Devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury

I've grown in my spiritual devotion to the Catholic Martyrs of England and Wales of the Reformation era, and I'm also growing in devotion to Saint Thomas of Canterbury, thanks to this book of prayers asking his intercession and meditating on his life and martyrdom.

Saint Thomas has often been seen as an important figure in the conflicts between Church and State: defending the rights of the Church in England against Henry II's attempt to take away the bishops's authority over priests and clergy. But Father John S. Hogan, in this book from Gracewing, Devotions to St Thomas Becket, reminds us that devotion to the martyred saint began as people went on pilgrimage to pray for his intercession, seeking miraculous healings through his prayers.

Therefore, Father Hogan includes prayers to Saint Thomas of Canterbury for the sick, a Litany for the Sick, a Prayer for Miracles, etc.

Father Hogan also reminds us that Saint Thomas of Canterbury grew in his Christian faith, that we find a process of conversion in his life, not just from his secular life at Court with Henry II, but through his exile and other sufferings. Father Hogan declares, "As he slowly woke to the way of true Christian discipleship, his experiences, his mistakes, his trials and sufferings, progressively turned him completely to Christ". (p. x) So there are prayers for conversion, including a Novena for the Grace of Conversion. 

Because Saint Thomas of Canterbury was a priest and bishop Father Hogan includes prayers for priests, for bishops, and a "Eucharistic Prayer", emphasizing Becket's growth in devotion to the Eucharist and to celebrating Mass with great reverence.

Thomas  Becket was born on the 21st of December (in 1119/20) and died on the 29th of December (in 1170), so there's a novena to celebrate the martyr between those dates. Since Canterbury is still a site for pilgrimage, there's a "Seven Stations" series of prayers with landmarks like St. Dunstan's Church, where Henry II started his penitential pilgrimage to the Cathedral in reparation for the martyr's murder, the Cloister of the Cathedral through which both the saint and his killers walked to enter the north transept, the Crypt where his first tomb was located, and the parish church of Saint Thomas of Canterbury, the Catholic shrine to this great saint.

There's also a Litany to St Thomas Becket and other prayers for courage, in time of persecution, etc. Gracewing has also published Father Hogan's biography of the saint.

Saint Thomas of Canterbury, pray for us.

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!

Book Review: Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle

I purchased this book because of Thomas Babington Macaulay's mention of "the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe" in his review of Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes, cited here. According to the publisher, Yale University Press:

In 1824 in Washington, D.C., Ann Mattingly, widowed sister of the city's mayor, was miraculously cured of a ravaging cancer. Just days, or perhaps even hours, from her predicted demise, she arose from her sickbed free from agonizing pain and able to enjoy an additional thirty-one years of life. The Mattingly miracle purportedly came through the intervention of a charismatic German cleric, Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, who was credited already with hundreds of cures across Europe and Great Britain. Though nearly forgotten today, Mattingly's astonishing healing became a polarizing event. It heralded a rising tide of anti-Catholicism in the United States that would culminate in violence over the next two decades.

Nancy L. Schultz deftly weaves analysis of this episode in American social and religious history together with the astonishing personal stories of both Ann Mattingly and the healer Prince Hohenlohe, around whom a cult was arising in Europe. Schultz's riveting book brings to light an early episode in the ongoing battle between faith and reason in the United States.

The author, Nancy Lusignan Schultz, also wrote Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (Free Press, 2000), which certainly describes the violence to come, just ten years after the Mattingly cure.

This book was fascinating to me because of the many ways Catholics in early 19th century America and England shared parallel concerns: How to participate as citizens (after 1829 in England); how to integrate--or not--into their respective cultures; even the controversies between the laity and the clergy and between the "native" and Continental clergy and between the orders (especially the Sulpicians and the Jesuits) seem parallel. Of slightly lesser interest was the situation in Germany, where Prince Hohenlohe lived and practiced his healing ministry, facing the concerns of both religious and secular authorities. 

Like the old Catholic families in England, the laity in the United States of America, via lay trusteeism, were used to be in charge of their parishes. In England, the Catholic laity, especially the landowners and wealthy, controlled the chapels on their estates, and sponsored the clergy to serve Catholics on their estates and nearby. As the hierarchy in both England and America developed, the laity had to adapt to new sources of authority. 

I thought also of the differences between Manning and Newman in England, with Manning like Faber much more willing to embrace Italianate devotion language than Newman and other Oratorians and converts. The same kind of devotional divide occurred in the early nineteenth century in Maryland, Virginia, and the Capital. The Sulpician Archbishop of Baltimore, Ambrose Maréchal, ordered the Jesuit Dubuisson not to be so scrupulous in applying Prince Hohenlohe's precise timeline, accounting for different time zones, but he was ignored (disobeyed).

Schultz points out the differences between not only the Sulpicians and the Jesuits, but between the English-trained Jesuits like Archbishop John Carroll, who'd been educated for a time at the College at St. Omers, preparing to work in the missions in England, and the Jesuits like Father Etienne/Stephen Dubuisson, who'd been prepared for a much more secure ministry (he was in charge of discipline for a time at Georgetown). The former were much more concerned about the possible deleterious effects of a triumphalistic proclamation of this miracle on the status of Catholics in the country, while the latter thought it best to spread the good news and combat any attacks against the miracle.

The family story of Ann Carbery Mattingly, her suffering, the two miraculous cures she received, and the mysteries of her husband's and her son's disappearances from her life is also compelling. I was certainly not as interested in the gender specific analysis Schultz conducted in the later chapters, but the book is vividly written and well documented. 

I've prayed for miracles of healing before and reading this book made me wonder what I would have done if one of those prayers were answered. I would feel great thankfulness and given God great praise, but how would I or the recipient of the healing I'd prayed for feel about telling people about the miracle, encountering skepticism, curiosity, even manipulation or fascination?

As Schultz demonstrates, being a wonder worker like Prince Hohenlohe or being recipient of a wondrous healing like Ann Mattingly did not make life any easier for either of them in many ways. He was distrusted, suspected, and certainly mocked--he does not seem to have the most stable character, as he often had to change schools, had some trouble with authority and with debts, and indeed might have enjoyed the celebrity of being a thaumaturgus too much. She still suffered family estrangement and opposition to the religious vocation she thought she might have (long after her husband was dead)--and of course, she still died. 

The eventual death of someone who is saved from death by a miracle always reminds me of C.S. Lewis's poem "Stephen to Lazarus":

But was I the first martyr, who
Gave up no more than life, while you,
Already free among the dead,
Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
Surrendered what all other men
Irrevocably keep, and when
Your battered ship at anchor lay
Seemingly safe in the dark bay
No ripple stirs, obediently
Put out a second time to sea
Well knowing that your death (in vain
Died once) must all be died again?

At the beginning of each chapter, Schultz recounts a supernatural episode and the reactions of people in that era, the early to mid-nineteenth century. Curses, strange hauntings, amazing catastrophes, they raise the specter of what reasonable people do when something out of this world seems to occur: will they believe what they saw and heard and experienced or believe what they want to be true in accord with nature and reason?

She emphasizes that Catholics in the new American republic were enjoying the "Era of Good Feeling" after the War of 1812 during the presidency of James Monroe before Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle: they had fit into the community and the government (Mrs. Mattingly's Catholic brother was the mayor of Washington City when she was cured) in spite of the distrust brought over from England that Catholicism and modern liberty did not fit well together. She cites the idea that the exercise of Catholic authority by the Papacy or other superiors could be considered a violation of the Monroe Doctrine as an expression of European colonialism (the Jesuits in Maryland tried to cite that issue when ordered to divest themselves of a plantation and free the slaves!).

Perhaps the saddest note is that both Ann's husband and son may have suffered from a form of ALS--not fatal but debilitating--and may have been misjudged as ne'er do wells in ignorance of the fact they were suffering from a "creeping paralysis". Based on a likely scenario, Schultz also argues that Ann and the other Carberys may have rejected Ann's son John Baptist Carbery Mattingly because he married a mixed-race woman. It's not documented but presumed.

Contents (including the the subheads in each chapter):

Mrs. Mattingly's Miracle: The Prince, the Widow, and the Cure that Shocked Washington City

Prologue: Washington City, 1824

One. Introduction

    Bamberg, Southern Germany, 1821

    Biographical and Archival Research

    "Some Domestic Cause of Grief": A Note about Historiography

    Epigraphs and Adumbrations

    Some Historical Context

Two. The Prince and the Princess

    Bohemia, 1810

    Wurzburg, 1821

    The Prince and the Farmer

Three. From St. Mary's County, Southern Maryland, to the Federal City

    Religious Tensions in Colonial Maryland

    Ann Carbery Mattingly's Early Years, 1784-1803

    The Federal City, 1800-1822

Four. Thaumaturgus and Priest

    Ellwangen, Germany, October 1777

    In the Eyes of His Contemporaries

    Westward over the Ocean

Five. A Capital Miracle

    Western Virginia, 1797

    The Cultural Context

    German Mysticism

    The Seeds of Controversy

    "News of Supernatural Facts"

    The Protestant Response

    "Friend of Truth"

    A Great Deal of Trouble": Dissension within the Catholic Church

    The Body of Evidence

Six. Aftermath

    Washington, DC, 1844    

    Ann Mattingly's Body

    Slavery, Race, and the Mattingly Miracle

    Nemini Cedimus: John Baptist Carbery Mattingly, 1809-1839

    More Hohenlohe Miracles, 1824-1838

    Mrs. Mattingly's Foot

Seven. Conclusion

    The Carberys, the Mattinglys, and Me: Visitation Monastery, Georgetown, April 2006

    "Yield to No One": John Baptist Carbery Mattingly's Secret

    Prince Hohenlohe's Final Years

    The Death of Ann Mattingly

Carbery-Mattingly Family Tree

Notes

Index

(no bibliography--I do wish there was a separate bibliography although the end notes--meaning the reader has to flip to the back of the to find the note and the source cited--are comprehensive)

Fascinating.

Another Reason for Newman's Canonization

John Allen writes about Blessed John Henry Newman's inspiration for Catholics today:

There are many reasons why religion continues to thrive, but high on the list has been the capacity of a handful of influential religious thinkers to make their ancient traditions relevant to the contemporary situation — to put those traditions in creative conversation with the questions asked by modern women and men.

In that universe, few Catholic figures have packed a stronger punch over the past century than Cardinal John Henry Newman, the 19th-century British convert from Anglicanism whose carefully reasoned journey to Catholicism continues to inspire and provoke.

One might describe Newman as Catholicism’s “patron saint of relevance,” in that one can agree or disagree with his conclusions, but it’s impossible to dismiss them as the relic of a medieval mind.

Anyone who reads Newman today, and scores still do, immediately recognizes a very modern voice. It’s no accident that one of his best-known works is called precisely Tracts for the Times.

And Father Dwight Longenecker writes for Aleteia:

A saint, however, is not a saint because of his intellectual accomplishments. Should he be declared a saint, John Henry Cardinal Newman will undoubtedly be up there with St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine, St. Bonaventure, St. Edith Stein and St Thomas More as one of the intellectual heavyweights. The galaxy of saints, however, contain stars who are not so bright intellectually. St. John Vianney, St. Joseph Cupertino, St. Therese of Lisieux and many others were not famous for their intellectual prowess or academic accomplishment. If John Henry Newman is a saint, then there is something else about him that we need to consider.

A saint is an ordinary person who has, by God’s grace, reached their full human potential. Therefore if John Henry Newman is to be a saint we must ask whether, by God’s grace, John Henry Newman had become all that John Henry Newman was created to be.

When we look at his life we see that he was gifted with a brilliant mind, a tender heart, and a deep love for God. Each one of those characteristics was fulfilled in his life. It is arguable, therefore, that John Henry Newman used his vast intellectual and spiritual gifts fully to the glory of God. Whether this beautiful soul and beautiful mind are granted the final formal recognition of being a saint is not so much a question of “if” but of “when.”

Since I have read and studied the life and works of Blessed John Henry Newman since I was a sophomore in college, this day of not if but when Newman is canonized is very exciting to me! I'm going to start the month of February off with the daily prayers and meditations from the CTS publication displayed above.

Newman's Second Miracle?

From The Catholic Herald:

The Archbishop of Birmingham has welcomed reports that the Vatican is investigating a possible second “miracle” which may lead to the canonisation of Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman.

Archbishop Bernard Longley said it was a “great joy” to know that the Cause was making progress.

He said the occasion should also spur on Catholics to renew their prayers for the canonisation of Blessed Dominic Barberi, who received Newman into the Catholic faith from the Church of England.

“Blessed Cardinal Newman has left an extraordinarily rich spiritual legacy – not least through the two Oratory communities in Birmingham and Oxford – as well as to the Church nationally and internationally,” Archbishop Longley said.

“It would be a great joy to see him take a step closer to being named among the saints and would be an encouragement to all who have been inspired by him seek the truth by seeking Christ.

“At the same time, and especially during this Jubilee Year of Mercy, I am sure that Blessed John Henry Newman would want us to continue praying for the canonisation of Blessed Dominic Barberi, the Passionist priest who first enabled him to receive the Sacrament of mercy at his reception into full communion with the Catholic Church at Littlemore in 1845 and who gave him a new insight into the merciful love of God.”

The archbishop spoke after the Tablet, a Catholic weekly magazine, revealed that the Archdiocese of Chicago had investigated the inexplicable healing of a young American mother who prayed for the Victorian cardinal’s intercession when she became afflicted by a “life-threatening pregnancy”.

Read the rest here.

The Birmingham Oratory outlines three reasons that Blessed John Henry Newman should be canonized, looking at aspects of his life and work beyond the intellectual and literary:

A fundamental component of Newman’s spirituality is his conviction of the primacy and immediacy of the unseen spiritual world around us. We need this initial conviction as we try to evangelize peoples and cultures that often ignore the reality of the supernatural, or else they take an unhealthy interest in warped versions of supernatural reality – occultism and all its poisonous derivatives.

Newman’s belief that what we see around us is only a tiny part of reality properly understood is at the heart of his theological and spiritual insights, both as an Anglican clergyman and later as a Catholic priest. . . .

Secondly, we should be inspired by the heroic docility with which he followed where the Spirit led. He was not in any way a charismatic in the modern sense of that label. He believed our prayer should always be tranquil and sober. However, by the use of his mind and by a finely tuned self-awareness of his own spiritual sensibilities he persevered step by step under the Spirit’s guidance along the path to truth, a path that led him out of the errors and prejudices which had coloured his earlier beliefs. The convert who in 1845 acknowledged the Roman Catholic Church as the one true fold of the Redeemer was the man who for many years previously had seriously believed that the Pope was antichrist, and the Roman Church a purveyor of idolatry, heresy, and superstition. . . .

Thirdly, we have the example of the fruitful integration within Newman himself of his love for God and his love of neighbour. His harmonious integration of those two great loves shows us that the gift of faith is a gift for the whole person. Newman loved God with the same heart and mind with which he also loved other creatures. His celibate and chaste affective life was not clouded by anything akin to what the post-Freudian world likes to call ‘repression’. His capacity for deep friendship with others, women and men, is well documented. It is charmingly revealed in the attentive and affectionate letters he wrote to his closer friends.

In an age like our own when genuine friendship can so easily be occluded by an obsessive sexualization of human affectivity, Newman reminds us that human love at its best is a pointer towards that supreme love to which we are all called, whatever our state in life and whatever our role in the Church: our personal love for our personal Saviour. John Henry’s human affections were an integral part of his spiritual journey. His friendships brought him closer to God. . . .

Read the rest there.

The Miracle of Miracles in Holy Week

I love being Catholic every Passiontide and Holy Week. Our Church has a series of rituals and special hymns to accompany us on the journey from Passion Sunday through Palm Sunday and the Triduum to Easter Sunday:

~Veiling the statues
~Receiving and blessing palms
~Processing with palms
~Washing the feet of 12 men
~Stripping the Altars
~Processing with the Eucharist
~Reposing the Eucharist
~Adoration at the Altar of Repose
~The empty, silent church on Good Friday, without His Presence
~The open Tabernacle doors
~Reading the Passion
~Venerating the Cross
~Lighting the Easter Fire
~Marking and Lighting the Easter Candle
~The Exsultet
~The bells ringing when the Gloria is sung at the Easter Vigil
~The Elect receiving the Sacraments of Initiation
~Candidates receiving Confirmation and First Holy Communion
~The renewal of Baptismal promises

These are the Roman Rite rituals that I'm familiar with; I know that many of these rituals are observed in other Christian communities, but they are fundamentally Catholic rituals, and they remind me how blessed I am to be a Catholic.

Robert Royal writes in a different way about the blessings--the miracle--of being Catholic in his reflection on the greatest miracle of all, that in spite of all that Catholics and outsiders do to Jesus's Church, it endures:

Ezra Pound once felt the need to observe: “Any institution that could survive the picturesqueness of the Borgias has a certain native resiliency.” But it’s not only the Borgias. The number of things that we clearly see the Church has survived is quite impressive, indeed unprecedented compared with any other human institution: The death of Jesus. The betrayal of all the apostles (not just Judas). The martyrdom of all the apostles (except for John). Early heresies (so many they would require a separate list). Persecution and martyrdom by the Roman Empire. Acceptance by the Roman Empire. Collapse of the Roman Empire. Barbarian invasions. Saracen invasions (Old St. Peter’s itself sacked in 846). Conflicts with medieval (Christian) kings and emperors. Medieval heresies (Albigenses, Franciscan Spirituals, etc.). The Fall of Byzantium. Renaissance corruption. The Reformation (Rome sacked again in 1527 by the Lutheran troops of Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V). The wars of religion. Late assaults by the Turks. Baroque corruptions. Pascal’s Jesuits. Kings claiming divine rights. Revolutions claiming absolute power. Napoleon. Freemasonry. Liberalism. Socialism. Nazism. Communism. Darwinism. Limp modern liturgies. Priestly sexual abuse. “Women religious” who believe in the Goddess or the cosmic process or whatever, and are proud of it.

This is just a partial list, which would at a minimum also need to recognize the constant presence of bad bishops and priests, and an ever-fickle laity. Under such circumstances – and given the tendency of all things to decay over time, it’s a miracle – perhaps, in a way, the greatest miracle of Christianity, that the Catholic Thing has survived, as Aquinas suggested. If we believe that Jesus is the God who created the universe, his rising from the dead was mere child’s play. Keeping together billions of fallen human beings, whom God has taken the risk of endowing with the freedom to choose their own ways, in a real historical Communion via the fragile earthen vessel we call the Church, may very well require even more divine powers. 

Also, every Holy Week when I experience these rituals, I think how horrible it would be to lose these outward representations--some are sacramentals and some are Sacraments--of the great Paschal Mystery. The Catholic people of England lost these rituals, and many others in the Sarum Use, in the sixteenth century. They were taken away in the name of preventing superstition but these rituals were not superstitious; the Church had developed these rituals to remind people of all that Jesus had done for His people, the Church. 

The rituals of Holy Week were taken away because the reformers did not trust the unity between Jesus and His Church; the reformers were complicating the matter in a way that St. Joan of Arc had warned against: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they are just one thing and we shouldn't complicate the matter." Because the English reformers complicated the matter, the Catholic people of England ended up with palmless Palm Sundays, candleless Candlemases and ashless Ash Wednesdays not to mention Shrovetide without Confession and Communion without the Real Presence. So within a couple of generations, they weren't the Catholic people of England anymore and yet a few endured, suffered, survived and revived three centuries later--which is another miracle indeed.

Of course anything good can be abused; even replacing rituals with a non-ritual can be abused and even reading the Bible could be abused superstitiously. Our Christian faith is an incarnational religion that unites the human and Divine in the great mystery and miracle of Jesus and His Church, His Bride for whom He lived and died and rose and lives always. The Catholic Church, messy and sinful as we certainly are with people like me among us, displays that mystery most miraculously every Passiontide, Holy Week, and Triduum.

Both pictures provided and copyright by Mark U. Mann (c) 2013-2015; used by permission. (Holy Week afternoon at Blessed Sacrament; Easter Sunday at St. Anthony of Padua.)

Sharing My Birthday: Edwin Abbott Abbott

Edwin Abbott Abbott was born on December 20, 1838, 120 years before I was. He was a critic of John Henry Cardinal Newman because Newman believed in miracles, that the miracles attributed to Jesus Christ in the Gospels were true, and he thought Newman had betrayed Reason by becoming a Catholic.

He wrote  Philomythus: An Antidote against Credulity in 1891, and The Anglican Career of Cardinal Newman in 1892. In the first book he argued against Newman's Essays on Miracles which he wrote while at Oriel College in 1825-26 and 1842-43--Newman edited them for publication 1870, making changes "simply of a literary character".

In the second book (two volumes) he wants to cast doubts on Newman's truthfulness in the Apologia pro vita sua by using the sermons and letters that Newman wrote as an Anglican to trace Newman's progress to the Catholic Church--a progress that Abbott considers totally regressive and superstitious. Abbott proclaims in his preface that Newman's "imagination dominated his reason, even more than his spiritual fears perverted his imagination". He further proclaims that Newman's sermons are "deficient in the Pauline spirit of hope and love, and inconsistent, as well as inadequate, in their expositions of the meanings and claims of faith and reason" and finally that Newman wanted to love God but did not know the meaning of the word love! Flatly stated (remember that Abbott wrote Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions) Abbott wanted to destroy any admiration anyone might have for Newman's intellect, religious faith, or love of God and His Church!

The Most Reverend Philip Boyce, OCD, Bishop of Raphoe, wrote about the "Tokens of Holiness in Blessed John Henry Newman" in 2012, noting that at the time of his death in 1890 many Catholics and non-Catholics praised Newman's holiness, love of God, devotion and piety. Bishop Boyce mentions Abbott's book on the Anglican Newman and Newman's brother Frank's attack on his personality and how they contributed to a change in opinion about Newman:

It is surprising then, that the idea of holiness in Newman’s life began to fade in public perception for over fifty years after his death. This was partly explained by some publications that propagated less than favourable interpretations of his character and his works. His brother Francis who had abandoned the Christian faith published a book about John Henry a year after his death. It was a reaction to the outburst of praise his deceased brother had received and it portrayed him in a very hostile manner, as being duped by organised religion and arrogant in his personal life.[Contributions chiefly to the Early History of Cardinal Newman (1891)] In the following year, 1892, another publication by Edwin Abbott, an Anglican, was also critical of Newman. He censured him for sacrificing his reason to the demands of an unfounded and irrational faith.

What such critics of Newman have to do is revive Kingsley's argument--Newman does not tell the truth, particularly about himself or his conversion! Both Frank and Abbott tear into Newman's character. That's why reading Edward Short's two books on Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family is so instructive. In those books, referencing Newman's correspondence (also Peter G. Wilcox's book on Newman as Spiritual Director) we can see how sensitive and attentive he was to others: friends, family, acquaintances, his Oxford friends, his Oratory companions, etc. I'm certain that Edward Short will include Edwin Abbott Abbott in his third book, Newman and His Critics! So although we share birthdays, E.A.A. and I don't share the same view of Blessed John Henry Newman!