Succession of infant King Henry VI

The son of Henry V and Katherine of Valois was born on December 6, 1421. When Henry V died untimely young, the nine-month old Henry VI succeeded him on August 31, 1422--with regents controlling the government, of course. He was crowned King of England on July 17, 1429 and King of France on December 16, 1431, coming of age in 1437.

He married Margaret of Anjou on April 23, 1445, lost his throne in 1461 during the Wars of the Roses because of bouts of madness and many governance problems at home and abroad, regained the throne in 1470 and died in the Tower of London on May 21, 1471.

Henry VI was certainly a devout Catholic and rumors of his sanctity continued after his death, with reported miracles. In fact, before the English Reformation, Henry might have been on his way to becoming declared a saint. Henry VII used his familial relationship to bolster his own Lancastrian claims, and therefore, encouraged this cult. (Henry VII's father Edmund Tudor was one of Henry VI's half-brothers, after Katherine of Valois and Owen Tudor got together!) But with the break from Rome under Henry VIII and the definite Calvinist Reformation during Edward VI's reign, that devotion was discouraged and his cult faded.

Henry VI therefore is remembered today for founding Eton College and King's College Chapel, which Henry VII and Henry VIII continued and completed.

Newman's Feast Day!!!--no questions now!

News from the Catholic Herald: Blessed John Henry Newman's feast day will be on October 9, the date of his conversion! I sure would like to get one of those booklets mentioned in the article.

An Anonymous post indicated as much on my August 11 post about Newman's death, but I was surprised since the tradition is for the saint to be honored on the date of his or her death as the date of being born into eternal life in heaven.

August 11 did pose a conflict because the cult of St. Clare of Assisi. October 9--mark it on your calendars!

The Catholic Truth Society has also posted a pre-order "official textual and photographic record" to be completed during/after the Papal Visit and other items, including commemorative stamps from the Isle of Man.

"Another Country Heard From"

I received an email from a reader in northeastern Europe:

I am writing from Vilnius, Lithuania, where I have been living for a number of years and where I was recently blessed to obtain a copy of your book, Supremacy and Survival. I found the book extremely interesting and very timely. It filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge of this important history.

In further correspondence, the reader reminded me that Lithuanian Catholics endured great oppression under the Soviet Union and the country has been rebuilding since 1994, when Soviet troops finally left the Baltic states after Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia regained independence. Pope John Paul II visited the Hill of Crosses near Siauliai in 1993. Under Communist rule the Soviet authorities bulldozed the hill, where people came to place the crosses to proclaim their Christian identity, three times and considered flooding the area by building a dam. Each time the hill was destroyed, Lithuanians would come back to place more crosses and crucifixes. The Lithuanian tourist website features a tour that follows the path of the pope's visit.

I heard an NPR report earlier this week about continuing tensions in Estonia between the Russian nationals living there and the government of Estonia, which passed laws after independence that limited the civil rights of those Russian national families not in the country before Soviet domination began in 1944.

There's no way to compare what happened to Catholics in England to what happened to the Baltic peoples under the Soviet Union--but the connection we can apply is how long it takes for reconciliation after oppression and persecution. Even after Emancipation in 1829 and the restoration of the hierarchy in 1850, Catholics had years of rebuilding, reforming, and development to complete. They had to work out conflicts within their growing community and deal with violence and reaction against that growth in the wider British culture.

England and the Papacy

As Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Scotland and England draws near, there are some interesting announcements. This is just the second visit of a reigning pope to England and the first State Visit of the Pope as head of the Vatican City-State. When he meets Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland, he will be, as The Telegraph notes, the "honoured guest of the British people." The editorial goes on to ask: "But will he be honoured--or will his enemies in public life use the opportunity to humiliate him?" The editorial concludes:

This state invitation does not require Anglicans and other Christians to recognise papal authority. But, as the Archbishop of Canterbury recognises, if Benedict XVI is greeted with hostility and manufactured scandals, then British Christianity as a whole will be weakened. And, in the eyes of hundreds of millions of Catholics around the world, our national reputation will be damaged. The Pope's visit is more than a great event for Catholics: it is a test of Britain's professionalism, hospitality, tolerance and maturity.

In the meantime, the Vatican has issued the official schedule; afternoon free timess have been identfied as rest or nap periods for the octogenarian pontiff, which have led to some smutty comments in on-line newspaper stories (demonstrating some failure in maturity, at least).

On the other hand, the Birmingham Oratory plans several special events around the celebration of Newman's beatification, including a conference with presentations by great Newman biographers (Fr. Ian Ker, Dr. William Oddie and Fr. Keith Beaumont), a performance of Elgar's oratorio based on Newman's "Dream of Gerontius", exhibitions, solemn vespers, Mass of Thanksgiving, and a pilgrimage to Littlemore!

When you read Newman's lectures on The Present Position of Catholics in England--even in an excerpt like this (and it is notably hard to excerpt Newman; one usually ends up with pages or more of "excerpts")--it's clear their position has not improved that much; instead of Protestants being the "enemy", as The Telegraph editorial comments, it's unbelievers or secularists, who cannot tolerate the claims of religion. Just substitute those words when Newman uses the word Protestants:

The duty of the Catholic Church is to preach to the world; and her promise and prerogative is success in preaching; but this is a subject which has not come into the scope of our discussions in this place. What I have been saying has no direct reference to any such end. I have not urged it on you, as I well might, in the case of those who, like you, love their religion so well that they wish others to enjoy the benefit of it with them. What I have said, however, does not presuppose this; it has not sprung out of any duty that we have of extending the limits of the Catholic pale; it would not have been superseded, if we had no such duty. I have not been aiming at the conversion of any persons, who are not Catholics, who have heard me: I have not been defending Catholic, or attacking Protestant doctrines, except indirectly and incidentally. The condition or hypothesis with which I have been entering into the discussion has been the present anti-Catholic agitation; and my object has been that of self-defence with reference to it. In the present state of things Catholics must, from the mere instinct of self-preservation, look about them; they are assailed by a very formidable party, or power, as I should rather call it, in this country, by its Protestantism. In the Protestantism of the country I do not include, of course, all who are not Catholics. By Protestants I mean the heirs of the Traditions of Elizabeth; I mean the country gentlemen, the Whig political party, the Church Establishment, and the Wesleyan Conference. I cannot over-estimate their power: they and their principles are established: yet I should be unjust, on the other hand, to all classes in the community if I made this Elizabethan Protestantism synonymous with the mind and the philosophy of the whole country. However, it is a tremendous power, and we are menaced by it; this is the condition of things . . .

Therefore, we should not be surprised of this last bit of news:

Catholic adoption agencies may no longer function in England and Wales as Catholic adoption agencies, because they place babies and children only with married heterosexual couples.

For those of use who are not going to England for the visit, there is this good news: EWTN will cover the events live and will have other special programming.

Preview of Upcoming Events

On Thursday, August 26, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to talk about Blessed Dominic Barberi and his connection to John Henry Newman--the usual time slot, 6:45 a.m. Central; 7:45 a.m. Eastern.

Then on Sunday, August 29, the interview taped earlier this year with Doug Keck for EWTN Bookmark will air at 8:30 a.m. Central; 9:30 a.m. Eastern--and they repeat it during the week.

An 80-Year Old Victim of the Popish Plot

The Catholic Herald highlights the martyrdom of St. John Kemble, found guilty of conspiring against King Charles II in the non-existent Popish Plot.

St. John Kemble was butchered by another incompetent executioner (see the story of Blessed Hugh Green) in Hereford after serving Catholics in Monmouthshire for more that 50--fifty!--years. The Anglicans in the area respected him and he had dwelt unmolested in his brother's castle (Pembridge). He was betrayed by the husband of one of his parishioners.

He was taken to London, where nothing could be proved against him in connection with the Popish Plot (since Titus Oates had made the whole thing up and had perjured himself before Parliament!). Therefore, he was found guilty of the old Elizabethan statute against the presence of Catholic priests in England. (He was born near the end of Elizabeth's reign in 1599 of a recusant family and ordained in 1625, so he was certainly guilty and had been for a longtime).

On August 22, 1679 he suffered, forgiving his enemies and proclaiming that he died for the religion that had made England Christian! Before his death, he asked for time to finish his prayers and smoke his last pipe and imbibe a last cup of wine, shared by the undersheriff (who after all had not arrested him for the last fifty years!) . Evidently, this is still remembered in Herefordshire in the sayings "a Kemble pipe" and "a Kemble cup".

The famous stage family, including Sarah (Kemble) Siddons, are related to this great priest and martyr. He is buried in an Anglican churchyard and area Catholics make a pilgrimage to his grave each August 22nd. His left hand is preserved in the Catholic church in Hereford, St. Francis Xavier.

The Sequel--bien sur!

Trianon and Madame Royale certainly deserve to be read consecutively but the reader must adjust her expectations. After the poetic and multifaceted episodes of Trianon, offering different people’s views of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Madame Royale is a thorough-composed historical novel telling the story of their one surviving child, Marie-Therese, spanning time and place, with an omniscient narrator unbound by geography or character. The prologue, however, offers a transition in style of sorts, as it depicts a scene that presages the horror to befall the title character’s family—a scene of conspiracy and cruelty taking place while she is an innocent and unaware child.

While Elena-Maria Vidal artfully composes the episodes of Trianon to redress the calumnies against the king and queen consort and tell a sympathetic version of Revolutionary history, she addresses a more complex narrative in Madame Royale. This is a broader canvas—a more expansive scene: Marie-Therese travels the world widely, while her mother’s world was geographically restricted and Marie-Therese crosses the sea and the English Channel, while her mother never even saw the ocean. Such a story requires a more direct narrative approach.

Mother and daughter endure many of the same struggles, however: the family divisions, unhappy (at first) arranged marriages, misunderstanding, revolutions, violence, and flight. Marie-Therese must live with uncles who betrayed her father and slandered her mother while encountering a cousin whose father cast the deciding vote that condemned her father to death. She also accepts poverty, difficult travel, and most of all, takes on the frustrating and emotional effort to find out what happened to her little brother, abused and imprisoned in the Temple.

That narrative thread competes with the patterns of exile and restoration, triumph and defeat, charity and conflict that emerge from the story of the Bourbon court, first in England, then in France, then returning to France after Waterloo, then in Scotland , briefly in Italy and finally in Austria. Throughout these peregrinations, Madame Royale bears the burden of the Bourbon dynasty, encountering both betrayal and loyalty. Some of the best passages in the novel depict the conflict in Marie-Therese’s soul, as when she returns to the scenes of so much tragedy in the French Revolution during the festivities celebrating the restoration of the monarchy after Napoleon’s abdication and first exile. She recalls the suffering of her parents even as she experiences the triumph of her new family.

She is steadfast in her Catholic faith and devoted to the remembrance of her parents and the restoration of the Catholic Church in France, welcoming the Marian apparitions experienced by Catherine Laboure on Rue de Bac in Paris and the children at La Sallette.

Marie-Therese finally accepts a conclusion of uncertainty as to the fate of her brother. Although she never bears a child, she becomes the de facto mother of the heir to the Bourbon throne, Henri, the Comte de Chambord and his sister, Louise. She raises them while their mother, the widow of Marie-Therese’s brother-in-law, the Duc de Berry remarries and briefly fights for her son’s rights.

The drive and devotion of the title character infuse the narrative of Madame Royale, indefatigably following the heroic and amazing journey of Marie-Therese.

The Catholic Advance

The editor for our local diocesan newspaper noticed that I had the article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review, and he CONTACTED ME for a story.

How nice! I wish I could find a similar interest in our local MSM newspaper, The Wichita Eagle. I have sent them two media releases about my book and my appearance on EWTN Live! but it is probably my fault for not making a strong enough connection. I'll try again with the Newman beatification--local interest since we have Newman University and the WSU Newman Center.

Newman an Anglican AND a Catholic--at the Same Time?

In this Catholic Herald comment/blog, William Oddie disagrees with the Anglican Professor John Milbank. The latter tries to say that Newman was a member of both the Church of England and the Catholic Church at the same time, which is an absurdity. As Dr. Oddie comments, Newman was a controversialist in these matters. After his conversion, he had little interest in Anglican matters. As I noted in my article published in Homiletic & Pastoral Review, he still valued the Church of England as the bulwark it was against atheism, but he thought it was only a temporary half-way house to the one True Church, the Catholic Church.

The late Father Stanley Jaki would agree with William Oddie. I have a copy of the Catholic Dossier issue dedicated to Cardinal Newman with Father Jaki's article on "Newman and His Converts: An Existential Ecclesiology."

Apropos of that, this would be a interesting mug to have in one's office.

A Little Off Topic, But It's a Birthday Present!

When I attended the Catholic Writers Conference last week, I obtained a copy of Trianon: A Novel of Royal France by Elena-Maria Vidal, kindly signed by the author. Reading it on my much delayed flight home I was transported to the places and time of Revolutionary France, almost completely secure within the world of Trianon. Although there were a couple times when the veil opened and I saw the art and intent behind the world Vidal creates in these vignettes, I was otherwise completely present and involved.

As in her most recent novel, The Night's Dark Shade, Vidal achieves wonderful immediacy and versimilitude in historical fiction. These episodes from the life of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette sympathetically and honestly depict the trials, triumphs, sadness, joy, and ultimate sacrifice of this much-maligned couple. They emerge as real people, neither monsters nor angels, but, as we are, mixtures of faults and virtues.

The novel begins with the celebration of St. Teresa of Avila's feast day, honored both at the Carmelite convent and at the French court. It ends with the death of the priest who accompanied Louis Capet to the guillotine as the one surviving member of the royal family, Marie-Therese, waits by his bedside. (Fortunately, her story is continued in Madame Royale.) In between, Vidal depicts how love grew between the royal couple after their arranged marriage of state, the births, growth, and deaths of their children, the rising tide of Revolution and the efforts of the King first to forestall it with reforms and then to survive it with accommodations that sometimes cost him dearly, and finally with the family's capture and imprisonment, the execution of Louis and then of Marie Antoinette, the abuse of the young Dauphin and the sufferings of Marie-Therese. I highly recommend this book, and its sequel.