Kicking Off the Annual Fortnight For Freedom

First of all, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show today and tomorrow: today at 7:45 a.m. Eastern during the first Sacred Heart Radio broadcast hour (6:45 a.m. Central) and then tomorrow with a rebroadcast during the EWTN national broadcast hour (from 6 to 7 a.m. Eastern or 5 to 6 a.m. Central). Anna Mitchell and I will discuss St. John Fisher, based upon this article in The National Catholic Register.

Then this evening, I'll be presenting at the The Ladder, the home of EDI's Sisters of Sophia, on Margaret More Roper, St. Thomas More's daughter.

This year, the focus of the Fortnight for Freedom is "Witnesses to Freedom" and the relics of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher are touring the USA--not coming close to us in Wichita, unfortunately--according to this story in America magazine:

This year the USCCB—along with Jesuit-run Stonyhurst College in the Diocese of Lancashire, England—is coordinating a U.S. tour of relics of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher to promote respect for religious liberty. Both were executed by King Henry VIII for their Catholic beliefs.

The relics will go to Miami, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, Denver, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Washington.

In addition, the USCCB is highlighting the Christian witness of 14 women and men—one each day of the fortnight observance, including:

• Blessed Oscar Romero, the slain archbishop of San Salvador.

• The Little Sisters of the Poor, the order at the forefront of the court fight against the contraceptive mandate.

• The Martyrs of Compiegne, France. The 16 Carmelites were guillotined during the French Revolution for defying the government's suppression of their monastery.

• The Coptic Christians who were killed by Islamic State militants last year.

"Reflecting on the lives of these great men and women can show us how we might serve as witnesses to freedom today," said the USCCB statement on the 2016 Fortnight for Freedom.

Last year, I highlighted the English Reformation saints and blessed who were executed during this period. On June 21, 1600, St. John Rigby, a layman, was hung at St. Thomas Waterings because he admitted that he had converted to Catholicism and had not attended Anglican services since that time. More about him here.

St. John Fisher, pray for us!

St. Thomas More, pray for us!

St. John Rigby, pray for us!

The Narrow Gate and the Cause of Martyrdom

John Andra writes about St. Thomas More's martyrdom for Crisis Magazine:

Martyrdom is in practice narrow. When St. Thomas More died on a scaffold in Henry VIII’s kingdom, it was for a narrow matter. Henry said he was the head of the Catholic Church in that realm, and Thomas disagreed. Thomas believed only a bishop could head the Church, specifically the bishop who had succeeded St. Peter on the chair in Rome.

It is a strange thing, though, that Henry would kill for narrowness. It was so important that he, with the backing of Parliament, considered it treason to disagree. Henry and Thomas agreed on nearly everything else in Catholic teaching, and Henry died still an enemy of Protestantism. For his own need to control the Church, however, Henry repeatedly killed.

Few resisted him, perhaps because the matter was so narrow. Would it really matter if Henry were called the head of the Church? It would not change the reality, after all. The sacraments also continued, the bishops and priests still taught, and none but the religious orders, possessors of great wealth, were entirely despoiled. Many probably thought Thomas, and the sole bishop to lose his life resisting, St. John Fisher, were unreasonable.

He makes a connection to Catholics and other Christians resisting State coercion today:

But we should always remember our Lord’s warning to enter by the narrow gate. “For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter that way. How narrow the gate and close the way that leads to life! And few there are who find it” (Matt. 7:13-14). St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher with the grace of God found the narrow gate. We must likewise prepare to resist any claim by an earthly power to jurisdiction over a matter of faith and morals. St. Peter, the first Bishop of Rome, gave us the fundamental rule: “ ‘We must obey God rather than men’ ” (Acts 5:29).

I've drafted an article for the Feast of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More--focusing on the Bishop of Rochester this time--in connection with the annual Fortnight for Freedom, which this year focuses on witnesses/martyrs from the early Church until today (including the Coptic martyrs beheaded on the beach in Libya last year by ISIL/ISIS). And, I'm working on a presentation for the Eighth Day Institute's Sisters of Sophia group on Margaret More Roper, St. Thomas More's daughter, to be given on June 21, the beginning of the Fortnight and the vigil of her father's feast! 

After those two projects are completed, I'll be keeping company with Dorothy L. Sayers, preparing a presentation for the EDI Inklings Festival in July and then with Blessed John Henry Newman, preparing a presentation for the Spiritual Life Center in August!

The Fortnight for Freedom: St. Thomas Garnet, SJ

St. Thomas Garnet, SJ was an alumnus of the seminary in Valladolid, Spain:

ST. Thomas GARNET SJ son of Richard Garnet, Confessor of the Faith, and nephew of Father Henry Garnet SJ martyr, was born in London in 1574.

Garnet's father Richard Garnet was at Balliol College at Oxford when restrictions were being placed on any students who seemed to be leaning toward Catholicism. That generation of the Garnet family produced at least four religious vocations: Henry Garnet became a Jesuit and three girls, Margaret, Eleanor, and Anne braved exile to become nuns of the Augustinian convent in Louvain.

For some time he was page to the Count of Arundel, until, in the year 1594, at the age of sixteen, he entered the college at St. Omer in the Low Countries.

Two years after, he was ordered to the college of St. Alban at VALLADOLID, where he studied for four years. In the same city he was ordained a priest, and from there returned to England.

In 1604 he was admitted to the Society of Jesus by his uncle (the local superior of the Jesuits), but upon attempting to leave England to begin his novitiate at Louvain [in 1605], he was stopped and incarcerated in the Gatehouse jail at Westminster, and later in the Tower of London. He was banished in the year 1606. 

[Note that authorities wanted him to give information about his uncle's involvement in the Gunpowder Plot.]

Shortly afterwards, he returned surreptitiously to England, where he was betrayed for being a priest. He was interrogated before the Protestant bishop of London on the 17th of November 1607, but refused to answer his questions, neither was he disposed to make the new oath of loyalty, because its contents were against the Catholic Faith. Having been intensively interrogated already for the bishop by Sir Thomas Wade, the superintendent of the keep and a very cruel torturer of priests, Father Garnet was moved to the Old Bailey prison.

Shortly afterwards, he was processed and condemned for his priesthood. While in jail, some Catholics provided him with means of escaping, but he refused, choosing rather to obey an interior voice that said to him "noli fugere".

He was stripped, hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn (London) on the 23rd of June 1608.On the 25th of October 1970, he was solemnly canonised by Pope Paul VI.

On the scaffold he announced that he was the happiest man alive that day. His steadfastness in facing death impressed the crowds, so he was dead before quartering and beheading. St. Thomas Garnet's missionary career during James I's reign shows the relative leniency of that king.

Because James wanted to preserve peace with Spain and France, Catholic countries he did not consistently target priests--and certainly not laity--for execution throughout his reign. Of course not every priest arrested during the reign of Elizabeth I was executed since some were held in Wisbech prison. Even after the terror of the Gunpowder Plot, Father Thomas Garnet, since nothing connected him then with any of the plotters, was (after torture) released into exile. 

The Fortnight for Freedom: Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning after the 7:45 a.m. Eastern time/6:45 a.m. Central time news break. Matt Swaim and I will discuss Saints John Fisher and Thomas More on their shared feast, which is the anniversary of Bishop Fisher's execution.

The author Michael Davies described the day of Fisher's beheading--he was awakened early and told the time of his execution; he asked to be allowed to sleep longer--and he was too weak to walk from his cell through the Tower to Tower Hill:

When he came out of the Tower, a summer morning's mist hung over the river, wreathing the buildings in a golden haze. Two of the Lieutenant's men carried him in a chair to the gate, and there they set him down, while waiting for the Sheriffs. The cardinal stood up and leaning his shoulder against a wall for support, opened the little New Testament he carried in his hand. "O Lord," he said, so that all could hear him, "this is the last time I shall ever open this book. Let some comforting place now chance to me whereby I, Thy poor servant, may glorify Thee in my last hour"----and looking down at the page, he read:

"Now this is etemal life: that they may know Thee, the one true God, and Jesus Christ Whom Thou has sent I have glorified Thee on earth: I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do"(John, 17:3-4).

Whereupon he shut the book, saying: "Here is even learning enough for me to my life's end." His lips were moving in prayer, as they carried him to Tower Hill. And when they reached the scaffold, the rough men of his escort offered to help him up the ladder. But he smiled at them: "Nay, masters, now let me alone, ye shall see me go up to my death well enough myself; without help." And forthwith he began to climb, almost nimbly. As he reached the top the sun appeared from behind the clouds, and its light shone upon his face. He was heard to murmur some words from Psalm 33: Accedite ad eum, etilluminamim, et facies vestræ non confundentur. The masked headsman knelt----as the custom was----to ask his pardon. And again the cardinal's manliness dictated every word of his answer: "I forgive thee with all my heart, and I trust on Our Lord Thou shalt see me die even lustily." Then they stripped him of his gown and furred tippet, and he stood in his doublet and hose before the crowd which had gathered to see his death. A gasp of pity went up at the sight of his "long, lean, slender body, nothing in manner but skin and bones . . . the flesh clean wasted away; and a very image of death, and as one might say, death in a man's shape and using a man's voice." He was offered a final chance to save his life by acknowledging the royal supremacy, but the Saint turned to the crowd, and from the front of the scaffold, he spoke these words:

"Christian people, I am come hither to die for the faith of Christ's Catholic Church, and I thank God hitherto my courage hath served me well thereto, so that yet hitherto I have not feared death; wherefore I desire you help me and assist me with your prayers, that at the very point and instant of my death's stroke, and in the very moment of my death, I then faint not in any point of the Catholic Faith for fear; and I pray God save the king and the realm, and hold His holy hand over it, and send the king a good counsel."

The power and resonance of his voice, the courage of his spirit triumphing over the obvious weakness of his body, amazed them all, and a murmur of admiration was still rustling the crowd when they saw him go down on his knees and begin to pray. They stood in awed silence while he said the Te Deum in praise of God, and the Psalm In Thee O Lord have I put my trust, the humble request for strength beyond his own. Then he signed to the executioner to bind his eyes. For a moment more he prayed, hands and heart raised to Heaven. Then he lay down and put his wasted neck upon the low block. The executioner, who had been standing back, took one quick step forward, raised his ax and with a single blow cut off his head. So copious a stream of blood poured from the neck that those present wondered how it could have come from so thin and wasted a frame. There was certainly Divine irony in the fact that 22 June, the date of the execution, was the Feast of St. Alban, the first Martyr for the Faith in Britain. If the king had realized this he would certainly have arranged for the execution of Cardinal Fisher to take place on another day.

I wrote about the "Importance of St. Thomas More Today" for The National Catholic Register. You may find the article linked here.

The Fortnight for Freedom Begins: St. John Rigby

The annual Fortnight for Freedom, sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to promote religious liberty, begins today and ends on July 4, our Independence Day.

FYI: tomorrow, Monday, June 22, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to discuss the Fortnight and Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, whose shared feast is always an important part of the Fortnight.

Today, however, we should honor an English Catholic martyr who died because England did not respect religious freedom in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries (who did? until Lord Baltimore founded Maryland), and one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, the layman St. John Rigby:

Rigby was born circa 1570 at Harrock Hall, Eccleston, near Chorley, Lancashire, the fifth or sixth son of Nicholas Rigby, by his wife Mary (née Breres). In 1600 Rigby was working for Sir Edmund Huddleston, whose daughter Mrs. Fortescue was summoned to the Old Bailey for recusancy. Because she was ill, Rigby appeared for her, was compelled to confess his Catholicism, and sent to Newgate. The next day, the feast day of St Valentine, he signed a confession saying that since he had been reconciled to the Roman Catholic faith by Saint John Jones, a Franciscan priest, he had not attended Anglican services. He was sent back to Newgate and later transferred to the White Lion. Twice he was given the chance to recant, but twice refused. His sentence was carried out. He gave the executioner who helped him up to the cart a piece of gold, saying, "Take this in token that I freely forgive thee and others that have been accessory to my death." Rigby was executed by hanging at St Thomas Waterings on June 21, 1600.

Saint John Jones, the priest who had reconciled Rigby, had died at the same place Rigby had died, St Thomas Waterings, two years earlier, on July 12, 1598.

St John Rigby Roman Catholic Sixth Form College in Orrell, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester is named after St. John Rigby. One of its buildings, Harrock House, is named after Rigby's birthplace.

Other reports of his execution include this exchange:

On his way to execution, the hurdle was stopped by a Captain Whitlock, who wished him to conform and asked him if he were married, to which the martyr replied, "I am a bachelor; and more than that I am a maid", and the captain thereupon desired his prayers.

Rigby's conversion to Catholicism was a felony in Elizabethan England (so much for Elizabeth I's claim not to want to see into men's souls!), as was attendance at the Catholic Mass--he would have just been fined and/or imprisoned for not attending Anglican services.

I will be highlighting the several English martyrs, canonized and beatified--and one Irish martyred saint--throughout the Fortnight. Here is an overview of them, published on The Christian Review.

Saints Fisher and More on the Son Rise Morning Show

Since yesterday (June 22) was the usual date of the feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More and the Fortnight for Freedom began on Saturday (June 21), I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to discuss these two great martyrs--a little after 7:45 a.m. Eastern Time.

You may listen on your local EWTN Radio affiliate--or on line here.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Sts. John Fisher & Thomas More, and the Fortnight for Freedom

Today is the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ in most dioceses of the United States of America, the feast having been moved from the Thursday after Trinity Sunday to the following Sunday. On the sanctoral calendar, it is the feast of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, two of the greatest and best known of the Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation. It is also the memorial of St. Alban, the first English martyr. Quite a combination of events--but wait, there's more!

In the United States we are observing another Fortnight For [Religious] Freedom from June 21 to July 4, our Independence Day. In the last two years, Fisher and More have really been emblems of the struggle for religious freedom in the U.S. as the Catholic Bishops, many Catholic and non-Catholic organizations have worked against HHS contraceptive, abortafacients, and sterilization mandates. This year the focus is "on the freedom to serve the poor and vulnerable in accord with human dignity and the Church's teaching."

So how to put it all together? The Solemnity of Corpus Christi, obviously, is the most important event today--all three martyrs would say so themselves. To focus on the two English Reformation martyrs, referenced so prominently during the Fortnight for Freedom in 2012 and 2013: St. John Fisher, clearly as a priest, bishop, and cardinal of the Catholic Church, was ordained to celebrate the Sacraments, especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The feast of Corpus Christi, with its special office written by St. Thomas Aquinas, the procession with the Blessed Sacrament, and the English people's great love and devotion to the Real Presence was part of his life. He wrote apologetic works defending the priesthood, the Mass, and the Real Presence against the teachings of Martin Luther and Oecolampidus.

St. Thomas More spent the last years of his life, from the time he resigned as Chancellor of England and retired to his study at Chelsea, meditating on the Holy Eucharist and on the Passion and Death of Jesus. He also wrote to defend the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence against the Protestant reformers attacks while he was Chancellor.

Indeed, the man who sent the holy bishop and his former friend to their deaths also defended the Real Presence. Henry VIII, even though he separated himself and his country from the universal Catholic Church, continued to defend the Church's teaching about the Holy Eucharist. Even as he sentenced Sts. John Fisher and St. Thomas More to death, commuting their sentences from being hung, drawn, and quartered to being beheaded, he had those who denied the Real Presence sentenced to being burned alive at the stake. What the holy martyrs knew, however, was that without the unity of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church the reality of the Holy Eucharist cannot hold. While Henry VIII held on to Christ's teaching about the Eucharist as His body and blood, necessary for communion with Him in His Church, Henry's Anglican Church would soon deny it (during the reign of Edward VI in Archbishop Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer).

Reflecting on the focus of the Fortnight for Freedom, "on the freedom to serve the poor and vulnerable in accord with human dignity and the Church's teaching", these two martyrs also demonstrated their dedication to service and charity. St. John Fisher was also renowned for his personal poverty and simple life combined with his great efforts to help the poor of his diocese--materially and spiritually. The great project of his life was to improve the education of priests and the quality of their preaching, so that the Church could serve the flock of Christ more effectively and completely.

As a layman, husband, and father, St. Thomas More took no vows of poverty--although he had considered a vocation as a Carthusian in the Charterhouse on London--but he fulfilled the usual obligation of a layman to give alms and help the poor. Since the great work of his public life was the administration of justice, More was renowned for his fairness, incorruptibility, and impartiality in dispensing justice and following the law to those rich or poor.

There is much to meditate on today about this great feast and these great martyrs. I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show tomorrow morning to talk about St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More (after the  7:45 a.m. Eastern news update). The date of their shared feast, June 22, is the commemoration of St. John Fisher's martyrdom. Henry VIII had no good choice of a date on which to execute this great holy man: the symbolism of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, to whom the bishop of Rochester had compared himself in his defense of the sacrament of Holy Matrimony, loomed in the days after his trial and condemnation (June 24)--and the vigil of that feast, June 23 was just as bad, as was the Octave after--so Henry's choice was June 22, the feast of the first English martyr, St. Alban.

Fortnight for Freedom: Saints John Fisher and Thomas More

I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show this morning at 6:45 Central, 7:45 Eastern to discuss the connections among the 2013 Fortnight for (Religious) Freedom, Saints John Fisher and Thomas More (on the vigil of their feast as martyrs), and the true definition of conscience. As you know, you can listen live on-line.

As Ryan Topping notes in his Rebuilding Catholic Culture, for as much good as Robert Bolt's play A Man for All Seasons has done to make St. Thomas More well known, the play has also done harm because of its modern view of conscience, which Blessed John Henry Newman identified in the nineteenth century as “a creation of man”. This view of conscience Newman calls “the right of self will.” It thinks of conscience as the individual’s “right of thinking, speaking, writing, and acting, according to their judgment or their humour, without any thought of God at all” so that everyone is “to be his own master in all things, and to profess what he pleases, asking no one's leave”. Newman also calls this view of conscience, in contrast to true conscience, as being "consistent with oneself"--and that's the form of conscience in Thomas More that Robert Bolt prizes. It's his individual claim, his independent freedom, that Robert Bolt wanted to depict--Thomas More as "hero of selfhood" (from the Preface; cited by Topping on page 129). (Newman quotes from his famous Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.)

Bishop John Fisher and Sir Thomas More did not argue for their freedom of conscience from that position. Their consciences were reflecting natural law and God's revelation, and both spoke on the worldwide tradition and current Catholic teaching to back up their decision not to swear either the Oath of Succession or the Oath of Supremacy (both of which denied the authority of the Pope on the matter of judging the sacramental validity of marriage). Transcripts of their trials indicate that both of them cited the authority of tradition and Christendom against Henry VIII:

St. Thomas More: "I see no reason why that thing should make any Change in my Conscience: for I doubt not, but of the learned and virtuous Men now alive, I do not speak only of this Realm, but of all Christendom, there are ten to one of my mind in this matter; but if I should take notice of those learned Doctors and virtuous Fathers that are already dead, many of whom are Saints in Heaven, I am sure there are far more, who all the while they lived thought in this case as I do now. And therefore, my Lord, I do not think my self bound to conform my Conscience to the Counsel of one Kingdom, against the general Consent of all Christendom."

St. John Fisher: "My lords, I am here condemned before you of high treason for denial of the King's supremacy over the Church of England, but by what order of justice I leave to God, Who is the searcher both of the king his Majesty's conscience and yours; nevertheless, being found guilty, as it is termed, I am and must be contented with all that God shall send, to whose will I wholly refer and submit myself. And now to tell you plainly my mind, touching this matter of the king's supremacy, I think indeed, and always have thought, and do now lastly affirm, that His Grace cannot justly claim any such supremacy over the Church of God as he now taketh upon him; neither hath (it) been seen or heard of that any temporal prince before his days hath presumed to that dignity; wherefore, if the king will now adventure himself in proceeding in this strange and unwonted case, so no doubt but he shall deeply incur the grievous displeasure of the Almighty, to the great damage of his own soul, and of many others, and to the utter ruin of this realm committed to his charge, wherefore, I pray God his Grace may remember himself in good time, and harken to good counsel for the preservation of himself and his realm and the quietness of all Christendom."

Last year, at the opening Mass for the Fortnight for Freedom in Baltimore, Maryland, Archbishop William Lori gave the homily. I'm sure that in some way tonight at the opening Mass at the Baltimore Basilica, he will recall these two great saints in some way. (I have to admit that when I watched that homily last year, one of my first thoughts was--"Not Tyburn Hill! They were beheaded on Tower Hill!")