and family, even after his conversion to Catholicism meant that they were separated, even when some refused to be with him or even correspond with him. This post from the website prepared in 2019 before his canonization provides many examples of his thoughts about friends: "All of the extracts in this article are taken from his ‘Sermon on Love of Relations and Friends’ and his ‘Sermon on Personal Influence, the Means of Propagating the Truth’, along with extracts from his spiritual autobiography ‘Apologia Pro Vita Sua’." 

Perhaps one of his most moving sermons is his last as an Anglican on September 25, 1853, "The Parting of Friends", which left many in the congregation at Littlemore in tears.

But, being human, the earthly trinity of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph was not to last:

3. The first weakening of that unison was when Joseph died. It was no jar in the sound, for to the last moment of his life, he was one with them, and the sympathy between the three only became more intense, and more sweet, while it was brought into new circumstances and had a wider range in the months of his declining, his sickness, and death. . . .

Newman's comments on the death of Saint Joseph remind us why he is the patron saint of Holy and Happy Death:

4. O what a moment of sympathy between the three, the moment before Joseph died—they supporting and hanging over him, he looking at them and reposing in them with undivided, unreserved, supreme, devotion, for he was in the arms of God and the Mother of God. As a flame shoots up and expires, so was the ecstasy of that last moment ineffable, for each knew and thought of the reverse {311} which was to follow on the snapping of that bond. One moment, very different, of joy, not of sorrow, was equal to it in intensity of feeling, that of the birth of Jesus. The birth of Jesus, the death of Joseph, moments of unutterable sweetness, unparalleled in the history of mankind. . . . 

So Mary and Jesus were left alone together for a few more years:

5. The birth of Jesus, the death of Joseph, those moments of transcendentally pure, and perfect and living sympathy, between the three members of this earthly Trinity, were its beginning and its end. The death of Joseph, which broke it up, was the breaking up of more than itself. It was but the beginning of that change which was coming over Son and Mother. Going on now for thirty years, each of them had been preserved from the world, and had lived for each other. . . .

Newman concludes this part of the meditation with this entreaty:

O my soul, thou art allowed to contemplate this union of the three, and to share thyself its sympathy, {312} by faith though not by sight. My God, I believe and know that then a communion of heavenly things was opened on earth which has never been suspended. It is my duty and my bliss to enter into it myself. It is my duty and my bliss to be in tune with that most touching music which then began to sound. Give me that grace which alone can make me hear and understand it, that it may thrill through me. Let the breathings of my soul be with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Let me live in obscurity, out of the world and the world's thought, with them. Let me look to them in sorrow and in joy, and live and die in their sweet sympathy.

Newman even offers a prayer for a happy and holy death:

OH, my Lord and Saviour, support me in that hour in the strong arms of Thy Sacraments, and by the fresh fragrance of Thy consolations. Let the absolving words be said over me, and the holy oil sign and seal me, and Thy own Body be my food, and Thy Blood my sprinkling; and let my sweet Mother, Mary, breathe on me, and my Angel whisper peace to me, and my glorious Saints ... [choose your own here!] smile upon me; that in them all, and through them all, I may receive the gift of perseverance, and die, as I desire to live, in Thy faith, in Thy Church, in Thy service, and in Thy love. Amen.

Next Monday, we'll look at the continuation of this passage in which Newman meditates on "that change which was coming over Son and Mother."

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us.

The images above are (C) 2025 Stephanie A. Mann; taken in Sacred Heart Catholic Church  in Colwich, Kansas.

Another View of Christianity in England: Peter Ackroyd on "The English Soul"

Catching up on my reading of periodicals, I looked at the book reviews in the December 2024 issue of First Things and saw a review of a new book by Peter Ackroyd written by Richard Rex, professor of Reformation history at the University of Cambridge. The book is titled The English Soul: Faith of a Nation and is published here in the USA by the University of Chicago Press with a paperback available in September this year (in the UK it's available now from Reaktion Books). The publisher's blurb:

This book portrays the spirit and nature of English Christianity, as it has developed over the last fourteen hundred years. During this time, Christianity has been the predominant faith of the people and the reflection of the English soul. This fascinating new history is an account of the Christian English soul, which recognizes the fact that Christianity has been the anchoring and defining doctrine of England while accepting respectfully that other powerful and significant faiths have influenced the religious sensibility of this nation. Peter Ackroyd surveys the lives and faith of the most important figures of English Christianity from the Venerable Bede to C. S. Lewis, exploring the mysticism of Julian of Norwich and William Blake; the tumultuous years of the Reformation; the emergence of the English bible; the evangelical tradition, including John Wesley; and the contemporary contest between tradition, revival, and atheism. This is an essential, comprehensive, and accessible survey of English Christianity.

Richard Rex comments on the unfulfilled promise of the title (his review is titled "Disintegrating England):

Peter Ackroyd is a major figure in contemporary English letters, a fluent and pleasing writer with dozens of fascinating books to his name in numerous genres—history, biography, chorography, criticism, and fiction. So the prospect of his reflections on the long history of Christian England is an appealing one. Yet, by his usual standards, The English Soul is a little disappointing. The book is cast as a catena of brief lives, with “England” an almost abstract backdrop, lacking that spirit of place which is so often the soul of Ackroyd’s writing. The eponymous “English Soul” is ritually invoked from time to time, often in phrases of atypical banality (such as the comment about Little Gidding, “It became a corner of the English soul”) or almost randomly (“This was a phase of the English soul”). The effect is of a halfhearted attempt to make something out of an eye-catching title that never really manages to marshal enough of an idea to justify itself. (p. 53)

And as the title of the review suggests, Rex comments on how Ackroyd does not address the moral decline and lack of Sunday observance in England today, as highlighted in the Crisis Magazine and National Catholic Register articles I posed on last week. What is "The Faith of [the English] Nation" today?

In the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) Lucy Beckett is a little unsure about it too:

The title and subtitle of Peter Ackroyd’s new book are both misleading: the book could more accurately be called From Bede to Don Cupitt: Essays in the history of English Christianity. Twenty-three chapters, each under the heading “Religion as …”, take the reader from the eighth to the twenty-first century, but six of these thirteen centuries are absent from the story. After Bede (“Religion as History”), the next subjects are the fourteenth-century English mystics (“Religion as Revelation”), who seem to be included principally to justify Ackroyd’s often-repeated idea that the (Christian) English soul begins in mystical experience and ends in pragmatism. For him, though they were orthodox Catholics, the mystics initiated the tradition of the individual’s connection with God, outside any structure of doctrine or sacraments, that was taken up first by enthusiasts in the sects that developed on the wilder fringes of Protestantism, then by William Blake. Contemporary with Julian of Norwich and the other mystics, who were very different from each other, was John Wyclif, a scratchy, clever, discontented academic, and indeed a proto-Protestant.

Beckett's review is titled: "A Practical faith: Peter Ackroyd’s Protestant reading of English Christianity". Ackroyd does indeed skip many Catholic writers after Julian Norwich and others in the fourteenth century, according to the Table of Contents until the nineteenth and twentieth. After her and Rolle and Hilton it's Wyclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, and Foxe. He does later devote chapters to John Henry Newman ("Religion as Thought"--YIKES!) and G.K.Chesterton (shared with C.S. Lewis in chapter titled "Religion as Argument"--Chesterton probably wouldn't mind that much because he did love a good argument!), two Anglican converts to Catholicism. I wonder if William Caxton, Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, Saint John of Beverley and Saint John of Bridlington (two of the English saints Henry V asked to intercede at the Battle of Agincourt),and otherss even merit a mention.

As Rex comments, "Having been called into existence by the papacy, English Christianity remained for nine hundred years intimately connected with Rome, but this truth is simply bypassed [by Ackroyd]. . . . the long continuum of English Catholicism, from 600 to 1500, is covered in fifty pages, a quarter of them on the idiosyncratic figure of John Wycliffe (sic) . . ." (p. 54 in the print edition) Rex also points out the irony that the cover of the book depicts Saint Thomas of Canterbury excommunicating Henry II when the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury is hardly mentioned in the book and by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus, yet none of the medieval Catholic material culture of art and architecture is mentioned.

Lucy Beckett brings up some of the same issues with this trenchant comment, "Ackroyd writes as if Eamon Duffy had never bothered to revive respect for the warmth and depth of medieval English Christianity, and treats Catholic piety only with the contempt of a scornful Protestant."

Speaking of Eamon Duffy, here's his view of Ackroyd's success or failure. He concludes: "Ackroyd is an accomplished writer who has often written compellingly about the English past. But he is not at his best in this book, a sometimes dutiful catalog of major and some very minor religious figures, lacking a convincing unifying theme. Anyone looking for a key to the English soul must look elsewhere."

I think I'll wait for the paperback . . . or to see it on the shelf at a bookstore and scan the chapter on Newman.

Preview: Lenten/Newman Series on the Son Rise Morning Show

On Monday of the First Week of Lent, we'll start a Newman/Lenten series on the Son Rise Morning Show, using a newly published collection/selection of Saint John Henry Newman's works on Lent. Sophia Institute Press produced this lovely collection, including a well-illustrated section with Newman's Meditations on the Stations of the Cross. 

On Monday, March 10, I'll be on at my usual time, at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Sophia's selection features works from both his Anglican and Catholic periods, and we'll start with one of a series of meditations he wrote at the Oratory School in Birmingham. They were published posthumously in a collection titled Meditations and Devotions, edited by his secretary Father William Neville in 1893, three years after Newman's death. The volume was dedicated to the boys of the Oratory School:

To you, boys of the Oratory School, past and present, this collection of devotional papers by Cardinal Newman is dedicated. They are a memento both of the Cardinal's constant thought of you, and of his confident assurance that, after his death, you would pray for his soul.

For those of you who have read my posts or listened to my segments on the Son Rise Morning Show based upon Newman's Parochial and Plain--or other Anglican--Sermons, be ready for a very different voice and method from Newman in these excerpts for the next several weeks. This is Catholic Newman, meditating on the Gospels, inspired by his spiritual mentor, Saint Philip Neri. More on that later.

These meditations seem to have been planned for Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament in a section titled "Meditations on Christian Doctrine" (there's a prayer "A Short Visit to the Blessed Sacrament Before Meditation" at the beginning). The first meditation in the section "Hope in God--Redeemer" is on "The Mental Sufferings of Our Lord" and it focuses on the response of Judas and the disciples to the Anointing at the house of Simon the Leper in Bethany in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 26 (and Mark 24):

After all His discourses were consummated (Matt. 26:1), fully finished and brought to an end, then He said, The Son of man will be betrayed to crucifixion. As an army puts itself in battle array, as sailors, before an action, clear the decks, as dying men make their will and then turn to God, so though our Lord could never cease to speak good words, did He sum up and complete His teaching, and then commence His passion. Then He removed by His own act the prohibition which kept Satan from Him, and opened the door to the agitations of His human heart, as a soldier, who is to suffer death, may drop his handkerchief himself. At once Satan came on and seized upon his brief hour. 

Newman emphasizes that Jesus allows Himself to become vulnerable as He ends His public ministry of teaching and miracles and prepares for His Passion. ("And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended all these words, he said to his disciples You know that after two days shall be the pasch, and the son of man shall be delivered up to be crucified." Matthew 26:1-2 )  (Douai-Rheims translation) Only He can give the signal ("drop his handkerchief") to begin the Passion. Then:

2. An evil temper of murmuring and criticism is spread among the disciples. One was the source of it, but it seems to have been spread. The thought {305} of His death was before Him, and He was thinking of it and His burial after it. A woman came and anointed His sacred head. The action spread a soothing tender feeling over His pure soul. It was a mute token of sympathy, and the whole house was filled with it. It was rudely broken by the harsh voice of the traitor now for the first time giving utterance to his secret heartlessness and malice. Ut quid perditio hæc? "To what purpose is this waste?"—the unjust steward with his impious economy making up for his own private thefts by grudging honour to his Master. Thus in the midst of the sweet calm harmony of that feast at Bethany, there comes a jar and discord; all is wrong: sour discontent and distrust are spreading, for the devil is abroad.

While Jesus takes some comfort from this anointing with its perfume and warmth, the disciples think only of the money it cost and a better use for it. From St. John's Gospel account of the anointing, Newman takes the real motive for Judas's objection: "He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it." (12:6)

Newman does not comment on Jesus's response to this remonstrance:

And Jesus knowing it, said to them: Why do you trouble this woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For the poor you have always with you: but me you have not always. For she in pouring this ointment upon my body, hath done it for my burial. Amen I say to you, wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which she hath done, shall be told for a memory of her. (Matthew 26:10-13)

He turns instead to Judas's actions (Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, and said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver. And from thenceforth he sought opportunity to betray him. Matthew 26:12-16):

3. Judas, having once shown what he was, lost no time in carrying out his malice. He went to the Chief Priests, and bargained with them to betray his Lord for a price. . . .

And Newman looks into the mind and heart of Jesus, True God and True Man, able to know what Judas was doing as he was doing it, and already feeling the betrayal before the traitor's kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane:

Our Lord saw all that took place within him; He saw Satan knocking at his heart, and admitted there and made an honoured and beloved guest and an intimate. He saw him go to the Priests and heard the conversation between them. He had seen it by His foreknowledge all the time he had been about Him, and when He chose him. What we know feebly as to be, affects us far more vividly and very differently when it actually takes place. Our Lord had at length felt, and suffered Himself to feel, the cruelty of the ingratitude of which He was the sport and victim. He had treated Judas as one of His most familiar friends. He had shown marks of the closest intimacy; He had made {306} him the purse-keeper of Himself and His followers. He had given him the power of working miracles. He had admitted him to a knowledge of the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. He had sent him out to preach and made him one of His own special representatives, so that the Master was judged of by the conduct of His servant. . . .

Then Newman looks at himself and prays for faith and faithfulness:

O my God, how can I look Thee in the face when I think of my ingratitude, so deeply seated, so habitual, so immovable—or rather so awfully increasing! Thou loadest me day by day with Thy favours, and feedest me with Thyself, as Thou didst Judas, yet I not only do not profit thereby, but I do not even make any acknowledgment at the time. Lord, how long? when shall I be free from this real, this fatal captivity? He who made Judas his prey, has got foothold of me in my old age, and I cannot get loose. It is the same day after day. When wilt Thou give me a still greater grace than Thou hast given, the grace to profit by the graces which Thou givest? When wilt Thou give me Thy effectual grace which alone can give life and vigour to this effete, miserable, dying soul of mine? My God, I know not in what sense I can pain Thee in Thy glorified state; but I know that every fresh sin, every fresh ingratitude I now commit, was among the blows and stripes which once fell on Thee in Thy passion. O let me have as little share in those Thy past sufferings as possible. Day by day goes, and I find I have been more and more, by the new sins of each day, the cause of them. I know that at best I have a real {309} share in solido of them all, but still it is shocking to find myself having a greater and greater share. Let others wound Thee—let not me. Let not me have to think that Thou wouldest have had this or that pang of soul or body the less, except for me. O my God, I am so fast in prison that I cannot get out. O Mary, pray for me. O Philip, pray for me, though I do not deserve Thy pity. 

So why this different tone and method in Newman's reflections on the Gospels? Because of the influence of St. Philip Neri, his patron as an Oratorian.

Father Henry Tristram of the Birmingham Oratory, who died in 1955, explained in "With Newman at Prayer" in John Henry Newman: Centenary Essays (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, LTD, 1945):

St. Philip newmanized Newman by creating a spiritual atmosphere in which he found himself, and became what at heart he always was--the Newman of domestic tradition. It was his constant prayer that he should grow into the likeness of his holy Patron . . . 

Father Tristram further explains that from St. Philip Neri, Newman drew his spiritual and devotional life as an Oratorian: frequent confessions, frequent communions, special devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, mental discipline, "obedience rather than sacrifice", an "interior religion," and "that illumination and freedom of spirit which comes of love." (p. 119) That helps explain the tenderness and humility of Newman's tone in these meditations as he sought to imitate his patron saint.

St. Philip Neri, pray for us!

St. John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Jesus's feet anointed by a sinner 1585 print by Ambrosius Francken I, S.I 1071, Prints Department, Royal Library of Belgium

Vestiges of Religion and the Decline of England, Part Two

The second article on the decline of British society suggests that the Catholic Church can step into the gap to provide meaning and significance, helping Britains find hope. (You'll find the post on the first article, from Crisis Magazine here, if you want to read them again.)

As National Catholic Register's Senior Contributor and EWTN News Vatican Analyst Edward Pentin suggests in "England’s Decline: As ‘Our Lady’s Dowry’ Wanes, Is the Catholic Faith Set for a Revival?", they're using something else now--according to Boris Johnson--and it's not good for them:

Britain’s former Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently caused a mini-uproar by saying the Church of England’s failure to fill “an aching spiritual void” had led to large numbers of British citizens “gorging themselves” and becoming obese instead.

While he was being deliberately provocative about a widespread disorder to which Johnson, by his own admission, is not immune, the connection between spiritual need and societal ills is one that others have also noticed as the country suffers from a well-publicized and growing socio-political malaise that extends well beyond obesity.

“If you spend time in pubs talking and listening to people,” said Sebastian Morello, an English Catholic philosopher and writer, “you’ll find everybody is desperately unhappy in England.”

Pentin then offers examples of crime, depression, promotion of assisted suicide, suppression of silent prayer outside abortuaries (thought crimes!), and loss of faith in government institutions. Then he looks at the religious statistics, which aren't going in the right direction for Christianity: In 2001 the percentage of people in England and Wales who identified themselves as Christian was 72%; in 2021, 46.2%. Only about 1.2% of the population attend Church of England services. That's why Anglican Cathedrals are presenting exhibitions and even hosting "Rave" events: to make money to maintain the great English Gothic beauty of formerly Catholic holy places.

But Pentin also posts bad news for the Catholic Church:

Meanwhile, mathematical models based on current trends predict Catholic Mass attendance in England and Wales potentially halving by 2040 and between a quarter and half a million Mass-goers by 2050, down from 1.75 million today.

He provides some excellent analysis by several writers, priests, and academics about the opportunity and challenge the Catholic hierarchy and laity faces if they want to revive Christianity in England and Wales. They have to recognize what Alan Fimister, who teaches dogmatic theology at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut, says at the end of the article:

Quoting St. John Henry Newman, who once said the Church has “nothing more to do than to go on in her own proper duties, in confidence and peace; to stand still and to see the salvation of God,” Fimister pointed out that when the Church was doing this and “teaching, sanctifying and governing without fear or favor,” the powers of this age had “no choice but to simulate her virtues in the hope of leading people away from Christ.”

But when the Church “forsook the reproach of Christ in the hope of befriending the world,” the powers of the age “had no more need to fear. Contraception, abortion, pornography, sodomy, euthanasia, et cetera have all been driven forward without opposition by the enemy and his minions.

“All we need do,” Fimister said, “is take up again the Sword of the Spirit and the enemy will flee before us.”

(The candle where the shrine of Saint Thomas of Canterbury once stood.)

There some varying opinions in that last section of the article, especially focused on the after effects of the English Reformation and the establishment of a royal (later parliamentary) state church, and among those quoted is John Rist, whom Pentin interviewed in a separate article, "Prominent English Scholar Says His Country’s Decline Began With the Reformation." Rist's biography: "An English convert to the faith, he is an expert on St. Augustine of Hippo, Plato and Aristotle and a prolific author who has held the Dominican Father Kurt Pritzl Chair in Philosophy at The Catholic University of America and is a life member of Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge, England."

Rist does believe that the English Reformation is at the root of Britain's decline:

I certainly agree that the collapse of traditional (i.e., Catholic) Christianity is an important factor in its decline, not least because all other forms are far less defensible. The Church of England, being Erastian [a church ruled by the state] from the start, was bound to collapse into its components with, say, “Laudian” Anglo-Catholicism on the one hand [Archbishop William Laud of Canterbury, 1573-1645], and local varieties of Calvinism on the other.

As to English history in particular, it seems the Reformation was helped along in its English version by identifying hatred of Spain with hatred of the papacy. Then come the atheists: [Christopher] Marlowe must be one of the very first, along with other members of the circle of Sir Walter Raleigh; then the wars of religion, then (libertine) weariness, with all the gruesome killings, which all had engaged in for so long, leading to the sense that religion is merely savagery (c.f., Voltaire) and should be replaced by science and shopping — and that was helped along very well by the profits of a growing empire.

But when the empire collapsed, what was left? Nobody knew. All was discredited — Catholicism, Protestantism, communism, fascism — so where else to go? . . .

Please read the rest there. 

(Side altar with relics of Saint Thomas of Canterbury)

The confusions, changes, and back and forth within English Christianity from Henry VIII through to the nineteenth century: saints in, saints out, saints in again; Pope in, Pope out, Pope in again, Pope out, iconoclasm, restoration, etc--certainly weakened the lingering foundations of the Church in England. The connections between worship and doctrine, moral and fundamental, were definitely weakened, and the secularism and anti-dogmatic spirit that Newman descried took their place. That's not even considering the political and international conflicts and alliances through those centuries and how they affected this trend!

Whether or not the Catholic Church in England will or can step into the gap is an important issue. The new evangelization efforts of the Anglican Ordinariate may prove essential to those who see the vestiges of hope in the Church of England.

Our Lady of Walsingham, pray for us!

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us!

Saint John Fisher, pray for us!

Saint Thomas More, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Pictures above (c) Stephanie A. Mann (2025): the Anglican Canterbury Cathedral and the Catholic church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury nearby.

Vestiges of Religion and the Decline of England, Part One

Two recent articles (plus a follow-up interview) of note: one by Edward Pentin in the National Catholic Register and the other by Charles Coulombe in Crisis Magazine for your attention.

Both deal with the decline in religious practice--namely Catholic religious practice--in England and the decline in culture and tradition.

(Picture of a marching band taken during a trip to London years ago with my late husband Mark. 

We'd just visited Buckingham Palace!)

In "What the British Have Forgotten—and Can Teach Us" Charles Coulombe focuses on the vestiges of Catholicism in England's traditions and cultures, and how they are fading:

For the visitor from the Anglosphere abroad, these customs of the mother country are a thrill—even if one is tied only by language and culture, rather than DNA. They are pleasant if quaint reminders of the remote backgrounds of our own civil institutions, and they seem to embody the world that produced our countries. For the natives, of course, they are either proud reassertions of their age-old heritage or embarrassing anachronisms that need to be junked, either slowly or rapidly. But this writer would dissent from either view.

So far from being merely quaint or pleasant and restricted to Britain, they are desiccated reminders of a ceremonial spirit that once animated all of Christendom, from Portugal to Russia—and even the Spanish and Portuguese viceroyalties in Latin America and the East Indies. This is just as the pounds-shillings-pence system—which survived to my childhood—was seen as a purely British eccentricity but was actually designed by Charlemagne and used throughout Europe until the French Revolution.

So many of what we consider peculiarly British customs and practices are really survivals—shorn of Catholic meaning—that were universal among Catholic peoples prior to the Protestant revolt, and which—like the pounds, shillings, and pence—were banished from Catholic lands by revolution. So it is that the British hold on to the form without concern for the missing content, and Catholics are ignorant and often scornful of what that content was. . . .

One tradition easily identifiable as an example of this: The Royal Maundy. This year on Holy Thursday, King Charles III and Queen Camilla will hand out coins at Durham Cathedral:

Royal Maundy services go back to the Middle Ages when the Monarch used to wash the feet of the poor and disadvantaged, just as Jesus washed the feet of the disciples on the night of the Last Supper. Alms were also distributed at the ceremony.

The service always takes place on Maundy Thursday, just three days before Easter. King Charles will present two purses of specially minted coins to 76 men and 76 women who have given outstanding support to their local communities. The number of people who receive the coins always matches the age of the Monarch.

The word "Maundy" refers to Our Lord's Mandatum to His Apostles the night before He died when He washed their feet like a servant, giving them an example to do likewise (John 13:4-17). From the reign of King John to King James II, the monarchs of England participated in a much more elaborate ceremony, washing the feet of twelve poor persons, giving them gifts. We have a record of Queen Mary I conducting these acts of humility and charity from the Holy Maundy of 1556:

At the entrance of the hall there was a great number of the chief dames and noble ladies of the court, and they prepared themselves by putting on a long linen apron which reached the ground, and round their necks they placed a towel, the two ends of which remained pendant at full length on either side, each of them carrying a silver ewer, and they had flowers in their hands, the Queen also being arrayed in like manner. Her Majesty knelt down on both her knees before the first of the poor women, and taking in the left hand the woman’s right foot, she washed it with her own right hand, drying it very thoroughly with the towel which hung at her neck, and having signed it with the cross she kissed the foot so fervently that it seemed as if she were embracing something very previous. She did the like by all and each of the other poor women, one by one, each of the ladies her attendants giving her in turn their basin and ewer and towel, and I vow to you that in all her movements and gestures, and by her manner, she seemed to act thus not merely out of ceremony, but from great feeling, and devotion. Amongst these demonstrations there was this one remarkable, that in washing the feet she went the whole length of that long hall, from one end to the other, ever on her knees. . . .

The tradition ended with William and Mary, and was transformed later into the honoring of people who performed charitable services with special coins. Queen Elizabeth II went to a different Anglican Cathedral or Abbey nearly every year of her reign to observe the Maundy. It is still a religious service, but the extraordinary demonstration of humility by the sovereign is no longer there. But, as Coulombe comments, "it became a big part of her [Elizabeth II's] personal devotion, as it has remained for her son [Charles III]". He also points out, however: "But just as 1688 eliminated the ability of the king to protect, defend, and govern his people, it also assured that Parliament would be master, rather than servant, of people and monarch alike. The dichotomy between form and substance has been less obvious in some reigns and some Parliaments than others. . . ." 

Thus, the tradition remains in some form, but the basis of the symbolism, its reality, has been vitiated. Please read the rest there. 

More on this theme tomorrow, from the National Catholic Register article by Edward Pentin and a follow-up interview with Professor John Rist.

Preview: The Korean War begins 75 Years Ago and Venerable Emil Kapaun was There!

I have a few more 2025 anniversaries to share on the Son Rise Morning Show, but this will be the last one for awhile as Anna Mitchell, Matt Swaim, and I will start a Lenten series on the Monday of the First Week of Lent. More about that series to come!

On Monday, March 3, we'll discuss the 75th anniversary of the start of the Korean War--and most of all Venerable Emil J. Kapaun's brief, heroic service in Korea--at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

On June 5, 1950, war in Korea was declared after Communist North Korea invaded South Korea. I'm not going to go too much into the causes and course of the Korean War in this post or the time we have on the air, because it's a complicated history, involving the Soviet Union, China, MacArthur, Truman, and M*A*S*H. The latter is all I knew of the Korean War for many years!

Venerable Father Emil J. Kapaun had returned to service as a Chaplain in 1948 at Fort Bliss and then went to Japan in 1949. He had previously served as an Army Chaplain in Burma and India in 1945 and 1946 and was promoted to Captain. After release from active duty, he returned to the USA to study at the Catholic University of America from 1946 to 1948, earning his M.A. in Education. But instead of teaching, he wanted to return to active service.

So Kapaun was in Occupied Japan with the Eighth Cavalry Regiment of the First Cavalry Division  when the war was declared and he went to Korea on July 15, 1950. As the website devoted to Father Kapaun's Cause here in the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas states:

During the next four months, Chaplain Kapaun tended to his chaplaincy duties with fierce devotion. All the while he experienced first-hand the horrors of the Korean War: hundreds of dead and wounded soldiers, men utterly exhausted and shell shocked from battle, South Korean refugees fleeing their homes, extreme heat and mosquitoes in summer and wet, rainy days during the fall, frequent lack of sleep and food, and the constant nerve-racking noise and confusion of battle.

He quickly earned a reputation for being a fearless soldier who risked his life to minister to the men fighting on the front lines. Along with praying with men in foxholes and saying Mass on the battlefield (oftentimes using the hood of his Jeep as the altar), Chaplain Kapaun would risk his life to administer the sacraments to the dying, to retrieve wounded soldiers, and to bury the dead--ally and enemy alike.

For rescuing a stranded and wounded soldier, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with a "V" device for valor.

When the Chinese People's Voluntary Army entered the war, however, Chaplain Kapaun and members of the Eighth Cavalry Regiment's 3rd Battalion were captured during the Battle of Unsan. Father Kapaun said his last Masses on November 1, All Saints Day, 1950 and he was captured on All Souls Day, November 2 and force-marched to Sombakal and then Camp 5 at Pyokton.

Until he was taken to the camp hospital in May 1951, suffering from a blood clot in one leg, malnutrition, dysentery, and pneumonia, Father Kapaun served the others in the camp physically, morally, spiritually, and sacrificially. He led an Easter Service (not a Mass) on March 25, and died on May 31, 1951. The men who survived the conditions of Camp 5 remembered his valor and service, and when the Korean War ended on July 27, 1953 with the UN Armistice they were released, they shared stories about him. They also brought back the Crucifix carved by Major Gerry Fink, a captured Marine Pilot, who was Jewish, when he came to Camp 5 after Kapaun had died. 

As the diocesan website notes:

It is due to the dedication and determination of Father Kapaun’s fellow prisoners of war that we know of his story today. Already awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in battle, Chaplain Kapaun was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during and after the Battle of Unsan. After years of clamoring that this medal be upgraded, the President of the United States [Barack Obama] posthumously awarded Chaplain Kapaun the Medal of Honor on April 11, 2013.

I saw the Crucifix Major Fink carved every day when I attended Kapaun-Mt. Carmel High School here in Wichita, Kansas and have been to able participate in several events associated with the return of his remains in September 2021 (his tomb is in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception), and a couple of symposia on his service and Korean War history. 

In March 2024 the Kansas Legislature passed a law authorizing a statue of Kapaun in the Kansas Capitol Building. On February 25, while in hospital for treatment of double pneumonia, Pope Francis declared Father Kapaun to be Venerable! Deo Gratias!

If you are looking for a different devotion for the Stations of Cross for Lent, the office promoting his cause has a booklet with meditations based on Chaplain Kapaun's time in the prison camp. Please note: Intended solely for private devotion. Created by the Father Kapaun Guild. Imprimatur by Bishop Carl A. Kemme of Wichita.

Here's the update on the Cause for Kapaun on the diocesan website:

This Decree is a formal recognition that, after a life of virtue, Kapaun freely and voluntarily made the supreme act of charity: offering his life for his fellow prisoners of war. "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," says Jesus (John 15:13).

 

The publication of the Decree opens the door for the investigation of alleged miracles needed as supernatural evidence to further the cause. One miracle will need to be approved for beatification. A second approved miracle, occurring after the beatification itself, will be needed for canonization as a saint.

 

Over the years we have received testimony of several instances of alleged miraculous intercession by Father Kapaun. Some of these potential miracles date back nearly two decades, while others occurred very recently. One or two will be sent in detail to the Dicastery for Saints in Rome for review by both theologians and medical experts before papal approval is given. This process will likely take many years before beatification could happen.

Venerable Father Emil J. Kapaun, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Father Emil Kapaun celebrating Mass using the hood of a Jeep as his altar, Oct 7, 1950

Arma Christi Rolls: Medieval Meditations on the Passion of Christ

As we prepare for Lent--the Byzantine Catholic Church (and the Orthodox Church) is marking its approach with Meat Fare and Cheese Fare Sundays and the Anglican Ordinariate and the 1962 Roman Missal with the season of Septuagesima, celebrating Mass on Sundays without the Gloria or the Alleluia, buried after the First Vespers of Septuagesima Sunday--our thoughts turn to what we will do or not do during Lent. One theme of Lent is meditations on Our Lord's Passion with Stations of the Cross, for example, prayed in parish churches each Friday.

A medieval English method of meditation on the instruments of Our Lord's Passion (the pillar at which He was scourged, the nails, the spear, the Cross, the Crown of Thorns, etc) was illustrated "Arma Christi" rolls, one of which was just discovered in the archives of the Bar Convent in York:

A rare medieval illuminated manuscript has been uncovered in a York convent's archive.
Dr Hannah Thomas discovered the 15th-Century Arma Christi at Bar Convent while cataloguing the religious order's collection, calling it "one of the best-preserved examples ever found".
The rolled document is one of only 11 copies known to have survived, the convent said, and featured the prayer poem "O Vernicle" with response texts written after each verse.
Dr Thomas said the responses, written in red, suggested it was used in communal worship as well as private prayer.
"With hand-drawn figures and beautiful calligraphy it's a medieval work of art in its own right," she said.
The manuscript, thought to date from about 1475, was found in a shoebox containing leaflets from the 1980s. 

Leaflets from the 1980s!!!!!!

Here's an image of an Arma Christi roll at the Morgan Library in NYC.

There's a scholarly ($$$$$$$$) book on the subject, inspired by one of the editors discovering an Arma Christi roll in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Andrea Denny-Brown writes about that discovery in 2002 here.

The BBC article cited above notes this reaction from the mother superior of the Bar Convent:

There are no records of when this Arma Christi was passed into the order's care, according to Bar Convent, with the item due to go on public display in April.
Sister Ann Stafford, mother superior, said the responses written on the scroll would now be used in a service at the convent's chapel.
"We're delighted that presiding at the service will be the Bishop of Middlesbrough and the Archbishop of York," she said.
"We plan to livestream the service so that the world can share in its discovery."

I'll try to watch for more information on the Bar Convent website.

I often pray Saint John Henry Newman's translation of the Anima Christi, another prayer that meditates on the Passion of Christ:

Soul of Christ, be my sanctification;
Body of Christ, be my salvation;
Blood of Christ, fill all my veins;
Water of Christ’s side, wash out my stains;
Passion of Christ, my comfort be;
O good Jesu, listen to me;
In thy wounds I fain would hide,
Ne’er to be parted from Thy side;
Guard me, should the foe assail me;
Call me when my life shall fail me;
Bid me come to Thee above,
With Thy saints to sing Thy love,
World without end. Amen.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Christ as Man of Sorrows between Four Angels, engraving by Master E. S., c. 1460

Preview: Venerable Robert Schuman and the Anniversary of the Schuman Declaration

May 9 this year is the 75th Anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, a harbinger of the European Union, written by Venerable Robert Schuman in 1950. We'll continue our series of historical anniversaries on the Son Rise Morning with a discussion of its importance and its author (mostly) on Monday, February 24. I'll be on at my usual time, at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

The Schuman Declaration was a proposal made by the French foreign minister Robert Schuman for France and West Germany to share production of coal and steel under a single authority. That authority was later called the European Coal and Steel Community. From this date, May 9 the European Union (the EU) takes its founding date and celebrates Europe Day.

Since trade and economic issues aren't the most exciting topics so early in the morning, I'd like to focus on Venerable Robert Schuman and the Catholic Christian background of his vision for the EU. 

Robert Schuman was born in Luxembourg on June 29, 1886. His father was a German citizen because he had been born in Alsace-Lorraine during one of those times it was held by Germany, but his mother was a native of Luxembourg, and Robert grew up speaking Luxembourgish, a Western German language. When Alsace-Lorraine was returned the French after World War I Schuman became a French citizen. (Then it back to German control under the Nazis and returned to France at the end of WWII, where it has stayed since.)

Schuman was a devout Catholic and a student of Saint Thomas Aquinas; he never married and lived an almost monastic life in practicing his faith. In many ways he was inspired by the Middle Ages as this address from 1949 demonstrates:

We are carrying out a great experiment, the fulfillment of the same recurrent dream that for ten centuries has revisited the peoples of Europe: creating between them an organization putting an end to war and guaranteeing an eternal peace. The Roman church of the Middle Ages failed finally in its attempts that were inspired by humane and human preoccupations.  

Another idea, that of a world empire constituted under the auspices of German emperors was less disinterested; it already relied on the unacceptable pretensions of a ‘Führertum’ (domination by dictatorship) whose 'charms' we have all experienced.

Audacious minds, such as Dante, Erasmus, Abbé de St-Pierre [priest and author of a plan for "perpetual peace" in the 18th century], Rousseau, Kant and [Pierre Joseph] Proudhon ["the father of anarchism"], had created in the abstract the framework for systems that were both ingenious and generous. The title of one of these systems became the synonym of all that is impractical: Utopia, itself a work of genius, written by Thomas More, the Chancellor of Henry VIII, King of England. . . .

We are still at the start of things. We would do well to bridle our impatience. If not, we are likely to make the doubters more distrustful and what is more serious, endanger not only the experiment but also the whole idea of a united Europe. 

Schuman knew an abstract Utopia wouldn't work for a united, peaceful Europe; it couldn't be forced by a Fuhrer or planned by a philosopher, so he began the development of a European Union with trade agreements and cooperation between two former enemies, France and (West) Germany.

As Catholic World Report announced on June 19, 2021:

Pope Francis has declared venerable the French statesman Robert Schuman, known as a key “founding father” of the European Union.

After a June 19 meeting with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, the pope advanced the sainthood causes of Schuman and six others.

“Schuman dedicated his life to serving the common good, seeking peace and reconciliation with Germany to create a community of European states,” Fr. Bernard Ardura, an official in charge of proposed French canonizations, told AFP.

Schuman’s efforts were “the work of a Christian, which serves as an example,” said Fr. Ardura, even if the statesman “remained very discreet about his personal life and his faith.”

Last year, the bishop of Metz asked Catholics to pray a novena for peace through Venerable Schuman's intercession:

Archbishop Philippe Ballot of Metz has urged Catholics in his northeastern French diocese to make a prayer novena for world peace through the intercession of the Venerable Robert Schuman (1886-1963), one of the founders of post-World War II Europe and a candidate for sainthood.

The archbishop and the Saint Benedict Institute [Institut Saint Benoit], an association in his diocese that is leading the cause for Schuman's canonization, set the nine days of prayer from February 16 to 24.

In announcing the initiative, Archbishop Ballot noted the many armed conflicts currently raging in the world and asked people to pray for an end to three in particular -- those between Russia and Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and Hamas and Israel. He said the novena for Schuman's intercession should encourage all believers to become "guardians of a brotherhood that is possible".

Recalling the late European statesmen as a "faithful architect of peace who conducted his secular activities as an apostolate", the novena includes different texts to meditate upon each day and a final prayer that implores God for peace through Schuman's intercession. 

Although Venerable Robert Schuman's vision for a united Europe was inspired by his Catholic faith--even the flag of the European Union has Marian imagery*--when the EU's Constitution was being drafted, Pope Saint John Paul II had to urge the framers to remember the Judaeo-Christian roots of Europe:

Multiple are the cultural roots that have contributed to reinforce the values just mentioned: from the spirit of Greece to that of Roman law and virtue; from the contributions of the Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Slav and Hungarian-Finnish peoples, to those of the Jewish culture and the Islamic world. These different factors found in the Jewish-Christian tradition the power that harmonized, consolidated and promoted them. By acknowledging this historical fact in the process leading to a new institutional order, Europe cannot deny its Christian heritage, since a great part of its achievements in the fields of law, art, literature and philosophy have been influenced by the evangelical message. Not giving in to a temptation to be nostalgic or to be content mechanically to repeat past models, but being open to the new challenges emerging, Europe will need to draw inspiration with creative fidelity from the Christian roots that have defined European history.

Historical memory demands it; but also and above all, it is essential to its mission. Europe is called today to be a teacher of true progress, to spread a globalization of solidarity without marginalization, to take part in building a just and lasting peace within it and in the world, to bring together different cultural traditions to give life to a humanism in which the respect for rights, solidarity and creativity will allow every man and woman to fulfil his/her noblest aspirations.

But the EU Constitution did not include any mention of Judaeo-Christian heritage in its final form in 2004; it also did not pass the required approval in individual national voting. The EU later adopted the Treaty of Lisbon instead as the document for the functioning of the EU, including how a member state exits (Brexit) the treaty.

*Arranged in a circlet, a dozen stars represent the constellation of Corona and are seen as a crown in paintings of the Virgin Mary as Stella Maris. The circle of twelve stars also signifies royalty and implicitly structures of government (as in a Round Table). The flag's designer, Arsène Heitz, has acknowledged that Revelation 12:1 ["And a great sign appeared in heaven: A woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars"] inspired him. He stated that the idea for the stars came to him from the apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Rue du Bac in Paris and the Miraculous Medal.

If you read French, there's more information about the Cause for the Beatification and Canonization of Venerable Robert Schuman at the Institut Saint Benoit.

Venerable Robert Schuman, pray for us!

Pope Saint John Paul II, pray for us!

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Robert Schuman as the Deputy for Moselle in France in 1929.

Saint Thomas More and the Princes in the Tower: New Evidence?

Last December, Channel 5 in the UK broadcast a documentary on the mystery of the fate of the Princes in the Tower--one of whom was the uncrowned King Edward V--titled Princes in the Tower: A Damning Discovery. 

The BBC History Magazine's December 2024 issue, which I perused in a local chain book/game/gift/toy store, featured an interview with two historians about that "damning discovery". Whom does that discovery damn? Hint: Not Saint Thomas More.

The evidence is that King Edward V's gold chain was handed down by a wealthy London woman in her will -- and that woman was the sister-in-law of Sir James Tyrell, the man Thomas More identified as the organizer of the murder of the Princes in the Tower at King Richard III's command.

Tim Thornton, Professor of History at the University of Huddersfield, found the will and shared his discovery with Jason Watkins and Tracy Borman, an historian and chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces during the documentary. From the BBC History article, Thornton explains his methodology:

One of the key sources we have on the disappearance is a detailed account written around 30 years later by Thomas More. He will be a familiar name to people interested in the Tudor era, and his account is the first that identifies how the deed was done and who was to blame. More claims that two individuals – Miles Forest and John Dighton – carried out the murder for an agent of Richard III called Sir James Tyrrell.

When I began looking at More’s account, I was working against a background of very great scepticism about his story. Many people believed it was a simple exercise in propaganda on behalf of the Tudors – Richard’s enemies who were on the throne at the time. Other people have suggested that More was more interested in literary flair and political philosophy than historical accuracy; he was writing an abstract account of how a country can fall into tyranny.

First, Thornton found a letter from More written while he was on embassy in Bruges and Miles Forest, son of the Miles Forest named above was a messenger, carrying More's letters back to England. Then he found the will of Lady Margaret Capell, widow of Sir William Capell or Capel, bequeathing a chain which had been King Edward V's, which her husband had left to her. (Margaret was a daughter of Sir John Arundell VII of Cornwall by his second wife, Katherine Chideocke or Chiddiock.)

Thornton adds another twist to the story:

It’s also worth noting that the Capells’ lawyer in the 1510s was a man called John More – the father of (you guessed it) Thomas More. So not only have we identified a physical object from the princes that survived in the hands of the sister-in-law of the man that More says organised the murders, but we’ve also established another connection with More himself.

I'd note that we don't have the chain nor do we have any record of the chain to test its provenance; there's some evidence on paper, but nothing concrete. Nevertheless, Tracey Borman expressed careful enthusiasm about the discovery:

As someone who has followed the story of the princes so closely throughout my whole career, I would say that this is undoubtedly the most significant discovery, not just in recent years, but in my entire tenure as a historian. I haven’t heard anything more compelling in this case than Tim’s latest discovery. This is the next chapter and it’s a hugely significant one.

She admits the discovery may strengthen the case against King Richard III, suggesting more evidence that he ordered the princes murdered. 

There's also a BBC News story summarizing the discovery. Other pictures are available at the University of Huddersfield website. And there's an article  (with open access now), "Sir William Capell and A Royal Chain: The Afterlives (and Death) of King Edward V" in History: The Journal of the Historical Association.

A further note: Lady Margaret Capell's will has been described before in a book by Susan E. James, Women's Voices in Tudor Wills, 1485–1603: Authority, Influence and Material (Ashgate, 2015):

The bequest was intended to entail the chain, the Capel bed with anchor badges, and other items to her grandchildren and the Capel family

"his faders cheyne which was younge kyng Edwarde the Vth's. To have the forsaid stuffe and cheyne during his life with reasonable werying upon that condicion that after his decease I will that yt remain and be kept by myn executors to the use of Henry Capell and Edward Capell from one to another, And for default of these two children, I will that my daughter Elizabeth Paulet shal'have the forsaid goodes".

I guess the next link in the mystery would be to find the chain!

Image Credit (Public Domain): The Two Princes Edward and Richard in the Tower, 1483 by Sir John Everett Millais, 1878, part of the Royal Holloway picture collection. Edward V at right wears the garter of the Order of the Garter beneath his left knee.

Chesterton on the "Book of Common Prayer"

Hilaire Belloc commented on Thomas Cranmer's masterpiece of English prose in the Book of Common Prayer as I noted in my review of Mysterium Press's edition of Cranmer last week. Belloc was born and raised in a Catholic family; his friend G.K. Chesterton was a convert to Catholicism after sharing the Anglo-Catholic faith of his wife Frances for years. As an Anglican, Chesterton used the Book of Common Prayer in church services; as a Catholic (after 1928), he looked back on the experience.

The late Father John Hunwicke (+April 30, 2024), a former Anglican minister who converted to Catholicism as a member (and priest) of the Anglican Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, posted some comments from Chesterton about the Book of Common Prayer on his blog. He does not give the source, however, but I wonder if they're from a collection of columns from the Illustrated London News. This post from the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society doesn't give the source either.

From Fr Hunwicke's Mutual Enrichment, May 2, 2018:

" ... why has the old Prayer-Book a power like that of great poetry upon the spirit and heart? The reason is much deeper than the mere avoidance of journalese. It might be put in a sentence; it has style, it has tradition; it has religion; it was written by apostate Catholics. It is strong, not in so far as it is the first Protestant book, but in so far as it was the last Catholic book. 

"As it happens, this can be proved in the most practical manner from the actual details of the prose. The most moving passages in the old Anglican Prayer Book are exactly those that are least like the atmosphere of the Anglicans. They are moving, or indeed thrilling, precisely because they say the things which Protestants have long left off saying; and which Catholics still say. Anybody who knows anything of literature knows when a style lifts itself to its loftiest efforts; and in these cases it is always to say strongly what we [Catholics] still endeavour to say, however weakly; but which nobody else ever endeavours to say at all. Let anyone recall for himself the very finest passages in the Book of Common Prayer, and he will soon see that they are concerned specially with spiritual thoughts and themes that now seem strange and terrible; but anyhow, the reverse of common."

Father Hunwicke further commented: More of this tomorrow; it comes from a collection of his pieces published in 1935, the year before he died (he had converted in 1922). When you read my next instalment, you will grow, I suspect, more and embarrassed about .... modern Catholic culture.

Here is the second post and here is the third.

Even though the 1662 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) revised some of the rubrics, etc., much of Cranmer's English prose, including the Litany and the Collects, etc., remained, as this interview about the 1662 BCP notes:

This quality is one that the 1662 BCP preserves from Cranmer’s work more than a century earlier. It reflects the orality of mid-sixteenth century written English. This is also why people notice its strong cadences. It was written for the ear. That’s a great usability advantage because it increases memorability.

So Belloc and Chesterton agreed on the excellence of Cranmer's English prose! ChesterBelloc!

Preview: The 20th Anniversary of the Election of Pope Benedict XVI

If we're remembering the 20th anniversary of Pope Saint John Paul II's death and funeral, it makes sense that we're also remembering the 20th anniversary of the election of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI on April 19, 2005! So that's our next historical anniversary to discuss on the Son Rise Morning Show--and another anniversary Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I will have personal memories of to share, I'm sure. 

On Monday, February 17, we'll discuss this papal anniversary at the top of the second national hour of the Son Rise Morning Show on EWTN, about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Anyone's memories of Pope Saint John Paul II's funeral Mass would surely include Cardinal Ratzinger's homily, in which he offered a meditation of the meaning of Christ's words to Saint Peter after the Resurrection, "Follow me" in the life of the late pope, with its conclusion:

None of us can ever forget how in that last Easter Sunday of his life, the Holy Father, marked by suffering, came once more to the window of the Apostolic Palace and one last time gave his blessing urbi et orbi. We can be sure that our beloved Pope is standing today at the window of the Father’s house, that he sees us and blesses us. Yes, bless us, Holy Father. We entrust your dear soul to the Mother of God, your Mother, who guided you each day and who will guide you now to the eternal glory of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

As Dean of the College of Cardinals, Cardinal Ratzinger then preached an important sermon in St. Peter’s Basilica before the Papal Conclave. As George Weigel would comment later:

During his homily at the Mass pro eligendo Romano Pontifice [for the election of the Roman Pontiff] on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger cautioned his fellow-cardinals that John Paul II’s successor would have to deal with an emerging “dictatorship of relativism” throughout the western world: the use of coercive state power to impose an agenda of dramatic moral deconstruction on all of society.

Some Catholic commentators charged that Ratzinger’s warning was so over-the-top that he could never be elected pope. Others thought the formula “dictatorship of relativism” a neat summary of a grave threat to freedom and believed that a man with the courage to call things by their true names would make a fine pontiff.

Professor Tracey Rowland also comments on this homily here. 

It may have seemed unlikely, but a day later Ratzinger was elected pope after only four ballots!

After giving his blessing, Pope Benedict XVI spoke a few words:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,
After the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple and humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord.
The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with inadequate instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.
Let us move forward in the joy of the Risen Lord, confident of his unfailing help. The Lord will help us and Mary, his Most Holy Mother, will be on our side. Thank you.

He did not want to be elected pope; he'd wanted to retire for years to read and study and write, but had remained in the Curia to serve Pope John Paul II. Commenting on the Papal Conclave in 2009, "At a certain point, I prayed to God, 'Please don't do this to me,'" he recalled. "Evidently, this time he didn't listen to me." 

Pope Benedict XVI outlined the goals for his pontificate on April 20 in comments after Mass in the Sistine Chapel with the Cardinals of the Conclave. After 20 years, it's fascinating to read what he said to those who'd elected him:

I am preparing to undertake this special ministry, the "Petrine" ministry at the service of the universal Church, with humble abandonment into the hands of God's Providence. I first of all renew my total and confident loyalty to Christ: "In Te, Domine, speravi; non confundar in aeternum!". . . .

Thus, as I prepare myself for the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, I also wish to confirm my determination to continue to put the Second Vatican Council into practice, following in the footsteps of my Predecessors and in faithful continuity with the 2,000-year tradition of the Church. This very year marks the 40th anniversary of the conclusion of the Council (8 December 1965). As the years have passed, the Conciliar Documents have lost none of their timeliness; indeed, their teachings are proving particularly relevant to the new situation of the Church and the current globalized society.

Then, he began to speak of himself in the third person as the successor of Saint Peter:

With full awareness, therefore, at the beginning of his ministry in the Church of Rome which Peter bathed in his blood, Peter's current Successor takes on as his primary task the duty to work tirelessly to rebuild the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. This is his ambition, his impelling duty. He is aware that good intentions do not suffice for this. Concrete gestures that enter hearts and stir consciences are essential, inspiring in everyone that inner conversion that is the prerequisite for all ecumenical progress. . . .

The current Successor of Peter is allowing himself to be called in the first person by this requirement and is prepared to do everything in his power to promote the fundamental cause of ecumenism. Following the example of his Predecessors, he is fully determined to encourage every initiative that seems appropriate for promoting contacts and understanding with the representatives of the different Churches and Ecclesial Communities. Indeed, on this occasion he sends them his most cordial greeting in Christ, the one Lord of us all.

The Church of today must revive her awareness of the duty to repropose to the world the voice of the One who said: "I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he shall possess the light of life" (Jn 8: 12). In carrying out his ministry, the new Pope knows that his task is to make Christ's light shine out before the men and women of today: not his own light, but Christ's.

And then switched back to first person in his concluding remarks:

Mane nobiscum, Domine! Stay with us, Lord! This invocation, which is the principal topic of the Apostolic Letter of John Paul II for the Year of the Eucharist, is the prayer that wells up spontaneously from my heart as I prepare to begin the ministry to which Christ has called me. Like Peter, I too renew to him my unconditional promise of fidelity. I intend to serve him alone, dedicating myself totally to the service of his Church.

To support me in my promise, I call on the motherly intercession of Mary Most Holy, in whose hands I place the present and future of the Church and of myself. May the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the Saints also intercede for us.

With these sentiments I impart to you, Venerable Brother Cardinals, to those who are taking part in this rite and to all who are watching it on television and listening to it on the radio, a special, affectionate Blessing.

He made further remarks on April 22 to the departing cardinals. On Sunday the 24th, he received the Pallium and the Fisherman's Ring. On Saturday, May 7, he took possession of the Chair in Saint John Lateran as the Bishop of Rome:

This is the task of all Peter's Successors: to be the guide in the profession of faith in Christ, Son of the living God. The Chair of Rome is above all the Seat of this belief. From high up on this Chair the Bishop of Rome is constantly bound to repeat: Dominus Iesus - "Jesus is Lord", as Paul wrote in his Letters to the Romans (10: 9) and to the Corinthians (I Cor 12: 3). To the Corinthians he stressed: "Even though there are so-called gods in the heavens and on the earth... for us there is one God, the Father... and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom everything was made and through whom we live" (I Cor 8: 5).

The Chair of Peter obliges all who hold it to say, as Peter said during a crisis time among the disciples when so many wanted to leave him: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe; we are convinced that you are God's holy one" (Jn 6: 68 ff.).

The One who sits on the Chair of Peter must remember the Lord's words to Simon Peter at the Last Supper: "...You in turn must strengthen your brothers" (Lk 22: 32). The one who holds the office of the Petrine ministry must be aware that he is a frail and weak human being - just as his own powers are frail and weak - and is constantly in need of purification and conversion.

At his first General Audience on Wednesday, April 27, he explained his choice of papal name:

After the holy death of my Venerable Predecessor John Paul II, the traditional Wednesday General Audiences are resuming today. Thus, we are returning to normality. At this first Meeting, I would like to begin by reflecting on the name that I chose on becoming Bishop of Rome and universal Pastor of the Church. I wanted to be called Benedict XVI in order to create a spiritual bond with Benedict XV, who steered the Church through the period of turmoil caused by the First World War. He was a courageous and authentic prophet of peace and strove with brave courage first of all to avert the tragedy of the war and then to limit its harmful consequences. Treading in his footsteps, I would like to place my ministry at the service of reconciliation and harmony between persons and peoples, since I am profoundly convinced that the great good of peace is first and foremost a gift of God, a precious but unfortunately fragile gift to pray for, safeguard and build up, day after day, with the help of all.

The name "Benedict" also calls to mind the extraordinary figure of the great "Patriarch of Western Monasticism", St Benedict of Norcia, Co-Patron of Europe together with Sts Cyril and Methodius, and the women Saints, Bridget of Sweden, Catherine of Siena and Edith Stein. The gradual expansion of the Benedictine Order that he founded had an enormous influence on the spread of Christianity across the Continent. St Benedict is therefore deeply venerated, also in Germany and particularly in Bavaria, my birthplace; he is a fundamental reference point for European unity and a powerful reminder of the indispensable Christian roots of his culture and civilization.

At the distance of 20 years, we can see how often Pope Benedict XVI expressed his feelings of concern that he would not be able to bear the burdens of this office without the prayers and support of all Catholics and especially without the collegiality and assistance of his brother bishops. I don't think this was false modesty or humility: he knew it was a hard job.

I look forward to remembering these events 20 years ago with my Son Rise Morning Show friends.

And since we're dealing with shared memories, we might also recall the day when Pope Benedict XVI resigned on February 11 (the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes) in 2013:  I was all set to talk to then-host Brian Patrick on the show about Shrovetide, Confession, pancakes and pancake races. Then-producer Matt Swaim emailed me with a change in topic: we would instead discuss Pope Benedict and the English Reformation, highlighting the September 2010 visit to Scotland and England, the establishment of the Anglican Ordinariate, and the beatification of John Henry Newman--all the ways Benedict had tried to heal the wounds of the sixteenth century disruption of the Catholic faith in England.

Saint Valentine, pray for us!

Saints Cyril and Methodius, pray for us!

Image Credit (Used by Permission): Benedict XVI during a canonization mass in 2010.