Book Review: Belloc on Oliver Cromwell

The picture posted above "Cromwell and dead Charles I", painted by Paul Delaroche in 1831, is in some way the opposite of Hilaire Belloc's study of Cromwell, published last year in a handsome hardcover edition by Mysterium Press in their series. Unlike Belloc, who wants to eschew myth and depict reality, Delaroche based this painting on François-René de Chateaubriand's fictional account of Cromwell opening Charles I's coffin. (It doesn't seem like Charles has been decollated at all from the angle Delaroche chose! Is there some blood pooled under the king's beard or is that just a shadow? Lack of a model, I suppose.) Belloc does reference this painting at the end of Chapter 12, "Killing the King":

There is a story the witness to which may be believed or unbelieved; it is of so dramatic a sort that many doubt it; but there is nothing impossible in it. It runs thus:

In the room where the King's body was lying at evening a figure entered which the watcher recognized as Cromwell's. He who so came in lifted the veil and looked upon the face, which was quiet even after such a death, and was heard to mutter, "Cruel necessity." (p, 216)

I commented on Belloc's style in my review of Belloc's Charles I. Here are a few examples of how that style creates confidence in the reader, from the first chapter of Cromwell, "Myth and Reality":

This book is not another life of Oliver Cromwell; there are dozens too many, the earlier batch a mass of slander, the later a mass of panegyric--all of them myth. My object here is to seek reality; to discover what Cromwell was within the nature of the man's motives, the quality of his actions as witnesses to the moral truth about himself. (p. 1)

[Ignoring the two myths, one condemning, the other praising] Belloc states: ". . . it is the business of historical judgment to establish truth on this character. No other object has been pursued in these pages." (p. 7)

And addressing the reader, Belloc emphasizes that we need to know Cromwell's background, his social standing, his great wealth, his attraction to the "intense new religion" [Puritan Calvinism]:

To discover his circumstances, you must, again, envisage those things in the world around him which made him act in a manner natural to him, strange to us: for instance, the presence of what I have called "The Catholic Menace" to him in 1620-50 most vividly apparent, to us in 1930-40 incomprehensible." (p. 8)

With that kind of address to the reader, and that kind of clarity of purpose, Belloc makes a case for trusting his portrait of Cromwell. He would have to be an utter cad if he was/is lying to his reader. He also makes it clear that he is more interested in Cromwell's political actions in bringing about Charles I's death than he is in Cromwell's military and strategic prowess, which he readily acknowledges. Not that he's going to ignore it, but it's not his main interest. He acknowledges it; he offers details in chapter 10, and narrates actions in other chapters.

The Table of Contents:

1. The Myth and Reality
2. The Problem
3. The New Millionaires
4. The New Religion
5. Growth of Character
6. The Catholic Menace
7. The Soldier Out of Place
8. The Nature of the Civil War

9. Forming and Informing

10. The Typical Actions
I. Winceby
II. Marston Moor
III. The Second Battle of Newbury
IV. Naseby
11. The Siege Train and Basing House
12. The Killing of the King
13. Ireland
I. The Approach
II. Drogheda 

III. Wexford
IV. Waterford
V. Kilkenny
VI. Clonmel
14. The Scotch Campaigns
I. Preston
II. Dunbar
III. Worcester
15. Reluctant Power
16. Cromwell in the Presence of Death

The first nine chapters are Belloc's setting of the scene of Cromwell's actions before, during, and after the English Civil War and through his reign as Protector. He describes Cromwell's family background, how the Williams-Cromwell family came to wealth through their connection with Thomas Cromwell and acquisition of land through the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Chapters 4 and 6 analyze the religious/social background of Calvinism and Catholicism, framing Belloc's scrupulously fair and balanced analysis of Cromwell's character. 

It's in Chapter 13 on Cromwell's actions in the sieges of the five Irish cities that Belloc concludes that Cromwell acted cruelly, unjustly, and horribly against especially the civilian population but also the military in those cities when they had been granted quarter. He charges Cromwell with "the profound wounding, mutilation and attempted murder of a nation." (p. 217)

Regarding these sieges, Belloc notes that in "the excesses of cruelty" displayed Cromwell was able to give "free rein to his religion" in a "crusading action" against Catholicism and Catholics. Cromwell accepted and even rejoiced in his responsibility in this action because he saw it as God's will. Belloc judges, however, that he was violating agreed-upon truces, surrender, quarter, and amnesties because of his hatred for Catholics. (pp. 224-225) For example, when the people of Wexford required the continued practice of their Catholic faith and the protection of Catholic churches and monasteries as part of their surrender, these terms "moved Cromwell to violence." 

In the last two chapters, Belloc describes Cromwell's reluctant personal rule and death. Cromwell finds himself facing the same difficulties Charles I had--how to finance the government when the people were tired of years of taxation (the taxation Parliament had fought Charles I about), especially when England was fighting a trade and naval war against the Dutch. Cromwell didn't want this absolute authority but was never able to share it with a reasonable Parliament. The responsibility for the debt England was incurring was all his. It was a "grinding menace" and "the burden grew heavier with every week that passed." (p. 315)

Belloc sympathizes with Cromwell's aches and pains at the end of his life after so much wear and tear on his body in the campaigns of the Civil War. Cromwell suffered from insomnia and was exhausted. Then his "beloved daughter, Elizabeth Claypool must die" and Cromwell "would not leave her" bedside as she was suffering, only adding to his exhaustion. (p. 319) As Belloc had suffered the devastating losses of his wife Elohe in 1914 and his son Louis in 1918 when serving the Royal Flying Corps in France.

I appreciate Belloc's fairness and his standards of judging Cromwell's character, as he has done in other books about Wolsey, Cranmer, and Charles I. I look forward to the books about Charles II and James II. He is careful, discreet, and as fair as possible, acknowledging the possibility of bias.

Please note that the publisher sent me a review copy in exchange for my opinion about the book. Mysterium Press books are available for sale in the USA at Os Justi Press in their "Belloc Books" collection.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Charles I, with Cromwell standing over his dead body.

Delaroche is famous for these genre historical paintings, like this one of Lady Jane Grey or of Saint Joan of Arc questioned by the Cardinal of Winchester.

Preview: Monsignor Benson on How to See and Love "Christ in the Average Man"

On Monday, February 9, we'll conclude our discussion of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on how to see and love "Christ in the Average Man" from The Friendship of Christ on the Son Rise Morning Show. Of course, I'll be on at my usual time, a little after 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

At the end of this chapter he warns there is no shortcut to following this path to holiness and then advises, relating this aspect of seeking the Friendship of Christ to those he's discussed before: 

. . . To find Him here is to find Him everywhere. If we find Him here, how much more easily shall we find Him in the Saint, the Sinner, the Priest, the Church and the Blessed Sacrament. . . .

Then he emphasizes that we have to be intentional in following this path:

(1) We have to remind ourselves constantly of the duty, and to remain discontented with ourselves until we are at least attempting to practise it.

And he offers a warning:

. . . Christ caresses the soul, entices it and enchants it, especially in the earlier stages of the spiritual life, in order to encourage it to further efforts; and it is, therefore, a very real spiritual snare that we should mistake Christ's gifts for Christ, religiosity for religion, and the joys possible on earth for the joys awaiting us in heaven -- in a word, that we should mistake the saying of "Lord! Lord!" for the "doing the Will of the Father who is in heaven."{6} . . .

And a way to test ourselves:

Continually and persistently, therefore, we have to test our progress by practical results. I find it easier and easier to worship Christ in the Tabernacle: do I therefore find it easier and easier to serve Christ in my neighbour? For, if not, I am making no real progress at all. I am not advancing, that is to say, along the whole line: I am pushing forward one department of my life to the expense of the rest: I am not developing my Friendship with Christ: I am developing, rather, my own conception of His Friendship (which is a totally different thing). I am falling into the most fatal of all interior snares. "I find Him in the shining of the stars. I find Him in the flowering of the fields. But in His ways with man I find Him not."{7} And therefore I am not finding him as He desires to be found.

Then, echoing his comment in the chapter on "Christ in the Sinner" ("Lastly, it is necessary to remember that if we are to have pity on Christ in the Sinner, we must therefore have pity on Christ in ourself. . . ") we have to remember that each of us is an "Average Man":

(2) A second aid to this recognition of Christ lies in an increase of self-knowledge. My supreme difficulty is the merely superficial and imaginative difficulty of realizing how it is possible to discern the Unique beneath the disguise of the Average. Therefore, as I learn to know myself better, and learn therefore how very average I myself am, and, at the same time, discover that Christ still bears with me, tolerates me and dwells within me, it becomes easier for me to realize that Christ is also in my neighbour. As I penetrate deeper and deeper by self-knowledge into the strata of my own character, learning afresh with each discovery how self-love permeates the whole, how little zeal there is for God's glory, and what an immensity of zeal for my own, how my best actions are poisoned by the worst motives -- and yet, all through, that Christ still condescends to tabernacle beneath it all and to shine in a heart so cloudy as mine -- it becomes increasingly easy for me to understand that He can with even greater facility lie hid beneath that exterior of my neighbour whom I find so antipathetic, but of whose unworthiness I can never be so certain as I am of my own.

His final word of advice: "And then, having found Christ in yourself, go out and find Him in your neighbour too."

Earlier this week I attended a "Lent 101" class offered by our Pastor at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Wichita, in which he emphasized the importance of Fasting during Lent. We have to fast and abstain, he said; that practice is the sine qua non of a good Lent. In covering the other two practices of Lent, prayer and almsgiving, he highlighted spiritual reading and the practice of the Works of Mercy. He further encouraged not only the Corporal Works of Mercy but also the Spiritual Works of Mercy. Obviously, those works of mercy are mostly for the good of our neighbor, the Average Man.

Image Credits (Public Domain): The Good Samaritan, after Delacroix by Van Gogh, 1890 at the top; and [before Van Gogh] Delacroix's Good Samaritan from 1849.

Another Optional Memorial for October 9: Saint John Henry Newman, Doctor of the Church

I really couldn't wait to express my delight at this news from the Vatican's Liturgical Office that Saint John Henry Newman's feast day on October 9 is to be added to the General Roman Calendar. It has been on the liturgical calendar of the Catholic Church in England with these texts under the Commons of Pastors: Pastors in the Liturgy of the Hours Office of Readings. But now, since he's been named a Doctor of the Church, that will change according to this Vatican document, and there's a different second reading from the current English liturgical prayers.

The English are currently reading a selection from Sermon 15. "Sins of Infirmity" from Volume 5 of the Parochial and Plain Sermons. The decree from the Vatican has a selection from Chapter Five "Position of My Mind Since 1845", pp. 238-239 and 250-251 of the Apologia pro Vita Sua (1865).

Here is the English translation of the decree:

The kindly light of God’s grace, which came into this world to enlighten the gentiles (cf. Lk 2: 32), led John Henry Newman to find peace in the Catholic Church and gave him such strength that he was able to say “God has created me to do Him some definite service … I have a part in this great work; I am a link in a chain, a bond of connexion between persons. He has not created me for naught”. Throughout his long life Cardinal Newman was unstinting in this service to which he had been called. The service of intellectual enquiry; the service of preaching and teaching; as well as service to the poor and the least.

His lively mind has left us enduring monuments of great importance in the fields of theology and ecclesiology, as well as poetic and devotional compositions. His constant search to be led out of shadows and images into the fullness of the truth has become an example for every disciple of the Risen One. Thus, in a special way, Saint John Henry, having been recognized as a radiant light for the Church on pilgrimage through history, may rightly be numbered among the other saintly Doctors inscribed in the General Roman Calendar.

For this reason, considering the recent declaration of the title of Doctor of the Church which has been conferred upon a saintly pastor of such outstanding significance for the entire community of the faithful, the Supreme Pontiff Pope LEO XIV has decreed that Saint John Henry Newman, Priest and Doctor of the Church, be inscribed in the General Roman Calendar, and that his Optional Memorial be celebrated by all on 9 October.

There is a comment: "Anything to the contrary notwithstanding." What does that contract clause mean for the Dioceses of England and Wales which currently celebrate his feast as a Feast? I don't see any update on their liturgical website, but they are in the transition between Archbishops of Westminster. Note that Pope Leo XIV made this decision in November last year. 

Note also that Saint John Leonardi and Saint Denis of Paris and Companions also have Optional Memorials on October 9.

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Report and Review: Piano "Salons" at Friends University

On Friday and Saturday, January 30 and 31, my sister and I attended two well-designed and performed piano recitals at Friends University: "Music of the Night" on Friday and "Songs without Words" on Saturday. 

The first featured Dr. Nathanael May, Fine Arts Division Chair and Professor of Music and three local, young pianists (two 8th graders and one high school sophomore). The younger soloists performed three of the better known Nocturnes by Chopin (No. 2 from Opus 9, No. 20 in C# minor and No. 21, in C minor, both published posthumously). Dr. May asked their piano teachers to stand and be recognized as did Dr. Knight on Saturday!

Dr. May offered biographical details on the composers whose works he performed, provided background on their composition, and gave some hints for our listening appreciation: Anis Fuleihan from Cyprus (Twilight Mood from 1940); Petite Serenade, Op. 41 by Eduard Schutt; Le Chreche by Idisor Philipp; one of the Kinderszenen of Robert Schumann, (Kind im Einschlummern); a Nocturne by Valeri Zhelobinsky, and several others: Debussy, Scriabin, Borodin, Respighi, and Jeff Manookian, all compositions related to the night. On a dark, cold winter night, the setting in the spare Quaker Chapel in the Riney Fine Arts Center was so appropriate. Dr. May wished that the fire place would have been working to add to the salon ambiance.

One of the composers I wanted to research after the concert was Jeff Manookian (1953-2021). He was represented by four of his 1993 Nocturnes. When Dr. May introduced them he mentioned that one would think the composer should be famous, given his resume. Here's an obituary. Albany Records has recorded some of his works.

Then on Saturday night, at an earlier hour, we attended Dr. James Knight's piano recital with operatic and other vocal works--including a Sonata-form medley of songs by The Beatles--but no Mendelssohn (by either Felix or Fanny!). Three of the works Dr. Knight performed, based on Puccini's La Boheme, Strauss's Salome, and A Beatles Sonata, were all his arrangements, and they were marvelous.

His Fantasy on Themes of La Boheme had me in the opera house as Rodolfo, Mimi, and Musetta were singing--and I cried as if Mimi had died in the garret. He also played an arrangement of the "Dance of the Blessed Spirits" from Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice by Giovanni Sgambati (I really wanted to hear "Che farò senza Euridice?", but Sgambati didn't include that).

When Dr. Knight introduced A Beatles Sonata, he commented that he was using Frederic Chopin's Sonata form when he composed the three movements, Allegro, Andante, and Rondo with famous tunes by the Beatles (Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey). I'd like to find out more about what differentiates Chopin's Sonata form, but what I've found on-line is too complicated for me.

As on Friday night, three students performed: two with a Russian Theme for Four Hands by Sergei Rachmaninoff (Morceaux de fantaisie, Op. 11, No. 3) and the third with "Song of Storms" by Koji Kondo, which is "from the video game series The Legend of Zelda"!

One of the students performing the Rachmaninoff is from my parish, Blessed Sacrament!

Over the years, I've enjoyed these great programs at Friends University: their Faculty Fanfare concerts, operas, Tower Wind Quintet concerts, jazz ensembles, etc. They've been enlightening and entertaining, and I anticipate the annual announcement of the schedule!

Image Credit (Public Domain): Photograph of Chopin from 1849.

Image Credit (Public Domain): Poster for the 1896 production for Puccini's La Boheme.

Postponed from January to February: Benson on the Son Rise Morning Show

No, not that "Benson" of sitcom memory, but Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. Because of a "snow day" in Cincinnati (we had one too in Wichita), we had to postpone our discussion of "Christ in the Average Man" from his The Friendship of Christ. So I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central on Monday, February 2. Please listen live here or later on the podcast here.

Here's my original post of excerpts from this chapter. 

As I mentioned before the wintery blast, we'll cover this chapter in two segments, concluding it on Monday, February 9! Then  on Monday, February 16, we'll finish off this section of the book, "Christ in the Exterior" with the last chapter, "Christ in the Sufferer".

That sets us up very well for a Lenten series on "Part III. Christ in His Historical Life, Chapter XII. Christ Our Friend Crucified" in which Benson explores the Friendship of Christ through the Seven Last Words on the Cross.

Don't you love it when a plan works out, even after a hiccup?

Listening to Szell's 1967 "Missa Solemnis" with Dietrich von Hildebrand

There's a YouTube channel titled The Ultimate Classical Music Guide by Dave Hurwitz I enjoy listening to: not because I always agree with the judgment (or the worldview) of the music critic, but because I always learn something, think I should explore the music, or even try to buy the CD performance of a work he recommends. The classical recording business is such that I am having to wait more than a month (12/27/25 to 2/5/26) to receive an order of two Brahms Piano Quartets with Krystian Zimmerman (one for a gift)!

Hurwitz has posted several discussions of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis with reviews of recordings by Bernstein, Zinman, Gardiner, Shaw, Klemperer, Blomstedt, etc. I own the Telarc CD of Robert Shaw of the Missa Solemnis and Mozart's Great Mass in C Minor with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus and several soloists. You could also watch the conductor rehearsing and performing the Missa Solemnis in 1992 at Carnegie Hall.

In one of Hurwitz's discussions of this great Mass, he talks about how until he listened to George Szell's 1967 performance in Severance Hall with the Cleveland Orchestra, Sara Mae Endlich (soprano), Florence Kopleff (alto), Ernst Haefliger (tenor) and Ezio Flagello (bass) and the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus prepared by Robert Shaw, he did not understand or appreciate this work. In another video, however, he chooses Leonard Bernstein's 1978/1979 live recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra as The Reference Recording. 

Indeed, the 1967 Szell is out of print, but I found it on YouTube, and after listening to it, went back to Dietrich von Hildebrand's MOZART BEETHOVEN SCHUBERT and read what he said about Beethoven's achievement in this work:

It is a work of art, but a sacred work of art. It is primarily an artistic representation--even the representation--of the spirit of the Holy Mass. Its sublime artistic beauty is fully thematic; but, on the other hand, it is so unambiguously sacred and so much a religious confession that one cannot do justice either to Beethoven's intention or to the spirit of the work if one listens to it as a pure work of art, that is to say, with the same attitude with which one listens to a symphony.* Despite the thematic character of the artistic beauty, the theme of the whole remains purely religious. (p. 73)

Earlier in the book, von Hildebrand comments on the "thoroughly Catholic" essence of this Mass at the beginning of the Benedictus "When . . . the violin rings out, it is as if heaven bends down; when the Dona nobis pacem resounds, as if humanity from its true metaphysical position looks up beseechingly to God. Truly, it ever in the world of art applies, then here we must say: "It is the Passover of the Lord." (p. 42)

That's so true in this performance! Or when you listen to the pleading of Szell's soloists and the chorus in the Agnus Dei for mercy and for peace as the prayers they are, not merely thematic developments, you know what von Hildebrand means. 

Sometimes critics ask if they can really appreciate a religious work without a religious response--reactions to Elgar's Dream of Gerontius usually disparage the text** and years ago a critic wrote that he couldn't respond to the tragedy of the Carmelites of Compiegne in Poulenc's opera because he didn't accept their rationale for martyrdom (I'm relying on my memory of Catholic media response to his review.) I think according to von Hildebrand you have to have the correct subjective response to the objective value of the work to give it its due and comprehend what the composer intended to achieve. 

Regarding Beethoven's religious faith, the commonly accepted view is that he had left behind his childhood Catholicism, but Nicholas Chong, an assistant professor of musicology at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, has written a book I've seen reviewed, The Catholic Beethoven, published by OUP (expensive!!!!!) but fascinating:

The Catholic Beethoven offers a new view of Beethoven and his religious music by demonstrating that both the composer and his sacred works were influenced by the German Catholicism of his era to a greater extent than has been thought. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, most accounts of Beethoven's religious attitudes have assumed that, as a child of the Enlightenment, the composer was estranged from the Catholicism into which he was born, adhering instead to an idiosyncratic and unorthodox religious outlook that was suspicious of dogma and tradition. This assumption has often resulted in the critical marginalization of Beethoven's religious music, with the notable exception of the Missa solemnis, which is usually included among his most important compositions only by being reinterpreted as a humanist or universalist work transcending its superficial identity as a setting of the Catholic Mass. This book argues that such views have relied on an inadequately complex view of the Enlightenment, which presumes incorrectly that the Enlightenment was monolithically opposed to traditional religious belief.

Beethoven's religious outlook was primarily shaped by ideas associated with the German Catholic Enlightenment, a particular strand of the Enlightenment that sought to reconcile traditional Catholic beliefs with elements from more familiar, secular versions of the Enlightenment. The book uses the central concerns of this Catholic Enlightenment as a framework for interpreting Beethoven's sacred works-not just the Missa solemnis, but also the Mass in C, Christus am Ölberge, and the Gellert Lieder-as well as documentary evidence usually cited in relation to the composer's religious outlook. In addition, it will situate the content of a number of religious books in his library within the religious-historical context of his time. Particular attention is devoted to Beethoven's interest in the writings of Johann Michael Sailer (1751-1832), one of the most important figures in German Catholicism during Beethoven's time, with whom the composer also had a personal connection.

*Von Hildebrand only mentions Gustav Mahler once (as an opera director of Beethoven's Fidelio); I wonder what he thought of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony with its "Urlicht" and "Aufersteh'n" movements . . . 

**Dave Hurwitz particularly despises Saint John Henry Newman's poetry in content and form. Newman had a more dispassionate view of his work: "As to my own Gerontius, it was not the versification which sold it, but the subject. It is a RELIGIOUS subject which appeals to the feelings of everyone." (September 18, 1870.) Not in this case, obviously.

Image Source (Public Domain): Beethoven with the manuscript of the Missa solemnis by Joseph Karl Stieler (1819-1820)

Preview: "Christ in the Average Man"--Part One--on the Son Rise Morning Show

UPDATED: On Monday, FEBRUARY 2 [because of a snow day in Cincinnati!], we'll look at the next chapter in The Friendship of Christ, "Christ in the Average Man" on the Son Rise Morning Show, at about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or later on the podcast here.

Before I began reading this chapter from Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ, I searched on line for a definition of "the average man" and the results were focused on height and weight! Not very helpful! 

Instead I decided to focus on what Benson means by "the average man", because of course he is looking at how Jesus helps us understand and love the average man--our neighbor--because he (or she) represents Him in our daily lives:

WE have seen that it is comparatively easy to recognize Christ in the Priest and the Saint. In the Priest He sacrifices; in the Saint He is transfigured -- or, rather, transfigures humanity once more with His own glory. And the only difficulty in recognizing Christ in the Sinner is the same as that which makes it hard to see Him in the Crucifix -- a difficulty which, when once surmounted, becomes luminous with the light which it sheds upon the Divine Character. We have seen, too, that those who do not see Christ in these types of humanity lose incalculable opportunities of approaching Him and of apprehending the fullness and variety of that Friendship which He extends to us. But Christ has even more strange disguises than any of these; and that which is perhaps more strange than all is that which He indicates to us when He tells us that not merely this or that man in particular, but the "average man" -- our "neighbour" -- is His representative and Vicar on earth as fully (though in wholly another sense) as Priest or Pontiff.

And once I read the rest of the chapter I realized we could barely cover the highlights of the chapter in the time we have, so we'll have two segments for this chapter; that way we have a fighting chance! 

In part one, we have Benson's explication of the great Judgment parable in Matthew 25: 31-46, in which the Son of Man, coming in His Glory, judges and divides the Sheep from the Goats:

On the one hand, He tells us, stand the saved; and on the other the lost; and the only reason He actually assigns, in this particular discourse, for that eternal separation between the two companies, is that those in the first have ministered to Him in their neighbour; and those in the second failed so to minister. "As long as you did it, or did it not, to one of these my least brethren, you did it, or did it not, to me." These then enter into life; and those into death.

Immediately we are puzzled by the apparent ignorance -- it would seem genuine and sincere ignorance -- of both one class and the other as to the merit or demerit of their lives. Both alike deprecate the sentence of acquittal and condemnation respectively: "Lord, when did we see thee hungry, . . . or thirsty, . . . or naked . . . or sick or in prison?" . . . "We have never knowingly served Thee," say the one. "We have never knowingly neglected Thee," say the other. In answer our Lord repeats the fact that in serving or neglecting their neighbours, they have, respectively, served or neglected Himself. Yet He does not explain how actions done in ignorance can either merit or demerit in His sight.

Benson says it's not that hard to figure out:

It is that the ignorance is not complete. For it is an universal fact of experience that we all feel an instinctive drawing towards our neighbour which we cannot reject without a sense of moral guilt. It may be that owing to ignorance or willful rejection of light a man may fail to understand or believe the Fatherhood of God and the claims of Jesus Christ; it may even be that he sincerely believes himself justified intellectually in explicitly denying those truths; but no man ever yet has lived a wholly selfish life from the beginning, no man has ever yet deliberately refused to love his neighbour or to deny the Brotherhood of man, without a consciousness, at some period at least, that he is outraging his highest instincts.

He offers an explanation of the issue at hand, using another Gospel passage on the Two Greatest Commandments and then follows it up with an example:

It is actually the Voice of the Eternal Word, although His Name and His historical actions may be unknown, that pleads in the voice of conscience. In rejecting, therefore, the claims of his neighbour, a man is rejecting the claims of the Son of Man. . . . Pilate was not condemned for not knowing the articles of the Nicene Creed, and for not identifying the Prisoner brought before him: he was condemned because he rejected the claims of justice and of the right of an innocent man to be acquitted. He outraged Incarnate Truth because he outraged Justice.

No wonder as Francis Bacon famously wrote: "What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer." He had Truth standing in front of him; he knew how he should judge; but he "outraged Justice" by letting the mob pass the sentence. (James Tissot's "Ecce Homo")

Here then is an undeniable fact. The man who does not keep the Second Commandment cannot even implicitly be keeping the First: the man who rejects Christ in man cannot accept Christ in God. "He that loveth not his brother whom he seeth, how can he love God, whom he seeth not?"{3}

Benson concludes our part one discussion of this chapter with phrases from the Breastplate of Saint Patrick:

"Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me". . . (as well as in the heart of every man who never gives me a thought). "Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me."{5}

Then he offers some rather quaint examples, we might think:

The husband, for example, has to see Christ in the frivolous wife who spends half her fortune and all her energies in the emptiest social ambition. The wife has to see Christ in the husband who has no idea in the world beyond his business on weekdays and his recreation on Sunday. The middle-aged woman living at home has to find Christ in her garrulous parents and her domestic duties: and her parents have to find Christ in their unimaginative and unattractive daughter.

On Friday, February 6 and the following Monday February 9, we'll look at Benson's advice on how to practice this aspect of the Friendship of Christ in the Average Man, which is the way to holiness (to being sheep)--and he warns that there is no shortcut. 

Top illustration: Sixth century mosaic of the separation of the sheep from the goats. This file is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.

Best Books of 2025: "Generalissima"--Queen Henrietta Maria and the English Civil War!

This is the second volume in a trilogy of historical novels about Queen Henrietta Maria, the wife of King Charles I; mother of Kings Charles II and James II and therefore grandmother of the Old Pretender and great-grandmother of the Young Pretender and the Cardinal Pretender. 

In this book the author traces the lives of the Queen and her family from 1640 to 1644, from the Royal palaces of Saint James, Wimbledon, Whitehall, Hampton Court, to The Hague in the Netherlands, the battlefields of the English Civil War, through betrayals--especially by Lucy Fairfax, one of her ladies-in-waiting--and attacks on Henriette (as she is called throughout the book) because she is a Catholic; storms and battles at sea, the death of her mother, pregnancies, separations, her efforts and love for her husband and her disappointments that he has not always fulfilled the promises of their marriage contract, times in York, Oxford, Cornwall, and France!

Throughout all these conflicts, dangers, and adventures, Vidal's narration, use of dialogue, and description are vivid, personal, and often poignant.

The publisher's blurb:

As the Three Kingdoms totter on the brink of anarchy, Henriette-Marie, queen of Charles I, strives to bring up their lively, growing family. In addition to her own health problems, she worries about the welfare of her mother the Dowager Queen of France, who sought refuge in London only to find herself under attack. As Henriette faces choices which may separate herself from her beloved husband and children, she seeks help from the Pope and the Irish Catholics. Meanwhile, Henriette's spy, Wat Montagu, informs her that there is a traitor within the royal household. Determined to save the throne, Henriette eventually decides to sell her jewels in order to raise an army. In spite of storms and near shipwreck as well as the attempts of her enemies to kill her, Henriette is able to return to her husband's side with an army, earning for herself the moniker of "Generalissima."

And my blurb for the book, written after reading the book in manuscript:

“From the first words of the Prologue, you're there with the Royal Family in the picture Gallery. Limned by a great historical novelist, each episode in this second volume of Vidal's ‘Henrietta of France Trilogy’ develops the characters and explores the challenges they face with vivid description and riveting action. Vidal depicts Queen Henrietta Maria's love and loyalty to her husband King Charles I and her family in the throes of the English Civil War sympathetically and realistically. Volume Three can't appear soon enough! —Stephanie A. Mann, blogger and author of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation

I appreciated Vidal's focus on James, the Duke of York in a couple of scenes; the author assured me that he will certainly be featured in the third volume of this work. I think a novel about his life would be wonderful from the pen of this author!

Please note again, that I was asked to blurb the book, and that I received a copy of the book. The author and I have been acquainted since my book was published, and we met at the Catholic Writers Guild Live Conference in 2010. I appreciate her craft and historical acumen.

"Christ in the Sinner" Addendum

I've been reading a book by Charles Scribner III, Home by Another Route: A Journal of Art, Music, and Faith (Paulist Press, 2016). It's a journal from the Epiphany of 2005 to the Epiphany of 2006, with seasonal entries with details of Masses attended, presentations made, and various trips, including a visit to Elizabeth Schwarzkopf in Austria six months before her death on August 3, 2006.

In the Eastertide of 2005, Scribner is an alternate on a murder trial and he remarks on a witness to the death of the victim, a heroin dealer, who had been "dealing and was shot in the head outside a schoolyard."

He describes the testimony of a Hispanic woman who described her encounter with the victim when she came out of the school and

saw the staggering victim calling for help, she rushed over to him; he collapsed on top of her; she called for 911, then cradled his bleeding head in her lap until the medics arrived. (p. 67)

Scribner--an art historian in addition to being a publisher--imagines "a Caravaggio Pieta* as it might have been painted in the lower east side of our island across the Atlantic, four centuries later." As he summarizes the effect of her testimony, he notes that the witness "relived her simple act of charity to a dying man."

Objectively, the victim was a sinner (he was dealing heroin), but she didn't know that, she just knew he needed her. She even went to the hospital and stayed with his family and attended the funeral! As Scribner sums it up:

She knew nothing of the victim's background or street business; he was simply a wounded soul in dire need of compassion; she gave it in abundance. (p. 68)

I read this passage in Adoration before Mass on Friday and thought how it echoed in a way Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's meditation on "Christ in the Sinner": We have to do, on the level of our own capacities, something of what Christ did in His Omnipotent love -- identify ourselves with the sinner, penetrate through his lovelessness and his darkness down to the love and light of Christ Who has not yet wholly left him to himself. We have, in a word, to make the best of him and not the worst (as our Lord does for ourselves every time He forgives us our sins), to forgive his trespasses as we hope that God will forgive our own. To recognize Christ in the sinner is not only to Christ's service, but to the sinner's as well.

*Caravaggio did not paint a Pieta that we know of. 

Preview: "Christ in the Sinner" on the Son Rise Morning Show

Before I realized that we'd continue our Son Rise Morning Show series on Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's The Friendship of Christ into January, we looked at his chapter on "Christ in the Saint" on December 8; on Monday, January 19th, we'll discuss the next chapter, "Christ in the Sinner" in the section titled "Christ in the Exterior", at my usual time, a little after 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

Benson prefaces this chapter with the verse, "This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them." -- Luke 15:2. He posits that this is a challenging idea for us--how can Jesus Christ, who "knew no sin"(2 Corinthians 5:21) be "in the sinner"?

But as he points out, Jesus ate and drank with sinners--as after the conversion of Matthew (portrayed above by James Tissot)--and spoke of sinners in surprising ways:

. . . it is clear that among His most marked characteristics, as recorded in the Gospels, were His Friendship for sinners, His extraordinary sympathy for them, and His apparent ease in their company. It was, in fact, for this very thing that fault was found with Him, who claimed, as He did, to teach a doctrine of perfection. And yet, if we think of it, this characteristic of His is one of His supreme credentials for His Divinity; since none but the Highest could condescend so low -- none but God would be so human. On the one side there is no patronage as from a superior height -- "This man receiveth sinners."{2} He is not content to preach to them: He "eateth with them" as if on their level. And, on the other, not a taint of the silly modern pose of unmorality: His final message is always, "Go, and now sin no more."{3}

So emphatic, indeed, is His Friendship for sinners that it seems, superficially, as if comparatively He cared but little for the saints. "I am not come to call the just," He says, "but sinners."{4} Three times over in a single discourse He drives this lesson home to souls that are naturally prejudiced the other way -- since the chief danger of religious souls lies in Pharisaism -- in three tremendous parables.{5} The piece of silver lost in the house is declared more precious than the nine pieces in the money-box: the single willful sheep lost in the wilderness more valuable than the ninety-nine in the fold: the rebellious son lost in the world more dear than the elder, and the heir, safe at home. [Tissot's painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son]

See, too, how He acted on what He said. It is not merely a vague benevolence that He practises towards sinners in the abstract; but a particular kindness towards sinners in the concrete.

Benson finds a lesson in these examples: "We cannot know Christ in His most characteristic aspect until we find Him among the Sinners." 

Now this recognition of Christ in the Sinner is the single essential to our capacity for helping the sinner. We must believe in his possibilities. And his only "possibility" is Christ. We have to recognize, that is to say, that beneath his apparent absence of faith there is still, at any rate, a spark of hope; beneath his hopelessness, at least a glimmer of charity. Mere pleading and rebuke are worse than useless. We have to do, on the level of our own capacities, something of what Christ did in His Omnipotent love -- identify ourselves with the sinner, penetrate through his lovelessness and his darkness down to the love and light of Christ Who has not yet wholly left him to himself. We have, in a word, to make the best of him and not the worst (as our Lord does for ourselves every time He forgives us our sins), to forgive his trespasses as we hope that God will forgive our own. To recognize Christ in the sinner is not only to Christ's service, but to the sinner's as well.

To fail to recognize Christ, therefore, in the sinner is to fail to recognize Christ when He is most fully and characteristically Himself. All the devotion in the world to the White Host in the monstrance; all the adoration in the world to the Stainless Child in the arms of His Stainless Mother -- all this fails utterly to attain to its true end, unless there accompanies it a passion for the souls of those who dishonour Him, since, beneath all the filth and the corruption of their sins, He who is in the Blessed Sacrament and the Crib dwells here also, and cries to us for help.

The laity must be prepared to hope for a sinner's conversion, to forgive a sinner if he or she offends us, and to "make the best of him and not the worst." We certainly don't want "to hug ourselves in our own religion, to leave sinners to themselves, to draw the curtains close, to make small cynical remarks, and to forget that a failure to recognize the claim of the heathen and the publican is a failure to recognize the Lord whom we profess to serve, under the disguise in which He most urgently desires our friendship". 

In his day, Benson suggested the laity should "support, let us say, Rescue Societies, or guilds for the conversion of the heathen," but now I think we have wider opportunities: post-abortion counseling, programs for prison ministry, etc.

And Benson offers a final poignant admonition:

Lastly, it is necessary to remember that if we are to have pity on Christ in the Sinner, we must therefore have pity on Christ in ourself. . . .

Since Robert Bridges did not publish the poetry of Father Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ, until 1918, when Benson wrote The Friendship of Christ (published in 1912) he wouldn't have known of Hopkins' poem, "My Own Heart Let Me Have Pity On":

My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.