March 10, 2015: The 400th Anniversary of a Martyrdom

The Archdiocese of Glasgow, Scotland is preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of St. John Ogilvie's martyrdom this year on March 9 and 10. The former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor, will represent Pope Francis at the events which include Solemn Vespers at St Aloysius Church, Glasgow at 7.30 pm on March 9 and a Mass in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Glasgow at 7.30 pm on March 10, St John Ogilvie’s feast day.:

John Ogilvie, a convert to the Catholic faith from Banffshire was educated on mainland Europe before being ordained a Jesuit priest. He returned to his native country to serve for a short time. He was hanged at Glasgow Cross on March 10 1615 after having been arrested for saying Mass and celebrating the sacraments with persecuted Catholics in and around the Glasgow area. He was canonised by Blessed Pope Paul VI in 1976 following the miraculous cure of Glasgow man John Fagan from cancer.

Commenting on his nomination, Cardinal Murphy O’Connor said: “I feel greatly honoured to be appointed by Pope Francis as a special envoy for the solemn celebration of the 400th centenary of the martyrdom of St John Ogilvie in Glasgow.

“I am particularly happy because I was in Rome for the saint’s canonisation in 1976 and took part in the great celebration for the Church in Scotland and indeed, the universal Church.

“I look forward to the events taking place in Glasgow on March 9-10 and to presenting the Holy Father’s message to the Church in Scotland and to all those present at the celebrations.”

Archbishop Philip Tartaglia of Glasgow, who will preside at the anniversary events, said: “The Bishops of Scotland intend to celebrate this anniversary both as an event of great joy for the Catholic community in Scotland and as a moment of new hope for all Christians, for all believers and for all people of good will. Cardinal Murphy O’Connor’s presence and participation as the Papal envoy will add even greater significance and will bring the Successor of Peter closer to us and to the people of Scotland.

More about St. John Ogilvie, SJ next month on his feast.

Blessed John Nelson, Late Vocation and Martyr

From the Jesuit Curia in Rome, this biography of today's martyr:

John Nelson (1535-1578) became a Jesuit in prison just before he was martyred. A man of unshakeable convictions, he died two years before the English mission began, but he provided the same fearless service to Catholics that Jesuits later lived and died for. The son of Sir Nicholas Nelson, he was born in Yorkshire about 1535. He was firm in his conviction that Catholics should be bold in professing their faith and did not accept the practice of attending Protestant services to avoid penalties. Finally he left England when he was almost 40 and studied at the English College in Douai. He was ordained a priest at Bynche in June 1576 and set out with four other newly ordained priests the following November to return to England.

Little is known about Father Nelson's ministry except that it lasted only one year before he was arrested on the evening of Dec. 1, 1577 when priest-catchers burst into his residence as he was reading his breviary. They arrested him on suspicion of being a Catholic; but when he was brought before the queen's high commissioners and asked who the head of the Church was, he boldly answered that it was the pope, thus sealing his fate. His trial took place February 1 and featured the comments he made before the commissioners; since he refused to take the oath acknowledging the queen's supremacy in religious matters, he was found guilty of high treason and condemned to be executed as a traitor. Nelson had admired the Jesuits but their mission to England did not begin until two years after his death. He wrote to the French Jesuits asking to be admitted, and they were pleased to accept a priest about to be martyred. He was kept in a foul dungeon for two days and then dragged to Tyburn to be executed. As he gave his final words to onlookers, he was hanged but then cut down while he was still alive and disembowelled. He was beheaded and quartered with his body parts exhibited on London Bridge and the city gates as a warning.

This Jesuit website gives some details about his last words:

On February 3, he was dragged to Tyburn for execution. Just before he was hanged, Fr Nelson asked the Catholics present to pray with him and aloud he recited the Creed, the Our Father and the Hail Mary, all in Latin. He then encouraged the bystanders to remain steadfast in their faith, asked forgiveness of all whom he might have offended and beseeched God to forgive his enemies and executioners. Just as he was finishing these words he was hanged.

Blessed John Nelson could definitely be a patron of those who enter the religious life or the priesthood when they are older than the norm. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIII in 1886.

Ending the Terror: The Carmelites of Compiegne

From my article on the Carmelites of Compiegne of OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine last year:

Their deaths were orderly, calm and holy. Each Carmelite paused before their prioress and asked permission to fulfill her vow.

They sang together, chanting the Salve Regina, the Te Deum and Veni, Sancte Spiritus on their way to the guillotine, and then intoned the psalm Laudate Dominum, omnes gentes (“Praise the Lord, all peoples”); each stroke of the guillotine silenced another voice until at last the prioress walked up the steps to die. The usually cheering mob was unusually silent.

Read the rest here.

Last month, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in London performed Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites and Tim Wong told the true story of the Carmelites on his blog for The Telegraph:

Forty people had their heads chopped off on 17 July 1794, 16 of whom were Carmelite nuns from the small city of Compiègne in Northern France. The Order of the Carmelites itself dates back to the 12th century, and has a strong tradition of Marian devotion. Their spiritual focus of the Order is contemplation.

Enlightenment intellectuals argued that such a passive activity as contemplation served no practical purpose for society. By the time of the French Revolution, both the monarchy and the Church came under attack – for their power and wealth in the face of a starving and angry nation.

It was a time of unprecedented upheaval in daily life, where all things Christian were swept away. The seven-day week was scrapped in favour of a ten-day one. A prostitute "Goddess of Reason" was installed in Notre Dame to perform lewd songs. The remains of past French Kings were dug up from the Royal Basilica at Saint-Denis and thrown into a common pit. In September 1792 alone 225 priests and bishops were slaughtered.

It’s perhaps no surprise, against this backdrop, that 16 Carmelite nuns were declared "enemies of the people". Poulenc’s opera broadly follows what actually happened – but there are some significant differences. . . .
 
Poulenc’s central character in Dialogues des Carmélites, the fictional Blanche de la Force, is modelled on Mother Marie – one of the two or three who escaped. Mother Marie resembles Blanche not only in age (she was in her thirties) but also in her aristocratic background: she was the illegitimate orphaned daughter of the Prince of Conti, who was considered to be a legitimate descendant of the monarch (a "prince du sang"). Both Blanche and Mother Marie's music is often cast in C major – forthright, pure, depicting innocence. Poulenc seems to imply that there's an unspoken affinity between these two characters.

Mother Marie was away when the sisters were arrested: William Bush informs us that she was in Paris sorting out a pension left by her father. Upon hearing the arrest she fled the capital with Madame Lidoine’s 78-year old mother and settled in Franche Comté for good. There was no record of her pleading with the chaplain to be allowed to join her sisters. Neither did her brother plead with her to return to the family – a key scene in the opera . It was in fact Sister Constance’s brother who turned up to ask the young nun to abandon her Order, which request she declined.

That was the climax of the Reign of Terror, for 10 days after the nun’s execution the regime was overthrown and Robespierre himself died on the guillotine. The sisters of Compiègne were beatified in 1906. Perhaps one day they will be declared saints. Certainly, in the eyes of many Catholics, they already are.

July 1, 1616 and 1681: Two Martyrdoms at Tyburn

July 1, 1616: A martyrdom in London during James I's reign was an event with international implications--the Spanish ambassadors were quite active around this time in pursuing pardons or even exile (knowing the priest would very likely return).

Blessed Thomas Maxfield was born in Stafford gaol, about 1590, martyred at Tyburn, London, Monday, 1 July, 1616. He was one of the younger sons of William Macclesfield of Chesterton and Maer and Aston, Staffordshire (a firm recusant, condemned to death in 1587 for harbouring priests, one of whom was his brother Humphrey), and Ursula, daughter of Francis Roos, of Laxton, Nottinghamshire. William Macclesfield is said to have died in prison and is one of the prætermissi as William Maxfield; but, as his death occurred in 1608, this is doubtful. Thomas arrived at the English College at Douai on 16 march, 1602-3, but had to return to England 17 May, 1610, owing to ill health. In 1614 he went back to Douai, was ordained priest, and in the next year came to London. Within three months of landing he was arrested, and sent to the Gatehouse, Westminster. After about eight months' imprisonment, he tried to escape by a rope let down from the window in his cell, but was captured on reaching the ground. This was at midnight 14-15 June, 1616. For seventy hours he was placed in the stocks in a filthy dungeon at the Gatehouse, and was then on Monday night (17 June) removed to Newgate, where he was set amongst the worst criminals, two of whom he converted. On Wednesday, 26 June, he was brought to the bar at the Old Bailey, and the next day was condemned solely for being a priest, under 27 Eliz., c, 2. The Spanish ambassador* did his best to obtain a pardon, or at least a reprieve; but, finding his efforts unavailing, had solemn exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in his chapel during the martyr's last night on earth. The procession to Tyburn early on the following morning was joined by many devout Spaniards, who, in spite of insults and mockery, persisted in forming a guard of honour for the martyr. Tyburn-tree itself was found decorated with garlands, and the ground round about strewn with sweet herbs. The sheriff ordered the martyr to be cut down alive, but popular feeling was too strong, and the disembowelling did not take place till he was quite senseless.

Downside Abbey, the Tyburn Convent near Marble Arch, and Holy Trinity Catholic in Staffordshire each honor his relics. See this site for a picture of an altar in Holy Trinity depicting the martyr.

*The Spanish Ambassador at that time was Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, 1st Count of Gondomar, who had succeeded in obtaining the release of Luisa de Carvajal in 1614.

Glorious Martyr, St. Oliver,

who willingly gave your life for your faith,

help us also to be strong in faith.

May we be loyal like you to the see of Peter.

By your intercession and example

may all hatred and bitterness

be banished from the hearts of Irish men and women.

May the peace of Christ reign in our hearts,

as it did in your heart,

even at the moment of your death.

Pray for us and for Ireland. Amen.  

 

July 1, 1681: St. Oliver Plunkett, the Archbishop of Armagh in Ireland, was executed at Tyburn in London on July 1, 1681. He was the last priest to be executed there and the final victim of the "Popish Plot"--that fraudulent, perjured plot cooked up by the BBC's Worst Briton of the 17th Century: Titus Oates.

So in the Catholic dioceses of England and Wales AND Ireland, today is the memorial/feast of St. Oliver Plunkett, Archbishop of Armagh, victim of Stuart injustice during the Anti-Catholic madness of Oates' fake plot.

The Whigs in Parliament, opposed most of all to the succession of Charles II's Catholic brother, James the Duke of York, jumped at the opportunity to attack Catholics--and James--when Titus Oates fabricated the story of a great conspiracy. Charles II did not believe most of the elements of the plot Oates "revealed", especially when the perjurer implicated his own queen, Catherine of Braganza, and his brother.

Once Oates was able to compound English fear of Jesuits and Catholics with English fear of Irish Catholics, Plunkett was in grave danger. St. Oliver Plunkett was brought to London from Ireland and accused of conspiring to bring French soldiers and recruit members of his diocese to mount a rebellion against the King and Parliament. There was, of course, no evidence of these accusations and Plunkett could bring no witnesses to testify for him--they were in Ireland and not permitted to come to England. He had been tried before in Ireland--no double jeopardy applied here--and English authorities like Shaftesbury were convinced that no Irish jury (even if packed with Protestants) would convict him.

On the day of his execution he was able to give a long discourse, in which he re-presented the evidence that proved he was not involved in any conspiracy, and which concluded with forgiveness and prayers:

as one of the said deacons (to wit, holy Stephen) did pray for those who stoned him to death; so do I, for those who, with perjuries, spill my innocent blood; saying, as St. Stephen did, "O Lord! lay not this sin to them." I do heartily forgive them, and also the judges, who, by denying me sufficient time to bring my records and witnesses from Ireland, did expose my life to evident danger. I do also forgive all those, who had a hand, in bringing me from Ireland, to be tried here; where it was morally impossible for me to have a fair trial. I do finally forgive all who did concur, directly or indirectly, to take away my life; and I ask forgiveness of all those whom I ever offended by thought, word, or deed.

I beseech the All-powerful, that his Divine Majesty grant our king, queen, and the duke of York, and all the royal family, health, long life, and all prosperity in this world and in the next, everlasting felicity.

Now, that 1 have shewed sufficiently (as I think) how innocent I am of any plot or conspiracy: I would I were able, with the like truth, to clear myself of high crimes committed against the Divine Majesty's commandments, often transgressed by me, for which, I am sorry with all my heart; and if I should or could live a thousand years, I have a firm resolution, and a strong purpose, by your grace, O my God! never to offend you; and I beseech your Divine Majesty, by the merits of Christ, and by the intercession of his Blessed Mother, and all the holy angels and saints, to forgive me my sins, and to grant my soul eternal rest. Miserere mei Deus, etc. Parce anima, etc. In manus tuas, etc.

St. Oliver Plunkett was born in 1629 in Loughcrew, County Meath, Ireland of well-to-do parents and studied for the priesthood at the Irish College in Rome. While Oliver Cromwell was inflicting the "righteous judgement of God" on the Irish who had rebelled against English rule during Charles I's reign, Plunkett had been unable to return to serve his people as a priest after ordination in 1654. He therefore remained in Rome and taught theology. In 1669 he was appointed the Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of All Ireland and finally returned to Ireland the next year. For a time, Charles II's Restoration leniency allowed Plunkett to accomplish many reforms and reorganizations in education and catechesis. As Archbishop, he confirmed thousands (48,000!) but in 1673, persecution of Catholics in England's colony forced him to go into hiding and close the schools. Arrested in connection with Oates' plot, he was imprisoned at Dublin Castle. He was canonized by Pope Paul VI in 1975 and in 1997 he was named the Patron Saint of Peace and Reconciliation in Ireland. His trial and execution were so manifestly unfair that even Shaftesbury realized things had gone too far--yet, with the Popish Plot's true conspirators, Oates and companions, finally being mistrusted and the whole matter winding down, Charles II did nothing to stop the execution of St. Oliver Plunkett. This site contains a wealth of information, including the prayers and readings for a Mass honoring his Feast.

When Pope Paul VI canonized the martyr, he began his remarks in Gaelic: Dia's muire Dhíbh, a chlann Phádraig! Céad mile fáilte rómhaibh! Tá Naomh nua againn inniu: Comharba Phádraig, Olibhéar Naofa Ploinéad. (God and Mary be with you, family of Saint Patrick! A hundred thousand welcomes! We have a new Saint today: the successor of Saint Patrick, Saint Oliver Plunkett). Today, Venerable Brothers and dear sons and daughters, the Church celebrates the highest expression of love-the supreme measure of Christian and pastoral charity. Today, the Church rejoices with a great joy, because the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, is reflected and manifested in a new Saint. And this new Saint is Oliver Plunkett, Bishop and Martyr-Oliver Plunkett, successor of Saint Patrick in the See of Armagh-Oliver Plunkett , glory of Ireland and Saint, today and for ever, of the Church of God, Oliver Plunkett is for all-for the entire world-an authentic and outstanding example of the love of Christ. And on our part we bow down today to venerate his sacred relics, just as on former occasions we have personally knelt in prayer and admiration at this shrine in Drogheda.

Book Review: "God's Traitors"

Rather like Adrian Tinniswood with The Verneys: A True Story of Love, War, and Madness in Seventeenth Century England, which focused on that family's reactions to events like the English Civil War and Interregnum,  in God's Traitors: Terror & Faith in Elizabethan England Jessie Childs focuses on the Vaux family of Harrowden Hall (and connected families like the Treshams of Rushton) and how they, remaining true to their Catholic faith, responded to the ever-tightening restrictions on recusant Catholics during Elizabeth I's reign--and how much they knew about the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

One great feature of the design of this book, which includes two insets of color images, other illustrations, a list of principal characters, and a family tree, is the map of the Midlands of England with the Catholic houses identified in each county: Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire. Seeing the distances (if not the terrain) between the houses, I could imagine the missionary priests moving from house to house, celebrating the Sacraments, keeping ahead of the government pursuivants. I could also imagine the government pursuivants, going from house to house, hoping to catch a priest!

By telling the story of Vaux family, as each generation continues the family's faithfulness to the Catholic Church, Childs retells stories familiar to me, of St. Edmund Campion and Father Robert Persons, St. Robert Southwell, Fathers Henry Garnett and John Gerard, and other priests and martyrs, from a different angle: how the Vaux family had sheltered and assisted the priests.

As Childs describes each Vaux generation's response to recusancy, the tension and the danger mount: fines, arrests, imprisonment, debt, danger, conflict within the extended family, and death. Trying to find a way to practice his faith and yet be an Englishman proved exhausting for William the second Baron Vaux. Recusant Catholics could "either obey their Queen and consign their souls to damnation", as Childs says, "or obey the pope and surrender their bodies to temporal punishment". His son Henry and daughters Anne and Eleanor and daughter-in-law Eliza would be even more courageous, leading the underground network of safety for the missionary priests. The later generations of Vauxes--further and further separated from how the Catholic faith had once been practiced in England--grew more and more desperate as they found their choices so limiting: unable to take part in the leadership of their country, they fled to the Continent as mercenaries, like Ambrose, the black sheep of the family.

The Vauxes are always on the edges of the conspiracies against Elizabeth I (the Ridolfi Plot, the Babington conspiracy, the Throckmorton Plot)--and thus William Vaux spent so much time answering questions, along with his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Tresham, paying fnes, enduring imprisonment and house arrest. But at the end of the book, the Gunpowder Plot attempt to blow up Parliament with King James I, his family, and all the Lords and Commons, sums up the entire struggle. Anne Vaux feared that young men she knew well like Robert Catesby were plotting something horrible and she wanted Father Henry Garnet to tell them not to go forward with their plans. Did Father Garnet do enough? did he ask the right questions? respond forcefully enough to tell Catesby and Digby et al not to pursue whatever plot they had in mind? Those were questions he asked himself while in prison and even during his questioning. Although he did not instigate the plot or encourage the plot--he knew about the Gunpowder Plot and he did not report it to the authorities, citing the seal of the confessional.

In the Epilogue, Childs continues the story of the Vauxes: the sisters Anne and Eleanor and their sister-in-law Eliza continue their good works, focused now on the children to be raised in the Catholic faith. The family endures the long Eighteenth century and then finally enjoys Emancipation and freedom. One of the best details of this after story is that the nine Baron Vaux was Father Gabriel Gilbey, O.S.B. and took his seat in the House of Lords in 1962, 403 years after the last Benedictine served in the House (I presume that could be John Feckenham, the last abbot of Westminster Abbey).

Alice Hogge in God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot (2005) described the lives and deaths of the missionary priests who studied abroad and returned to England, branded as traitors for their priesthood, in her build-up to the Gunpowder Plot and its aftermath. It could almost serve as the companion volume to Childs' great story of the Vaux family. By focusing on the noble Vaux family, the lay men and women who struggled to remain true to their Church and to their nation, however, Childs has given us a great story of faithfulness and endurance. I cannot recommend God's Traitors highly enough: it is well-narrated and her analysis is always balanced and insightful.

Please note that I received this review copy from the author, with the only expectation being that I would read it and review it honestly.

Dominic Selwood on the English Reformation

Writing on his Telegraph blog about how history can be manipulated by the ruling party, Dominic Selwood writes:

So what about England? Has our constitutional monarchy and ancient tradition of parliamentary democracy protected our history from political manipulation? Can we rely on what we are taught and told, or are there myths we, too, have swallowed hook, line, and sinker?

Where better to start than with that most quintessentially English of events ­— the break with Rome that signalled the birth of modern England?

For centuries, the English have been taught that the late medieval Church was superstitious, corrupt, exploitative, and alien. Above all, we were told that King Henry VIII and the people of England despised its popish flummery and primitive rites. England was fed up to the back teeth with the ignorant mumbo-jumbo magicians of the foreign Church, and up and down the country Tudor people preferred plain-speaking, rational men like Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin. Henry VIII achieved what all sane English and Welsh people had long desired ­– an excuse to break away from an anachronistic subjugation to the ridiculous medieval strictures of the Church.

For many in England, the subject of whether or not this was true was not even up for debate. Even now, the historical English disdain for all things Catholic is often regarded as irrefutable and objective fact. Otherwise why would we have been taught it for four and a half centuries? And anyway, the English are quite clearly not an emotional race like some of our continental cousins. We like our churches bright and clean and practical and full of common sense. For this reason, we are brought up to believe that Catholicism is just fundamentally, well … un-English.

But the last 30 years have seen a revolution in Reformation research. Leading scholars have started looking behind the pronouncements of the religious revolution’s leaders – Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell, Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley – and beyond the parliamentary pronouncements and the great sermons. Instead, they have begun focusing on the records left by ordinary English people. This “bottom up” approach to history has undoubtedly been the most exciting development in historical research in the last 50 years. It has taken us away from what the rulers want us to know, and steered us closer towards what actually happened.

Golly, you'd almost think he'd read my book!

I thought this was a particularly well-reasoned analysis of the violence of Henry VIII's imposition of his break from Rome:

The Tudor violence meted out to enforce the break with Rome was extreme, designed to deter by shock. For instance, one of Henry’s earliest victims was Sister Elizabeth Barton, a Benedictine nun. When she criticised Henry’s desire to marry Anne Boleyn, he had her executed, and her head spiked on London Bridge ­— the first and only woman ever to have suffered this posthumous barbarity.

Henry and his inner circle of politicians and radical clerics put to death hundreds of dissenters, pour encourager les autres. None of these people were plotting to kill him or destabilise his rule. Their “treason” was to oppose the destruction of their religion or the despoiling of their property. The brutal strangulation, emasculation, disembowelling, beheading, and quartering they endured as traitors was hideous, as was the total absence of any form of due process or justice.

Henry's use of attainder, meaning that the accused was never tried nor really even knew the charges against them, was brought up in an article by Suzannah Lipscomb in History Today, discussing whether or not Henry VIII was a tyrant:

Yet one of these laws, passed in 1539, ordered that royal proclamations would henceforth have the same status in law as statute. In other words, Henry used Parliament to eradicate the need for it and to make his word – quite literally – law. Similarly he condemned to death, through Parliament, an unprecedented number of people who were available for trial by the use of acts of attainder – acts of Parliament by which the accused was declared guilty and his property and life forfeited without trial or the need to cite precise evidence or name specific crimes. This is how Henry’s fifth wife, Katherine Howard, and first minister, Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, were dispatched.

Blessed Margaret Pole, Blessed Adrian Fortescue, and Blessed Thomas Dingley were also all executed under a Bill of Attainder. They were not plotting to bring down Henry VIII's rule--but all three were wealthy Catholics. Henry was able to seize the treasure of the Knights of Jerusalem and the lands of Countess of Salisbury by bringing them to the block, making up conspiracies out of travels to the Continent and devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ.

But I think Selwood is wrong to ignore the fact that those burned at the stake during the reign of Mary I were not plotting to kill her or "destabilize" her rule either. Cranmer, of course, had been found guilty of treason against the rightful heir, and could have been beheaded. Certainly, the Catholic martyrs of the Elizabethan era who have been beatified and canonized were not plotting against Elizabeth.

Otherwise, Selwood provides an interesting and spirited summary of the revisionist history more or less accepted now about the English Reformation.

St. John Fisher, Defender of Marriage (And a Few Colleagues)

From Crisis Magazine, this article by Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute:

In his October 2013 article on the question of communion for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, Cardinal Gerhard Müller underscored that the Catholic Church had risked much to uphold Christ’s teaching regarding true marriage’s indissolubility. The Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith singled out the fact that Catholicism had suffered the schism of “a Church in England” “because the Pope, out of obedience to the sayings of Jesus, could not accommodate the demands of King Henry VIII for the dissolution of his marriage.”

In this context, most people immediately think of Saint Thomas More. In at least two accounts of his trial, More stated that the real core of Henry VIII’s animus against him was that More did not believe Anne Boleyn to be Henry’s wife. After all, one reason for More’s imprisonment was his refusal to affirm, on oath, the marriage’s validity.

In truth, however, More had tried to say as little as possible about the King’s Great Matter before and after his resignation as Lord Chancellor. In public at least, the real water on the marriage issue was carried by another Saint: Cardinal John Fisher of Rochester.

Fisher was by far the most formidable defender of the validity of Henry and Catherine of Aragon’s marriage, penning at least 7 tracts on the subject. Widely regarded as one of the greatest bishop-scholars of his time and a successful Chancellor of Cambridge University, Fisher’s writings underscore his deep familiarity with the Scriptures, church fathers, and scholastic and renaissance thought. Not many people learn Greek in their forties. Yet Fisher somehow managed to do so.

Concerns about what his scholarly peers might think, however, didn't prevent Fisher from confronting doctrinal and moral error. He also actively combated corruption and lax morality among clergy and laity alike. Nor was Fisher ever distracted from his pastoral responsibilities. Testimonies abound to Fisher personally serving the poor, spending long hours in the confessional, regularly visiting the sick and dying, penning devotional writings for ordinary folk, and leading an abstentious life. Eligible for any number of more famous sees, Fisher chose to remain in the very poor, insignificant diocese of Rochester.

Other great defenders of the validity of Henry and Catherine's marriage met the same fate as good Bishop Fisher: Fathers Thomas Abel, Richard Fetherston, and Edward Powell (except that they endured the full sentence of the execution of traitors, being hung, drawn, and quartered). The Observant Franciscans, formerly Henry VIII's favorite mendicants, openly opposed Henry's marital machinations and defended the validity of his marriage to Queen Catherine. Friars Peto and Elstow publicly stated their opposition and defense during sermons in the Greenwich chapel. Perhaps on this date, April 8, in 1533, the friars appeared before Henry's Council. According to this website:

Again the friars repeated their strong condemnation of Henry's course of action. The Earl of Essex (sic) [Henry did not name Thomas Cromwell Earl of Essex until 1540, less than two months before his arrest and attainder] told them that they deserved to be put in a sack and cast into the Thames. Elstow's response deserves recording: "Threaten these things to rich and dainty folk who are clothed in purple, fare delicately, and have their chiefest hope in this world, for we esteem them not, but are joyful that for the discharge of our duties we are driven hence. With thanks to God we know the way to Heaven to be as ready by water as by land, and therefore we care not which way we go." 

Astonishingly the two friars were not flung into the Thames or even into prison (Henry was still flexing his proto-totalitarian muscles) and were instead banished from the country. Friar Peto was eventually to be raised in Rome to the purple [during the reign of Mary I].

St. John Ogilvie, SJ

According to this CNA story, Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI encouraged devotion to St. John Ogilvie in February of 2010, before his visit to Scotland and England in September that year--then mentioned him again at the Mass at Bellahouston Park in Glasgow the day of his arrival:

 March 10 is the liturgical memorial of Saint John Ogilvie, a 16th-and 17th-century Scotsman who converted from Presbyterianism to Catholicism, served as a Jesuit priest, and died as a martyr at the hands of state officials. St. John was executed for treason, refusing to accept King James I’s claim of supremacy over the Church. Pope Paul VI canonized him in 1976, making him Scotland’s first canonized saint for several hundred years [since 1250!]

In February 2010, during a visit to Rome by the Scottish bishops’conference, Benedict XVI asked the bishops to promote devotion to St. John Ogilvie among priests – since the Jesuit martyr had been “truly outstanding in his dedication to a difficult and dangerous pastoral ministry, to the point of laying down his life.” Later that year, during the Scottish segment of his U.K. visit, the Pope again encouraged priests to look to the saint’s “dedicated, selfless and brave” example.

The Jesuit Vocations website in Great Britain describes his early life and conversion:

John Ogilvie was born in 1579 and brought up in the Calvinist tradition. He was six or seven years old when Mary Queen of Scots died on the scaffold. He grew up as a child in a Scotland which had rejected her, and with her the old faith of his fathers. At the age of twelve he crossed to the continent in pursuit of education. But travelling in Europe broadened his mind, and he decided to become a Catholic, ending up at a Jesuit college in Austria. A year later, in 1599, he entered the Jesuit novitiate, and followed the normal Jesuit programme of noviceship, philosophy, and school teaching, in Vienna, before he was ordained in Paris in 1610.

After his capture in Glasgow, he endured great tortures:

The archbishop hit John Ogilvie in the face and said, "you are over bold to say your Masses in a reformed city," to which the Jesuit, replied, "You act like a hangman, not a bishop, in striking me." He was then beaten up by the archbishop's men, and taken off to prison and interrogation, but he never lost his spirit.

The cell they put him in stank, his feet where weighed down, and he was tortured before being taken to Edinburgh to appear before a council appointed by King James I of England (James VI of Scotland). There he was tortured by sleep deprivation for nearly ten days until December 22, but still refused to divulge names of those he had worked with or lived with. So he was sent back to prison in Glasgow, where he managed to write an account of what had happened to him since his arrest, and have it smuggled out and sent to his Jesuit superior.

His final interrogation was in January, when King James who considered himself a theologian and had taken an interest in the case, had devised some questions for him, the answer to which must be either the denial of the pope's supremacy and the assertion of the king's in religious matters, or must condemn him for treason. John Ogilvie replied that only the pope, and not the king, had power in religious matters, and also that the pope could both excommunicate and depose the king. When the king read these responses he gave orders that John was to be tried on March 10 and executed if he would not change.

At 11 a.m. at Tollbooth in Glasgow John went on trial for high treason. He was found guilty by lunchtime, and executed at 4 p.m. He kissed the scaffold as he went, and spent some time in prayer, then was pushed off the ladder Since he did not die immediately, the hangman pulled on legs to finish the agony. Unusually, and despite the sentence he had been given, his body was not quartered but buried in a criminal’s graveyard.

The CNA story offers these further details of his execution:

Attempts to ply John with bribery – in exchange for his return to Protestantism, and his betrayal of fellow Catholics – continued even as he was being led to his execution. His own defiant words are recorded: for the Catholic faith, he said, he would "willingly and joyfully pour forth even a hundred lives. Snatch away that one which I have from me, and make no delay about it, but my religion you will never snatch away from me!"

Asked whether he was afraid to die, the priest replied: “I fear death as much as you do your dinner.” St. John Ogilvie was executed by hanging on March 10, 1615.

As a last gesture before his hanging, St. John had tossed his Rosary beads into the crowd where they were caught by a Calvinist nobleman. The man, Baron John ab Eckersdorff, later became a Catholic, tracing his conversion to the incident and the martyr’s beads.

A prayer for the courage to imitate St. John Ogilvie:

God our Father, fountain of all blessing, We thank you for the countless graces that come to us in answer to the prayers of your saints. With great confidence we ask you in the name of your Son and through the prayers of St John Ogilvie to help us in all our needs.   

Lord Jesus, you chose your servant St John Ogilvie to be your faithful witness to the spiritual authority of the chief shepherd of your flock. Keep your people always one in mind and heart, In communion with [Francis] our Pope, and all the bishops of your Church.   

Holy Spirit, you gave St John Ogilvie light to know your truth, wisdom to defend it, and courage to die for it. Through his prayers and example bring our country into the unity and peace of Christ’s kingdom. Amen.

The Feast of St. Stephen and the English Catholic Martyrs

St. Stephen is course the proto-martyr and his imitation of Christ was so exact that he spoke the same words of forgiveness for his executioners. Because the Venerable English College in Rome was like "a nursery for martyrs", the custom arose of one of their seminarians preaching on the feast of St. Stephen, according to this blog:

The English College gained a reputation as a nursery of martyrs. Owing to the number of its martyred students, the custom arose of a student of the college preaching, on the theme of martyrdom, before the Pope on St Stephen’s Day.

On St Stephen’s Day, 1581, Blessed John Cornelius, who had entered the English College, Rome, in April 1580, preached before Pope Gregory XIII. (Pope Gregory XIII is best remembered for producing, with the help of Christopher Clavius S J, the Gregorian calendar.) In his sermon, John called the College the “Pontifical Seminary of Martyrs”. Thirteen years later, on 4th July 1594, John Cornelius was martyred at Dorchester, Oxfordshire. He was beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

On St Stephen’s Day 1642, the recently ordained Welshman, David Lewis, preached before Pope Urban VIII in the Lateran Basilica. He preached in Latin and his sermon, entitled “Corona Christi pro spinis gemmea” was on the Martyrdom of St Stephen, the first Christian Martyr. David Lewis was martyred at Usk on 27th August 1679. He was canonised in 1970 by Pope Paul VI.

Here is the College's Litany of Martyrs:

St Ralph Sherwin, 1581
St Luke Kirby, 1582
Blessed John Shert, 1582
Blessed William Lacey, 1582
Blessed Thomas Cottam, 1582
Blessed William Hart, 1583
Blessed George Haydock, 1584
Blessed Thomas Hemerford, 1584
Blessed John Munden, 1584
Blessed John Lowe, 1586
Blessed Robert Morton, 1588
Blessed Richard Leigh, 1588
Blessed Edward James, 1588
Blessed Christopher Buxton, 1588
Blessed Christopher Bales, 1590
Blessed Edmund Duke, 1590
St Polydore Plasden, 1591
St Eustace White, 1591
Blessed Joseph Lambton, 1592
Blessed Thomas Pormort, 1592
Blessed John Cornelius S J, 1594
Blessed John Ingram, 1594
Blessed Edward Thwing, 1594
St Robert Southwell S J, 1595
St Henry Walpole S J, 1595
Blessed Robert Middleton, 1601
Blessed Robert Watkinson, 1602
Venerable Thomas Tichborne, 1602
Blessed Edward Oldcorne, 1606
St John Almond , 1612
Blessed Richard Smith, 1612
Blessed John Thules, 1616
Blessed John Lockwood, 1642
Venerable Edward Morgan, 1642
Venerable Brian Tansfield S J, 1643
St Henry Morse S J, 1645
Blessed John Woodcock O F M, 1646
Venerable Edward Mico S J, 1678
Blessed Antony Turner S J, 1679
St John Wall O F M, 1679
St David Lewis S J, 1679

More on the College and the Age of Martyrs here.

December 10, 1591: Executions on Gray's Inn Road and at Tyburn

St. Swithun Wells was hanged for NOT attending a Catholic Mass in Elizabethan England. His wife Alice attended the Mass held in his house near Gray's Inn in London, but he wasn't there when the priest hunters burst in during the Mass celebrated by Father Edmund Gennings. Those attending held the pursuivants off. His wife, Fathers Gennings (pictured here) and Polydore Plasden, and three other laymen, John Mason, Sidney Hodgson, and Brian Lacey were arrested at the end of the Mass. Swithun was arrested when he came home.

At his trial, he said he wished he could have attended that Mass and that was enough for the Elizabethan authorities! He was hung near his home on Gray's Inn Road in London, and he spoke to Richard Topcliffe before he died, hoping that this persecutor and torturer of Catholics would convert! He said, "I pray God make you a Paul of a Saul, of a bloody persecutor one of the Catholic Church's children." St. Swithun as a school master had for a time conformed to the official church but then had returned to the Catholic faith.

As he was led to the scaffold, Wells saw an old friend in the crowd and called out to him: "Farewell, dear friend, farewell to all hawking, hunting, and old pastimes. I am now going a better way"!

St. Swithun's wife Alice received a reprieve from her death sentence, but died in prison in 1602. The two priests and the other three laymen were all executed on December 10. Sir Walter Raleigh was present at the execution and heard Father Polydore pray for Queen Elizabeth. Raleigh then asked him about his loyalty to Queen Elizabeth as the rightful ruler of England and liked his answers, so ordered him to be hung until dead, thus avoiding the rest of the torture of his execution. On the other hand, Topcliffe made sure that Father Gennings suffered all the tortures of being hung and quartered: he was left to hang but a short time and was fully conscious as the executioner started cutting him up. Father Gennings had said, "I know not ever to have offended the Queen. If to say Mass be treason, I confess to have done it and glory in it."

The two priests and the house owner have been canonized: St. Edmund Gennings, St. Polydore Plasden, and St. Swithun Wells--among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970. The two laymen who helped defend St. Edmund Gennings at Mass and were sentenced to death for that felony (sic) were beatified (Blessed John Mason and Blessed Sidney Hodgson) by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

But these were not the only martyrdoms in London that day in 1591--Father Eustace White and layman Brian Lacey were executed at Tyburn. St. Eustace White was a convert to Catholicism--his anti-Catholic father cursed him and White endured permanent estrangement from his family. In 1584 Eustace began studies for the priesthood in Rheims, France and Rome, Italy, and was ordained at the Venerable English College in Rome in 1588. In November 1588 he returned to the west of England to minister to covert Catholics. The Church was going through a period of persecution in England, made even worse by the attack of the Armada from Catholic Spain. Arrested in Blandford, Dorset, England on 1 September 1591 for the crime of being a priest. He was lodged in Bridwell prison in London, and repeatedly tortured.

He endured the torture technique developed by Richard Topcliffe and used on St. Robert Southwell and others, being hung by the wrists. As he wrote to Fr. Henry Garnet, SJ from prison:

"The morrow after Simon and Jude's day I was hanged at the wall from the ground, my manacles fast locked into a staple as high as I could reach upon a stool: the stool taken away where I hanged from a little after 8 o'clock in the morning until after 4 in the afternoon, without any ease or comfort at all, saving that Topcliffe came in and told me that the Spaniards were come into Southwark by our means: 'For lo, do you not hear the drums' (for then the drums played in honour of the Lord Mayor). The next day after also I was hanged up an hour or two: such is the malicious minds of our adversaries."

At his trial he forgave the judges who sentenced him to death. He is also one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. You could read more about him in this book.

Brian Lacey was a Yorkshire country gentleman. Cousin, companion and assistant to Blessed Father Montford Scott. Arrested in 1586 for helping and hiding priests. Arrested again in 1591 when his own brother Richard betrayed him, Brian was tortured at Bridewell prison to learn the names of more people who had helped priests. Finally arraigned down the Old Bailey, he was condemed to death for his faith, for aiding priests and encouraging Catholic. Pope Pius XI also beatified him in 1929. Blessed Brian Lacey was also related to Blessed William Lacey, a 1582 martyr in York.

December 1, 1581: The Martyrdoms of Campion, Briant, and Sherwin

Today, of course, is the First Sunday of Advent, but it is also the anniversary of the 1581 executions of  St. Edmund Campion, SJ; St. Alexander Briant, SJ, and St. Ralph Sherwin.

St. Edmund Campion was born on January 25, 1540 in London, the son of a bookseller. He was raised a Catholic, given a scholarship to St. John's College, Oxford, when fifteen, and became a fellow when only seventeen. His brilliance attracted the attention of such leading personages as the Earl of Leicester, Robert Cecil, and even Queen Elizabeth. He took the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Elizabeth head of the church in England and became an Anglican deacon in 1564. Doubts about Protestanism increasingly beset him, and in 1569 he went to Ireland where further study convinced him he had been in error, and he returned to Catholicism. Forced to flee the persecution unleashed on Catholics by the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pope Pius V, he went to Douai, France, where he studied theology, joined the Jesuits, and then went to Brno, Bohemia, the following year for his novitiate. He taught at the college of Prague and in 1578 was ordained there. He and Father Robert Persons were the first Jesuits chosen for the English mission and were sent to England in 1580. His activities among the Catholics, the distribution of his Decem rationes at the University Church in Oxford, and the premature publication of his famous Brag (which he had written to present his case if he was captured) made him the object of one of the most intensive manhunts in English history. He was betrayed at Lyford, near Oxford, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and when he refused to apostatize when offered rich inducements to do so, was tortured and then hanged, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn on December 1 on the technical charge of treason, but in reality because of his priesthood.

St. Alexander Briant (1556-1581) was a diocesan priest who entered the Jesuits just before he was executed. He studied at Oxford at Hertford (then Hart Hall) College where he met and became a follower of Robert Parsons at Balliol who later became a Jesuit and slipped into England with Campion. Briant crossed the Channel in August 1577 to attend the English College at Douai where he was reconciled to the Catholic Church. He was ordained in 1578 and in August 1579 returned to his homeland and took up ministry in his native shire (Somerset). He was only able to care for Catholics for two years before priest-hunters caught him by accident.

They searched unsuccessfully for Fr. Persons in one house, and then went to a neighboring house where they discovered Fr. Briant. His captors kept him without food and with little to drink for six days hoping to force information from him about Persons. He refused to speak so he was transferred to the Tower for further interrogation and torture on the rack. He wrote to the English Jesuits about his torture, saying that he kept his mind so firmly set on Christ's Passion that he felt no pain during the torture, only afterwards. He also wrote that just before he was tortured a second time, he had determined to enter the Jesuits if he were released from prison. However, since he doubted that he would be released, he asked to be accepted into the Society. The Jesuits accepted him upon receiving his letter.

St. Alexander Briant had carved a small wooden cross and held it in his hands in the courtroom. When one of the judges took it from him (Why?) he said, "You can take it out of my hands, but not out of my heart." Taking the cross from him seems an act of petty cruelty. I guess when you've tortured a man so much that the man using the rack boasts that the victim will be a foot longer, you'll do just about anything.

St. Ralph Sherwin: Born 1550: Rodsley, Derbyshire. Ralph Sherwin was the nephew of John Woodward, rector of Ingatestone in Essex from 1556 to 1566. In 1568, Sir William Petre of Ingatestone Hall, nominated Ralph to one of eight fellowships he had founded at Exeter College, Oxford; Ralph took his MA there in 1574.

Brought up as a Protestant, Ralph converted to the Catholic faith in 1575, and went to the English college at Douai where he was ordained in 1577. He continued his studies at the English College in Rome, his name being the first in the College register. When an oath requiring students to consent to the English mission was required, Ralph readily agreed, saying, ‘Today rather than tomorrow’.

Ralph returned to England on 1st August 1580, but on 9th November 1580 he was arrested in London and committed to the Marshalsea prison. He was transferred to the Tower of London where he was alternately tortured on the rack and thrown out into the December snow. He was once kept upon the rack for five consecutive days without food. He was offered a bishopric if he would conform to the authorised religion, but refused.

On 20th November 1581, Ralph was tried at Westminster Hall, accused of treason. He wrote a letter to his uncle, John Woodward, saying, "Innocency is my only comfort against all the forged villainy which is fathered on my fellow priests and me." His last words were: "Jesu, Jesu, Jesu, esto mihi Jesus!" "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, be to me Jesus (Saviour)".

When they were found guilty, St. Edmund Campion told the judges: "In condemning us you condemn all your own ancesters--all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings--all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter. For what have we taught, however you may qualify it with the odious name of treason, that they did not uniformly teach? To be condemned with these lights--not of England only, but of the world--by their degenerate descendants, is both gladness and glory to us."

Upon hearing the sentence of death, the three sang "Te Deum Laudamus".

At Tyburn Tree, St. Alexander Briant watched the brutal execution meted out to those found guilty of treason inflicted on Sherwin and Campion. It's hard to imagine the fortitude and faith necessary to witness such horrors and know that in a moment, you will endure the same--at least humanly speaking. Only the theological virtues of faith, hope and love grants that kind of strength.

These three holy men were canonized by Pope Paul VI among the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales in 1970.

Blessed Richard Hurst, Executed on the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist

This martyr, a farmer with a family, was a public recusant in Lancashire. He was executed on August 29 in 1628 after a rigged trial.

According to this blog:

A CONVICTED recusant, he was ploughing his field when one Dewhurst came to serve him with a warrant. Herst fled, and Dewhurst, following in pursuit, received a blow from Herst's maid, and afterwards in the heat of the pursuit fell and broke his leg. From that wound in the leg he died, yet Herst, who had never been within thirty yards of him, was charged with his death. Herst's pardon was offered him if he would take the oath, but he refused, and he declined also to go to church, so he was trailed there by his legs and much hurt. In the church he stopped his ears, not to hear false doctrine, and, on returning, said, "They have tortured my body, but, thank God, they have not hurt my soul." At his trial at Lancaster, though his innocence of Dewhurst's death was evident, the judge told the jury that he was a recusant, had resisted the Bishop's authority, and that they must find it murder for an example, which was done. At the gallows he said to the hangman, who was bungling with the rope, "Tom, I think I must come and help you." Then, after repeating the holy names of Jesus and Mary, he passed to immortality, Lancaster, August 29.

He corresponded with his confessor while in prison awaiting his execution:

THIS is his last letter to his confessor when about to suffer : "Now I take my last leave; now I am dying, and am as willing to die as ever I was to live, I thank my Lord and Saviour, who I trust will never fail me. I have comfort in Christ Jesus and His Blessed Mother, my good angel, and all the blessed Saints, and in the valiant and triumphant martyr, B. Arrowsmith, who is gone before me. How I have been used you will hear, and likewise what I had offered me if I would have taken the oath. I hope my friends will truly understand that my greatest desire is to suffer, and I would I had as many lives to offer as I have committed sins. Now, dear Sir, prepare yourself also to suffer, and animate your ghostly children in suffering. Once again, I desire you to say and to procure some Masses for my sinful soul, and if it please God to receive me into His kingdom, I shall not be unmindful of you and of all my good friends. I pray you remember my poor children, and encourage my friends about my debts which my chief worldly care is to satisfy. Once again, adieu. I desire to be dissolved, and to be with Christ Jesus."

The B. Arrowsmith he refers to is, of course, St. Edmund (Bryan) Arrowsmith, SJ who had been executed the day before.

According to this blog, Blessed Richard Hurst reflected on the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist before his execution:

He kissed the gallows on reaching the place of execution, and disregarding the ministers present, recommended himself to God, and begged the prayers of the Blessed Virgin, his angel guardian, and all the saints, especially St. John the Baptist, it being the day of his decollation. Ascending the ladder, he repeated the names of Jesus and Mary, and so was put to death.


More on the Lancashire Martyrs here.

Pope Leo XIII, RIP

Pope Leo XIII died on July 20, 1903. He was born Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi on March 2, 1810 and elected as the Vicar of Christ on February 20, 1878. As this article from the Catholic Encyclopedia describes his papacy, he had great impact on the Catholic Church in England and left an important legacy for the universal Catholic Church with his many (12!) encyclicals on the Rosary, his ground-breaking social encyclical, Rerum Novarum, and other Catholic devotions, like the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel:

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.

Sancte Michael Archangele,
defende nos in proelio;
contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.
Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur:
tuque, Princeps militiae Caelestis,
satanam aliosque spiritus malignos,
qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo,
divina virtute in infernum detrude.
Amen.

As to his influence on the British Empire and Ireland, the Catholic Encyclopedia article notes:

Among the acts of Leo XIII that affected in a particular way the English-speaking world may be mentioned: for England, the elevation of John Henry Newman to the cardinalate (1879), the "Romanos Pontifices" of 1881 concerning the relations of the hierarchy and the regular clergy, the beatification (1886) of fifty English martyrs, the celebration of the thirteenth centenary of St. Gregory the Great, Apostle of England (1891), the Encyclicals "Ad Anglos" of 1895, on the return to Catholic unity, and the "Apostolicæ Curæ" of 1896, on the non-validity of the Anglican orders. He restored the Scotch hierarchy in 1878, and in 1898 addressed to the Scotch a very touching letter. In English India Pope Leo established the hierarchy in 1886, and regulated there long-standing conflicts with the Portugese authorities. In 1903 King Edward VII paid him a visit at the Vatican. The Irish Church experienced his pastoral solicitude on many occasions. His letter to Archbishop McCabe of Dublin (1881), the elevation of the same prelate to the cardinalate in 1882, the calling of the Irish bishops to Rome in 1885, the decree of the Holy Office (13 April, 1888) on the plan of campaign and boycotting, and the subsequent Encyclical of 24 June, 1888, to the Irish hierarchy represent in part his fatherly concern for the Irish people, however diverse the feelings they aroused at the height of the land agitation.

When Pope Leo XIII made Father John Henry Newman a Cardinal Deacon of the Church, he knew it was a controversial move--he called Newman "my cardinal" and said, "My cardinal! it was not easy, it was not easy. They said he was too liberal, but I had determined to honour the Church in honouring Newman. I always had a cult for him. I am proud that I was able to honour such a man."

May Pope Leo XIII, Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi, rest in the peace of Christ. Image credit from wikipedia commons.

Bastille Day and Religious Freedom

Today is Bastille Day, when France celebrates the Revolution of 1789. As I view the day, I note that the celebration occurs in the midst of the Novena to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, just two days before that Feast and just three days before the memorial of the Blessed Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne, whom I discussed with Barbara McGuigan yesterday on The Good Fight and will this Wednesday discuss with Brian Patrick on the Son Rise Morning Show. I sent a version of this post to Barbara as background for our conversation.

Since January 2012, when the Obama administration issued the final version of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate of insurance coverage for “free” contraceptive, abortafacient, and sterilization services, many pundits have cited the historical example of Henry VIII and the English Reformation. See for example, Chris Matthews’ comments on MSNBC: “I guess I grew up watching movies like Becket and A Man for All Seasons and seeing the church and state go to war with each other and being told stories from the Old Testament about the Maccabees, about people, families being told you got to eat pork,” he said. Matthews added that it is “frightening” to him “when the state tells the church what to do.” On The Catholic World Report website, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman saw some parallels between Elizabethan era recusancy laws and the Obama administration’s HHS Mandate against Catholic consciences:

“Intentionally or not, the administration’s policy smacks of the methods established by England’s Queen Elizabeth against Catholic “recusants,” who refused to participate in the worship services of the Anglican Church during the late 16th century. Although Elizabeth’s regime, and those that followed for the next two hundred years, did not provide a penalty for Catholic belief as such, they found a simple and devastating way to coerce Catholics to violate their consciences: the recusancy fine, which was levied against those who absented themselves from Sunday Anglican worship or failed to receive communion once a year.”

In the summer of 2012 and again this summer, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops have sponsored the Fortnight for (Religious) Freedom from June 21 to July 4, beginning the fourteen day period of prayer, fasting, and protest the day before the memorial of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More. St. Thomas More has particularly been the focus, since he was a layman (and the bishops are calling on the laity for leadership in this effort), and he has even been featured on a prayer card.

While I have been supportive of this interpretation, I think that the French Revolution’s attack on the Catholic Church might be an even better historical parallel for us to consider.

While the English Reformation did introduce a great conflict between Catholics and the state, it did so by creating an Erastian (state controlled) Christian church. There is definitely a confessional element here of the officially Protestant state, with its head being the Supreme Head and Governor of the Church, persecuting Catholics for their faith, especially for their attendance at Holy Mass and their spiritual and ecclesial loyalty to the Pope as the Vicar of Christ. But I suggest the attempted secularization of French culture and the animosity of the revolutionary governments against the Catholic Church as being counter-revolutionary is the more apt comparison.

The Incorruptible Maximilien Robespierre and the Reign of Terror led a campaign to excise Christianity from French culture. The revolutionaries were acting on the Enlightenment philosophes’ verbal attacks on the Catholic Church, regarding it as an ally of the old regime. The National Constituent Assembly of France seized all Church property, suppressed convents and monasteries, and forced priests to serve as employees of the State, swearing an oath to the Revolution while denying loyalty to the Pope. The Blessed Sacrament was desecrated, church furnishings and artwork wrecked, and churches destroyed in a massive campaign of iconoclasm. More than 200 non-juring priests and three bishops—those who would not take the required oath—were brutally massacred in Paris on September 2 and 3, 1793 (pictured above). The Carmelites of Compiegne, the Ursulines of Valencienne, and nuns from other religious orders were guillotined as enemies of the Revolution.

Other steps in the dechristianization of France were to eliminate the Gregorian calendar, the seven day week, the Sunday day of rest and worship; change any street or city name with a religious reference; and ban holy days and saints’ feasts. A new calendar began with Year I of the new Republic. In all these efforts, the French revolutionary governments—from the fall of the monarchy to the restoration of some rights with Napoleon Bonaparte’s Concordat with the Vatican—wanted to demonstrate that the Catholic Church was an enemy of the revolution.

In the revolution’s terms, the Catholic Church was an enemy first because the Church had great wealth and had supported the old structures. But the deeper reason was that the Catholic Church could distract her members from loyalty to the revolution and new state that emphasized absolute unity around the ideals of Liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Note that priests and religious were particularly targeted, as the hierarchy of the Church was forced to choose between loyalty to the State and loyalty to the Church, and contemplative religious orders were suppressed because their lives of prayer and sacrifice were considered useless to the common good. Christianity was fundamentally in conflict with the goals of the revolution, and had to be eradicated from French culture. Of course, this attempt failed—even trying to replace Catholic worship of Almighty God and devotion to His saints with the Cult of the Supreme Being and other deist rituals and festivals—because many of the people, especially in the rural areas, remained true to the Catholic Faith. In the Vendee region of France they fought for their faith (and the monarchy) and the people suffered greatly when Robespierre and his Committee ordered their massacre and devastation of their crops and property.

The parallel I see to our situation today in the United States—and there is another very obvious parallel in France today with the Socialist Hollande government forcing so called “gay marriage” on the people in spite of their overwhelming protests against that legislative action —is the State proclaiming its absolute authority to force the Church and its members to accept the State’s version of the common good. (The same could be said of Enda Kenny of Irish Fine Gael imposing abortion on Ireland in spite of protests and opposition in his own party.) The Obama administration has obviously determined that these contraceptive and “reproductive health services” are required by its standards of the common good. The Church’s argument against that position has been rejected, even when we attempt to use natural law and the dignity of the human person, including the right to life of the unborn, and the fact that fertility is a normal, healthy condition. Our argument from the right of conscientious objection has also been ignored and rejected, because the State has determined that providing these reproductive services is a good that trumps conscience rights and the free exercise of religion, even though the latter is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The French Revolution established a pattern of State control over and interference with Church and religion, combining those efforts with violence and destruction in the name of secular unity on earthly ideals. In 2012, the film For Greater Glory dramatized the Cristeros War in twentieth-century Mexico, during which the revolutionary government followed the French Revolution’s example to attempt again to destroy Catholicism. As often noted, of course, we are not facing life and death decisions like the recusant Catholics of England, the non-juring priests of France, or the Cristeros in Mexico. Catholic individuals, organizations, universities, and dioceses have access to legislative and judicial means to avoid either compromising our beliefs or paying fines. Nevertheless the French Revolution’s attack on the Catholic Church provides us with a fascinating historical parallel to the modern secular state attempts to impose its will on Catholics and other Christians in the name of the common good.

But the story would be incomplete without remembering the failure of this effort and the recovery of the Church after the French Revolution. The martyrdoms of the priests and seminarians in the September massacres, the execution of the Carmelites, Ursulines, and other religious, inspired Catholics to remain true to their Faith. The government’s very attempt to replace the Catholic Mass with deistic festivals showed that society abhorred the religious vacuum. The laity remained true to their devotions and prayers, even if they could not attend Mass.

And after the rise of Napoleon and the Concordat with the Vatican, the Church in France recovered and grew: new religious orders serving the poor flourished; the monastic orders revived; new educational and social efforts, like the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, involved the laity in charitable works. Great cathedrals and churches were reconsecrated for sacred worship and restored--church bells tolled again to call the people to prayer. although the bells in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, having been melted down for coinage and cannon shot, were replaced with out-of-tune bells. This situation was not remedied until 2013, when a new set of bells were consecrated and installed in time for Holy Week.

Pilgrimages to the sites of Marian apparitions—Lourdes, the Rue de Bac (Miraculous Medal), Laus, and La Sallette—recalled medieval piety and devotion. Great saints inspire the Church to this day: St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Catherine Laboure, Blessed Frederic Ozanam, St. Peter Julian Eymard, St. John Vianney, and many foundresses of the religious orders like St. Mary Magdalen Postel (The Sisters of the Christian Schools of Mercy), St. Mary Euphrasia (The Good Shepherd Sisters), and St. Julie Billiart (The Institute of Notre Dame)—their lives of holiness and service demonstrate the chronic vigor of the Church.
These signs of revival and renewal clearly demonstrate the continuing guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit in the Church. Just as after the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, God raised up many saints to lead and inspire the Church in the nineteenth century, the Age of Revolution in Europe. That’s why Catholic Church history is always so inspiring and even consoling: it proves that as He promised, Jesus is always with His Church. Whatever dangers or persecutions we encounter—from within and without—He protects and guides us to struggle on in this life to do His will.

St. Thomas More

I have written and posted and spoken often about St. Thomas More--he's been mentioned 54 times at least on this blog, for example. For the past two years, especially during the two Fortnight for Freedom events, his name and his cause have been mentioned often. He is praised as a martyr for religious freedom, for conscience, for marriage, for Catholic unity; he is noted as a model of Christian humanism, as a father and educator, writer, lawyer, politician, and friend--and he is sometimes a figure of controversy too, over the issues of heresy and trials for heresy during his term as Chancellor and sometimes for the language he used in the print arguments against William Tyndale. But as G.K. Chesterton said in 1929, "[Saint] Thomas More is important today, but he is not as important now as he will be in one hundred years from today"--isn't hard to believe that in 1929, he was "just" Blessed Thomas More? As I noted last year, Chesterton was correct; he was just off a couple of decades.

 

Instead of more words about St. Thomas More, here are some words from St. Thomas More--a prayer he wrote and prayed in the Tower of London, awaiting trial and execution:

Give me the grace, Good Lord
~To set the world at naught.
~To set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men's mouths.
~To be content to be solitary. Not to long for worldly pleasures. Little by little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all its business.
~Not to long to hear of earthly things, but that the hearing of worldly fancies may be displeasing to me.
~Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help. To lean into the comfort of God. Busily to labor to love Him.
~To know my own vileness and wretchedness. To humble myself under the mighty hand of God. To bewail my sins and, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
~Gladly to bear my purgatory here. To be joyful in tribulations. To walk the narrow way that leads to life.
~To have the last thing in remembrance. To have ever before my eyes my death that is ever at hand. To make death no stranger to me. To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of Hell. To pray for pardon before the judge comes.
~To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me. For His benefits unceasingly to give Him thanks.
~To buy the time again that I have lost. To abstain from vain conversations. To shun foolish mirth and gladness. To cut off unnecessary recreations.
~Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at naught, for the winning of Christ.
~To think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.
~These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all in one heap.
Amen

Image from wikipedia commons.

April 20th in 1534, 1584, 1586, and 1602

A digest of last year's posts on this date:

On April 20, 1534, Elizabeth Barton, the Nun of Kent, was executed at Tyburn, London, along with monks and priests named as her co-conspirators.

In Father Philip Hughes' A Popular History of the Reformation, he provides an excellent chronological narrative of events, describing the influence of the Lutheran Reformation in England before Henry VIII's Break from Rome. He then traces the events leading up to the Break, the Reformation Parliament and "the deed of blood" that was a turning point:

The deed of blood was the condemnation by attainder (i.e., by an act of Parliament, without any trial) and the execution at Tyburn of "the Nun of Kent" and four priests condemned as her accomplices. "We now enter on a period which is happily unique in the annals of England, a period of terror. It lasts from [1534 to 1540]. --quoting H.A.L. Fisher's History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of Henry VIII (1918).

I was impressed by the quotation Father Hughes selected and the use of the term "period of terror" like the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution. As Father Hughes goes on to comment by April 20, 1534 Sir Thomas More and John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester are imprisoned--even though they escaped being included in the attainder because of their contact with Elizabeth Barton.

Blessed James Bell and Blessed John Finch were martyred in Lancaster on April 20, 1584:

When condemned and sentenced Blessed James Bell said to the Judge: "I beg your Lordship would add to the sentence that my lips and the tops of my fingers may be cut off, for having sworn and subscribed to the articles of heretics contrary both to my conscience and to God's Truth"--because he had conformed to the Church of England for a time. The priest was hung, drawn, and quartered, while the layman Finch was hung to death. They were both beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1929.

Blessed Richard Sargent and Blessed William Thomson both have a connection to St. Anne Line, and were both hung, drawn, and quartered at Tyburn in London on April 20, 1586--they are among the 85 Martyrs of England and Wales beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 1987.

Blessed Thomas Tichborne, Blessed Robert Watkinson, and Blessed Francis Page (another connection to St. Anne Line, as he was the priest ready to celebrate Mass when pursuivants broke into the safe house Anne Line managed for Father John Gerard, SJ) were all executed at Tyburn on April 20, 1602. They also were beatified in 1987.

I don't know what overall significance we should ascribe to this coincidence that seven beatified martyrs and six attainted conspirators against the monarch's religious and marital policies all died on April 20 in four different years. The links among St. Anne Line, Blessed Francis Page, Blessed Richard Sargent, and Blessed William Thomson certainly make sense: the recusant Catholic community was small and connected through the underground system of safe houses, etc.