Shrovetide: Confession and Pancakes

In honor of the last two days of Shrovetide, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show today and tomorrow to talk about Confession and Pancakes with Matt Swaim or Annie Mitchell. Today (live) at 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central during the first of the two "local" Ohio/Kentucky hours and tomorrow (repeated) during the national EWTN hour (exact time TBD). Listen live here today and the repeat here tomorrow.

Lent starts Wednesday so there's just two more days for spiritual and practical preparation for the 40 days of fasting, praying, and almsgiving. Here is a good description of this season:

Shrove Tuesday is the last day of what traditionally was called "Shrovetide," the weeks preceding the beginning of Lent. The word itself, Shrovetide, is the English equivalent for "Carnival," which is derived from the Latin words carnem levare, meaning "to take away the flesh." (Note that in Germany, this period is called "Fasching," and in parts of the United States, particularly Louisiana, "Mardi Gras.") While this was seen as the last chance for merriment, and, unfortunately in some places, has resulted in excessive pleasure, Shrovetide was the time to cast off things of the flesh and to prepare spiritually for Lent.

Actually, the English term provides the best meaning for this period. "To shrive" meant to hear confessions. In the Anglo-Saxon "Ecclesiastical Institutes," recorded by Theodulphus and translated by Abbot Aelfric about AD 1000, Shrovetide was described--as follows: "In the week immediately before Lent everyone shall go to his confessor and confess his deeds and the confessor shall so shrive him as he then may hear by his deeds what he is to do in the way of penance." To highlight the point and motivate the people, special plays or masques were performed which portrayed the passion of our Lord or final judgment. Clearly, this Shrovetide preparation for Lent included the confessing of sin and the reception of absolution; as such, Lent then would become a time for penance and renewal of faith.

While this week of Shrovetide condoned the partaking of pleasures from which a person would abstain during Lent, Shrove Tuesday had a special significance in England. Pancakes were prepared and enjoyed, because in so doing a family depleted their eggs, milk, butter, and fat which were part of the Lenten fast. At this time, some areas of the Church abstained from all forms of meat and animal products, while others made exceptions for food like fish. For example, Pope St. Gregory (d. 604), writing to St. Augustine of Canterbury, issued the following rule: "We abstain from flesh, meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs." These were the fasting rules governing the Church in England; hence, the eating of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. 

As Pieter Bruegel the Elder depicted in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (above), we can get carried away with the possible excesses of Carnival/Fasching/Shrovetide/Mardi Gras--we don't want to incur sins of gluttony or drunkenness just before the season of penitence and repentance!! Otherwise, you could end up like the carnival goer in this painting: waking up in jail the next morning (Ash Wednesday) after sleeping it off!

Shrovetide seems to achieve the right balance: spiritually preparing for Lent with confession of sins and penance while practically getting ready for fasting and abstinence by using up what you won't be using any more from Ash Wednesday to Easter!


Here is a recipe for pancakes from the Tudor era: specifically, from The good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin from 1588:

To make the pancakes:

Take new thicke Creame a pinte, four of five yolks of Egs, a good handful of flower, and two or three spoonfuls of ale, strain them altogether into a faire platter, and season it with a good handful of Sugar, a sooneful of Synamon and a little Ginger: then take a frying pan, and put in a little peece of Butter, as but as your thombe, and when it is molten browne, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the furthesr side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hole your pan aslope, so that you stuffe may run abroad all ouer all the pan, as thin as may be: then set it to the fyre, and let the fyre be verie soft, and when the one side is bakes, then turne the other, and bake them as dry as ye can without burning.

After one Tudor housewife starting making her pancakes, she heard the church bells ring and ran to church, carrying the frying pan with a pancake in it, still wearing her apron, and tying a scarf around her head--and that's how the tradition of Pancake Races began. Since 1950, ladies in Olney, England and Liberal, Kansas (USA) have competed in the International Pancake Day races!

On Friday, March 8, I'll prepare for our resumption of the series on Blessed John Henry Newman. The topic for Monday, March 11 on the Son Rise Morning Show is Conscience and Authority!

Ash Wednesday 2017

Carnival or Mardi Gras is over and Lent has begun. The German romantic painter, Carl Spitzweg, depicts a man who was partying the day before in the cold light of Ash Wednesday. Author Catherine Delors offers a meditation on the painting here:

Ash Wednesday follows Fat Tuesday, and the mood could not be more different. Today, a day of fast and prayer, marks the beginning of Lent. The day of ashes on foreheads, and the admonition Memento, homo, quod pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris (“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”)

No better illustration of the contrast between Carnival and Lent than this work by the 19th century Bavarian artist Carl Spitzweg. Spitzweg, though classified as a Romanticist, admired and emulated the genre paintings of the 17th century Flemish school. His style is often humorous and down-to-earth (two qualities I find somewhat lacking in Romantic art.)

Note how the character here is still wearing his cheerful Carnival costume. Only he probably pushed the spirit of revelry a bit too far and gets to spend Ash Wednesday in jail, a pitcher of water as his sole company.

The projection of the bars of the window and mournful attitude of our character bring home his contrition, and yet sunlight floods the cell, symbolizing the forgiveness and hope that follow atonement.

The sprinkling of ashes on our heads or the marking of a cross on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday is a sacramental in the Catholic Church. Anyone can receive it because it applies to us all: we came from ashes and we return to ashes. And we all mostly want to live as though that's not true. Being marked with these ashes and hearing either those words ("Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return" or "Repent and believe in the Gospel") reminds us of reality when we want to live in fantasy, constructing our own reality. God is God and we are not. Only He and His Grace can divinize us and we have to cooperate with Him. Ash Wednesday and Lent are yearly reminders of those facts.

T.S. Eliot meditated on how he struggled to accept those facts in his Ash Wednesday:

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death. . . .

Speaking of death, Thomas a Kempis offers this meditation on preparing for death in his influential and timeless The Imitation of Christ:

Very soon the end of your life will be at hand: consider, therefore, the state of your soul. Today a man is here; tomorrow he is gone.(I Machabees 2:63) And when he is out of sight, he is soon out of mind. Oh, how dull and hard is the heart of man, which thinks only of the present, and does not provide against the future! You should order your every deed and thought, as though today were the day of your death. Had you a good conscience, death would hold no terrors for you; (Luke 12:37) even so, it were better to avoid sin than to escape death. (Wisdom 4:16) If you are not ready to die today, will tomorrow find you better prepared? (Matthew 24:44) Tomorrow is uncertain; and how can you be sure of tomorrow? Of what use is a long life, if we amend so little? Alas, a long life often adds to our sins rather than to our virtue!

Would to God that we might spend a single day really well! Many recount the years since their conversion, but their lives show little sign of improvement. If it is dreadful to die, it is perhaps more dangerous to live long. Blessed is the man who keeps the hour of his death always in mind, and daily prepares himself to die. If you have ever seen anyone die, remember that you, too, must travel the same road.(Hebrews 9:27)

Each morning remember that you may not live until evening; and in the evening, do not presume to promise yourself another day. Be ready at all times, (Luke 21:36) and so live that death may never find you unprepared. Many die suddenly and unexpectedly; for at an hour that we do not know the Son of Man will come. (Matthew 24:44) When your last hour strikes, you will begin to think very differently of your past life, and grieve deeply that you have been so careless and remiss.

Happy and wise is he who endeavours to be during his life as he wishes to be found at his death. For these things will afford us sure hope of a happy death; perfect contempt of the world; fervent desire to grow in holiness; love of discipline; the practice of penance; ready obedience; self-denial; the bearing of every trial for the love of Christ. While you enjoy health, you can do much good; but when sickness comes, little can be done. Few are made better by sickness, and those who make frequent pilgrimages seldom acquire holiness by so doing.

Do not rely on friends and neighbours, and do not delay the salvation of your soul to some future date, for men will forget you sooner than you think. It is better to make timely provision and to acquire merit in this life, than to depend on the help of others. And if you have no care for your own soul, who will have care for you in time to come? The present time is most precious; now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2) It is sad that you do not employ your time better, when you may win eternal life hereafter. The time will come when you will long for one day or one hour in which to amend; and who knows whether it will be granted?

Dear soul, from what peril and fear you could free yourself, if you lived in holy fear, mindful of your death. Apply yourself so to live now, that at the hour of death, you may be glad and unafraid. Learn now to die to the world, that you may begin to live with Christ. (Romans 6:8) Learn now to despise ail earthly things, that you may go freely to Christ. Discipline your body now by penance, that you may enjoy a sure hope of salvation.

Foolish man, how can you promise yourself a long life, when you are not certain of a single day? (Luke 12:20) How many have deceived themselves in this way, and been snatched unexpectedly from life! You have often heard how this man was slain by the sword; another drowned; how another fell from a high place and broke his neck; how another died at table how another met his end in play. One perishes by fire, another by the sword, another from disease, another at the hands of robbers. Death is the end of all men (Ecclesiasticus 7:2) and the life of man passes away suddenly as a shadow.(Psalm 38:7; 143:4)

Who will remember you when you are dead? Who will pray for you? Act now, dear soul; do all you can; for you know neither the hour of your death, nor your state after death. While you have time, gather the riches of everlasting life. (Luke 12:33; Galatians 6:8) Think only of your salvation, and care only for the things of God. Make friends now, by honouring the Saints of God and by following their example, that when this life is over, they may welcome you to your eternal home.(Luke 16:9)

Keep yourself a stranger and pilgrim upon earth, (I Peter 2:11), to whom the affairs of this world are of no concern. Keep your heart free and lifted up to God, for here you have no abiding city.(Hebrews13:14) Daily direct your prayers and longings to Heaven, that at your death your soul may merit to pass joyfully into the presence of God.

John Farrow, St. Damien the Leper and St. Thomas More

Today is, of course, Ash Wednesday.

February 10 is also the birthday, in 1904, of John Farrow, the Australian screenwriter, director, and author. He wrote a great biography of Damien the Leper priest of Molokai, now Saint Damien de Veuster--and also a biography of St. Thomas More. EWTN has it in their library.

As I'm preparing for my presentation this Saturday, February 13 on "St. Thomas More and the Defense of Christendom" at the First Annual History and Heretics Symposium in Fort Scott, Kansas, hosted by The Prairie Troubadour, I scrolled down to see what Farrow said about More's apologetic works against the Lutheran reformers:

In the long literary controversy, four men led the lists against More: William Tyndale, John Frith, Simon Fish, and Christopher Saint-German. The first two were priests, influenced by the new heresy; the second two were lawyers. All four were able men and put their cases well, but their opponent was abler still. After completing the Dialogue, More answered Fish's Supplication of Beggars with Supplication of Souls. Again he showed his characteristic wit in the story of "a lewd gallant and a good friar. Whom, when the gallant saw going barefoot in a great frost and snow, he asked him why he did take such pain. And he answered that it was very little pain if a man would remember hell. 'Yea, Friar,' quod the gallant, 'but what and there be no hell? Then art thou a great fool?' 'Yea, Master,' quod the friar, 'but what and there be hell? Then is your mastership a much more fool.'"

Even when he became Lord Chancellor, More somehow found time to wield his pen in defence of the Church, nor after his fall from the high office was the labour diminished. The pen continued to move; book after book answered the arguments and charges of the enemy. He deemed the great task he had undertaken to be both a duty and a work of love, and to keep his moral independence he avoided subsidy. (Chapter 10).

After his resignation from the Chancellorship, Farrow notes how much Thomas More wrote to defend Catholic teaching:

The speed with which he moved his pen was amazing. Unhampered by public duties, he completed his Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, a letter against Frith, the Apology, a work in defence of the clergy, The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, and his Answer to the book which a nameless heretic hath named The Supper of the Lord.

These works, nearly a half million words, constituted a bulwark of orthodoxy, and the clergy, recognizing More as their champion, thought to reward him. They collected a great sum of money, which he refused, giving as his reason that if he were in their pay, he would no longer be a disinterested and unbiased defender. Some of his friends pointed out that he was now a poor man and that it would be well for him to accept so that his wife and children would profit. But he was obdurate. When they offered him the purse he said: "I had liefer see it all cast into the Thames, than I, or any of mine, should have thereof the worth of one penny. For though your offer, my Lords, be indeed very friendly and honourable, yet set I so much by my pleasure and so little by my profit, that I would not, in good faith, for so much, and much more too, have lost the rest of so many nights sleep that was spent upon the same. And yet wish would I, for all that, upon condition that all heresies were suppressed, that all my books were burned and my labour utterly lost." (Chapter 15).

As Farrow notes in his foreword, he is not writing a critical biography, but he does write with a filmmaker's eye, noting the great drama of the events at Henry VIII's court:

The reader will soon discover that my aim was not to write an exhaustive biography in the conventional sense, but to tell a story in general terms of a man and his friends and his enemies; his time and circumstance; a story of tenderness and violence and tragedy, and, above all, a story of courage and example. I am indebted to Fr. Joseph Donovan, S.J., Dean of Law at Loyola University in Los Angeles, who encouraged me to write the book and who, at the planning stage, took me to the Huntington Library. There, thanks to the graciousness of the Library officials, my appetite was stimulated by the famous Holbein collection and the treasure of papers and books of the period. The Assistant to the Librarian, Miss Gertrude Ruhnka, consented to aid me in the compilation of the considerable research. This she did most ably and I thank her deeply. Upon completion of the writing, I sent the manuscript to a More scholar and fellow devotee then in London, Dr. Frank Sullivan. He interrupted his busy literary labours at the British Museum to make valuable suggestions and criticism. I thank him also.

Two Weeks From Today: Cardinal Newman Lecture

If my Cardinal Newman lecture is only two weeks from today, then you are only two weeks away from the beginning of Lent!

I'll be speaking at Newman University on Ash Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Dugan-Gorges Conference Center.

More information will be coming very soon but here is a link to information on the Newman University website.

My topic is Newman and the Liturgy: Affliction and Love in Lent. It is based mostly upon his Parochial and Plain Sermons, but also on his Catholic homilies and his life and spirituality.

Mass for Ash Wednesday with the imposition of ashes will follow my presentation at 9:00 p.m. in St. John's Chapel inside Sacred Heart Hall.

My talk is all typed out--now it's just practice, practice, practice!

The Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548

Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars is so indispensible! If I had to be on a desert island and couldn't follow up on G.K. Chesterton’s advice to have a book about building ships, I would want to have Duffy's book with me. It definitely changed our view of the English Reformation. Note that Alec Ryrie comes at the English Reformation from a distinctly Protestant view, but appreciates Duffy’s achievement so well:

As an interpretation of English Reformation history, there was nothing particularly revolutionary about The Stripping of the Altars. The argument, essentially, was that pre-Reformation English Catholicism was a vibrant, popular, unified and flourishing tradition; a tradition that was then wantonly, deliberately and violently destroyed by a small clique of Protestant extremists. Others had made similar arguments, and while this picture can be overstated, precious few scholars today reject it entirely.

Duffy's particular achievement, though, was to show us "traditional religion" (not "popular" religion, he insists: the elite shared it, too) at parish level. And Duffy, an Irish Catholic born in 1947, understands this tradition in his bones. He can explain how, for example, an illiterate people could fully understand a Latin liturgy even if they could not actually translate it. He rescues medieval Catholicism from both the caricatures of later Protestantism and the condescension of later Catholicism. . . .

But he has changed the discipline, for three reasons. First, the sheer mass of evidence his scholarship has accumulated. This is a fat book, which, as a review quoted on the cover insists, is "not a page too long". Second, it makes sense of so much else. Scholars with Protestant sympathies frequently agree with Duffy about much of what happened, if not with his tone of lament. His rehabilitation of Mary I - long remembered as "Bloody Mary" - has been particularly compelling.

Lastly, the passion with which he writes gives the reader not merely a shrewd historical argument but a compelling vision of what it meant actually to live this traditional religion. It is a vision that a secular historian could not have given us.

In the chapter on Edward VI, ("The Attack on Traditional Religion III: The Reign of Edward VI") he recounts the Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548, which followed the Candle-less Candlemas of the Feast of the Purification. Palm Sunday was palm-less that year, of course, and no processions--no Creeping to the Cross on Good Friday. The entire edifice of Catholic culture and liturgy was being dismantled in England.

Blessed John Henry Newman moved his listeners to tears at the first Catholic synod held in the Diocese of Westminster on July 13, 1852 when he preached his sermon on the Second Spring:

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, that great creation of God's power, stood in this land in pride of place. It had the honours of near a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned in some twenty sees up and down the broad country; it was based in the will of a faithful people; it energized through ten thousand instruments of power and influence; and it was ennobled by a host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of glorified intercessors, who were the respective objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of Chichester. And then, too its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its universities, its wide relations all over Europe, its high prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its dependencies, its popular honours,--where was there in the whole of Christendom a more glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with king and nobles, with the people, found in every village an in every town,--it seemed destined to stand, so long as England stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers--you know it well. I need not go through it. The vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time, and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed,--its grace disowned,--its power despised,--its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown. It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away, and there was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace;--and such was about the state of things when we were born into this weary world.

Blessed John Henry Newman on Lent

On Ash Wednesday in 2007, Edward T. Oakes, SJ, offered some quotations from Blessed John Henry Newman appropriate to the beginning of Lent (featured on First Things):

No theologian working inside the traditions of western Christianity was more sensitive to the rhythms of the Church's liturgical year than was John Henry Newman. Which, of course, stands to reason, given the fact that, as an Anglican curate at St. Clement's in Oxford and later as vicar at St. Mary's in Littlemore, he gave sermons "in season and out" that were soon recognized as the most theologically rich ever delivered since patristic times, later published in eight volumes as Parochial and Plain Sermons. Yes, his appointment as a Fellow of Oriel College at Oxford gave clear testimony to his academic brilliance, a verdict of his peers that he vindicated with such scholarly publications as Lectures on Justification and The Arians of the Fourth Century. But his real work during that period from 1824 to 1843 was in pastoral care, including preaching nearly every Sunday with a tenacity and depth that caught the imagination of hearers and readers from his day to our own.

This being the onset of the season of Lent—when Christians think especially on the reality of sin in their lives—I thought I would offer a string of quotations from Newman appropriate to this season now begun, a catena, as it were, of "edifying discourses" from a master at homiletical brilliance.

What has always struck me about his Lenten sermons are two themes delicately balanced: On the one hand, Newman sets the bar of Christian holiness very high; yet, on the other, he shows an acute awareness of the weaknesses that beset Christians and so understands them when they fail (as we are all bound to do) to measure up to his extraordinarily demanding standards. As to the first theme, take this typical passage from his sermon "The Religion of the Day":

We dwell in the full light of the Gospel, and the full grace of the Sacraments. We ought then to have the holiness of the Apostles. There is no reason except our own willful corruption, that we are not by this time walking in the steps of St. Paul or St. John, and following them as they followed Christ. . . . Nothing is more difficult than to be disciplined and regular in our religion. It is very easy to be religious by fits and starts, and to keep up our feelings by artificial stimulants; but regularity seems to trammel us, and we become impatient.

Read the rest here.

The Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548

Eamon Duffy's The Stripping of the Altars is so indepensible! If I had to be on a desert island and couldn't follow up on G.K. Chesterson's advice to have a book about building ships, I would want to have Duffy's book with me. I still look forward to his forthcoming book, but this has been tremendously influential. It definitely changed our view of the English Reformation.

Anyway, in the chapter on Edward VI, ("The Attack on Traditional Religion III: The Reign of Edward VI") he recounts the Ashless Ash Wednesday of 1548, which followed the Candle-less Candlemas of the Feast of the Purification. Palm Sunday was palm-less that year, of course, and no processions--no Creeping to the Cross on Good Friday. The entire edifice of Catholic culture and liturgy was being dismantled in England.

Blessed John Henry Newman moved his listeners to tears at the first Catholic synod held in the Diocese of Westminster on July 13, 1852 when he preached his sermon on the Second Spring:

Three centuries ago, and the Catholic Church, that great creation of God's power, stood in this land in pride of place. It had the honours of near a thousand years upon it; it was enthroned in some twenty sees up and down the broad country; it was based in the will of a faithful people; it energized through ten thousand instruments of power and influence; and it was ennobled by a host of Saints and Martyrs. The churches, one by one, recounted and rejoiced in the line of glorified intercessors, who were the respective objects of their grateful homage. Canterbury alone numbered perhaps some sixteen, from St. Augustine to St. Dunstan and St. Elphege, from St. Anselm and St. Thomas down to St. Edmund. York had its St. Paulinus, St. John, St. Wilfrid, and St. William; London, its St. Erconwald; Durham, its St. Cuthbert; Winton, its St. Swithun. Then there were St. Aidan of Lindisfarne, and St. Hugh of Lincoln, and St. Chad of Lichfield, and St. Thomas of Hereford, and St. Oswald and St. Wulstan of Worcester, and St. Osmund of Salisbury, and St. Birinus of Dorchester, and St. Richard of Chichester. And then, too its religious orders, its monastic establishments, its universities, its wide relations all over Europe, its high prerogatives in the temporal state, its wealth, its dependencies, its popular honours,--where was there in the whole of Christendom a more glorious hierarchy? Mixed up with the civil institutions, with king and nobles, with the people, found in every village an in every town,--it seemed destined to stand, so long as England stood, and to outlast, it might be, England's greatness.

But it was the high decree of heaven, that the majesty of that presence should be blotted out. It is a long story, my Fathers and Brothers--you know it well. I need not go through it. The vivifying principle of truth, the shadow of St. Peter, the grace of the Redeemer, left it. That old Church in its day became a corpse (a marvellous, an awful change!); and then it did but corrupt the air which once it refreshed, and cumber the ground which once it beautified. So all seemed to be lost; and there was a struggle for a time, and then its priests were cast out or martyred. There were sacrileges innumerable. Its temples were profaned or destroyed; its revenues seized by covetous nobles, or squandered upon the ministers of a new faith. The presence of Catholicism was at length simply removed,--its grace disowned,--its power despised,--its name, except as a matter of history, at length almost unknown. It took a long time to do this thoroughly; much time, much thought, much labour, much expense; but at last it was done. Oh, that miserable day, centuries before we were born! What a martyrdom to live in it and see the fair form of Truth, moral and material, hacked piecemeal, and every limb and organ carried off, and burned in the fire, or cast into the deep! But at last the work was done. Truth was disposed of, and shovelled away, and there was a calm, a silence, a sort of peace;--and such was about the state of things when we were born into this weary world.

My emphasis added.