Preview: Undset and Belloc on the SRMS

Next on our list of English Catholic authors who influenced Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism is Hilaire Belloc. One of the books listed among those of Belloc's she read is The Catholic Church and History published in 1927. So we will start a Son Rise Morning Show discussion of this book and its influence on Sigrid Undset on Monday, October 12.

The Catholic Church and History is one book in the Calvert Series for which Belloc was the General Editor. The Lords Baltimore, the Calvert family, were the founders of Colonial Maryland as a refuge for English Catholics from the Penal Laws in Stuart England. Other books in the series are The Catholic Church and Conversion by G.K. Chesterton (a book we know Undset read!), The Catholic Church and Philosophy by Father Vincent McNabb, The Catholic Church and the Appeal to Reason by Leo Ward, and The Catholic Church and Its Reactions with Science by Bertram C. A. Windle.

Today Joseph Pearce is the great apologist for Hilaire Belloc's contributions to Catholic apologetics, especially in his books about history. He cites The Church and Socialism and Europe and the Faith as two important early works and then opines that Belloc

is best remembered and most justly celebrated as a historian of the Reformation, correcting the bias and inaccuracy of what he called the “enormous mountain of ignorant wickedness” that constituted “tom-fool Protestant history.”

Apart from his seminal historical works, How the Reformation Happened and Characters of the Reformation, he also wrote biographies of many key figures of the English Reformation, including Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cranmer, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton and James II.

I've been appreciative of Belloc's historical work too, especially in that series of biographies Pearce lists, recently reissued by Mysterium Press (Wolsey, Cranmer, Charles I, Cromwell, Charles II, and James II). As a historical biographer, Belloc has a keen sense of character, situation, politics, economics, and social context--and military tactics when pertinent--, at least that's what I've determined after reading those books (his study of James II is still pending my review). His prose is vivid and vibrant; he sets out his purpose cogently and then makes out his argument as promised. Several years ago, we discussed every character and every chapter in Characters of the Reformation on the Son Rise Morning Show. So those are our bona fides.

Here is the Preface to The Catholic Church and History (1926/1927):

The object of the author has been to state and summarise in a brief, succinct form the arguments drawn from History in opposition to the claim of the Catholic Church: that is, to the claim put forward by that Church to speak with Divine and Infallible Authority. The author insists upon the point that he is not attempting a positive apologetic drawn from History in favour of this claim, but a rebutting of the evidence drawn from History opposed to this claim. He is engaged in examining the value of the arguments drawn from History to prove that the Catholic Church has varied or erred in her teaching or has made it depend upon immoral methods, and in showing that they have no force.

The little book is divided into two parts, the first dealing with the three moral arguments: (1) that the Church has made pronouncements which History can prove to be false; (2) that the Church can be proved by History to have used material which she knew to be false; (3) that the Church, being proved by history to be not only organised but increasingly organised from the beginning of its existence, is thereby shown to be different from the simple thing which a divine institution of the sort should be.

Secondly, the intellectual argument, to wit, that the Church can be proved by History to be man-made, not God-made. This the author divides into two sections: (1) the Protestant argument that there was some original good message told by Jesus Christ, which the Church has gradually corrupted and from the origin of which she has deviated; (2) the general agnostic argument that the Church can be proved historically to be but one of many religions, to have grown up like any other religion, with the same illusions and similar rites and mysteries, and is therefore man-made—which last form of attack the author regards as to-day by far the most serious.

According to this website, "Her library contains . . . over thirty [books] by Hilaire Belloc . . .", although I haven't found any insights into when she read any of these books by Belloc. In this book he is definitely on the defensive, presenting the arguments against the Catholic Church first and then refuting them. I would guess that Undset, who had no great connection with the official Lutheran church in Norway, agreed with Belloc that the second "general agnostic argument" was more important to refute:

The Sceptical appeal to History—much the most formidable to-day, and always intellectually the most respectable—speaks in much bolder tones, thus: “The whole of the Catholic Faith from beginning to end is man-made. It is a mass of illusions: of projections of the human mind thrown by the human imagination upon the void; of deceptions, some of them conscious in some degree, many more but half-conscious; by far the most unconscious, implanted in the mind by early training. What the Catholic Church affirms is false from beginning to end, and History shows that the affirmations of the Catholic Faith have been thus man-made step by step from the very first origins we can discover. The idea of a God is man-made; so is the sacramental idea, the idea of Incarnation—the whole affair.” . . .

 Perhaps Undset, a critical and intelligent reader, found this conclusion from Belloc compelling:

A man making a survey of what little is known of the old religious experiments and perversions of mankind, and being asked, as a pure hypothesis, “Suppose a divine society, corporate, distinct, highly organised, and therefore of highly differentiated function, were to arise on earth to bear witness to the Living God: suppose such a thing for the sake of argument only, what, think you, would such a body present by way of appearance, action and thought?” could not but answer that it would have of necessity present within it not only vital truths, but also practices discoverable wherever man had groped at or half remembered a revelation.

This man, with no knowledge of such a society, but considering what his fellow beings were, what the human mind is, what questions it poses, what answers it demands, would reply: “In that society you would discover the worship of a Creator, the affirmation that he had revealed himself; a mysterious link between the divine and the human, comparable to the link between the unthinking matter of our bodies and the living essence within. It would have sacrifice and veneration combined. It would sanctify objects, places, persons and rites; it would have central institutions, and in proportion to its vitality a multitude of lesser activities; it would have symbols which it would distinguish from realities and forms of reality which it would attach to symbols; for man without a soul is a corpse, and man without a body is a wraith. This supposed society which you bid men imagine would certainly present in their highest form such elements as History has also discovered, disjointedly appearing, often perverted, often degraded, in the various (and ineffective) spiritual experiments or lapses of mankind.”

Then, one might say to such a man, such a general scholar and observer of the unique animal, man, at prayer, “Should there conceivably be such a home upon the earth, how otherwise would you know it?” He could but answer, “Its nature would be such that it would satisfy to the full the demands of men; it would be unique so as to correspond to man himself who is unique on earth, and it would grant him fulness and repose.”

I readily admit that this is not the kind of argument that I follow easily, but something in this book contributed to Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism!

Image Source (Public Domain): Author and poet Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953), circa 1917.

Preview: Sigrid Undset and Benson on "The Cross" on the Son Rise Morning Show

The third volume of Sigrid Undset's Nobel Prize Winning novel Kristen Lavransdatter is titled The Cross, so it makes sense that Matt Swaim or Anna Mitchell and I would look at what Undset appreciated in Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's Christ in the Church. So during the October 5th edition of the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll discuss some important themes from Chapter 1 in Part IV "Failure and Triumph" in Benson's 1911 book.

In "The Theological Controversialist", chapter 8 of Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, Father Nichols quotes some passages from Benson's chapter on the Cross in the above-mentioned work, which has "some palpable results for a theology of the Church, since throughout Benson's presentation of the life, death, and Resurrection of Christ he is always thinking ecclesiology . . ."

Benson discusses the Cross, and Our Lord's endurance of its agony, in response to a common argument against the authority and infallibility of the Catholic Church as the Church Christ founded and protects: her historical failures mixed with the stories of great saints; our corruption and weakness:

'Your principles are splendid,' they tell us; 'at least they sound splendid. But why are they not put into practice? The Sermon on the Mount is an exquisite ideal, but why do you not try to realise it? What is the matter with Christianity is that there are no Christians. You are always making good beginnings, but you never live up to them. You were magnificent under Nero and Diocletian; but so soon as you seemed really to have conquered the world, you allowed the world to conquer you. You saved others; yourselves you cannot save. You were unworldly so long as Nero burnt and tortured you, but you became as worldly as everyone else so soon as Constantine tolerated you. . . .' (p. 176)

Benson then comments that this mixture of success and failure matches the life of Christ told in the Gospels:

Now, this is precisely the story of the Gospels. Again and again there came moments when the success of Jesus Christ seemed almost assured. There were moments when the whole world went after Him who seemed so perfectly to meet its ideals; when the world itself would come and take Him by force and make Him a King; when the kingdoms of the world seemed laid at His feet  and yet, somehow or another, it all came to nothing. His whole life on earth was a kind of crescendo of popularity, up to the last moment; and then, in an instant, it all crumbled down again to nothing. Palm Sunday immediately preceded Good Friday. . . .

Now, all this is very largely true. We may regard the progress of Christ in the Gospels and in the Church as a triumph which fails, or as a failure which triumphs. (p. 177)

At the center of that triumphant failure/failed triumph is the suffering of the Cross. As Benson notes, many thinkers have tried to find a way out of this problem, "The Problem of Pain", but he suggests that "it is worth while to point out the solution that Jesus Christ offers. His solution of suffering is to suffer." (p. 179) He suffers out of love, Benson argues, and anyone who loves, suffers:

Real love seeks not to possess, but to be possessed ; not, so to speak, to devour the beloved, to satisfy self with the beloved, but the exact contrary — to be devoured and to satisfy. (That is why the Love of God, naturally greater than human love, insists upon the Sacrament of the altar.) Real love, then, is a continual emptying and slaying of self, a continual immolation of self on the altar of the beloved. This is simply a commonplace of human experience, described by every poet and artist since the world began. It is exactly this that distinguishes it from its caricature — its antichrist — from lust or liking. Lust and liking desire to acquire and to win; love to be acquired and to be won. (p. 184)

As Benson concludes, "Pain and failure must always be elements in the life of the Church."

For his part, in his study of Undset, Nichols comments that "the Cross and its images are prominent in her work. Brother Edvin tells Kristen, "I hold on to the Cross with all my strength--one must cling to it like a kitten hanging on to a plank when it falls into the sea." (p. 158)

Certainly the Cross is prominent in Undset's life too: a failed marriage, two disabled children in her care, her son Ander's death in 1940, exile from her homeland during World War II, the despoilation of her home, requisitioned by the Wehrmacht, illness, etc. Nichols concludes that the heart of her faith was the Cross: she "found in the Cross of Christ--seen as the glorious Cross, and thus with its inherent reference to the Resurrection--the answer to the questions of existence . . .",  (p. 177) so no wonder she read and translated Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's Christ in the Church.

Preview: Undset and Benson's "Christ in the Church" on the Son Rise Morning Show

Sigrid Undset read and translated another book by Monsignor Robert H. Benson, Christ in the Church (as Kristus i kirken in 1926) so we will discuss the influence it had on her on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, September 28.

Unlike The Friendship of Christ, which could be characterized as work of Catholic spirituality written for Catholics, Christ in the Church is a work of Catholic apologetics written for both Catholics and non-Catholics. Like The Friendship of Christ it is based on sermons Benson gave in both Rome and Kensington, England (plus Boston, Massachusetts). Benson particularly defends the Catholic Church's authority and infallibility and its role in salvation. There is a printed edition available and there is also an online version.

For example of this apologetic tone, Monsignor Benson starts with:

The charge brought most commonly in these days against Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, is that it claims in an unique and exclusive degree to contain the whole of truth. Surely, it is said, considering the religious history of the world - the numerous bodies that have flourished in East and West alike, in all the centuries of man's existence - such a claim is arrogant and impossible. We must find the truth, it is said, in the Least Common Multiple of the religious experiences of all men if we are intellectually democratic; or, if we have aristocratic leanings, in the unanimous conclusions (if any such can be found) of the best independent religious thinkers. Above all, we must be pliant and undogmatic; we must be willing to see the conclusions of this generation overthrown by the next; we must believe in progress even though we are not sure in what direction progress lies. For there is no absolute truth, no final revelation: creeds are no more than forms and symbols of the One Truth as held by various groups of minds and temperaments. [Saint John Henry Newman had called this the spirit of liberalism in religion!*]

No wonder Father Aidan Nichols includes the comment that Benson was among "the more hard-line English Catholic apologists". Remember that Benson was writing well before Pope Pius XII issued Mystici Corporis Christi in 1943, but as Nichols comments, Benson is writing about the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ--that's his model of the Catholic Church, and he concentrates on that image of the Body of Christ and each Catholic being a member of that Body:

But to the Catholic who sees in the Church a human society (often terribly human), but also a Body in which God dwells, an organism composed of countless individual cells, but indwelt by a Divine Personality - a Catholic who believes that this Society is actually redemptive of the human race, as well as the actually Divine Teacher - more than a school of thought, more than the best religious club in existence, more than the Ambassador of God, more than the Bride of Christ - to the Catholic who believes that the Church is not one among ten thousand, but One, unique, singular and final, between whom and other religious bodies there is no more comparison than between the creature and the Creator - to him, membership in that body, the position of a cell in that organism, is the one thing to which no other can be preferred; and the loss of that membership the one supreme catastrophe or crime. Certainly the Catholic holds that it is possible to belong to the Soul of the Church without external membership in the Body; it is possible, where there is no fault on the individual's side, that he may be united inwardly to the Person who inhabits that body; but such is not God's primary intention, and to forsake the Body is to forsake the soul. In any case the individual loses enormously by being forced to stand alone, without that grace and strength of unity which external membership in the external body can alone confer.

In "The Theological Controversialist", chapter 8 of Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, Father Nichols emphasizes another aspect of this Mystical Body of Christ that seems contradictory: its holiness and the sinners within it. As Benson admits, just as it was when Christ was in the world:

we have the same environment - namely, the human nature of the world, human ambitions, interests, virtues, vices, circumstances, strengths and weaknesses, now as then. We should expect to find then, if the Catholic hypothesis is true, the same results now as then. So far as Jesus Christ was accepted or rejected then by the world into which He came, so will He be accepted and rejected now, and by the same kind of people for the same kind of reasons. . . .If, then, we find in the history of the Catholic Church the same psychological situations as those recorded in the Gospels continually reproduced under similar circumstances - if we find, that is, Peters and Judases and Pilates swarming round the Church's progress through the ages - if we find that the same comments are made, the same paradoxes generated, the same accusations leveled, the same criticisms, the same bursts of flame and thunder . . .

we shouldn't be surprised. It's not evidence against the holiness and infallibility of the Church Our Lord founded. Undset, the creator of unfaithful, sinful, and fallen "good" characters--and herself repentant--saw the truth in Benson's argument. The Church is holy because the Church is the Body of Christ and Christ is Holy.

When I attended daily Mass on Friday in the 25th Week of Ordinary Time, Father Hoffman at St. Paul's Catholic Student Center (the Newman Center) at WSU, made clear the contrast between the reading from Ecclesiastes (3:1-11*) about the variability of human life and the Gospel from St. Luke (9:18-22), with St. Peter's declaration is Jesus is "the Christ of God", Someone sure and certain. Then Father pointed out that's what the students coming to OCIA are seeking and seeing in the Catholic Church: that certainty and security in the midst of change and a seeming lack of "gain from the efforts they make" (Eccl 3:9). 

On page 134 in "The Theological Controversialist", Father Nichols cites Undset's Katholsk propaganda in which she wrote "that the Church's inner essence is indefectible, like God's." (Oslo: Some, 1927, p.4). As my best friend often reminds me, there's no comparison, really, between the number of Catholics living on Earth right now and the millions of Catholic souls, purified and purifying, in Heaven and Purgatory. They are the larger and holiest part of the Church: they are the fulfillment of that indefectibility.

* “Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.” Biglietto Speech May 12, 1879

**I'm sure that other people of a certain age were hearing the Byrds singing "Turn, Turn, Turn" in their mind's ear.

Image Source (Public Domain): Albrecht Dürer - Adoration of the Trinity

Preview: Undset and Robert Hugh Benson: "The Friendship of Christ"

To begin our discussion of the English Catholic influences on Sigrid Undset's conversion to Catholicism on the Son Rise Morning Show, we thought it a good idea to start with a work we'd discussed in the Advent and Christmas seasons of 2025/2026 and during the Lent of 2026. We looked at Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ (at least the sections on "Christ in the Exterior" and "Christ in His Historical Life") quite extensively during those discussions.

So on Monday, September 21, we'll explore how Benson's spiritual advice to Catholics influenced Sigrid Undset to become a Catholic and why she'd want to translate The Friendship of Christ into Norwegian as Kristi Venskap in 1928, four years after her reception into the Catholic Church.

To understand why Undset was even looking at Catholic writers like Benson I think we need to look at her life during the late 1910s and early 1920's. She'd met and married a man already married with children and then found out that they had couldn't live together, that he was not reliable (!). She'd been raised to be artistic, observant, and critical and the man she married, Anders Castus Svasrstad, an artist, was "even more observant and critical" and she appreciated that, according to Tordis Orjasaeter (cited in Nichols, pp. 34-35). They were married in 1912 and he left for Paris in 1914. By 1915, she was reading Belloc, Chesterton, Christopher Dawson, and Monsignor Benson. Her relationship with her husband continued to deteriorate. 

What did she find in Benson's The Friendship of Christ? She clearly found something there that she could not find in Norway's Lutheran Church, her own creativity, or her criticism of contemporary feminism and other trends to help her deal with her married life.

In a chapter from The Friendship of Christ we have not looked at before extensively on the Son Rise Morning Show, Monsignor Benson describes friendship as a mystery--a fallible mystery, on the natural plane in contrast to Divine friendship:

Human friendships usually take their rise in some small external detail. We catch a phrase, we hear an inflection of a voice, we notice the look of the eyes, or a movement in walking; and the tiny experience seems to us like an initiation into a new world. We take the little event as a symbol of a universe that lies behind; we think we have detected a soul exactly suited to our own, a temperament which either from its resemblance to our own, or from a harmonious dissimilarity, is precisely fitted to be our companion. Then the process of friendship begins; we exhibit our own characteristics; we examine his: in point after point we find what we expected to find, and we verify our guesses; and he too, no less, follows the same method, until that point is reached (as it is reached in so many cases, though not, thank God! in all), either in a crisis, or after a trying period, when we discover either that we have been mistaken from the beginning, or that we have deceived the other, or that the process has run its course; the summer is come and gone, and that there are no more fruits to gather on either side.

Now the Divine Friendship -- the consciousness, that is to say, that Christ desires our love and intimacy, and offers His own in return -- usually begins in the same manner. It may be at the reception of some sacrament, such as we have received a thousand times before; or itmay be as we kneel before the Crib at Christmas, or follow our Lord along the Way of the Cross. We have done these things or performed those ceremonies dutifully and lovingly again and again; yet on this sudden day a new experience comes to us. We understand, for example, for the first time that the Holy Child is stretching His arms from the straw, not merely to embrace the world -- that would be little enough! -- but to embrace our own soul in particular. We understand as we watch Jesus, bloodstained and weary, rising from His third fall, that He is asking our own very self in particular to help Him with His burden. The glance of the Divine Eyes meets our own; there passes from Him to us an emotion or a message that we had never before associated with our own relations with Him. The tiny event has happened! He has knocked at our door, and we have opened; He has called and we have answered. Henceforth, we think, He is ours and we are His. Here, at last, we tell ourselves, is the Friend for whom we have been looking so long: here is the Soul that perfectly understands our own; the one Personality which we can safely allow to dominate our own. Jesus Christ has leapt forward two thousand years, and is standing by our side; He has come down from the painting on the wall; He has risen from the straw in the manger -- My Beloved is mine and I am His. . . . (Part I. Christ in the Interior Soul, Chapter II. The Friendship of Christ (Interior)

Perhaps Undset responded well to Benson's caution that some Catholics neglect their friendship with Christ, either relying on their own efforts to pray and adore, sacrifice, repent, and worship. He provides faithful Catholics, as we highlighted in our series earlier this liturgical year, insights into responding to Our Lord's desire to make sure that we're not alone (Genesis 1:8) and that He is our true friend--our one true friend.

Another chapter that might have appealed to Undset is the one about Christ in The Saint. As the creator (or sub-creator as Dorothy L. Sayers would put it) of characters like Kristen Lavransdatter and Erland, Jenny, Marta and Otto, etc., she'd see the creation and development of sanctity in a person as something great and artistic:

. . . He is in them as a flame is in a lantern; that their lives are not mere imitations or reflections of His, but actually manifestations of it. The graces that they display are actually the same graces as those with which this Sacred Humanity was saturated; their horror of sin is His; the powers which they exercise are His. They are "the light of the world,"{7} since there burns in them the Supreme Light of the world. Their "life is hid with Christ in God."{8} They have, by the help of grace, hewn at the stone of their human nature, by mortification, by effort, by prayer -- even by the final strokes of martyrdom itself -- until, little by little, or all at once by sudden heroism, there has emerged from the gross material, not the angel of Michael Angelo, not merely a copy of the Perfect Model; but, in a real sense, that actual Model Himself. It is He Who has lived in them, as really, though in another manner, as in the Sacrament of the Altar; it is He Who now appears in them in the culmination of their sanctity, visible to all who have eyes to see. Certainly it is not He Himself, pure and simple; since there still remains in every saint that film or glass of his own personal identity which God gave him and can never take away. For it is exactly for the sake of this personal identity, and for the service which it renders to the promulgation of Christ upon earth, that the saint has been created and sanctified.

Again I wonder how Undset would have reacted to the fact that Benson published this book after giving a series of sermons in Rome and Kensington because he was concerned that faithful practicing Catholics might not fully understand the friend they had in Jesus. While he made great and true statements about the fullness of the Catholic faith, Benson acknowledged that everyone in the Church might not have "that intimate knowledge of and companionship with Him in which the Divine Friendship consists". He wanted to make sure that they realized an assume fact: "He must be known (if His relation with us is to be that which He desires) in all those activities and manifestations in which He displays Himself." Therefore she needed to know Christ in the Eucharist, in the Church, in the Priest, in the Saint, in the Sinner, in the Average Man, and in the Sufferer. For someone who wanted to give her all to her art, her family, and her country and who wanted to create characters and worlds as vividly and wholly as possible--as I think Father Nichols describes her in his book--I think that would have appealed to her.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Benson in 1907

Back on the SRMS: Sigrid Undset and English Catholicism

On Monday, September 14, we'll begin a new series on the Son Rise Morning Show, looking at how much English Catholicism influenced Sigrid Undset in her conversion to Catholicism. We'll lay the groundwork in this first episode and then look at certain works in finer detail during subsequent episodes.

One reason for looking at this subject is that the bishop of Oslo, Fredrik Hansen intends to open a Cause for Undset's canonization later this year. As Bishop Hansen noted that she won't be canonized because she's a great author and Nobel Prize Winner for her great trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, nor because she lived a perfect moral life (she married a divorced man years before her conversion), but instead because she offers "the Catholic Church in Norway [ . . .] a concrete example of that calling lived out in public life, suffering, motherhood, and conversion" as she repented and pursued holiness in her life.

Another reason is that not only contemporary Catholic authors like Belloc, Chesterton, Monsignor Benson, etc., influenced her, but the stories of the English Catholic martyrs of the Elizabethan era offered her great examples of heroism and fidelity. Catholicism was a minority religion in Norway; she'd been raised in an irreligious family. Donald DeMarco described some of her background:

Her religious upbringing was virtually nonexistent. Both her parents were atheists. She abandoned Lutheranism, which was the state-supported religion, having found it to be anemic.

“I have never understood the meaning of the Reformation,” she said, “as other than a history of revolt of believing Christians who, subjectively pious, hoped that true Christianity agreed better with their subjective idea of Christianity than [with] the factual one.”

In her long, arduous journey to Catholicism, she could say that the Catholic Church is “the only explanation of existence.” . . .

“We sorely need the wisdom of the saint,” she declared. The Catholic saints of history are “the only thoroughly sane people … they stood in continual confrontation with the world.”

No wonder the English Catholic martyrs--not yet canonized at the time, but beatified with a cult developing more and more--as saints attracted her in their "confrontation with the [Elizabethan] world."

This website lists some of the English authors who had influenced her:

While Undset kept abreast of Catholic thought on the continent, it was the English who had the greater influence on her. Her library contains over sixty books by G. K. Chesterton and over thirty by Hilaire Belloc and Robert Hugh Benson each. Chesterton and Benson made such an impression on Undset that within a few years of her conversion, she set about several translations for the benefit of her compatriots. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man (1925) was translated in 1931 as the 450-page Den Evige Menneske and Benson’s Christ in the Church (1911) and The Friendship of Christ (1912) were rendered into Norwegian as Kristus i kirken (1926) and Kristi Venskap (1928) respectively.

In Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts, Father Aidan Nichols, OP, adds Belloc's The Catholic Church and History and Chesterton's The Catholic Church and Conversion to this list. He also refers to these writers as "the more hard-line English Catholic apologists"[!]. (p. 96) Father Nichols cites one Finn Thorn who "evidently regretted . . . her seeming lack of interest in John Henry Newman"[!!]. (p. 95)

So, we'll look these different English Catholic influences on Sigrid Undset's conversion over the next several weeks on the Son Rise Morning Show!

Image Source (Public Domain): Sigrid Undset Nobel laureate in Literature 1928

Preview: King Nebuchadnezzar and the form "like the Son of God" in Keble's "Christian Year"

Three of my favorite Old Testament stories to hear at daily Mass are from the Second Book of Maccabees and from the Book of Daniel. From Second Maccabees, the story of the martyrdoms of the Mother and her seven sons in chapter 7 as the drama builds with each exchange among the Jewish men, their mother, and King Antiochus. 

From the Book of Daniel: one is the story of Susanna and the Elders. I remember Father William Carr (RIP) at the WSU St. Paul's Parish-Newman Center, decades ago, telling me to read that long reading slowly, clearly, and deliberately. [“Are you such fools, O Israelites, as to condemn a daughter of Israel without examination and without learning the facts? Return to court, for these men have given false evidence against her.”] It's such a good story and needs to "be told" again well; Father Carr didn't want me to rush it.

The other story from the Book of Daniel: that of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as King Nebuchadnezzar's elaborately cruel attempt to roast the Jewish exiles to death is thwarted by the appearance of one "like the Son of God" joining them in the oven as they chant praises God.

On Monday, August 31, we'll look at how John Keble meditates on their story on the Son Rise Morning Show. He selects the verse "Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astonished, and rose up in haste, and spake, and said unto his counsellors, 'Did not we cast three men bound into the midst of the fire?' They answered and said unto the king, 'True, O king.' He answered and said, 'Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God.'" (Daniel iii. 24, 25.) for his inspiration on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity in the Book of Common Prayer:

When Persecution’s torrent blaze
   Wraps the unshrinking Martyr’s head;
When fade all earthly flowers and bays,
   When summer friends are gone and fled,
Is he alone in that dark hour
Who owns the Lord of love and power?

Or waves there not around his brow
   A wand no human arm may wield,
Fraught with a spell no angels know,
   His steps to guide, his soul to shield?
Thou, Saviour, art his Charmèd Bower,
His Magic Ring, his Rock, his Tower.

And when the wicked ones behold
   Thy favourites walking in Thy light,
Just as, in fancy triumph bold,
   They deemed them lost in deadly night,
Amazed they cry, “What spell is this,
Which turns their sufferings all to bliss?

“How are they free whom we had bound?
   Upright, whom in the gulf we cast?
What wondrous helper have they found
   To screen them from the scorching blast?
Three were they—who hath made them four?
And sure a form divine he wore,

“E’en like the Son of God.”  So cried
   The Tyrant, when in one fierce flame
The Martyrs lived, the murderers died:
   Yet knew he not what angel came
To make the rushing fire-flood seem
Like summer breeze by woodland stream.

He knew not, but there are who know:
   The Matron, who alone hath stood,
When not a prop seemed left below,
   The first lorn hour of widowhood,
Yet cheered and cheering all, the while,
With sad but unaffected smile;—

The Father, who his vigil keeps
   By the sad couch whence hope hath flown,
Watching the eye where reason sleeps,
   Yet in his heart can mercy own,
Still sweetly yielding to the rod,
Still loving man, still thanking God;—

The Christian Pastor, bowed to earth
   With thankless toil, and vile esteemed,
Still travailing in second birth
   Of souls that will not be redeemed:
Yet steadfast set to do his part,
And fearing most his own vain heart;—

These know: on these look long and well,
   Cleansing thy sight by prayer and faith,
And thou shalt know what secret spell
   Preserves them in their living death:
Through sevenfold flames thine eye shall see
The Saviour walking with His faithful Three.

Although Keble at first emphasizes the drama of the scene, narrating the King's shock at what he is seeing that defies all his commands: the blazing fire, the bound victims now unbound and unharmed by the flames, but most of all, the presence of a fourth man, one "like the Son of God"--he turns from that dramatization. 

King Nebuchadnezzar didn't know "what angel came/To make the rushing fire-flood seem/Like summer breeze by woodland stream", but Keble knows of people who do know: a widow, a father, and a pastor. They know, in the midst of their sorrows and troubles, who is there beside them. It is not one "like the Son of God": He is the Son of God! Keble urges the reader to look at them and learn from them, "Cleansing thy sight by prayer and faith". 

I think the words "secret spell" (to rhyme with "well") are unfortunate, but the poem ends with "The Saviour walking with His faithful Three"--or even six: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the Matron/Widow, Father, and Pastor.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Simeon Solomon - Shadrach Meshach Abednego

Preview: John Keble's Poem for Saint Bartholomew's Feast

Monday, August 24 is the feast day of Saint Bartholomew so naturally, we'll continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on John Keble with his poem for that Apostle.

The Vatican City State website has these notes about Saint Bartholomew:

Bartholomew was one of the twelve disciples who followed Jesus after the Baptism in the Jordan River. His name is included in the Synoptic Gospels as one of the Apostles linked to his contemporary Philip. We know little about this Apostle, whose Feast Day is celebrated on 24 August, the day Catholic tradition dates as his martyrdom. He was originally from Cana in Galilee, near Nazareth. Jesus said of him: “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile” (Jn 1:47). In his Gospel, John speaks of Nathanael, who is Bartholomew, at least according to the exegetes. . . .

The Acts of the Apostles also mention Bartholomew among the disciples who gathered together in Jerusalem with Mary, Mother of God: “Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a sabbath day’s journey away; and when they had entered, they went up to the upper room, where they were staying, Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers” (Acts 1:12-14).

Keble's poem is inspired by Our Lord's words to Nathaniel when they meet in Saint John's Gospel and focuses on the sense of sight, especially the sight of very great things: "Jesus answered and said unto him, 'Because I said unto thee, I saw the under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.'" John 1:50.

Hold up thy mirror to the sun,
   And thou shalt need an eagle’s gaze,
So perfectly the polished stone
   Gives back the glory of his rays:

Turn it, and it shall paint as true
   The soft green of the vernal earth,
And each small flower of bashful hue,
   That closest hides its lowly birth.

Our mirror is a blessèd book,
   Where out from each illumined page
We see one glorious Image look
   All eyes to dazzle and engage,

The Son of God: and that indeed
   We see Him as He is, we know,
Since in the same bright glass we read
   The very life of things below.—

Eye of God’s word! where’er we turn
   Ever upon us! thy keen gaze
Can all the depths of sin discern,
   Unravel every bosom’s maze:

Who that has felt thy glance of dread
   Thrill through his heart’s remotest cells,
About his path, about his bed,
   Can doubt what spirit in thee dwells?

“What word is this?  Whence know’st thou me?”
   All wondering cries the humbled heart,
To hear thee that deep mystery,
   The knowledge of itself, impart.

The veil is raised; who runs may read,
   By its own light the truth is seen,
And soon the Israelite indeed
   Bows down t’ adore the Nazarene.

So did Nathanael, guileless man,
   At once, not shame-faced or afraid,
Owning Him God, who so could scan
   His musings in the lonely shade;

In his own pleasant fig-tree’s shade,
   Which by his household fountain grew,
Where at noon-day his prayer he made
   To know God better than he knew.

Oh! happy hours of heavenward thought!
   How richly crowned! how well improved!
In musing o’er the Law he taught,
   In waiting for the Lord he loved.

We must not mar with earthly praise
   What God’s approving word hath sealed:
Enough, if might our feeble lays
   Take up the promise He revealed;

“The child-like faith, that asks not sight,
   Waits not for wonder or for sign,
Believes, because it loves, aright—
   Shall see things greater, things divine.

“Heaven to that gaze shall open wide,
   And brightest angels to and fro
On messages of love shall glide
   ’Twixt God above and Christ below.”

So still the guileless man is blest,
   To him all crooked paths are straight,
Him on his way to endless rest
   Fresh, ever-growing strengths await.

God’s witnesses, a glorious host,
   Compass him daily like a cloud;
Martyrs and seers, the saved and lost,
   Mercies and judgments cry aloud.

Yet shall to him the still small voice,
   That first into his bosom found
A way, and fixed his wavering choice,
   Nearest and dearest ever sound.

There are many details to explicate here as Keble moves back and forth from the Gospel story to us; from Jesus's sight of Nathanial/Bartholomew beneath the fig tree to the sights that Apostle saw as he followed Jesus as a disciple and then Apostle, and finally to our efforts to see--and also to hear--what "child-like faith . . . because it loves" perceives in God's word and in His witnesses.

Here's the whole passage from the Gospel of St. John:

On the following day, he would go forth into Galilee, and he findeth Philip. And Jesus saith to him: Follow me. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith to him: We have found him of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus the son of Joseph of Nazareth. And Nathanael said to him: Can any thing of good come from Nazareth? Philip saith to him: Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him: and he saith of him: Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile. Nathanael saith to him: Whence knowest thou me? Jesus answered, and said to him: Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee. Nathanael answered him, and said: Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel. Jesus answered, and said to him: Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, thou believest: greater things than these shalt thou see. And he saith to him: Amen, amen I say to you, you shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man. (1:43-51)

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Saint Bartholomew, pray for us!

Saint Philip, pray for us!

Image Credit (Public domain): St Bartholomew by Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1611

Sigrid Undset and the English Catholic Martyrs

I've almost finished a biographical study of Sigrid Undset by Father Aidan Nichols, OP, published by Ignatius Press: Sigrid Undset: Reader of Hearts. In the course of his discussion of her conversion to Catholicism, Father Nichols reminded me that she had written about a couple of English Catholic martyrs of the Recusant era, Saint Robert Southwell, poet and Jesuit missionary, and Saint Margaret Clitherow, wife, mother of two Catholic priests, and protector of priests. (Neither had been canonized at the time, however.) He also notes that English Catholic authors had some influence on Undset's conversion.

Father Nichols examines these interests and influences in two chapters, one describing those contemporary English Catholic writers like Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Hilaire Belloc, and G.K. Chesterton (chapter 6, "The Thirties, or the Coming of War"). The other (chapter 9, "The Hagiographer") offers some details about how she depicted the lives, not just of Southwell and Clitherow, but also of Saints Edmund Campion and Philip Howard.

We'll be taking up this subject in a series on the Son Rise Morning Show in September, starting 9/14 (after the Labor Day hiatus), looking first at the contemporary English Catholic writers who accompanied Undset as she prepared to become a Catholic and then at those martyrs as she told their stories. English Catholicism, from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, was essential to Undset's conversion.

Since Bishop Fredrik Hansen of Oslo declared on July 8 that he would be opening a Cause for Undset's sainthood, she's been getting more attention.

Stay tuned for future updates on this story, as they used to say on the radio!

Preview: John Keble's "Ave Maria"

Since August is traditionally a month of special devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I thought it appropriate to highlight a Marian poem from John Keble's The Christian Year on the Son Rise Morning Show on Monday, August 17 (especially after celebrating the Solemnity of the Assumption). He included a poem on "The Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary" in his survey of the feasts of the Anglican liturgical year. 

He takes, of course, a verse from Saint Luke's Gospel as his inspiration, "And the Angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women." (1:28), but Keble also goes on at the end of the poem to reference Luke chapter 11 ("And it happened that, when he was saying these things, a certain woman from the crowd, lifting up her voice, said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you.” Then he said, “Yes, but moreover: blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” 27-28):

Oh! Thou who deign’st to sympathise
With all our frail and fleshly ties,
   Maker yet Brother dear,
Forgive the too presumptuous thought,
If, calming wayward grief, I sought
   To gaze on Thee too near.

Yet sure ’twas not presumption, Lord,
’Twas Thine own comfortable word
   That made the lesson known:
Of all the dearest bonds we prove,
Thou countest sons and mothers’ love
   Most sacred, most Thine own.

When wandering here a little span,
Thou took’st on Thee to rescue man,
   Thou had’st no earthly sire:
That wedded love we prize so dear,
As if our heaven and home were here,
   It lit in Thee no fire.

On no sweet sister’s faithful breast
Wouldst Thou Thine aching forehead rest,
   On no kind brother lean:
But who, O perfect filial heart,
E’er did like Thee a true son’s part,
   Endearing, firm, serene?

Thou wept’st, meek maiden, mother mild,
Thou wept’st upon thy sinless Child,
   Thy very heart was riven:
And yet, what mourning matron here
Would deem thy sorrows bought too dear
   By all on this side Heaven?

A Son that never did amiss,
That never shamed His Mother’s kiss,
   Nor crossed her fondest prayer:
E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,
For her His agonised brow,
   Her, His sole earthly care.

Ave Maria! blessèd Maid!
Lily of Eden’s fragrant shade,
   Who can express the love
That nurtured thee so pure and sweet,
Making thy heart a shelter meet
   For Jesus’ holy dove?

Ave Maria!  Mother blest,
To whom, caressing and caressed,
   Clings the eternal Child;
Favoured beyond Archangels’ dream,
When first on Thee with tenderest gleam
   Thy new-born Saviour smiled:—

Ave Maria! thou whose name
All but adoring love may claim,
   Yet may we reach thy shrine;
For He, thy Son and Saviour, vows
To crown all lowly lofty brows
   With love and joy like thine.

Blessed is the womb that bare Him—blessed
The bosom where His lips were pressed,
   But rather blessed are they
Who hear His word and keep it well,
The living homes where Christ shall dwell,
   And never pass away.

He begins with meditation upon Our Lord, but turns soon to the relationship between Jesus and His Mother Mary. The use of "Ave Maria", a very Roman Catholic phrase, is balanced by Keble's reticence about devotion to the Mother of God ("All but adoring love may claim"), even though he hints at a coronation ("To crown all lowly lofty brows/With love and joy like thine.") I'd also call attention to the lovely reference to Mary at the foot of the Cross in the Gospel of John ("E’en from the tree He deigned to bow,/For her His agonised brow,/Her, His sole earthly care.") as a special aspect of Our Lord's love for His Mother, the Mother of God.

Nevertheless, his poem demonstrates the delicacy of the Oxford Movement leaders when they touched on matters that would seem "too Catholic" to some Anglicans. But when Newman prepared a sermon for the Annunciation in one of his Anglican Plain and Parochial Sermons, "The Reverence Due to the Virgin Mary" (Sermon 12 in Volume 2, with the verse from Luke 1:43 "From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."), he seems to have to hinted at her sinlessness and virtue-- in contrast to our condition--although not according to our Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception:

Observe the lesson which we gain for ourselves from the history of the Blessed Virgin; that the highest graces of the soul may be matured in private, and without those fierce trials to which the many are exposed in order to their sanctification. So hard are our hearts, that affliction, pain, and anxiety are sent to humble us, and dispose us towards a true faith in the heavenly word, when preached to us. Yet it is only our extreme obstinacy of unbelief which renders this chastisement necessary. The aids which God gives under the Gospel Covenant, have power to renew and purify our hearts, without uncommon providences to discipline us into receiving them. God gives His Holy Spirit to us silently; and the silent duties of every day (it may be humbly hoped) are blest to the sufficient sanctification of thousands, whom the world knows not of. The Blessed Virgin is a memorial of this; and it is consoling as well as instructive to know it. When we quench the grace of Baptism, then it is that we need severe trials to restore us. This is the case of the multitude, whose best estate is that of chastisement, repentance, supplication, and absolution, again and again. But there are those who go on in a calm and unswerving course, learning day by day to love Him who has redeemed {137} them, and overcoming the sin of their nature by His heavenly grace, as the various temptations to evil successively present themselves. And, of these undefiled followers of the Lamb, the Blessed Mary is the chief. Strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might, she "staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief;" she believed when Zacharias doubted,—with a faith like Abraham's she believed and was blessed for her belief, and had the performance of those things which were told her by the Lord. And when sorrow came upon her afterwards, it was but the blessed participation of her Son's sacred sorrows, not the sorrow of those who suffer for their sins.

Of course, as a Catholic priest, Newman would not only accept but defend the definition of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, engaging in a written debate with another old Oxford Movement friend, E. B. Pusey!

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us! 

Preview: John Keble's "Silent Solitary Walk"

As we've been discussing John Keble's poems inspired by the readings and/or feasts of the liturgy, I've commented that they are not the greatest poetry in the English language but that they are well-composed and thoughtful compositions. In 1887, when Cassell and Company, London, published an edition of The Christian Year, the anonymous editor commented on Keble's verse, comparing and contrasting it to that of George Herbert or Henry Vaughan:

The power of Keble’s verse lies in its truth.  A faithful and pure nature, strong in home affections, full of love and reverence for all that is of heaven in our earthly lot, strives for the full consecration of man’s life with love and faith.  There is no rare gift of genius.  Keble is not in subtlety of thought or of expression another George Herbert, or another Henry Vaughan.  But his voice is not the less in unison with theirs, for every note is true, and wins us by its purity.  His also are melodies of the everlasting chime.

On Monday, August 10 on the Son Rise Morning Show, we'll examine the introductory poem, "Dedication" in which Keble admitted that he knew his limits; he can't compete with David or a "high-souled bard" like Herbert or Vaughan; he is feeble, "earth-palsied", wavering, and frail. Nevertheless, he seeks inspiration in prayer:

When in my silent solitary walk,
I sought a strain not all unworthy Thee,
My heart, still ringing with wild worldly talk,
Gave forth no note of holier minstrelsy.

Prayer is the secret, to myself I said,
Strong supplication must call down the charm,
And thus with untuned heart I feebly prayed,
Knocking at Heaven’s gate with earth-palsied arm.

Fountain of Harmony! Thou Spirit blest,
By whom the troubled waves of earthly sound
Are gathered into order, such as best
Some high-souled bard in his enchanted round

May compass, Power divine! Oh, spread Thy wing,
Thy dovelike wing that makes confusion fly,
Over my dark, void spirit, summoning
New worlds of music, strains that may not die.

Oh, happiest who before thine altar wait,
With pure hands ever holding up on high
The guiding Star of all who seek Thy gate,
The undying lamp of heavenly Poesy.

Too weak, too wavering, for such holy task
Is my frail arm, O Lord; but I would fain
Track to its source the brightness, I would bask
In the clear ray that makes Thy pathway plain.

I dare not hope with David’s harp to chase
The evil spirit from the troubled breast;
Enough for me if I can find such grace
To listen to the strain, and be at rest.

I warned Anna Mitchell that I would try to resist my English Major enthusiasm, but the mention of George Herbert and Henry Vaughan proved too much. One of my favorite English Lit classes was English 522A "Donne & the Metaphysical Poets", taught by the late Professor Frank Kastor (RIP) in the Spring of 19-- at Wichita State University. 

From Pastor Herbert: "Prayer (I)" in which each image invites meditation:

Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav'n and earth
Engine against th' Almighty, sinner's tow'r,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;
Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul's blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

And from Henry Vaughan, "Peace":

My Soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits, crown’d with smiles,
And One born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And (O my Soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress, and thy ease.
Leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure,
But One, who never changes,
Thy God, thy life, thy cure.